Who Woke Up Turkey? 
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF AN EXPERT NEWSPAPER 
 CORRESPONDENT 
 
 A Letter of William E. Curtis to tlie Chicago Record-Herald 
 
 \Repritited by the American Board of Commissioners for For- 
 eign Missions, by permission of the Chicago Record-Herald^ 
 
 [Note. — Mr. Curtis is in the foremost file of special correspondents. 
 His work is known throughout the journalistic world, for keenness of in- 
 sight, fulness and accuracy of information, and balanced judgment. He 
 has traveled widely, studied many lands and peoples, observed much, 
 weighed, compared, and reviewed his opinions, until he is to-day one 
 of America's most cosmopolitan men, — a trained and experienced in- 
 vestigator whom a leading journal sends on difficult or responsible tours 
 of inquiry. Mr. Curtis's testimony to what the missionaries have done 
 for Turkey may be accepted as absolutely unpurchased and unprejudiced: 
 the witness of a capable reporter who sees and tells the thing as it is. — 
 Officers of the American Board.] 
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE, Sept. ii, 1910.— Nowhere in all the 
 world, not even in China or Japan, are the results of the 
 labors and influence of American missionaries more con- 
 spicuous or more generally recognized than in the Ottoman 
 Empire. They have not confined themselves to making converts to 
 Christianity, but their intelligence and enterprise have been felt even 
 more extensively and effectively in the material than in the spiritual 
 improvement of the people. The first electric telegraph instrument in 
 Turkey was set up by missionaries. They introduced the first sew- 
 ing-machine, the first printing-press, and the first modern agricul- 
 tural implements. They brought the tomato and the potato and the 
 other valuable vegetables and fruits that are now staples; they built 
 the first hospitals; they started the first dispensary and the first 
 modern schools. Before they came, not one of the several races in 
 Turkey had the Bible in its own language. To-day, thanks to the 
 American missionaries, every subject of the Turkish sultan can read 
 the Bible in his own language, if he can read at all. 
 
 But a large volume would be necessary to tell what I would like 
 to say on this subject. Mr. Bryce, the British ambassador to Wash- 
 ington, in one of his books, says : 
 
 I 
 
" I cannot mention the American missionaries without 
 a tribute to the admirable work they have done. They 
 have been the only good influence that has worked from 
 abroad upon the Turkish Empire." 
 
 Sir William Ramsey, the famous British scientist, who has spent 
 much time in Turkey, is quite as enthusiastic; and I could quote a 
 dozen other equally competent authorities as to the character of 
 the men and the results they have accomplished. 
 
 The American missionaries have over four hundred schools, one 
 hundred and thirty or more large churches in the centers of popula- 
 tion, with congregations numbering as high as 2,000, besides a mul- 
 titude of outstations in the villages of Asia Minor. In the division 
 of territory the Presbyterians have Syria; the United Presbyterians, 
 Egypt; while European Turkey and Asia Minor are occupied by the 
 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, affiliated 
 with the Congregational Church, with headquarters at Boston. 
 There are several Church of England missions, but no central 
 organization. The Swedish, German, and Swiss Lutherans have 
 schools, churches, and orphanages. The French Roman Catholics 
 have schools and hospitals in Asia Minor in charge of Capuchin and 
 Franciscan monks; but the chief missionary work in Turkey — edu- 
 cational, benevolent, and evangelical — has been done by agents of 
 the American Board since 1820, when two pioneers, Pliny Fisk and 
 Levi Parsons, landed at Smyrna and began to prepare themselves for 
 preaching and teaching by learning the native languages. 
 
 The headquarters from which the campaign of evangelization and 
 civilization is directed is called the Bible House in Stamboul, the 
 native section of Constantinople, which was built in 187 1 and is to- 
 day the most far-reaching lighthouse in all the East. Its rays pene- 
 trate to every corner of the Ottoman Empire. Here are the offices of 
 administration; the depository of the Bible Society; the printing- 
 plant and publication house; the treasury, the library, the informa- 
 tion bureaus, and other branches of the work. If you ever want to 
 know anything about missions or missionaries in the near East, indi- 
 vidually or collectively, their personnel, their purposes, or the results 
 they have accomplished, or anything about American education and 
 charitable work in Turkey, write to the Bible House, Stamboul, 
 Constantinople; and if you have any money to contribute toward 
 the expenses of the great work that is going on, send it there to 
 Dr, Feet, the treasurer. 
 
 The most far-reaching work of the American missionaries is educa- 
 tional, which comprehends all races, all religions, and all languages. 
 They are educating representatives of every one of the many differ- 
 ent races of which the Turkish Empire is composed, regardless of 
 
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'religious faith — Turks, Arabs, Egyptians, Armenians, Kurds, Per- 
 sians, Macedonians, Bulgars, Druses, Nestorians, Greeks, Russians, 
 Georgians, Circassians, and others too numerous to mention. Their 
 influence is thus extended to every community, because no student 
 leaves an American institution without carrying with him the germs 
 of progress which must affect the family and the neighborhood and 
 all of the inhabitants with whom he may thereafter come in contact. 
 This influence has been working for half a century or more, and has 
 been preparing the minds of the people for the great change that has 
 recently come over them. The missionaries do not teach revolution; 
 they do not encourage revolutionary methods; but they have always 
 preached and taught liberty, equality, fraternity, and the rights of 
 man. ; 
 
 The congregations of the American churches, and especially the 
 pupils of the missionary schools, are usually reduced from 25 to 30 
 per cent every year by immigration to the United States. Having 
 learned from their teachers of the advantages and the opportuni- 
 ties that exist across the water; having acquired the English language; 
 and being able to get good advice as to location and often letters of 
 introduction, they have decided advantages over ordinary emigrants, 
 and for the same reason they make the best sort of citizens when 
 they reach their new homes. It had been very difficult for an emi- 
 grant to leave Turkey until two years ago; but somehow or another, 
 there has been a constant stream running that way for a quarter of 
 a century. 
 
 A dozen missionaries have told me that the brightest and most 
 promising young men and women in their districts, and especially 
 the best teachers in their schools, have emigrated. Many of them 
 go to Massachusetts, Chicago has thousands, and there is a large 
 colony in Troy working in the shirt and collar factories. For exam- 
 ple, the churches at Harput had 3,107 members one year and 2,413 
 the next. The balance had gone to America. One-fourth of the con- 
 gregation of the mission church at Bitlis emigrated, almost in a 
 body, last year. It would be a great deal better for Turkey if these 
 people would stay at home and use the knowledge and the principles 
 they have gained in the regeneration of their country; but it cannot 
 be denied that they are among the most valuable immigrants of all 
 the aliens that go to the United States. 
 
 Most of the mission churches are small, like those in the villages 
 of the United States, with congregations of only twenty-five or 
 thirty or fifty members. Those in the cities are larger, several 
 having more than a thousand members. They are organized just 
 like the Protestant churches in the United States, with native pastors 
 and native church officers. They have Sunday schools, prayer meet- 
 ings. Christian Endeavor societies, and other organizations, and they 
 
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study the saftie Sunday-school lessons as the Protestant children in 
 the United States. 
 
 Most of them are self-supporting. Sometimes the newly organized 
 congregations get a little help from the United States at the start, but 
 the great majority of native converts pay more for their religion and 
 make greater sacrifices than the Christians of the United States. For 
 example, thirteen out of tvs?enty-seven churches in the Central Turk- 
 ish mission are not only entirely self-supporting, but contribute sub- 
 stantial aid to weaker churches in their neighborhood. In the entire 
 Turkish Empire last year the native churches paid five-sixths of all 
 the expenses of education, worship, and charity. 
 
 The board pays the salaries of the missionaries, but the effort 
 is to bring the native churches to a condition of pecuniary independ- 
 ence, for the reason that it stimulates their pride and their ambition; 
 it gives them confidence and self-respect, which, as everybody knows, 
 are the strongest elements in the formation of national as well as 
 individual character. Notwithstanding the extension of the work, 
 the amount of money contributed by the United States for the sup- 
 port of native churches has been growing smaller every year. I 
 picked up a report the other day which showed that whereas the 
 board contributed ^54,585 to assist native churches twenty years 
 ago, last year it gave less than ^20,000. 
 
 The vital need, however, is chapels. Every congregation ought to 
 have a home and its own place of worship. It is not necessary to 
 explain the advantages. They are obvious. It is just ten times as 
 important for a native congregation in Turkey to have its own house 
 of worship as it is for a congregation in the United States, and for 
 the same reason. And, as a rule, the congregation in the United 
 States has ten times the financial ability to provide its own house of 
 worship as the little circle of native believers in Turkey. 
 
 There are about one hundred and fifty American missionaries in 
 Turkey to-day, and each has a district like the diocese of an Epis- 
 copal bishop, with a dozen or twenty churches under his care. He 
 visits them regularly, advises with their pastors, superintends their 
 schools, and exercises a paternal authority over the people. They 
 consult him concerning their temporal as well as their spiritual wel- 
 fare — not only the members of his congregation, but men of every 
 class. No class of people in all Turkey are so trusted by the offi- 
 cials and the public and by every race as the American mission- 
 aries. All classes accept the word of a missionary without question. 
 Money is intrusted to him for safe keeping or for transmission to 
 other hands without asking a receipt, -and it is a common thing for 
 officials of high rank to seek counsel of missionaries when they 
 are in doubt or in danger. As a well-known writer has said: 
 
 "They know that in times of trouble the missionary is their best 
 friend, no matter how much they may have abused him in times of 
 
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prosperity. They know that he will always do what he believes to 
 be for their best good, even though there may be a difference of 
 judgment as to what is the best thing. In the midst of Oriental 
 duphcity the missionaries have established a reputation for speaking 
 the truth. At first this was one of the severest puzzles to the Turks 
 in the dealings of the missionaries with the government. They could 
 conceive of no reason for telling the truth under such circum- 
 stances, so they were completely misled." 
 
 It is the policy of the missionaries to make the natives do every- 
 thing for themselves so far as practicable, and native pastors relieve 
 them of much of their labor except supervision. But at the same 
 time the missionary must drive new stakes and plow new ground 
 and plant new seeds all the rime to extend his sphere of influence. 
 And he travels about for this reason, holding religious services in 
 the native languages and drawing believers together until he gets 
 enough material to start a church. I know a man who preaches 
 three rimes every Sunday in three different languages in difi^erent 
 places to different congregations — Turkish, Armenian, and Greek. 
 And they have all kinds of schools to look after, from kinder- 
 gartens to theological seminaries. The latter are especially im- 
 portant because they furnish pastors for the native churches. The 
 faculties in the American colleges are nearly all natives, but the 
 presidents, the deans, and the treasurers are always Americans, 
 and the boards of trustees are mixed. 
 
 If you would attend a gathering of native pastors in Turkey you 
 would find that they compare favorably in appearance and manners 
 and intelligence and education with the members of any conference 
 or presbytery or ministerial association in the United States, and 
 that is one of the reasons why their work has been so successful. 
 The Moslem priests and the clergy of the orthodox Greek and Ar- 
 menian churches are almost universally uncouth and illiterate men, 
 and the public in Turkey is prompt and keen in detecting the dif- 
 ference. 
 
 President Angell of the University of Michigan, who was United 
 States Minister to Turkey for seven years, once said: 
 
 "So far as Americans are concerned the missionary 
 work in European Turkey and Asia Minor is and long 
 has been almost exclusively in the hands of the Amer- 
 ican Board. In no part of the world has that board or 
 any board had abler or more devoted representatives to 
 preach the gospel, to conduct schools and colleges, or to 
 establish and administer hospitals. Wherever an Amer- 
 ican mission is established, there is a center of alert, en- 
 terprising American life, whose influence in a hundred 
 ways is felt even by the lethargic Oriental life." 
 
 WILLIAM E. CURTIS. 
 
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IF any reader of Mr. Curtis's letter is moved to adopt its suggestion 
 and entrust a gift for the work thus highly rated to the hands of Dr. 
 W. W. Peet, Treasurer of American Board Turkish Missions at the 
 Bible House, Constantinople, he may be glad to learn that the incon- 
 venience of transmitting money to a foreign country can be avoided by 
 sending the gift to Frank H. Wiggin, Treasurer of the American Board, 
 14 Beacon Street, Boston, who will see that it is promptly forwarded, 
 without expense, to Dr. Peet, and used for the purpose desired. 
 
 A GRAPHIC account of the American Board's enterprise in 
 Turkey since i8ig, portraying the events and the actors through 
 which the remarkable history has been wrought, will be found 
 in The Story of the American Board, a finely illustrated and at- 
 tractive volume of over 500 pages written by William E. Strong, the 
 Board's Editorial Secretary, and just issued. The price of the book is 
 81.75 net; postage, 18 cents. It may be obtained of 
 
 THE AMERICAN BOARD or THE PILGRIM PRESS 
 
 14 Beacon Street, Boston 14 Beacon Street, Boston 
 
 Fourth Avenue and 22d Street, New York 156 Fifth Avenue, New York 
 153 La Salle Street, Chicago 175 Wabash Avenue, Chicago 
 
 Mechanics Bank Building, San Francisco 
 
 or of your own bookseller. 
 
 ANOTHER recent book bearing on the subject of Mr. Curtis's 
 letter is Daybreak in Turkey, by Secretary James L. Barton, 
 a story of the Turkish Empire, its people and religions, with 
 an account of the development of modern Christian institutions in the 
 country, which have made a New Turkey possible. Seventh Thousand. 
 
 Dark green ornamental boards, gilt top, illustrated and indexed, 306 
 pages, ^1.50. The same in paper covers, 50 cents. Post-paid. Or a copy 
 of the board edition will be sent together with a year's subscription to 
 The Missionary Herald, from a new subscriber, for $2.00. 
 Address John G. Hosmer, Agent, 14 Beacon Street, Boston. 
 
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