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TURKEY AND THE UNITED STATES 459
ment in their gigantic task of adapting democratic princi
ples to Oriental conditions and the day may come when the
voice of the American people, without fear of political en
tanglements, will be of no little influence in pleading for
Turkey the right to achieve, unhindered by foreign intrigue,
that place among the nations which the God of nations may
have destined it to possess.
It cannot be denied that there are many who do not wish
to see the rule of the Turks perpetuated; those who still
feel towards the Moslem something of the spirit of the old
Crusaders; who have ineradicable prejudices that preclude
fair judgment, who honestly doubt the capacity of the Turk
for administration, his ability to assimilate principles of
self-government ; who question the adaptability of the Faith
of Islam to modern progress. It should not be difficult,
however, in our consideration of the relations which should
exist between the United States and Turkey, to agree that
there is every good reason to be proud of the work of Ameri
can institutions in Turkey; that these institutions have still
a mission to fulfill; that the new constitutional regime has
opened up magnificent commercial opportunities; that the
United States is in a peculiarly favored position to take
advantage of these opportunities and finally that we ought
not to rest indifferent to the efforts of the Young Turks, who,
against disheartening odds, are striving to throw light into
darkness and give to those long oppressed and without hope
the priceless treasure of self-government.

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT AS A FACTOR IN THE
PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY
By Ellsworth Huntington, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in
Yale University
The Turkish empire has changed its dress, but not its
nature. A body diseased for a millenium cannot recover in
two or three years. As Dr. Zwemer forcibly puts it, ' ' Noth
ing has ended in Turkey, but something has begun." The
body politic has been cleansed, and the drastic removal of
the old sultan has put the country in a state where growth
is possible. Constitutional government has infused new
hope in despairing hearts and gives promise that if rightly
nurtured it will lead to steady progress. Nevertheless the
old disease is still present, ready to break out if any untoward
crisis weakens the new regime.
Gathered here, as we are, to discuss the present condi
tions of the Near East, every participant in this conference
is animated, I believe, by the sincere desire to assist in the
solution of the great problems which confront the new
Turkey. Nothing can aid her more than a true under
standing of the causes of her weakness. Each of us has
his own diagnosis, and his own remedy, whose nature depends
on whether we are missionaries, diplomats, historians, edu
cators, business men, or scientists. Doubtless each is
partly wrong, but probably all of us together are nearly
right. To-day I present the diagnosis of a geographer, one
whose profession is the study of the relation between physi
cal surroundings and human life. If I were to choose a text
it would be from Eliot's "Turkey in Europe," that best
of books on the Turks: "The crimes with which the Turks
are frequently reproached, such as treachery, fratricide and
wholesale cruelty, are characteristic not of them, but of
the lands which they invaded." I would carry this further
460

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY 461
and say that to an extent hitherto unrealized, the character
of the Turks and other races of the empire is dependent
upon past and present physical environment. I do not
ignore the influence of religion, or of other psychic forces,
but I believe that these cannot be rightly understood until
we appreciate the part played by geographic surroundings
in molding human character.
No one can travel in Turkey without seeing scores of
examples of the influence of natural environment upon the
inhabitants. Take, for example, the facts which came to
my notice in the summer of 1909 during an hour's talk with
Herr Winter, the engineer in charge of the extensive works
which will soon bring water from Lake Bey Shehir to the
dry plain of Konia, the ancient Axylon, in the center of
Asia Minor. As we talked, four of Herr Winter's assist
ants one by one came into the room and were introduced.
"You see what we are like," he said. "This engineer is a
Greek, that one a Bulgarian, this a Belgian, and the other
an Italian; another is an Armenian, and others are of still
different races. The irrigation company is German; but
I am the only German here, and I'm an Austrian, Our
laborers are just as mixed, — Turks, Armenians, some Kurds,
a few Greeks, and I don't know what else. Of course we
don't understand each other. We don't try to."
Having forcibly illustrated one of the predominant re
sults of the peculiar geographic nature of Turkey — its racial
diversity, — Herr Winter proceeded to give an example
of the effect of the unique conditions of Lake Bey Shehir
upon the activity and thus upon the character of the inhabi
tants of the region. From the lake, thirty miles long, a
large, clear river flows southeastward to a smaller lake,
Kara Viren. At most times this second sheet has no out
let, for the water finds exit underground through several
"katavothrae," or deep holes in the underlying limestone.
Occasionally the holes become clogged, or the supply of
water is too great to escape through them, and a stream
flows out from the lake, northeastward to the Konia plain.
For a thousand years or more the Turks and their prede
cessors have vainly striven to prevent the loss of water

462 ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON
through the sink-holes and turn the entire supply to the
thirsty plain. They have built walls in front of the holes;
have dumped load after load of earth and rock into the
yawning chasms; have manufactured crude covers of
beams, felt and earth; have deepened the channel at the
outlet of the lake ; and have wasted much energy in digging
a practically horizontal canal for a. dozen miles around the
lake from inlet to outlet. Each attempt has failed, not
from lack of initiative or energy, but because natural diffi
culties have been insuperable for people in Turkey's stage
of development. Only the most exact modern methods of
elaborate surveying afford the Germans any hope of tapping
the river above the smaller lake and carrying it around to
the outlet valley. To suppose that the failure to utilize
the water of a single lake would have an appreciable effect
upon the character of the people of Turkey would be absurd.
Consider, however, the deadening effect of a thousand such
failures each year for hundreds of years.
Possibly these failures have much to do with the stupidity
of men like the Turk of whom Herr Winter told us. One
of the engineers was talking with a peasant whose land will
ultimately be irrigated. "This is a wonderful thing for
you," remarked the engineer. "When we turn the water
into the canals, you will get a crop of grain five times as
large as now." The peasant seemed impressed. He squatted
on his toes, scratched his head, rolled another cigarette and
thought the matter over. Suddenly an idea, a surprising
idea, struck him. He stood up, almost hastily, tightened
his girdle, and remarked "Allah be praised. Do you know
what I'll do? I'll sell all but one-fifth of my land, and
work only one-fifth as much as now."
The Turkish pasha who dug a horizontal canal and the
peasant who longed for ease arouse our mirth; yet if our
ancestors had lived under similar physical conditions, we
might have been equally stupid. Before discussing this
subject further, let us glance at a few other characteristics
inimical to progress in Turkey. Already we have mentioned
three, diversity of race and language, inability to cope with
the difficulties arising from the nature of the country, and a

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY 463
high degree of inertia, laziness, or whatever was the quality
of the peasant who proposed to sell four-fifths of his land.
To quote Eliot once more, "Perhaps one fact which lies
at the root of all the actions of the Turks, small and great,
is that they are by nature nomads. If they quoted from the
Bible instead of the Koran, no words would better charac
terize their manner of life than 'Here have we no continuing
city.' Both in the town and in the country they think it
rather strange to remain long in the same abode. Perhaps
it is to this spirit that most of the vices of the Turks should
be attributed. Traveling generates an immoral habit of
mind; that is to say, you do many things in a place where
you are going to stop only a few hours which you would not
do in your permanent residence. Observe the undisguised
selfishness and greed of ordinary railway travelers, the
brutal violence with which they seize eligible seats or other
comforts, the savage gluttony with which they ravage the
buffet. So the Turk pays no attention to the inhabitants
of the territory he occupies; he makes himself comfortable
in his own way in whatever shelter he finds, knocks a hole
in the finest fresco if he wants to run a stovepipe through
the wall, or pulls down a Greek temple if he wants stones.
He builds nothing but what is immediately necessary, and
repairs nothing at all. Why should he? He will pass on
somewhere else and take another house." No one who
has traveled in the interior of Asia Minor is likely to dispute
Eliot's statements. On many a summer's day I have ridden
from night till morning and found the villages deserted except
for a watchman or two. The inhabitants were up among
the mountains or out in the plain with their sheep; or per
chance were scattered in various small valleys caring for
gardens which were isolated because no one spot offers
sufficient water for more than a single family. Everywhere
in the more remote regions the traveler in the summer
meets lines of camels and donkeys laden with household
stuff, the scanty goods of a score of families.
The Turk is not the only nomad of the empire. The
Arabs, Kurds, Yoruks, and others are for the most part
nomadic; and, where they dare, even the Armenians often

464 ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON
move back and forth from one abode to another. Nomadism
is characteristic of the land as well as of the Turkish race.
We are often told that it is a principle of Turkish policy
to keep the borders of the empire in a state of devastation,
because such frontiers render it difficult for an enemy to
penetrate into the country. Whether this is a fact or not,
the borders certainly are in a continual state of unrest.
Those who have not visited the remoter districts scarcely
realize the frequency of raids, or how prominent and familiar
an event they are to the native mind. In the spring of
1909 I slept one night in an Arab tent east of the Jordan.
Suddenly guns sounded, dogs barked, men shouted and
women shrieked. I had been within sight of raids before,
but nevertheless I was excited enough to dress hastily and
hurry out toward the place where a robber band, while driv
ing off a herd of camels, had shot at the watchmen. Two old
Arabs, however, guests like myself in the tent of the sheikh,
merely raised their heads from the saddles which served as
pillows, saw that a raid had taken place, and went to sleep
again. Why should they trouble themselves about a little
matter like a raid?
Among the other qualities which have always menaced
Turkey and which to-day threaten all progress, misgovern-
ment and poverty hold an important place. There is no
need to picture them. The new regime has ameliorated
misgovernment, temporarily at least, and the introduction
of railroads and foreign enterprises will doubtless relieve
poverty. Yet the process must be slow, for aside from
mines and irrigable tracts such as the plain of Mesopotamia,
Turkey is poor, and its agricultural resources are already
almost completely utilized. Away from the main centers,
the Turks and all the native races, with the exception of the
Greeks on the coast and the Armenians who have been
affected by missions and other foreign influences, are deeply
ignorant. Worse than this, a certain hopelessness pre
vails, born of ages of disappointment. Moslems and
Christians feel it alike. The introduction of constitu
tional government dispelled it for a moment, but despair
once more is beginning to hang darkly over the land as

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY 465
a whole. A year ago, while traveling in central Asia
Minor, the most Turkish portion of the empire, I made
it a practise in every village to inquire as to the new regime.
"What about this new liberty?" I asked. "What difference
does it make in your village? What does it mean, anyhow?"
Time and again the answer was the same: "This liberty?
What do we know about it? They tell us that we have it,
and that everything will be all right now. Perhaps it will.
God knows. But we see no difference. Oh, yes, the officials
do not take so many bribes as formerly, but that won't last.
They are afraid now, but you wait. They want money
just as much as ever. They take as many taxes as before,
and soon they will take as many bribes. They seem to
want more soldiers than ever, and they take our sons to
die in Yemen. We don't mind being soldiers, but Yemen!
Men die like flies there. Did we vote for a man to go to
Constantinople? We don't know what you mean. Oh,
now we understand. Yes, a man went from the city, but
we know nothing about him. Why do you ask us all these
things? How can we tell about liberty? We don't know
what it means. You are from the city, you have read books.
You ought to explain to us what it all means. What do
we know except that we are poor and God is great? Allah
grant that we get enough to pay the taxes and live this dry
year." Thus far I have mentioned eight or ten characteristics
of the Turkish empire, but without arranging them logically.
I have purposely set them down in the accidental order
naturally used by one who has no definite idea as to their
origin. Now I propose to restate them in a sequence which
seems logical to the geographer. Eliot appears right in
putting nomadism first among the causes of the present
status of Turkey. It logically leads to a second and third
evil, namely, the perpetual devastation and unrest of the
borderlands and some other districts, and the extreme diver
sity of races. Religious differences accentuate the diversity,
but are not its original cause. Fourth among the characteris
tics of the land comes inability to cope with natural diffi
culties, a trait of the majority of Ottomans of whatever

466 ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON
race. They see the advantage of new methods, but rarely
invent them. Having reached a certain degree of profi
ciency in utilizing the wealth of nature, they wait for
foreigners to teach them how to go farther. From this
proceed other evils, especially inertia, hopelessness, ignorance
poverty, and misgovernment. It will be noticed that I put
at the end of the list misgovernment with its attendant evils
of cruelty, oppression, and treachery. I know that religious
beliefs or racial traits may lead to all manner of baneful
results, and that cruelty and treachery are characteristic
of certain stages in the development of all races. Never
theless the persistance of these qualities and the peculiar
manner of their combination can be explained most satis
factorily as the product of physical environment.
Let us now turn to the geographic interpretation of
Turkey, beginning with nomadism. Is the Turk by nature
a nomad? I answer, No. Nature, herself, to be sure, has
made him a nomad, but she can unmake him, for the race
is still plastic. Central Asia, where his ancestors lived for
thousands of years, is full of nomads now, and has con
tained still more in the past. Undoubtedly they scorn the
sedentary life. Many of them would not settle in agricul
tural communities if they could, but these are the well-to-do.
In every nomadic community the individuals whose flocks
are small are not merely willing, but eager to practise agri
culture or to engage in any other pursuit which will yield a
living. They fail to become farmers, simply because the
area available for agriculture is extremely limited. The
settled population occupies practically every available
square mile. If a few years of unusually heavy rainfall
increase the arable area, the villagers promptly take advan
tage of it, and enlarge their fields. Time and again the
cultivated area has expanded, only to contract once more
with the advent of a few dry years. If the nomad would
become an agriculturist, he must fight for the privilege.
Outside the arable tracts, however, vast areas are clothed
with grass for part of the year. In most cases such areas
are deserts or steppes too dry to support crops, in others
they are high plateaus covered with splendid grass in sum-

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY 467
mer, but having a warm season too short for food-produc
ing crops. In either case the regions are habitable for
people who adopt the nomadic life, but not for anyone else.
Hence unnumbered tribes have become nomads, not from
choice, but because they could live in no other way in the
districts where their lot happened to be cast. The nomadic
life is precarious in the highest degree, because a shortage of
grass is fatal to the flocks and herds. Hence in times of
stress the nomads move in search of better pastures. Their
manner of life makes it easy to travel hundreds of miles.
Once started, they may keep on indefinitely, or until they
find an abiding place. On the way, they come in contact
with other tribes, either nomads or settled folk. War is
the inevitable result. Starting from Central Asia, where
desert conditions had imposed upon their ancestors the
nomadic habit, the Turks, in wave after wave, moved for
ward until finally they found rest in Asia Minor, and pressed
over into European Turkey. Naturally the habits of
thousands of years stay with a race. In the struggle of
generations in Central Asia the individuals of a sturdy,
warlike type succeeded best, and passed on their character
istics to a progeny more numerous than that of the weaker
individuals who had not the hardihood to save their flocks
from danger, or to find new pastures by fighting with neigh
bors. In those old days laziness was no disadvantage, pro
vided a man could arouse himself to a frenzy of activity at
the critical moment. Thus the Turk became what he is, a
fighter, but not a man of energy in ordinary times. The
deserts of Central Asia gave him his character, and the
inheritance of ages still persists.
Having seen the effect of his original physical environ
ment in molding the Turk, we are led to ask how far the new
environment of Turkey has changed him. Is he permanently
endowed with the nomadic traits? I believe not. Few
inhabitants of the empire make better peasants than he.
Witness once more what Eliot says: "All occupations except
agriculture and military service are distasteful to the true
Osmanli. He does not rejoice in reclaiming barren land,
or in turning the mountain-side into fruitful vineyards. But

468 ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON
he has a keen appreciation of the simplest and most material
joys of country life. He likes fine horses, fat sheep and
cattle, good corn and olives, rich grass. But more than all,
he likes a good kitchen-garden, where he can grow fruit and
vegetables, succulent pumpkins and cucumbers, and per
haps regale a party of friends with roast lamb in a little
summer house under the shade of his mulberry and walnut
trees." Eliot here describes a combination of the character
istics of the nomad and the agriculturist in just the propor
tions which the nature of the country would lead us to
expect. In a word, since coming to Turkey, the Turkish
race has sloughed off part of the habits of nomadism and
assumed part of those of the true agriculturist. Neverthe
less he still retains many nomadic habits, partly by inherit
ance and partly because portions of Asia Minor are as desert
as the steppes farther east.
In many districts of Asia Minor nomadism is still a neces
sity. Take for example the plain of Axylon. On the edges
streams from the mountains furnish water for irrigation,
while the tendency of the air to rise among the hills causes
a fair amount of rainfall, though in most places not enough
to support forests. Hence villages are fairly numerous
along the line followed by the Bagdad railway at the foot of
the mountains. Out in the plain, however, the rainfall is
insufficient to support an agricultural population. Grain
is raised, but the harvest is precarious. In 1909 I inquired
time after time, and found that the crop amounted to only
from one to fourfold the seed sown. A man who obtained
four or five-fold thought himself most fortunate. Occa
sionally a series of two or three years may be worse than
1909, as in the late sixties and early seventies. Good crops
are raised in years of propitious rainfall, but the inhabitants
cannot rely on this. Hence semi-nomadism is a necessity.
If the people of the great Axylon plain relied solely upon
agriculture, they would soon starve, or be forced to move
away. Accordingly, they are pastoral; their chief reliance
is great flocks of sheep and other animals. In winter the
whole population gathers in large villages at the foot of the
mountains, or near large springs, and the animals are sup-

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY 469
ported on the grass near at hand, eked out by hay or straw
stored on the tops of the flat adobe houses. During more
than half the year, however, the villagers move out into the
plain in little groups of from three to a dozen families.
There they cultivate a part of the land on the chance of get
ting good crops of grain, but the main occupation is the care
of the flocks and herds. Evidently nomadism is a necessity.
Among the mountains the same is true ; for throughout large
portions of the elevated parts of Turkey grass grows well,
but the climate is too dry or too cold to permit dependence
upon agriculture. Hence the nomadic habit, with all that it
involves of character or of modes of thought and action,
has not been wholly eradicated by the migration of the Turks
to their present home. Some of the invaders have become
the best of agriculturists, but even in them the old mode
of life is still a potent influence. Others, such as the Turko
mans of late arrival, must perforce be nomads still, for
nature will not permit otherwise.
Our conclusions as to nomadism explain the unrest and
devastation of the Turkish borders. On the south the
Arabs live in a desert which enforces the strictest nomadism.
On the east, in the high Armenian plateau near the Persian
border, much of the country is so cold and dry that the
Kurds are necessarily nomadic, in summer at least. Even
where the degree of nomadism is slight, unrest prevails,
because of the sterility of the mountains. Take the case of
Dersim, between the two main branches of the upper Eu
phrates, a mountainous tract, highly rugged, and with some
peaks rising to an elevation of 10,000 feet. Dersim is far
from fertile. The Kurdish inhabitants raise grain, but
depend in large measure on flocks. In 1907-8 the crops
were bad, and the sheep did not do so well as usual because
the grass was scanty. The Kurds needed supplies from
without. In the old days they would merely have robbed
the neighboring villages. I myself have been in a village
on the borders of Dersim when the Kurds drove off the flocks,
killed a shepherd, and had a fight with the villagers. In
1908, however, having felt the strong arm of the govern
ment, they purchased grain, and made up a great caravan

470 ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON
to bring it home. The officials naturally said, "Now is
our chance. We can strike a blow at the Kurds without
injury to ourselves." The caravan was seized. As a result,
the Kurds flared up, and began to rob and plunder on all
sides. The authorities sent a large body of troops, 20,000
it is said, who hung around the borders of the mountains,
but dared not penetrate the fastnesses. Half a million dol
lars, 108,000 Turkish liras, were spent by the government;
but nothing was attained. The Kurds were embittered and
made more ready to plunder any and all their neighbors;
misgovernment was rampant for a while. The whole
affair was due primarily to the mountainous, unproductive
character of Dersim, which makes the Kurds semi-nomadic,
exposes them to the constant danger of want, and gives them
a fastness to which they can retire and defy the government.
Of course the officials were foolish, but ignorance was their
chief fault. They had not realized that at the bottom of
the trouble lay the hunger of centuries. Half a million dol
lars spent in furnishing labor on public works would have
enabled those particular Kurds to buy five times the food
they needed and would have kept them perfectly quiet.
The fundamental mistake is in assuming that the Kurds
are by nature robbers, a dangerous element to be sternly
repressed. The remedy lies in so adjusting matters that
the evils of their physical environment shall be met.
The Albanians, and, still more, the Arabs, are in like man
ner the victims of circumstances. I could harrow your souls
by telling how the people of the borders of the Arabian desert
starved in the early seventies, while the Arabs plundered them
unmercifully. In those days, by universal testimony, the
Arabs pressed in from the desert by the thousand. They were
hungry; their sheep and camels were weak; milk failed for the
young animals; and food for the people. Therefore they
scourged the starving villagers, stripping men and women of
every rag, and leaving them weak and wounded to find the way
home for miles in the blazing desert sun. We grow eloquent
over the infernal wickedness of the Arabs, and the criminal
weakness of the Turkish government in permitting such
devastation within its dominions. Our eloquence is wasted.

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY 471
What right have we to blame them? If we would do any
thing, we must show the Arab how to find food where there
is no food, and the Turk how to know that the Arabs are
.about to be hungry and violent. If the Turkish govern
ment can find a way of helping the Arabs in times of drought,
it can preserve its borders from wild desolation. It can
never prevent raids so long as the raiders are spurred by
hunger, and have the desert as an inviolable refuge.
The diversity of races in the Turkish empire scarcely
needs explanation. Located at the apex of a vast continent,
Armenia and Asia Minor, throughout the ages, have received
the outwash of tribes from the desert. Forced onward by
the hordes behind them, one tribe or race after another
has been driven to the verge of extinction. Some have
crossed to Europe; more have found refuge in the nooks
and corners of the uplands. Where the mountains are
highest, there the mixture of races is greatest. In the
Armenian and Kurdish mountains the Turk, Amenian, Kurd,
Nestorian, Kuzzilbash, Yezidi, Lar, and many another race
finds shelter. The same is true of the Balkans, the Caucasus,
and the region around the Pamirs. Wherever a great knot
of mountains lies in the midst of regions whose physical
circumstances lead to nomadism or even poverty, the rem
nants of defeated races gather in diverse little communities.
Separated at first by race, religion and language, they are
prevented from later amalgamation by the mountains them
selves. Nature combines with human impulses to create
diversity in rugged regions, whereas in plains she produces
uniformity. Thus far, I think, most of my hearers will agree with me.
I now come to the more difficult question of the ability of
the' Turkish race. The Turks as a race are undoubtedly
deficient in originality and enterprise. In the recent crisis
they have won universal admiration; yet their own
leaders are sorely troubled for fear that the good work will
slacken and cease, and that the former apathy and misrule
will recur, not in the old form, but with much of the old
substance. If incompetence, inertia, laziness, hopelessness
are necessary qualities of the Turkish race and of certain

472 ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON
other oriental races, the case is indeed sad. Let us investi
gate a few specific examples. Everyone familiar with Con
stantinople wonders at the desolate character of the sur
rounding country. On the Asiatic side the case is not so
bad, for villages are fairly numerous in spite of the relatively
high mountains. On the European side, however, the beau
tiful plateau stretching northward to the Black sea and
westward for a hundred miles to Adrianople, is well-nigh
uninhabited. It lies only a few hundred feet high, the soil
is deep, the slopes gentle, and everything appears propitious
for agriculture. Yet one may walk for miles and see noth
ing but flocks of sheep and at long intervals a little village
in a secluded valley. To test the common opinion I made
inquiries of three friends who have lived in Constantinople.
All are far better informed than the average traveler, and
one is among the chief authorities on the country. My
inquiries took the form of a question as to why the region is
so sparsely populated. The first reply was : "Lack of energy
on the part of the Turks is the reason why there are no
people on the plateau. They might have fine gardens
there; they have them in some places around the city, —
splendid ones, — and if the Turks were an energetic people
they would turn the whole region into fine farms." The
second reply emphasized another point: "It is because the
Turks don't know how to do things wisely. They keep
sheep up there on the plateau. You can see them any day
close to the city, eating away, and cleaning the ground off
smooth as a floor. The Turks ought to give that up, and
take to farming." The third answer carried the matter
still farther: "The trouble is that it is not safe outside the
city. It is dangerous to go out alone there on the hills;
all over the plateau the shepherds are unfriendly. Soldiers
from the city go out there and insult or rob respectable
citizens. So people do not like to live there. The govern
ment is to blame."
These three answers represent the common opinion not
only of the people of Turkey, but of the most thoughtful
foreigners. I accept all the answers as true, but they are
only partial truths. They fail to strike at the root of the

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY 473
matter, as my three friends agreed after we had talked the
matter over, and they had themselves stated the facts on
which I base my conclusion. Lack of energy, lack of knowl
edge, and lack of safety all seem to be in large measure the
result of physical conditions. The plateau west of the
Bosphorus does not blossom with gardens because it is too
dry. In the spring it is beautifully green, and in exceptional
years it remains verdant well toward autumn. Usually,
however, it dries up at the beginning of summer. The
moisture does not last long enough to insure the growth
of any but the earliest crops; even grain and barley often
fail. The gardens to which two of my friends referred are
all irrigated, or if not irrigated are located in valleys which
enjoy what may be called natural irrigation. Under present
conditions water cannot possibly be brought to the main por
tion of the plateau, which is therefore left to semi-nomadic
shepherds. Being sparsely inhabited it becomes the haunt
of miscreants from the great city. Hence the lack of
safety. If agriculture were profitable thousands of poor
people would gladly take up farms; villages would spring
up; and in a few years comparative safety would prevail.
That the absence of cultivation is not due to lack of energy
is proved by the fact that in the fall of 1909, when the depo
sition of Abdul Hamid had assured safety in the minds of
many, a considerable area of the plateau not far from the
city was planted with grain. The results are said to have
been disappointing. The grain sprouted and grew, but not
vigorously. The crop was by no means such as to tempt
further expansion of agriculture. Yet 1909-10 was not
one of the worst years, although not one of the best. The
rainfall of Constantinople varies from 1 1 to 44 inches. Being
influenced by winds from both the north and the south,
it is very irregular. Sometimes it continues all summer,
but not often. Usually the effective rains end about the
first of June and begin again in September. Occasionally
rain ceases, save for a few ineffective showers, as early as
April, and does not begin until October. In such years
agriculture without irrigation is out of the question. Dr.
Washburn tells me that he has known the water supply of

474 ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON
Robert College to fail completely because of the withholding
of rain until the end of October. The little villages on the
plateau, chiftfiks, as they are called, depend upon water
from wells; and in bad years the wells sometimes go dry.
Dr. Washburn has known of years when the inhabitants
of certain villages were forced to carry water long distances
for their own use, while their cattle suffered greatly from
thirst. When two or three years with a rainfall of fifteen
inches or less occur in succession much distress ensues.
Famine does not occur because the people of the plateau
rely largely on their flocks and because they can get work in
the great city. Clearly, however, the reason for the sparse
population and lack of safety of the regions immediately
around Constantinpole is primarily the irregularity of the
rainfall, which makes agriculture highly precarious.
As to the effect of this on the lack of energy and lack of
knowledge so prevalent in Turkey, a little further explana
tion is necessary. As I drove one day over the plain of
Axylon, northeast of Konia, the parched land changed in
appearance, and began to be clothed with short, thick green
grass. After a few miles we were in the midst of a verdant
plain stretching indefinitely on every side. Yet not a trace
of a village or field could we see, nothing but the tents or
little mud huts of nomads. Hitherto my Greek driver had
not been sparing of opprobrious epithets, but now he broke
out with renewed exclamations at the laziness, ignorance,
and incompetence of the poor swine who inhabited the plain.
"Look at this fine plain," he exclaimed. "See how green
it is. Look at that brook. If only some Greeks were here,
or even some Muhajir Turks, they would make a perfect
garden of this. But these vile Turks. What do they
know? They are animals without a speck of sense in their
heads." His remarks threw light on two points. In the
first place he had no theory as to the incompetence of the
Turks as a race on matters of agriculture. Muhajir Turks
are those who have lately come from Roumania or other
European regions, driven away by the change from Turkish
to Christian government since 1876. Racially, they are as
pure as almost any Turks, yet they are rightly deemed among

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY 475
the best farmers in the empire. The reason is not that
their ancestors were less nomadic than those of other Turks,
but that they happened to settle in the relatively fertile
regions of eastern Europe, where nature invited them to
live a purely agricultural life, with almost nothing of the
old nomadism. Hence they have changed in character.
The second point in the Greek's remark is that his mental
attitude exemplifies that of almost the whole world. He
failed to realize that men in the stage of development of the
Turks would never leave so easily tilled a plain uncultivated
unless some important physical characteristic prevented
its utilization. The reason soon appeared. We spent the
night with a Kurdish chief, for part of the people were
Kurds and part Turks. He proudly showed me his garden.
"It is hard work," he said, "to make a garden here. You
see what a good little brook we have. I think we ought to
have some good gardens. A few years ago I tried to make
one over there. It was all right the first year, but the second
season the ground became hard, and we could not make
things grow. Now I am trying here, where the soil is more
sandy. This is the third year. Some plants do pretty
well, but I don't know why so many trees die." He took
me about, pointing out the melons, carrots, cabbages and
other vegetables, as well as various fruit trees. Some
species seemed thriving, but many were stunted, and about
half the trees had died after the first year. Later I visited
another garden in the same neighborhood. It was only
two years old, but had suffered more than its neighbor
four or five miles away. The reason was plain. We were
in the bed of an ancient salt lake. The soil was strongly
impregnated with salt, and the water of the brooks was
somewhat saline. Irrigation concentrated the salt, as it
always does, and after a few years rendered the ground unfit
for plants of any kind except coarse grasses. The attempts
of the two Kurds do not seem to be the first of their kind.
We saw traces of former gardens; marked in several places
by willow trees which survive where a running stream keeps
the soil washed comparatively free from salt. In no case,
however, has cultivation proved successful.

476 ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON
The moral of the Kurdish gardens is evident; but before
speaking of it, I wish to cite an incident at Beersheba, the
most southerly inhabited town of Palestine on the edge of
the desert. A young official there told me that he and
two partners had attempted to raise grain wholesale. See
ing many square miles of good land lying unused, they
leased from the government a large tract at a rental of
about $2000 a year. In 1908 they planted several acres
and reaped an excellent crop. The next year they increased
the area, hiring many laborers, and investing all that they
could in the venture. The spring of 1909 was unpropitious,
for no rain fell from February till the end of April. When
I visited Beersheba at the close of April the fields, which
ought to have been at their best, looked almost as if they
had never been planted. No attempt was made to reap
the crop. Each man lost $1500 or more that year, which
is as much for the East as eight or ten thousand would be
for us.
The unfilled lands of Constantinople, the stunted Kurdish
gaidens, and the withered crop of Beersheba are not isolated
instances. They represent the constant experience of the
Turkish empire. On all sides men are trying to improve their
condition, but fail because of natural obstacles over which
they have no control, or which they do not comprehend.
In these days the number of attempts is small compared
with what we should make if suddenly transferred thither,
but it is surprisingly large in view of the failures of the past.
No man can be blamed if nature refuses to cooperate with
him. With us nature may not always be so pliable as we
might wish, but she rarely fails us utterly. Exertion on
our part almost always brings reward. Thus we are en
couraged to new efforts, and are fast learning to master
highly unpropitious circumstances. With the people of
Turkey the case has been different. For a thousand years
they have found themselves face to face with difficulties
too great for the capacity of any race save those who, under
more favorable circumstances, have reached a high state
of knowledge. No wonder the Turk has grown inert and
hopeless. Each failure such as that of the man at Beersheba

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY 477
or of the Kurds of the Axylon has been known to hundreds
of the surrounding people, and has deterred them from
similar attempts. "What is the use?" has been the con
stant question. "If we try we shall only fail." Hence
fatalism has found ready acceptance and has become part
of the mental equipment of every Turk. Not merely have
failures been frequent, but there have been few successes
such as those which are so stimulating in America. Hence
poverty prevails and adds its benumbing influence.
The government of an inert, unenergetic, hopeless, pov
erty-stricken land can scarcely be expected to be good. Human
greed is not lessened by misfortune. Nor are governmental
demands for taxes diminished in times of hunger; on the
contrary they increase, for rebellion, invasion, and sedition
are rife at such periods. When the peasants have little or
nothing with which to pay taxes, the officials also are in
danger of poverty; no wonder they practice extortion and
cruelty. I am not apologizing for these weaknesses, nor
palliating them. I am simply striving to show their cause,
or at least to show how one great cause has failed to receive
its proper valuation. Physical environment is certainly
responsible for some of the mental and moral qualities which
hinder the advance of Turkey.
I know that many of my hearers will object to this con
clusion. "What of religion ?" they will ask. "Is not Moham
medanism much more potent than physical environment
as a cause of evil? Are not the Greeks and Armenians
ahead of the Turks, because of the difference in religion?"
To answer the last question first, if the Christian races are
ahead of the Turks, I believe it is due in good measure to
Christianity, but other things may have a share in it. In
the first place the older races, the Greeks, Armenians, and
so forth, did not bring with them the Turkish heritage of
nomadism, or if they did, they are removed from it by
thousands instead of hundreds of years. In the next place
the Christians have been comparatively open to outside
influences, for their community of belief with Europe has
made them willing to accept ideas which the Moslems resist.
On the whole, however, the innate character of the Turks
may not be greatly inferior to that of the Christians; for

478 ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON
the Turks are by no means to be despised. Not for a
moment do I question that a new faith may work wonders
in an individual, but when the stimulus of the bringers of
the new belief is removed, the religious condition of a com
munity soon falls to a level commensurate with the moral
fiber of the people as a whole. Witness the Abyssinian
Christians, or those of parts of South America. The higher
a race rises, the higher the type of religion which it is
able to grasp, and the more it is stimulated by great
ideas, and by the power of faith. While a race is plunged
in hopelessness by adverse physical conditions, it can scare-
ly attain high ideals. When other conditions improve, then
the race is able to assimilate higher ideas and to be elevated
by them. The physical and the psychic are so intertwined
that each stimulates the other, but neither can make great
progress while the other is retarded.
I should be loath to have it appear that in emphasizing
the influence of physical environment I minimize other
influences. I simply desire that all shall receive their
proper consideration. In the past the word missionary
meant merely a man who went out to teach the dogmas of
Christianity. At the beginning of modern missions the one
thought was to preach, and to cause the people of non-
Christian lands to give up their old faiths and accept Christi
anity. To-day the most enlightened missionaries realize
that medical and educational work are as important as
direct religious efforts, and some go so far as to count them
even more important. Many a man who went to foreign
lands to preach has spent most of his life in teaching modern
methods of farming, business, or mechanics. In a word
the most useful missionaries have been those who have not
only preached the faith that is in them, but have combined
with this an intelligent endeavor to help the backward
races in their attempts to master the difficulties of nature.
They have done their work empirically, that is, without a
full scientific knowledge of the relation of physical environ
ment to character, but with full faith that true progress
somehow combines material, mental, and spiritual elements.
The need of the world to-day is not less missionary work,
but more and broader. We have spiritual, medical and

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY 479
educational missionaries: we need scientific, technical, agri
cultural, and commercial missionaries who shall work in
their lines as unselfishly and patiently as the others have
worked in theirs. Above all things the world needs men
of ideals who shall inspire the faint-hearted to effort, whether
by a new spiritual faith, or by a successful irrigation project.
Some of my hearers, while agreeing that the views here
presented give due weight to spiritual and psychic factors
may think that historical facts confute the conclusions that
we have reached. In the past, they say, the Turkish
empire nourished a civilization far in advance of that of
today, — as advanced as any of its time. If such could be
the case in the past, why not to-day? The answer must
be stated briefly. In a volume on "Palestine and its Trans
formation" I have answered it at length. Here I can
merely say that long study of the problem leads me to believe
that physical conditions to-day are not what they were in
the past. The climate of western Asia has changed, and the
change has taken place in a most irregular fashion, — some
times rapidly, at others slowly, sometimes tending toward
aridity and sometimes toward greater rainfall. On the
whole, however, the tendency has been pronouncedly toward
aridity, not on account of deforestation or human action,
but through a cosmic transformation. Once the plateau
around Constantinople was dotted with agricultural villages,
whose ruins still remain to prove the change. In Syria
great baths fed by streams of running water formerly
existed in places which now are wholly waterless. The
Greek, the Armenian and the other ancient races of Turkey
attained their high civilization during the period of propitious
physical environment; the unpropitious later period has
seen the feeble Byzantine and Turkish empires. The
agreement between the times of pronounced decadence and
the times of widespread aridity is one of the strongest argu
ments in favor of the conclusion that the character of a race
is in many respects the reflection of its physical environ
ment. The environment may not work directly. Cases
like one related to me by Dr. Washburn are common. Be
tween Alexandretta and Aleppo lies the town of Azizieh,
in the plain at the foot of Giaur Dagh. Some years ago

480 ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON
the Turkish government found the mountaineers of Giaur
Dagh so unruly and such plunderers, that it brought them
down and settled them in the abandoned ruins of Azizieh.
The country appeared rich and well watered, but no one
was living there. The reason speedily became apparent. The
mountaineers died wholesale, cut down by fever, and soon
the population was diminished by half. Many other places
which once were habitable are now scourged with disease.
The change of climate appears to have involved a great
increase in malarial fevers, whose wide prevalence and
insidious weakening effects, so physicians say, make them
the most dangerous of all diseases. In this way, as well as
in many others the past was more favorable than the present.
The problem of the Turkish empire is in a broad sense
biological. Man, like every other animal, must adapt
himself to his environment. Mental traits are quite as
important as physical in the process of adaptation. The
Turk has migrated from the environment of deserts; the
Greeks and Armenian have descended from an en vironment
of greater rainfall and fertility. To-day all these races are
still in process of adjustment. Certain characteristics
have been inherited, others are being acquired; and little
by little a type is being selected adapted to the present con
ditions. The process of adjustment has brought out many
undesirable qualities. The problem to-day is to eliminate
them. The chief causes of the bad traits, so far as geo
graphic conditions are concerned, are the lack or irregu
larity of rainfall, the juxtaposition of infertile regions
inhabited by nomads and of fertile agricultural regions in
habited by more peaceful people, the terminal position and
mountainous character of the land, which has fostered diver
sity of races and interests, and the change which has taken
place in the water supply during the Christian era.
At first thought this array of unpropitious circumstances
seems hopeless, especially if it be granted that character is
largely a pioduct of environment, and that religion itself
can be degraded by adverse circumstances. Yet such is
by no means the case. When the world discovered the
nature of bacteria, mankind seemed at first to be utterly
at their mercy. What hope had a man of escaping disease

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF TURKEY 481
if he breathed, ate, and drank bacteria, if he touched mil
lions each day, and was never away from their influence?
Yet now all men recognize that the road to immunity from
a disease lies in a knowledge of the bacteria which occasion
it. Formerly we kept the consumptive shut in a warm close
house, and unconsciously fostered tubercular bacilli by
every means in our power. Now we know their nature,
and are able to kill them with fresh air and low ternperature.
Even so the people of Turkey are suffering from a disease
whose exact cause is unknown. All sorts of remedies are
advocated, religious, social, political, commercial. These
may or may not be helpful; some may be exactly the right
treatment; others may aggravate the trouble. So long
as we are only partially aware of the nature of the malady,
even the best remedies may be misapplied, or may fail to
accomplish their full results. Physical environment seems
to be a cause underlying all the others, — by no means more
important than they, any more than the root is more impor
tant than the fruit, but lying below them and nourishing
them even as the root nourishes the whole plant. The
patient suffering from typhoid fever to-day cares little to
know the nature of the typhoid bacillus ; for him the prime
object is to allay the fever. For the people of the future, and
for those not now afflicted, the nature and actions of the
typhoid bacilli are most essential problems. Doubtless
the troubles of Turkey are due to spiritual and psychic
bacilli as well as to physical environment. The one essential
is to study all phases of the question impartially and deter
mine the true nature of each type of malady. To tell a
nation that it suffers because of the land which it inhabits
may seem depressing. Yet this is far more hopeful than
to say that the race is bad at the core. If outside forces
are one of the main causes of the present low status of Turkey
there is hope for the future. We cannot here discuss the
remedies which will do away with the ill effects of physical
conditions; we do not know them yet, but we are well
assured that they exist. First we must discover the nature
of the evils, then the cure. Even as Christ encouraged
the world, so would we encourage Turkey, — "Ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE NEGRO TO
HUMAN CIVILIZATION
By Alexander Francis Chamberlain, Ph.D., Assistant Prof essor
of Anthropology, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.
That the black man should have contributed in the slight
est to the common fund of our human civilization is a thought
quite foreign to the minds of some Americans afflicted with
acute Anglosaxonism and Negrophobia. No amount of
evidence would e.g., convince Mr. Thomas Dixon, Mr.
Thomas Watson, or Professor W. B. Smith, that the Negro
has done anything decidedly and recognizably human dur
ing the long millenniums of his existence as a race. That
the world must be "white," by hook or by crook, is their
motto, anyl they seek to persuade themselves that it has
always been so. Surely no one, except him in whose veins
still runs somewhat riotously the blood of the old task
master of the slave, or one whose myopic view of the facts of
science permits him to set up a mere social prejudice, and
that, too, of very recent origin, against world-truths, which
it is entirely beyond the power of any race or people, not
to say a section of one, to alter or to destroy, can speak or
write in such terms. Only individuals immune to the teach
ings of evolution could imagine that a race, millenniums
old, and numbering to-day after centuries of more or less
brutal contact with the whites, more than 150,000,000,
could have existed or could continue to exist, without in
the slightest influencing the currents of human thought
and action. It is with eyes blind to the results of the most
recent investigations of the origin and the development of
Negro culture in Africa, and to the achievements of the
race in other parts of the globe that such people content
482

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