Part 13

While the Turks have not largely attended any of the schools mentioned, nor have they seemed awake to the needs of a modern education, nevertheless, through the influence of so many advanced schools in the country they have been compelled to improve their own schools. It is an interesting fact that recently a far greater number of Mohammedan pupils are applying for admission to these schools. Few of the Turkish schools have as yet been thoroughly modernized; still, their entire educational system, if system it may be called, has felt the influence of the foreign schools. There have now and then been attempts at the organization of a Mohammedan college. These have for the most part proven egregious failures from the lack of preparatory schools to train students for the college and of teachers with proper training to carry on college work. They have also in cases, not a few, opened and conducted schools for girls, thus demonstrating their acceptance, in a measure at least, of the Christian doctrine of the equality of the sexes and the worth of womanhood. Many Moslem young men have been aroused to seek education in England or France.

XVIII. THE PRINTING-PRESS

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. They have shown great judgment and tact in their relations with the ancient churches of the land, Orthodox, Gregorian, Jacobite, Nestorian, and Catholic. They have lived cheerfully in the midst, not only of hardships, but latterly of serious dangers also. They have been the first to bring the light of education and learning into these dark places, and have rightly judged that it was far better to diffuse that light through their schools than to aim at a swollen roll of converts. From them alone, if we except the British consuls, has it been possible during the last thirty years to obtain trustworthy information regarding what passes in the interior. —HON. JAMES BRYCE, British Ambassador to the United States.

The entire plan and purpose of missionary work in Turkey involved the printing-press. Only a little more than two years after the first missionaries to Turkey arrived upon the field, a press under the care of a missionary of the Board arrived at Malta, commissioned to print for the use of the Palestine and Turkish missions. At that time hostilities between Greece and Turkey were in progress and no port upon the Mediterranean was safe for the American press. Malta was under the English flag, and so proved for the time the best base for the literary operations of the mission.

Undoubtedly the earlier publications were too impracticable to meet the needs of the people of Turkey. The missionaries assumed ability in the untrained Oriental mind to grasp the thoughts of the West. In the list of what was printed at Malta during the first ten years are found such works as “Serious Thoughts on Eternity,” “Guilt and Danger of Neglecting the Saviour,” “Scott’s Force of Truth,” “Content and Discontent,” “Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.” A great variety of books was prepared, for the most part, by those who knew practically nothing of the thought and life of the people who were supposed to read them.

In 1833 the political atmosphere had so cleared that the press was removed from Malta, the Arabic equipment going to Beirut in Syria, while the Greek, Turkish, and Armenian outfit was set up in Smyrna. During the ten years at Malta, over twenty-one million pages were printed in four different languages, namely modern Greek, Italian, Armeno-Turkish, and Arabic. The largest amount by far was in Greek. No printing in Armenian was done until the press was set up in Smyrna and, previous to 1837, less than 175,000 pages had been printed in that language.

In 1829 it was decided to do more in the way of providing much needed books for elementary schools. One of these books was so popular that 27,000 copies were sold in Greece alone. In 1831 the Armeno-Turkish New Testament, translated by Dr. Goodell, was printed. That same year over five million pages of modern Greek were put out from the press. Nearly all of this was circulated about as rapidly as it could be run off.

The publication work in the Turkish missions outside Syria was carried on at Smyrna until 1853, or for about twenty years. The last and one of the most important works published there was the modern Armenian Bible translated by Dr. Elias Riggs. This one book has accomplished more to fix, unify, and simplify the modern spoken Armenian language than all other influences combined. What the King James version has done for the English speaking peoples, and Luther’s Bible for the Germans, this scholarly and accurate translation has done for the Armenians all over the world.

Besides the Bible and strictly Biblical works, a large number of school-books of almost every grade as well as translations of choice parts of English literature were printed and sold. The eagerness of the Greeks and Armenians, and especially the latter, for a literature suited to their aroused intellectual condition made it possible to sell at cost much that was published. After the organization of the Evangelical Protestant Church, hymn-books in various languages were prepared and printed. It would be impossible in the limits of this discussion to give even a classified list of the publications issued from the mission presses of Turkey since printing began. The output upon the average from 1833, even to the present time, has been at the rate of from twelve to fifty million pages each year in not less than ten languages, including Bulgarian and Koordish. In some years this has been exceeded.

At Beirut in 1906 there were printed on the American press 152,500 volumes of distinctively Biblical literature, with a total of 47,278,000 pages. To this was added nearly 9,000,000 pages of other Christian and educational books, making a total of 56,000,000 pages of literature from this one press alone in a single year.

For the Bulgarians and the Armenians the missionaries practically created their new literature in the spoken tongue. Of the first one hundred books printed in the modern Bulgarian, some seventy were the product of the missionary press. The first grammar of the modern Armenian language was printed by the missionaries. The Koords had no literature of any kind, while their language is even yet unclassified. The New Testament was translated into that tongue, written with the Armenian characters, and in that language it was printed. Parts of the Bible have also been printed in the Albanian tongue.

The Bible has been translated into Arabo-Turkish, the language read by all the educated Moslems in Turkey north of Syria and is printed and widely circulated. This, with the Arabic and Syriac versions printed at Beirut, puts the Bible into the language of all the Moslems of Turkey, except the Koords and Albanians. As yet the former have only a part of the Bible, and the latter a very poor and fragmentary version, in their own language.

However great the influence of the press has been in the preparation of books and tracts, it has probably reached and permanently moved more people still by its periodical publications. Papers have been printed for more than a generation in Armenian, Greek, Armeno-Turkish, Greco-Turkish, Bulgarian, and Arabic which have had wide circulation among all classes, but especially among the evangelicals. These papers while religious, have also been newspapers, carrying into the remote hamlets of the interior information of the great outside world of which the masses were profoundly ignorant when mission work began. The influence of these papers can best be measured by the fact that when the cholera was approaching any section of the country, the missionaries were accustomed to publish detailed instructions regarding the best methods to prevent contracting the dread disease and what to do as soon as the symptoms appeared. Those who read the papers took great care to follow directions, and so the Protestants who usually knew how to read seldom suffered from the scourge.

When the cholera was raging with unusual virulence in Aintab, taking for the most part the Moslems and ignorant Gregorians and leaving the Protestants almost unscathed, a learned Moslem asked a missionary if God spread a tent over the Protestants that the cholera should pass them by. Through the periodicals in the various languages, the missionaries and leading Armenians have been able constantly to speak directly to the most intelligent classes of people in the entire empire.

When the missionaries began work in Turkey in 1820 there was no newspaper worthy the name in the country in any language and the number of books was but few. Printing was not left, however, entirely in the hands of the missionaries, for, after a time, to meet the demands of the different religious communities other presses were started. These were small in output and power and did not amount to much until within the last twenty-five years. During this time the Armenians have prepared and published some excellent text-books, many of which have been and still are in constant use in Protestant schools. They also have started a few periodicals that for the most part have little permanent value. The Moslems have done but little in the way of printing books or periodicals of any kind. They do not allow the Koran to be translated into the vernacular of the people, and it is their policy to exclude from their subjects, as far as possible, all knowledge of the outside world. The Moslem press has produced little of real value to the people.

Great freedom to the work of the press was given in the earlier days, all of which has changed during the last thirty years. While the Turks were never favorable to it, they tolerated it under a silent protest. Gradually the opposition became more and more open and violent. Undoubtedly all this originated among the Roman Catholics and the Jesuits, who even in the early days of the mission fought against the circulation of the Bible and Protestant books. They did much to stir up opposition to Protestant books, among the Greeks first and later among the Armenians, always assuming that the Bible is a Protestant book. There is no doubt that this hostility was helped on also by the representatives at the Porte from Russia. The Turks were not so much concerned with what they regarded as squabbles between the various Christian sects.

About 1878 Dr. Wheeler, President of Euphrates College, imported a printing-press into Harpoot, where he set it up and ran it with great industry for several years. Only a local work was done there, while the general publication operations of the missions were carried on at Beirut and Constantinople. In the eighties the Turkish government began to put severe restrictions upon the press. The one at Harpoot was silenced and has so remained to this day.[1] Strict rules were promulgated to restrict printing in the empire. Formal permission must be procured in order to own a printing outfit, and strict rules were formulated for its conduct. All matter to be printed must first be submitted to a royal censor whose stamp of approval upon every article is necessary before it is put upon the press. The same stamp of approval which carries with it the sanction of the sultan must be printed upon the first page of every book, otherwise its issue, circulation, or even possession by a subject of the empire constitutes a crime. This approval must be obtained for every edition of the same book. It is almost as difficult to secure permission to-day to print a new edition of the Bible as it was after the appointment of the first censorship to print the first edition. Permission to print a book like the Bible carries with it no authority to print separately any part of the same. These rules have greatly hampered the work of the press, but have not by any means been able to stop the constant output of useful books and periodicals in the leading languages of the country.

There is no department of missionary effort which has done more to open the eyes of the people and stir in them new desires and ambitions than this work of publication, taken in connection with the general educational operations. Many English books and periodicals find their way into these schools and are included in the libraries of the teachers and students. These too are subject to all the restrictive laws which hamper the press. The tendency is more and more to exclude all foreign books and periodicals and to have it almost a crime for a subject of Turkey to have in his possession a library of any kind. Many an Armenian has been arrested and thrown into prison for no other crime than the possession of a few harmless English books. No one has yet been bold enough to confiscate from the libraries of the missionaries the books which they possess, but this step has been repeatedly threatened. The officials, however, intercept many books in the mails or in transit by freight.

In all work of reform which marks the history of missions in that country this agency has been supremely potent. Undoubtedly to-day there is no more vitalizing force in the empire affecting the intellectual and religious life of the Moslems than that which is exerted not only through the Bible and especially prepared literature, but through books on science. These contain startling revelations to the old-school Moslem, since modern science runs counter to nearly every teaching of the Koran. He cannot deny their truth forever, and when he yields he has already met with a mighty intellectual and religious evolution.

[Footnote 1: This press began operations again in September, 1908.]

XIX. MODERN MEDICINE

In the Turkish empire a remarkable impetus has been given to the material development of Asia Minor and Syria, which may be largely traced to the quickening influences of American missions. Mission converts are proverbially men of affairs, alert and progressive, and in full sympathy with modern ideals of progress. The change in their personal environment, and in the temper and spirit of their lives, testifies to new impulses, higher ambitions, and an enlarged and increasing sympathy with modern progress. As long ago as 1881, an incident of commercial significance was reported in The Missionary Herald. It was announced that through missionaries at Harpoot nearly five hundred sets of irons for fanning-mills had been ordered from the United States, native carpenters having been taught to make the necessary woodwork which would render them available. Since then the introduction of American agricultural machines has increased, in spite of the difficulties and heavy cost of transportation. The German government has interested itself in securing concessions for a railway through Asia Minor to Bagdad and Busrah, with the evident expectation that German trade will find in those regions a profitable field of exploitation. If it should prove true that Mesopotamia may become a source of supply for the grain which Europe needs, there is good reason to expect that American agricultural implements will find a new market in Asiatic Turkey. Owing to the large emigration of Armenians to the United States, and the long residence of American missionaries in Turkey, no foreign country is better known or more admiringly regarded by the entire Christian element of Armenia than the United States. Mr. Charles M. Dickinson, Consul-General of the United States at Constantinople, regards even the material returns of American mission work in Turkey as justifying in large measure the outlay. His opinion is expressed in the following paragraph:

“In all our efforts to extend American commerce, in the hard struggle to establish and maintain direct steam communication with New York, the opening of American expositions and agencies, and the introduction of new articles of manufacture, many of the missionaries have been willing pioneers, blazing the way for American exporters, and doing valuable introductory work through their knowledge of the local languages and their influence with the people. From every standpoint, therefore, I do not see how the American missions in Turkey, as they are at present conducted, can fail to be of distinct advantage to the commerce and influence of the United States.” —JAMES S. DENNIS, in “Christian Missions and Social Progress.”

There was no purpose or plan at the beginning of missionary work in Turkey to make special use of the physician. Whenever a man was appointed as missionary who had taken a full course of medicine he was not sent out especially as a medical missionary, but went as did the others, with the understanding that he was an evangelistic missionary and was to use his medical skill as an auxiliary force. The outfit of the early medical missionaries, like Dr. Grant and Dr. Asa Dodge of Syria, was exceedingly circumscribed, consisting of a few standard remedies and simple instruments and appliances. There was no suggestion of a hospital or even a public dispensary. The medical missionary was able to transport the major part of his equipment upon a horse and apply his art at any point along the way. After the days of pioneering were passed and the various mission stations were well established, the medical missionaries began to prepare for a broader and more thorough work.

The country had no modern physicians when the Board began work there and no schools for medicine. The people submitted to the most loathsome and cruel methods of treatment at the hands of heartless old women and unskilled men who traded upon their sufferings. From the beginning the fullest confidence was placed in the American physician. He was deemed by the ignorant and needy masses as little less than a worker of miracles. His reputation gave not only himself but his missionary associates standing among all classes in the country. His presence often proved in times of stress to be a large element of safety for all members of the station. The Turkish officer and persecuting ecclesiast did not care to injure the man into whose hands their lives might soon be placed by disease or accident. They thought it good policy to keep on fairly good terms with the doctor.

Medical work in the empire took its earliest and strongest hold upon Beirut and Aintab. In the former place a hospital was erected and a medical school was in operation in the ’70’s. Aintab took the same step ten years later, but finally, for want of funds, gave up the medical school but continued the hospital. The next mission hospital to be erected was at Mardin. Until the last decade these constituted the main mission hospitals in the empire. Hospitals have followed at Cæsarea, Marsovan, and Van, while others are contemplated at Harpoot, Sivas, Erzerum, Adana, Constantinople, and elsewhere.

Many Greeks and Armenians have qualified themselves for medical practise in Turkey by taking a course of training either in the medical department of the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut or the medical schools in Europe or the United States. The laws of Turkey are so stringent in regard to the practise of medicine, or rather so oppressive, that it is almost impossible for a subject of Turkey to win great success in it. The law permits the arrest and imprisonment of a physician upon the complaint of any one that he did not correctly treat a case which ended fatally. When once he has been imprisoned it costs a round sum to secure release. This process repeated destroys practise and eats up profits. Many a well-trained Armenian doctor has been compelled to give up the effort and return to the United States. There are several Armenian physicians enjoying a good and honorable practise in this country. The foreign physician enjoys the extra territorial privileges of his country and, although often annoyed, is not seriously disturbed by restrictive measures. He practises under a license granted by an official medical board at Constantinople.

Medical missions in Turkey have opened the eyes of all classes to the value of scientific medical practise. Were it not for the restrictive measures of local officials, every town of considerable size in the country might now have its native physicians, the most of whom were trained in Christian schools. Until that time arrives the American missionary physician will have large place in the life of the country. His importance there is due to this fact, and also because of the confidence reposed in him by the higher Turkish officials. They regard the work of the medical missionary as supremely Christian. It commands their admiration. Not a little of the hold which the missionaries now have upon the country is due to his presence and work. In imitation of the missionaries, the Turks themselves have attempted, at different places, to maintain hospitals of their own for the care of soldiers and officers, but these have usually been of little value unless the physician in charge was a European or a man trained by the missions.

Medical work in Turkey is probably nearer self-support than that of any other missionary country except Japan. The people are willing so far as able to pay for medicines received and for services rendered. Wealthy officials often make a handsome present to the missionary physician treating them, thus making it possible to treat many poor without pay. The hospital at Mardin, for instance, receives in fees and in payment for medicines enough to meet all expenses except the salary of the American physician in charge. The hospital of Aintab receives little money from the Board.

Medical missions in Turkey are less hampered by officialism and hindered by opposition than any other form of missionary work. Physicians are more generally welcomed and their benefits more widely appreciated than anything else the missionaries do. While the other departments cannot be and ought not to be curtailed, much less abandoned, in view of all the conditions that prevail there with the constant scourges of pestilential diseases and the recurrence of violence and massacre in different parts of the country, there is an unlimited field for the operations of the Christian missionary physician who commends the gospel which he preaches to all with whom he comes in contact. At the same time, this work, compared with the extent of its influence, costs perhaps less than any other form of purely missionary service.

Missionary physicians, their medical schools, hospitals, dispensaries, and practise among the people have been a mighty force not only for alleviating suffering, but for breaking down the superstitions of all classes of people. The Arabs, the Koords, the Turks, as well as other Mohammedan races, have found their belief in _kismet_, or fate, greatly shaken by the practises of men who seemed successfully to set themselves against the will of God. They have seen the scourge of cholera stayed in its ravages by the application of modern scientific methods, and diseases which were regarded as almost universally fatal become little feared, and they are compelled to inquire if, after all, “whatever is, is ordained by Allah.” Perhaps the medical work of the missionaries in Turkey has accomplished more in breaking down that benumbing belief in fatalism among the Mohammedans than all other phases of mission work together.

XX. STANDING OF MISSIONARIES