CHAPTER XXXIX
CONCLUSION
The outstanding facts in the preceding narrative are the following:
1. Smyrna was burned by the Turks, as the concluding, at present, act in a consistent policy that has been shaping Moslem history and expansion for centuries, and especially Turkish history since the coming to power of the Young Turks, as displayed in the “Turkifying” murders, tortures and persecutions in Macedonia that led to the First Balkan War (1912); the killing and driving from their homes of the Greeks of Asia Minor during the period just preceding the outbreak of the World War and the destruction of their flourishing villages, (as described by the Frenchman Manciet, writing of the scenes at Phocæa); the deportation of Greeks, men, women and children in the midwinter of 1916, from the Black Sea region, forcing them to walk in the inclement weather till many thousands perished (as mentioned by Dana K. Getchell, in his letter given above); the doing to death of between eight hundred thousand and a million Armenians in 1915-16; the burning of Smyrna and the massacre of thousands of its inhabitants in 1922.
2. Smyrna was burned by Turkish soldiers at a time when they were in full and complete possession of the city, and the fires were applied first in the Armenian quarter, in which the Turks had been plundering, murdering and raping for several days and where no Armenian was to be found, with the possible exception of such survivors as might be hiding in cellars.
3. Credible non-Greek or non-Armenian witnesses testified to the manner of the burning of Smyrna.
4. A Turkish soldier poured petroleum, or petroleum mixed with gasoline, in the street before the American consular building, causing the fire to be led up to and communicated to the building and endangering the lives of those within.
5. The burning of Smyrna and the massacre and abuse of its Christian inhabitants in the year of our Lord, 1922, was made possible through the mutual jealousies and conflicting commercial interests of certain Christian powers, and the actual aid, moral and material, furnished by some of them to the Turks.
6. The Turks committed their fearful acts against the Christians and humanity in general in the full conviction that they would meet with no opposition nor even criticism from the United States. They were led to this belief by a loud pro-Turk and anti-Christian propaganda carried on in the American press by certain concession hunters, and other interested writers.
7. No Gladstonian note of horror, protest or revulsion has as yet issued from any official American source, though the Turks have surpassed anything that Gladstone ever dreamed of.
8. The Turks can not regain the confidence and respect of the civilized world until they repent sincerely of their crimes and make all restitution in their power.
9. Concealing such deeds as have been recounted in these chapters or misrepresenting them with the purpose of obtaining material advantages or saving property, reveals a low state of morality, consistent with the spirit of this commercial age.
10. One of the many reasons why Mohammedanism is outstripping Christianity in the latter’s ancient birthplace and territory, and in general wherever the two religions meet face to face, is that Christ has been unworthily followed by the people who are sending out the missionaries.
11. Church people in America should become aware of the fact that American missionaries in Turkey can not convert Turks, nor conduct religious exercises at which Turks are present and that the schools in the Ottoman Empire are now being conducted on that basis; and that, if they should convert any Turks, the latter would be killed, and the missionaries and their buildings be in danger of attack.
But the chief lesson of these pages is the growing feebleness of Christianity—divided, insincere, permeated with materialism; undermined and befuddled, in much of its old sturdy and childlike credence, by modern scientific discovery.
Whoever has attended, as I have done at the city of Washington, a general meeting of missionaries, can not have failed to be impressed with the devotion, enthusiasm and spiritual fervor of those noble men and women who carry the beautiful doctrines of Christ to heathen lands. I saw them and heard them soon after my return from the Near East and the Smyrna horror, and I could scarcely refrain from rising to my feet and crying:
“Come home and save us, before it is everlastingly too late!”
THE END
APPENDIX
The fearful and cataclysmic drama of anti-Christ unrolled in these pages is still developing, in all its phases. In the _Christian Advocate_ of June 18, 1925, appeared the following editorial, as the leading article, which I quote in full:
A NAME! A NAME!
What’s in a name? asks the poet, as if “Nothing” must be the inevitable answer. Yet it is the experience of mankind that the proper answer would be “Everything.” For around the name cluster all the qualities of the thing named. The color and scent of the queen of flowers flash out before the imagination at the very name of “rose.” So precious are the names of articles of commerce that we find manufacturers of soaps and tooth-pastes, gasolines and lubricants, bread, salves and cigarettes, paying large sums to secure a distinctive name for their special brand, and registering it with the government and defending their sole right to its use with all the authority the laws confer. Shut your eyes and let some one speak the words “Ford” and “Rolls-Royce,” and no more ask what’s in a name?
There is a Name that is—or must we say was?—above every name. What has happened to it?
A remarkable thing has recently taken place in Turkey. The government called into consultation Asa Kent Jennings, an American resident of Asia Minor (whose name is still borne with honor on the rolls of the Northern New York Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church). During the war between the Turks and Greeks he had displayed qualities of character which won him the good opinion of both nations. He was told that the Turkish Republic was seeking to discover some educational method or social agency that would promote the physical, intellectual and moral excellence of the young men and women of the nation. In conference with him a plan was worked out for a system of associations or clubs in large centers, where everything which distinguishes the threefold program of the Young Men’s Christian Association shall be put in practice under the official patronage and with the support of the Turkish Government, which is Mohammedan in religion, but under the direction of Mr. Jennings, who is a “Y” secretary and a Methodist preacher. The first of these clubs is to be opened at Angora, the new capital, and the man in charge will be another Methodist preacher, John B. Ascham, of West Ohio, whose illuminating contributions on the European political situation since the war have appeared in these columns from time to time. But it was stipulated by the Angora government these institutions, though redolent of the spirit of Christ, must not bear the name of Christian. That is a fundamental condition. Everything Christian, except the label!
How can this be? The explanation is obvious. From the time of the Crusades, when the wearers of the Cross clashed with the wearers of the Crescent, the name of Christian has been forever tarnished with memories of massacre and war. None of the fruits of the Spirit, the virtues which the Western world likes to connect with the word Christian, come to the mind of the Turk when he sees that name. Thus Christianity, named for the Elder Brother of all mankind, is for a whole nation synonymous with racial and religious enmity.
There are European nations where the name that should be above every name has been dragged in the dust. A London writer who was commissioned to create a Christian literature for the boys of Czecho-Slovakia proposed to initiate a series of hero-biographies with a life of Jesus Christ. A man who was better acquainted with the people of that country warned him that a life of Christ would kill the series. During the long period of Austrian tyranny over these lands the Church of Rome had so identified itself with the ruling despotism, that everything bearing the Christian name shared the evil reputation of that partnership of oppression and superstition. The Kaiser was gone and the Church disestablished, but a book with the label of Christian would still be viewed with suspicion by the people, as being propaganda for their former masters. Consequently the series will start off with Abraham Lincoln because groups calling themselves Christian have made the name of Christ a reproach.
Mahatma Gandhi of India tells the missionaries that Christ wins him, but Christianity as exemplified by Western political, social and economic standards he does not recognize as a New Testament product. China looks lovingly toward Christ, but becomes suspicious of Christian nations when they are represented by warships, machine guns, and extra-territorial courts, or by predatory foreign business corporations, wringing the last cent from coolie labor at the expense of decency and life itself. “If this is Christ,” they say, “let us stick to Confucius!”
Nor is it necessary to go abroad to find the golden name of Christ debased and counterfeited. The purity of the coinage is entrusted to every one who has named for himself the name of Christ. The excellence of His precepts is sure to be judged by the performance of His professed followers. Many a sermon has failed to convince, convict and convert the sinner, chiefly because the sinner could point to men and women in the congregation whose lives, known and read by their associates, tended to discredit the minister’s appeal. Thus, the Name before which every knee should bow commands no homage.
The nation or the individual that takes the name of Christian incurs a weighty responsibility. In some degree the Name of Christ is committed to them. Upon the manner in which that person, church, society, or nation discharges its responsibility will measurably depend the esteem which others will give to that Name.
I have read this editorial time and time again, and all that I can get from it is that the name of Christ, of a soap, of a tooth-paste, of a salve, of a grease, of a cigarette, should be used as long as it produces results, but when no longer potent, should be dropped. This is certainly what has been officially done in Turkey with the Name. What the church people of America should understand is that Mohammedanism is marching on with firebrand and scimitar, the greatest enemy of Christianity in the world, and that dropping the Name of Christ and the teaching of the Master, by great Christian organizations, is another victory for the Prophet. No sophistry, however ingenious, can obscure this fact. Let us hope that this move on their part is the prelude to a great awakening and revulsion on the part of Western Christians:
And as Peter was beneath in the palace, there cometh one of the maids of the high priest:
And when she saw Peter warming himself, she looked upon him, and said, And thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth.
But he denied, saying, I know not, neither understand I what thou sayest. And he went out into the porch; and the cock crew.
But Peter afterward testified in quite a different manner. There can be no working for Christ in any place where his Name is dropped. That concession is in itself a victory for the Powers of darkness.
In the press of October 25, 1925, appeared an article by George Seldes, describing the persecution of the Christian Chaldeans, on the Turkish-British frontier, near Mosul. It was announced as the first of a series, but the other articles have not been published. It is so similar to the other well authenticated happenings of a like nature described in the foregoing pages, that it forms a logical continuation of the narrative. I quote from the _Washington Post_ of October 25, 1925:
Mosul, Mesopotamia, October 18 (By Mail to Cairo).—In a beautiful village oasis called Zakho, on the British-Turkish frontier in the biblical country, amidst peaceful surroundings, I found witnesses to-day to a terrible tragedy which Mohammedan Arabs as well as Christians asked me to relate to the Christian world.
It is the story of the deportation of eight thousand Chaldean Christians from the frontier, of their march into the interior of Turkey, of how the Turks murdered men, violated women and threw infants over precipices. It is a story of suffering unparalleled in recent times and every word here written is sworn to on the Bible by chieftains of villages and their priests and attested by Archbishop Timothy, their spiritual father.
OLD AND ILL SLAIN
“Will the Christian world believe that such things can happen now?” asked Archbishop Timothy as the Mukhtar—or sheif—of Murga, knelt and told his story. What the Mukhtar told in Arabic was this:
“As God is my witness and by the blood of Christ I swear that on the march north the Turks killed five men who, on account of their age, could not keep up with the procession. Three women who were ill they stoned to death. On the first night we camped near a fountain. The Turkish officers and soldiers put out the lights and seized all the young pretty girls and carried them to the fields. All night we heard the screams and cries of the girls and women. They clouded the skies with their mournful cries and it was like the day of judgment.
“On the third day one of the women was in the pangs of childbirth. The Turks waited until the baby was born. Other women took the baby, but the mother was too feeble to march, so she was shot. At the Ozozan Mountains three men and two women who tried to escape were shot to death. Their young orphaned children were then killed.”
This statement, in colder official form, I saw later in records sworn to and attested by the British governor of Mesopotamia.
A letter has just been received by me (October, 1925) from Doctor George E. White, President of the ill-fated missionary college at Marsovan, Turkey. This important and once flourishing institution has been reopened at Saloniki, Greece. I quote the following from its circular:
The refugee peoples of the Near East deserve all the sympathy they receive from American friends. This tragic “movement of populations” is the greatest of its kind in all history. There are 160,000 refugees in the city of Saloniki, 800,000 in the province of Macedonia, and 1,500,000 in the whole of Greece.... The Greek Government has revised its laws for the express purpose of welcoming American education.... Saloniki is building mightily at the present time; it is the point where the Greek seaman from the South meets the Slav plowman from the North; Moslem Jew and Christian have felt at home for many generations; Saloniki is moving forward under a Christian government reestablished in 1912, after alien domination since 1430.
Let us hope that this Christian college will “build mightily” in its new habitat, where it has a great and sacred mission: so to diffuse the spirit of the Master through the Balkans that race hatreds will diminish in those regions, wars cease, and the remnants of the glorious old Byzantine Empire will be able to reestablish that Christian civilization which the Turk has driven out of Asia Minor. Or, if that is too much, let us at least hope that the influence of its teachings may be sufficiently great to prevent any of the Balkan States from joining with the Moslems or the Bolsheviks to destroy their neighbors.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Martyred at Smyrna, September, 1922.
[2] Professor Davis’ _Short History of the Near East_.
[3] Published by the Anglo-Hellenic League, No. 49.
[4] In all seventy-four sentences were passed on those convicted of disturbing public order on the days immediately following the landing of the Greek military authorities: three of death; four of hard labor for life; two of hard labor for a term of years; twelve of long and fifty-three of shorter terms of imprisonment. Of the seventy-four sentenced, forty-eight were Greeks; thirteen Turks; twelve were Armenians and one a Jew. The three persons executed were Greeks, one of them a soldier.
[5] While I was in Saloniki during the war, the American Y. M. C. A. was greatly aided, both financially and morally, by the Greek authorities, both Mr. Venizelos and the Greek archbishop being friendly to this institution and present at the dedication of its new house.
The American missionaries, who had an agricultural college and a school there, were at first viewed with suspicion by the Greeks for the reason that they all spoke Bulgarian and continued to preach in that language after the Greek occupation. I brought the missionaries and the Greek authorities together and since then the said authorities have been most benevolent to the missionaries and helpful to them in many ways. At my invitation the late King Alexander came to Saloniki to visit the various missionary and educational institutions and assured them of his friendly interest and support.
[6] A teacher in the secondary Turkish school attached to a mosque.
[7] _A Short History of the Near East_, page 393.
[8] _The Occident and the Orient_, page 58.
[9] September 20, 1922.
[10] The entire report can be found in the _Gibraltar Diocesan Gazette_, No. 2, vol. 6, November, 1922.
[11] Page 393.
[12] Their own transport being sadly depleted.
[13] Lewis Heck had been closely associated with the Chester interests, and Admiral Chester’s son was also at Lausanne.—R. H.
[14] _A Survey of Southern Illiteracy_, published by the Education Board, Southern Baptist Convention, Birmingham, 1923.
[15] Draycott’s _Mahomet_, page 234 et sq.
[16] Draycott, 253-254.
[17] _Occident and Orient_, Chirol, pp. 65-67.
[18] This system of concentrating the business of the country at these three places creates the fictitious appearance of increased activity at these ports, at the expense of all the others. Macri, which formerly had fifteen thousand inhabitants, has now a miserable two thousand survivors. The same is also true of Adalia, formerly important, and now completely dead.