AMERICAN LEAVEN IN THE NEAR EAST
American education is revolutionizing the Orient. It has been one of the
chief modernizing forces in Egypt, it had much to do with the revolution
in Persia, and it is the basis of the reorganization of the whole Turkish
Empire. The first schools of Egypt were started by the missionaries
of the United Presbyterian Church, whose educational institutions now
cover the Nile Valley. This church has schools in the Sudan and a great
American college at Asyut, several hundred miles from Cairo. The college
was started in a donkey stable more than forty years ago, and it has
been turning out graduates ever since. It has now more than one thousand
students who are housed in ten large two-story buildings, and it has
three of the finest halls to be found in the East. These are situated
just outside Asyut, at the junction of the Nile with the great canal
north of that city. The college has about three hundred women.
[Illustration: These are not stones of the field, but great blocks of
marble, many of them beautifully carved—the remains of the wondrous city
of Diana]
[Illustration: Storks build their nests in the palaces of Ephesus and
the peasants fence their fields with chunks of marble from its once
magnificent temples]
[Illustration: There is a great rustling as the silkworms attack their
breakfast of mulberry leaves. Every year representatives of the silk
industry in the Lebanon go abroad to get worms for breeding, as those
bred in that region do not lay healthy eggs]
I visited the college at Asyut not long ago. It is full to overflowing,
and notwithstanding the new structure just completed it needs more money
and more buildings. It has a great prestige throughout Egypt, and with a
little money its efficiency could easily be doubled. The college is said
to give a better education than the government institutions, and that
at the lowest possible cost. The tuition is nominal. For the poorest
schools it is only about one dollar a term in money, and the ordinary
rate is about ten dollars a year. The cost of the education varies with
the taste of the students. These are of all classes from the sons of the
poorest _fellah_ to the heir of the highest pasha or richest merchant.
There are three kinds of accommodations, the cost of which ranges from
thirty-five dollars a year upward. The wealthy Egyptian boy can have
his own room, or groups can live four in a room. He can eat at the best
table, or he can get cheaper board with meat three or four times a week.
On the other hand, he can work his way through college, furnishing his
own food, buying vegetables and fish at very low cost. Many of the boys
bring their bread from home. It is made of ground corn or millet and
baked in cakes an inch thick. These cakes are toasted until they are as
hard as stone, in which shape they will go through the term. Before going
to a meal the students dip their bread in buckets of water set out for
the purpose, and when it is soft carry it with them to the table.
The Asyut institution has its graduates in all the government departments
of Egypt. They are among the leading merchants of the country, and every
town has numbers of them. Many of them are Copts and not a few are
Mohammedans. I am told that there are more than fifteen thousand boys now
being educated in the United Presbyterian schools and colleges.
Shortly before Sultan Abdul Hamid was ousted by the Young Turk party
and carried to his prison in Saloniki, he referred bitterly to the work
that Robert College had done in unsettling his empire. Said he: “That
institution has cost me Bulgaria, and it is like to lose me my throne.”
He was right. Robert College was founded in Constantinople in 1863 by a
New York merchant named Robert, who gave a large part of his fortune to
this institution. He was aided by the Reverend Cyrus Hamlin, D.D., who
was, I think, the real organizer. Since then its graduates have formed
the leaven for new ideas throughout the Near East. Some of its graduates
organized the colleges and schools in Bulgaria. Others have been teaching
in schools throughout the Turkish Empire; many have acted as officers of
the Government, and some of the best leaders of Turkey to-day got their
education at Robert College.
Robert College has now five hundred or six hundred students, including
Mohammedans, Jews, Armenians, and Russians, as well as representatives
of the other nations about. The teaching is non-sectarian, although all
are required to attend daily prayers and go to services on Sunday. The
college has won the approval of the Government, but the officials want
it incorporated as a Turkish institution so it will be subject to their
laws. To this the Americans naturally object. They say that they are
organized under the laws of New York and they expect to stand by all
the rights which they now enjoy as an American corporation under the
protection of the United States Government.
There is no doubt that the Americans are sensible in preferring the
protection of Uncle Sam to that of the Sultan. Conditions are bound to
be unsettled in this part of the world for years to come. There will
be revolutions and counter-revolutions before the Turks come down to a
solid, substantial, modern government. There is always the fear that the
college will be put under a strict censorship, as used to be the case.
As it is now, the students can read what books they like, and there
is little trouble as to the newspapers. They can go where they please
without passports, and the present government seems to be doing all it
can to promote education.
Under the régime of Abdul Hamid it was far different. In his time every
newspaper was carefully looked over by Turkish officials, and all
sentences or words objectionable to the Government were cut out. This
was true of papers coming in through the mail as well as of the native
publications. Here in Beirut a Sunday weekly is published devoted largely
to the life and sayings of our Saviour. The censors objected to it,
saying: “The paper is a dangerous one, for in it they kill a King of the
Jews every week. This might suggest the assassination of the Sultan, and
we cannot permit it.”
Dr. Bliss, the president of the American University of Beirut, once
imported an old copy of Shakespeare. It was kept at the customs house,
the censor objecting to its importation. Said the latter: “Shakespeare
is not a good book for the Turks. It has in it the story of a man named
Macbeth who killed a king. It would be a bad example for our people.”
Dr. Bliss succeeded in getting his Shakespeare through by saying he had
another copy of the same book, which, as it was already in the country,
could not be taken out, and he would be glad to trade this for the new
copy. The censor consented, accepted the Shakespeare which cost a dollar,
and admitted the fine old edition instead.
At another time some New Testaments sent to Constantinople were held back
by one of the censors because of the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians.
Galata is one of the divisions of Constantinople, and the censor asked:
“Who is this man Paul, and why is he writing to our people in Galata?” He
was with difficulty persuaded that St. Paul was dead and that his letter
was not part of a plot. There is a story that a textbook on chemistry was
kept out because a censor objected to the term H₂O, saying that it seemed
to mean that Hamid II (the Sultan, Abdul Hamid) amounted to nothing.
In addition to Robert College and the institution at Asyut there is one
here at Beirut which is quite as important as either of the others. I
refer to the American University of Beirut, founded by Americans in
1863, which has become the Harvard and Yale of the Near East. It has had
thousands of graduates, and its doctors and lawyers stand at the heads of
their professions in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Persia, and India. It has more
than nine hundred students, all Orientals, representing every part of the
Levant.
This institution was founded by Presbyterians, but the instruction is
non-sectarian. The faculty has about one hundred and twenty professors,
most of them Americans, and it is a thoroughly up-to-date university.
It has a medical department which, with its hospitals, treats thousands
of patients a year. It has physical, chemical, and other laboratories,
a large library, and ethnological and industrial museums devoted to
exhibits from Syria and Turkey.
[Illustration: Armenian children begin to make themselves useful at an
early age. Centuries of hardships under anti-Christian rulers have made
these people resourceful and self-reliant. They are the shrewdest traders
of the East]
[Illustration: American relief in the Near East takes the practical form
of getting the people back to the land, much of which has been devastated
by one war after another]
During my stay here I have visited the college. It is beautifully
located, the buildings being situated on the bluffs south of Beirut
and running from them down to the sea. Standing upon the campus, which
contains about fifty acres, one faces the glorious Mediterranean, while
at his back are the snow-capped mountains of Lebanon with the rich
vegetation climbing their slopes. The institution has a gymnasium, tennis
courts, and good athletic grounds. Its students play football, baseball,
and cricket. They are full of college spirit and have their college
papers, their college songs, and their college yell.
The boys have silver cups and other trophies which are contended for by
the various athletic teams, and these Persians, Greeks, Syrians, Arabs,
Egyptians, Armenians, and Turks are being welded into one brotherhood by
the hard knocks of football and the track.
The Beirut University is an American college and a Christian college as
well, but it does not attempt to proselytize, and the Moslem can come
to it without changing his religion. It insists only that everyone who
goes through its courses shall attend chapel and the Bible classes,
which study the Bible as one of the great influences in the work of the
world. Once the Moslem students struck against these regulations. They
refused to go to chapel and took an oath not to attend the Bible classes.
The strike created a sensation, and for a time it seemed as though it
might do serious damage. The faculty, however, headed by the president,
Dr. Howard S. Bliss, stood firm, saying that the school was a Christian
college. They demanded that all students attend the religious services,
and the result was that most of the strikers came in, and the college has
gone along on its original lines.
In talking about this to the Mohammedan students Dr. Bliss said:
“Our college was established to give the Mohammedan world the best the
Christian world has. Our aim is to make of you broad-minded, intelligent
men whether you continue to be Moslems or become Christians. We believe
that the best thing we have is our religion, so we are bound to let you
know what it is. Whether you accept it or not rests with yourselves. If,
upon investigation, you still think the Moslem religion the best, we
believe that the knowledge you have of our religion will make you better
and broader Moslems. Religion is for man, not man for religion, and we
want you to have the training which will make each one of you the best
man, whether he be Christian or Moslem.”
To-day the Mohammedan students attending the services look upon them as
largely educational, and they study the Bible as history and literature.
The influence of colleges like this goes far and wide. The students come
from villages all over the Turkish Empire and from those of India and
Persia as well. Going home, each forms a little hot-bed for the growth of
independent thought.
Civilized ideas are spread in other ways besides these. One of the great
means of such distribution is the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which is
attended by nearly half a million Mohammedans from all parts of the
Orient. At that time Mecca becomes a great camp meeting or bush meeting,
such as we farmers have in Virginia. The people come together and gossip.
They discuss the crops and ask one another how they are getting along.
Hassan Ali of Egypt says to Mohammed of Turkey, “How is business? Are you
making money, and how does your government treat you?” Mohammed replies
that the Turks are taxed to death, but they hope for much under the new
Sultan. Thereupon Hassan says that the English have cut down the taxes
in Egypt and that the church has plenty of money in the treasury. He
tells how he has been able to send his boy to college, and that he hopes
he will some day be an official. The Turk, thereupon, longs for a better
government. At the same time the college students tell what they have
learned, and as a result the twentieth-century spirit of modern progress
is stirring the Mohammedan world.
In addition to the collegiate work great advances in the spread of our
civilization are being made by the Protestant missions. There are now
thousands of native Christians in Syria and from seventy-five to one
hundred thousand native Christians in the empire of Turkey. The American
missionaries alone have more than one hundred schools, with five or six
thousand pupils, and the English have many more.
Here in Beirut is the largest and most up-to-date publishing house in the
Orient. It belongs to the American mission, and annually turns out tens
of thousands of Bibles, school textbooks, and other works on religious
and scientific subjects. Altogether, it has published more than seven
hundred different works in Arabic, and it is estimated that it has
printed in the neighbourhood of a billion pages of one kind or other. It
issues around one hundred thousand volumes a year, containing altogether
something like thirty million pages. Its Bibles published in Arabic are
sold throughout the Mohammedan world.
The medical missionaries are doing a great deal in all parts of the
Orient. I have seen their hospitals everywhere on my trips around the
world. They are to be found in all parts of India, far up the Nile
Valley, and in the leading centres of the Holy Land. One of the best I
have visited is situated at Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, and headed
by Dr. Torrence, who has been treating the Bedouins and others there for
the last thirty years. In my talk with him the question of tuberculosis
came up, and he described the evils of the great white plague as they are
found in his region on the very edge of the desert. He says tuberculosis
is rife among the Bedouins although they live out of doors in the purest
air all the time. He thinks that the disease is spread largely by the
cattle. About 50 per cent. of the cows have tuberculosis, and the people
live chiefly on milk.
Another doctor connected with the hospital tells me that Syria had no
consumption until about twenty-five years ago, when the disease was
brought in from the United States by natives who had emigrated to our
country, contracted consumption, and brought it back home. The Syrians
had no idea what it meant, and it rapidly spread. The sanitary conditions
of this part of the world are bad, the bacteria breed rapidly, and the
disease is sweeping the country.
And this brings me to a great work at Juneau within a few miles of
Beirut. This is a tuberculosis hospital built there by the Church of the
Covenant at Washington, and in charge of Dr. Mary Eddy, who has become
famous throughout the Near East for her work as a medical missionary.
Miss Eddy is the daughter of the Rev. William W. Eddy, who came to Syria
many years ago and remained here until his death. Besides being a woman
of fine education and great medical skill, she is an expert on all
matters connected with tuberculosis and its treatment.
[Illustration: Cradles in Armenia have no sides, a wide cloth band drawn
tight keeping the baby from falling out]
[Illustration: American flour sacks serve a double purpose among the
Armenians and Syrians in time of distress]
[Illustration: Much of the wilderness of the Jordan will be reclaimed
by irrigation and forestation when the British-Zionist project for
developing water power along the river is completed]
She is the only woman who has ever been granted an _irade_, or
certificate of protection, from the Sultan authorizing her to practise as
a doctor everywhere throughout his dominions and directing that all good
Turks shall give her assistance as she goes on her way.
Miss Eddy has been working in Syria for years and has been fighting the
spread of consumption as best she could without any hospital facilities
for her patients. The people have come and camped near her house waiting
treatment, and the tents of the Bedouins may be seen dotting the plains
near where the hospital now is. Some of the best known men and women
of our national capital have been interested in the building of this
hospital and the support of its work.