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.