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The Golden Age for February 13, 1913.
AMERICANS ARE RE-MAKING TURKEY
William T. Stead in “Voice From the Dead” Gives Thrilling Story of What He Had Seen of the Transforming Influence
of American Missions in Ottoman Empire,
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The Founder of Robert College.
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When “The Titanic” went down it
carried no brighter mind, no greater
character, we are sure, than the fa
mous English editor and Christian pa
triot, William T. Stead.
With the great speech w r hich he
would have delivered to the Peace
Conference in Carnegie Hall, New
York, locked forever in his bosom, a
message which was interpreted in an
address of great power by Editor Mc-
Donald, of Toronto, Mr. Stead left an
unpublished story on “Americanizing
Turkey,” which, in itself is a peace
message to the world.
We are indebted to that great Amer
ican favorite, The Youth’s Companion,
for the story and the cuts which ap
pear with it. Its being somewhat de
layed, does not detract from the ab
sorbing interest of the great English
man’s story. It is worthy to be re
produced every year until the Ottoman
Empire shall be redeemed:
AMERICANIZING TURKEY.
By the Late William T. Stead.
How often have I wished during my
visits to Turkey that Christian minis
ters would let the Acts of the Apostles
rest for a while, and instead tell their
congregations something of the acts
of the modern apostles who are lahsr
ing today in the very countries that
enjoyed the ministry of Paul! How
much more interesting it would be to
hear the story of the founding of the
American College at Tarsus than to
hear for the thousandeth time of the
Saul of Tarsus, who found salvation
on the way to Damascus! And how
much more vivid and inspiring an ac
count of the Thessalonica Agricultural
and Industrial Institute that the Amer
icans have founded at Salonika would
be, than the threadbare dissertations
on the man of Macedonia, the sight of
whom in a dream brought the mission
ary to the Gentiles, nearly nineteen
centuries ago, to the city where Ab
dul Hamid, in his prison villa so long
waited deliverance by death!
Strange American Indifference.
The general apathy and indifference
of the average educated American in
Europe to the one supremely great and
useful achievement of Americans in
the Old World, is to me almost incon
ceivable. Os course, there are a se
lect few who know what is being done,
for otherwise the work would cease.
But of the Americans I have met, I
think that not one in a hundred has
any realizing sense of the immense
value of the work that is being done
by their countrymen and countrywom
en in European and in Asiatic Turkey.
I am not writing from the missionary
point of view. lam writing as a man
interested in the civilization, the edu
cation, the general uplifting of his fel
low men. And I unhesitatingly affirm
that when I get sick and weary over
the contemplation of the mean in
trigues, the squalid ambitions and the
unscrupulous doings of politicians, I
find an unfailing refreshment for my
soul in remembering the heroic pion
eer work that is being done in the
dominions of the Sultan by the citizens
of the United States.
Great Britain, absorbed in diplomat
ic, naval and military affairs, has
spent untold millions of dollars in
propping up the political system es
tablished in the East. But today you
look in vain for any lasting trace of
good resulting from all her sacrifices.
The American government, on the
other hand, has spent nothing and has
accomplished nothing. But private
American citizens, subscribing out of
their own pockets sums that in fifty
years might perhaps have equalled the
amount spent to build one modern
ironclad, have left in every province
of the Ottoman Empire the imprint of
their intelligence and of their charac
ter. Sir Edwin Pears, in his book on
Turkey and its people, says:
“In a journey made a few years ago
through the entire length of Roumelia
from the west to the Black Sea, I found
in almost every town, that the houses,
with the conveniences of European
civilization, with decent sanitary ap
pliances and the comparative refine
ments to be found in English homes
of the lower middle class, were those
of former pupils of American schools.”
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Robert College—The Dynamo of Turkey’s. Transformation.
That is a small thing, although if
cleanliness is next to godliness, it is
not to be scoffed at; but it is not a
small thing to have laid the founda
tions of a new State, to have given
shape to the latent aspirations of a
nationality—and that is what the
Americans did when they cradled the
Bulgarian kingdom in the classrooms
of Robert College. Even greater work
than this they have done and are do
ing. If it is a great thing to eman
cipate a nationality, how much great
er a thing is it to liberate a sex! The
deliverance of Turkish womanhood
from the darkness of ignorance and
seclusion is a task far more vast than
the foundation of Bulgarian indepen
dence. The work is yet in its in
fancy; but it has been well begun,
and the doing of it is perhaps one of
the most important things that Ameri
cans are achieving in this world today.
On what trifles, seemingly as light
as air, do the destinies of nations
hang! Between fifty and sixty years
ago, the Eastern world was convulsed
with war. Six nations sent their
sons to fight and die in the Crimea in
order to secure forever the integrity
of the Ottoman Empire. While they
were thus engaged, attracting the at
tention of the world by their alarums
of war, it so happened that one fine
day an American citizen named Rob
ert saw a boat cross the Bosphorus to
Scutari laden with loaves of bread that
seemed to have been baked in an
American oven.
Attracted by the homelike appear
ance of the loaves, he inquired whence
they came. He was told that Mr.
Hamlin, an American missionary, who
kept a school at a village called Bebek,
had a contract to supply Florence
Nightingale’s hospital with bread, and
that these loaves were baked by his
pupils after the American fashion.
“Bread Cast Upon the Waters.”
Robert, an American Scot, from New
York, sought out the pastor who was
combining the supply of the bread of
earth with that of the bread of heaven,
liked him, and fired by his zeal and
enthusiasm, gave him thirty thousand
dollars with which to found an Ameri
can College in Turkey.
It was only a trifling sum; but it
has produced and is producing more
wide-reaching and permanent results
than the thousand million dollars that
the European nations were then lav
ishing on their armies in the Crimea.
For that small endowment was like the
grain of mustard-seed in the parable.
In the college thus founded were rear
ed and trained on American principles,
the men who, twenty years afterward,
destroyed the integrity of the great
Ottoman Empire by founding the prin
cipality, now the Kingdom of Bulgaria,
which is today the most thriving, the
most advanced, and the most powerful
of all the Balkan States.
There are not so many Bulgarian
students in Robert College now. The
men trained there have founded
schools and colleges in their own
country. Out of a total revenue of
thirty-five million dollars Bulgaria
spends on education every year four
million dollars —not a bad return for
the thirty thousand dollars of Ameri
can money given by Christopher Rob
ert in 1856.
When the Russian soldiers returned
home after the war of 1878 that lib
erated Bulgaria, each transport as it
passed the bluff crowded by the build
ings of Robert College, saluted the in
stitution without which all their he
roic valor would have been of no avail.
It was a well-deserved tribute to one
of the most useful institutions on the
broad earth’s surface. But how few
American citizens have even so much
as heard its name!
Robert College is, however, less in
teresting than the Ammerrycolly Kuse
ran, or American College for Girls —
formerly situated at Scutari, but now
being installed at Arnaut-Koi, a mag
nificent site immediately behind Rob
ert College. There, halls bearing the
familiar names of Gould, Woods and
Rockefeller will accommodate the
girl undergraduates of the Ottoman
Empire. Miss Patrick, the principal
of the American College for Girls, is
a woman of remarkable capacity, both
as a business administrator and as a
teacher. She has for years been do
ing work of inestimable value among
the women of the East.
A Turkish Heroine.
The college began as a high school
in 1871, but was chartered as a college
in 1890 by the Massachusetts Legisla
ture. At first, with a few exceptions,
it educated Christian girls, only, one of
whom was the charming and accom
plished Halideh Seleh, usually known
as Halideh Hanum, or Mrs. Halideh,
who entered the college in 1894 and
was graduated in 1901. After the
revolution, Turkish women were free
to avail themselves of the advantages
of the college. But the college can
not accommodate more than one hun
dred and ninety boarders, and most of
the applicants have to wait till the
new building is ready, when the num
ber of students will be raised to four
hundred and thirty.
The girls at Scutari come from all
parts of the Ottoman Empire, and are
of all races and religons and langua
ges. They all learn English and ac
quire American ideas. No one can
estimate the influence that these edu
cated girls will exercise in Europe and
Asia.
The Scutari College has not only done
good by training hundreds of girls; it
has set an example that the Turks are
now eagerly imitating. The Sultan
gave Ahmed Riza, the chairman of
the Chamber of Deputies, a palace. He
has given it to his sister, to be used as
a school for Turkish girls.
When I was in Constantinople I
wrote articles for the Tanin—The
Times of Turkey. They were trans
lated into Turkish by Halideh Hanum,
who has long been a member of the
staff of the paper. Halideh Hanum
also addressed a meeting at the college
at which I was present. She is a very
pretty woman, slight in figure; she
spoke with ease and effect before a.
mixed audience of men and women.
Yet she can not go out in the streets
without a veil; and when in the inno
cence of my heart I proposed to ask
the translator of my articles to lunch
with me at the leading hotel in Pera,
I was told that no Turkish woman
would ever dream of going to a hotel
even in the company of her own
husband.
Spreading Light in Ottoman Empire.
I have made special mention of Rob
ert College and the Women’s College
because I have visited both more than
once. They are at the center of the
empire and stand at the head of their
class. But they are only the best
types of many other similar institu
tions that are diffusing culture
throughout the length and breadth of
the Ottoman Empire. The Americans
brought the first printing press into
Turkey. An American first compiled
a grammar for the Albanians. The
American Bible Society and the Amer
ican Board of Foreign Missions have,
for half a century, developed the mind
and trained the conscience of tribes
whose very names are unknown in the
United States. It is an inspiring
sight merely to look at the map of the
Ottoman Empire that shows the sta
tions of the American missions. The
whole map is dotted with red spots,
and every one of these red spots is as
a pharos of intelligence, a lighthouse
from whose lofty tower rays of cul
ture stream into the darkest regions
of the earth.
In Asia Minor alone there are now
four hundred and fifty schools founded
by Americans, on American principles,
and controlled by American managers.
Tn these schools there are today near
ly twenty-five thousand students, six
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