The official French paper, the _Journal de Constantinople_, in its issue of August 4, 1864, published a leader supposed to emanate from Ali Pasha, the grand vizier, in which the arrest of the Christian Turks was charged to the alleged fact that the zeal of the missionaries in making converts amounted to a “veritable war,” and that in this work of proselyting seductive arts were employed. These charges were investigated by the Minister of the United States, and by the British ambassador, and not only were the missionaries exonerated from all blame, but Earl Russell, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Great Britain, strongly defended the missionaries and demanded of Turkey that she maintain in her dealings with her subjects the observance of the true principles of religious liberty. Upon the demand of the English government the exiled Turks were permitted to return. It was at once understood by the Moslems that for them there was no liberty to change their faith. It is true that none were arrested upon the open charge of changing their religion, but every conceivable pretense was trumped up against them, to substantiate which any number of Mohammedan witnesses could be procured, and the Christian Mohammedan was sent into exile, languished in prison, or disappeared from view. Frequently missionaries attempted to follow up a case of manifest persecution, but they usually came upon a medical certificate that the man had died in prison from fever or some other natural cause, or lost all traces of the prisoner through frequent transfers to distant parts. Some men are known to have been shot by their guard in the transfer. In the Treaty of Berlin, entered into in 1878 by England, Austria, Russia, France, Italy, and Turkey, Article 2 states that absolute religious liberty is to exist in all the various territories mentioned in the preceding article “including the whole Turkish empire.” The sixty-second article begins, “The Sublime Porte, having expressed its willingness to maintain the principle of religious liberty and to give it the widest sphere, the contracting parties take cognizance of this spontaneous declaration.” Then follow specifications of how the sultan is to carry out these principles. In spite of these reiterated declarations, it is evident that the Turkish government does not and never did intend to acknowledge the right of a Moslem to become a Christian. A high official once told the writer that Turkey gives to all her subjects the widest religious liberty. He said, “There is the fullest liberty for the Armenian to become a Catholic, for the Greek to become an Armenian, for the Catholic and Armenian to become Greeks, for any one of them to become Protestant, or for all to become Mohammedans. There is the fullest and completest religious liberty for all the subjects of this empire.”