Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman empire, occupies the most strategic position of any city in Europe and dominates both the European and Asiatic sides of the Bosporus. To this center all the great and historic cities of Turkey look for political direction, and to it come sooner or later representatives of every tribe and race in the empire. All traffic from the Black Sea to the outer world and even from Persia and southern and eastern Russia must perforce pass through Constantinople and the Dardanelles. It stands upon the highway and at the crossroads of commerce and travel. As a base for missionary operations, not only upon Turkey but upon adjacent countries as well, it is unexcelled. Smyrna upon the Grecian Sea, with immense populations behind it, by the strategic force of its location, commanded the early attention of those sent out to explore for location. Beirut in Syria attracted for the same reason the attention of the missionaries to Palestine. There is an advantage in carrying on missionary work among sturdy races. When such are converted, they become a force in the work of the Church, the conduct of Christian institutions, and the propagation of the gospel. No country in the world could present such an array of ancient, historic, and hardy races as Turkey. Race survival there was under the law of the survival of the fittest. None but the invincible remained. Some had proven themselves invincible by arms, others had conquered by superior intelligence, strategy, and cunning. Each race remained because, in some particular, it had an advantage over its natural and persistent antagonists. The very fact that these races had kept themselves apart, resisting gradual absorption while repelling open attempts at conquest, and all for twenty centuries or more, testifies to their sturdy worth. Some of these, like the Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and Arabs, had been masters of an ancient and proud civilization, in which learning had high place and religion was supreme. There was no ground for questioning native ability to grasp the principles of Christianity when once these peoples were enlisted. A modern Church and a modern civilization built upon such historic races, and propagated by such men, could not fail to become an irresistible force in that needy land. It is no wonder that the officers of the American Board of Missions early concluded that the Ottoman empire was a strategic point in which to plant modern Christianity and the institutions which it fosters and propagates.