The political organization extended down through the different provinces and included in its last analysis each individual church. Under the injustice endured by the Christians of Turkey during the past five hundred years, it is most natural that not a few of the members of the Church, if not a great majority, should look upon the organization, not primarily as a spiritual temple, but as a means of securing redress for wrongs suffered, or for obtaining privileges from the Porte. Under the laws of Turkey the Church must exercise political functions. Under the practise of the people, it came to be primarily political, the spiritual being relegated to the background. General education never existed in that country, but under the sway of the Moslem all education was discouraged. The schools of the Moslems consisted of classes in reading the Koran in Arabic, accompanied by traditional stories of Mohammed and comments upon his teachings. Among the Christians there was little except the instruction of a few youths in monasterial schools where men were trained for Church orders. It is true that now and then among the Greeks and Armenians some bright and inquiring mind far exceeded the ordinary bounds of indigenous scholarship and became conspicuous for learning. But these were rare exceptions. The masses of the people of all classes and religions were in gross ignorance. Even within the last twenty-five years the writer has been in many Armenian villages in which not a person except the priest knew how to read and write, and even his accomplishments ceased with the bare ability to read the ritual of the Church. A leading priest once asked a student who had studied one year in a mission school, “What remains for you to learn after studying an entire year?” Under such a leadership in the Church, and with open opposition to general education among the Turks, it is not surprising that ignorance among the masses became almost universal, with little or no impulse to change. If the above is true with reference to the education of the men, what could be expected for the girls and women? It is natural that, among the Mohammedans, who accord to women a low place in society and religion, it should have come to be believed in wide areas in the interior of Turkey that women were incapable of learning to read. Among them the vital question calling for early discussion was not, “Shall education be afforded to girls?” but it was, “Can girls learn to read?” This question has been hotly discussed within the last fifty years in the interior of Turkey, with the missionary contending that they can, while leading men of the country have contended with vehemence that the idea was too preposterous to consider. Conviction came only by actual demonstration.