Napoleon I was wont to say that a lie, given twenty-four hours’ start, becomes immortal. But, when lies about the Turks have been repeated for generations in spite of the official denials of the Ottoman government and in spite of the contradictions of men who have long lived among these much misunderstood and greatly misrepresented people, what hope, one may ask, can there be for the final triumph of truth? What can be done to counteract shameless calumnies and official _dementis_ when the greater part of the press is either muzzled or avowedly hostile and when public opinion has been so utterly poisoned by long and constant reiteration of all kinds of vilification and slander that the unfortunate victims are everywhere prejudiced and denied the right of a hearing which the law--not to speak of Christian charity--of all civilized nations accords to even the worst of criminals? “Professional scribblers,” writes Pierre Loti, “who have never set foot in Turkey, expectorate ‘great historical romances’ on the ‘Tigers of the Bosphorus’ and the ‘Monsters of Stamboul.’”[146] “And they go so far even as to confound the true Turks with that aggregation of sharpers from all the Balkan and Levantine races who put on a fez in order to live among the Anatolians as gnawing parasites, parasites to the bone, whose depredations and usury, ruining entire villages, would almost excuse the worst vengeance of the rude and upright laborers of Anatolia who finally revolted.”[147] Sidney Whitman, the distinguished English author who knows Turkey so well, is at one with the illustrious Academician when he writes: In the course of my many visits to Constantinople I have repeatedly been made acquainted with instances of questionable newspaper correspondents who came to the Palace with the scarcely veiled intimation that it was to be a case of pay or slander. During the Armenian disturbances in 1896 a French female journalist went up to the Palace and openly declared that she intended to be paid or write up “atrocities.”[148] But, notwithstanding the lurid tales that have so long been circulated about the Osmanlis, they have, nevertheless, loyal friends where one would least expect to find them. I have adduced in their favor the testimony of those who from long association among them have learned to know them and admire them for their splendid human qualities. Among these witnesses to the virtues of the Osmanlis are French, English, and American men whose competence is as incontrovertible as their authority is unimpeachable. It were easy to add to the number and among them we should find French, Italian, and German priests and bishops, Sisters of Charity and _religieuses_ of the various teaching orders who have spent long years among the Osmanlis in all parts of the Ottoman Empire and their testimony would confirm that already introduced.