The Anatolian Mussulmans will be the first to profit by this. Patient workers, loving the land, and living in harmony with their Christian compatriots, they will be happy to secure the product of their labor, of which the Turkish functionary constantly robbed them, so that he finally made them dislike all labor, and urged them on into the path of crime. This living together as friends, on a footing of equality, will perhaps make Christianity flourish anew in this land which was the first to be saved from paganism, and whose fruits, transplanted to the rest of the world, have caused the springing forth of that glorious civilization which Prussian megalomania is now staining with blood. II. HELLENISM IN ASIA MINOR By KARL DIETERICH Translated from the German By CARROLL N. BROWN, PH.D., The College of the City of New York PREFACE By THEODORE P. ION, D.C.L. The German dream of dominion from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf has naturally attracted the attention of the world to Asia Minor, a country which has been for centuries in a dormant condition on account of its subjection to a moribund state. Conquered and reconquered by Asiatic hordes, its wealth ravaged and pillaged many and many times, its cities, towns and villages razed to the ground more than once, and its inhabitants having been subjected again and again to massacres _en masse_, Asia Minor has been and will naturally continue to be the reservoir, so to speak, of European civilization for the Great East. From ancient times the rays of civilization which shone on this peninsula were not Asiatic but European, that is Hellenic, the civilizing influences of the language of Homer and Plato having been kept alive even during the rule of the Mohammedan Arabs. As is well known, the Arabian Caliphs of Bagdad were always surrounded by Hellenists and considered the books of the Greek sages more valuable than gold.[2] Hence came the great impetus given to Arabian philosophy and positive science through the translation of the writings of the Greeks, which were subsequently transplanted to Europe by the Moors even before the time of the renaissance. The darkest epoch of Asia Minor began undoubtedly with the advent of the followers of Osman, who, ever since their irruption into that country, have wrought havoc among its people, and within a comparatively short space of time have reduced that fair land to barbarity and desolation. The ancient seats of learning, the theaters, the stadia, the treasures of art and other tokens of Hellenic civilization are now nothing but heaps of ruins, inarticulate witnesses to the ancient glory of Hellenism.