“My son,” an old Turk once said, “do you see that herd of swine? Some are white, some are black, some are large, some are small; they differ from each other in some respects, but they are all swine. So it is with Christians. Be not deceived, my son. These Christians may wear fine clothes, their women may be very beautiful to look upon; their skins are white and splendid; many of them are very intelligent, and they build wonderful cities and create what seem to be great States. But remember that underneath all this dazzling exterior they are all the same--they are all swine.” I have talked with many of the splendid men and women whom America has sent as missionaries to Turkey. They tell me that, in the presence of a Turk, they are always conscious of this attitude. The Turk may be obsequiously polite, but there is invariably an almost unconscious feeling that he is mentally shrinking from his American friend as something unclean. And this fundamental conviction for centuries directed the Ottoman policy toward its subject peoples. This wild horde swept from the plains of Central Asia and, like a whirlwind, overwhelmed the nations of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, conquered Egypt, Arabia, and practically all of Northern Africa and then poured into Europe, crushed the Balkan nations, occupied a large part of Hungary, and even established the outposts of the Ottoman Empire in the southern part of Russia. So far as I can discover, the Ottoman Turks had only one great quality, that of military genius. They had several military leaders of commanding ability, and the early conquering Turks were brave, fanatical, and tenacious fighters, just as their descendants are to-day. I think that these old Turks present the most complete illustration in history of the brigand idea in politics. They were lacking in what we may call the fundamentals of a civilised community. They had no alphabet and no art of writing, no books, no poets, no art, and no architecture; they built no cities and thus established no orderly state. They knew no law except the rule of might, and they had practically no agriculture and no industrial organisation. They were simply wild and marauding horsemen, whose one conception of tribal success was to pounce upon people who were more civilised than themselves and plunder them.