I have already described the “capitulations,” under which foreigners in Turkey had their own courts, prison, post-offices, and other institutions. Yet the early Sultans gave these privileges not from a spirit of tolerance, but merely because they looked upon the Christian nations as unclean, and therefore unfit to have any contact with the Ottoman administrative and judicial system. The Sultans similarly erected the several peoples each as the Greeks and Armenians into separate “millets,” or nations, not because they desired to promote their independence and welfare, but because they regarded them as vermin, and therefore disqualified for membership in the Ottoman State. The attitude of the Government toward their Christian subjects was illustrated by certain regulations which limited their freedom of action. The buildings in which Christians lived should not be conspicuous, and their churches should have no belfry. Christians were not permitted to ride a horse, for that was the exclusive right of the noble Moslems. If a Turk in the street should ask a Christian to clean his shoes, the latter must do so under penalty of death. The Turk had the right to test the sharpness of his sword upon the neck of any Christian. One of the most remarkable official documents ever devised is the burial permit which the Ottoman Government used to issue, up to a hundred years ago, for the interment of its Christian subjects. The following is a literal translation:--“Oh thou irreligious priest, who hast been expelled from the presence of God, thou that wearest the crown of the devil and black raiments, so and so of your congregation of polluted infidels having died--although his desecrated corpse is not acceptable to the earth, yet as its terrible stench will become a public nuisance, take the polluted dead one, open a ditch, throw him in it, trample him under foot, and come back, thou infidel swine!” Imagine a great Government, year in and year out, maintaining this attitude toward many millions of its own subjects! And for centuries the Turks simply lived like parasites upon these overburdened and industrious people. They taxed them to economic extinction, stole their most beautiful daughters and forced them into their harems, took Christian male infants by the hundreds of thousands and brought them up as Moslem soldiers. I have no intention of describing the terrible vassalage and oppression that went on for five centuries; my purpose is merely to emphasise this innate attitude of the Moslem Turk to people not of his own race and religion--that they are not human beings with rights, but merely chattels, which may be permitted to live when they promote the interest of their masters, but which may be pitilessly destroyed when they have ceased to be useful. This attitude is intensified by a disregard for human life and an intense delight in physical human suffering which are the not unusual attributes of primitive peoples.