The agitation carried on in England by Canon McColl and the
Duke of Westminster, backed by sundry fervent Nonconformists,
had had the effect of exhibiting the fanatical Turk as
thirsting for the blood of the Christian.
And yet not a single Christian other than the Orthodox Armenians was
molested. With regard to the Jews he tells us how a Jewish money-changer,
mistaken for an Armenian, had been set on by the mob: when it was
ascertained that he was a Jew, he was released, but the crowd ran after
him, and brought him back to collect his money, which was scattered
on the ground. Would any other mob in the world have acted thus under
similar conditions?
It is a noteworthy fact that from the time when the Jews first found
shelter in Turkey from their Christian persecutors and the terrors of
the Inquisition in Spain, until the present date, no one has ever even
suggested that they have been ill-treated in the Ottoman Dominions; on
the contrary, thousands of fugitive Jews, escaping from pogroms in Russia
have within the last quarter of a century found security and peace in
Turkey. Many Poles fleeing from persecution have found a safe asylum in
Turkey, as well as the Hungarian leaders Kossuth, Gorgey and many others
after their abortive revolution against Austrian domination. Although
threatened with war by both Austria and Russia unless he surrendered
the fugitives, the Sultan of Turkey refused to break the sacred laws of
hospitality enjoined by Mohammed. On an earlier occasion a Sultan of
Turkey had similarly refused to surrender to Russia the King of Ukraine
(Lesser Russia), who was a refugee at his court, although he was offered
a great reward should he comply, with war as the alternative in case of
refusal.
If the Turk were a fanatical persecutor of all persons professing another
faith than his own, how is it that for centuries Jews, Roman Catholic
and Greek Christians have been allowed free exercise of their religion
in all parts of the Turkish Empire, and that Protestant missionaries of
many sects have not been interfered with in that country? Does not all
this tend to prove that the Armenian trouble is a political and not a
religious one?
Mr. Sidney Whitman further says, that in one hospital he visited he found
that about forty Turkish soldiers, who were lying there, were wounded by
Armenian bombs or revolver shots during the street fighting, and that the
correspondents of the different European papers, when asked to inspect a
large quantity of bombs found in a house at Pera, refused to do so.
Such was the general disinclination to admit any fact which
could tell in favour of the great provocation the Turks had
received from the Armenian revolutionists.
The sad case of the late Mr. Melton Prior shows a pleasing exception to
the general attitude adopted by the foreign journalists:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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