It was this same Sultan Mahmoud who issued in 1827 a protest against the interference of the Christian Powers in the administration of the Turkish Empire, 'the affairs of which,' as he truly said, 'are conducted upon the principles of sacred legislation, and all the regulations of which are strictly connected with the principles of religion.' The unending record of massacres, and of even more vile atrocities perpetrated upon Armenian Christians within that Empire are but another witness to its degradation, and are hardly past history yet. The war has brought us terrible reminders that the Moslem is no less a Moslem for his German alliance. [Sidenote: Persia.] Or if we turn to Persia, we find no relief from the gloom into which a survey of the history and condition of Moslem lands has plunged us. An observant traveller, after a journey across Persia, thus describes its condition: {122} Like a wreck, a ruin, a memory of far distant greatness, the Persian nation lies in evidence of the paralysis of Islam. There are no schools, save here and there chattering groups around a village priest, or worse than medieval groups around a mesjid and a mujtahid. The few schools of the Government in Tabriz and Teheran are chiefly opportunities for officials to eat up public revenues. Charitable institutions are practically unknown. Prisons are mere places of torture until the demanded money fine is paid. Houses of permanent detention or reformation for evil-doers do not exist. Death or payment or torture are the end of the law. The courts, half civil, half ecclesiastical, are irregular, with no written codes, no jury system, no pleading, no testimony, save the eloquence and evidence of bribes. The sects of Shiahism[5] riot when they please in internecine strife, plunder and murder. The attempts to imitate some of the external ways of civilization have ended in bathos. The postal system is a despair, the couriers lounging idly along the road, taking often a week to go 200 miles, while postmasters take letters from the mail when they please, and are the tools of the Government. The telegraph system is yet more of a farce. Whole sentences were omitted from our messages. The posts lie on the ground with the wires under the feet of the caravans. Telegrams are often as long on the road as letters, and the senders frequently arrive before their messages. The roads are mere {123} trails. One or two were built once, but they are falling into ruin.... The army, with wages of two cents a day, and pay a year in arrears, tattered and sickly, is too sad a sight to be ludicrous.... The land lies smitten and in despair.... Saddest of all is the decadence of religious perception, the want of moral stamina, the prevalence of deceit, falsehood, rottenness of life, of all of which there is no stronger evidence than the throngs of dervishes, the holy men of Islam, who wander up and down the land, loathsome beyond words.'[6] [Sidenote: Morocco.]