THE
outstanding facts in the preceding narrative are the following:
1. Smyrna was burned by the Turks, as the concluding, at present,
act in a consistent policy that has been shaping Moslem history and expansion
for centuries, and especially Turkish history since the coming to power of the
Young Turks, as displayed in the “Turkifying” murders, tortures and
persecutions in Macedonia that led to the First Balkan War (1912); the killing
and driving from their homes of the Greeks of Asia Minor during the period just
preceding the outbreak of the World War and the destruction of their
flourishing villages, (as described by the Frenchman Manciet, writing of the scenes at Phocaea); the deportation of Greeks,
men, women and children in the midwinter of 1916, from the Black Sea region, forcing them to walk
in the inclement weather till many thousands perished (as mentioned by Dana K.
Getchell, in his letter given above); the doing to death of between eight
hundred thousand and a million Armenians in 1915-16; the burning of Smyrna and
the massacre of thousands of its inhabitants in 1922.
2. Smyrna was burned by Turkish
soldiers at a time when they were in full and complete possession of the city,
and the fires were applied first in the Armenian quarter, in which the Turks
had been plundering, murdering and raping for several days and where no
Armenian was to be found, with the possible exception of such survivors as
might be hiding in cellars.
3. Credible non-Greek or non-Armenian witnesses testified to the
manner of the burning of Smyrna.
4. A Turkish soldier poured
petroleum, or petroleum mixed with gasoline, in the street before the American
consular building, causing the fire to be led up to and communicated to the
building and endangering the lives of those within.
5. The burning of Smyrna and
the massacre and abuse of its Christian inhabitants in the year of our Lord,
1922, was made possible through the mutual jealousies and conflicting
commercial interests of certain Christian powers, and the actual aid, moral
and material, furnished by some of them to the Turks.
6. The Turks committed their
fearful acts against the Christians and humanity in general in the full
conviction that they would meet with no opposition nor even criticism from the
United States. They were led to this belief by a loud pro-Turk and
anti-Christian propaganda carried on in the American press by certain
concession hunters, and other interested writers.
7. No Gladstonian note of
horror, protest or revulsion has as yet issued from any official American
source, though the Turks have surpassed anything that Gladstone ever dreamed
of.
8. The Turks can not regain the
confidence and respect of the civilized world until they repent
sincerely of their crimes and make all restitution in
their power.
9. Concealing such deeds as
have been recounted in these chapters or misrepresenting them with the purpose
of obtaining material advantages or saving property, reveals a low state of
morality, consistent with the spirit of this commercial age.
10. One of the many reasons why Mohammedanism is outstripping
Christianity in the latter’s ancient birthplace and territory, and in general
wherever the two religions meet face to face, is that Christ has been
unworthily followed by the people who are sending out the missionaries.
11. Church people in America should become aware of the fact that
American missionaries in Turkey can not convert Turks, nor conduct religious
exercises at which Turks are present and that the schools in the Ottoman Empire
are now being conducted on that basis; and that, if they should convert any
Turks, the latter would be killed, and the missionaries and their buildings be
in danger of attack.
But
the chief lesson of these pages is the growing feebleness of
Christianity—divided, insincere, permeated with materialism; undermined and befuddled,
in much of its old sturdy and childlike credence, by modern scientific
discovery.
Whoever
has attended, as I have done at the city of Washington, a general meeting of
missionaries, can not have failed to be impressed with the devotion,
enthusiasm and spiritual fervor of those noble men and women who carry the
beautiful doctrines of Christ to heathen lands. I saw them and heard them soon
after my return from the Near East and the Smyrna horror, and I could scarcely
refrain from rising to my feet and crying:
“Come
borne and save us, before it is everlastingly too late!”
THE
END
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