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people of Turkey. The reverse is the fact. Prejudice against them and against the Christians who are carrying them on there doubtless is, and opposition to them by some men high in political and ecclesiastical circles. But in the main the Americans have commended themselves to the Turks. America has no desire to encroach on Turkey's territory, or to possess Constantinople, or to exercise any political control in Turkey's affairs. No considerable body of Americans are interested in making money out of Turkey, and the interest of the missionaries and the teachers and doctors has not been to make proselytes out of the Turks. In consequence, there is in Turkey no such hostility to America as there is to her nearer national neighbors. The Turks have good reason to believe that they have no disinterested friends in Europe, that their only unselfish friends are Americans.

Hitherto the protection of American citizens in Turkey has depended, as the protection of other foreigners in Turkey has depended, on certain special treaties; detailed information respecting them and how they .grew up will be found on another page. Enough here to say that owing to the provisions of these treaties. Turkey is unable to increase or reduce her customs duties without the consent of the Powers; foreigners have the right of trial in civil and criminal cases by their own diplomatic and consular courts; and they are exempt from the payment of certain taxes. America has no such specific treaty with Turkey, but it is entitled to claim the same rights by a general treaty giving to America all the privileges of the most favored nation. Turkey has now given notice that she abrogates all these international agreements restricting the sovereignty of the Porte and will not regard them as binding upon her after the first of next October.

Had Turkey acted in accordance with international etiquette, perhaps we should say international law, except that there is not much difference between the two, she would have entered into negotiations with the Powers before giving this notice. But it must be said on her behalf that she has not in the past found that appeals to the sense of justice of the Christian nations of Europe resulted in any very distinguished success. It was natural, and The Outlook is inclined to think legitimate, for her to seize this opportunity, when those nations are engaged in other and more important business, to free

herself from what she not unnaturally regards as an interference with her national liberty and an obstacle to her economic and political progress. There is no reason to think that Germany has incited her to this action. Austria and Germany, as well as Italy, France, England, and Russia, have protested against it. It is not, however, unreasonable to think that if this protest leads Turkey into war she will be found fighting with Germany and Austria against Russia and England. There is no reason to believe that this is intended as a prelude to a general religious war by Mohammedans throughout the world against the Christian races. That it might lead to such a war is possible, though not probable. If anything could bring about so disastrous a result, it would be the union of all the Christian Powers in an attempt to force Turkey back into the humiliating position of tutelage from which she is trying to escape. That the Powers will make any present attempt to compel Turkey to retrace her steps is highly improbable. They must wait till the European war has come to an end.

What should America do?

America might join in the protest. And then what? Wait? Our commercial interests might wait, but our National honor cannot. We owe protection to American citizens who have gone to Turkey with the cordial assent of the Turkish Government to render unselfish service to the Christians and the Moslems residing in Turkey. We owe protection to their pupils, who are their wards and whom they certainly will not desert. Hitherto the rights of these American citizens and their wards have been guaranteed by the special treaties now abrogated. For the enforcement of these treaties we have depended on the European Powers. We have had neither fleet nor army in the Near East.

We can

depend on these European Powers no longer. We must be prepared, and prepared now, to protect our fellow-citizens, and we must decide whether for that protection we will depend on force or diplomacy.

It has been proposed that the United States ask Turkey to postpone action until the European war is over. Such a request would almost certainly be refused. If granted, it could only postpone perplexity, not solve it. By postponement the perplexity would be increased. Turkey knows that Russia and Pan-Germany-i. e., Germany and Austria-want to possess Constantinople. They know that England does not want them to

possess Constantinople, because the possession of Constantinople by any strong Power would threaten the Suez Canal and England's empire in the Far East. The same reason makes England unwilling to see Turkey a strong Power. Turkey is therefore naturally suspicious of the motives of England, Germany, Austria, Russia. She has no suspicions of America and no reason for suspicions. For America to ask Turkey now to postpone action until the European war is over is to align America in the Turkish mind with these European Powers, and to arouse against ourselves the suspicions from which America is now free. And if we postpone negotiations with Turkey until we can negotiate in co-operation with European Powers, we should naturally, and almost necessarily, drift into one of those entangling alliances with Europe against which Washington wisely warned his countrymen."

Before the United States there appears to us to be only two practicable courses: Refuse finally and be prepared to enforce our refusal; or consent cordially, but consent in such a way as to make it clear to Turkey that the United States expects her to treat American citizens and their wards as other civilized nations treat foreigners residing in their territories. The case is not one for half-way measures. It is not one for watchful waiting. It is one for immediate and decisive action. The Outlook believes that the policy of cordial consent is the wiser, the more efficient, and the more Christian policy.

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We can best interpret the spirit in which we should like to see the United States act by a concrete illustration of one method which that spirit might employ.

In the winter of 1867-8 Admiral Farragut in an American man-of-war made a friendly visit to Constantinople. He was entertained at dinner by the Grand Vizier. Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, the President of Robert College in Constantinople, requested Admiral Farragut to ask the Grand Vizier what prevented Dr. Hamlin from getting from the Government the permission to erect the necessary building for his college-a permission often promised but never given. The Admiral asked the question. History does not record the answer; but a few days later the long-delayed permit was sent by the Grand Vizier to President Hamlin. To the Oriental a show of force which is not in form a threat gives both significance and dignity to a diplomatic request. We should like to

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THE GREAT REFUSAL

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The great refusal is the refusal to accept the gift of life, which is the supreme gift of God to man. Without that gift all other gifts would have been impossible either of bestowal or of acceptance. Men and women come into life without their own volition, but they are not compelled to accept the gift of life; many do not accept it; instead of taking it with gratitude and using it with the courage of insight into its splendid possibilities, they strive to protect themselves from it as if it were a menace to their ease, a danger to their comfort. It is and ought to be both, for ease and comfort are perilous and despicable if one seeks them. There are many things of real value if they come to a man as the by-products of living, but enervating and corrupting if pursued as ends in themselves. Popularity is an excellent and useful possession if one does not seek it and is not afraid of it when it has been secured. Social influence and position are valuable if they come without seeking, but the woman who works for them degrades her soul; there is no meanness of snobbery to which the social "climber" will not descend, no personal indignity to which she will not submit, on the ignoble path which she has chosen. Even happiness, if put before honor, duty, or service, betrays the soul.

A man may live and yet refuse the gift of life. To exist is not to live; they only live who take life with all its experiences with courage and joy, who not only put aside the fear of living but welcome the opportunities of living as a brave man welcomes a perilous chance to help or inspire or lead in a moment of danger. The fear of living is the source of that cowardice which empties the lives of many people of spiritual meaning and human dignity. They may be blameless so far as external morals are concerned, and yet they are guilty of refusing the supreme gift which God puts into their hands. The pure in heart are not those who have never known temptation, but those who, fiercely tempted, have as fiercely resisted; or who, having fallen, have risen again and through purification made themselves clean. The heroes are not those who have kept away from danger, but have faced it, suffered, and triumphed.

Among the miserable throng of those who are bearing the pains of Purgatory there are none of whom Dante speaks with such scorn

as "those inert ones who are pleasing neither to God nor to his enemies." These wretched

ones have made the great refusal; they have lived without praise or blame; their offense is that they have been neither faithful to God nor rebellious. They have existed for themselves only. When opportunity interfered with ease, they chose ease; when duty came companioned by danger, they bolted the door and kept themselves safe; when, in the night and storm, the cry for help rose above the tumult, they remained comfortable by the fire; when life offered great enterprises, with the toil and peril which make success a matter of character as well as of opportunity, they stayed securely at home.

The fear of living prompts men to accept narrow positions without outlook on the future for the sake of security against the vicissitudes of business; to accept a small fixed income because it provides immediate comfort, rather than take those longer chances of fortune which impose patience, self-denial, and the training of experience at the start. Marriage brings heavy responsibilities; it interferes with the freedom to be selfish without protest or criticism; it means many surrenders of small comforts which are dear to those whose idea of life is to keep clear of obligations; it forces a man to think sometimes of another when he wishes to think all the time and only of himself.

The making and keeping of a home necessitates self-sacrifice, work, and the expenditure of time and strength. It interferes with that opportunity to do at any moment whatever you want to do which many unfortunate people call "freedom of life," and who therefore avoid the complications of home-making and home-keeping. The people who make this great refusal do not know what the words "freedom of life" mean; they put ease of condition in place of some of the supreme joys of living. To bring children into life is to tie one's self with many bands of duty, to limit one's ability to spend money freely on pleasure, to limit one's freedom in the matter of time and place, to invoke a thousand cares and burdens; the coming of a child is the most insidious form of teaching unselfishness which the Heavenly Father has yet discovered. To refuse the gift of children is to close the door in the face of a great, enduring, and wonderful happiness. It is to avoid the noblest chance of education which life offers. And yet thousands of people do this simply to escape being "bothered;" men want to

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keep clear of all relations which bring any obligations with them in order that they may be free to be perfectly selfish; women. want to be free from the cares of maternity in order that they may devote themselves entirely to social life or to what they call a 'career," as if the fulfillment of the oldest, most fundamental, and divinest of all human functions was not the richest, most influential, and happiest career open to men and women, the only really creative function committed to them. No people are more to be pitied than the young men and women who marry as a further step in selfishness ; who live in hotels or take their meals at restaurants in order to escape the responsibilities of having a home; who profane a noble relationship and defeat one of the great ends of marriage by agreeing not to have children because children are "such a bother."

These unfortunate people blight their souls at the very start, cut all the deeper roots of life, and condemn themselves to a thin, narrow, superficial life, in order to escape the very things they were sent into life to achieve. They make the great refusal before they know what they are refusing; they shut the door in face of happiness in the vain endeavor to make comfortable for their bodies a world which was framed to liberate and inspire their spirits. They fall into one of the most insidious forms of sensualism and one of the most devitalizing forms of skepticism.

Without a strain of heroism life is poor and mean. Cowardice is fatal to nobility. Those who want life without paying for it not only fail to get it but do not know what they are losing; that is the penalty of cowardice. By work life becomes an achievement, by surmounting obstacles and facing dangers men and women become the masters of themselves; by self-denial and glad acceptance, by greeting the "Unseen with a cheer," they make the great acceptance and become worthy of God's great gift to his children.

In the hour of sorest trial, poor, lonely, ill, Beethoven faced life with unflinching courage, and life poured into him the wealth of knowledge and feeling which enriched all time in the "Ninth Symphony." "From the brink of the grave," said a noble Frenchman recovering from a perilous illness, "I' measured, not the vanity of life, but its importance."

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TURKEY'S DECLARATION OF

INDEPENDENCE

BY FREDERICK D. GREENE

The writer of this article is the son of the Rev. Joseph K. Greene, D.D., for fiftyfive years a missionary of the American Board at Constantinople. The son, after a boyhood in Constantinople, received an American education and returned to Turkey, and was engaged for several years in missionary and educational work in Armenia. He writes from an intimate knowledge of the Turk, both at his worst and at his best. At the time of the Armenian massacres Mr. Greene resigned from the American Board in order to be free, without imperiting American missionary interests with which he had been connected, to bring out the truth as to the horrible nature, the extent, and the cause of the Armenian massacres. He is the author of "The Armenian Crisis,' which deals unsparingly with the shortcomings of the Turkish Government, a book which at the time was useful in shaping public opinion both in America and in England. Mr. Greene writes without partisanship and in full appreciation of the great educational and philanthropic interests which America has in Turkey.

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Following this article is a statement giving another point of view from an authority on Turkish affairs.

An editorial on this subject will be found elsewhere in this issue.-THE EDITORS.

N September 10, 1914, the nations of the world were formally notified by Turkey of the abrogation of the Capitulations. The European situation seemed already complicated enough. Many are puzzled to know just what this new ingredient is that has been so unexpectedly thrown into the seething political caldronwhy it should be thrown in now, what will be its probable effect upon Turkey and upon other countries, and what action, if any, it calls for on the part of the United States.

The term "Capitulation," it need hardly be said, is not to be taken in a military sense; it is a diplomatic term to designate certain Ottoman state papers which were reduced to chapters (capita). They are the articles by which, from time to time, the Sublime Porte has granted to foreigners in Turkey certain immunities, privileges, and extra-territorial rights. Some of these Capitulations go back eight hundred years, to the very beginning of Turkish power, and their analogies can be traced even through the Roman and the Byzantine Empire, which the Turks superseded.

At the capture of Constantinople in 1453 Mohammed II, in order to check the exodus of the Christian population, and with it the leaders of commerce, craftsmanship, art, and education, decreed for these classes unusual privileges and permitted colonies of resident foreigners to continue forms of local self-gov

ernment. These privileges included certain valuable exemptions from taxation, freedom from military service, and the exercise by the ecclesiastics not only of religious control but also of important civil functions within the limits of their own communions, whether of the Catholic, Greek, Jewish, Armenian, or other faiths, including the Protestant at a later date. To these privileges there have subsequently been added others, such as the right of subjects of favored nations to immunity from the procedure of Turkish law in criminal cases, and to trial in a consular court of their own country. Foreign nations have been allowed to maintain in Turkey extraterritorial post-offices with the management of which Turkey has nothing to do and from which she can derive no revenue, each nation using its own stamps for letters going out of the country. In the matter of their own tariff the Turks have been very seriously exploited by having been induced many years ago to agree to charge no higher rate than eight per cent on imports. The year after the Young Turk reformers came into power in 1909 they succeeded in obtaining the reluctant consent of the Powers to raising these duties to eleven per cent. This figure, however, is entirely inadequate to provide absolutely necessary revenue and to foster Turkish industries or even prevent them from extinction. As a result of the low tariff forced upon her the Turks have to im

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