Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President, Transmitted to Congress December 2, 1895, Part II
Mr. Terrell to Mr. Olney.
Constantinople, Dec. 29, 1895. (Received Jan. 13, 1896.)
Sir: I have the honor to inform yon of my utter failure to convince those charged here with missionary interests of the propriety of withdrawing for a time our American women and children from the interior.
Regarding this matter, I respectfully request a careful reading of the inclosed correspondence between Rev. Br. H. O. Dwight and myself.
I have, etc.,
Mr. Dwight to Mr. Terrell.
The purpose of this paper is the elucidation in some detail of the principle which underlies the refusal of the American mission at Constantinople to hastily withdraw the missionaries in Asiatic Turkey from their posts, because they are beyond the sphere of the direct influence of the United States Navy. In brief, this principle is that a great American enterprise, and not merely the lives of its agents, is the interest for which protection has been invoked. * * *
During sixty-five years our society has been engaged in its operations in this country. From the point of view of a business enterprise, such as the treaties authorize American citizens to undertake and maintain in this country, the missions must be regarded as a mere association of American citizens which has chosen to invest capital in two main directions:
- 1.
- A large educational system embracing common schools, high schools, colleges for men and women, theological seminaries, and medical schools and hospitals.
- 2.
- A large publishing and bookselling business.
In order to induce the people of this country to value and pay for the goods which we place before them, Americans, chosen with great care for the purpose, have been sent to live among the people, to cultivate in them understanding of the value both of the education and of the books which we offer. Our aim has been to cultivate in the people not only a desire to buy our wares, but a willingness ultimately to take over the whole financial support and future development of the establishments which the American society has founded and fostered. So far as the business side of this enterprise is concerned, it makes no difference to our Government nor to the Turkish Government under whose local regulations these operations are carried on, that by daily intercourse and example and other instruction we seek at the same time to elevate the moral character of the people as well as their intellectual Power. That fact is simply an additional guaranty that our educational and our publishing business is conducted in a way that avoids reasonable objection from a Government really interested in the advancement of its people.
Be this as it may, by incurring an expense for organization, equipment, and maintenance of about $6,000,000 Americans have built up in Asiatic Turkey a business which already makes an appreciable cash return, and which has promised to realize our hope that it will be taken [Page 1428] over entirely by the people who are our customers. We have 435 schools of all grades in the various provinces of Asiatic Turkey, and these schools are attended by 19,795 pupils of both sexes. We have also (it should be noted that our publications do not include any copies of the Bible, for this is published by the American Bible Society) a book trade with sales rooms and depots in 25 or more of the principal cities and with a somewhat extensive publishing house in Constantinople, which relies for its market mainly upon the customers in the interior provinces of the Empire. For the maintenance and further development of our undertaking many thousands of people in the United States, who may be regarded as the stockholders of the concern, pay annually about $150,000 in addition to the revenue from tuition and from the sales of books and newspapers in Turkey, which amounts to about $70,000 a year. The sum of these two amounts may be regarded as the interest on the capital invested in the enterprise, since it is an annual sum put into the business. If we regard this sum of $220,000 as the interest of a capital which annually produces it we may call that capital $7,000,000. This is a rough way of estimating the money value of the stock, real estate, equipment, and other property provided by Americans for our present operations in Asiatic Turkey.
The object of this analysis of the business aspects of our mission enterprise is to obtain a basis for a more clear understanding of two points:
1. Our business is of sufficient financial importance to warrant the somewhat persistent demands which we make for protection from the United States Government. During the months of October and November of this year, about 100 of our village schoolhouses and chapels in the various provinces have been pillaged and destroyed or seized by the Mohammedan population and applied to their own uses. Moreover, our books to the value of about $25,000 (not including books destroyed which belong to other American societies) have been seized and carried off as plunder or used to kindle the fires which destroyed the buildings where they were on sale. These estimates of loss will probably have to be increased with the receipt of more full particulars.
This work of destruction has been done * * * by the aid of the forces whose duty it was under the treaties to have defended this property. Unless the Government of the United States is informed of the nature and extent of this outrageous attack and peremptorily demands that if be ended, our whole equipment, so slowly and so expensively prepared, will be annihilated.
2. When the proposal is made that Americans withdraw from our stations in the interior provinces in order to save their own lives, acceptance of the proposal involves the sacrifice of the whole capital sunk in bringing our business to the prosperous condition in which it was before this disaster was brought upon it. If we now withdraw from the country, the safety of our abandoned property will depend upon the promise of the Ottoman authorities that it shall be protected until our return. The property which has already been destroyed was under a promise of protection as forcibly expressed and as sacredly binding as any that can now be made. If so much of our property has been destroyed in our presence by the very men who were bound to protect it, we should be indeed unsophisticated to hope that the same men, emboldened by the impunity which they have enjoyed, would protect our remaining property in our absence. But even if there were no question of the protection of a large property from destruction, there remains the no less important question of deriving future benefit from past expenditure.
[Page 1429]Our business depends upon our retaining the confidence of the people in our moral rectitude and general qualifications to be instructors and leaders of a people seeking manhood. Some hundreds of thousands of people in Asiatic Turkey now have this confidence in us and, from a business point of view, these are our future customers. Accustomed by a certain breadth of experience to regard us as qualified to instruct their young people they look to us in a time, like the present, of deadly peril as persons on whom they can depend for advice in all matters coining within the scope of our proper functions and whom in some degree they may regard as their friends. In better days hereafter these are the people who will patronize our reopened schools and buy our reprinted books. If, for the sake of escaping the difficulties and dangers of the attack upon Christians of every denomination which is now being made in Asiatic Turkey, we should now abandon our posts, with outposts, we would abandon the whole position of influence which has been won by sixty-five years of hard and almost desperate effort. In this case the whole investment will be sacrificed which the American people has made in the enterprise now under our charge. At least no future return can be expected from it for many years. Under these circumstances the saving of the lives of the American citizens now resident in Turkey in connection with these missions should not be regarded as the only, nor, indeed, as the chief point to be aimed at by the intervention of the United States.
Holding these facts in view and inviting anew the attention of our Government to the great interests here at stake, our society at Boston has instructed us that it does not intend to withdraw from its operations in Turkey, nor from any part of them. At the same time it instructs us to take, as heretofore, any measures that may suggest themselves to us for securing the safety of the American men and women who are the agents of the mission enterprise.
Up to the time of this writing we have not seen any effort made by the Ottoman Government to prevent or limit the violence which has attacked our enterprise. Nor have we as yet been made aware of the use by our own Government of the full means available to it for leading the Sultan to see that an end must be made of the apparent disregard for law which threatens our associates and ourselves. We are unable therefore, to regard our case as desperate. When the Ottoman Government has disavowed publicly and punished its Mohammedan plunderers and murderers without thereby restoring security, and when our own Government officially notifies us that it declines to afford protection to our business and our American associates we shall take what steps are necessary for inducing, if possible, American missionaries in exposed posts to abandon the work to which they have given their lives and devoted the whole of their affections.
But we lay great stress, before any such measure can be com tern-plated, upon the importance of attempting to make it unnecessary by convincing His Imperal Majesty the Sultan that the United States Government is serious in its purpose of protecting these American interests. The dispatch of the Mediterranean squadron to the Levant has been chiefly useful in this direction; and its increase, and especially the stationing of one of the additional ships at Constantinople, will further tend to influence the minds of those in power here, in a deterrent sense. The prompt dispatch to Harpoot and Erzerum of the consuls provided for by the last Congress will act in the same way, besides exercising, by their mere presence, restraint upon the local officials and at the same time obtaining for our Government such information respecting the general tendencies of Turkish policy as is essential [Page 1430] to a proper understanding of the problem before the United States in these matters.
We have reason to believe that the destruction of the colleges at Marsovan and Aintab is still in contemplation. The temporary dispatch of Consul Jewett to Marsovan (which is in the province of Sivas) would enable you to measure, and will tend to remove the danger, so far as Marsovan College is concerned. The pressure for reparation for the destruction of property at Harpoot and Marash will also tend to suppress further official aggression. High officers of the Government at Harpoot and Marash are alleged to be implicated in this destruction of property, and Ottoman soldiers are known to have been implicated in the plunder and arson. Measures to secure the punishment of such and to force them to disgorge the plunder which they took from our buildings we deem essential to the quick and effective protection of that which remains to us. The method used to bring about the destruction of our property has been to excite the Mohammedan people by reports and proofs that we are seeking to slaughter our Mohammedan neighbors or to overturn the Ottoman Government. Thus is turned upon us the blind wrath of men who have been hitherto on the best of terms with us. This process of inflaming the minds of the people by calumny is now in progress at Aintab, Bitlis, Harpoot, and Marsovan, and can only be stopped by insisting on the punishment of all those who engage in it.
To us, who know intimately the feelings and the working of the minds of the people among whom we live, it appears that all of the points of protection above enumerated can be secured without violence, which we do not desire, and without threats save the silent presence in these waters of a very moderate naval force. The choice of such a line of policy, instead of that of inviting American citizens to withdraw from Turkey, will make secure their great enterprise, their establishments and other property, and their lives. Such is oar opinion, and if our Government is urged to adopt this policy, and does adopt it, we, on our part, shall feel no hesitancy in accepting the risks of remaining in the country until it shall have its full effect.
Mr. Terrell to Mr. Dwight.
Constantinople, December 27, 1895.
Sir: I received yesterday a paper dated the 26th instant, signed by yourself, the expressed object of which is to make clear the principles which underlie the refusal of the American mission at Constantinople to withdraw its missionaries in Asiatic Turkey, who are beyond the direct influence of the United States Navy, from their posts.
The fact that you have presented in this formal manner the reasons for such refusal seems to require from me an expression of opinion in writing, which has already been conveyed to you verbally. The temporary withdrawal of American missionaries from Turkey has not been suggested by me to any missionary except to you, in whom I recognize an intermediary between our missionaries in Asiatic Turkey and this legation. Though you have never been authorized to reveal my apprehensions to your associates here, it was naturally expected that you would inform the boards in America.
[Page 1431]While most willing to incur any odium that may attach to a conscientious discharge of duty, I did not deem it prudent either to increase the alarm of those already in peril, by expressing to them fears for their safety, or by requesting them to leave their posts to excite against myself the prejudices of those who desired them to stay.
To yon, to the consul-general, to the secretary of the legation, and, I believe, to President Washburn, I expressed four months ago my conviction that the so called “reforms” would, when announced, be followed by a massacre of Armenians, and a period of great danger to our missionaries. This view was not entertained by those to whom I have referred, nor by my colleagues; but acting on my own convictions, instant measures were taken for the security of our countrymen. A residence in the southern portion of the United States at the close of our civil war prepared me to anticipate the fearful era through which we are now passing here. I had seen the resentful violence of a proud and dominant race, caused by enforced reforms for a subject race, which was increased by the arrogance of the enfranchised negroes, and which resulted in Kuklux outrages.
It was known here that one at least of the great powers would not consent to the use of force to make the reforms proposed for the benefit of the Armenian race effective. And so, on the 21st of October, when very many persons were rejoicing over the irade which proposed to arm and make officers of a race which had for centuries been subjugated and denied privileges, I demanded and obtained on that day telegraphic orders to every civil and military chief in the Ottoman Empire to protect American missionaries. Once before, in anticipation of those reforms, and four times since, like orders were demanded at the Porte by myself, such frequent repetition being necessary to impress officials in the interior.
These facts are not new to you, for with reference to them and other matters affecting American interests, I have, on account of our isolation at this distant post, conferred with you freely, and thus derived benefit to my countrymen and to myself.
When it is remembered that religious fanaticism has inspired with frenzy multitudes of Mohammedans in whom resentment was excited by the reforms demanded by European powers, some idea of the danger to which missionaries are now exposed can be understood.
Those who profess to know inform me that among many Mohammedans the killing of a Christian becomes a virtue when it tends to advance the cause of Islam. If this be so, those in America who control the movements of their missionaries here must see the danger to which they are exposed in the interior provinces.
The solicitude of our own Government for the protection of our citizens here is continually shown; but while peace between the two Governments continues, and so long as Turkey gives assurances for the protection of our citizens, the United States can not be expected to interfere between the missionary boards and their teachers here, and advise the latter to leave the Ottoman Empire.
I know the magnitude of the interests, pecuniary and moral, which you and your associates are attempting to safeguard here. I understand the self-sacrificing spirit which caused men and women of rare culture to come here and labor to educate and elevate an ignorant race of primitive Christians. And it is because I do appreciate the good work attempted in Asiatic Turkey by our countrymen that I wish to see them removed from posts where they can now do no good to places of safety. In my opinion the Turkish Government should be required [Page 1432] to place and keep a guard over all missionary property in the interior, and wherever it is practicable our American teachers should temporarily withdraw from the interior until tranquillity is restored; unless, indeed, it is deemed more important to keep our people at their posts at the risk of being killed by Turkish soldiers, detailed to protect them, than to preserve them for future usefulness. These are no times for school-teaching, especially when the instructors have no power to protect their pupils.
It is known to you that our missionaries have, in many places, looked down from their windows upon the massacre of the people they came to aid; that mobs have time and again sought to destroy the missionaries and their houses, and have been prevented only by soldiers who joined the mobs in plundering; that a bloodthirsty rabble and the more cruel Koords are waging a war of extermination, in which perhaps 50,000 Christians have already perished; that this day a Turkish guard protects every missionary in the disturbed provinces; that the guards are distrusted, and Christian Europe, after exasperating the Turks with compulsory reforms, now looks with folded hands and does nothing to stop this carnival of blood.
If inspired by that lofty zeal which incites to martyrdom—our grown missionaries prefer to risk destruction rather than withdraw—I have nothing to say, but the little children (and there are many among those 170 missionaries) should be saved. They are not missionaries. Painful as it is to differ with those who think they should remain exposed, I can not abandon the exercise of independent judgment, and I say that the sacrifice of those helpless little ones (who have no volition) through the neglect of those who have power to save them by a timely removal will be done without my approval.
They may, providentially, escape by remaining where they are—some even now it may be impossible to remove—but in my judgment the risk in remaining is too great, for if these massacres continue the Central Government may soon be unable to restrain the fanaticism of the very soldiers I have secured as guards.
Miss Strawn, now in this city, witnessed at Marsovan the repeated rush of an angry mob that sought the destruction of our missionaries there. She looked down on the slaughter of helpless Armenians and heard the wife of Professor Smith say, when death seemed at hand, “Husband, is it not time to kill the children to save them from the Turks?” In that very city renewed apprehensions caused me only yesterday to telegraph Consul Jewett, at the request of President Herrick and yourself, to leave Sivas and go there, unless some peril at his post detained him; and now, while I write, he wires me that another massacre is threatened at Sivas and he can not leave. If those children perish while I have yet power to get safe conduct for them to the seacoast, I could not sleep under the reflection that I failed to offer my assistance to save them. Our physical aid is on the other side of the world and could only be made available in future. The danger is present. If His Imperial Majesty the Sultan is not already convinced “that the United States Government is serious in its purpose of protecting these American interests,” it is because he does not understand the force of language already used by me.
All that you have written about the value of American investments in Turkey, of the injury that would result from a suspension of your enterprises and of the duty to remain among the people whom you have come to elevate, is fully appreciated. But the work of destruction goes on, our people are powerless to stop it, winter is upon us and [Page 1433] I can not see how our own Government could give relief in time, even if its entire resources were actively employed.
All your suggestions, relating to diplomatic action, are fully appreciated, for I know the motive that prompts them. The Ottoman Government has been officially notified that when full data showing the value of destroyed property is received, the payment of indemnity with promptness will be demanded. “That the United States Government is serious in its purpose” of protecting American interests is known to Turkey, as shown by the presence of a Turkish guard at every American house in the interior.
Whether the United States will use (as you say) “the full means available to it for leading the Sultan to see that an end must be made to the apparent disregard of law” which threatens your associates and yourself, or will content itself with indemnity for pecuniary losses so long as no missionaries of our people are killed, it is needless to inquire.
Turkey, by the treaty of Berlin, as you know, is under the quasi-guardianship of the great powers of Europe, and it does not seem probable that the United States will assume the burden of correcting that “disregard of law” to which you refer, and which the powers tolerate, so long as Turkey protects American citizens. Compensation can be made for the destruction of property and of business interests, but no adequate measure of value can be found for the destruction of human life. It is precisely for this cause that I think our people should withdraw for a season, for even if they do not value their own lives they should regard the peace of nations which their sacrifice would jeopardize.
I quite sympathize with your desire to see calumniators punished on account of my own experience at this post, but when you reflect that the rival Christian churches of eastern and southern Europe would rather see Asia Minor controlled by Turks than by American Protestants, that this prejudice is so strong that the consuls of one great Catholic power officially reported to their ambassador that our missionaries had encouraged the Armenians to aspire to state autonomy, you will readily understand that the most dangerous calumniators are beyond the control of the Turkish Government.
Impatience under despotism is the natural result of enlightenment. The education of the Armenian race has naturally engendered a desire for larger freedom. Though our missionaries have discouraged sedition and are now in danger from an undeserved popular prejudice which has been fostered by calumnies, a present remedy in this era of suspicion and massacre is not apparent. Those calumnies have been denounced by me to the Porte in a written note. A demand for punishment would be answered by a proposal for a judicial inquiry. Such an inquiry at such a time, and conducted in the interior among the calumniators, I can liken to nothing except suing the devil and trying the case in hell.
I will be excused from expressing an opinion as to whether our naval force in the Mediterranean will be increased.
* * * * * * *
If, as you suggested, missionaries can not now leave Harpoot on account of the severe winter, the same difficulty would seem to render impracticable your suggestion that a consul should go there. The failure of the two consuls to reach their posts from Trebizond was neither their fault nor that of the United States, nor of the legation.
Your request that those who plundered American property at Harpoot and Marash should be compelled to disgorge it, would require that [Page 1434] its value, which has been itemized, should be stricken from my claim for indemnity. If you prefer that course it can be adopted.
Other suggestions made in your note will, at your convenience, be made the subject of a personal conference, for, though I must be loyal to the convictions of my own judgment when we disagree, it would be regarded as a misfortune if, for that reason, I should be deprived of your suggestions and large experience.
I know that the Department of State feels the utmost solicitude for the protection of all American interests. It lias sustained me in every responsibility assumed, which had that protection for its object, and I can not, even by implication, concede that it has neglected the interests of your associates and yourself. It surveys the whole vast field of our nation’s complicated embarrassments and duties. Our vision is circumscribed by our isolation.
The interests which you supervise are the chief American interests in Turkey, and are the same interests which I am here to protect. Hence I have departed from my custom and written to you with the utmost freedom, for I know both your prudence and devotion to duty. In the future, as in the past, I shall hope for your suggestions during these perils, even if I shall sometimes disagree with you. Very truly, yours,