OCR Text |
Show THE CITIZEN 7 THE TURKS IN CHAINS the terms of the treaty which the Turks are asked to sign the Turkish empire disappears and the sultan is maintained In Constantinople rather as the head of a church than as a political sovereign. The immediate consequence is a nationalistic movement among the Turks to regain something of their political power by instigating a holy war in the name of the Y Moslem religion. It is an effort to coalesce Moslem sentiment for the benefit of that barbaric race which came down out of central Asia and arrogated to itself supremacy over the "religion founded by Mahomet. It is curious that the religion of Islam has gained millions of adherents in the generation which has seen the swift decay and the destruction of the Turkish empire. In central Africa, where the existence of the Caliph as head of the church was but dimly understood, whole tribes, whose total number is many millions, have been added to the religion whose simple doctrine is the Divine unity and the mission of Mahomet. The decline of the Turkish empire minion the teachings of the Koran were given an unchangeable aspect. And because the Koran purported to embrace the temporal as well as the spiritual, because the whole law, civil and spiritual, was presumed to be the within apait, comprised to his model was content thetic Turk individual life and the life of society on the principle of utter resignation to what he believed to be the ineluctable divine dispensation. By F. P. Gallagher Whatever the causes, the Turks set is only a few miles from the city. In Asia Minor the rule of the Turks is restricted practically to areas. a wall between themselves and progress and it became only a question of time when progress in the external world would come into conflict with them and crush them. We have seen the process of imperial disintegration gaining momentum for many years. First the Turks lost their political control in Northern Africa. It is only a dozen years since one of the most important of their Mediterranean colonies in Africa was wrested from them by Italy. A little later Austria, to which Bosnia and Herzegovina had been given in a kind of trustee arrangement, annexed these Turkish provinces. The Balkan war of 1912-1- 3 freed Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. Owing to the obstinacy of Bulgaria, which claimed the right to occupy Constantinople and which fougnt with Greece over Macedonia, Turkey was able to retake the sacred city of Adria-nopl- e and advance from the Chatal ja line into Thrace. Then came the world war which has ended in the extinction of Turkish power in Europe except for nominal sovereignty in Constantinople and as far as the Chatalja line, which up At the beginning of the twentieth century the Turk was where he had been six centuries before. He had made no progress in the arts of life. He had no taste for science or agriculture, or even for business. And because of restrictions in the Koran on the acceptance of interest on loans a teaching, by the way, which held the early Christian communities in commercial leash the Turks avoided finance and compromised with their consciences by allowing Armenians, Jews and others from among their subject peoples to be their bankers. The barbaric principle is also exemplified among them by their reliance upon slavery. Just as they had made k , was due in some degree, no doubt, to the restrictions of the Koran on art their prisoners their bond servants and science, but in a much greater, de- ' in the days of their military conquests, gree to the incurable barbarism of the so, when they had fastened their power Turks. The Saracens, who preceded upon many races, they made these the Turks as the protagonists of the races their servants in agriculture and Islamic faith, were possessed of fertile, in commerce. It was the Armenian, creative minds and seemed capable of Bulgar, Serb, Greek, Syrian, Hebrew or Georgian peasant who worked and producing an opulent and progressive civilization. developed the farm while the Turkish The fall of the Turkish empire is a master took the fruits thereof. Even in the realm of war the Ottoclear demonstration of the elimination of the unfit. The qualities that won for mans relied upon the conquered races them the mastery of Asia Minor, of to recruit their armies. It is one of Northern Africa and Balkan Europe the curious phases of their history fitted them to survive in a barbaric that they depended upon the Mameworld of their own. They wTould have lukes and Janizaries, warriors recruited from among slaves, converted to the disappeared long ago as a political entity had civilization been united. And religion of the masters. The locale of the Mamelukes was Egypt, wrhereas they lost their dominion as soon as civilization had settled its own dispute in the Janizaries came from Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Thrace and one great final test. The first Janizaries were slaves History demonstrates that civilized of the sultan. Later the Turks seized the most phynations are destroyed from within; barbaric nations from without. Nor sically perfect sons of their Christian need this cause surprise. Among civisubjects, converted them to Islam by lized peoples intellectual ferment con- force and trained them in the ways of tinues unceasingly. Among abrbaric war. These fighters became more fapeoples mental torpor is the rule natical, ferocious and skilled in war than the Turks themselves. They finand intellectual activity the exception. It is only in war, when the depths of ally grew so disorderly that, when they their natures are stirred by savage im- revolted in 1826, the Turks annihilated pulses, that they rise to the zenith of them. their powef and that power is limited by their warlike capabilities. In the When we review these phases of Otcontests of art, science and statecraft toman life we discern no principle of they are at a disadvantage. progress. There are few inventors or It was easy for the Turk to accept discoverers among them. Their literthe idea that all knowledge was co- ature is childishly immature, as is their music. Painting and sculpture are not ntained in the Koran and that it was impious to strive for a progress unex- existant in any real sense, due, perpressed and unimplied in that book. So haps; as much to the limitations fixed long as the Saracens were the leading by the inhibitions of the Koran as to power in the Islamic world there were the static condition of the Turkish mind. The imitation of natural obdisputations about doctrines and debates which led to the establishment jects, such as fruits and flowers, is of sects. When the Turks acquired do placed under a ban by Lhcir scriptures. Rou-mani- - a. non-Christi- an It is to be seen whether the Turks are able to govern themselves; certainly they were not able to govern oth- ers. In this respect they differed es- sentially from their Arabic predecessors, who, although they were guilty of many and great atrocities, possessed the civilizing instinct. Especially where they vied with Christian civilization, did the Moorish Moslems display capabilities which seemed to destine them for a commanding place in the van of civilized powers. It is unnecessary here to discuss the causes of their decline and fall, but it is pertinent to point out that what they achieved in civilization emhpasizes the difference between races essentially progressive and races which, through long ages, preserve the characteristics in-Spai- of barbarians. Islam established the celebrated university of Cordova in Spain. Its curriculum was such as to attract the atten- ( Continued on page 18.) SALT LAKE THEATRE Three nights, commencing Monday, June 7; matinee Wednesday Cohan E. Harris presents the gripping play of the secret service THREE 99 with Violet Heming and the original New York cast One year in New York; six months Chicago; four months Boston THE MOST FASCINATING MYSTERY PLAY EVER WRITTEN Nights $2.50, $2.00, $1.50, $1.00, 50c Wednesday matinee $2.00, $1.50, $1.00, 75c, 50c SEATS NOW SELLING Curtain, 8:20 sharp. NO ONE SEATED DURING PROLOGUE NEXT ATTRACTION Three days starting Thursday, June 10; Saturday matinee THE DARINGLY DIMPLED REVUE G. M. Andersons FRIVOLITIES OF 1920 Company of one hundred; frivol chorus of fifty; direct from 44th Street Theatre, New York. SEATS ON SALE MONDAY Nights, 75c to $2.50; matinee, 50c to $2.00, plus tax KB |