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vol. title: Miscellaneous Scraps from January 1st 1878 vol. period: 1875-1878 pages in vol.: 153 |
< Crescent and Cross (continued from page 5-34) >
the Geneva convention and to share the privileges conferred by it.
The natural consequence of this is that a society organized under the rules of the Geneva convention has, according to the statutes of the latter, no right to act in favor of an army which has violated those statutes in the most flagrant manner, reviving in the nineteenth century all the horrors of mediæval warfare. In acting otherwise a Red Cross society would belie the very civilizing and humanitarian principles it is expected to represent. Of course everybody has a full right to aid the Turkish wounded and to form societies with that object. But then these societies can not be considered as making a part of the international association founded on the principles of the Geneva convention. I repeat, that this is not a matter of national or political sympathies. If Russia were at war with any other civilized army even the shadow of such a question could not have arisen. But what would you say if (the United States being at war with the Indians, who would scalp every wounded man and burn alive every prisoner), in St. Petersburg one were to organize a Society of the Red Cross and—Tomahawk, for instance, with the intention of "dividing the proceeds equally between both armies?" And if in their mode of warfare there exists a difference between Indian and Bashi-Bazouk the balance is rather in favor of the former.
Considering, as I have said, the present question to be entirely independent of any political sympathies for either of the belligerent parties, I will not enter here into the details of another question discussed in your article, as to how far the present condition of religious and political liberty in Russia is preferable to that existing in Turkey. I am the first to acknowledge that many things concerning the Church and the State in Russia are not as they should be, and not as the more intelligent portion of the Russian society desires them to be. Nevertheless, for every impartial observer there exists a vast, immeasurable difference between the so-called protection which the Russian law accords to the official national Church and which does not interfere in any way with the free exercise of all other religions throughout the Empire, and the condition of the Greek Catholic Christians in Turkey. It is not the American or English Protestant missionaries you must ask about that matter. Their preaching, their institutions are, naturally, in the eyes of the Ottoman Government but a drop of water in the sea, and as such they are treated with all possible respect and courtesy. The Ottoman Government knows full well that, however great the zeal of the missionaries may be, they will not convert the Turkish nation to the Protestant religion, nor will they or their converts ever acquire any political importance in the Ottoman Empire. It is not so with the Christian Slavonian subjects of Turkey. It is them, and them alone, whom you must ask about religious liberty in Turkey. Go into the Bulgarian villages on both sides of the Balkans and you will scarcely find a family which has not its tale to tell of violence, injustice, bloodshed—in short, of that "religious liberty" which Islam awards to its traditional foe. I defy the bitterest enemy of Russia to find, even in the most arbitrary proceedings of the Russian Government (for the religious tolerance of the Russian people is, I presume, beyond question), anything approaching to those nameless horrors which are summed up in the one word "religious liberty"—in Turkey!
As regards the other facts stated in your article: the persecutions endured by the Jews both in Russia and in Roumania, "in consequence of the presence of the armies of the Czar;" the sixty thousand exiles sent yearly to Siberia by the Russian Government; the 150,000 (!) Circassians who perished during the "persecution" (?); in regard to all these accusations allow me to ask you on what facts, on what statistical data are they based? The Jews, though still submitted to certain restrictions in regard to their residing in St. Petersburg and Moscow (and only in these cities), are so far from being persecuted, that a great part of the most lucrative banking and commercial business transacted in Russia is under the control of the Jews; while in the army and in Roumania nearly all the contracts for conveying supplies to the army are, too, in their hands. The constructor of the Bulgarian railways, for instance—Polakoff—one of the first capitalists in Russia, is a Jew. As to the 150,000 slaughtered Circassians and the 60,000 exiles, I must confess that, if these facts do exist, they are utterly unknown to me. I am far from being a friend of any arbitrary and cruel action, committed under the present system of government in Russia, and if such horrors are really perpetrated, I will be the first to brand them with the shame they merit.
I will add but a few words concerning the protest against the American Red Cross Society which the Ottoman Minister to the United States has seen fit to publish, and in which he speaks of the "religious liberty" enjoyed by the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Porte. The author of that protest may be considered thoroughly competent in the matter, for being a high official of the Ottoman Porte, he at the same time belongs, as he himself stated not long ago in one of the New York papers, to the Christian Greek Catholic Church. And yet this assertion of a Christian representative of Islam will doubtless be met with an incredulous smile by all those who have not forgotten the name of Batak and all the different episodes of the last massacres in Bulgaria, and who now read that "rope is becoming scarce at Adrianople," and that the testimony of one Mahometan suffices to convict of high treason many a Christian Bulgarian. All these and many other facts illustrative of Turkish "religious liberty," may suggest to the sceptical reader the idea that "freedom of conscience" is practiced—not indeed by the Ottoman Government, but rather by its Christian representative at Washington. Truly yours,
New York, October 30.
House to Let
French Haunted House to Let, St. Malo, France.—To be let for the annual rental of $30 (or 10 francs) the picturesquely situated but haunted house, near the English Channel, known as the Maison Rouge (Red House), with numerous rooms and magnificent gardens has not been inhabited for 20 years; the old superstition in St. Malo respecting this establishment is that every body who goes to live there is found dead, without any marks of violence, in their bed the day after taking up their abode there; it is situated at about an hour's walk from St. Malo, and in one of the most picturesque parts of Brittany. This is a rare chance for an enterprising American family in reduce circumstances. Apply, with references, to the Proprietor of La Maison Rouge, St. Malo, France.
Editor's notes
- ↑ House to Let by unknown author, Telegram, New York, March 15, 1878