s." These difficulties, however,
might be settled with a new and better Anatolian government; and as for
the racial question, with time and guaranteed tolerance for religion it
might solve itself, for there is a rude vitality in the Turkish
language, and the Greek and Armenian minorities in Central Anatolia have
been gradually adopting it in place of their native speech, though this
tendency is now being counteracted by the spread of national schools
among the scattered outposts of the two nationalities in the interior.
III
With these suggestions, Anatolia and Turkish Nationalism may be
dismissed from our survey. Shorn of their pretensions in Armenia and the
countries south of Taurus, the Turks may experiment in the art of
government without the tragedies which their present domination has
brought upon mankind. The other lands and peoples of Western Asia, when
they have ceased to be "Turkey," will be restored once more to the
civilised world. What forces will shape their growth? Not, even
indirectly, the discrowned Turk, for if he were not banned by his crimes
he would still be doomed by his incapacity.
The relative qualities of the different Near Eastern races are not in
doubt. A German teacher in the German Technical School at Aleppo, who
resigned his appointment as a protest against the Armenian atrocities in
1915, thus records his personal judgment in an open letter to the
_Reichstag_[21]:
"The Young Turk is afraid of the Christian nationalities--Armenians,
Syrians and Greeks--on account of their cultural and economic
superiority, and he sees in their religion a hindrance to Turkifying
them by peaceful means. They must therefore be exterminated or
converted to Islam by force. The Turks do not suspect that in so doing
they are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting themselves. Yet
who is to help Turkey forward if not the Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians,
who constitute more than a quarter of the population of the Empire? The
Turks, _the least gifted of the races living in Turkey_, are themselves
only a minority of the population, and are still far behind the Arabs in
culture. Where is there any Turkish trade, Turkish handicraft, Turkish
industry, Turkish art, Turkish science? They have even borrowed their
law and religion from the conquered Arabs, and their language, so far as
it has been given literary form.
"We teachers, who have been teaching Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Turks,
and Jews in G
|