The herald., 1897-04-11
GREEK AND TURK

The spectacle Of the six great powers
taking the side of the Turk against the
Greek is one Of the strangest in history.
These greatest and most enlightened
nations of Europe are espousing the part
of darkness against light, of tyranny
against liberty. of etagnation. corrup-
tion and decay against progress,
amelioration and regeneration.
We do not claim that all the Greeks
are moral as Socrates. as philosophic as
Plato, nor as intelligent as Aristotle.
But as compared with the Turks they
are ae light to darkness and as life to
death.
Why so great difference should ex-
ist between two nations is a most in
teresting study. 1t is not SO much
matter of race as might appear at first
glance. The Greek blood is very COM
plex mixture and the Turkish is far from
pure. In ancient Greece the people were
of very compound origin. On the original
Pelaegian stock there was engrafted
Coptic from Egypt, as we'll as semi
Gothic, semi-Keltic from the northern
shores of the Adriatic sea and Thrace.
Nor was all the strain Of Aryan descent.
The Semitic blood Of the Phoenicians
found Its way into the veins Of both
Spartans and .Athenians. Scythian
blood, too, mingled with the other
streams in the Hellenic stock. After the
lapse of $500 years, Of course, the race
now dwelling in Greece and Crete is so
complex in blood that any attempt to
analyze its elements or trace it to its
fountain head would be vain task.
The Turk originally was of that stock
kindred to the Aryan, but not Identical.
known among ethnologists as Semitic.
But in it's present makeup in European
Turkey this, too, is most complex peo-
pie. Even in the days of the Trojan
war the Hellenic-Pelasgian peoples of
Greece had founded many colonies on
the eastern shore OF the Mediterranean,
then known as Anatolia. as it is now.
FROM the Bosphorus to Tyre in after
days that coast was all under the
domination Of the Greeks Along the
south coast of the Euxine these colonies
spread as far as the Caucasus noun
tains.
The original Turks, who were closely
related to the Tartar stock Of central
Asia, when they came westward and took
possession of Palestine, and north
westerly to Thrace, Macedonia and
Greece. mingled with the complex races
of these countries until there is not much
Of the blood of Genghis Khan or Tam
erlane left in the reigning sultan or his
pashae. still less in his bashi bazouks.
The people of Athens are not SO much
different from those of Constantinople
in race origin, while the Moslem in Crete
is a cousin, SO far as blood goes. Of the
Christian Of the island on whose life
he has 90 fell a design.
The Turk of the old days was as brave
a warrior as ever drew sword. The
Saracen was generous and chivalrous
The Turk of modern days is as corrupt
and cruel a brute as ever disgraced the
form of man. The modern Greek mani
tests aspiratior1 towards regeneration.
He glories in the history of his coun-
try, would emulate Epaminondas and
Loenidas, reads the lofty stories OF
Homer and studies the profound specu-
lations of Plato The Turk cares no
more for the glories of Haroun AL
Rashid~ or the high character of the
Saladin than doee one of the miserabl
dogs which infest Constantinople.
Why is this so if these people are SO
dissimilar in, race?
The whole thing is explained by the
sacred books whose teachings lie at the
roots of 4 the. two forms of civilization.
The Koran and the Bible are the we'll
springs from which flow the aspirations
of the Greek and the degeneration Of the
Turk. {as ffes
The Aryan race, which now forms the
vast mass of those who read the Christ
ian scriptures, did not write word of
them. They are the product of Semitic