The Newtown bee., 1897-04-02
The HOm3 i ircIe.
Turkey and Turkish Problems.

Turkey and Turkish Problems
 REV EDWIN HALLOCK BYINGTON OI
 BROOKLYN IN THE CONGREGATIONAL
 IST.
 Part of my boyhood was spent il Turkey, and 1 was in Constantinoplt during the entire Russo-Turkish war As the Turkish soldiers were driver from the Balkans toward that city fea1 was in every Christian household. w expected that, when the Turks were driven from their final stand behind the Qualifications, which lay q few miles from Constant, ople, they would breal ranks, rush for the Bo. porrs and eager. ly seek refuge on the Asiatic side. We knew that they would use this as 8 golden opportunity to aveDge them selves on the miserable gjaours, as they contemptuously call all Christians. The city would be fired, the Christian inhab. itants butchercd and plunder sought that rhcir flight might not be empty handed
 An Amer .n mgn-ol- war Was in the harbor, and planned lhag all Americans in Bebek anG Hissar should fly to Robert College, where f1atcd the stars and stripes and whuher the Vaudalia was to send force If marines fir our psotuc. tion. All in Scur.gi Che Aziatic suburb of CoI-tautiuople, rear the en- trance to the BJspoIu) were to seek and secure similar safety in the American college for girls situated iu that locality, and those living in the city proper were to make their way to the Vandalla, which lay not far from the Golden Horn.
 As far as l can remember each day father went to the Bible House in Stamboul and 1 to the college. Life went on as usual. But we expected that the emergency anticipated might at any moment become terrible reality. How ever, it did not. E1gland's determiua- tion that Russia should not enter Con. stantinople checked the advancing army within ten miles of the city. An armistice was proclaimed, pending ne- gotiations.
 During this armistice a party of us visited the Russian army. We found them
 TALL, BROAD sHoULDERED, POWERFUL
 LOOKING FELLOWS; well armed, having fine uniforms, com. fortabIe tents, prarctog horses-a boy's ideal If soldiers. Yet the effect on us was curious. You remember the woman who said that the mere she saw of men the better she liked dogs. The more we saw of the Russians the more we admired the fighting qualities of the Turkish army. The Turkish soldiers we had seen drilling in the public gardens at Bebek had moved us to eontempt-small of stature, round shoutdered, shuffiing along as they marched, often looking as spiritless and woe-begone as the dogs so plentiful in the streets of Constantino- pie. Of course the comparison ba- tween the two armies was unfair. Vel had seen the flower of the Russian army, the emperor's Life Guards, and the Turkish soldiers were the last reseryes-I the young, the old, the diseased, the puny, all pressed into service to meet the emergency.
 Still we never had seen any Turkish soldiers whose appearance resembled in the slightest degree that of these mag nifieent looking Russians. How could there be any conflict at all between two such forces? How dared the Turks stand a moment against the, Russians? Yet we knew they had. Inc Russians had anticipated triumphal march from the Danube to Constantinople; the world expected it; any one looking at the two armies would have prophesied it
 
 without fear. But 1t was not so. Russia's advance was slow. Again and again her armies were checked. You remember Plevna, before whose fortifi cations thousands of Russians fellPl What struggle they had to pass the Balkans. The opinion afterward sprang up among us that had the Turkish army been properly officered the Russians never would have crossed the Balkans. It was said that sometimes, when the officers ordered retreat and fled them selves, he soldiers kept on lighting, even victoriously. The stubborn resi- tance of the Turks was the more re- markable because they were fighting in what was practically foreign country. They weie in Bulgaria, province of