The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1906-01-18
sUlTAN's GOVERNMENT.
swayed by Religion That Is Warp
ing and Forbids Any
Progress.

NJ tOnStdntiuOpte we mdue our uTSt
acquaintance with the Turk, usually
called "the unspeakable." He is slow,
procrastinating, and as a government
disinclined to move, and all this is
perfectly natural, says the Chicago
Advance. His religion forbids prog
ress. IL does not recognize the rights
of man as man upon which all prog
ress rests. Besides, 1t is fatalistic;
and things can happen in Gods way
regardless of hurry or railways or
modern facilities Still more, every
Turkish official is surrounded by spies
eager to earn their pay by reporting
wrongdoing. and any new departure is
easily represented as criminal.
1t took us over an hour to get
through the custom house. This was
partly due to exceptional circum-
stances. A few weeks ago, when a
bomb was thrown at the sultan one of
the accused was found to be an Ar
menian just from America. Soon after
after another American Armenian
stabbed a merchant in the city for
refusing money for a revolutionary
fund. The result was that Americans
we're feared as men of dynamite, and
our baggage was searched to the bot
tom Two or three books we're hand
ed over to a special censor to reid.
Even my wife's jorunal was carefully
gone through, and her gummed-in pic
lures OF William Tell and Augustus.
with Cupids holding him by the legs
we're severely scanned. The Turks are
afraid OF hooks as well as of bombs,
for in a sense they do the same work.
was told of one book on mechanics
rejected because 1t spoke of something
making 80 revolutions in minute.
and of a chemistry cut-out because II.
o. in II was regarded as "Homio II.
Is no good
knowledge and liberty go together,
and the sultan is the deadly foe OF lib
erty. lie has absorbed in himself the
power OF the cabinet. His ministers
are only his clerks and messengers.
All new laws are his DEGREES. so II
is no wonder that 1t takes two or three
years Tor business to reach a deci-
sion Ho lives in a palace surrounded
by walls and guards. with a mosque
within the grounds. He refuses TO go
into old Stamboul, even once a year
for worship. as his predecessors did.
He has guard about him by night
which Is paid $3.50 in gold every morn
ing. 1t is said the only men in the
empire who are promptly and fully
in the capitol. Since the last bomb
thro wing the sultan is being walled
up more than before. and the public
will zee him no more going to his
mosque on Fridays. How long Tur-
key can stand is a question; fall II
must some time, for It is an impossible
system in the twentieth century.
have been told that Macedonia is ripe
for separation, and that within ten
years 1t is expected to become part of
Bulgaria, Austria and Greece. accord
ing to the people in different sections
OF il. ruler that will not allow a
telephone In his dominions, nor a code
for kilograms; who has In his capital
English. French. German and Aus
trian post Offices. because people do
not trust the government Offices; whose
mother was an Armenian. and yet
who murders Armenians till he has
made all that survive his deadly foes;
who cannot allow guns to be fred an
nouncing fires till a telegram Is sent
to the police to explain what the shots
signify; who has his brother. heir 10
tho throne. kept prisoner In a pal
ace beside his own. and who lives in
terror and suspicion. opposing, like
Moslem pope. all new light and life,
and breeding corruption and venality
In all about him-such a ruler seems
impossible.