The Hartford herald. [volume] (Hartford, Ky.) 1875-1926, 1914-11-11
MayReD Destroyed. Missionary
Work and Christianity
Are Menaced.
FEARING TORTURE AND EXILE
Turkish Massacres.

Washington, Nov. 9.-Turkey' S
plunge into the war zone may cost
the United States hundreds of
American lives and millions of dol
lars in property interests.
1t will retard, say directors of
mission work. the progress of Christ
ianity in the Far East more than
any of the previous internal wars or
massacres that blacken the history
of Turkey
Every State in the Union anxious
ly awaits the outcome of events in
Turkey, for every State has sent
men and women and money to the
mission fields of Asia Minor -
There are 212 American mission
aries, of whom 1876 are women and
girls, now in Turkey, threatened
with destruction if the present dis
turbance is famed into a holy
war" Many of the American mis-
sion workers have lived in the East
for years, some of them are descend
ants of the pioneer missionaries who
carried the stars and stripes into
Turkey in 1910.
Through the American Board
of Missions, millions of dollars have
been expended in building churches.
hospitals, Sunday Schools, industrial
schools and printing plants.
The American flag may protect
the American missionaries from
Turkish atrocities, but the thous-
ands of native Christians educated
in American methods and living ac-
cording to American ideas must
surely be sacrificed II the racial and
religious hatred of the Moslem vents
itself on the Christian and the
works of the Christian.
If the present disturbance in the
land of the Sultan develOpes into a
of Christians and. 1.-The tor
ture or death of American mission
aries. Turkish history will be ne
peating itself.
1t was ten years after the first
missionaries. built an. al
tar in Turkey that the Moslems be-
gan their destruction of the detest-
ed Christian invader. More than
$4,000 lives were sacrificed to the
religious hatred of the Turk. That
was in 1922.
The number of American mission
aries increased in the Far East and
heir work prospered. But in 1850,
the unspeakable Turk" rose again |
N his blind hatred for the cross, and |
wrecked cities and killed men and |
and drenched the fields of
with blood. Ten thous-
md lives We're lost in the "Nesto-
ian massacre" of 1850.
Ten years later 1000 lives We're
acrificed to appease the blood-thirst
II the Turk when the Massacre of
lebanon" appalled, the world with
he atrocities, the tortures practiced
" the followers of the Crescent.
In 1876 a massacre in Bulgaria in
Which 10000 Bulgarian Christians
'ere slaughtered like cattle gave
utilization and Christianity a set
ack In the Orient from which II
ook many years to recover.
The horror of the Armenian
of 1894 In which $4,000
alive Christians and several Amer
IAN missionaries weer killed. is
resh in the minds of America. In
500 the Massacre of Adana" set
turkey ablaze from Constantinople
} Adana with the flame of racial
and Moslem Turk con-
nued the riot of arson, murder and ,
'rture against Christian Armenian ,
ntil thousands OF lives had been TIA
en- and thousands of dollars worth I
property destroyed.
The last blood sacrifice demand
I by the Turk from his Christian
eighbor was when Albania. Oldest |
the nations-it was nation five ,