Constantinople the literary centre of the whole region

Having an authorized printing office, the printer may print neither book, newspaper, nor picture, without the signed approval of the censors of the press. These two rules force men to make Constantinople the literary centre of the whole region of its influence. For in provincial towns officials shrink from responsibility, and refer the would-be printer or author to Constantinople for the final decision upon the merits of his petition. Difference of language makes Beyrout a centre for printing in Arabic, and the American Mission and the Bible Societies print there large numbers of books in that language. There are also newspaper presses at Smyrna and Salonica. But in all the vast interior provinces of Turkey printing presses are found in the Government headquarters alone. For this reason the people of all that great region where the Turkish and Armenian and Greek languages are used look to Constantinople for their books, if they have any.

If Turkish or Greek or Armenian men and women in Turkey are ever to be stirred in any large sense to intellectual or spiritual life, the impulse must come through books issued at Constantinople by people who know intellectual and spiritual life. If the view already given is true, of the lacks in both these directions seen among the people of the city, a burden of responsibility falls upon missionaries as educated Christian men and women private tours balkan. The Missionary Societies should concentrate at this one point all necessary means and forces for making the press instruct and help the people of this Empire. Excuse for failure to do this can only be found in ungreediness of the people to be reached by the press, or in the effectiveness of a native press already thoroughly occupying the ground, or in some obstacle of the local laws.

The press laws of Turkey

The press laws of Turkey do not form such an obstacle as one might expect. They limit the field and the style of literature produced under the censor’s care. But they are not obstacles on the whole to the missionary, unless he wishes to write controversial books. And these arc commonly best unwritten. As to the preparedness of the people, all classes of the population of Turkey offer a living example of the punishment which neglect of reading brings upon itself. After a time, talkers who do not read have travelled so far from their original starting point, that their language is quite apart from that of those who meanwhile have been shut up with their books. Then comes the punishment of the people who have neglected reading. Any one of them who now tardily decides that he would like to read, cannot do it. The language of the books is a strange language to him, although it is the one which his ancestors deserted when they stopped reading.

This calamity fell upon all the peoples of Turkey after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Up to that time the Greeks still had preserved the essential grammatical forms of the magnificent Greek literature which is still schoolmaster to the civilized world in literary expression. Now, they can only read their ancient writings by patient study with grammar and dictionary.

Until the middle of the 15th century the Armenians too, had a literature. But in the catastrophes of the Turkish invasion, they, too, lost the power of using it. Until the fourteenth century, the Turks themselves had beginnings of a literature written with Arabic letters, and making much use of Arabic and Persian expressions.

But, having devoted themselves, like a good many other people of the Middle Ages, to war rather than to study, long before the end of the eighteenth century common Turks could not understand the book language any more than they could understand the Arabic in which their religious books are written.