Necessarily exceptions to such broad statements

There are necessarily exceptions to such broad statements. In Constantinople one does not fail to meet Greeks and Armenians who are bright and entertaining and obliging, or Mohammedans who are noble and courteous, and thoughtful enough to make their acquaintance an acquisition. But every study of the people in mass is a revelation of arrested development, absence of initiative, and general uselessness by reason of narrow selfishness. The city, and with it the millions to whom the city is model seem hostile to what is best in the world’s work. High-sounding phrases of lofty principle are heard in the city. Custom provides for this much of concession to the sensibilities of others. But the centuries seem to have frayed off the last semblance of meaning from the words. To quote a remark of a sage official in India which applies to the whole of Asia “ Whilst the mouth is proclaiming its enlightenment and progress, the body is waddling backward as fast as the nature of the ground will permit.” The bane of Constantinople is not solely poverty of resources. It is poverty of ideals.

It is quite impossible for one having any pretensions whatever to general good will toward men, to come in contact with the good and attractive qualities of these people, without wishing for some means of helping them to get rid of the bad. Such a benevolent bystander, questioning how the people of this city may be led to measure their real needs, may naturally incline to believe that contact with Western civilization is the speediest agency for waking them up. The contagious energy of the West must in time modify this sluggish content in what has been and in the belief that respect to the fathers demands that the children shall not expect to be better daily tours istanbul.

Principles of civilization

The main thing needed seems to be to isolate the principles of civilization from the religious principle somewhat persistently associated in the West with the advance of civilization. The way is prepared for this by the fact that in Constantinople a sort of compromise seems to have taken place between the claims of a medley of rival religions in order to permit commercial intercourse. The captain of a Turkish steamboat on the Bosphorus illustrated the feeling that undue assertion of religious prejudice alone disturbs the placidity of the business world. A small boy had found surreptitious access to the whistle of the boat, and made it give forth a blast both deafening and untimely. The captain, rushing from his post to seek the culprit, instead of asking who did this thing, voiced his disgust and his belief that religion was at the bottom of all ills by the shout “ Whose religion have I got to curse now?”

If civilization so isolated is the redemptive and elevating agency that will bring forth progress in Turkey, Constantinople is the place in which to watch the process.

For with all of its shrinking from adopting modern theories, Constantinople frankly and warmly admires their fruits in other nations. No Turk, Jew, nor Christian in all the city hesitates to tell the curious inquirer of his boundless affection for civilization. When talking of the problem of progress in his country every Turkish official naively gauges it by comparison with England, France, Germany, or America. It never occurs to him that, by choosing such types of the highest development of man, Asia and Islam are rendering an interesting and suggestive homage to Christianity and the West.