No. 5.
Mr. Phelps
to Mr. Frelinghuysen
Vienna, April 20, 1882. (Received May 6.)
Sir: * * * With an earnest desire to find something in my recent visit to the east which might be of real value to the Department, I could find nothing which the resources of the press and the vigilance of the local agents of the Department—who seem to stand at their posts like sentries, with eager eye watching for every bit of information—was not gathering.
But my own observation impressed me so strongly with the high favor in which American men and American institutions are just now held among eastern peoples, that I want to record my testimony, although only cumulative.
It would seem a great misfortune if American energy should be so exhausted in the west as to neglect the flattering field thus opened to its trade in the east. Rulers and subjects are united in the possession and expression of the kindliest feeling towards us, and Americans may rely on receiving not only the treatment accorded to the most favored nations, but even a better. I think General Wallace, at Constantinople, and Mr. Wolf, at Cairo, would corroborate my statement, that to-day, upon a proposition to the government for a charter or concession, or to the average Turk or Egyptian for a bargain, the American, both at court and in the market, would receive the preference. Does not this open to us a field of profitable enterprise, the limits of which can be found only in the resources of a people who begin to appreciate, and are still lacking, all those conveniences which modern invention has added to civilized life? And this appreciation of us and our country, it must be remembered, is at a time when the United States can make no display of those material resources which unduly, and, it has been supposed, only affect the oriental imagination. The harbors of Alexandria, Smyrna, and the Sea of Marmora see the great ships and hulking ironclads of our rivals, but rarely any vessels of ours.
Two influences seem mainly to have produced this sentiment so strange and so flattering. The education given by the American colleges and the characters and influence of the American missionary is one. On the most conspicuous site on the Bosphorus stands Robert College, and on a rocky point, seen by the mariner long before the minarets and roofs of the surrounding city of Beirut, stands the Syrian Protestant college. Both institutions are founded by American munificence, and no youth who seeks here a liberal education fails to recognize that the privileges of library, and dormitory, and lecture-room, and class-room, and grounds, and hall, are the unselfish gift of American philanthropy.
The college at Beirut, under the influence of a great demand, has gathered round itself the ordinary departments of a university. These departments, like the parent college, are housed in stone, and the stately [Page 6] structures suggest that the learning for which they exist has come to stay. It is difficult to overestimate the influence wielded by the lawyer, the doctor, the engineer, the teacher, the scholar, who returns from these walls to his home in Bulgaria, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt. He left it a poor native boy—he returns to wield the power of education among the illiterate, and never fails gratefully to remember and eloquently to tell a story so full of honor to America.
A second influence is the general impression, that all other nations have only selfish objects in their intercourse with Turkey; they come because they want something. On the other hand, the common talk in every Eastern mouth was, “You Americans want nothing; you seek to give; you build our colleges; you educate our youths; you seek no offices for your citizens; you seek no share of our lands; you enforce the payment of no illegal debt.” And these expressions so constantly heard, some in a rough way, the opportunities for American influence in Turkey. The policy of our government countenances no governmental interference. But that policy has taught the American citizen everywhere to rely on himself. Is there any reason why the American citizen should not here as an individual step in and establish a trade and general commercial intercourse which would be most remunerative to us and yet most useful to the Turks?
I have, &c.,