Mr. Dwight has been in possession of these facts for some time, but hoped the
promises of the mutessarif as to proper protection would be carried out, and
thus keep the matter out of a diplomatic channel. The receipt of Bartlett’s
telegram yesterday brought out the whole story. The telegram was as follows
(translation from Turkish): “There is much danger to our lives.” It showed
conclusively that protection was not being given.
I called at once on the grand vizier, who, the moment Bartlett was spoken,
referred to him in an undisguised, ugly way, saying that he must certainly
be to blame and that he hoped I would order him out of the country; that he
knew the people of Kara Hissar well, it being his native town, etc. I told
him I must insist upon immediate telegraphic orders being sent to protect
Bartlett and his property, and that I did not care to report to my
Government a second Bourdour incident. “Tell your Government what you
please, but also tell them that Bartlett had better be told something too.”
I could see no way to talk the matter over with him in a rational way, and
in a diplomatic way [he] practically dismissed me from his room.
For comments on this case I ask permission to refer you to my No. 576, of
this date.
[Inclosure in No. 575.]
Mr. Dwight to Mr.
Newberry.
Bible
House, Constantinople, October 18,
1892.
Dear Sir: The city of Afion Kara Hissar, in the
province of Brousa, and about 100 miles north of Bourdour, containing
about 30,000 inhabitants, has been the seat of a branch of our mission
since 1874. We have had a primary school there for fifteen years and
have kept an agent there for the sale of our books, who has also held
religious services in his house, rented by the American mission for his
residence, a congregation of from 40 to 50 attending on Sunday his
simple expositions of the Bible and the religious worship connected
therewith. Neither the Government nor the people of the town have ever
shown bitter feeling toward our people there until recently.
The superintendence of our agency in Kara Hissar is with the Rev. Messrs.
Bartlett, MacNaughton, and MacLachlan, missionaries of the American
board in the district of Smyrna, and they visit the city once or twice
in each year, spending some weeks there at each visit.
At about the same time as the effervescence of fanaticism against our
missionary at Bourdour during the past summer, the Armenians of Afion
Kara Hissar began to stone the house rented by our mission and occupied
by Mr. Yeranian, an Ottoman subject, who is our agent in that city. The
outburst of ferocity was so sudden and
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so unusual that it may he deemed due to some cause
as yet not discovered, corresponding—not in time hut in source—with the
outbreak at Bourdour. Beginning early in August, the house rented by the
mission has been stoned every night, and men known to be Protestant have
been attacked and beaten, and have been overwhelmed with exorbitant
taxes laid upon them avowedly because they are Protestants, and
amounting to three or four fold the amount laid upon those who are not
Protestants. The Sunday religious worship of the Protestants, conducted
by Mr. Yeranian, has been repeatedly disturbed by rowdies on one
occasion, in September, a band of men with drums and horns stationing
themselves in the street in front of the house and keeping up such a din
during the whole time that those assembled within could not hear a word
of the service.
This state of affairs was so extraordinary and so unlawful, according to
the simplest principles of the Ottoman Government, that the missionaries
in Smyrna decided to go to Kara Hissar and learn the cause of the
troubles and remove them. Mr. Bartlett, an old and experienced
missionary, was selected for the visit, and he went there from Bourdour,
arriving at Kara Hissar on the 1st of October, taking up his abode in
the house rented by the mission, before alluded to. He called on the
mutasserif and also upon the leading Armenian priest of the city, being
received politely by both, and being assured that no harm was intended
to any of the interests of the mission.
On the first night after their arrival the room occupied by Miss Bartlett
as a sleeping room was vigorously stoned. The precaution of protecting
the windows by wire netting had been taken, and no harm was done. Two
nights later, while Mr. Bartlett was sitting in his own room, on the
other side of the house, a large stone was thrown at the window,
breaking it in and scattering the fragments all over the room. The
mutessarif, being appealed to, promised protection, but again, on the
night of the 6th, the house was freely stoned, evidently from
neighboring roofs.
The mutessarif called on Mr. Bartlett the next morning and witnessed the
damage caused by the stoning. He gave the most earnest assurances that
nothing more of the sort should occur. I mentioned none of these things
to you at the time because there was good reason to believe that the
mutessarif would protect Mr. Bartlett without outside pressure.
But a letter received to-day from Mr. Bartlett, dated the 10th of
October, says that the mutessarif has not carried out his promise; that
the house is stoned daily, and that on the 9th, while Mr. Bartlett was
engaged in worship with a few friends, in his room, about forty Armenian
boys assembled in the street outside and stoned the house continuously
for two hours and a half, hooting and yelling in such a way as to break
up the service. A postscript, added on the 13th, says that the
mutessarif again promised protection and arrested a number of the
offenders, but that the persons arrested boasted that the Armenian
influence was strong enough to protect them. In fact they were
immediately released by the mutessarif, on the request of a leading
Armenian of the city.
A telegram sent to me, with answer prepaid, on the tenth day, by Mr.
Bartlett, was suppressed by the governor (mutessarif).
To-day I received a telegram from Mr. Bartlett, dated the 15th, in the
following words: “We are not safe here. Last night it was attempted to
force an entrance into our house to the extent that the door was broken
in. We are being calumniated.”
I explain the last phrase of this telegram by the fact that, according to
Mr. Bartlett’s letters, the popular heart was being excited by false
stories about the Protestants, and that one of these stories, to the
effect that Mr. Bartlett’s agent had declared in a public place that the
Virgin Mary was an immoral woman, had been taken up by the mutessarif,
and Mr. Yeranian has been summoned to answer to this false and
impossible charge.
You will see, I think, that in this state of things, allowed to continue
unchecked by the mutessarif, we have the elements of another affair more
serious, perhaps, than that at Bourdour. In all the three interviews
which Mr. Bartlett has had with the mutessarif, abundant promises have
been made, but the real ruler of the place is not the mutessarif, but a
wealthy Armenian named Yeshia Effendi Oshul Oghlou. What he says must be
done is done, and he says no one shall be molested for attacking Mr.
Bartlett or any other Protestant in Kara Hissar. The fact of the
suppression by the mutessarif of Mr. Bartlett’s telegram to me of the
10th, and his taking up so eagerly the preposterous story that Mr.
Yeranian made such a declaration about the Virgin Mary show me that he
is not inclined to accord to Mr. Bartlett the protection which is due of
any man as quiet and well controlled, and wise as he. The blind
excitement so actively fostered by Chinese methods in Kara Hissar is not
a thing to be played with.
It appears to me that a request to the Porte simply to order the
mutessarif of Kara Hissar to secure Mr. Bartlett from these attacks and
to see that he is not molested in his worship by people who have no
interest in it, will suffice. The
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mutessarif has it in his power to enforce the laws
if he is only made to see that he must do so. All that is necessary is
that the Porte say to him peremptorily that these lawless acts must
stop, and they will stop. Unless they are stopped they will certainly
lead up to some catastrophe, for Mr. Bartlett will not leave Kara Hissar
until he can he assured that his friends there and his house there are
safe from unlawful aggression.
I need not add that Mr. Bartlett’s knowledge of the proprieties is
fortified by his mild and thoroughly kind temperament. He has not and he
will not he found trenching upon the rights of any, offending the
legitimate susceptibility of any, or attacking in private or in public
the religious belief of any. He is a missionary, and he has a right to
live in Kara Hissar as many days or weeks as he chooses, and to watch
over the interests of the little school there, and to teach the use and
meaning of the Bible to any who choose to visit him for the purpose of
learning. In this right I doubt not that the representative of our
Government will see that he is protected.
Yery respectfully,
