Mr. Adee to Mr. Terrell.

No. 556.]

Sir: On the 10th instant, in view of press telegrams announcing that a mob had attacked St. Paul’s Institute at Tarsus, and that immediate measures for the protection of that American educational enterprise were needed, I telegraphed to you as follows:

If reported attack on St. Paul’s Institute, Tarsus, confirmed, make instant demand for protection and chastisement.

I had the pleasure to receive from you yesterday your telegraphic reply, presumed to bear date August 11, reading as follows:

Turkish Government on the 7th promised investigation and punishment in Tarsus matter. I have instructed Gibson to investigate in person. Fear that cholera quarantine will prevent.

The Department commends the promptitude with which you anticipated the instructions sent you. It was not doubted that you would act at once upon information received. It appears from a letter received from Prof. Alexander S. Christie, brother of Dr. Christie, of St. Paul’s Institute, that your action in the premises was taken in advance of the news of the attack on St. Paul’s Institute becoming known in Constantinople on the 9th, and that your intervention had been so timely that you had in fact secured an answer from the Porte two days before the [Page 1273] news was public. I inclose, for your files, copy of Professor Christie’s letter and of my reply.1

At the same time I inclose for a like object copy of a letter from the Rev. Henry MacCracken, president of the trustees of St. Paul’s Institute, University of New York, dated New York, the 12th instant, and of my reply of the 13th,1 upon this subject.

Although without sufficient information to indicate the gravity of the reported attack at Tarsus, the incident seems so forcibly to illustrate the prevalence of a feeling in the coast provinces of Adana and Syria hostile to American educational and missionary interests in that quarter and suggestive of further assaults that it has been deemed proper to request the Navy Department to have a vessel within call in case of emergency, and I am to-day informed that the Marblehead, now in English waters, will be immediately dispatched to some convenient point in the eastern Mediterranean, probably Cyprus, there to await further orders.

I am, etc.,

Alvey A. Adee,
Acting Secretary.
  1. Inclosures not printed.
  2. Inclosures not printed.