Mr. Terrell to Mr. Olney.
Constantinople, March 1, 1897.
Sir: I have the honor to inclose for your information the copy of a letter just received from Rev. L. O. Lee, of Marash, dated February 15, in which he states that the college under his charge adjoins the French consulate, and that he has, therefore, had no guards for several months, and that the general condition was improving until the day of his writing, when stones were thrown at some teachers “on their way [Page 579] home from the academy.” From this I infer that these teachers were resident natives who lived away from the college.
I will, however, at once bring the incident to the notice of the Porte to prevent its repetition.
Mr. Lee remarks that no facts are requested by me “respecting schools in which our [their] workers are employed.” He adds that unless they are protected “the reason for our [their] continuance in this land would soon cease to exist.”
The dispatches from my predecessors and the report of Rev. H. O. Dwight, dated October 18, 1893, and which was inclosed in my No. 1099, of December 10, 1896, shows that over thirty of such schools were closed before my appointment to this post. Such action did not disturb friendly relations with Turkey during the administration of President Harrison.
If the continuance of American missionaries in Turkey depends upon their being protected in the right to establish and control schools when and where they please, which are not to be taught by American citizens, and which yet shall be free from the authority of the Turkish Government to permit or close them at will, then the stay of missionaries here will not be long.
Mr. Lee’s letter makes a plain statement of the missionary claim. It ignores the sovereign right of the Government to control at will the education of its own children by its own subjects.
The American missionary alone among foreigners asserts this claim of right. It is one for which I have never contended. My failure in this respect has provoked resentment.
I have, etc.,