"The missionaries in Armenia are considering the question of placing their common schools under his direction, and I think within a few years it will be an accomplished fact, provided they can come to some satisfactory understanding concerning the regulations. Armenia will be the most progressive and prosperous part of the Ottoman Empire before many years. The ambition of the people is unbounded; their national pride is stronger and their industry is greater than that of any other race. No people have suffered so much, but none has gained more than the Armenians."
"Has there been any change in the policy of the government toward education.? "
"Decidedly. The new government seems to be working very hard to organize an educational system throughout the empire and is copying European methods. It is sending boys to foreign countries to be educated for teachers, and is also placing students in almost every one of the American colleges and high schools. Five government students have matriculated at Robert College and G.ve young women entered the American College for Girls last winter to be educated at the government's expense as instructors in the national schools.;When the American College for Girls moves to its new location next year, the imperial government will start a school in their old building, with the American college as its model. Normal schools and high schools are being opened fast as competent instructors can be found, but the great obstacle to the extension of the school system is the lack of teachers and the inability to pay such salaries as will tempt educated men to undertake the work.
"The most significant and satisfactory feature of the new regime is the recognition of Christian schools on the same basis as Moslem schools by the Department of Education. In the allotment of the funds appropriated for education the American missionary schools are receiving the same assistance as those recently organized by the government."
In the work of the American missionaries in Turkey, as in other parts of the world, printing presses are of importance. Without them little could have been accomplished; slow progress would have been made. There are two great publication houses in the near East, one under the direction of the Presbyterian board at Beirut, and the other under the Congregational church in Constantinople. They are the most complete and modern printing plants in that part of the world, representing an investment of many thousands of dollars and equal to any of their size in the United States. The presses are going all the time, turning out an average of fifty million pages each a year in not less than ten languages. The output, since the presses were established in 1833, has undoubtedly been as large as that of any other printing house in the world, and indeed there are few of longer or greater age or better record.
The entire plan of missionary work in Turkey at the beginning was based upon the use of these presses, and within three years after the first missionaries arrived in that field, a plant was set up on the island of Malta to furnish literature for Palestine and Turkey. It was considered unsafe to attempt at that time to do any printing on Turkish soil, and Malta, being under the British flag, was the nearest locality where the presses could run without interruption. In 1833, the political atmosphere having cleared, the Arabic outfit was transferred to Beirut in Syria, while the Greek,
Turkish, and Armenian branches were set up in Smyrna. During the ten years at Malta, more than twenty-one million pages were printed for the benefit of Greeks, Armenians and Turks. This included text-books for the elementary schools, which were chiefly translations of standard American editions. Then came the Bible, which has since been translated and published entire in four different languages, and partially in several more, and distributed by millions of copies throughout the East.
The Bible was translated into Turkish and published at Smyrna in 1836. Dr. Elias Riggs's translation into Armenian was published in 1852, and his translation into Bulgarian in 1871. The Arabic Bible, translated by Smith and Van Dyck, has since been issued from the Beirut press, and more than 1,500,000 copies have been circulated.
In a single year the American press at Beirut issued 152,500 volumes of distinctively Biblical literature, with a a total of 47,278,000 pages, in addition to nearly 9,000,000 pages of text-books and other literature, making a total of 56,000,000 pages from that one plant.