And so he continued to discuss his treasures, as fast as his tongue could waggle, and he would not let us go without explaining his views on the doctrine of the atonement as taught by the Christian missionaries in Turkey. He did not know whether Christian theologians in other parts of the world were guilty of the same folly, but the American missionaries in Turkey were teaching the people that they could be saved and go to heaven, no matter how many sins they committed, provided they repented of those sins before they died. "This," the old gentleman declared, "is such a pernicious doctrine that I am surprised that the government does not prohibit the missionaries from teaching it. Anyone must see what it would lead to; for if this missionarytheory is correct, it simply offers an inducement for men to sin. And then, when they get old, and do not care to sin any more, it is only necessary for them to say that they are sorry and they will be forgiven and taken back into the fold and have just as high a place in heaven as those who have been good and pious all their lives. '*
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
THE emancipation of Turkish women is not complete, but has advanced with remarkable speed. The restrictions which have kept them in seclusion and ignorance have already been very largely removed. No single reform that has followed the change of government has been more radical or complete. Upon the retail trading streets of Pera, the foreign section of Constantinople, you can see thousands of unveiled Turkish women any afternoon and thousands more of women whose veils are thrust aside so that their physical and mental visions are clear, and they can look a man in the face without a blush of embarrassment or shame. In Stamboul, which is almost exclusively of native inhabitants, the innovation is not so general, but a stranger would scarcely notice the difference. In other Turkish cities the same change has taken place. Half the women of the empire wear veils now simply as a matter of habit instead of preference. The majority of them wear the thinnest sort of gauze in place of the impenetrable yashmak that they were compelled to draw over their faces before the constitution. Indeed, the average veil worn by the women of Turkey to-day does not conceal their eyes or their features any more than the dotted stuff affected by the fashionable women of the European cities and the United States.
This gossamer stuff is also In the nature of a compromise, rather than a mask. During the first weeks that followed the revolution of July, 1908, nearly every woman drew off her veil and many participated in the political demonstrations, as the women of Paris did in the riots of the commune. And I was told that throughout the day and the evening the windows of the residences were filled with unveiled faces, which looked without embarrassment upon the people who were passing by. To-day women who drive about in carriages discard the veil altogether; even the inmates of the imperial harem, which, however, is not so radical a change as would appear, because the new sultan is perhaps the most liberal man in all Turkey. So many Turkish women were imprudent in their behaviour immediately after the revolution that the thoughtful ones called a halt and resumed their veils as a protest against the indelicate and unwomanly demeanour of some of their sex. The minister of police issued an official communication, with the approval of the leaders of the Young Turk party, requesting women not to go into the streets with their faces uncovered, and the managers of theatres were* forbidden to admit women to their performances. But such things usually adjust themselves in time, and the experience of two years has resulted in a sort of compromise, by which sensible women still wear veils, but cover their faces only when necessary to protect themselves against masculine insolence.
The use of the veil for centuries has been more or less an act of piety, as well as a social custom. It is supposed to be required by the Koran. I have never been able to find any passage which demands or even suggests it, but that is the interpretation of the Mohammedan world, and the association of ideas has made the veil a badge of feminine virtue. An ordinary Mohammedan woman would no more go into the street, or stand in the presence of a man who does not belong to her family, without a veil than she would without a skirt or any other necessary article of clothing.