BAD TIMES IN TURKEY

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 24, 1880

BAD TIMES IN TURKEY.

In the eastern part of the Turkish Empire thousands are starving. Parents are selling their children and famine is doing its deadly work. But the Government is doing nothing to relieve the suffering. The stories which reach us are harrowing in the extreme. The native merchants and citizens of Beirut, Moslem, Christian and Jewish, have raised a large contribution during the last few days, to be sent to the vicinity of Mosul and Bagdad. But the wealthy Pashas look on in indifference. And while these vast multitudes are starving in the East there are stored up in the Imperial Treasury in Constantinople tens of millions of pounds worth of jewels and precious stones jeweled robes, regalia and weapons, the property of the Sultan and his predecessors. The question is asked: What was done with the vast sums of money borrowed years since of England and France? A large proportion of it was quietly absorbed by the Pashas who were so fortunate as to be in office when it was borrowed. Millions were expended on ironclads, Krupp cannons, Martini Henri rifles, military equipments and stores, millions more on palaces on the Bosphorus. Had the money been expended in the improvement of the empire, in building roads and railways and opening schools, the country would have entered upon a career of prosperity, which has now become an impossibility under Turkish rule. The Anglo-Turkish Cyprus Treaty guaranteed to Europe the reform of the Turkish empire. But reform has now become well-nigh impossible. Extortion, bribery and legalized robbery are now almost universal. One of the reforms suggested by Lord Salisbury was the raising the salaries of the judges and other officers, so as to place them above temptation to bribery. Instead of this, their salaries are cut down so low as to compel every official in the empire to take bribes or resign. Consequently, official corruption is now increasing alarmingly everywhere.—Alta.