"He knows little of either," I replied, "nothing, at any rate, from personal observation of them in their own lands. We have first-class Near-East specialists, no doubt; but his chief informants have been nonconformist preachers, even more biassed than he. Nonconformity is the traditional foe of the Turks. Their boasted 'freedom of thought and conscience' does not extend to the Servants of the Prophet, and as they once echoed Gladstone, to-day they echo Lloyd George."
"And in America?" asked the cheik.
"Their church is an advertising agency. They have transformed 'dissent' to a 'trust.' Go to the States with an idea, and, if it pleases them, they will 'put it across' like any other commodity, as a 'cute' business proposition. With a colony of two million Greeks, and, maybe, as many Armenians (whose exaggerated and unchecked 'lamentations' have full Free-Church support), America will never give Turkey even a fair hearing. You have read their 'Press'?"
"Alas," he answered, "I fear the East is losing its faith in the West."
"Do not say that," I answered. "Men like you, who have known us at our best, must declare that to-day's madness is but a phase. Tell us these things should never have been and shall not continue. Write as you can write, and teach the people of Europe to be once more themselves.
"When East and West shake hands again, there will be peace, and peace we must have!"
