Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/53

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community in the Ottoman Empire. Italy whose relations with the Vatican at home had not always been friendly clung tenaciously to the rights of Italian Catholic orders in Palestine. Germany whose Lutherans had no specified rights in the Christian holy places and whose Kaiser had proclaimed himself the friend of Islam, had planted stronger colonies in Palestine and more buildings in Jerusalem than any other Western Power, and had built a hospice on the Mount of Olives "strengthened" by a wall which could hardly have been better adapted for the uses of military defense if it had been built for the purpose. So we had a city sacred to Moslems, Christians and Jews, dominated by Russian and German hospices on the Mount of Olives, strong fortress-like structures erected ad gloriam maiorem Dei. Meanwhile the Caliph of Islam continued to administer the city with fairness to the communicants of all three faiths, keeping his garrison down at Jaffa on the coast except on the occasions of such religious festivals as required its temporary presence in Jerusalem.

One expects from American Protestantism and British Nonconformism an attitude of aloofness from this sort of thing, for both have revolted against the use of the Church by the State. Both have revolted against that ritualism which marks the older forms of Christianity and have set up for themselves a form of service severely simple and aggressively evangelical. In accordance with the finest of its evangelical traditions, American Protestantism has carried on a long and vigorous missionary endeavor in the old Ottoman Empire, but actual contact with Islam in its own country has