Page:Armenian poems, rendered into English verse (IA armenianpoemsren00blaciala).pdf/18

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INTRODUCTION.

to our own level.... Their shrewdness and aptitude for business are remarkable, and whatever exists of commercial enterprise in Asia Minor is almost altogether in their hands."

After teaching among them for thirty-five years, Dr. Cyrus Hamlin wrote: "The Armenians are a noble race." Dr. Grace N. Kimball, who lived for years in the heart of Armenia, calls them "a race full of enterprise and the spirit of advancement, much like ourselves in characteristics, and full of possibilities of every kind." So says the Rev. Frederick D. Greene, who was born and brought up among them.

Miss Florence E. Fensham, Dean for years of the American College for Girls at Constantinople, told me that she had found the Armenian girls among her students not only able, but very faithful and trustworthy.

H. F. B. Lynch says: "The Armenian people may be included in the small number of races who have shown themselves capable of the highest culture."

Speaking of the importance of spreading Western progressive ideas in the East, he says:

"Tn the Armenians we have a people who are peculiarly adapted to be the intermediaries of the new dispensation. They profess our religion, are familiar with some of our best ideals, and assimilate each new product of European culture with an avidity and thoroughness which no other race between India and the Mediterranean has given any evidence of being able to rival. These capacities they have made manifest under the greatest disadvantages....