60 



PEOF. D. S. MARGOLTOUTH^ D.LITT., ON 



and certain phenomena seem to bear it out. The author of a 

 prize essay,* published in 1881, on the influence of Islam on 

 the life of its professors, called attention to the fact that at 

 Constantinople intellectual capacity, where it was required, 

 was chiefly provided by Christians, whether native or 

 European. " The steamship lines in the Levant belong to 

 Greeks, Armenians, French, Austrians, Eussians. The Osmanli 

 fleet is under the direction of English officers. In the Turkish 

 land-army Prussian, French, and English officers have im- 

 portant posts. The railways are built by English, French 

 and German engineers. The telegraph lines in Turkey are 

 managed by Poles and Italians." Twenty years later, 

 Mr. r)wight,t writing in 1901, declares that the same 

 condition prevails. ''The Moslem masses are hewers of 

 wood and drawers of water. They are bearers of burdens, 

 they are donkey drivers, they are the smallest of small 

 traders, they are artisans whose tools compete with their 

 hands in clumsiness. The Turkish army depends on foreign 

 Christians for its organization as well as for its arms and 

 ammunition ; and to a considerable extent for the instruction 

 of its officers. The treasury would go to pieces if Chi-istian 

 counsellors were not at the side of the minister of finance. 

 Earely does a wealthy Turk venture to keep up an establish- 

 ment without a Christian to manage his accounts. A 

 Mohammedan banking-house is almost unthinkable. The 

 most important book-publishing houses for Mohammedan 

 literature are owned and operated by Christians." The same 

 probably holds good of the other cities of the Turkish empire. 

 In the towns of northern Persia, where there is a native 

 Christian by the side of a Moslem population, the Christians 

 will undertake none of the lower forms of labour, and indeed 

 require a higher rate of wages than the Moslems. In the 

 villages of the same region those in which there is a majority 

 of Christians are obviously the more prosperous. Mr. Dwight 

 accounts for this fact by certain of the doctrines which he 

 attributes to Islam. They give the reason for the failure of 

 Mohammedanism to progress in lines of effort which make for 

 prosperity and benefit the world. In them is the explanation 

 of the battered old houses and the dilapidated steamers, and 

 the squalid swarm of incompetent labourers found in the 



Pisclion, Dcr Einfluss dcs Islam avf das Lehen seiner BeJcenner. 

 + Constantinople and its Problems, p. 50. 



