Turkey: a Past and a Future by Arnold Joseph Toynbee
page 48 of 78 (61%)
page 48 of 78 (61%)
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agreements defining its powers, or perhaps it is not an opportune moment
for intervention.' "Our presence had no ameliorating effect, and what we could do ourselves was negligible.... The abusive epithet 'Giaur' is heard once more by German ears.... "We think it our duty to draw attention to the fact that our educational work in Turkey forfeits its moral basis and the natives' esteem, if the German Government is not in a position to prevent the brutalities inflicted here upon the wives and children of murdered Armenians. "The writer considers it out of the question that the German Government, if it seriously desired to stem the tide of destruction in this eleventh hour, would find it impossible to bring the Turkish Government to reason.... "If we persist in treating the massacres of Christians as an internal affair of Turkey, which is only important to us because it ensures us the Turks' friendship, then we must change the orientation of our German _Kulturpolitik_. We must stop sending German teachers to Turkey, and we teachers must give up telling our pupils in Turkey about German poets and philosophers, German culture and German ideals, to say nothing of German Christianity. "Three years ago I was sent by the Foreign Office as higher-grade teacher to the German Technical School at Aleppo. The Prussian Provincial School Board at Magdeburg specially enjoined upon me, when I went out, to show myself worthy of the confidence reposed in me in the grant of furlough to take up this post. I should not be fulfilling my |
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