Now I have taken this one instance of the work of Americans at Urmia to
show in some detail the character of the work that they were doing, and
the Christian and humanising influence of it. But all over Armenia and
Anatolia were similar settlements, and, as already mentioned, at the
time of the massacres there were established there over a hundred of
their churches and over four hundred schools, and from these extracts
which concern only one not very large centre, it may be gathered what
leaven of civilising influence the sum of their energies must have
implied. That lamp shone steady and clear, a 'kindly light' in the
darkness of Turkish misrule, and in the havoc of the massacres a beacon
of hope, not always reached by those hapless refugees. Indeed it seems
to have been only on the frontier that the missions were able to save
those foredoomed hordes of fleeing Christians; in Armenia and in
Anatolia generally the massacres and 'deportations' were complete, and
by the end of 1915 all American missions were closed, for there were
none to tend and care for. Even if the massacres had not occurred, the
entry of America into the war would have resulted in a similar cessation
of their work, and most probably in a massacre of the American
missioners themselves. Their withdrawal, of course, was hailed with a
peacock scream of pride by that enlightened body under Talaat and Enver,
called the New Turkish party of Progress, for their presence was a bar
to the Turkish notions of civilisation, in that their influence made for
humanity, and health and education. Now 'the humiliating and dangerous
situation' (to quote from the columns of _Hilal_) was put an end to, and
Turkish progress could make headway again.

Similarly in Syria the outbreak of war put an end to 'the humiliating
and dangerous situation' of the presence of French schools and missions.
There, for many years, French missioners had done the same work as