The New Turkey.

New York Times 100 years ago today, March 24, 1913:
Looks to Us for Aid In Work of National Reconstruction.
To the Editor of The New York Times:
    Turkish newspapers which are coming to me from Constantinople make four things vary plain:
    1. The Turks feel themselves crushed under the most terrible disaster in the life of their race. The humiliation they are suffering is almost unbearable.
    2. They bitterly complain that the powers of Europe have deliberately broken their solemn promises to Turkey, and become champions of the Balkan States.
    3. Yet they are resolving and encouraging each other, if their enemies and their enemies' backers will only let them catch their breath, to face their deeply clouded future with renewed hope and with manly courage.
    4. The want and distress into which the war has flung all classes of the population of Turkey is beyond the power of words or of the most vivid imagination to describe.
    The saddest thing in all these sad events is the readiness of Christendom to jump upon the Moslem Turk when he is already down and is begging for quarter. Is this Christian? Is it humane? A little body of genuine Ottoman patriots have undertaken, in the face of obstacles and difficulties, infinite in magnitude and complexity, to make their country worthy of her place in the European fellowship of States. They have appealed to Europe for material and moral help. They have begged the world to have patience with them in their imperfect efforts to fulfill their task. Look at the response that has been made to their appeal.
    Deserted by all their former friends in Europe, the true men of Turkey turn to America and Americans. They have learned to trust the Americans resident in their country. A new effort, led by former Ambassador Straus, is now being made, by relieving in some degree the terrible suffering resulting from the war, to help the Turks to pass this crisis in their national life without being utterly overwhelmed. There are no people, East or West, more appreciative of kindness than they are. It is our opportunity to show them that true humanity, that a sense of universal brotherhood, still exists in this Western World.
                GEORGE F. HERRICK.
                New York, March 20, 1913.