America's Interest In The Balkan War.

New York Times 100 years ago today, October 13, 1912:
Prof. Sloane Says Spread of Influence of Greek Church Would Hurt Our Missions.
THE TURKS MORE TOLERANT
Foresees Complications In Which This Country Will Have to Take a Hand If Ottomans Are Defeated.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    BERLIN, Oct 12.— "America is by no means a disinterested observer of the conflagration in the Balkans," said William Milligan Sloane, author of that monumental work, "Napoleon Bonaparte: a History," and Seth Low, Professor of History at Columbia University, in an interview with The New York Times correspondent to-day. Prof. Sloane, who is well acquainted with Near Eastern conditions and has just finished a series of essays on them for The American Political Science Quarterly, is about to begin his lectures as Roosevelt Professor at the University of Berlin. He said:
    "I understand that the Berlin correspondent of a New York newspaper received a cablegram this week from his editor, reading, 'Keep war news down. World's baseball series now on.' That would seem to an outsider to indicate that American interest in the events now convulsing the Balkans is practically non-existent. No more inaccurate impression could possibly be conveyed.
    "We have a very real interest in the Near East. It has been for decades the scene of comprehensive and highly successful American missionary campaigns.
    "Strange to say, America, from the Christian point of view, has more to hope from the perpetuation of the Turkish regime than from the spread of the Greek Catholic Church's influence in the Balkans. I have a definite impression that if the Balkan lands pass more completely into the hands of their own populations and into the control of the Greek Church, foreign missionary enterprise in those regions will be fatally affected.
    "It will be as effectually hampered as it now is in Russia. Islam is tolerance personified compared with what may be expected if its influence be supplanted by that of the Greek Church.
    "American business interests, too, I have reliably been given to understand, do not view with favor the spread of Slav dominion in the Near East. It is said to be extremely difficult for our merchants and manufacturers to obtain adequate Government protection from the Balkan Governments, and any increase of their prestige or authority would therefore not be viewed with favor by our business world.
    "Although from both sentimental and business standpoints America can thus only wish for the preservation of Turkey, the fact cannot be blinked that conditions in Macedonia are unspeakable and horrible, and something must be done there. The country is fitted to be a garden, and it is a desert. The plight of the Christian population has never been so bad as under the Young Turks.
    "I rather incline to the view that if a Christian Governor could be set up in Macedonia, as in Syria, a vast step forward in the direction of a humane regime would be taken. If, however, the Balkan States eventually succeed in establishing their dominion over the lands now belonging to the Turk, I can foresee certain complications in which the United States will have to take a hand.
    "Rightly or wrongly, our Government, by precedent and custom, is definitely committed to the policy of protecting American missionaries in the pursuit of their activities abroad. Such activities are sure to be seriously interfered with if the authority of the Greek Church be extended to Macedonia, Albania, or other territories on which Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, and Montenegro have designs.
    "Bearing this in mind, it is obviously a mistake to rush to the conclusion that our interest in the Balkan war is that of an indifferent bystander."
    Prof. Sloane, who will lecture at Berlin University on the timely topic of "American Political Conditions and the Presidential Election System," has taken the apartment of the Baroness von Ketteler, formerly Miss Ledyard of Detroit, and widow of the German Minister to China who lost his life at the beginning of the Boxer rebellion in 1900.
    Prof. Charles Sedgwick Minot of Harvard University, the 1912-13 Exchange Professor, will, together with Prof.  Sloane, begin work at the university in the last week of October. Prof. Minot's subject is "Histology and Human Embryology."