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424 DESTRUCTION OF THE GEEEK EMPIEE been powerful for evil, and the standards in particular of commercial honesty generally prevalent in Christian nations have neither been preserved nor attained. Under Turkish rule punishment often failed to follow detection. In some cases — notably, for example, bigamy — the conquering race recognises no offence and therefore awards no punishment. The Christians had and have so little con- fidence in their chance of obtaining justice that it is the ex- ception to prosecute an offender. A man will rather suffer loss than waste his time in appealing to a court where he knows that he will certainly incur expense and inconvenience and that the offender, provided he can pay, can escape condemnation. It is to this impossibility of obtaining justice that must be ascribed more perhaps than to any other cause the lowering of the morals of Eastern Christians. Those who know them best, from Arab Christians in Syria to the Greeks and others in Constantinople and the Balkan Peninsula, and whose sympathies are entirely with them in the per- secution they have undergone, and in their desire to shake off the oppressor's yoke, have regretfully to confess that the reputation which they have acquired in Western Europe for un trust worthiness and untruthfulness is not undeserved. Happily, in Greece and other coud tries which have been freed from Turkish misrule there are abundant signs of an awakening to the necessity of regarding offences from a loftier standpoint and of presenting in the Churches a higher ideal of morality ; signs, too, of the public opinion which is bringing these countries into line with Western states. 1 1 I may add here that the great value of Christian missions from the West in the Turkish Empire, those of the Latin Church and of the American Protestant Churches alike, lies not only in their educational work but still more in their holding up to the members of the Eastern Churches higher standards of truthfulness and morality. Their influence has been already very useful. They have kindled a desire for instruction, and have infused new life in many of the members of the ancient Churches. While Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians look with intense distrust on any attempts to proselytise, they have all been awakened by these missions to the necessity for education. Considering the means at their disposal, I think it may be fairly said that no other people during the last half-century has done so much for education as the Greeks. The