But back of the Cabinet and House of Deputies there was the "invisible government" (to use Senator Beveridge's phrase) sitting in secret in Salonica and dictating absolute orders at its own caprice. During the disastrous war with Italy the Committee of Union and Progress lost prestige and finally broke down. This was the opportune moment for a coalition of the Balkan states. And they were not asleep. But the remarkable thing is that those states have reached a working agreement. Only a supreme common purpose, "to drive the Turks, bag and baggage, out of Europe," can account for the alliance which has been made.

I have said that the master motive in this war is the emancipation of the Christian peoples of European Turkey. This makes it virtually a religious war. And it is so regarded not only by the Turks, but by the Montenegrins and their allies. The flags of six Bulgarian regiments were blessed by the bishops of the national Church in the presence of a vast gathering. Before making his entry into Berana the Montenegrin general held a solemn religious service in celebration of the victory. A special service was held in the cathedral of Sofia, at which the

Archbishop invoked God's blessing on the Holy War. Similar services have been held in the churches throughout the country. Meanwhile the Sultan has gone to the Top Kapou Palace to pray, over the relics of the Prophet treasured there, for the success of the Ottoman arms. The Mussulman Bulgars have crossed the frontier and are sacking the Christian villages of Bulgaria, slaying as they go. The ties of a common ancestry and a common language are not sufficient to restrain the impulse of Mohammedan hatred. A still clearer piece of evidence is the part which the Albanians are taking in the war. The Albanians are naturally the political enemies of the Turks. Their insurrection has but recently been suppressed. They were grievously harassed by the Hamidian régime, and still more by the rigorous policy of the Young Turks. Their own language was denied them in their schools, and they were not permitted to elect any officials of their own race. Politically they had every reason to turn against the Turks. But they have rushed to the front, waving the green standards of Mohammed, and falling upon the Montenegrins with terrific effect. They are fighting in the faith of Allah, and their

mullahs chant the Koran as the regiments march to battle. In Ourfa in 1895 a mullah read from the Koran while the Armenian victims were bound hand and foot and were done to death in the marketplace. In the city of Adana, in 1909, one of the leaders in the attack was a doctor of the Mohammedan law, who carried an oldfashioned battle-ax and chanted from the Holy Koran as he hastened through the streets. Let me quote a few passages from Rodwell's translation of the Koran, from the "Chapter of the Spoils :"

"Fight, then, against the unbelievers till strife be at an end, and the religion be all of it God's."

"Believers! when ye confront a troop, stand firm and make frequent mention of the name of God, that it may fare well with you. Obey God and his Apostle."

"Make ready, then, against them what force ye can, and strong squadrons whereby ye may strike terror into the enemy of God and your enemy."

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"O prophet! stir up the faithful to the fight. Twenty of you who stand firm shall vanquish two hundred; and if there be a hundred of you they shall vanquish a thousand of the infidels, for they are a people devoid of understanding."

"No prophet hath been enabled to take captives until he had made great slaughter in the earth."

And from the forty-seventh Surah, the chapter on Mohammed

"But whoso believe and do things that are right, and believe in what hath been sent down to Mohammed-their sins will He cancel and dispose their hearts aright."

"When ye encounter the infidels, strike off their heads till ye have made a great slaughter among them, and of the rest make fast the fetters!"

With such an iron creed as this, do you wonder at Mohammedan fanaticism?

And there is another influence which has had its powerful effect in producing this

religious antagonism. Back of the prejudice of to-day, back of the hatreds which hinder the work of the missionary, back of the feeling which refuses the Red Cross and creates the Red Crescent, there is the period of the Crusades! Oh, the pity of it! The Moslems have never forgotten the Crusades.

We glorify the Crusades and read into them all the chivalry and romance of sacred legend. We think of Peter the Hermit's fervor and Godfrey's prowess, and we glow with enthusi asm as we read the story of Bernard of Clairvaux. But what were the Crusades, after all? Were they not a bloody and relentless war? Did not King Richard permit outrages upon his Saracen prisoners? And was not Saladin a nobler man than Richard? If the Crusades could only be wiped out of history, the evangelization of the Mohammedan world would be far more readily accomplished. How can we speak to the Mohammedans about tolerance and peace and love, when they can turn at any moment and cite St. Bartholomew's Night and the Spanish Inquisition, the torture of the Jews in Russia to-day, and the iniquities of the Crusades which were done in the name of Christ? I think the reader must begin to feel what a difficult task the missionary to the Mohammedans has upon his hands. And have we not great reason to thank God that, in spite of these handicaps, in northern India and Java and Sumatra thousands upon thousands of Moslems have recently turned to Christ, and even in the troubled land of Turkey many secret believers have found the joy that is in him? This may seem far from the Balkan situation. But it is all one great problem for Christendom to solve.

America's clear opportunity is in taking the lead in the Red Cross work. The impetus of this world-wide and humane movement has come from America. The Red Cross of Christ was vainly carried amid the spears and lances of Richard's knights, but it shall be taken in loving ministry by American nurses and doctors and missionaries to Slav and Turk who lie stricken on the battlefield.

แ

G

O quickly, please, to No. East Eleventh Street, near the river," was the burden of a message received one day in the Charities Building; "a Hungarian family is in trouble." The little

word that covers the widest range in the language gives marching orders daily to many busy feet thereabouts, and, before the October sun had set, a visitor from the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor had climbed to the fourth floor of the tenement and found the Josefy family. This was what she discovered there: a man in the last stages of consumption, a woman within two weeks of her confinement, five hungry children, a landlord clamoring for his rent. The man had long ceased to earn the family living. His wife, taking up that burden with the rest, had worked on cloaks for a sweater until she also had to give up. In fact, the work gave out just as their need was great

est.

Now, with the new baby coming, no preparation had been made to receive it. For those already there, there was no food in the house.

They had once been well off. Josefy was a tailor, and had employed nearly a score of hands in the busy season. He paid fortyfour dollars a month rent then. That day the landlord had threatened to dispossess them for one month's arrears of seven dollars, and only because of the rain had given them a day's grace. All the money saved up in better days had gone to pay doctor

and druggist, without making Josefy any better. His wife listened dismally to the recital of their troubles and asked for workany light work that she could do.

The rent was paid, and the baby came. They were eight then, subsisting, as the society's records show, in January on the earnings of Mrs. Josefy making ladies' blouse sleeves at twenty-five cents a dozen pairs, in February on the receipts of embroidering initials on napkins at fifteen cents apiece, in March on her labors in a downtown house on sample cloaks. Three dollars a week was her wage there. To save car-fare she walked to her work and back, a good two miles each way, getting up at 3 A.M. to do her home washing and cleaning first. In bad weather they were poorer by ten cents a day, because then she had to ride. The neighbors were kind; the baker left them bread twice a week and the butcher gave them a little meat now and then. The father's hemorrhages were more frequent. When, on a slippery day, one of the children, going for milk, fell in the street and spilled it, he went without his only food, as they had but eight cents in the house. In May came the end. The tailor died, and in the house of mourning there was one care less, one less to feed and clothe. The widow gathered her flock close and faced the future dry-eyed. The luxury of grief is not for those at close grips with stern poverty.

When word reached far-off Hungary, Mrs.

Josefy's sister wrote to her to come back; she would send the money. The widow's friends rejoiced, but she shook her head. To face poverty as bitter there? This was her children's country; it should be hers too. At the Consulate they reasoned with her; the chance was too good to let pass. When she persisted, they told her to put the children in a home, then; she could never make her way with so many. No doubt they considered her an ungrateful person when she flatly refused to do either. It is not in the record that she ever darkened the door of the Consulate again.

The charitable committee had no better success. They offered her passage money, and she refused it. "She is always looking for work," writes the visitor in the register, for once in her life a little resentfully, it would almost seem. When finally tickets came at the end of a year, Victor, the oldest boy, must finish his schooling first. Exasperated, the committee issues its ultimatum: she must go, or put the children away. Dry bread was the family fare when Mrs. Josefy was confronted with it, but she met it as firmly: Never! she would stay and do the best she could.

The record which I have followed states here that the committee dropped her, but stood by to watch the struggle, half shamefacedly one cannot help thinking, though they had given the best advice they knew. Six months later the widow reports that "the children had never wanted something to eat."

At this time Victor is offered a job, two dollars and a half a week, with a chance of advancement. The mother goes out housecleaning. Together they live on bread and coffee to save money for the rent, but she refuses the proffered relief. Victor is in the graduating class; he must finish his schooling. Just then her sewing-machine is seized for debt. The committee, retreating in a huff after a fresh defeat over the emigration question, hastens to the rescue, glad of a chance, and it is restored. In sheer admiration at her pluck they put it down that "she is doing the best she can to keep her family together." There is a curious little entry here that sizes up the children. They had sent them to Coney Island on a vacation, but at night they were back home. "No one spoke to them there," is their explanation. They had their mother's pride.

It happened in the last month of that year that I went out to speak in a suburban New

Jersey town. Neighbors" was my topic. I was the guest of the secretary of a Foreign Mission Board that has its office in the Presbyterian Building on Fifth Avenue. That night when we sat at dinner the talk ran on the modern methods of organized charity. "Yes," said my host, as his eyes rested on the quiverful seated around the board, "it is all good. But best of all would be if you could find for me a widow, say, with children like my own, whom my wife could help in her own way, and the children learn to take an interest in. I have no chance, as you know. The office claims all my time. But they that would be best of all, for them and for us."

And he was right; that would be charity in the real meaning of the word: friendship, the neighborly lift that gets one over the hard places in the road. The other half would cease to be, on that plan, and we should all be one great whole, pulling together, and our democracy would become real. I promised to find him such a widow.

But it proved a harder task than I had thought. None of the widows I knew had six children. The charitable societies had no family that fitted my friend's case. But in time I found people who knew about Mrs. Josefy. The children were rightso many boys and so many girls; what they told me of the mother made me want to know more. I went over to East Eleventh Street at once. On the way the feeling grew upon me that I had found my friend's Christmas present-I forgot to say that it was on Christmas Eve-and when I saw them and gathered something of the fight that splendid little woman had waged for her brood those eight long years, I knew that my search was over. When we had set up a Christmas tree together, to the wild delight of the children, and I had ordered a good dinner from a neighboring restaurant on my friend's account, I hastened back to tell him of my good luck and his. I knew he was late at the office with his mail.

Half-way across town it came to me with a sense of shock that I had forgotten something. Mrs. Josefy had told me that she scrubbed in a public building, but where I had not asked. Perhaps it would not have seemed important to you. It did to me, and when I had gone all the way back and she answered my question, I knew why. Where do you suppose she scrubbed? In the Presbyterian Building! Under his own