CORRESPONDENCE. "WET" GAINS IN AMERICAN ELECTIONS.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17610, 13 November 1922, Page 4

CORRESPONDENCE.

"WET" GAINS IN AMERICAN ELECTIONS.

TO THE EDITOB OF " THE PEESS." Sir,—The report of certain "wet" gains in tho elections now in progress in U.S.A., published in to-day's "Press." when taken in conjunction with what Senator Borah is reported to have said, as published in Monday's "Press." does not give much comfort to those who may imagine that Prohibition in America is fizzling out. Speaking of the "surprising iauk of great issues deciding tho two main parties," Senator Borah said, "Prohibition, though up for test in live States, is not a real issue, because a majority of the candidates of both parties endorse it." That means that the "wet" gains now reported will make no difference in the existing law. A State may, on its own initiative, take a referendum on the question of permitting a modification of the law to permit the sale of wine and beer, as Illinois has done. But even when, as in this case, a majority vote for such a change is secured tho practical result will be nil so far as the Stn.to itself is concerned, because the law prohibiting the manufacture, snle and importation of such liquor l is a Federal law. and can only be changed by the action of Congress. Of that, as Senator Borah points out, at present there is no likelihood wliaterc-er.—Yours, etc., W. J. WILLIAMS. November 9th, 1922. THE GREEK NOT AN ALIEN IN CONSTANTINOPLE. TO THE EDITOB OF " THE PRESS." Sir,—ln the cablegram from Constantinople, published in your issue of to-day, occur these words: "If tho Greeks go, other foreigners must follow." "When shall wo ceaso circulating the falsehood, so dear to Turk and Turcophil, that the Greeks are foreigners in Constantinople, and that the Turk is its trueborn citizens? The truth lies tho other way. In its origin Constantinople is a Christian • city, and it remained Christian for more than a thousand years; and to-day, underneath ita Turkish wrappings, Constantinople is still essentially Greek. Its most noteworthy monuments are from Imperial times, and aro Greek in style and spirit. The, very name "Byzantine," as applied to the architecture that took its rise in the Eastern Empiro, should remind us of that fact. When tho Turks conquered this essentially Greek city in 1453 A.D., their first act was to seize the great Church of the Holy Wisdom (sometimes called by its original Greek name, "Hagia Sophia"), and pervert it from its Christian use to a Moslem mosque. For that Church, which 1 some are inclined to think the most magnificent Church in the world, was built by a Greek architect Anthemios, under the Emperor Justinian, in the .year 532. There had been previous temples for Christian worship, on the same site, and under the same' name of the Holy Wisdom, since tho Emperor Constantino founded New Rome in 330 A.D. Thus for virtually a thousand years the building now used as a Turkish mosque, resounded with the Christian worship of the Greek Church before the alien conqueror laid on it his disfiguring and " defiling - hand. To-day hideous green shields, inscribed with Arabic characters, hang on the walls of the Christian temple, in which they are obviously out of place. Every Friday, a preacher known as the Imam ascends the pulpit with drawn sword, and proclaims that the Church is held by conquest—a confession by the Turk' ■himself that he is the alienj not'/the Greek.

During tho Christian period of the Hagia Sophia, .the true stone dome and the spaces between the four arches were literally resplendent with mosaics and frescoes, which represented our Lord coming in judgment. The Holy Mother and child, 'the Cross (onw, of course, replaced by the Crescent), the Archangels, the fojur evangelists, and other figures . demonstrably Christian.. The Moslems, with : their hatred of symbolic representation, covered all this with plaster and paint. In vain! The Christian population, subjected to recurring persecution and massacre,; handed on from generation to generation a prophecy that one day the legends and frescoes so idly screened from view, again disclose themselves to human gaze—and when that happened, they might take heart, for the redemption of their beloved Church was drawing nigh! 1 ' Tho mosaics have been growing more and more visible under the slowly vanishing paint; on the great bronze gate can be read the graven inscription, "I am the Door of the Sheep." The consecration, crosses can' be seen on the huge columns. As has been well said: "Saint 1 Sophia to-day is still a Church, if a: Church gone wrong. It refuses to be a mosque, and demands to be reconsecrated.''

How many ordinary newspaper readers would gather from the cablegrams reaching us from interested quarters in Europe, that the population of Con-, stantinople is preponderatingly Christian, and has always been so, even since the fateful year 1453? • That population has been estimated as Consisting of less than half a million Turks, oyer 400,000 Greeks, 160,000 Armenians, 46,000 Jews, and 150,000 of other nationalities, tho large majority of which is Christian. If the question be asked: Why docs not this pre-' ppnderating Christian majority demonstrate? the answer' is simple enough—they dare not. During the 500 years of his blighting misrule, the alien conquerer has managed to reduce the . Christian population to a state of little less than abject terror, by tho perpetual threat of a "jehad" or holy war, (in other words, a massacre—for tho Christians are defenceloss). So long as the Turkish overlord can mako something out of his Christian subjects, ho tolerates them in tho "house of Islam" as a necessary evil,, and treats them as less than. human beings. Indeed,' they are termed, both officially and colloquially, as " rayah, "an Arabic word meaning cattle. How, then, are they not extinct? Tho secret of their persistent and almost miraculous survival is to be found in their religion, "the Holy Orthodox Faith." But how has their Christianity survived? One can point to a long succession of venerable patriarchs, from the patriotic. Gennadius (in 1453) down to that fearless confessor and lover of a reunited Christendom, Meletios. Each of these oecumenical patriarchs in Constantinople has in turn occupied a position of extreme peril. Heroes almost every one of them, not a few murdered, doposed, or banished, because they were not cowardly time-servers, and would not be silent spectators when their flock were being butchered or .(the women) being led away only too often to a fate worse than death. The patriarch of these subject Christians lives in the lowly Phanar, and hold 3 a supreme place in .the affections and loyalty of the faithful. And the symbol of the one' undying hope that makes them cling with doglike tenacity to the Faith, in spite of every inducement to apostatise—is the Hagia Sophia, tho Church of the Holy Wisdom, a Greek Church in a Greek city. It is more to these harassed Christians than Westminster Abbey to the English, or St. Peter's to the Soman Catholic. That desecrated church is dear to them as the temple of Jerusalem was to the ancient Jew. Its very dust is precious in their sight. To attempt to enter it would} - tor the Greek Christian, mean instant death. Yet

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they feel it is theirs bv every right. Their fathers built it and worshipped in it—the children have suffered for it, and live on, looking forward to tho dav when the nightmare of captivity shall be a-thing of the past, and the Divine Liturgy celebrated once more at its gorgeous altar. That day of redemption has been indefinitely postponed, because the British and their Allies went back on their solemn, pledges; and now it seems that the sacred name of "Empire" is to bo used to justify what (if it happens) will be the most dastardly act of modern times —handing over the native population of Constantinople, men and women who are our fellow-Christians, to their most implacable foes. Truly, we owe them reparation. At the least, let us remember who aro the rightful, heirs of Constantinople and its great Christian temple. Exiles they may be. Do not let us heap insult upon their age-long sorrow by dismissing them contemptuously with that question-begging epithet, "alien."— Yours, etc, F. BUTHEEFOBD RAWLE. Waikari, November 10th.