Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/148

142 2. Censorship of Press. The manuscript of any book must go to the press-officer, who is the president of a committee charged with the sacred duty of ruling over the thoughts, speeches and writings of millions of human beings. The same transactions must be repeated before each edition of the same book. There were so many books officially sanctioned five to fifteen years ago that they are confiscated and prohibited now. This shows that the burden of tyranny is growing heavier. All the books sent from foreign countries must go to the same office, be carefully examined and withheld if some injurious thing is imagined. Any kind of history, geography, even cyclopedias containing articles about Armenia, Turkey, Mohametan religion, etc., are confiscated.

All the unofficial newspapers, Moslem or non-Moslem, must be published in Constantinople, and each proof-sheet of every paper must first go to the censor in order to be examined and corrected, and detained if he deems proper. On every occasion of the Sultan's anniversary, or of the commencement services of the government schools, the papers are expected and even demanded to give full pages in praise of the wisdom and mercy of the Sultan in the official style of the palace slaves. "The late Shah of Persia has died of dropsy." "M. Carnot, of France, has suddenly died of heart disease." Many viziers who have been strangled in the palace were reported in the papers as "died a natural death from sickness to which he was subject a log time, and in spite of all the skill of the doctors could not be saved." These