Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/195

Rh Hamid II. as one of the most proper representatives in the chair of Mohamet. And the spirit of Islam took a new fire all over the country, and the chronic anti-Christian enthusiasm began to boil the blood of the followers of Islam.

3. The Third and a Natural Step was the restraint put on the Christian subjects. This began to show itself in the slow and gradual exclusion of the Armenian students and officers from their positions. Then the number of Armenian schools and churches was decreased by not allowing the new ones to be established, and closing some of the former ones for trifling reasons. Sultan Hamid is said to have given firmans only for one new Armenian church near the frontiers of Russia, and for the repairing of a few, while he ordered scores of churches and schools and other institutions to be disbanded. Almost all literary, educational, charitable and economical societies, even the Young Men's Christian Associations, were prohibited and dissolved when discovered. The programs of the schools and the text-books were minutely examined. Armenian and universal histories, geography and readers, which contained direct or indirect allusions to the above subjects, foreign atlases, statistics, historical novels, all were confiscated and officially prohibited. Teachers who could not be made blind instruments in their hands were expelled, imprisoned, tortured, and in many cases killed. Christian doctors, lawyers, merchants and influential members were arrested by false