ABSTRACT
It was from American missionaries concentrated in eastern Anatolia that the outside world received much of its news of what was going on in the interior of the Ottoman state. Much of what they had to say in (or to) the outside world was hardly discreet, particularly as the Ottoman authorities already suspected them of spreading sedition in one way or another. They publicly expressed their hostility to the revolutionaries but it was difficult to avoid entanglement with them. The missionary predicament was summed up in a letter written by President Tracy of Marsovan (Merzifon) College in May 1895. As we have seen, considerable embarrassment had been caused two years earlier when it was alleged that Armenian teachers had printed revolutionary placards at the college. Tracy wrote:
It has come to our knowledge that our enemies the revolutionists have been and are trying to stir up people against us by a double-faced lie – secretly accusing us to their sympathisers of having betrayed their nation and with the other face, with holy indignation, accusing us to the government of the very indignities of which they themselves are guilty. I think the local government has got hold of the former class of accusations, which will work in our favour rather than otherwise. The old fact remains true, and it has been all along, that we have had nothing to do with political matters except as it has become necessary to rid ourselves of those whom we suspected of such a connection. 1
