Page 24 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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CHAPTER II

THE ARABIAN MISSION COMES OP AGE
(1915-1933)

The assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo

in August of 1914 was one of those watershed events that was

to have a major effect on the future course of world history.

Several thousand miles away, in the Arabian Gulf, the Mission

quickly felt its repercussions as what was left of the Otto­

man Empire geared up to wage war on the side of Germany against

the "Entente Cordiale". As the British Expeditionary Force

landed in Mesopotamia and General Allenby marched on Jeru­

salem, the five mission hospitals took on a new importance.

Already significant in native society as advocates of science

and modern medicine, the doctors now became important as a

military asset - to tend to the thousands of wounded soldiers

coming back from the front. The Lansing Memorial Hospital in

Basrah, in particular, was crowded with Turkish soldiers by

the Spring of 1915 according to Mission reports.^

Although the Western powers, Great Britain and the

United States in particular, looked on the Mission outposts

as part ofthe Allied war effort - a sort of imperial advance

guard, surrounded and awaiting relief - the missionaries

themselves maintained strict political, if not emotional,

neutrality throughout the war. Wounded Turkish soldiers in

1915 received the same solicitous and expert care as their

British counterparts did three years lAter.^1 The mission­

aries, after all, even if they identified with the cause of