I have already told Father Ohrwalder that, in commenting upon what he says in “Ten Years’ Captivity,” when speaking of Gordon’s actions, the remarks I may feel called upon to make are not intended for him personally, and although I foresee |307| that I must in the main have to speak as to the second person, I think Father Ohrwalder quite understands that the second person in this instance is his book, not himself. I do not, as I have told him, consider that he is directly responsible for the opinions he is credited with in “Ten Years’ Captivity,” and this notwithstanding the remark, “The reader is reminded that all opinions expressed are those of Father Ohrwalder.” Considering that Father Ohrwalder is a priest and missionary, and has ventured upon thin ice in attacking Gordon’s memory, such a statement is hardly fair to him, as in the preface to the book it is stated, that “Father Ohrwalder’s manuscript, which was in the first instance written in German, was roughly translated into English by Yusef Effendi Cudzi, a Syrian; this I entirely rewrote in narrative form; the work therefore does not profess to be a literal translation of the original manuscript. . . .”
I should have thought that when Gordon was being attacked the original manuscript might have been treated a little differently. Of course it is easily understandable that when a Syrian, with Arabic for his mother tongue, translates from one difficult language which he has picked up into another equally difficult, and translates roughly too, when moreover this rough translation is handled in the manner admitted, errors may have crept in or been passed unnoticed, whilst salient points were lost sight of. It is also quite possible that the peculiar idioms of the Arabic, German, and English languages |308| got into a hopeless tangle, and were left so. Whatever the cause, there is no gainsaying the fact that Father Ohrwalder is credited with the expression of opinions which he, as a priest and missionary, ought to be one of the last on this earth to give utterance to. That he did not appreciate to the full the real import of the opinions he is credited with, I feel certain of after my long interview with him, when, with the Bible in one hand and a copy of “Ten Years’ Captivity” in the other, we compared the opinions expressed in the latter with the teachings of Christ in the former.