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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Betrayed Armenia - -Author: Diana Agabeg Apcar - -Release Date: September 30, 2016 [EBook #53170] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETRAYED ARMENIA *** - - - - -Produced by Cindy Horton and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<p class="transnote">Transcriber’s Note: you will find both Christian(ity, etc) and christian -used in this book, seemingly interchangeably; spelling of names is also -variable.</p> - -<p>When this book was written, the writer was -under the supposition then generally current that -the Armenian Massacres of April, 1909, in Cilicia -were instigated by Abdul Hamid and his Yildiz -Clique. Babikian Effendi, the Armenian deputy -who went to Adana from Constantinople to investigate -into the massacres, plainly reported that -all investigations had failed to trace them to Abdul -Hamid and his Yildiz Clique. Babikian Effendi, -as was to be expected, died suddenly on his return -to Constantinople, but later on it became known -that the massacres of April, 1909, had been planned, -prepared, organized and carried into execution by -the Constitutional Government of what has been -called “Liberal Turks” or “Young Turks.”</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="img1" style="width: 600px;"> - -<img src="images/i_002.jpg" width="600" height="460" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">THEY TORE THE BABES FROM THE ARMS OF THEIR MOTHERS, TO HACK THEM TO PIECES -WITH KNIVES, OR THROW THEM ALIVE INTO THE FIRE.</p> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<h1>BETRAYED ARMENIA.</h1> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br /> -DIANA AGABEG APCAR.</p> - -<p class="titlepage">ILLUSTRATED.</p> - -<p class="titlepage">THESE ARE THEY WHICH CAME OUT<br /> -OF GREAT TRIBULATION.</p> - -<p class="titlepage">ALL RIGHTS RESERVED,<br /> -<span class="smaller">BUT TRANSLATIONS INTO FRENCH AND ARMENIAN PERMITTED.</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage">YOKOHAMA:<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE “JAPAN GAZETTE” PRESS.<br /> -1910.</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> - -<table summary="Contents"> - <tr> - <td></td><td class="tdr"><span class="smcap">Page.</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Why and Wherefore</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Disinterested Evidence</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Preface to 2nd Printing</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_8">8</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Introduction</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2"><a href="#PART_I"><span class="smcap">Part I.</span></a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdindent">The Armenian Massacres and the Treaty of Berlin</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdindent">The Armenian Massacres and the Turkish Constitution</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdindent">The Armenian Massacres and the Armenian People</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdindent">The Armenian Massacres and the Future of the Armenians</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdindent">The Armenian Massacres and Civilized Europe</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td colspan="2"><a href="#PART_II"><span class="smcap">Part II.</span></a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdindent">Out of the Depths</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdindent">What the Turkish Constitution Means for the Armenians</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdindent">The Armenian Question</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdindent">Open Letter to the Honorable President William Howard Taft</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdindent">Abdul Hamid, the Triumph of Crime</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>L’Avenir</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>The Origin of the Armenians—The Introduction of Christianity into Armenia—Decline -and Grand Revival</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p> - -<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2> - -<table summary="List of Illustrations"> - <tr> - <td></td><td class="tdr"><span class="smcap">Page.</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>They Tore the Babes from the Arms of their Mothers</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img1">Frontispiece</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Scene of the Massacres in Asia Minor</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img2">4</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>In this House 115 Women and Children were Roasted Alive</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img3">5</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Ruined Church and Homes at Adana</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img4">6</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>General Prince Loris Melikoff</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img5">19</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>General Ter Goukassoff</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img6">24</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Muckertich Khirimian</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img7">30</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Matthevose Ezmerlian</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img8">33</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Nerses Varjabetian</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img9">46</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Minaret at Erivan, one of the Cities Tradition Ascribes to be Founded by Noah</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img10">64</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Great and Little Ararat</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img11">66</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Abgar King of Armenia</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img12">70</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Soorb Gregore Loosavoritch</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img13">74</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>The Cathedral of Etchmiatzi</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#img14">76</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> - -<h2>WHY AND WHEREFORE.</h2> - -<p>In making a study of my race, I have found three marked characteristics -Intelligence—Energy—Industry. Combined with these three characteristics -is an intense Love of Nationality. We live in a complex world. In an -independent people these characteristics and this sentiment are laudable -Virtues. In a subject people they are Crimes.</p> - -<p>After I had laid this bitter Truth to heart, I did not have to seek for the -Why and Wherefore of the Armenian Massacres.</p> - -<p>The Armenian Massacres stand without their parallel in history. The -human mind staggers to contemplate the fiendish orgies of which they have -been the victims, and no pen can describe their horrors: and this helpless -christian people are to-day in the same deadly peril as they have been since -the famous Treaty of Berlin consigned them bound hand and foot to the -mercy of their executioners.</p> - -<p>The Armenians may be led again “as sheep to the slaughter” and the -work of extermination may be completed—Jesus Christ was crucified on -Calvary and the servant is not greater than his Lord—but the work of their -extermination can only be completed when the evil influences in the Turkish -Empire have reached their culminating point. Hitherto the Powers of -Europe have by their jealousies and rivalries cultivated these evil influences, -they have watered them and made them grow, but when their culminating -point is reached, they must re-act on Christendom and the natural -consequence must follow. Those who sow the wind, must reap the whirlwind. -It is in the natural order of things.</p> - -<p>I will allow that Liberty, Justice, Equality, Fraternity are the watchwords -of Young Turkey, but Young Turkey is only a small minority; the great -majority of the Turkish nation are not Young Turks.</p> - -<p>The question therefore resolves itself into this critical point: “What will -Christendom do even now?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="img2" style="width: 600px;"> - -<img src="images/i_009.jpg" width="600" height="440" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">SCENE OF THE MASSACRES IN ASIA MINOR.</p> - -<p class="caption2">The trouble began in Adana. An armed mob strengthened and augmented by soldiers -fell in overwhelming numbers upon the unarmed Christians. The Armenian population of -Antioch and vicinity were practically wiped out and the Armenian villages in the -Alexandretta district destroyed with immense loss of life. Hadjim, Kessab and the neighbouring -villages were burned. The Armenian quarter in Tarsus was ruined and ill-omened -Marash stained again with the blood of thousands of Armenians. Zeitoon was desolated. The -entire population of Kirikon between Aleppo and Alexandretta were massacred to the last -babe. The mob and the soldiers burned what they could not carry away, so that the material -loss has been enormous. In place of the former abundance and thriving industries there are -instead desolated provinces and the charred and blackened remains of pillaged and ruined -homes, and the residue of those who escaped massacre are reduced to homelessness and -starvation.</p> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p> - -<h2>DISINTERESTED EVIDENCE.</h2> - -<p>I have thought it advisable to insert a few extracts from accounts of -the Massacres of April, 1909, given by disinterested witnesses.</p> - -<div class="figleft" id="img3" style="width: 350px;"> - -<img src="images/i_010.jpg" width="350" height="225" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">IN THIS HOUSE 115 WOMEN AND CHILDREN WERE ROASTED ALIVE.</p> - -<p class="caption2">History repeats itself. In 1895 Turkish soldiers fell upon seventy to eighty young -women and girls in a church, where they had fled for refuge, and after hideously outraging -them, barricaded them in, setting fire to the building at the same time, and derisively shouting -to their victims as they were being roasted alive, to call upon their Christ to save them now.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“We are having a perfectly hideous time here. Thousands have been murdered—25,000 -in this province they say; but the number is probably greater, for every Christian village -was wiped out. In Adana about 5000 have perished. After Turks and Armenians had -made peace, the Turks came in the night with hose and kerosene, and set fire to what remained -of the Armenian quarter. Next day the French and Armenian schools were fired. Nearly everyone -in the Armenian school perished, anybody trying to escape being shot down by the soldiers.”</p> - -<p>“The Turkish Authorities do nothing except arrest unoffending Armenians, from whom -by torture they extort the most fanciful confessions. Even the wounded are not safe from -their injustice. A man was being carried in to me yesterday when he was seized and taken -off to gaol. I dare not think what his fate may be.”</p> - -<p>“For fiends incarnate commend me to the Turks. Nobody is safe from them. They -murder babies in front of their mothers; they half murder men, and violate the wives while -the husbands are lying there dying in pools of blood.”</p> - -<p>“The authorities did nothing, and the soldiers were worse than the crowd, for they were -better armed. One house in our quarter was burned with 115 people inside. We counted -the bodies. The soldiers set fire to the door, and as the windows had iron bars, nobody -could get out. Everybody in the house was roasted alive. They were all women and -children and old people.”—Extract from letter of Mrs. Doughty-Wylie, wife of British Consul -at Adana; published in the London “Daily Mail.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“The soldiers led the way in -these horrors and were guilty of -atrocities so terrible that they can -never be described in a public -print. Even the soldiers landed at -Mersina—the soldiers sent expressly -to restore order—added to the -crimes and for three days continued -the murders unchecked.”—Extract -from the London “Daily Mail.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="figright" id="img4" style="width: 235px;"> - -<img src="images/i_011.jpg" width="235" height="400" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">RUINED CHURCH AND HOMES AT ADANA.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“The outbreak began in the -Armenian bazaar on April 14th, -and on the pretence that an Armenian -revolt was in progress the -Redifs or reserves were called out. -These, as villainous a crew as could -well be found, had arms and ammunition -served out to them, and -immediately joined in the slaughter, -and all the worst of the subsequent -killing, looting, and house burning -was done by them.”</p> - -<p>“The Armenians did not take -their punishment lying down. Their -quarter of the town was so well -defended that the mob, mad as they -were with lust for blood, would not -venture into it. Houses on the outskirts -were besieged by thousands -of men and held by half a dozen; in -fact, the courage of these hordes of -Moslem savages was only equal to -butchering women and children and -unarmed men. I saw a Greek -house which was held for eight -hours by one Armenian with a shotgun -against hundreds of Turks firing -from the surrounding houses and -the minaret of a mosque. At last -his cartridges gave-out, but not for -two hours after that did the mob -pluck up courage to rush the -house.”—Extracts from accounts by Mr. J. L. C. Booth, special correspondent of the London -“Graphic.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Kessab was a thrifty Armenian town of about eight thousand -inhabitants, situated on the landward slope of Mt. Cassius (Arabic, -Jebel Akra) which stands out prominently upon the Mediterranean -seacoast half-way between Alexandretta and Latakia. Kessab is now a -mass<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> -of blackened ruins, the stark walls of the churches and houses rising -up out of the ashes and charred timbers heaped on every side. What must -it mean to the five thousand men and women and little children who -have survived a painful flight to the seacoast and have now returned -to their mountain home, only to find their houses sacked and burned! -There were nine Christian villages which clustered about Kessab in -the valleys below. Several of these have been completely destroyed by -fire. All have been plundered and the helpless people driven out or -slain.”</p> - -<p>“Can you imagine the feelings of the Kessab people as they climbed -on foot the long trail up the mountain, and then as they came over -the ridge into full view of their charred and ruined dwellings? Their -stores of wheat, barley and rice had been burned; clothing, cooking -utensils, furniture and tools had gone; their goats, cows and mules had -been stolen; their silk industries stamped out; their beloved churches -reduced to smouldering heaps. The bodies of their friends and relatives -who had been killed had not been buried. And yet the love of home is so -strong that the people have settled down there with the determination -to clear up the debris and rebuild their houses.”—Extracts from -“The Sack of Kessab,” Stephen Van R. Trowbridge.</p> - -</div> - -<p>As these sheets are going through the press there comes news of famine -at Zeitoon. The Rev. F. W. Macullum, American Missionary at Marash, -writes to the Rev. W. W. Peet, American Missionary at Constantinople, that -12,000 souls in and around Zeitoon are dying of hunger; they are wandering -about in rags, mixing bran and water, and cooking and eating it, if they can -get even that. Rev. Macullum adds, “The same story comes to us from all -sides. As we foresaw all along, from now on the distress will be greatest.”</p> - -<p>If 50,000 were massacred, the list of those who have died and are dying -of homelessness and starvation will exceed 150,000. It is true; and the -numbers are not exaggerated. Last year the people reaped no harvest, and -this year there are no sowings.</p> - -<p>The latest news is that Mush, a prosperous Armenian village that had -escaped the desolation of the massacres, has been plundered in a night attack -by armed Kurds, and the villagers are now reduced to extreme distress. Before -the outbreak the Armenian patriarchal vicar at Mush had repeatedly appealed -to the Armenian Patriarch at Constantinople, and the Armenian Patriarch -had repeatedly appealed to the Authorities at Constantinople asking protection -for the villagers of Mush as a Kurdish attack was apprehended. It is -evident that the authorities at Constantinople are unable to protect thriving -Armenian villages from Kurdish and Turkish raiders.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p> - -<h2>PREFACE TO 2<span class="smcapuc">ND</span> PRINTING.</h2> - -<p>The first and second parts of this little book were written and printed -in pamphlet form for circulation in the United States, shortly after the -Adana Massacres of April, 1909. I have now thought it advisable to add -a Supplement of a short history of the Origin of the Armenians and the -Introduction and Revival of Christianity in Armenia.</p> - -<p>The illustrations and the extracts from the periodicals “Harper’s -Monthly,” “The Wide World” and the “Cosmopolitan” have been added -to the 2nd printing.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p> - -<h2>INTRODUCTION TO 2<span class="smcapuc">ND</span> PRINTING.</h2> - -<p>My object in writing this little book is to lay the hard case of my unfortunate -race before the men and women of the United States; since it is -from the United States that the American Missionaries have gone forth, who -have been the only helping influence from without for my suffering people in -Asiatic Turkey. To the earnest and devoted men and women of the -American Missions, we Armenians owe a debt of gratitude which we can -never repay.</p> - -<p>If in the contents of the pages of this little book I have exaggerated -Facts by one whit or one iota, if I have deviated by one hair’s breadth from -the Truth, I stand to be judged.</p> - -<p>“God save us from another Adana, but the sword of Islam has not been -dulled” was one of the clarion notes sounded at the Sixth International -Convention of the Student Volunteer Movement, which was held at Rochester, -New York. The man who sounded that clarion note knew Islam, and -because knowing of my own knowledge that the sword of Islam has not been -dulled, I tremble lest its sharp edge fall once more on the neck of my helpless -race. If I knew and felt sure in mine own heart that the sword of Islam -was dulled, I would be content to let bygones be bygones, and to hold my -peace and be silent for ever.</p> - -<p>Like the sudden explosion of a volcano in the physical world, comes the -explosion of a Turkish Massacre of Armenians in the moral world. It comes -just in that way; the subterranean fires are always there, but all of a sudden -the sulphur flames of religious fanaticism burst, the lava floods of race hatred -and lust of plunder, break forth and run in fiery streams; the unfortunate -victims are pounced upon, swooped upon, pillaged, plundered, butchered, -slaughtered, subjected to outrages so hideous, cruel, loathsome, and revolting, -that no pen could depict their horrible realities and the details can never -go into print. The human mind is staggered and asks itself the question if -even the imaginations of fiends and devils could originate such horrors. -Then this orgy of the human fiends is arrested. For the time being the -appetite for blood, lust, and plunder is satisfied; for the time being, the eye -is content with the scenes of havoc and desolation lying under the sun; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> -smell of corpses is in the air, the odor from the carcases of the “christian -swine” reek in the nostrils of the Turk, he turns away, his jaws dripping with -blood, and rests to couch for a future spring. We have seen that sort of an -end to the tragedy of a tiger’s victim: the tiger has eaten his fill, he rests, -to keep guard over the crunched bones and mangled bits of bloody flesh that -bestrew the earth. So also now there is a residue left of those that have -served as the meat and wine of this devil’s feast; the demons have gorged -themselves over the banquet, and now there are left over the broken remains -of the banquet, the miserable residue homeless and destitute.</p> - -<p>Civilized nations have received a temporary moral shock, like a shock -that spreads from the centre of an explosion; the electric vibration running -far and wide from the scene of the centre of devastation. There are among -these civilized nations generous and kind-hearted people who open their -purse strings; they give money to purchase shelter, food and clothing for -these homeless, naked and hungry beggars, made homeless, naked and -hungry through no fault of their own. But oh! ye generous and kind hearted -people! can any power under heaven assuage the heart anguish of this -miserable residue? Can they be made by any means of human comfort to -forget the black horrors or recover from the effects of the fires of the hideous -affliction through which they have passed? What is there left for a woman -who has seen with her own eyes the slaughter and heard with her own ears -the dying cry of her murdered child? even her reason must give way under -the stress of her anguish. All ye who are mothers, I appeal to you, for one -moment to put yourselves in the place of thousands of such mothers, in -whose hearts the same mother’s love burns as in yours, and then measure -the depth of their agony.</p> - -<p>Generous and kind hearted people who open your purse strings; would -to God I entreat, ye would raise up your voices and demand that this hideous -slaughter and oppression of a helpless christian race should cease. Would -to God I entreat, ye would raise up your voices and demand that this people -of an industrious, intelligent christian race, robust in mind and body, should -be let to live. Would to God I entreat, that ye would raise up your voices -and demand for them that security of life and property to which they are -entitled just as equally as all other peoples.</p> - -<p>Public Sentiment has done great things in the world’s history. Public -Sentiment liberated Greece, The Lebanon, The Balkan States from Turkish -Oppression. Slavery was abolished in the United States through Public -Sentiment: but alas! does Public Sentiment sleep for this helpless Christian -race. Are they not God’s creatures? have they not a right to live on God’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> -earth as other nations? Does Humanity, does Christianity allow that tender -babes and children should be hideously and horribly mutilated and butchered -before the eyes of their mothers, or that the ears of mothers should be rent -with the cries of the dying agony of their murdered children? Does -Humanity, does Christianity allow that helpless women should be forcibly -subjected to the most hideous, the most loathsome, the most revolting, and -the most cruel outrages? Does Humanity, does Christianity, allow all this?</p> - -<p>Christian Governments have organized a Hague Conference of Peace -and Civilization, but they have closed its doors to the cause of a bleeding -christian race groaning under the yoke of the cruellest oppressors that the -world has yet known. Christian men and women have held up their hands -in horror at the Indian Juggernauth; but alas! the political wheels of -Christian Governments have been a Greater Juggernauth for a helpless -christian race. It is by Christian Governments that “we are made as the -filth of the world, and as the offscouring of all things unto this day.” It is -as if the answer to our groanings had been made by Christian Governments -in just these words:</p> - -<p>“We know that you have had frightful grievances, such as have been -beyond the measure of human endurance. We know that since the Treaty -of Berlin your history has been written in blood and tears, as the history of -no other nation has been written before or now. We know that your women -are subjected to the most revolting and hideous agonies, and your babes -and children hounded to hideous deaths. We know that the sum total of -your wrongs and sufferings is so great, that the cry of its anguish is piercing -the very heavens, but really, our political and commercial jealousies prevent; -and we each one of us being on the look out lest our separate political and -commercial interests in the Empire of your oppressors be endangered, cannot -regard you. It may be the deadliest scandal of Christendom that we -Christian Powers should be all gathered together, one against another, in the -Empire of your Oppressors, as eagles gather together round a carcase; but -really there is no help for it; and if you must die hideously by a hellish -extermination, why then you must die, and we have to condone your hellish -extermination, for in any case, each one of us must secure his own political -and commercial interests in this same Empire of your Oppressors.”</p> - -<p>In “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” published by Mr. James Bryce in 1876, -there occurs in the chapter entitled “Some Political Reflections” the following -passage:</p> - -<p>“The attention of the West was so much drawn towards Herzegovina -and Bulgaria by the events of 1876 that the miseries of the Asiatic subjects<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> -of the Porte have been unreasonably forgotten or neglected. They are fully -as wretched as the Slavs or Cretans have been; and in so far worse off, -that in Europe there exists no large body of tribes making murder and -robbery its regular and daily occupation as the Kurds, and latterly the -Circassians also, have done in Armenia. If anyone will take the trouble to -read the complaints of oppressions and cruelties presented to the Porte by -the Armenian Patriarchate in 1872 (since reprinted in England) and some of -the more recent statements printed by the Armenians in England on the -same topic, he will see that the state of Turkish Asia presents as grave and -pressing a problem as that of Bulgaria itself.”</p> - -<p>In the 4th edition of the same book, published in 1896, the following -note appears to the passage I have quoted:</p> - -<p>“Shortly after this was written, the Blue Books presented to Parliament, -containing reports from British Consuls in Asiatic Turkey, showed -that things were really far worse there than they had been in Bulgaria or -Herzegovina.”</p> - -<p>What has followed since 1876 is too well known. For seeking redress -from their frightful grievances the Armenians were hunted like wild beasts -and killed like rats and flies during the Hamidian régime.</p> - -<p>You will tell me, my christian friends, that with the rise of the reform -party in Turkey, the era of massacres is at an end, and I will tell you that -the conditions of 1876 and 1896 have not actually changed, though they -may seemingly appear so to the uninformed and uninitiated. I will answer -you that the hideous massacres of April last happened nine months after the -reform party first rose in power, and nine months after the inauguration of -the Constitution. I do not question the goodwill of the reform party, but -the reform party does not comprise the whole Turkish nation, and until the -Turk learns to become liberal, civilized and human, there may be no more -Armenians left, unless some Christian Power such as the United States -demands their protection and enforces it. No! my Christian friends, it can -be well for other Christians in the Turkish Empire with their powerful -Governments at their back; but alas! there is no security for a subject -people alien in race and religion.</p> - -<p>The massacres in April last raged from Adana to Alexandretta, and -according to authenticated reports about fifty thousand men, women and -children were hideously exterminated; more than this, the last massacres -were especially characterized by the most hideous, the most loathsome, the -most revolting and ferocious cruelties perpetrated on women and children. -Now what other name can we find for the perpetrators of this diabolical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> -orgy, except to call them fiends incarnate; and who is the bold man who -can guarantee that these same fiends incarnate have become metamorphosed -and changed all of a sudden; or that the handful of liberal Turks at Constantinople -are capable of controlling and restraining them. We have not -even heard that the leaders and participators of the last massacres have -been punished as they deserved; and what is the reason they are left unpunished? -because the Government is afraid to punish Mahommedans for -killing Christians; because the liberal Turks dare not punish the “true -believers” for killing “Kaffirs.”</p> - -<p>The religion of Mahommed, the religion of the sword, has been infused -into the Turk, and to understand the effect of the religion of Mahommed -upon the Turk, it is necessary to regard it from four aspects, or from four -points of analysis. First, the fundamental doctrine and law of the religion. -Second, the character of the founder as an example to his followers. Third, -the racial and ethnographic characteristics of the Turk. Fourth, the effect -which this particular religion would be likely to have on this particular race. -When we have viewed the Turk and his government from these four points -of analysis, we have the explanation of all the woe and desolation which -have lain over the countries under Turkish rule.</p> - -<p>“When ye encounter the unbelievers strike off their heads until you -have made a great slaughter of them” is a chapter of the Koran which the -Turk has religiously and steadfastly made his creed.</p> - -<p>In conclusion, I will ask my readers to compare one point of difference -between the two races, the oppressor and the oppressed. Thousands upon -thousands of Armenian women, thousands upon thousands of Armenian -children, have been hounded to death, or savagely, ferociously, horribly and -loathsomely maltreated by the Turk, and yet in all the agonizing years when -Massacre has succeeded upon Massacre, has there been one known case or -one single instance of a Turkish woman or child maltreated by Armenians?</p> - -<p>The last massacres though especially organized from the Palace at -Constantinople, were officially announced to originate from an affray -between one Armenian and three Turks, in which the single handed one, on -the one side, grappling with the three on the other, killed one of the three: -given equal numbers and arms, the Armenian is always a match for the -Turk, but alas for him that unequal numbers and want of arms have always -made him the victim of his oppressor.</p> - -<p>Ahmed Riza Bey in the first part (Ses Causes) of his book “La Crise de -L’Orient” published in Paris in 1907 holds a brief for his nation which -through its own fallacious arguments falls to the ground. I will quote one -passage as an example.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Jamais les populations chrétiennes ne se sont révoltées, spontanément, -d’elles-mêmes. Les révoltes ont toujours été partielles et espacées, ce qui -tend bien à prouver qu’elles sont provoquées non par certains injustices -administratives que nous savons être constantes et les mêmes pour tous, -mais par les sourdes menées de l’extérieur. Les agences consulaires, les -écoles étrangères, les maisons des missionnaires, couvertes par les Capitulations, -ont servi de foyer de propagande, de dépôts d’armes, et même de -refuge pour les perturbateurs. Souvent les ambassadeurs sont intervenus -pour faire gracier des rebelles pris et condamnés. On se rappelle avec -quelle solennité les Arméniens qui s’étaient introduits dans la Banque -Ottomane furent conduits sains et saufs à bord d’un bateau par le drogman -de l’Ambassade russe—leur complice.</p> - -<p>“Si ces prétendus patriotards sont tant soutenus et choyés dans le monde -occidental, c’est parce qu’ils constituent un élément ou plutôt un instrument -de destruction au service de certains Européens élevés dans les préjugés des -Croissades et qui crient avec Chateaubriand: (‘L’espèce humaine ne peut -que gagner à la destruction de l’Empire Ottoman’).”</p> - -<p>The author of “La Crise de L’Orient” continues in this strain. Are we -then to suppose that the British Consuls, men whose truthfulness has never -been impeached, whose reports on the unsupportable sufferings of the subject -christian races and the oppressions and hideous atrocities of the Turks, have -filled volumes: and likewise the American Missionaries, men who have -deservedly gained the honor and respect of the world, whose statements -have corroborated the British Consular reports; have been according to -Ahmed Riza Bey the mischief-makers in the Turkish Empire? since it is -from them alone the world has gained the widest and most correct knowledge -of the daily miseries and oppressions under which the subject Christian -races have groaned. Are we also to suppose that men like Mr. James -Bryce and Dr. Dillon have by mendacious writings upheld them, British -Consul and American Missionary, liars, and mischief makers? Or -rather are we not to suppose that if thinking men and women in the world -have come to cry out with Chateaubriand “L’espèce humaine ne peut que -gagner à la destruction de l’Empire Ottoman” it is because the Turks have -earned the world’s condemnation through their own diabolical acts, and on -account of the woe and desolation which Turkish rule has worked over the -fairest provinces under the sun. If the Turk will turn from the evil of his -ways unto good, the stigma of “the unspeakable Turk” which now attaches -itself to him, will cease to be a veritable truth. The bringing about of the -transformation rests with himself.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p> - -<p>Further in answer to Ahmed Riza Bey’s account of the Armenian -“prétendus patriotards” in connection with the Ottoman Bank; I cannot do -better than quote from Mr. Bryce’s version of the story, and the massacre -that followed: “In the following June serious trouble arose at Van, where -some sort of insurrection is said to have been planned, though in the discrepancy -of the accounts it is hard to arrive at the truth. Masses of Kurds -came down threatening to massacre the Christians, and a conflict in which -many innocent persons perished, was with difficulty brought to an end by -the intervention of the British Consul. A little later the Armenian revolutionary -party, emboldened by the rising in Crete, where the Christians, being -well armed and outnumbering the Muslims, held their ground successfully, -issued appeals to the Embassies and to the Turkish Government to introduce -reforms, threatening disturbances if the policy of repression and massacre -was persisted in. These threats were repeated in August, and ultimately, -on August 26, a band of about twenty Armenians, belonging the revolutionary -party, made a sudden attack on the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Constantinople, -declaring they were prepared to hold it and blow it up should the -Sultan refuse their demand. They captured the building by a <i>coup de main</i>, -but were persuaded by the Russian dragoman to withdraw upon a promise -of safety. Meanwhile the Government, who through their spies knew of the -project, had organised and armed a large mob of Kurds and Lazes—many -of whom had recently been brought to the city—together with the lowest -Turkish class. Using the occasion, they launched this mob upon the peaceful -Armenian population. The onslaught began in various parts of the city so -soon after the attack on the Bank that it had obviously been prearranged, -and the precaution had been taken to employ the Turkish ruffians in different -quarters from those in which they dwelt; so that they might less easily be -recognised. Carts had moreover been prepared in which to carry off the -dead. For two days an indiscriminate slaughter went on, in which not only -Armenian merchants and traders of the cultivated class, not only the industrious -and peaceable Armenians of the humbler class, clerks, domestic servants, -porters employed on the quays and in the warehouses, but also women -and children were butchered in the streets and hunted down all through the -suburbs. On the afternoon of the 27th the British Chargé d’Affaires (whose -action throughout won general approval) told the Sultan he would land -British sailors, and the Ambassadors telegraphed to the Sultan. Then the -general massacre was stopped, though sporadic slaughter went on round the -city during the next few days. The Ambassadors, who did not hesitate -to declare that the massacre had been organised by the Government, -estimated the number of killed at from 6000 to 7000; the official report<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> -made to the Sultan is said to have put it at 8750.<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> During the whole time -the army and the police had perfect control of the city—the police, and a -certain number of the military officers and some high civil officials, joining in -the slaughter. Of all the frightful scenes which Constantinople, a city of -carnage, has seen since the great insurrection of A.D. 527 when 30,000 -people perished in the hippodrome there has been none more horrible than -this. For this was not the suppression of an insurrection in which contending -factions fought. It was not the natural sequel to a capture by storm, as -when the city was taken and sacked by the Crusaders in A.D. 1204, and by -the Turks in A.D. 1453. It was slaughter in cold blood, when innocent men -and women, going about their usual avocations in a time of apparent peace, -were suddenly beaten to death with clubs, or hacked to pieces with knives, by -ruffians who fell upon them in the streets before they could fly to any place -of refuge.”<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> - -<p>I am also obliged to quote from an Article written by a Turkish Officer -who signs himself A. J. and published in the “Siper-i-Saïka-i-Hurriet,” a -Turkish daily, on July 6, 1909.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>Every time that I hear the name Armenian I feel the bleeding of a moral wound within -me. It was the year I was sent into exile (1896). On a Thursday, before we had left the -Military School for our vacation, a rumor flew through the school,—“They are massacring -the Armenians.” All my young patriotic companions turned pale from deep emotion. Every -one tried to read in the sad faces of others the reason for this bad news. But each one -avoided expressing his thought. After a time the details began to circulate to the effect that -the Armenians had dared to destroy the Ottoman Bank and government buildings with bombs, -and that this was the reason why they were massacred. At that time all of us trembled, -because we also were enemies of that government, because we also wished to overthrow it, and -although we were not convinced that the best service could be rendered by bombs, we were -working quietly to spread our ideas. In our hearts a flame of enmity and indignation, no less -terrible than bombs, was burning. The poor Armenians were being massacred ruthlessly, -because out of their number five or ten persons, resenting their wrongs, had rebelled. But -that which maddened these poor men, that drove them to rebellion and placed bombs in their -hands was the stupidity of the people and the outrageous oppressions of the government. And -now this inhuman government was killing with clubs a noble nation, under the pretext of -putting down a rebellion produced by its own oppressions. Among the crimes committed by -the former government the most unpardonable crime was the Armenian massacre. If there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> -was a race up to that time among non-Moslem peoples which with sincere and deep feeling -honored the Ottoman fatherland that race was the Armenian. It is the Armenians who -wear most nearly the national dress, who speak and write Turkish best, and recognize the -Ottoman country as their fatherland. Besides this it is the Armenians who engage in -commerce and agriculture, and thus, by demonstrating its fruitfulness, increase the value of -the Ottoman Empire. Because a few among them justly started an agitation, these our noble -and industrious brethren were being massacred. What a terrible scene! When we -left the school building we saw hundreds of the bodies of our Armenian compatriots being -removed in manure carts; legs and arms were hanging down outside. This bloody scene will -ever remain impressed on my mind.</p> - -<p>“This shocking crime of Yildiz formed a deep lake of blood, and this lake, during the -whole course of a cursed absolutism, up to the last moment, grew wider. Even during the -past nine months of the Constitution, in spite of the brotherly feelings which had been shown, -the awful events in Adana took place and the souls of all true Osmanlis melted into tears. -Up to the present time the deep sorrow caused by this event has not disappeared, because this -bloody wound in our social body cannot easily be cured. While we fill our stomachs with -choice morsels, while we rest selfishly in our comfortable beds, these fatherless and brotherless -orphans, widows hungry, naked, and barefoot wander hither and thither, and thousands of -families are fleeing from the fatherland. We are convinced that the government is doing its -work, but what has happened is so great a calamity that it can keep a government busy for -years. However much sacrifice we may make, still it will be inadequate, because the -happiness of the fatherland depends on healing such blood wounds as these as soon as possible. -We are convinced that the government and all connected with it are persuaded of this as well as -ourselves. We must now wipe out the traces of the misfortune brought by a cursed period. -We must now comfort weeping hearts. We must understand and teach those who do not -understand that patriotism and brotherhood do not differ from each other. The responsibility -of the government for the Armenians is very great and very weighty. The whole Ottoman -nation is under obligations to protect this suffering race, because the liberty we enjoy to-day -is in large part due to the blood shed by the Armenians. We thought that these truths -were so obvious that we preferred to keep silence, whereas to-day we understand that it is -necessary from time to time to recall the greatness of our obligation. We must not forget -that this unhappy people up to yesterday has endured only barbarism, and for twelve years -has been constantly oppressed and ground to the earth, and has given thousands of victims. -Hereafter we must work to assure them that the era of massacres has passed, and with all our -strength of mind and soul we must quiet them. The obligation of the government to protect -them is also very heavy, because our Armenian countrymen live among wandering tribes. -We must all assist the government and point out its obligation. It must be declared in -public and periodically that the one of the most important duties of the Ottoman nation is to -protect, together with those of other races, the interests, the life, and property of the -Armenians as well, since these are their sacred rights. Let investigations be made and let -whatever is necessary be done in order to reach this aim.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>This article of the Turkish officer, who however does not dare disclose -his identity; and the account given by an authority like Mr. James Bryce -surely refute the facile explanation of Ahmed Riza Bey in alluding to the -Massacres as “les Massacres occasionnés par les aventuriers Arméniens.” -Indeed it holds out poor hope for the furtherance of liberty and justice in -Turkey when the man who is the President of the Chamber of Deputies only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> -as far back as 1907 tries to palliate the horrors of the Hamidian régime by -misrepresentations.</p> - -<p>The author of “La Crise de l’Orient” also cites the Japanese as an -instance of the civilization and aptitude for progress of a non-Christian -oriental race. In this case, Ahmed Riza Bey certainly needs to measure the -distance between the mental, moral and humane qualities of the Japanese -and the Turk, a distance as great as lies geographically between the North -Pole and the South.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="PART_I">PART I.</h2> - -<h3>THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES AND THE -TREATY OF BERLIN.</h3> - -<p>Since the gathering of the Plenipotentiaries of Europe at the famous -Congress of Berlin in 1878, and the signing of the still more famous Treaty -of Berlin, the martyr roll of the unfortunate Armenian nation stands without -its parallel in history.</p> - -<p>In the Guildhall at Berlin hangs a picture of the memorable scene -witnessed in that city on July the thirteenth 1878. The painter has depicted -the proud array of representatives of the powerful Governments of Europe, -but in the interests of Humanity there should be attached to that painting -the wording of Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin written in letters of blood -(Armenian blood).</p> - -<p>It was a curious irony of Fate, that although the taking of “the -terrible stronghold of Kars,” universally admitted to be one of the greatest -and most difficult military exploits ever achieved, and the crowning success -of the Russian arms in Asiatic Turkey, should have been accomplished by -an Armenian General; that although Armenian Generals in the Russian -service had led to conquest, and Armenian soldiers fought, conquered and -died, yet by these successes not only was no amelioration attained of the -hard fate of their unhappy nation under Turkish rule, but that fate, hard -before, was made a hundredfold and even a thousandfold harder.</p> - -<div class="figleft" id="img5" style="width: 250px;"> - -<img src="images/i_024.jpg" width="180" height="250" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">GENERAL PRINCE LORIS MELIKOFF.</p> - -<p class="caption2">Commanded the Russian forces in Asiatic Turkey -during the Russo-Turkish war and captured the impregnable -fortress of Kars. Appointed Prime Minister -of Russia by Alexander II. The liberal policy which -characterized the reign of that excellent monarch, and -the Constitution that he was on the eve of granting to -his people were influenced by Melikoff; but after the -death of Alexander II he was not allowed to continue in -his good work of reforming Russia, being overthrown -from office early in the reign of Alexander III.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p> - -<p>The efforts of the Armenians, and the entreaties of their Patriarch -Nerses had procured the insertion of Article 16 in the Treaty of San -Stefano signed between Russia and Turkey in March 1878. In fact the -wording of the Article had been suggested by the Patriarch himself. It -provided the following stipulation for the protection of the Armenians:—</p> - -<p>“As the evacuation by the Russian troops of the territory which they -now occupy in Armenia, and which is to be restored to Turkey, might give -rise to conflicts and complications detrimental to the maintenance of good -relations between the two countries, the Sublime Porte engages to carry into -effect without further delay the improvements and reforms demanded by -local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to -guarantee their security against the Kurds and Circassians.”</p> - -<p>What followed has passed into history. The British Government of -which Lord Beaconsfield (then Mr. D’Israeli) was Premier, and Lord Salisbury -Foreign Secretary, once more pursued the old policy of baffling Russian -aggrandizement in Turkey. Afraid that her own real or fancied interests -would thereby become imperilled, England threw in the weight of her power, -and virtually commanded the substitution of the Treaty of Berlin in lieu of -the Treaty of San Stefano. Thus the substantial guarantee of a natural and -immediate protector, both able and desirous of enforcing the protection which -the Armenians then had in Russia, was taken away, and the security of impotent -words given in its stead, namely:—</p> - -<p>“The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out without further delay the -improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces -inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the -Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make known the steps taken to -this effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application.”</p> - -<p>“<i>It will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the -Powers, who will superintend their application.</i>” How this last proviso -could furnish food for laughter were it not for the terrible tragedy involved -in it.</p> - -<p>The insertion of Article 61 in the Treaty of Berlin, granted, or rather -seemingly granted, by the six Powers of Europe, proved in reality, as subsequent -events bore out, an instrument of death and torture. It was as if -the reversal of the figures had reversed the possibilities of succour and -protection, and with the death of the Czar Liberator, the last chance of the -Armenians died.</p> - -<p>The Turkish Massacres of 1875 and 1876 which led up to the Russo-Turkish -War of 1877 are historical facts too well known to need further<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> -comment in this article. The Czar Liberator stands out in history as that -noble figure—a benefactor of mankind. Through his humanitarian susceptibilities, -and his sublime efforts for their deliverance, the Christians of -European Turkey received immunity from Turkish slaughter; and the protection -of his benevolent arm was extended over that unhappy Christian -nation of Asiatic Turkey, the Armenians; at least it would have secured -them immunity from the record-breaking slaughter that followed, but the -Power that had stood behind Turkey since 1791 frustrated his endeavours.</p> - -<p>A British commentator on that page of British policy has summed it -up in the words:—</p> - -<p>“In no other part of the world has our national policy or conduct been -determined by motives so immoral and so stupid.”<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> - -<p>The same commentator, in reviewing also the result of the substituted -Treaty, fittingly remarks:—</p> - -<p>“The Turk could see at a glance that, whilst it relieved him of the -dangerous pressure of Russia, it substituted no other pressure which his -own infinite dexterity in delays could not make abortive. As for the unfortunate -Armenians, the change was simply one which must tend to expose -them to the increased enmity of their tyrants, whilst it damaged and discouraged -the only protection which was possible under the inexorable conditions -of the physical geography of the country.”</p> - -<p>It had been the constant endeavour of the Patriarch Nerses to point out -to the Armenians that their true policy lay in aiding Russian advance in -Turkey: that even if Russia were selfish in her designs, she was the only -Christian Power that would stand as their protector against Turkish or Persian -tyranny. His political foresight had already been verified as early as -1827,<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> and his strenuous life-long labours were nearing the goal in 1878, but -were frustrated by the fatal action that intervened.</p> - -<p>England, by commanding the substitution of the Treaty of Berlin in -place of that of San Stefano had taken upon herself the heaviest obligations -any nation could incur. It is unnecessary to repeat that those obligations -were never fulfilled.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p> - -<p>If the lamented death of the Emperor Alexander II was one of the most -unhappy events that could have befallen Russia; it was a hundredfold -more unhappy for the Armenian nation. His successor, who adopted repressive -and coercive measures for his own people in the place of his father’s -liberal policy, not only applied the same measures to his Armenian subjects -in his own domains, but left their countrymen under Turkish rule to -their merciless fate.</p> - -<p>Russia, twice foiled in her subjugation of Turkey, changed her policy -from that of crushing into that of upholding the Ottoman Empire. When -the horrors of the Armenian massacres, revealed to the people of England -by their own ambassadors and consuls, their own journalists and men of -letters, thrilled the hearts of men and women, when England’s “Grand Old -Man” thundered his vituperations against the “Great Assassin,”<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Prince -Lobanoff in answer to British proposals of coercion towards Turkey, conveyed -Russia’s intentions in his warning note to the Salisbury Government, -and England, who in 1878 had rivetted the Turkish yoke on the necks of -the Armenians, to use the words of an eminent British authority on Turkish -affairs, “wrung her hands and submitted.”<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> - -<p>The same authority tells us that the <i>coup de grace</i> to the intervention -of the Concert of Europe in Armenian affairs was given by Prince Bismarck, -“who in 1883 intimated to the British Government, in terms of cynical -frankness and force, that Germany cared nothing about the matter, and that -it had better be allowed to drop.”</p> - -<p>Thus the Concert of Europe, under whose aegis the aspiring Armenians -foolishly and fondly hoped to recover National Autonomy, became the cause -of dealing out to the struggling nation, not security from Turkish oppression, -but instead fire, famine and slaughter, a slaughter to which were added -devilish ingenuity of torture, and the loathsome horrors of Turkish prisons. -If before the Treaty of Berlin the Armenians had suffered from various -phases of Turkish oppression, they had at least not been pursued with the -relentless fury that followed, until the soil of the fatherland was soaked, and -reeked and steamed with the life-blood of its slaughtered sons and daughters;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> -until women and children were done to their death under the most hideous -and revolting circumstances, and tender youths and cultured men of letters -rotted in Turkish dungeons.</p> - -<p>England, with her uneasy conscience, continued spasmodic efforts in the -shape of paper remonstrances, from time to time she rallied the other powers -who were signatories to the Treaty of Berlin and by means of Ambassadorial -Identical Notes and Collective Notes sought to terminate the -horrors that were stirring public feeling at home; but Abdul Hamid, fully -cognizant of the jealousies and rivalries of the Powers, and knowing himself -secure thereby, laughed in his sleeve at all the paper remonstrances.</p> - -<p>No action was taken by the Cabinets of Europe to leash the tiger sitting -on the Ottoman throne. The lust of blood and the lust of plunder of “le -Sultan Rouge,” combined with the greed of his satellites, were allowed to -be gratified to the full on a helpless and hapless people, whilst Europe -looked on.</p> - -<p>The character of Abdul Hamid has been well summed up in the -testimony of a writer having opportunities of intimate acquaintance with him.</p> - -<p>“Il voit dans son peuple un vil troupeau qu’il peut dévorer sans pitié, -et à qui, comme le lion de la Fable, il fait beaucoup d’honneur en daignant -le croquer.”<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p> - -<p>When to these significant words, we add the following by the same -author:—</p> - -<p>“De ce qu’Abdul Hamid n’est pas bon musulman, il ne faudrait pas -conclure qu’il aime les Chrétiens; il les déteste, au contraire, et emploie -fréquemment le mot <i>giaour</i> pour désigner un infidèle ou insulter un musulman.”</p> - -<p>We have the explanation of the Armenian massacres; especially as -that unfortunate people had become by Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin, -subjects of the paper remonstrances of the Powers of Europe, and thereby -also objects of the tyrant’s vengeance.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p> - -<div class="figright" id="img6" style="width: 300px;"> - -<img src="images/i_029.jpg" width="149" height="200" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">GENERAL TER GOUKASSOFF.</p> - -<p class="caption2">Relieved the beleaguered Russian garrison -at Bayazid during the Russo-Turkish war of -1877, captured the fortress; and otherwise -distinguished himself during the war.</p> - -<p class="caption2">The other Armenian General who distinguished -himself during the Russo-Turkish -war was General Lazaroff.</p> - -</div> - -<p>That the Armenians should be constantly appealing to the Power that -had pledged itself for their protection, and that the same Power should be -constantly rallying the others, and making Ambassadorial demonstrations, -was enough to rouse the vilest passions of a nature in which no feelings -except vile passions existed.</p> - -<p>Of all sins in this world, perhaps the sin of foolishness receives the -severest punishment, and of all crimes, the crime of failure meets with the -heaviest doom. For their foolishness in trusting in European protection -and hoping for European intervention the unfortunate Armenians paid with -rivers of their own blood, and for their crime of failure they were made to -wallow in that blood. The darkest pages of their history have been written -in the closing years of the nineteenth, and the early years of the twentieth -century; never since the loss of their independence, nine centuries ago, had -they hoped for so much, and never had they paid so dearly for their folly.</p> - -<p>If they had carefully laid to heart the whole history of Europe’s intercourse -with Asia, beginning with the conquests of the Macedonian Alexander, -they would have read in the light of sober judgement, self-interest, and self-interest -only written on every line and page, but they committed the folly of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> -hoping that for their sakes the history of the world, which means in other -words the history of human selfishness, was going to be reversed; and they -forgot what was more important than all, that Europe had nothing to gain -by their emancipation. There is only one explanation for their folly. It is -a peculiarity of human nature that the troubles we have been bearing with -more or less patience, become unbearable when once hopes of deliverance -from them are awakened. Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin awakened -hopes that proved bitterer in the eating than Dead Sea fruit. It aroused -towards the Armenians the diabolical animosity of the human fiend who held -sovereignty over them.</p> - -<p>Hunted like wild beasts, killed like rats and flies, out of the depths of -its agony and its martyrdom, the nation has still contrived to rear its head -and live; for it was as it is now, the industrious, energetic, self-respecting -element in the Turkish Empire, with a virile life in its loins and sinews, that -centuries of oppression culminating in the unspeakable horrors of a thirty -years’ martyrdom has failed to exterminate.</p> - -<p>As for the Treaty of Berlin—It has done its work.</p> - -<hr /> - -<h3>THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES AND THE -TURKISH CONSTITUTION.</h3> - -<p>The Turkish Constitution came with a bound that shook the equanimity -of Europe. To the anxious and jealously watching eyes of Europe the -“sick man in her midst” was at last becoming moribund. His recovery -was as startling as unexpected. Europe had not correctly gauged the latent -forces within the Turkish Empire, neither had she correctly estimated the -far-reaching astuteness of the tyrant on the throne.</p> - -<p>Assailed by enemies from without and within, feeling the foundation of -his throne crumbling, Abdul Hamid, arch murderer and assassin, performed -his own <i>auto da fé</i>, and rose from his ashes a constitutional sovereign. The -obduracy of the merciless tyrant melted like wax before the approach of -personal danger, and the act was necessary to save himself.</p> - -<p>Hopes rose high at such a magnificent <i>coup d’état</i> of the revolutionaries. -Young Turks and Armenians fell on each other’s necks, embraced, and -mingled their tears of joy together. Leaders of the Turkish Constitution<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> -proclaimed in public speeches that the Turks owed the deepest debt of -gratitude to the Armenians who had been the initiators of their struggle for -Freedom, and in the Armenian graveyard at Constantinople Turks held a -memorial service and kissed the graves of the Armenian dead, whom they -called “the martyrs whose blood had been shed for Turkish freedom.”</p> - -<p>At the banquet given by Abdul Hamid to the Delegates of the Turkish -Parliament, the Armenian Delegates alone refused to attend, declining to be -the guest of the man responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of -their countrymen.</p> - -<p>The Armenian revolutionaries had stood behind the Young Turk party -and joined hands with them; already the nation at large imagined itself -breathing the air of Freedom, and already in anticipation drank in deep -draughts of the air of Liberty.</p> - -<p>The awakening came all too quickly. In spite of the Constitution the -machinations of Abdul Hamid and his palace clique could find fruitful ground -among a fanatical populace to whom the Padishah was not only the Lord’s -anointed but the Lord’s appointed, the delegate of the Prophet on whom his -sacred mantle had fallen; added to this the incentive of pecuniary rewards -to a brutal soldiery and the lust of plunder, and once more the horrors of -massacres were let loose on the Armenians. There followed sacked and -burning villages, plundered and devastated homes, an unarmed population -put to the sword, and as in every case, cruelties of the most hideous and -ferocious nature perpetrated on women and children.</p> - -<p>In the whole long story of the massacres, courage to face their oppressors -has never been found wanting on the part of the Armenians. It is on -record that the women of a whole mountain village surprised by Turkish -soldiers, in the absence of the men, fought and resisted to the last gasp, and -finally, to escape the clutches of the brutal soldiery, committed suicide with -their children by precipitating themselves from their mountain cliffs. A -nation which could produce such women, and which has had the simple -courage to die for its faith, as no Christian people has died before, is not -wanting in brave men, but no amount of bravery and heroism can save an -unarmed population from being mowed down by soldiery equipped with -modern instruments of carnage and slaughter.</p> - -<p>The horrors of Adana coming on the heels of a Constitution they had -aided, and from which they had hoped so much, presages grave fears for the -Armenians.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p> - -<p>No one doubts that a great forward movement is reaching its culminating -point in the destiny of Asia. The West has learnt its all of religion (the -moral and guiding principle of mankind) from the East, and now the East -would fain learn the law of restraint and the law of freedom (the protecting -principles of mankind) from the West. Inspired by this feeling the liberal -Turks decidedly mean well, and they are animated with a sincere desire to -ensure peace and security of life and property for the heterogeneous peoples -under the Turkish sway, but they themselves have had to contend and still -have to contend with a fanatical populace.</p> - -<p>To the Mahommedan world at large the Caliph of Islam is the envoy of -God, the sacredness of whose person must be inviolate. Abdul Hamid, the -astute politician, knew that the security of his sovereignty depended on his -Caliphal rights, and his main policy during the long period of his execrable -reign had been directed towards preserving and asserting the same; thus -we can see how his dethronement, which the liberal Turks would gladly have -accomplished simultaneously with the inauguration of the Constitution, had -to be deferred to a later period, and how it was necessary for the Sheik ul -Islam to pronounce the Caliph a traitor to his sacred trust, a violator of the -holy law of the Prophet, before his dethronement could be dared or -accomplished.</p> - -<p>The Christian Armenians in Turkey live in the midst of the followers -of a hostile religion, with no power or force behind them which makes for -protection. Who does not know that the great numerical preponderance of -Hinduism keeps the balance of power in India, and restrains bloody religious -hostilities; and when we review the whole religious history of Christian -Europe, and that terribly long roll of crimes committed in the name of Him -who expounded His religion with the parable of the Good Samaritan, and -the precept of loving one’s neighbour as one’s self, we cannot feel surprise at -the fanatical outbursts of the followers of Mahommed, the founder of a -religion whose doctrines certainly fall short of the humane principles -inculcated by the Founder of Christianity. If authentic historical facts prove -to us that horrible and atrocious cruelties have been perpetrated by Christian -nations, not only on other religionists, but on fellow Christians of different -denominations, how then can we expect better things from the Turk unless -some power or force restrain him?</p> - -<p>Christianity has now partly emancipated herself from the ferocities -which darkened and poured the red stream of blood on her white banner: -but to the Mahommedan world at large, religion is still the powder magazine -which a spark can ignite.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Better the Czar than the Sultan, but better any form of national -autonomy than either Czar or Sultan” has been the principle which has -animated the Armenians, and the goal towards which they have been striving -for thirty years.</p> - -<p>National Autonomy has been the dream of the Armenians in Turkey, -but it is well to consider if such a dream has any possibility of realization. -Bulgaria declared her independence, and Austria annexed Bosnia and -Herzegovina, but these reductions of Turkish power were accomplished by -the force that stood behind them. Have the Armenians any such force -which could accomplish their deliverance? Have they an organized army -at their command? Are they equipped with all the necessary weapons of -modern warfare? are questions it is well for the nation to ask before it -makes itself a target for Turkish bullets.</p> - -<p>On the other hand is it likely that the Turks will willingly give the -Armenians independence? To do so would mean that they should themselves -dismember their own Empire, and when we see Christian Governments -actuated in their foreign policy by the supremest selfishness; Christian -Governments striving tooth and nail in their own self interest to keep -possessions which are lawfully not their own, then why in the name of -common sense should we expect such extraordinary magnanimity, or such -super-nobility from the Turk.</p> - -<p>Armenia stands in the unhappy position of being divided between -Russia and Turkey (if we except Persia, which does not count for much -since 1827). It is evident that even the Czar Liberator, if he had been -allowed to carry out his humanitarian endeavours, would have liberated -Armenia from Turkey, not to give her independence but to make her into a -Russian possession, for to have given Turkish Armenia independence would -have been tantamount to fostering the spirit of independence in those provinces -of Armenia which had already passed under Russian rule.</p> - -<p>It is well known that the Emperor Alexander II was guided and influenced -by the liberal principles of Loris Melikoff (or properly Melikian -according to the Armenian termination of his name). Melikian enjoyed the -personal friendship of the Czar, and the successful victor of Kars was -rewarded by his august master with the office of Prime Minister. The policy -of Melikian made for the Russofication of Armenia, and while it is not -possible that he loved Russia more than he loved his own country, it is -rather more than probable that he saw in the Russofication of his nation the -only way of saving its people.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p> - -<p>With the death of Alexander II Melikian’s star passed out of the horizon -of Russian ministership; his liberal principles were not acceptable to -Alexander III, and the policy of Russia towards the Armenians underwent a -decided change.</p> - -<p>Since the disastrous war with Japan the policy of Russia towards the -Armenians has undergone another change. In the years preceding the war, -the reigning autocrat had pursued the policy of his father to an even greater -degree of repression. Not only had national schools and theatres been -closed in Russian Armenia and newspapers suspended, but the Czar -went still further, and confiscated the lands and the wealth of the Armenian -church.</p> - -<p>The late Armenian Catholicos Mukertich Khirimian (one of the delegates -sent to the Congress of Berlin by the Patriarch Nerses), to whom his own -people had given the beloved appellation of “Hairik” (little father) had by -his noble life of self-sacrifice, his unceasing labours for the cause of the -people, and his remarkable individuality, come to be regarded as a sort of -holy man. There in the Cathedral of Etchmiatzin, under the venerable dome -where for seventeen hundred years the successors of Gregore Loosavoritch -(Gregory the Illuminator) had each in his turn held sway, and worshipped -on the spot where the vision of Christ the Lord had descended, there before -the altar of Christ, had Hairik the holy man lifted up his voice and cursed—cursed -the Czar; and cursed Russia—Pious Russia with its pious Czar at its -head shuddered, and the astounding reverses in the war with Japan that -followed were attributed to Khirimian’s curse.</p> - -<p>Russia in Expiation made Reparation: the ban on schools, theatres and -newspapers was removed, the church lands and the church wealth were -restored, and the Czar of all the Russias in a friendly note to the Armenian -Catholicos assured him of the Imperial friendship, and the Imperial solicitude -for the welfare of his people.</p> - -<p>The return from exile of the Patriarch Ezmerlian to Constantinople, was -quickly followed by his nomination to the See of Etchmiatzin, left vacant by -the death of his predecessor, and now we hear of the Catholicos appealing -to the Russian Government to take over the protectorate of Armenia from -Turkey. Ezmerlian knows Turkey, he has been in close touch with the -liberal Turks, and he knows the Turkish nation as a whole; he knows also -that the present and immediate future of Russia is dark in the gloom of -autocratic Czardom, and a man of his intellectual attainments and liberal -principles can have no sympathy with absolutism. The appeal therefore of -the Catholicos Ezmerlian (the Iron Patriarch as he is familiarly known) must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> -be read as a premonition, that not only has all hope of wresting national -autonomy from Turkey died in his resolute heart, but also that he entertains -grave fears of the possibility of the horrors of Adana being repeated.</p> - -<div class="figleft" id="img7" style="width: 250px;"> - -<img src="images/i_035.jpg" width="150" height="200" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">MUCKERTICH KHIRIMIAN.</p> - -<p class="caption2">(Late Catholicos and Supreme Patriarch -of Etchmiatzin. Author and Poet).</p> - -</div> - -<p>Russia may go on massacring Jews until Russians have left off being -fanatical devils, and learned to be human, but however much she may pursue -the policy of suppressing nationalism, however much she may seek to absorb -the nation into herself, she has stopped at slaughter as far as Armenians are -concerned. In his appeal to Russia, the Catholicos can be actuated by no -other motive except the one motive of safe-guarding the people, of whom he -is the acknowledged head.</p> - -<p>A man of high character and a dauntless -patriot, known to his people under the -beloved appellation of “Hairik” (little -father). He was one of the delegates -sent by the Patriarch Nerses to the -Congress of Berlin in 1878. He worked -for the cause of the people during his -whole life, and died, worn out with heartbreaking -disappointments; his dying -words were, “We must not despair.”</p> - -<p>In an article entitled “The Church of -Ararat” by Henry W. Nevinson in -Harper’s Monthly Magazine of April, -1908 there is given the following interesting -account of the late Catholicos.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>The old man was sitting up in bed, a gray -rug neatly spread over him for counterpane. -There was something childlike and appealing in -his position, as there always is about a sick man -lying in bed in the daytime. One felt a little -brutal standing beside him, dressed, and well, and -tingling from the cold outside. It was a time for -soothing hands and motherly care to put this baby of fourscore years to rest. But his mother -was long ago forgotten: even his wife had been dead for half a century; and his only nurse -was a stalwart black-bearded bishop of middle age.</p> - -<p>It was a long, low room, pleasant in its austerity. The whitewashed walls, the bare floor, -the absence of all ornament, told of a clean and devoted mind. The windows looked upon a -courtyard, silent but for the murmur and fluttering of pigeons. The old man’s hands lay -quiet on the blanket, white, and wasted almost to the bone. The nightgown hid a form so -thin it hardly made a ripple under the clothes. Through the white and shrunken face every -lineament of the future skull was already visible; but on each side of the thin nose, hooked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> -like a round bow, a great brown eye revealed the inward spirit’s intelligence and zeal unquenched. -On his head was a close-fitting cap of purple velvet.</p> - -<p>Thus, near the end of last December, one of a century’s greatest men—Mgrditch -Khrimian, Katholikos of the Armenian Church, and soul of the Armenian people—slowly -approaching to death, lay in the ancient monastery called Etchmiatzin, or “The Only-Begotten -is Descended.” From the window of a neighboring room he might have looked across the -frost bound plain of the Araxes, where the vines were now all cut close and buried for the -winter. Beyond the plain stood a dark mass of whirling snow and hurricane that hid the -cone of Ararat. And just beyond Ararat lies Lake Van, last puddle of the Deluge. On the -shore of that lake, eighty-seven years ago, Khrimian was born. In 1820 the Turkish -Empire was still undiminished by sea or land; the Sultan still counted as one of the formidable -Powers of Europe. It was four years before Byron set out to deliver Greece from his -tyranny, and established for England a reputation as the generous champion of freedom—a -reputation which still rather pathetically survives throughout the Near East. Long and -stormy had been the life upon which the Katholikos now looked back, but not unhappy, for -from first to last it had been inspired by one absorbing and unselfish aim—the freedom and -regeneration of his people. It is true he had failed.</p> - -<p>From his earliest years, when he had witnessed the terrors of Turkish oppression in the -homes of Armenians round Ararat, he was possessed by the spirit of nationality—such a -spirit as only kindles in oppressed races, but dies away into easygoing tolerance among the -prosperous and contented of the world. He began as a poet, wandering far and wide through -the Turkish, Persian, and Russian sections of Armenia, visiting Constantinople and Jerusalem, -and recalling to his people by his poems the scenes and glories of their national history. -Entering the monastic order after his wife’s death, he devoted himself to the building of schools, -which he generously threw open to Kurds, the hereditary assassins of Armenians. For many -years, while Europe was occupied with Crimean wars, Austrian wars, or French and German -wars, we see him ceaselessly journeying from Van to Constantinople and through the -cities of Asia, unyielding in the contest, though continually defeated, his schools burned, his -printing-presses broken up, his sacred emblems of the Host hung in mockery round the necks -of dogs. When elected Armenian patriarch of Constantinople (1869), he was driven from -his office after four years.</p> - -<p>But the cup of Turkish iniquity was filling. The pitiless slaughter of Bulgarians and -Armenians alike was more than even the European Powers could stand. With varied motives, -Russia sent her armies to fight their way to the walls of Constantinople, and Khrimian found -himself summoned to plead his people’s cause before the Congress of Berlin. Though he -speaks no language but Armenian and Turkish, he visited all the great courts of Europe -beforehand, urging them to create an autonomous neutral state for Armenia, as they had -done with success for the Lebanon. In London he became acquainted with Gladstone; but -Gladstone was then only the blazing firebrand which had kindled the heart of England, and, -in the Congress itself Khrimian could gain nothing for his people beyond the promises of -Article 61, pledging the Powers, and especially England, to hold the Kurds in check and -enforce Turkey’s definite reforms. It is needless to say that none of these promises and -pledges were observed. Beaconsfield returned to London amid shouts of “Peace with Honor,” -and Armenia was left to stew.</p> - -<p>So it went on. Detained in Constantinople as prisoner, banished to Jerusalem for -rebellion, and finally chosen Katholikos, or head of his Church and race, by his own people, he -maintained the hopeless contest. Year by year the woe increased, till by the last incalculable -crime (1894-1896), the Armenians were slaughtered like sheep from the Bosporus to Lake<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> -Van, and the lowest estimate counted the murdered dead at 100,000. Gladstone made the -last great speech of his heroic life. England attempted some kind of protest. But rather -than join the Liberal demand for action, Lord Rosebery left his party for private leisure, and -Russia, France, and Germany combined to secure immunity for the “great assassin.” It -was the lowest point of Europe’s shame.</p> - -<p>Blow followed blow. Hardly had the remnant of the Armenian people escaped from -massacre when their Church fell under the brutal domination of Russia. Plehve ordained its -destruction, and Golitzin was sent to Tiflis as governor-general to carry it out. Church -property to the value of £6,000,000 was seized by violence, the Katholikos resolutely refusing -to give up the keys of the safe where the title deeds were kept (June, 1903). For two years -the Russian officials played with the revenues, retaining eighty per cent. for their own -advantage. But in the mean time assassination had rid the earth of Plehve, and the overwhelming -defeats of Russia in Manchuria were attributed to the Armenian curse. Grudgingly -the Church property was restored, in utter chaos, and for the moment it is Russia’s policy to -favor the Armenians as a balance against the Georgians, whom the St. Petersburg government -is now determined to destroy.</p> - -<p>Such was the past upon which the worn old man, stretched on his monastic bed, looked -back that winter’s morning. Singleness of aim has its reward in spiritual peace, but of the -future he was not hopeful. He no longer even contemplated an autonomous Armenia, either -on Turkish territory or on Russian. On the Russian side of the frontier the Armenian -villages were too scattered, too much interspersed with Georgians and Tartars, to allow -of autonomy. On the Turkish side, he thought, massacre and exile had now left too few of -the race to form any kind of community. Indeed, for the last twelve years the Armenian -villagers have been crawling over the foot of Ararat by thousands a year to escape the Kurds, -and every morning they come and stand in fresh groups of pink and blue rags outside the -monastery door where the head of their Church and race lies dying. They stand there in -mute appeal, as I saw them, possessing nothing in the world but the variegated tatters -that cover them, and their faith in their Katholikos. Slowly they are drafted away into -Tiflis, Baku, or their Caucasian villages, but nowhere are they welcomed.</p> - -<p>Some of the bishops and monks, who form a council round their chief, still look for -Europe’s interference, and trust that the solemn pledges taken by England and other Powers -at Berlin may be fulfilled. The Bishop of Erivan, for instance, still labors for the appointment -of a Christian governor over the district marked by the ill-omened names of Van, Bitlis, -and Erzeroum. I also found that even among the Georgians there was a large party willing -to concede all the frontier district from Erivan to Kars, where Armenian villages are thickest, -as an autonomous Armenian province, in the happy day when the Caucasus wins federal -autonomy. But the majority of the Armenian clergy, who hitherto have led the people, are -beginning to acquiesce in the hopelessness of political change, and are now limiting their -efforts to education and industries. One cannot yet say how far their influence may be -surpassed in the growing revolutionary parties of “The Bell” and “The Flag.” Of these, -the Social Democratic “Bell” follows the usual impracticable and pedantic creed of St. Marx. -The “Flag,” or party of Nationalist Democrats, is at present dominant, and at a great -assembly held in Erivan last August (1906) they adopted a programme of land nationalization, -universal suffrage and education, an eight-hour day, and the control of the Church property -by elected laymen. If the Russian revolution makes good progress, they will naturally unite -with the Georgian Federalists, on whom the best hopes of the country are set.</p> - -<p>Whatever may be the political future of the Armenians, they seem likely to survive for -many generations yet as a race, held together by language and religion. Except the Jews, -there is, I think, no parallel to such a survival. It is a thousand years since they could be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> -called a powerful nation. For almost as long they have possessed no independent country of -their own. For six hundred years their ancient capital city of Ani has stood a splendid but -empty ruin in the desert between Kars and the great mountain of Alagöz, which confronts -Ararat, with nearly equal height. They have been rent asunder and tormented by Persians, -Turks, Tartars, and Russians in turn. Even their religion is not nationalistic or distinctly -separate from other forms of religion, like the Jewish. Except for metaphysical shades of -difference, hardly comprehensible to the modern world, there is little to distinguish it from the -orthodox Christianity of the Near East. Yet, through innumerable disasters and attempts -at extermination, the race persists, like the Jews, with astonishing vitality, unmistakable in -characteristics which may not be exactly heroic, but lead to a certain material success. After -all, it is only in harassed and persecuted nationalities that true patriotism ever survives.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="figcenter" id="img8" style="width: 400px;"> - -<img src="images/i_038.jpg" width="165" height="200" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">MATTHEVOSE EZMERLIAN.</p> - -<p class="caption2">Catholicos and Supreme Patriarch of -Etchmiatzin. A man of high character and -great ability, also a distinguished linguist. -As Patriarch of Constantinople he was familiarly -known as the “Iron Patriarch.” Banished -by the Hamidian Government, he returned -from exile in 1908 and was shortly after elected -Catholicos of Etchmiatzin.</p> - -<p class="caption2">The Armenian Catholicos is not infallible -like the Pope. He is elected by the nation, -but his appointment is subject to the sanction -of the Czar.</p> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p> - -<h3>THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES AND THE -ARMENIAN PEOPLE.</h3> - -<p>During a period extending over thirty years the civilized world has -heard of Turkish Massacres of Armenians. Massacres of a nature so -ferocious and diabolical, so hideous and revolting, that no pen could adequately -describe their horrors.</p> - -<p>Writing in 1896, Mr. James Bryce, in his supplementary chapter to the -4th edition of his book “Transcaucasia and Ararat” makes the following -grave comment:—</p> - -<p>“Twenty years is a short space in the life of a nation. But these -twenty years have been filled with sufferings for the Armenian Christians -greater than their ancestors had to endure during the eight centuries that -have passed since the first Turkish Conquest of Armenia. They have been -years of misery, slaughter, martyrdom, agony, despair.”</p> - -<p>And the years that have followed from 1896 to 1909 have had the -same tale of woe to unfold; a tale of horrors such as have never been surpassed -in the history of nations.</p> - -<p>The opinion of the Turkish Pasha, “The way to get rid of the Armenian -Question, is to get rid of the Armenians” was followed by “le Sultan Rouge,” -and that the monster and assassin who sat on the Turkish throne from 1876 -to 1909 was not able to accomplish this policy to the bitter end of complete -extermination, was no doubt due to the grit and stubborn endurance of the -victims.</p> - -<p>A Turkish writer has made the remark, “There are Armenians, but -there is no Armenia.” This assertion would be true if meant in a political -sense only, for of all civilized races on earth, Armenians are politically one -of the most forlorn, but the country has not been wiped off the map. It still -occupies the geographical place it has held since history has been written. -The land of the Euphrates and Tigris, that Araxes valley, where, as simple -and primitive Armenians will to this day assert in unshaken belief, God made -man in His own image, and the country round the base of Ararat, where the -generations of men once more began to people the earth.</p> - -<p>Once the land of Ararat was an independent kingdom until the tide of -victory rolled over it and conquered its independence. Hemmed round by -three Great Empires, Russian, Turkish and Persian, the unfortunate geographical -position of the country became the cause of its people’s ruin.</p> - -<p>It is of bitter interest to Armenians to know that Ararat is the point -where the three Empires, Russian, Turkish and Persian, meet, whilst the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> -children of the land of Ararat have passed under the sovereignties of Czar, -Sultan and Shah. Thus it may be true that there is no Armenia in the -political sense of the word, but if Armenia has lost her independence, the -Armenian people have survived.</p> - -<p>The Author of “Transcaucasia and Ararat” thus writes of them:—</p> - -<p>“The Armenians are an extraordinary people, with a tenacity of -national life scarcely inferior to that of the Jews.”</p> - -<p>The remark is true. There are two nations of antiquity who notwithstanding -unremitting persecutions, and centuries of loss of independence, -have survived their contemporary nations; their fortunes have run on -parallel lines, though their national characteristics have been different in some -respects. Together with his other avocations, the Armenian is mountaineer, -soldier, labourer, agriculturist, while the Jew is purely a dweller in cities; but -the same virility of life, the same mental and physical strength have sustained -both. The sons of Heber, great grandson of Shem, have however become -wise in their generation, the Jew is now more American than the American, -more British than the British, more French than the French, more German -than the German. Not so the sons of Haik, great grandson of Japhet, for -with the same determined obstinacy with which he has clung to his faith, the -Armenian clings to his nationality. He has known how to resist Russian -endeavours of absorption, and Turkish systems of extermination. When he -gives up his nationality, it will be the story of the hunted animal brought to -its last gasp.</p> - -<p>The Armenians have been called “the most determined of Christians,” -a remark the truth of which has been borne out by their unequalled -martyrdom for their faith; and yet it may truly be said that in no Christian -Church is the lay element more strong than it is in the Armenian Church. -Conscious of this freedom, Armenians are surprised to read assertions made -by some writers, about “the gross superstitions” of their Church, which -they on their part regard as the happy medium between Protestantism and -Roman Catholicism. Surrounded with pomp and splendour, and a show of -outward ceremonies, which the average Armenian regards as no more than -mere adjuncts to gratify and impress the sensibilities, the Liturgy of the -Armenian Church, in its grandeur and pathos, appeals to the heart of the -Armenian people, as no other form of worship can; it is the reason, as has -truly been said of them, that “they carry their religion with them wherever -they go.”</p> - -<p>The Armenians have also been called “the interpreters between the -East and the West.” There is no doubt a certain adaptability which is a -national characteristic; and as language is the vehicle of comprehension,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> -their talent for acquiring languages helps to bring them into touch with -Eastern and Western peoples; but the main truth of the observation lies in -the fact, that being born Asiatics, and living for the most part in the midst of -Asiatic surroundings, they fall into the ways of Asiatic life; they understand -Asiatics better, and know how to sympathise with them; whilst on the other -hand, their religion is the religion which has moulded the thought of the -West, and consequently also the religion that has moulded the thought of -a people who were the earliest Christians.</p> - -<p>The main point of social difference between them and other Asiatic -nations, lies in the exalted position occupied by their women, and this point -of difference may be traced to that one cause or influence, which has exalted -the position of women in the West, the doctrines of Jesus of Nazareth. -This point of difference in social life, together with the difference of religion, -has always kept them separate from Persian and Turk.</p> - -<p>Private and trustworthy information to hand brings the news that the -ex Sultan Abdul Hamid, aware of his impending dethronement, desired to -bring about a general massacre of Christians in Constantinople, beginning -with the foreign Embassies downwards. “I must be the last Padishah, even -though Turkey perish,” was Abdul’s frantic appeal to his satellites, but his -minions, not daring to venture on so dangerous an undertaking, planned the -massacres to begin at the village of Adana, inhabited by the unfortunate -Armenians. It was a safe plan, since the Armenians had no battleships to -turn their guns upon Constantinople, and by the bombardment of the capital, -to seek revenge for the murder of their countrymen.</p> - -<p>A massacre so wanton as that of Adana, can only find its counterpart -in the other Turkish massacres of Armenians which preceded it.</p> - -<p>“Abdul the Damned” has been dethroned, but he has not been -executed, and so long as he continues to draw breath, as long is there danger -for the Armenians.</p> - -<p>We hear of the Mahommedans in India cabling their petition to the new -Turkish Government to spare the life of the ex-Padishah and the ex-Caliph of -Islam; the erstwhile “God’s shadow on earth” and the erstwhile “God’s -envoy on earth” the sacredness of whose person should be inviolate. In -this demonstration of the Indian Mahommedans, we can read the epistle of -Mahommedan thought, and feel the pulse of Mahommedan feeling all over -the Sunni Moslem world.</p> - -<p>Although intensely mercenary, Abdul Hamid however not only never -grudged the gold which helped to accomplish the Armenian massacres, but -he used it largely in douceurs which purchased silence or false representations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> -of his diabolical acts, and it was by means of such douceurs that he -went farther than seducing merely his own subjects.</p> - -<p>“Mais l’oeuvre de l’impérial corrupteur a dépassé les limites de son -Palais et de ses États, N’a-t-il pas, en effet, étouffé sous des baillons dorés -la voix d’importants organes de la presse européenne? N’a-t-il pas acheté à -l’étranger des politiciens et même des diplomates?</p> - -<p>“Saïd Pacha ayant recherché ce qu’en six mois les massacres d’Arménie -avaient coûté au Trésor turc, en allocations à certains journaux européens, a -établi le compte approximatif suivant: 640 décorations, et 235,000 Livres -Turques (près de cinq millions et demi)!”<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p> - -<p>It needs not be added that no one who knows the truth of Turkish affairs, -doubts the truth of this impeachment.</p> - -<p>“But whatever the future may bring, the past is past, and will one day -fall to be judged. And of the judgement of posterity there can be little -doubt.”</p> - -<p>In these memorable words, Mr. James Bryce in the supplementary -chapter of his book “Transcaucasia and Ararat” concludes his criticism on -what he calls “the fatal action followed by the fatal inaction of the European -Powers.”</p> - -<p>It is true. As surely as the world revolves on her own axis, and as -day succeeds night, so surely History will record and Posterity will judge. -But what compensation to the Armenians? What compensation for the -rivers of blood that have inundated their land? What atonement for the -hideous past? What relief for the present? What hope for the future?</p> - -<hr /> - -<h3>THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES AND THE FUTURE -OF THE ARMENIANS.</h3> - -<p>The above is a subject for profound meditation for the Armenian -people; it has therefore naturally for me occupied much deep thought.</p> - -<p>National Autonomy has been the dream of the Armenians; a dream -which through centuries of oppression and years of slaughter, the nation has -been striving and struggling to realize. The oldest of historical nations, we -have held to our nationality, language and religion; we have struggled and -striven, and though billows of affliction have swept over us, we have not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> -allowed ourselves to be engulfed. “Love is stronger than Death” and -truly the Armenian has loved his nationality with a steadfastness and tenacity -that has conquered death.</p> - -<p>Steady, stubborn grit, combined with a remarkable natural intelligence -have been characteristics of the race, and have kept us alive in spite of -national adversities, such as no other nation could have suffered and -survived.</p> - -<p>But our position is an acutely unhappy and an acutely unfortunate one. -Our misfortunes began with the physical geography of our country. Surrounded -by three great empires, our kingdom was strangled by the overwhelming -pressure, and to-day our country is divided up between Russia, -Turkey and Persia. For this reason we have been a great deal more -unfortunate than the Balkan States, and now if there were any possible -chance of wresting autonomy for Turkish Armenia from Turkey, Russia -fearing the spread of the same spirit in her own provinces, would assuredly -not only frown on such an attempt but use all the means in her power to -crush it.</p> - -<p>There is also a stern fact which a people so politically helpless and -forlorn as ourselves must ever bear in mind, namely, that we live in an -intensely selfish and intensely grasping world; no prating the pretty -nonsense of Western Civilization, or Western Humanity, or Western -Christianity can alter that stern hard fact as it stands, and as it has stood -since the history of our world has been written.</p> - -<p>Indeed, nineteenth century civilization, which has made the world of -commerce acutely grasping, has also made the world of Politics unscrupulously -selfish.</p> - -<p>However much it may clothe itself in the garment of fair speech, -what we call “Politics” is actually made up of that one devouring, absorbing, -grasping element—Selfishness. “The friends of to-day may be -enemies to-morrow” is more truly spoken in the domain of Politics than -anywhere else.</p> - -<p>Let the Armenians take a lesson not only from the Turkish massacres, -but from the attitude of Europe towards those massacres? Let them look -back on the past, and remember how they have been trampled under the -merciless foot of Political Selfishness, and then left to welter in their gore.</p> - -<p>Who doubts, who can gainsay, that by so much as the lifting up of a -finger the Powers of Europe could have stopped those massacres? Was -that finger ever lifted up, however, all through the long years of “slaughter, -martyrdom, agony, despair” to save our helpless people from butcheries so -enormous, so hideous, so appalling that no pen could portray the horrible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> -realities? Had the Turkish bonds been in jeopardy, Constantinople harbour -would have witnessed the battleships of the Powers of Europe discharging their -cannon on the capital of the Turkish Empire, but a hundred thousand or five -hundred thousand Armenians, more or less, mangled and butchered to death, or -fleeing from their sacked and burning villages to die of cold and starvation in -their mountain passes, could not rouse action on the part of Europe, even -though the Concert of Europe had been instrumental in their destruction.</p> - -<p>I do not write with a desire to indulge in recriminations, since vain -recriminations will not bear profitable fruit; but I write with the object of -impressing on my countrymen to remember, always to remember, the lessons -written on the pages of a past that should never be forgotten by us.</p> - -<p>In his book “Our Responsibilities for Turkey” the late Duke of Argyll -quotes from the famous despatch of a British Ambassador to Turkey, the -date being given as September 4, 1876. The despatch proceeds thus:—</p> - -<p>“To the accusation of being a blind partisan of the Turks I will only -answer that my conduct here has never been guided by any sentimental -affection for them, but by a firm determination to uphold the interests of -Great Britain to the utmost of my power; and that those interests are deeply -engaged in preventing the disruption of the Turkish Empire is a conviction -which I share in common with the most eminent statesmen who have directed -our foreign policy, but which appears now to be abandoned by shallow -politicians or persons who have allowed their feelings of revolted humanity -to make them forget the capital interests involved in the question.</p> - -<p>“We may and must feel indignant at the needless and monstrous -severity with which the Bulgarian insurrection was put down; <i>but the -necessity which exists for England to prevent changes from occurring here -which would be most detrimental to ourselves is not affected by the question -whether it was 10,000 or 20,000 persons who perished in the suppression</i>.</p> - -<p>“We have been upholding what we know to be a semi-civilized nation, -liable under certain circumstances to be carried into fearful excesses; but the -fact of this having just now been strikingly brought home to us all cannot be -a sufficient reason for abandoning a policy which is the only one that can be -followed with due regard to our interest.”</p> - -<p>I quote this famous despatch merely to point out that “due regard to -our interest” was carefully followed out in the Past by the Powers of Europe, -and that “due regard to our interest” will be just as carefully followed out in -the Present and in the Future.</p> - -<p>From the Turk and Persian, the Armenian must ever remain separate, -as he has through centuries, though living in the midst of them, -remained separate. The gulf that divides the one nation from the other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> -two, the wall of iron that rises between them is the position of woman. The -Armenian has accepted whole-heartedly the position in which woman has -been placed by the Great Founder of his faith. For seventeen hundred -years unremittingly since Christianity was revived in Armenia by Gregory -the Illuminator, the Christian law with regard to the position of woman has -moulded the thought of the nation, it has left its impress on the nation, and -it is this vital and essential difference between the law of Mahommed and the -law of Christ that like a two-edged sword has cleaved apart Christian -Armenian from Moslem Turk and Persian.</p> - -<p>If “East is East, and West is West” it is on account of the social plane -on which woman stands, a social plane that is never so degraded in any -corner of Asia, as it is in the countries where the law of Mahommed governs.</p> - -<p>The Armenians in Asiatic Turkey are scattered and dispersed among -Turks and other antagonistic races; they are without any military force or -organization to wrest autonomy from the military and governing power. -That Europe should aid their endeavours, or that Turkey should make them -a free gift of autonomy, are both of them absolutely out of the question. -Then what remains for us?</p> - -<p>To hold to our own nationality and to be subject—Subject to Russia, -subject to Turkey, subject to Persia—What shall it profit us? What will -it profit? What doth it profit us? Our strong, clever, energetic men, our -beautiful, intelligent women, when neither chance nor opportunity can enable -our finest and best to reach the higher rungs of the world’s ladder, and -when as a subject people we must ever remain hewers of wood and drawers -of water, even our Aivasowskis and our Melikoffs have been known to the -world as Russians, not as Armenians. Have we a chance of bursting the -fetters? Have we strength to break the chains? Can we reach the goal -toward which, bleeding and torn, we have been striving, and still are striving? -These are questions which we must ask ourselves; looking them soberly in -the face.</p> - -<p>But this is not enough: if we must persist in holding to our nationality, -we must look into ourselves, we must search out and probe our national -failings and our national weaknesses, and find out in what essential characteristics -we are wanting as a nation, and so build up national character. Let -us weigh ourselves in the balance, and supply what in us is found wanting.</p> - -<p>In the period of less than a decade a Great Power has risen in the -Orient. The people of a small island empire with an empty Treasury have -beaten successfully and disastrously a colossal empire of whom the Powers -of Europe had stood in awe, and against whom not one had ventured single-handed -to engage.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p> - -<p>On the field the ever victorious army of little Japan undermined Russia’s -stronghold, and succeeded in driving back and ever driving back the ever -defeated and ever retreating army of colossal Russia. At sea the ever -victorious Japanese Fleet succeeded in completely annihilating the Russian -Fleet. It was war such as the world had never yet seen. The secret of -such astounding successes should be investigated, and here I beg leave to -quote from one of a series of articles in which I gave view to my opinions -during the Russo-Japanese War. “Japan may be likened to the bundle of -faggots in the fable firmly tied together; one faggot of larger dimensions in -the centre, the sovereign round whom the whole nation clusters, and all, -ruler and people tied together by adamantine bands of patriotism.”</p> - -<p>These remarks of mine were based on observations of actual facts. In -national unity Japan stands as an object lesson to the world; she furnishes -an example which the world needs to copy, and which a nation so politically -forlorn as ourselves more than any other needs to copy.</p> - -<p>From the astounding success of Japan let us turn to the position the -Great Republic of the United States of America occupies in the world, and -take the lesson to heart of what Union can accomplish as we contrast their -present position with the position that the handful of puritan pilgrims occupied -when they first landed on American soil not quite three hundred years ago.</p> - -<p>National Unity is our greatest need; it is the banner which we must -raise up over our national life. National Unity must be engraven on the -tablets of our minds and throb in the pulses of our hearts. There are -mountains of difficulties before us, and if ever we must reach the goal we -can only do so by being bound together like the bundle of faggots in the -fable, with no weakening or loosening of the bands. Then perhaps we -might once more be able to get an independent footing on the historical soil -of our fathers, and perhaps once more rally round our own flag. A Japanese -lives for the State, not for himself; we have no State for which to live, -but let us live for our communities whilst we keep the hope in our hearts -that communities grow into States.</p> - -<p>We have grit and endurance in an unparalleled degree, but these -characteristics will profit us nothing if we are wanting in unity.</p> - -<p>Let us remember that utterance of the Founder of our faith. In our -loyalty and allegiance to Him our life-blood has flowed like the torrents of a -cataract, but we must remember His warning utterance:—</p> - -<p>“What shall it profit a man.” What shall it profit a nation. Unity is -the soul of a nation. Let us keep our soul and not lose it.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p> - -<h3>THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES AND CIVILIZED -EUROPE.</h3> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Hear then ye Senates! hear this truth sublime,</div> -<div class="verse">They who allow Oppression share the crime.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel -weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because -they were not.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>In the twentieth century of the christian era, in the age of trumpeted -progress, of boasted and vaunted civilization, there is a Ramah of countries, -a desolated Ramah, blackened and calcined with the fires of oppression, and -over her desolated wastes there flows, flows, continually flows, ever replenished -and ever renewed, that red stream which crieth up from the earth -to God: and out of this modern Ramah, a voice is heard of lamentation and -bitter weeping, it riseth up in its boundless anguish to reach the heavens, it -crieth out and will not be stopped, for it is the voice of the Rahel of nations -weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are not.</p> - -<p>Ah! thou Rahel of nations! to the cry of thy boundless anguish, to thy -lamentation and bitter weeping, Christendom and Civilization, the Christendom -and Civilization of Europe have replied “Are we thy children’s -keepers?”</p> - -<p>Who that has read the history of the Crusades has not turned with -sickening disgust from the chapters wherein history has recorded the savage -barbarities and fearful excesses of those christian warriors, who went to -Palestine ostensibly fired with the enthusiasm of a holy cause, but in reality -only to glut in slaughter and gratify brutal passions. Europe has, however, -designated her past as the “dark ages” into which she has thrust back, the -ferocious outbursts of religion, the merciless persecutions of the church, the -savage sweep of the barbarians of the north, and the unbridled tyrannies of -despotic power, from all which she loudly boasts to have emancipated herself, -and like the evolution according to the Darwinian theory of the anthropomorphal -ape, to have progressed into the state of civilization. But -beginning from the last quarter of the nineteenth and on into the first decade -of the twentieth century, the horrors of the darkest ages in human history -have lain at her doors, and towards these horrors Europe has kept up the -role of an extenuatingly disclaiming, a mildly rebuking, sweetly frowning, -smilingly denouncing, Disapprover.</p> - -<p>Half a million Armenians annihilated by organized massacres of the -most ferocious and hideous natures, and perhaps a corresponding number<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> -fated either to rot to death in Turkish prisons or made homeless and -destitute to die of cold and starvation, with Europe nonchalantly looking on -is surely convincing proof that the Humanity, Christianity and Civilization of -Europe are whited sepulchres, hiding by the smooth outside the rottenness -within; therefore ye priests of the gospel come down from your pulpits, close -your churches, hold your tongues and be silent for ever, for the Christianity -you preach has bowed itself out, if ever it existed, in Christian Europe. -The Christ of Europe is the demon of greed and the demon of land hunger, -and the god of civilization is Mammon.</p> - -<p>In 1878 an astounding policy was carried out by Great Britain; it was -the crowning act of her long continued support to Turkey, a government -she knew to be hopelessly vicious and profoundly cruel and bad to the core. -With this Power, England posing before the world as the home of freedom, -the friend of the oppressed, and the defender of the rights and liberties of -man, entered into a Convention. It was called the “Anglo-Turkish Convention,” -of which Article I reads thus:</p> - -<p>“If Batum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them, shall be retained by Russia, -and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by Russia to take possession -of any further territories of his Imperial Majesty the Sultan in Asia, -as fixed by the definitive Treaty of Peace, England engages to join his -Imperial Majesty the Sultan in defending them by force of arms. In return -his Imperial Majesty the Sultan promises to England to introduce necessary -reforms, to be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the government -and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte -in these territories. And in order to enable England to make necessary -provision for executing her engagement, his Imperial Majesty the Sultan -further consents to assign the island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered -by England.”</p> - -<p>It is well to remark here what was blazoned to the world at the time that -part of those “<i>necessary reforms</i>” “<i>in these territories</i>” include twenty-two -large organized massacres of Armenians (besides smaller ones) dating from -September 30th, 1895 to December 29th, 1895; and be it remembered that -these were massacres of a hideousness and ferocity of nature even devils could -not rival; besides also other organized massacres by the Turkish Government -of the same nature (large and small) both before and after that period.</p> - -<p>The British press, followed by a large section of the British public, -raged against what they called the advance of Russia in the East, as they -had already raged for half a century past. It is astonishing how one nation -can swallow its own camels and strain at the other’s gnats.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p> - -<p>However, this Anglo-Turkish Convention and the Congress at Berlin -was the crowning act of England’s support and defense of a power whose -rule had been characterized by mis-rule, massacre and oppression. Her -prime minister returned from the Congress of Berlin loudly proclaiming -“Peace with Honour.” Of that “Honour” Time has been the test, and -Time has revealed to the world that “Peace” in its true character.</p> - -<p>Dating from the Congress of Berlin the supreme tragedy of Armenia -begins; deliberately and without compunction England revived the dying -tyranny of Turkey for the Armenians, deliberately and without compunction -she took away from them (a people politically the most helpless and forlorn -of all civilized nations) the only protection they had of a powerful neighbour -willing and able to enforce its protection, and rivetted on their necks the -yoke of the cruellest oppressor that the world had yet known. The history -of the rule of the house of Osman up to the thirty-fourth Padishah was knowledge -enough and experience enough for the British Government and the -British people, and yet in the last quarter of the civilized nineteenth century, -the great and enlightened Christian power of Great Britain proceeded to -carry out and complete this gigantic political crime of fastening on the necks -of a struggling Christian people, the last remnants of an ancient civilization, -the merciless yoke of their oppressors. From that time onward history -must mark the course of the supreme tragedy of Armenia.</p> - -<p>The bold move taken by the Patriarch Nerses of sending delegates to -the Congress of Berlin cost the renowned prelate his life, his firm refusal to -recall his delegates aroused the last fury of Turkey’s Padishah; the Patriarch -was stealthily murdered and his genius and great personal influence lost to -the cause of his people.</p> - -<p>But a loss greater than the loss of their beloved leader befell the -Armenians in the assassination of the Emperor Alexander II, whose untimely -death plunged Russia back into the night of ignorance, bigotry and superstition, -of the savagery and slavery, out of the darkness of which he was leading -her; the best and noblest of Czars was succeeded by a son whose policy -shaped itself directly contrary to that of his father’s, and Russia from being -the help of the Armenians under Turkish rule turned into one of the pillars -of support of their oppressor.</p> - -<p>“Since 1884,” writes Mr. James Bryce, “it has been generally understood -in Constantinople that the Russian Embassy has made no serious -effort to bring about any radical change in Turkish administration, and it was -indeed believed that the more England remonstrated the more did Russia -point out to the Sultan how much he had erred in supposing that England -was his friend.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> - -<p>We have it on the authority of Professor Arminius Vambéry that the -Czar Alexander III had given assurances of his friendship and support to -Sultan Abdul Hamid; and there are not wanting political students who affirm -that the Armenian Massacres were in part instigated by Russian politicians -who saw, or professed to see, in a free Armenia an impediment to Russia’s -advance in the south and a fostering of the spirit of independence in the -Russian provinces of Armenia.<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> This on the authority of Mr. James Bryce -was the reason which Prince Lobanoff assigned for his refusal to give -support to British proposals of coercion towards Turkey. “On January -16, 1896,” so writes Mr. Bryce, “when the massacres had gone on for -more than three months, he (Prince Lobanoff) ‘saw nothing to destroy his -confidence in the bonne volonté of the Sultan, who was’ (”he felt assured“) -‘doing his best.’” And Mr. Bryce continues to add “Turkey, which in -1877 had looked to England for help against Russia, now turned to Russia -for support against the menaces of England.”</p> - -<p>We have it also on the authority of Mr. Bryce that shortly after the -terrible and cold-blooded massacre of Armenians at Constantinople “the -German Ambassador presented to the Sultan a picture of the German Imperial -family which he had asked for some time ago”<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> and the friendship of Kaiser -Wilhelm for Abdul Hamid “his friend and brother,” as an American writer -has called him; the costly gifts presented by the ex-Sultan to the German -Imperial family, the magnificent reception of the Kaiser at Constantinople, -and the still more magnificent concession of Turkish territory to Germany, -are too well known to the world to need any further comment.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p> - -<p>Thus it became the fate of the unfortunate Armenians to be the bruised -and mangled shuttle-cock of powerful bats.</p> - -<div class="figleft" id="img9" style="width: 200px;"> - -<img src="images/i_051.jpg" width="150" height="200" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">NERSES VARJABETIAN.</p> - -<p class="caption">(Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople).</p> - -</div> - -<p>Much has been written and much has been said by great authorities, -(far more comprehensively and by pens much more forcible than my humble -efforts could aspire to reach) against the selfishness and callousness, the -inhumanity and cynicism of those great powers which have coldly looked on -and permitted the hellish atrocities and horrors of the Armenian Massacres. -The name of William Ewart Gladstone is loved and revered by Armenians -all over the world; but the thunderings of that veteran statesman and the -denouncing protests of those thoughtful men whose feelings of revolted -humanity have made themselves heard in sounding language, have fallen on -stony ground; they have been like the voices of men crying out in the wilderness. -Europe has turned a deaf ear to the condemnations of justice and -truth, even as she has turned a deaf ear to the voice of Rahel weeping for -her slaughtered children.</p> - -<p>The victim of Abdul Hamid’s -revenge who was stealthily murdered -in his bed. He was elected Patriarch -in 1843 and held the highest place in -the esteem and affection of his people. -Mr. James Bryce gives his age at the -time of his election in 1843 as -seventy-three; if this is correct then -he was over a hundred years old -when he was foully murdered. Mr. -Bryce writes of him as, “the worthy -leader of his nation,” “a man of -high character and great ability.”</p> - -<p>A writer signing himself Beyzadé -gives the following account of the -Patriarch’s tragic death in the July -number of “The Wide World:”</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>The attempted poisoning and subsequent -death of Monseigneur Nercès Varjabétian, -the Armenian Patriarch and Archbishop of -Constantinople, was a revolting illustration -of the inhuman and barbarous tactics of the -Yildiz Kiosk “Camarilla.” Monseigneur -Nercès Varjabétian was not only one of the -most prominent prelates of the Armenian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> -Church, but was also a fearless patriot—a distinguished linguist, an eloquent preacher, and a -thorough gentleman in every sense of the word. When peace was concluded between Turkey -and Russia, and preparations were being made for the Berlin Congress, it was he who, in -spite of the feared fanatical uprising of the Turks, threw prudence to the winds and took -a step that will long be remembered in the annals of Armenian history.</p> - -<p>At the first meeting of the Berlin Congress the Turkish delegates were thunderstruck to -learn from official sources that an Armenian delegation had arrived from Constantinople, sent -by Monseigneur Nercès, the Patriarch, their object being to request the signatory Powers of -the Berlin Treaty to force a guarantee from the Turkish Government to make certain -important improvements in Armenia.</p> - -<p>Abdul Hamid and his advisers were furious at this affront, and Monseigneur Nercès was -summoned to the Palace. It is said that when he received the summons he simply smiled -and asked one of his curates to read the Burial Service to him, as he did not expect to -return alive. However, he went. No one has ever heard what passed between the Sultan -and himself at the interview; suffice it to say that he immediately summoned the Armenian -General Assembly and tendered his resignation. This was not accepted by the Assembly, -and, amidst enthusiastic cheers, he was carried back to his apartments at the Patriarchate. -Meanwhile a peremptory order reached him, signed by the Sultan, to recall the Armenian -delegation from Berlin. This Monseigneur Varjabétian point-blank refused to do, and retired -to his private residence at Haskeuy, a village on the Golden Horn. The success of the delegation, -however, did not come up to his expectations. The Armenians, as it happened, could -not be heard, but they were so far successful as to have an article inserted in the treaty.</p> - -<p>The Sultan and his advisers never forgave the Patriarch this, though they could not -openly do anything to him on account of his enormous popularity. Time passed on, and to -all appearance the incident was forgotten, but it was not so. One summer afternoon a most -cordial invitation was sent by a very high dignitary of the Palace, requesting the Archbishop -to dine with him informally. An invitation of this kind could not very well be refused, so -the Archbishop, accompanied only by a body-servant named Vartan, repaired to the Pasha’s -house. The Pasha received him at the door and escorted the visitor with much ceremony and -extreme courtesy to a private apartment of the salamlik of his house (the men’s quarters), -where dinner was served. The geniality displayed by his host dispelled any fears that the -Archbishop might have had as to his personal safety.</p> - -<p>After dinner, as usual, coffee was served. Now, this serving of the coffee is rather a -ceremonial according to high Turkish etiquette, and it is not unusual for guests to bring their -own <i>tchooboukdar</i> (the servant who carries his master’s pipe and pouch and also superintends -the making of his coffee). The Archbishop was presented with a “tchoobouk” (pipe) filled -and lighted for smoking, and a servant followed with coffee. The Archbishop accepted both -with due compliments to his host, and took a sip at his coffee. Just at that moment the -heavy curtains over the doorway were thrown apart, revealing the ghastly pale face of his -servant Vartan, who cried, in Armenian, in a voice trembling with emotion, “Monseigneur, -I did not brew the coffee!”</p> - -<p>This was enough for the Archbishop; he pretended to be startled and spilt the coffee, but, -alas! he had already drunk a small quantity of it. Meanwhile a scuffle was going on behind -the <i>portière</i>, where his poor servant Vartan was paying the penalty of his devotion to his -master. Concerning Vartan’s whereabouts or his ultimate end nothing was ever made public—the -poor fellow simply vanished. Monseigneur Varjabétian, after a short interval thanked -the Pasha for his generous and kind hospitality and took his departure. On the way home he -was taken violently ill and a doctor was hastily summoned. The Patriarch took to his bed, -and lost all his hair through the effects of the poison. Then, one morning, when a servant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> -took his breakfast upstairs he found, to his horror, that both the bedroom door and the -window were wide open and his beloved master lay dead in his bed, which was covered with -blood! There are no such things as coroners and juries in Turkey to ascertain the causes of -mysterious deaths of this kind, but the news that the Patriarch was dead spread like wildfire -through Constantinople. The Sultan himself thought it advisable to show some concern in -the matter, and aides-de-camp from the Palace were sent to the Patriarchate to learn the full -details of this “sad catastrophe,” as they termed it. The official statement was that the -Archbishop died of dysentery. Only a very few know how the Archbishop had died, and -they wisely kept their mouths shut.</p> - -<p>I was told the details of this story by a high official of the Armenian Patriarchate. It -seems that as the poison did not act as quickly as the Patriarch’s enemies had anticipated, -owing to his having been cautioned in the nick of time, they “had to resort to other means”! -The funeral was the largest ever witnessed in Constantinople, with an escort of Turkish -cavalry sent specially by the Sultan, and representatives of all the religious denominations -and the Diplomatic Corps. I was myself present, representing a foreign Government.</p> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="PART_II">PART II.</h2> - -<h3>OUT OF THE DEPTHS.</h3> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that -I might weep day and night for the slain of my people.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>A book has been written and published in Japan, its title “Niku Dan” -translated into English, reads, “Human Bullets.” This little book, a -narrative of the siege of Port Arthur, after being read through the length -and breadth of the empire, found translators to translate it into the best -known of languages; and its young author, himself an actor in the siege, -was summoned to the presence of his sovereign to be thanked and praised. -The book is a graphic narrative of the most terrible siege in history, wherein -is vividly portrayed the deadly struggle of the besiegers. It contains as an -acknowledgement of its merit, a page on which is recorded the Field -Marshal’s appreciation, and another page bearing the Commanding General’s -commendation.</p> - -<p>In simple narrative the author carries the reader through appalling -scenes of horror, and as we read we are made to realize the slaughter of -the enemy’s machine guns, of their ground-mines, electric-wire entanglements, -and exploding shells; we are made to hear the roar of the artillery -fire dealing death and destruction, and there rises before us the mental vision -of the fierce hand to hand conflict, and the dead and dying lying thickly in -the dark ravine.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“For hill and battle plain,</div> -<div class="verse">With dying men and slain,</div> -<div class="verse">Grew mountain heights of pain,</div> -<div class="verse">And mine is boundless woe.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>The grim warrior who stormed and took the most impregnable fortress -in the world gives expression to his feelings on his own great achievement, -in saddest words.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“And mine is boundless woe,”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>For the grim warrior’s heart is cleft in twain for the human bullets that -under his command hurled themselves to their death.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p> - -<p>In the world’s greatest war, human bullets were sacrificed for the -protection of hearths and homes and a nation’s existence, moreover the -human bullets were made of men who fought and died for sovereign and -country.</p> - -<p>But there is a counter picture of horrors in which also there has been a -sacrifice of human bullets, made not only of men but of women and children, -human bullets, not of soldiers, themselves fortified and equipped with -instruments of slaughter for fighting and grappling with the foe, but human -bullets of unarmed men, of helpless women and children, of youth and old -age, caught like rats in a rat-trap; and these human bullets have been -sacrificed to the savage lusts of murder and plunder of the world’s fiercest -oppressors, and to the political and commercial interests of civilized nations.</p> - -<p>In the first decade of the civilized twentieth century, a horrible and -wanton slaughter of unarmed men, of helpless women and children has been -perpetrated with all the accessories of cruelties unsurpassed for their -fiendishness: whole towns and villages have been desolated, homes pillaged -and destroyed, not only men, but women and children subjected to hideous -deaths and nameless horrors, which no pen could depict in their true realism, -and the details could never go into print, and this wanton slaughter, even as -the many of a similar nature that have preceded it, has come and gone like -a ripple on a smooth sea.</p> - -<p>No cry of horror has risen from the hearts of civilized nations! Turkey -can butcher the helpless victims of her greed and carnivorous instincts with -impunity, since Christendom and Civilization are busy only with Turkish -concessions, with land grabbing and money making.</p> - -<p>“Human Bullets”! “Human Bullets”! here are human bullets of -heavier rain than at the world’s grimmest siege; here are “sure death -detachments” hurled to a more pitiful fate; and the civilized world does not -care, for Armenian Massacres come and go, and the civilized world is getting -used to them. But in the eternal order of things, a Nemesis follows human -actions, be they of individuals or of nations. Material Prosperity is a great -and good thing, but Moral Prosperity is greater and better. The Armenians -may be done to their death, the last remnants of an ancient civilization may -be exterminated and consigned in their blood to oblivion; but to the nations -grown great in material prosperity that for their own selfish interests can -allow and condone this hellish extermination, history teaches a mighty -lesson. The moral cancer eating into the moral sense of nations, saps -moral prosperity which in its turn undermines material prosperity. Great -Empires once flourishing have decayed through moral poverty. History -repeats itself.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p> - -<h3>WHAT THE TURKISH CONSTITUTION MEANS -FOR THE ARMENIANS.</h3> - -<p>A year has passed since the inauguration of the Turkish Constitution; -since the first glad cries of “liberty, fraternity, equality” were resounded as -heralds of the peace and prosperity that were to follow; but although a -whole year has passed, the Turkish Constitution, thus far, has only paraded -itself as a spectacular effect, and as a panorama on shifting sand.</p> - -<p>A whole year has passed and the liberal Turks have produced neither -a Prince Ito nor an Abraham Lincoln, though both were urgently needed to -meet the pressing exigencies and heavy responsibilities of the times; and we -may well ask now, Where is the man who is to hold the helm of the Constitutional -ship and steer it over the turbulent waters?</p> - -<p>The task of the new régime was the most difficult that could have -fallen to any administration. Beset on the one hand by the jealousies, -rivalries, and political intrigues of European Powers; on the other, by the -machinations of that “Red Beast” the ex-Sultan and his murderous and -corrupt clique, by disappointed plundering pashas and officials (compelled -to grant their arch enemy the ex-Sultan a lease of life through fear of a -fanatical populace), the liberal Turks on their own part have not brought to -bear upon their work any administrative ability, when extraordinary powers -of governing and the highest and strongest genius for administration were -absolutely needed. The Turk has always shown to the world that he is a -born fighter, but a puerile administrator.</p> - -<p>For the Armenians the Constitution has resulted in two conditions—Massacre -and Oppression; their hopes and aspirations have ended in the -death throes of, as some accounts give, thirty thousand and others fifty -thousand of their unhappy race, in homelessness and precipitation into -absolute destitution of a few more thousands,<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> and in insecurity for the nation -at large. An unarmed population scattered and dispersed among a hostile, -murderous and fanatical populace; their position even under the new régime -is to be compared to that of herbivorous animals standing at bay in the -midst of ravening wolves.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p> - -<p>His spiritual interests call upon the Moslem Turk and the Moslem Kurd -to murder the Christian Armenian; his material interests to plunder and -enrich his own idleness with the worldly goods the other has acquired by his -industry and toil, and the prosperity and well-being that the Armenian -labours to bring to the fairest provinces under the sun are swooped upon -and devastated by the brigandage of his enemies. Religious fanaticism and -lust of plunder have always been governing elements in the Turkish massacres, -and against these same religious fanaticism and lust of plunder, the -Armenians stand to-day in deadly peril under the new régime.</p> - -<p>What more is to follow? Our hearts sicken to forecast, and our -minds tremble to foresee. Are the balance of our striplings and our greybeards, -our pen-men, and our ploughmen to be made to rot in Turkish -dungeons, condemned to such loathsome horrors as can only be perpetrated -in Turkish prisons? Are the balance of our women to be subjected to -agonies so hideous and revolting that death at the fiery stake or on the iron -rack were mercy and bliss? Are the balance of our babes and children to -be exterminated like vermin? Are the balance of our people, the industrious, -intelligent, clean, self-respecting element in the Turkish Empire, -to be yet again hunted like wild beasts and killed like rats and flies?</p> - -<p>We are not wild and lawless descendants of Jenghis Khan and -Tamerlane: we are peace-loving, law-abiding citizens, lovers of language and -literature, of the arts and sciences, energetic traders, hardworking tillers of -the soil, industrious artizans and labourers, producing in ourselves all the -elements that constitute the society and well-being of civilized man; and as -the oldest Christians, we ask of Christian nations, if we are to be trodden -out?</p> - -<p>On the soil of our fatherland we are surrounded by a murderous, -marauding, religion-frenzied populace, and neither Humanity nor Christianity -will hold out to us a helping hand.</p> - -<p>If nothing else were done for the Armenians, at least Christian governors -should be appointed over the provinces inhabited by them: we do not -expect the Turkish Government to do this of their own initiative, but we have -a right to expect the European Powers that were signatories to the Treaty of -Berlin to compel the new régime to do it. Since the signing of the famous -Treaty of Berlin thirty-one years ago, the history of the Armenians has been -written in blood and tears, as the history of no other nation has been written -before or now; and we ask, How long? How long will the Christian -Powers stand silent witnesses to the work of slaughter and oppression carried -on under their eyes?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p> - -<p>Alas! the weight of the Turkish bonds is too heavy in the scale, and -Armenian life too light; the selfish interests of the European Powers involved -in the Turkish Empire cannot be endangered to save the blood of three or -four millions of Armenians, and the death warrant of an oppressed and bleeding -nation can find no place on the table of the Hague Conference of Peace -and Civilization.</p> - -<hr /> - -<h3>THE ARMENIAN QUESTION.</h3> - -<p>In the closing pages of “Twenty Years of the Armenian Question” -published in 1896, its distinguished author,<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> one of the greatest authorities -on the subject, makes the following notable comment on the character and -fate of the Armenian race.</p> - -<p>“They had maintained their nationality from immemorial times, before -history began to be written. They had clung to their Christian faith, under -incessant persecution for fifteen centuries. They were an intelligent, laborious -race, full of energy, and increasing in numbers wherever oppression and -murder did not check their increase, because they were more apt to learn, -more thrifty in their habits, and far less infected by Eastern vices than their -Mahommedan neighbours. They were the one indigenous population in -Western Asia which, much as adversity had injured them, showed a capacity -for moral as well as intellectual progress, and for assimilating the civilization -of the West. In their hands the industrial future of Western Asia lay, -whatever government might be established there; and those who had marked -the tenacity and robust qualities of the race looked to them to restore prosperity -to these once populous and flourishing countries when the blighting -shadow of Turkish rule had passed away. But now, after eighteen years -of constantly increasing misery, a large part, and, in many districts, the best -part, of this race has been destroyed, and the remnant is threatened with -extinction.”</p> - -<p>These remarks made in 1896 by a great and disinterested authority -with a profound knowledge of the subject he was writing about, stand as true -to-day as when they were written. From 1896 onwards, events following -in succession one upon another have proved the truth and soundness of his -opinions.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p> - -<p>Can the Armenians hope now for any change in their condition under -Turkish rule? To this question, we must answer an emphatic No!</p> - -<p>The causes that must operate against any change are many and deep-seated. -In the first place it cannot be expected that a few Turks of liberal -ideas (or it may be French polished) at Constantinople, are going to change -the thought and character of the nation. The characteristics of a people -change very slowly, if they ever change at all, and the predominant national -traits of the many-blooded modern Turk have been shown to the world to -be, cruelty and fanaticism, combined with a fierce sensuality; and what is -more than all, and which has to be remembered most, is, that they are a -people accustomed to the unbridled gratification of their worst passions.</p> - -<p>The ethnographic traits of the Turkman which history bears out, are -wildness and fierceness, and it would not be incorrect to argue that with the -instincts of his primitive ancestors have been assimilated the many cross -currents that run in his veins, into all of which has been infused the -doctrines of the religion of the sword, a religion which does not make for -the peace or well being of mankind; a religion, also, which assigning one of -the two sexes to the degraded position of being created solely for the gross -pleasure of the other, does not make for the exaltation of mankind.</p> - -<p>To quote again the eminent authority previously referred to: “No -Mahommedan race or dynasty has ever shown itself able to govern well -even subjects of its own religion, while to extend equal rights to subjects of -a different creed is forbidden by the very law of its being.”</p> - -<p>Not the Jewish conceit proclaiming itself God’s elect and chosen, and -originating the name “heathen” which it scorned. Not the Christian conceit -emanating from the Jewish source, and laying the flattering unction to its -soul of superiority over the “heathen” of its own time. Not the unbending -caste exclusiveness of the Brahman across whose path even the shadow of -the despised Sudra falling would be deemed defilement. Not any of these, -can equal the intolerant religious pride of the Mahommedan, or reach the -pinnacle of religious self-sufficiency on which he has seated himself. To be -a Mahommedan, is enough—<i>Cela suffit</i>.</p> - -<p>To any one who has familiar acquaintance with Mahommedans, and -intimate with Mahommedan thought, one fact must strike itself most forcibly, -and that is, the Mahommedan is above all things a Mahommedan. His -religion is the paramount question in his life, and remains its predominating -feature above everything else. This should not be surprising, since to the -“faithful” Paradise is secured, and all crimes and transgressions against -“unbelievers” absolved.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p> - -<p>Added to these important factors of racial characteristics, influences of -religion, and long grown habits of the Turk, we have also in Turkish -Armenia another evil, from which the other provinces of the Turkish Empire -fortunately for themselves have been exempt; this super-added evil, is, the -large neighbouring bodies of Kurds and Circassians, greater marauders and -depredators than the Turks, the regular occupation of whose lives comprises -murder and robbery, and who have through weary centuries unremittingly -quartered themselves upon the industrious christian peasants, and lived on -the fruits of their labour and toil. Indeed as the Hamidieh cavalry which -was established expressly for the Hamidian massacres was composed of -these Kurds, it ought to be matter of speculation what outlet these warriors, -trained and practised in organized murder, can now find for those habits in -which they were encouraged and trained to indulge by the Hamidian -régime.</p> - -<p>Under all such conditions no hope of better days can be forthcoming, -no prospect of better times seems possible, for that unhappy portion of the -Armenian race whom force of circumstances keeps on the soil of the -fatherland.</p> - -<p>The appointment of Christian governors over the provinces inhabited -by them might ameliorate some of the evils, or the other alternative, -of allowing the use of arms to all alike, irrespective of creed or -nationality, would furnish some means of self-defence against the raids -and barbarities of the oppressors; but even if such concessions were granted, -life for the christian peasant subject to Turkish rule, and living in the midst -of his enemies, must remain one long struggle and battle against pillage, -murder, depredation, and offences of the worst nature. Not the most fertile -soil, not the most favourable climatic conditions, not the most assiduous -industry, not the most peace loving, law abiding instincts, can bring to the -Armenian peasant under Turkish rule even a modicum of that comfort, -happiness, and security of life and property, which the law of all civilized -countries guarantees to the industrious labourer and tiller of the soil.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p> - -<h3>OPEN LETTER TO THE HONORABLE PRESIDENT -WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT.</h3> - -<p><span class="smcap">Excellent Sir</span>,</p> - -<p>You are the President of the mighty Republic of the United States of -America, and I am only an obscure unit of a forlorn and helpless nation, but -encouraged by the intrinsic qualities of your head and heart, and also by the -record of great and noble services rendered in the cause of oppressed -humanity, by certain of your predecessors in the presidential chair (so -encouraged) I venture humbly to address you. The annals of that presidential -chair on which you sit are clear and bright as the noonday sun; turning -over the pages of their brightness, I am encouraged to address you its -present occupant.</p> - -<p>Your immediate predecessor rendered a great service in the interests -of Humanity, by bringing a terrible and bloody war to its close. His staunch -strong hand of friendship was held out to the gallant nation fighting heroically -for its national existence, whilst the might of his iron will strenuously contested -and made the peace which will ever be associated with his name, but -there was a peace which his great heart wished to break but could not -succeed in breaking, and which his upright mind has branded as -“infamous”: such are his own words “the infamous peace kept by the joint -action of the great powers, while Turkey inflicted the last horrors of butchery, -torture and outrage upon the men, women and children of despairing -Armenia.”<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> For thirty-one years the great European Powers kept up -by joint action an infamous peace, and out of regard for their own selfish -interests allowed a corrupt, vicious, gangrened and blood-thirsty power to -wreak its hellish atrocities not only on the men, but on the women and -children of a helpless nation.</p> - -<p>These are strong words, but they are true, and you will agree with me -that the meanest and humblest of God’s creatures has a right to speak the -truth, and that greatest is the right to speak the truth, when it is spoken in -the cause of murdered, outraged and misery-stricken humanity.</p> - -<p>The yoke of Turkey rivetted on the necks of the Armenians by England -in 1878, was rivetted again by Russia, and yet again rivetted by Germany. -The political interests and the commercial interests of Europe have trampled -us under foot; we have been sacrificed on the altar of the political animosities -of England and Russia, and given over, men, women and children to butchery,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> -slaughter, imprisonment, torture; we have been crushed under the iron -wheels of the Baghdad railway, a greater Juggernauth for us, while the ex-Sultan -received his payment and “bartered a kingdom for the Kaiser’s -friendship”; and yet again we have been crushed when British diplomacy -checkmated William of Hohenzollern’s dream.</p> - -<p>The death warrant of our bleeding nation has found no place on the -table of the Hague Conference of Peace and Civilization since the selfish -interests of the European Powers would give it no abiding room. President -of a great and free Republic, let it be the work of your mighty hands to lay it -there. The Cabinets of Europe have turned a deaf ear to the death shriek -of our bleeding nation, let our despairing cry be heard now in the Senate of -the United States of America.</p> - -<p>It remains for the historian of the future to record the Armenian -Massacres as the foulest blot and the blackest stain on European Civilization -and European International Morality, but in addressing you now I will turn -down the pages of the hideous Past, and humbly lay open the pages of the -Present, on which is clearly written the deadly peril in which our nation stands: -the book is open, and who will may read. For it is not the goodwill of the -new régime that has to be taken into calculation, as far as the Armenians -are concerned, but the powerfulness or the powerlessness of the new régime -to make for their protection.</p> - -<p>How can we forget Adana? A whole town and villages sacked and -desolated; fifty thousand of our men, women and children done to horrible -deaths, and the residue left to homelessness and starvation. How can we -forget that the arch-enemy of Christian and liberal Turk still lives, dethroned but -not executed, and that through fear of his worshippers and his adherents the -liberal Turks are compelled to pamper and support the monster assassin -of the world? When such difficulties beset the path of the liberal Turks, -the rulers, what security is there for a subject people, alien in race and -religion?</p> - -<p>President of a great and free Republic, we need a friend, we ask for -your mighty hands to be held out to us in succour, since the number of our -enemies are legion: even Nature has arrayed herself against us in the -inexorable conditions of the physical geography of our country. Shall the -President of a mighty Republic with noble traditions; shall the christian men -and women of the United States leave us to our terrible fate?</p> - -<p>“To serve Armenia is to serve Civilization.” These words were -spoken by a great and revered statesman; the noble handiwork of his -Creator (William Ewart Gladstone), now gone to his honored rest. “Do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> -not let me be told that one nation has no authority over another” was his -reply to the Armenian deputation which waited on him in 1894. Let his -reply be your answer to us now, President of a mighty Republic; let it be -your answer written in golden letters across the banner of that great -civilization, of which you are the presiding head.</p> - -<p>The Republic of the United States of America has been compared to -that grain of mustard seed, which when planted in the earth budded forth -and grew into such dimensions that the birds of the air lodged under the -branches thereof. I pray that the shadow of those branches be extended -over my bleeding nation.</p> - -<hr /> - -<h3>ABDUL HAMID, THE TRIUMPH OF CRIME.</h3> - -<p>A monster assassin! Has he been brought before the bar of his -country, tried and condemned to the penalty of death, such as in the days -of his power he meted out to hundreds of thousands of innocents? Has he -been cast into a loathsome prison, such as the many in which thousands of -his victims have rotted and died? Nay! not so! it is not so decreed in -Turkey.</p> - -<p>In Turkey, a camarilla of murderous and plundering pashas, and a -fanatical and marauding populace stand behind a Padishah who knew how to -furnish gratification for the murdering and marauding instincts of his -adherents. Nay! neither death nor imprisonment for the Padishah whose -sovereignty was the most auspicious for brigandage and murder. Who -dares to slay or imprison the demigod of rapine and despotism? Such -things cannot be done in Turkey.</p> - -<p>For crimes that were in comparison as light as air, those puerile tyrants, -Charles of England and Louis of France forfeited their heads. Poor Charles -and Louis! Your heads chopped off and your bodies trundled away in a -cart: no glorifying spiritualized titles of Zeid and Imam read out in your bills -of indictment; such glorifying spiritualized titles are reserved for monster -assassins in Turkey.</p> - -<p>In Turkey, a monster assassin whose list of murders rank him as premier -assassin of the world, who under heel of iron and fire annihilated the rights -and liberties of his subjects is pensioned off to live in purple and fare sumptuously: -housed in a luxurious palace, he sits on carpeted divans, supported<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> -by silken and velvet pillows, with eleven ministering houris, the youngest -and fairest of his past entourage, to solace the “dolce far niente” of his -deposed Padishahdom. Ample leisure, possible opportunities to hatch plots -for the subversion of law and order, and the revival of the reign of plunder -and massacre. But it is so allowed in Turkey. It is enough to be a Caliph -and a Padishah to be able to count victims, not by thousands, but by hundreds -of thousands, and remain immune from punishment for mountains of crime.</p> - -<p>What evil, what woe and desolation hast thou not wrought, spiritualized -Zeid and Imam, Caliph and Padishah? And yet thou art allowed to live! -Evil genius of thy people! thou hast worked out their moral degradation to -the lowest depths that a nation could fall; but limitless evil, supremest woe, -hast thou worked over the nation whose country thou turned into a charnel -house of slaughter, and over whom thy reign of thirty-three years hung like -a pestilence. Who can count the multitude of thy crimes against them, who -can measure the height and the depth of the woe that thou laid over their -lives. Hearths and homes pillaged and desolated, harvest fields turned into -rivers of blood, not thousands upon thousands, but hundreds of thousands of -men, women, and children tortured with devilish ingenuities of torture, imprisoned -in loathsome dungeons, outraged, butchered, slaughtered, hunted -like wild beasts, left to homelessness and starvation.</p> - -<p>Enough blood to drown a leprous souled and gangrened souled Padishah -and his gangrened pack of followers! Enough crime to hang a Caliph!</p> - -<p>Out with thy Caliphate! even by the law of thy prophet, that fierce son -of the desert, the Caliph is ordained protector of the weak and helpless; -what didst thou with thy thirty-three years of Caliphal power, except crush -the weak and annihilate the helpless.</p> - -<p>The very earth has echoed with the dying cry of the least of them, those -“christian puppies” with little bodies piled up one upon another, and little -heads struck off together at one stroke; with the frenzied shrieks of mothers -who have seen with their own eyes the slaughter of their children, with the -anguished wail of women, with the death groans of youth and old age. Aye! -the very earth has echoed with the dying gasp of that righteous man, the -venerable sire of his people, the renowned nonagenarian whom thou stealthily -silenced on a bloody bed into the sleep of death for trying to save his flock -from thy hyena jaws.</p> - -<p>An explosive bomb shattered the life of thy crowned opponent, (a noble -life consecrated to the welfare of his people) but no chance or opportunity -directed any explosive bomb to shatter thy cadaverous body. No jeweled -pistol or secret dagger like the many that have dripped with the blood of thy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> -victims in thy Yildiz Kiosk, found its way to thy treacherous heart. No -poisoned cup of coffee like the countless cups brewed in thy palaces trickled -down thy throat to end thy vampire existence.</p> - -<p>Thou hast lived! Protected from the Nemesis of thy crimes by the -jealousies and rivalries of great powers which thou artfully played one against -another; by the combined forces of religion and plunder which thou cunningly -wielded into one. Even so thou livest! Peerless living example in the -civilized twentieth century of the Triumph of Crime.</p> - -<hr /> - -<h2>L’AVENIR.</h2> - -<p>In the foregoing pages I have directed my humble efforts to sketch out -what the Powers of Europe have done in the past, and how their actions -have reflected on my unfortunate race.</p> - -<p>It is considered good policy now by a certain class of European writers -to ascribe all the horrors of the Armenian Massacres to Hamid the despot, -to represent him as a tyrant as unassailable and unconquerable as he was -implacable, in short as a sort of superhuman being who swept everything -before him to the consummation of his own despotic will. The reason for -this is not difficult to perceive. They would fain disavow the part Europe -has played in the tragedy, and to do this successfully it becomes necessary -also to present Turkey to the world now as a paradise (from whence the -tyrant once removed) peopled only by saints and angels; so we have also -many roseate colored word pictures of Constitutional Turkey.</p> - -<p>The murders, deportations and imprisonments of the Turkish revolutionaries, -or more correctly reformers, were undoubtedly the sole work of -Abdul Hamid and his palace clique, but Abdul and his minions could not -have carried out that hellish work of wholesale extermination of the -Armenians without the perpetration and participation of the Turkish -people. It is true the massacres were originated and organized in the -Palace, the Palace clique stirred up religious fanaticism and race hatred, but -the co-operation of the people was necessary; and the people co-operated -in order to plunder and enrich themselves with the worldly goods that the -Armenians always knew how to acquire by their own industry and toil; the -appeal to their marauding and bestial instincts met with a ready response. -It was moreover easy work for a race of brigands, especially as their numbers -exceeded their victims by about ten to one and who were practically unarmed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p> - -<p>The first Armenian Massacres of Abdul Hamid were tentative; he -began by feeling the pulse of Europe; he found that the six Signatories to -the Treaty of Berlin accepted the situation, he was thus emboldened to -carry out that long and awful list of horrors that stands without its parallel -in history. Clearly it was in the power of Europe to have prevented both -the massacres and all the agonizing sufferings that came in their train, but -Europe took no preventive action.</p> - -<p>Let us ask the question, Who and what are these Turks, whom Europe -for her own sordid ends has petted and pampered and helped and supported? -and the answer comes with striking force to-day over the lapse of a century, -in the words of one of England’s greatest sons: “I have never before heard -that the Turkish Empire has been considered any part of the balance of -Powers in Europe. They despise and contemn all Christian princes as -infidels, and only wish to subdue and exterminate them and their people. -What have these worse than savages to do with the Powers of Europe but -to spread war, destruction, and pestilence among them? The Ministers and -the policy which shall give these people any weight in Europe will deserve -all the bans and curses of posterity.”<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p> - -<p>To-day the Powers of Europe are armed to the teeth. To-day they are -groaning under the burden of armaments which they are increasing with -breathless speed although the burden grows heavier. To-day all Europe is -trembling lest the hell-hounds of war be let loose. Has any political student -put his finger on the cause which began, the beginning and the source of the -evil, the Alpha of the Omega. I have put my finger on it—the beginning and -the source—The jealousies and rivalries of European Politics in the Turkish -Empire. According to an Eastern proverb “The flies are always round the -honey,” but sometimes the flies stick in the honey.</p> - -<p>Politicians of the Governments of Europe have said in the pride of their -hearts “There is no God.” Particularly has this spirit of cynicism and -heartlessness governed the actions of Russian politicians after the death of -Alexander II. Since 1881, they have looked upon the extermination of the -Armenians just as the pathfinder in a forest would look upon a dense forest -growth, the clearing away of which would make out a path for him and lead -to running streams and harvest fields. In the eyes of Russian politicians -the unfortunate Armenians have been the forest growth which has stood in -the way of their advance to the South and into Persia, and they have looked -on with intense satisfaction at the exterminating process of the Turk, which -they have regarded as the helping hand that clears away the difficulty confronting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> -them. But precisely whether Russia can grow strong by the pouring -out of Armenian blood, and whether her empire will be extended by -their hellish extermination remains to be solved by the future. One thing, -however, the history of the world points out, that iniquity ends, not in -strength, but in dissolution; and “The wages of sin is death.”</p> - -<p>Politicians of Europe have, in the pride of their hearts, arrogated to -themselves that power, which appertains to the Creator; they have imagined -that they hold the world in the hollows of their hands, and the misery or -happiness of millions of human beings has weighed as nothing in their -estimation, against the interests of what they have designated “our sphere -of influence,” but they have forgotten what they need to be reminded that -the Creator is mightier than the creature and that the eternal law of heaven -and earth changeth not for politicians.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“And the First Morning of Creation wrote;</div> -<div class="verse">What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens -are the work of thy hands.</p> - -<p>“They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax -old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be -changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.”</p> - -<p>When the heavens and earth shall perish, shall wax old as a garment -and be changed as a vesture; whence shall endure the power and principalities, -the empires and spheres of influence of him who is called man?</p> - -<p>“As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he -flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place -thereof shall know it no more.”</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p> - -<h2>THE ORIGIN OF THE ARMENIANS—THE INTRODUCTION -OF CHRISTIANITY INTO ARMENIA—DECLINE -& GRAND REVIVAL.</h2> - -<p>“God shall enlarge Japhet and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and -Canaan shall be his servant.”</p> - -<p>For the interpretation of this blessing of Noah’s to his eldest son, and -of how it may or may not have met with its fulfilment, I shall leave to -theologians to discuss, and only record it here as a quotation from Genesis. -Beyond the story of his connection with the flood, and this blessing with -which his father blessed him, and the genealogy of his sons, we read nothing -more in Genesis, of Japhet, this mighty father of the Caucasian race.</p> - -<p>The genealogy in Genesis runs thus:</p> - -<p>“The sons of Japhet, Gomer and Magog and Madai, and Javan, and -Tubal, and Meschech, and Tiras.</p> - -<p>“And the sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz and Riphath and Togarmah.</p> - -<p>“And the sons of Javan; Elishah and Tarshish, Kittim and Dodamin.</p> - -<p>“By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every -one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.”</p> - -<p>Only the names of the three sons of Gomer, and the four sons of -Javan are given in Genesis, and by these we are told were the isles of the -Gentiles divided. So much for Genesis.</p> - -<p>Later history records that these Gentiles spread themselves over part -of that stretch of terra firma which now goes by the name of Europe, developing -their own families, and their own nations, and originating their own -tongues, and also they spread themselves over other parts of the surface of -the globe, populating where they could, ruling where they could.</p> - -<p>But through the roll of centuries which lost themselves into the flight of -thousand years, one branch of the sons of Japhet kept themselves on the land -where Noah planted his vineyard, and round the base of that mountain from -whence his descendants began to spread and people the earth.</p> - -<p>Tradition has woven a romance round the names of towns and villages -in Armenia. “No aighee” (Noah’s vineyard) is the name of a village -supposed to be the place where the patriarch planted his vine; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> -“Nakhitchvan”<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> -meaning (first -descent) where -Noah is supposed -to have descended -from the ark; also -“Mairand” meaning -(mother is -there) where -Noah’s wife is supposed -to be buried; -and “Erivan”<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> -meaning (that -which can be seen) -supposed to be the -land in the distance -which could be -seen when Noah -descended from -the ark.</p> - -<div class="figright" id="img10" style="width: 300px;"> - -<img src="images/i_069.jpg" width="300" height="300" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">MINARET AT ERIVAN, ONE OF THE CITIES TRADITION -ASCRIBES TO BE FOUNDED BY NOAH.</p> - -</div> - -<p>Armenian history -begins with -Haik, the first chief -or king of the -tribe: he was third -in descent from -Japhet, and fourth in descent from Noah, and his genealogy is given thus: -Haik the son of Togarmah, the son of Gomer, the son of Japhet, the son of -Noah.</p> - -<p>“They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses and -horsemen and mules” is the designation given by Ezekiel, 27th chapter 14th -verse of the merchants of Armenia trading with Tyrus.</p> - -<p>Haik revolting from Belus, the Nimrod of Genesis, the son of Cush and -grandson of Ham, retraced his footsteps from the plains of Shinar, where he -with others had tried to build the tower whose top should reach into heaven, -and with his followers and children settled himself round the base of Ararat.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p> - -<p>Perhaps a nascent fire of patriotism was burning in Haik’s heart as he -retraced his steps to the land of his father’s or grandfather’s childhood: -perhaps owing to the circumstances under which he was placed, he had not -the alternative of another choice.</p> - -<p>We read in Armenian history that Belus sent the following message -to Haik:</p> - -<p>“Why didst thou go to that cold country? Were it not better for -thee to have moderated thy pride, and submissively dwelt on my territory -in any part thou wished.”</p> - -<p>To which Haik replied:</p> - -<p>“It is better to die bravely than to bow down in fear to that presumptuous -man who would be worshipped as a god.”</p> - -<p>Whatever causes may have influenced Haik, his choice of country was -geographically most unfortunate for the race he founded, and it may truly be -said that owing to its geographical conditions affording facilities for the -march of conquerors, to have been instrumental in bringing about the overwhelming -and unequalled adversities that through weary centuries have -followed like a grim fate the footsteps of his descendants.</p> - -<p>No geographical position on the surface of the globe could have been -more unfortunate, hemmed round by larger territories, with no natural -defences or boundaries, and no outlet to the sea, except the lake of the -Caspian on the one side, and the lake of the Black Sea on the other, that -land on which Haik chose to found a country and a nation, has been soaked -with the blood and the tears of this branch of the sons of Japhet.</p> - -<p>The animosity between Haik and Belus continued, and later, according -to Armenian historians, Belus was slain in battle by an arrow from the bow -of Haik.</p> - -<p>We read the following record of Belus in Genesis: “he began to be a -mighty one in the earth.” “He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: -wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.”</p> - -<p>In Armenian history, Haik is depicted as a man of powerful physique -and gigantic stature; no man of his time being able to bend his bow or -shoot his arrow. Moses of Chorene, the chief of Armenian historians, -quoting from the learned Syrian Mar Abbas, writes of him thus:</p> - -<p>“He was graceful and well built, curly haired, pleasing in appearance, -and strong armed, and it might be remembered that among the heroes of -his time he was the most remarkable of all.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p> - -<p>However that may be, Armenian history awards to Haik the proud -distinction of having overcome and slain Belus, the mighty hunter Nimrod.</p> - -<p>The people who retraced their steps from the plains of Shinar, and -settled round the base of Ararat called themselves “Hai” after their chief, -and they named their country “Haiyastan,” and these names still continue -to be used in the Armenian, or “Haiyérane” as the Armenians call their -own language.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="img11" style="width: 400px;"> - -<img src="images/i_071.jpg" width="400" height="265" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">GREAT AND LITTLE ARARAT.</p> - -</div> - -<p>I will pass over the periods when the son and grandson of Haik ruled -over Armenia, and only mention that the mountain known to the world as -Ararat was called by the Hai “Masis” after their king Amasia and great-grandson -of Haik. To this day, Armenian peasants and others dwelling -round Ararat, call the mountain “Masis.” I remember in my childhood -having seen an Armenian periodical entitled “Masis,” which showed that the -name had been steadily kept up.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p> - -<p>I will again pass over the periods ruled by the successors of Amasia, -and relate the story of King Aram, who ended his brilliant reign in B.C. -1796 after ruling over Armenia fifty-eight years.</p> - -<p>He was a great and powerful prince, and extended his dominions, and -grew to be so mighty in battle that the neighbouring nations called his -country Aramia and the people were called Aramians, such names as -Armenia or Armenians being no doubt later corruptions.</p> - -<p>The first victory of Aram was over Neuchar king of Media, whom he -took prisoner and put to death, and made a large part of the country of the -defeated prince tributary to his own. The second victory of Aram was over -Barsham king of Babylon, whom also he took prisoner and put to death. -The next victory was over the king of Cappadocia; the army of the -Cappadocians was pursued to the very shores of the Mediterranean, and the -whole of Cappadocia fell into the hands of Aram B.C. 1796. Also Ninus -king of Assyria, at one time an eager enemy, awed by the victories of Aram, -sought to cultivate his friendship.</p> - -<p>No doubt if the volumes and scripts of paper or parchment of the famous -Alexandrian library, which burned for six months as fuel in the four thousand -baths of the city, had escaped that most atrocious act of vandalism, and been -preserved instead, vast treasures of knowledge now lost to us concerning -the ancient kingdoms of Western Asia might be known in our day; and also -when the tide of Islam victory rolled over the kingdom of Armenia, how -much of the story and history of the people was lost and destroyed along -with the destruction of their independence it would be difficult now to calculate -or assert, but in taking up link by link of whatever knowledge has been left -to us, there seems to be grounds for supposing that the “Aramæans” -designated by foreign writers as “a people of Semitic race, language and -religion, coming from Northern Arabia and settling in the region between -the western boundaries of Babylonia and the highlands of Western Asia” -were no other than the Hai who under their King Aram had spread their -conquests and their kingdom into Mesopotamia and even to the shores of -the Mediterranean.</p> - -<p>Herodotus also rather corroborates this conjecture when he includes -Northern Mesopotamia, together with the mountainous country of Ararat, -under the name of Armenia, and in writing of the Armenian boats that -brought merchandise to Babylon, he remarks that they were constructed in -Armenia, <i>in the parts above Assyria</i>.</p> - -<p>Archæological researches have laid the claim that the modern Armenians -are the descendants of the old Hittites; the modern Armenian being supposed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> -to be the survival of the ancient Hittite tongue, and it is asserted almost -everything that is known in the Hittite language is Old Armenian in form: -but who these Hittites were, or whence they came neither historian nor -archæologist have been able definitely to ascertain. In the Armenian -version of the Bible, we find the name “Kethosi” used for the Hittite who -were known to the Assyrians and Egyptians as “Ketha,” but this can have -no important bearing since the Bible was translated into the Armenian -language from the Greek in the fifth century of the Christian era, and the -Armenian scribe no doubt simply translated what he found in the Greek.</p> - -<p>According, however, to all known history the Hittites were a warlike -and conquering race and ranked among the foremost of the nations of Western -Asia. The modern historian has come to the following conclusion concerning -them: “Their primitive home is thought to have been in that part of -Armenia where the Euphrates, the Halys, and Lycus approach nearest -to one another; and it is even asserted that the modern Armenians are -descendants of the old Hittites. From this point they began their career -of conquests, probably under the leadership of some able and vigorous chief, -whose ambition overleaped his native boundaries. One conquest led to -another. Their leaders acquired great armies, and subdued many nations, -until the Hittites became one of the most powerful peoples of ancient times, -and their kings were able successfully to defy even Egypt, at that time the -strongest nation on the globe.”</p> - -<p>This description accords with Armenian history; the Hai being known -from time immemorial as a warlike race, and extending their territory by -conquests, until, as I have narrated, under the leadership of Aram their -kingdom spread from the mountains of Upper Armenia to the shores of the -Mediterranean and into northern Mesopotamia, which proves that almost all -of Asia Minor was conquered by them, and according also to Armenian -history the language of the Hai was introduced into Cappadocia by King -Aram.<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p> - -<p>Allowing, however, for the many obscurities of Armenian history, confusion -comes in, when historians or archæologists ascribe a Mongolian -ancestry to the Hittites, whereas Armenian history holds its unquestionable -ground firmly and decidedly on the Japhetian ancestry; and the peculiar -physiognomy of the Armenians; the oval contour of face, the distinctive, -prominent nose, large eye, and well marked arch of eyebrow do not show any -traces of Mongolian ancestry. It follows therefore that if the Armenians are -the descendants of the Hittites, then the Hittites were not of Mongolian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> -ancestry. If the Hittites were the Hai, the name must have undergone -corruption during the course of centuries and it is reasonable to suppose -that they shared the fate of all conquerors, and after a period of power, -were driven back from the shores of the Mediterranean to their own native -home.</p> - -<p>Aram was succeeded by his son Ara, a prince of such singular and -surpassing beauty that he was surnamed “Ara the Beautiful.” The famous -Semiramis, wife of Ninus king of Assyria, attracted by his great personal -beauty offered him her affections and her throne after the death of her -husband, but her proffers of love were scornfully rejected by Ara, who -according to the story related of his own love was passionately attached to -his queen Nuvard. The proud Semiramis, scorned, enraged and mortified, -declared war against Ara and entered his country with her armies; a battle -was fought in which Ara leading his army was slain, although Semiramis -had given special instructions to her troops to be careful of his life and bring -him to her a living prisoner.</p> - -<p>The death of Ara was evidently a grief to Semiramis, for she established -his son Kardos on his father’s throne. She also built a town and fortress -on the shores of Lake Aghthamar, now called Van, the battlefield on which -the beautiful Ara pursued by her fatal love lost his life. The town and -fortress were named “Semiramakert” meaning “built by Semiramis.”</p> - -<p>The name of the highest mountain in Armenia which the people of the -country called “Masis” came to be known as Ararat, it is supposed to be -derived from the Armenian words “Ara-i-jard” meaning “the defeat of -Ara” or “the undoing of Ara.” If this version is correct, the name is -likely to have been used in derision by the Assyrians. According to another -version the name of Ara was converted into Ararat, and the country called -after him. Thus we read in the account of the flood given in Genesis:</p> - -<p>“And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of -the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.”</p> - -<p>In the Armenian version of the bible, we read “on the twenty-seventh -day of the month,” but likewise as in English “upon the mountains of -Ararat.” This is not surprising since the designation “thaghavoroothune -Araratian” meaning “the kingdom of Ararat” is in use in the Armenian -language.</p> - -<p>I have alluded to the reigns of Aram and Ara to show how the Hai -have come to be called Armenians and how their country has come to be -named Armenia; also whence the name, Ararat; and as I purport here -only to treat of the origin of the Armenians, I shall now pass on to the no -less interesting period of their history:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY.</p> - -<p>When that great event bearing the message “on earth peace, goodwill -toward men” celebrated throughout the Christian world as the divine birth, -took place in the city of Bethlehem; Abgar the son of Arsham reigned in -Armenia.</p> - -<p>That country was now broken in -strength, the severe blows dealt on the one -side by the Roman Empire, and the incessant -warfare of the Persian on the other, -had greatly curtailed her former independence -and power; the talons of the Roman -Eagles were already felt in her vitals, and -the king of Armenia subsisted under the -favor of the Roman Emperor, whilst it -became necessary for him to cultivate the -friendship of his powerful neighbour, the -king of Persia.</p> - -<p>Whilst in Persian territory, whither he -had gone to settle the dispute that had -arisen on the death of the Persian monarch -between his sons, Abgar had contracted a -severe disease, evidently leprosy.</p> - -<div class="figleft" id="img12" style="width: 200px;"> - -<img src="images/i_075.jpg" width="150" height="200" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">ABGAR KING OF ARMENIA.</p> - -<p class="caption2">Converted to Christianity in A.D. 34. -Baptised by the Apostle Thaddeus.</p> - -</div> - -<p>The wonderful cures and miracles of -Christ were reported to him by the representatives -he had sent to the Roman General Marinus in Jerusalem. -These representatives had gone to refute the charges brought against him by -King Herod, and to propitiate the Roman Power; they came back to tell -what they had witnessed in Jerusalem, of the singular wisdom and wondrous -works of a marvellous man named Jesus, who was of Nazareth, but whom -his own followers persisted in calling the Son of God.</p> - -<p>The story relates that Abgar was deeply impressed by what he heard, -and expressed his own belief that man could not do such wondrous works as -were related of this Jesus the Nazarene. Thereupon the King sent messengers -to Jerusalem with a letter to Jesus. What a touch of human nature -is here displayed; the king is suffering from a loathsome disease, the medical -skill of his country and of neighbouring countries has been exhausted, all in -vain; the royal heart is stricken as well as the royal body, for his disease is -so loathsome, that although he is king, his subjects would rather shun than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> -approach him; he hears of this wonderful man Jesus, his representatives -have come back from Jerusalem to tell him that “he cleanseth the lepers.” -Hasten to him, said the king, take unto him my greetings, carry my messages -and my letter and bring him unto me that I might honor him and if so be -that he may heal me.</p> - -<p>The messengers of Abgar were headed by Anany the Greek scribe of -the king and they are supposed to be present in the procession of Christ’s -entry into Jerusalem. The twentieth and twenty-first verses of the Gospel -of St. John are adduced by Armenian historians as corroborative testimony:</p> - -<p>“And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship -at the feast;</p> - -<p>“The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, -and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus.”</p> - -<p>Anany and his companions are supposed to be the “certain Greeks” -who came to Philip asking to see Jesus. And here I have to explain that the -letters of the Armenian alphabet were invented by St. Mesrope in the beginning -of the fifth century of the christian era; previous to the time of Mesrope -there were no special Armenian letters, and as this invention was hailed as -a signal national boon we have to conclude that there was no written -Armenian language previous to the fifth century. One thing however must -be certain, that this letter carried by the king’s Greek scribe, the leader of the -messengers, must originally have been written in Greek. This letter has -already been translated from the Armenian into English; the translation -reads thus:</p> - -<p>“Abgar the son of Arsham, Prince of Armenia, sends to Thee, Saviour -and Benefactor, Jesus, who didst perform miracles in Jerusalem, greeting.</p> - -<p>“I have heard of Thee, and of the cures wrought by Thee without herbs -or medicines; for it is reported that Thou restoreth the blind and maketh -the lame walk, cleanseth the lepers, casteth out devils and unclean spirits, -and healeth those that are tormented of diseases of long continuance, and -that Thou also raiseth the dead:—hearing all this of Thee I was fully -persuaded that Thou art the very God come down from heaven to do such -miracles, or that Thou art the Son of God and so performeth them; wherefore -I write to Thee to entreat Thee to take the trouble to come to me and -cure my disease. Besides, I hear that the Jews murmur against Thee and -want to torture Thee. I have a small and beautiful city—sufficient for us -both.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p> - -<p>The story goes on to relate that among the messengers was an artist -by the name of John who had been commissioned by the king to bring back -a portrait of Christ; the artist however failed in his efforts to portray the -divine features, whereupon Christ gave him a veil which he had laid to his -face and on which his features had become imprinted, to carry back to his -master.</p> - -<p>We are also told that the apostle Thomas was commanded by Christ to -write a reply to Abgar. The reply has also been translated into English -and the translation reads thus:</p> - -<p>“Blessed is he who believes in Me without seeing Me, for it is written -of Me that they that see Me shall not believe, and they that have not seen -Me shall believe and be saved. As concerning the request that I should -come to thee, it becomes Me to fulfil all things for which I was sent, and -when I have fulfilled those then I shall ascend to Him that sent me; but -after my Ascension I will send one of my disciples, who shall cure thee of -thy disease and give life to thee and to all those that are with thee.”</p> - -<p>Two stories are given of the cure of Abgar. According to one version -he was healed on receiving the veil, according to the other, the apostle -Thaddeus on coming to Armenia laid his hands on the king and cured him.</p> - -<p>This story of the veil has been treated by certain scholars as a legend, -especially as the Roman church has also got a somewhat similar story. We -are of course not in a position to vouch for its truth or incorrectness, but it -seems to me if all the miracles of Christ as related in the gospels are to be -credited, this one also can be regarded as one out of many. If according to -the gospel story water was turned into wine at the marriage feast in Cana, -what is there incredible about the imprint of the divine features on a veil; -and if the gospels assure us of the healing of many lepers there can be -nothing astonishing in the healing of the king of Armenia.</p> - -<p>I was however much interested when I came across the following -passage in the history of the “Spread of Islam”:</p> - -<p>“To the east they advanced to the banks and sources of the Euphrates -and Tigris; the long disputed barrier of Rome and Persia was forever confounded; -the walls of Edessa and Amida, of Dara and Nisibis, which had -resisted the arms and engines of Sapor or Nushirvan, were levelled in the -dust; and the holy city of Abgarus might vainly produce the epistle or the -image of Christ to an unbelieving conqueror.”</p> - -<p>“The long disputed barrier of Rome and Persia” which was “forever -confounded” was of course Armenia; and “the holy city of Abgarus” the -historian evidently had in his mind must have been Edessa, whither Abgar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> -had removed his seat of government. To Armenians, however, Edessa has -never been “the holy city,” if they had a holy city, they would prefer to -name Ani, the city of a thousand churches, or on account of its peculiar -associations Etchmiatzin the ecclesiastical metropolis.</p> - -<p>It was in Anno Domini 34 that the apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew -went to Armenia, where they were warmly welcomed and received with -great reverence and respect by the King, who accepted the christian faith at -once, himself and the royal household being baptised by the apostle -Thaddeus.</p> - -<p>Thaddeus and Bartholomew continued their preaching in Armenia, -converting and baptising the people; churches were raised up, bishops -consecrated, and the christian religion established in the country.</p> - -<p>It might have been a matter of wonder to us why Saint Paul did not -address an epistle to the Armenians as he addressed to other nations; but -I think the 20th verse of the 15th chapter of his epistle to the Romans -clearly explains the reason why there was not an epistle written to the -Armenians also:</p> - -<p>“Yea, so have I strived to preach the Gospel, not where Christ was -named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation.”</p> - -<p>Clearly then no epistle was written to the Armenians because Christ -was already named among them, and Paul did not wish to build upon the -foundation of Thaddeus and Bartholomew who had laid the foundation of -Christianity in Armenia at a time when Paul himself was persecuting -Christians. Thaddeus and Bartholomew left behind no epistles, and we -have only Armenian history for the record of the work they did in Armenia.</p> - -<p>Abgar died soon after his baptism and conversion, and was succeeded -by his son Anany who tried to revive the old religion, which was something -similar to the worship of the Greeks and Romans. The people of the -country however had in large part accepted Christianity, and the revival of -the old religion was consequently met with disfavour, but before their -discontent had time to assume active tendencies Anany met his death by an -accident; the people thereupon immediately invited Abgar’s nephew Sanatrook -to occupy the throne, taking a pledge from him that he would not -interfere with their religion. The pledge was readily given by Sanatrook, -but once secure on the throne he proved a cruel and merciless despot: the -remaining sons of Abgar were killed, and his daughters and widow Helena -banished, but the crowning act of the tyrant’s wickedness and infamy was -the martyrdom of the apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew. Thus Christianity -continued its struggles in Armenia, persecuted and declining, but still enduring.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p> - -<p>About Anno Domini 260 the king reigning in Armenia by the name of -Terdat, persecuted Christianity. He had regained his throne through the -support of the Roman Army, and to celebrate his accession he offered thanksgiving -and sacrifice in the temple of the goddess Anahid, which was no other -than the goddess Diana of the Romans, but the fathers of the Armenian -church in their christian zeal have reversed the name of the goddess, made -a topsy-turvy of it, calling her Anahid, and so the name has remained in the -Armenian language to this day.</p> - -<p>This occasion of the king’s worship and -thanksgiving in the temple of Diana, marked the -beginning of the persecution of Gregory, afterwards -known as Gregory the Illuminator and the -patron saint of Armenia. The childhood of -Gregory had been shadowed by a parent’s guilt: -his father Anak having treacherously assassinated -the then reigning king Khosrov the Great, -the whole family was exterminated, only two -sons escaping death, one of them, Gregory, was -secretly removed by his nurse to Caesaria, and -kept in concealment, until in the course of years -the father’s crime having been forgotten, all -danger for the life of the son was supposed to -have passed away.</p> - -<div class="figleft" id="img13" style="width: 200px;"> - -<img src="images/i_079.jpg" width="150" height="300" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">SOORB GREGORE LOOSAVORITCH.</p> - -<p class="caption">(St. Gregory the Illuminator)</p> - -<p class="caption2">Patron Saint of Armenia. Revived -Christianity in Armenia -in A.D. 276.</p> - -</div> - -<p>Gregory’s christian faith however now became -the cause of his misfortunes; the king -called upon Gregory to assist in the worship in -the temple of Diana, but he firmly refused and -boldly avowed his christianity, which so incensed -the king that he ordered frightful tortures to be -inflicted upon him, but as the tortures had no -effect and Gregory remained firm to his faith, -the king ordered him to be thrown into a dry -well. The story goes on to relate that Gregory -lived for fifteen years in this dry well, food and -drink being conveyed to him secretly by a -woman, herself a christian. On this spot is built -the famous monastery of “Khorvirap” meaning -“deep well.”</p> - -<p>A beautiful Roman maiden by the name of Rhipsimè fleeing from the -addresses of the Emperor Diocletian sought refuge in Armenia; she was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> -accompanied by a friend, a woman of maturer years of the name of Caiana, -and some other christian maidens, all fleeing from persecution in Rome.</p> - -<p>Rhipsimè’s rare beauty had captivated the Roman emperor, and she -had sought to escape from his passion by flight, but a crueller fate awaited -her in Armenia, for king Terdat in his turn smitten by the exquisite beauty -of her face offered to make her his queen, and her refusal to accept his throne -and his love so exasperated the king that he ordered her beautiful head to -be cut off. Thus Rhipsimè with Caiana and their young companions were -cruelly martyred. Rhipsimè and Caiana were later beatified as saints in -the Armenian church.</p> - -<p>The king however did not escape the Nemesis of his diabolical crime, -the memory of the beautiful Rhipsimè haunted him; remorse took the place -of the ferocious anger that had doomed his hapless victim to her cruel death -and the king lost his reason. The king having become incapacitated, -Gregory was released from his underground prison by the king’s sister -Khosrovidookt, and as the malady of the king was mental, remorse for his -own crime having overturned his reason, it became the peculiar office of -Gregory to minister to the king, and by his spiritual ministrations to effect -the restoration of the royal mind.</p> - -<p>Terdat recovered his reason and as a broken-hearted penitent accepted -the religion of Gregory and the beautiful Rhipsimè.</p> - -<p>Gregory now freely preached Christianity in Armenia. It was a grand -Revival; the temples of Anahid were turned into the churches of Christ, -and the whole nation accepted Christianity, which became the established -religion in the country.<a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> The name of Gregory has been handed down to -posterity as Soorb Gregore Loosavoritch (Saint Gregory the Illuminator). -“Illuminator” is the generally accepted English translation of the Armenian -term “Loosavoritch,” but it is true nevertheless that neither the term -“Illuminator” nor “Enlightener” suitably conveys the definition of its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> -meaning; sometimes modes of expression are so difficult to translate from -one language into another, and it can be said that the term “Illuminator” is -used for want of a better word in English. The Armenians call their -religion “loois havat;” the word “loois” means “light” and “havat” -means “faith” or “religion,” but if I translated the two words as -“enlightened faith” or “enlightened religion” the translation would not -suitably convey the meaning of the original.</p> - -<div class="figcenter" id="img14" style="width: 400px;"> - -<img src="images/i_081.jpg" width="400" height="280" alt="" /> - -<p class="caption">THE CATHEDRAL OF ETCHMIATZIN.</p> - -<p class="caption">(Only Begotten Descended).</p> - -<p class="caption2">Seat of the Supreme Patriarch. The foundation stone was laid by St. Gregory the -Illuminator who built the Church in the third century of the Christian era.</p> - -</div> - -<p>The cathedral of Etchmiatzin is identified with Gregory; its name -“Etchmiatzin” means in the Armenian language “the only begotten is -descended,” and the story attached to it is, that in a vision Christ appeared -to Gregory descended in light; Gregory built his church on the spot where -the vision had appeared to him, giving it the name of “Etchmiatzin” (only -begotten descended). The cathedral also gives its name to the town -Etchmiatzin, the ecclesiastical metropolis of Armenia.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p> - -<p>Since the time of Gregory, Christianity has been the national religion -of the Armenians, and they have clung to their christian faith through unremitting -persecutions and martyrdoms such as no other christian people -have been called upon to endure.</p> - -<p>The cathedral of Etchmiatzin built by Gregory still stands to-day; it has -constantly been repaired and rebuilt in some part or other, until perhaps -little of the original building may be left, but it still claims to be the church -built by the patron saint of Armenia. I shall here quote a passage from -“Historical Sketch of the Armenian Church,” written by an Armenian -priest:</p> - -<p>“Owing to political circumstances the Armenian Patriarchate had at -times to be transferred to metropolises and to other principal towns of -Armenia. In the year A.D. 452 it was removed to Dwin, in 993 to Ani, -in 1114 to Rômklah, and in 1294 to Sis. The Kingdom of Cilicia becoming -extinct, and, we having no more a kingdom and no longer a capital town, it -was natural and proper to re-transfer the See to its own original place, as -the entire nation unanimously desired it. Accordingly, in the year 1441, it -was decided by an ecclesiastical meeting that the seat of the Catholicus should -return to Holy Etchmiatzin, where to this day has been preserved the -proper unbroken succession from our Apostles and from our holy Father, -St. Gregory the Illuminator.”</p> - -<p>I read the other day in one of the foreign papers published in Japan, -the following piece of news:</p> - -<p>“An Armenian Church pronounced by experts to date from the second -century of the Christian era, has been discovered in a fair state of preservation -in the neighbourhood of Bash-Aparnah.”</p> - -<p>Perhaps the excavations in Armenia which Professor Marr is now -conducting might lead to throwing more light on Armenian history.</p> - -<hr /> - -<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In a recent publication “Fifty Years in Constantinople,” the author Dr. George Washburn, -ex-President of Robert College, estimates the number that were slaughtered in cold blood in the -streets of the city as 10,000. Dr. Washburn adds the following: “The massacre of the Armenians -came to an end on Friday, the day after the soldiers came to the College; but the persecution of -them which went on for months was worse than the massacre. Their business was destroyed, they -were plundered and blackmailed without mercy, they were hunted like wild beasts, they were -imprisoned, tortured, killed, deported, fled the country, until the Armenian population of the city -was reduced by some seventy-five thousand, mostly men, including those massacred.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> “Transcaucasia and Ararat: Twenty Years of the Armenian Question.”—<span class="smcap">James Bryce.</span></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> “Our Responsibilities For Turkey.”—Argyll (note to 2nd printing).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> In 1826 the Russian General Paskevitch defeated the Persians at Elizabetopol and in the -following year 1827 he seized the monastery of Etchmiatzin (the seat of the Armenian Patriarch) and -Erivan one of the great towns of Armenia and gained for himself the title of Erivanski. By these -successes Russia advanced as far as the line of the Araxes and wrested from Persia the provinces of -Erivan and Nakhitchvan. The Treaty of Peace was concluded between Russia and Persia at -Turkmantchai on the 22nd of February 1828.—Note to 2nd printing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Commenting on the effect on Abdul Hamid of the indignation aroused in England over the -massacres, Mr. James Bryce writes, “The indignation expressed in England exasperated him; he -passed from fear to fury, and back again to fear; and went so far as to beg, and obtain, the friendly -offices of the Pope, who, through the Government of Spain, asked the British Government not to -press too hardly upon the Sultan with regard to the Armenians.”—Note to 2nd printing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> “Transcaucasia and Ararat: Twenty Years of the Armenian Question.”—James Bryce. -Note to 2nd printing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> “Abdul Hamid Intime,” Georges Dorys. In the Preface by Pierre Guillard to the same book, -there occurs the following passage: “Gladstone dénonça le Grand Assassin; M. Albert Vandal flétrit -le Sultan Rouge; M. Anatole France fit trembler dans l’antre de Yildiz le Despote fou d’épouvante -et d’autres le traitèrent de Bête Rouge et de Sultan blême. -</p> -<p> -“Cependant aucun de ces termes excessifs en apparence n’est encore satisfaisant et n’exprime -en toute son horreur le caractère d’un être à face humaine, tel, disait récemment un haut exilé -ottoman, qu’il n’en existe point de semblable, qu’il n’en a jamais existé de pareil et que selon toute -probabilité, il n’en pourra dans l’avenir exister un second. Les conquérants assyriens qui se vantent -dans des inscriptions lapidaires d’avoir exterminé les peuples rebelles et tendu de peaux écorchées -les murailles des villes prises, Néron, Caligula, Timour, Gengiz Khan, les inquisiteurs catholiques et -les tortionnaires chinois, aucun tueur d’hommes n’égala Abdul-Hamid.”—Note to 2nd printing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> “Abdul Hamid Intime,” Georges Dorys.—Note to 2nd printing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Nicholas C. Adossides [Youngest Son of Adossides Pasha] in the “Cosmopolitan” for July, -1909, (“Abdul the Dethroned”) writes as follows: -</p> -<p> -“I remember the following incident which depicts the official Russian attitude: One night, -while dining at the Russian legation in Bern, Switzerland, many Russian officials being present, the -conversation was directed to the ever-engrossing Eastern question. A diplomat from St. Petersburg -expressed his admiration of Abdul Hamid, praising his extraordinary intelligence and diplomatic -skill. ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘he is not so black as his enemies have painted him.’ -</p> -<p> -“Not being able to restrain my indignation at this, I protested, saying he was an arch assassin. -‘Not to speak of his innumerable cruelties and many villainies,’ I said, ‘can you deny, Sir, that he -instigated and accomplished the annihilation of 360,000 Armenians?’ -</p> -<p> -“The admirer of the Sultan smiled, but before he could answer me, the military attaché of the -legation, who was sitting next to me, exclaimed: -</p> -<p> -“If you condemn the Sultan for that, you astonish me. The Armenians? Bah! They ought to -be exterminated <i>en masse</i>, and the Sultan did an excellent piece of work when he got rid of them. -I have no use for them. Besides,’ he continued, ‘can’t you see that a free Armenia would be a -serious obstacle to Russian expansion and to our advance to the south and into Persia? Abdul -Hamid has proved himself a very valuable ally of Russia. He is the best Ambassador at Constantinople -that we’ve ever had.”—Note to 2nd printing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> This statement is corroborated by Dr. George Washburn in his account of the Constantinople -Massacre: “But the Concert of Europe did nothing. It accepted the situation. The Emperor of Germany -went further. He sent a special embassy to present to the Sultan a portrait of his family as a -token of his esteem.”—“Fifty Years in Constantinople,” George Washburn. (Note to 2nd printing.)</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Since these lines were written later accounts show that over a hundred thousand have been -precipitated into homelessness and destitution, and this misery is growing greater every day.—Note -to 2nd printing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> “Transcaucasia and Ararat: Twenty Years of the Armenian Question,” James Bryce.—Note -to 2nd printing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> “The Strenuous Life: Expansion and Peace,” Theodore Roosevelt.—Note to 2nd printing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Edmund Burke—Speech in Parliament in opposition to Mr. Pitt, 1791.—Note to 2nd printing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Nakhitchvan—Invaded and seized by the Persian Monarch Shah Abbas in 1603. Taken from -Persia by Russia in 1827.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Erivan—Invaded and seized by the Persian monarch Shah Abbas in 1603. Taken from Persia -by Russia 1827.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> The Hittites flourished in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries B.C. King Aram completed -his conquest of Cappadocia in B.C. 1796.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> The orthodox church of Armenia is the church founded by Gregory. Since the loss of their -independence, persecution has scattered and dispersed the people, thousands fleeing from their -native home sought refuge in other countries and in some cases they or their descendants have -come under the influence of other churches; thus the Mukhitharian monks of the monastery of St. -Lazar in Venice have been drawn into the Romish Church and their influence has been extended -over a small minority of laymen; also the influence of the American Missionaries in Asiatic Turkey -has drawn others into Protestantism, but the bulk of the nation has remained Gregorians. It is -well to remark here however that the orthodox Church, although calling herself “The Holy -Catholic and Apostolic Church” has devoted her energies mainly to upholding the essential -principles of Christianity and has not concerned herself much about dogmas. As for the modern -Armenians of the Gregorian Church their religious views are characterized by liberalism, they look -to the central figure of Christianity and regard dogmas as immaterial: their jealousy of their -church is only actuated by the passionate feeling of preserving nationalism. They regard their -church as the ark in which nationalism may be preserved until the dawn of better days.</p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> - -<img src="images/i_083.jpg" width="400" height="335" alt="Flag, possibly intended to depict the coat of arms of Armenia?" /> - -</div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 345px;"> - -<p>明治四十三年五月廿二日印刷</p> - -<p>明治四十三年五月廿五日發行</p> - -<p>著作兼</p> - -<p>發行者</p> - -<p>印刷者</p> - -<p>印刷所</p> - -<p>神奈川縣横濱市山手町二百二十番地</p> - -<p>ダイアナ・アガベッグ・アプカー</p> - -<p>神奈川縣横濱市山下町十番地</p> - -<p>エス・エッチ・ソマートン</p> - -<p>神奈川縣横濱市山下町十番地</p> - -<p>ジャパン・ガゼット新聞社</p> - -<img src="images/i_084.jpg" width="345" height="600" alt="Image of the Japanese text above" /> - -</div> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Betrayed Armenia, by Diana Agabeg Apcar - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETRAYED ARMENIA *** - -***** This file should be named 53170-h.htm or 53170-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/1/7/53170/ - -Produced by Cindy Horton and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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