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THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES AND THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE

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.

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: —

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

The Author of “Transcaucasia and Ararat” thus writes of them: —

“The Armenians are an extraordinary people, with a tenacity of national life scarcely inferior to that of the Jews.”

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.

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.”

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, 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.

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.

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.

A massacre so wanton as that of Adana, can only find its counterpart in the other Turkish massacres of Armenians which preceded it.

“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.

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.

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 of his diabolical acts, and it was by means of such douceurs that he went farther than seducing merely his own subjects.

“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?

“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)!”⁸

It needs not be added that no one who knows the truth of Turkish affairs, doubts the truth of this impeachment.

“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.”

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.”

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?

THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES AND THE FUTURE OF THE ARMENIANS

The above is a subject for profound meditation for the Armenian people; it has therefore naturally for me occupied much deep thought.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Indeed, nineteenth century civilization, which has made the world of commerce acutely grasping, has also made the world of Politics unscrupulously selfish.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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: —

“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.

“We may and must feel indignant at the needless and monstrous severity with which the Bulgarian insurrection was put down; 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.

“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.”

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

We have grit and endurance in an unparalleled degree, but these characteristics will profit us nothing if we are wanting in unity.

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: —

“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.