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Title: The blackest page in modern history: Events in Armenia in 1915

Author: Herbert Adams Gibbons

Release date: May 15, 2022 [eBook #68082]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: G. P. Putnam's Sons

Credits: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACKEST PAGE IN MODERN HISTORY: EVENTS IN ARMENIA IN 1915 ***





  The Blackest Page
  of
  Modern History

  Events in Armenia in 1915

  The Facts and the Responsibilities

  By
  Herbert Adams Gibbons, Ph.D.

  Author of
  “The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire,” “The
  New Map of Europe,” etc.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons
  New York and London
  The Knickerbocker Press
  1916




  COPYRIGHT, 1916
  BY
  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Second Impression

  The Knickerbocker Press, New York




“And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I
know not: am I my brother’s keeper?”

                                                       _Genesis_ iv., 9.




The Blackest Page of Modern History




FOREWORD


_The war that started on August 1, 1914, has gradually involved
nations, large and small, not originally participants. Other nations,
large and small, while still managing to maintain an official
neutrality, have found themselves drawn into diplomatic controversies
with both groups of belligerents. With the exception of South America,
the continents of the world have sent contingents to fight in Europe.
The destinies of Africa, Asia, and Australia are at stake, and the
destinies of the western hemisphere will, long before the end is
reached, be influenced vitally by the tremendous events that are taking
place in Europe. We can, then, without exaggeration, call the war that
was provoked by the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Servia, a world war._

_Still in the midst of war, still prejudiced by our sympathies and
our interests, neither participants nor spectators are in a position
to form a definitive judgment upon the many problems of the origin of
the war, and upon controversial points that have arisen between the
belligerents and between belligerents and neutrals, because of acts of
war._

_But can we assume the attitude of suspending judgment in regard to
=all= that has happened since August, 1914, and =all= that is happening
to-day? The world at heart is not cold-blooded. The world at heart
is not hopelessly selfish. The world at heart is not deaf to the
appeal of the innocent and helpless. Else we should have reason indeed
to believe in the complete disappearance of our twentieth-century
Christian civilization. If some issues are debatable, if some events
are obscure, if some charges and counter-charges cannot be determined,
there are others that can be determined._

_It is because the Armenian massacres in Turkey are clearly
established, because responsibilities can be definitely fixed, and
because an appeal to humanity can be made on behalf of the remnant of
the Armenian race in the Ottoman Empire without the slightest suspicion
of political interest, that I feel it advisable =and imperative= at
this moment to call attention to what is undoubtedly the blackest
page in modern history, to set forth the facts, and to point out the
responsibilities._

                                                  HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS.

  _Paris, December 1, 1915._




CONTENTS


                                             PAGE

  FOREWORD                                      5

  INTRODUCTORY                                 11


  CHAPTER I

  IN APRIL, 1915, THE OTTOMAN GOVERNMENT
    BEGAN TO PUT INTO EXECUTION
    THROUGHOUT TURKEY A SYSTEMATIC
    AND CAREFULLY-PREPARED PLAN TO
    EXTERMINATE THE ARMENIAN RACE.
    IN SIX MONTHS NEARLY A MILLION
    ARMENIANS HAVE BEEN KILLED. THE
    NUMBER OF THE VICTIMS AND THE
    MANNER OF THEIR DESTRUCTION ARE
    WITHOUT PARALLEL IN MODERN HISTORY         17


  CHAPTER II

  THE ARMENIANS, AS A RACE, HAVE NEVER
    BEEN, AND ARE NOT, A MENACE TO THE
    SECURITY OF TURKEY. THEY ARE
    BLAMELESS OF THE CHARGE OF DISLOYALTY,
    WHICH HAS BEEN THE EXCUSE
    FOR THEIR MASSACRE AND DEPORTATION         30


  CHAPTER III

  THE PRESERVATION OF THE ARMENIAN
    ELEMENT IS ABSOLUTELY INDISPENSABLE
    TO THE WELL-BEING AND PROSPERITY
    OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. IT
    HAS BEEN PROVED THROUGH CENTURIES
    THAT CHRISTIANS AND MOSLEMS ARE
    ABLE TO LIVE IN PEACE AND AMITY
    IN TURKEY, WHICH IS EQUALLY THE
    COUNTRY OF BOTH                            43


  CHAPTER IV

  THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT COULD HAVE
    PREVENTED THIS EFFORT AT EXTERMINATING
    THE ARMENIAN RACE, BUT
    HAS CHOSEN NOT TO DO SO. THERE IS
    GRAVE REASON TO BELIEVE THE GERMAN
    GOVERNMENT HAS WELCOMED, IF
    NOT ENCOURAGED, THE DISAPPEARANCE
    OF THE ARMENIANS FROM ASIA
    MINOR, FOR THE FURTHERANCE OF
    GERMAN POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL
    DESIGNS ON THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE              54

  CONCLUSION                                   65

  SOURCES                                      69




INTRODUCTORY


In the summer of 1908, when the Young Turks compelled Abdul Hamid to
re-establish the constitution he had granted, and almost immediately
suppressed, at the beginning of his reign thirty years before, they had
a good press throughout the civilized world. Writers of all nations
lauded the Young Turks, and described in glowing terms the wonderful
future of the Ottoman Empire under the régime of Liberty, Equality,
and Fraternity. The goodwill of Europe and America, and practical
encouragement as well, was given to the reformers of Turkey in every
possible way. Especially among the Powers, Great Britain and France
aided the Young Turks to establish the new régime by lending them money
and capable advisers for the Treasury and Navy, the two departments of
the Turkish Government that were the weakest.

One has only to look through the files of the newspapers of Occidental
Europe to establish the truth of this statement. As one of the group of
writers for the European and American press on Turkish affairs, during
the first difficult (and disappointing!) years of the constitutional
régime, I can say honestly that our loyalty to the Young Turks was
unswerving. In the hope that the end would justify the means, I am
afraid that there was not one of us who did not occasionally sin
against his own convictions by _suppressio veri_, if not by actual
_suggestio falsi_. Occidental diplomacy was just as loyal to Young
Turkey as was Occidental journalism. Successive Grand Viziers assured
me that the loyal co-operation of London and Paris, through willingness
to forbear criticism and to leave much unsaid, had made possible the
maintenance of the newly-established constitution throughout the first
difficult winter, and the weathering of the storm of Abdul Hamid’s
attempted counter-revolution.

It was my fortune to go to Turkey during the first month of the new
régime, and to live in Asia Minor and Constantinople until after the
disastrous war with the Balkan States. From 1908 to 1913, I enjoyed
exceptional opportunities of travelling in European and Asiatic Turkey,
of becoming acquainted with the men who were guiding the destinies of
the Ottoman Empire, and of witnessing the fatal events that changed in
five years the hope of regeneration into the despair of dissolution.
At Smyrna, at Constantinople, and at Beirut, I took part in the fêtes
to celebrate the birth of the new régime, and saw the ostensible
reconciliation of Christian, Moslem, and Jewish elements. Christian
priests and Moslem ulema embraced each other and drove through the
streets in triumphal procession in the same carriages.

Above all, from the very beginning, I was in a position to become
intimately acquainted with the Armenians of Turkey and to find out
their real sentiments towards the Young Turks and the new régime. I was
in Adana, in April, 1909, when their enthusiastic loyalty was rewarded
by a massacre of thirty thousand of them in Cilicia and northern
Syria. I was able to observe the attitude of the Armenians before the
massacre. Their blood was spilled before my eyes in Adana. I was with
them in different places after the fury of the massacre had passed.

This preamble in the first person is reluctantly written. But I feel
that it must be given, in order that I may anticipate exception to my
statements on the ground that I am “not acquainted with the problem,”
and that “it is impossible for an outsider to form a judgment on these
matters.” For I have always found that the Turk _and his friends_, when
you speak to them on the Armenian question, flatly deny your facts and
challenge the competency of your judgment. It is necessary, then,
for me to state that the facts set forth here are given with intimate
personal knowledge of their authenticity, and that the judgments passed
upon these facts are the result of years of study and observation at
close range.




CHAPTER I

  IN APRIL, 1915, THE OTTOMAN GOVERNMENT BEGAN TO PUT INTO EXECUTION
    THROUGHOUT TURKEY A SYSTEMATIC AND CAREFULLY-PREPARED PLAN TO
    EXTERMINATE THE ARMENIAN RACE. IN SIX MONTHS NEARLY A MILLION
    ARMENIANS HAVE BEEN KILLED. THE NUMBER OF THE VICTIMS AND THE MANNER
    OF THEIR DESTRUCTION ARE WITHOUT PARALLEL IN MODERN HISTORY.


In the autumn of 1914, the Turks began to mobilize Christians as well
as Moslems for the army. For six months, in every part of Turkey, they
called upon the Armenians for military service. Exemption money was
accepted from those who could pay. A few weeks later the exemption
certificates were disregarded, and their holders enrolled. The younger
classes of Armenians, who did not live too far from Constantinople,
were placed, as in the Balkan wars, in the active army. The older
ones, and all the Armenians enrolled in the more distant regions,
were utilized for road, railway, and fortification building. Wherever
they were called, and to whatever task they were put, the Armenians
did their duty, and worked for the defence of Turkey. They proved
themselves brave soldiers and intelligent and industrious labourers.

In April, 1915, orders were sent out from Constantinople to the local
authorities in Asia Minor to take whatever measures were deemed best
to paralyse in advance an attempt at rebellion on the part of the
Armenians. The orders impressed upon the local authorities that the
Armenians were an extreme danger to the safety of the empire, and
suggested that national defence demanded imperatively _anticipatory_
severity in order that the Armenians might be rendered harmless.

In some places, the local authorities replied that they had observed
no suspicious activity on the part of the Armenians and reminded the
Government that the Armenians were harmless because they possessed no
arms and because the most vigorous masculine element had already been
taken for the army. There are some Turks who have a sense of pity and
a sense of shame! But the majority of the Turkish officials responded
with alacrity to the hint from Constantinople, and those who did not
were very soon replaced.

A new era of Armenian massacres began.

At first, in order that the task might be accomplished with the least
possible risk, the virile masculine Armenian population still left in
the cities and villages was summoned to assemble at a convenient place,
generally outside the town, and gendarmes and police saw to it that
the summons was obeyed. None was overlooked. When they had rounded
up the Armenian men, they butchered them. This method of procedure
was generally feasible in small places. In larger cities, it was not
always possible to fulfil the orders from Constantinople so simply and
promptly. The Armenian notables were assassinated in the streets or in
their homes. If it was an interior city, the men were sent off under
guard to “another town.” In a few hours the guard would return without
their prisoners. If it was a coast city, the Armenians were taken away
in boats outside the harbour to “another port.” The boats returned
astonishingly soon without the passengers.

Then, in order to prevent the possibility of trouble from Armenians
mobilized for railway and road construction, they were divided in
companies of from three hundred to five hundred and put to work at
intervals of several miles. Regiments of the Turkish regular army were
sent “to put down the Armenian revolution,” and came suddenly upon
the little groups of workers plying pickaxe, crowbar, and shovel. The
“rebels” were riddled with bullets before they knew what was happening.
The few who managed to flee were followed by mounted men, and shot or
sabred.

Telegrams began to pour in upon Talaat bey at Constantinople,
announcing that here, there, and everywhere Armenian uprisings had
been put down, and telegrams were returned, congratulating the local
officials upon the success of their prompt measures. To neutral
newspaper men at Constantinople, to neutral diplomats, who had heard
vaguely of a recurrence of Armenian massacres, this telegraphic
correspondence was shown as proof that an imminent danger had been
averted. “We have not been cruel, but we admit having been severe,”
declared Talaat bey. “This is war time.”

Having thus rid themselves of the active manhood of the Armenian race,
the Turkish Government still felt uneasy. The old men and boys, the
women and children, were an element of danger to the Ottoman Empire.
The Armenians must be rooted out of Turkey. But how accomplish this in
such a way that the Turkish Ambassador at Washington and the German
newspapers might be able to say, as they have said and are still
saying, “All those who have been killed were of that rebellious element
caught red-handed or while otherwise committing traitorous acts against
the Turkish Government, and _not women and children_, as some of these
_fabricated_ reports would have the Americans believe?” Talaat bey was
ready with his plan. Deportation--a regrettable measure, a military
necessity--but perfectly humane.

From May until October the Ottoman Government pursued methodically
a plan of extermination far more hellish than the worst possible
massacre. Orders for deportation of the entire Armenian population to
Mesopotamia were despatched to every province of Asia Minor. These
orders were explicit and detailed. No hamlet was too insignificant to
be missed. The news was given by town criers that _every_ Armenian was
to be ready to leave at a certain hour for an unknown destination.
There were no exceptions for the aged, the ill, the women in pregnancy.
Only rich merchants and bankers and good-looking women and girls were
allowed to escape by professing Islâm, and let it be said to their
everlasting honour that few availed themselves of this means of escape.
The time given varied from two days to six hours. No household goods,
no animals, no extra clothing could be taken along. Food supply and
bedding was limited to what a person could carry. And they had to
go _on foot_ under the burning sun through parched valleys and over
snow-covered mountain passes, a journey of from three to eight weeks.

When they passed through Christian villages where the deportation
order had not yet been received, the travellers were not allowed to
receive food or ministrations of any sort. The sick and the aged and
the wee children fell by the roadside, and did not rise again. Women
in childbirth were urged along by bayonets and whips until the moment
of deliverance came, and were left to bleed to death. The likely girls
were seized for harems, or raped day after day by the guards until
death came as a merciful release. Those who could committed suicide.
Mothers went crazy, and threw their children into the river to end
their sufferings. Hundreds of thousands of women and children died of
hunger, of thirst, of exposure, of shame.

The pitiful caravans thinned out, first daily, and later hourly. Death
became the one thing to be longed for: for how can hope live, how can
strength remain, even to the fittest, in a journey that has no end? And
if they turned to right or left from that road to hell, they were shot
or speared. Kurds and mounted peasants hunted down those who succeeded
in escaping the roadside guards.

They are still putting down the Armenian revolution out there in Asia
Minor. I had just written the above paragraph when an English woman
whom I have known for many years came to my home. She left Adana,
in Cilicia, only a month ago. Her story is the same as that of a
hundred others. I have the identical facts, one eye-witness testimony
corroborating the other, from American, English, German, and Swiss
sources. This English woman said to me, “The deportation is still going
on. From the interior along the Bagdad Railway they are still being
sent through Adana on the journey of death. As far as the railway
exists, it is being used to hurry the work of extermination faster than
the caravans from the regions where there are no railways. Oh! if they
would only massacre them, and be done with it, as in the Hamidian days!
I stood there at the Adana railway station, and from the carriages the
women would hold up their children, and cry for water. They had got
beyond a desire for bread. Only water! There was a pump. I went down on
my knees to beg the Turkish guard to let me give them a drink. But the
train moved on, and the last I heard was the cry of those lost souls.
That was not once. It was almost every day the same thing. Did Lord
Bryce say eight hundred thousand? Well, it must be a million now. Could
you conceive of human beings allowing wild animals to die a death like
that?”

But the Turkish Ambassador in Washington declares that these stories
are “fabrications,” and that “no women and children have been killed.”




CHAPTER II

  THE ARMENIANS, AS A RACE, HAVE NEVER BEEN, AND ARE NOT, A MENACE
    TO THE SECURITY OF TURKEY. THEY ARE BLAMELESS OF THE CHARGE OF
    DISLOYALTY, WHICH HAS BEEN THE EXCUSE FOR THEIR MASSACRE AND
    DEPORTATION.


In commenting upon the report of the American Committee, on Armenian
Atrocities, Djelal Munif bey, the Turkish Consul-General in New York,
declared: “However much to be deplored may be these harrowing events in
the last analysis, we can but say the Armenians have only themselves
to blame.” Djelal Munif bey went on to explain that the Armenians had
been planning a revolution, and were killed by the Turkish soldiers
only after they had been caught “red-handed with arms in their hands,
resisting lawful authority.”

This has been the invariable explanation for the massacre of Armenians
in Turkey. We heard it in 1895-1896 and in 1909. We have been hearing
it again in 1915. But facts to substantiate it have never been given.
On the other hand, there exists overwhelming evidence of the most
convincing character to show how inadmissible it is as an explanation,
how baseless it is as a charge.

I have talked personally with, or have seen letters and reports from,
American missionaries and consular officials of all nations, who were
witnesses of the massacres of 1895 and 1896. At that time, as a result
of unendurable persecution and injustice, certain organizations of
young men, of the type the French call _exaltés_, banded together in
secret societies, an imitation of internal organizations in Russia,
agitated, within the Ottoman Empire and abroad, for a more favourable
treatment of Armenians and other Christians. Some of these _exaltés_
certainly advocated, and tried to work for, the independence of
Armenia. But the propaganda never gained favour in ecclesiastical
circles, nor ground among the great mass of the Armenian population in
Turkey. Except in the _vilayet_ of Van, the Armenians no longer formed
the majority of the population. They were too scattered throughout
the empire to have serious hope of winning independence, such as the
Greeks, Bulgarians, Servians, and Rumanians had succeeded in obtaining
in the Balkan peninsula.[1]

In the 1909 massacre, I was on the ground at the time, and studied
these charges. I demonstrated to my own satisfaction (and to that
of a number of newspaper men, including Germans) the total lack of
foundation of this charge against the Armenians of Cilicia. Not one
Armenian out of a hundred had anything to do with the revolutionary
societies. The lower classes were too ignorant to be affected by such a
propaganda. The Armenian Church denounced the folly of the visionaries.
College professors spoke and wrote against it. The wealthy city classes
frankly let the agitators know that they were not only passively, but
also actively, opposed to the propaganda.

The Turks had nothing whatever to fear from Armenian revolutionaries.
They knew this. More than that, they knew just who the _exaltés_
were. The Turkish Government was well able to assure itself that the
propagandists were not to be feared. If they had feared them, they
could easily have laid their hands on them any time they wanted to. In
Adana, the arrest of from thirty to forty young men would have gathered
into the net all the agitators. Instead of that, six thousand were
massacred there, and half the city burned. Then the Armenian revolution
was trumped up as an excuse!

The hideous miscarriage of justice of the court martial after the Adana
massacre was the beginning of the downfall of the Young Turk régime. It
was a demonstration of the mockery of the Young Turk assertion that the
Ottoman Empire was to be reconstructed on the principles of Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity. From that day to this, their every act has
given the lie to their profession. I say _hideous_ miscarriage of
justice, because no element in the empire had welcomed more heartily
the advent of the constitutional régime, no element had supported the
Young Turks more loyally than the Armenians. If they erred at all
during those first nine months of the constitutional era, it was in
showing so openly--and so joyously--their touching faith in the men of
Salonika. They accepted the revolution as sincere. Their support of the
new régime was spontaneous and enthusiastic. They believed in the Young
Turks--until they were undeceived by the Young Turks themselves.

After the massacre had stopped, _on word from Constantinople_, I heard
a Young Turk officer address the survivors in the courtyard of the
American Mission at Tarsus. He assured them that the danger was over,
that it had been due to the counter-revolution of Abdul Hamid, and
that now they might feel assured that Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity
were really theirs. He told the Armenians that the Young Turks had
suffered equally with them, and that they had been companions in
misfortune. With sublime faith, sublime even though stupid, the bulk of
the Armenians believed once more. They accepted the explanation of the
massacre, and continued to support the Ottoman Government.

During the four years after Adana, I spent most of my time in
Constantinople, and I was constantly with the leaders of the Armenian
race. Never once did I hear an Armenian ecclesiastic or other Armenian
of weight and reputation speak against the Ottoman Government. I know
positively that they were not working against the Ottoman Government.
On the other hand, I am sure that the Turks knew they could count on
the loyal support and co-operation of the Armenians. The Turks had
proof of Armenian loyalty during the Italian war and the two Balkan
wars. Armenians, enrolled in the Turkish army, fought bravely for the
common fatherland beside their Moslem brethren. In the hour of danger
and humiliation, the Armenians of Turkey stood by their fellow Ottoman
subjects. They gave their blood for Turkey. Unlike the Ottoman Greeks,
they could be suspected of no secret wishes for the success of the
enemy.

It is unfair for the Ottoman Government to cite, as basis for its
charges against its Armenian subjects, the fact that Armenians in large
numbers are fighting in the Russian army. As a result of the war of
1877, Turkey was compelled to cede a portion of Armenia to Russia.
The Armenians of these territories and of the Caucasus have been for
nearly forty years under Russian rule, and are naturally, as Russian
subjects, fighting against Turkey. In giving the fact that there are
Armenians in the Russian armies as a reason for doubting the loyalty
of the Armenians in Turkey, the Turks and their German apologists have
traded upon European and American imperfect knowledge of the history
and geography of the regions beyond Van. The formation of corps of
Armenian volunteers in the Allied armies, and the open support of the
cause of the Allies on the part of Armenian communities in France and
Great Britain have been unfortunate. As individuals who have left
Turkey, these exiled Armenians have a right to do as they choose, as
communities, it would have been--it is now--better for them to keep
quiet. Although they have no justification for doing so, the Turks
and Germans have been using the manifestations made by these small
communities outside of Turkey as reflecting the spirit and intentions
of the Armenians in Turkey, and have succeeded in confusing many
neutrals about the real facts of the Armenian situation.

If the Armenians, during the present massacres and forcible
deportations, have in some places, as they did in Adana in 1909,
defended, arms in hand, their homes and their loved ones, it has been
only when the Ottoman Government failed them, and when they were
convinced that their extermination had been decided upon. Even in these
cases, as at Adana, when they received assurances of protection against
local Moslem fanaticism from the Government at Constantinople, they
trusted once more. In every instance of this kind--again let me remind
my readers that I have authentic eye-witness testimony--their faith
was betrayed. The Ottoman Government officials broke their word, and
butchered the Armenians after they had laid down their arms.

With the possible exception of Van, there was no place where the Turks
had the slightest ground for suspicion that the local attempt of the
Armenians to defend their wives and children was in connivance with
the enemy. _And Van is only one of thirty centres of massacre and
deportation in Asia Minor!_

If the Ottoman Government has facts to establish its contention that
the Armenians of Turkey were plotting against the security of the
empire, let it lay these facts before the world.




CHAPTER III

  THE PRESERVATION OF THE ARMENIAN ELEMENT IS ABSOLUTELY INDISPENSABLE
    TO THE WELL-BEING AND PROSPERITY OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. IT HAS BEEN
    PROVED THROUGH CENTURIES THAT CHRISTIANS AND MOSLEMS ARE ABLE TO
    LIVE IN PEACE AND AMITY IN TURKEY, WHICH IS EQUALLY THE COUNTRY OF
    BOTH.


One hesitates, on general principles, to attempt to advise, or to
admonish, as to its best interests, a nation at war. In a life and
death struggle such as this war has become, it would be naturally
supposed that a nation and its rulers are the best judges of what it
is to their interest to do. Advice from outside sources is open to the
suspicion of being not disinterested. And does not admonition, if not
sheer impertinence, betray impotence on the part of the admonisher?

But in the Ottoman Empire, the situation is different from that of
any other country in Europe. There is not a sufficient number of
educated men among the non-Christian elements of the Ottoman Empire to
form, let alone to guide, public opinion. Consequently, there is no
public opinion. The governing power has always been in the hands of a
small and corrupt circle, and the Ottoman nation has not developed in
self-government, in popular institutions, as have the other nations of
Europe.

The new régime was hailed with joy by the outside world, and by the
non-Moslem elements inside the empire as well, because the Constitution
of 1908 was regarded as the starting point in a struggle of the people
of the empire, irrespective of religion and race, against an absolutism
that had in practice proved equally injurious, if not equally
oppressive, to all the races subjected to the tyranny of Yildiz Kiosk.

It was very soon seen, however, that Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity
had no part whatever in the Young Turk conception of a constitutional
state. It was simply the replacing of one clique by another. The
honest, sincere Young Turks, with motives above suspicion, who
actually meant what they said, were so few in number that they could
not prevail against the type in the Committee of Union and Progress,
personified by such men as Talaat, Enver, Djavid, Djemal, Hairi, Ahmed
Riza, Dr. Nazim, Hadji Adil, Bedri, and Hussein Djahid. The Moslem
population of the empire, being intensely ignorant, could not be looked
to by the few enthusiasts to support constitutional principles. The
Christian population, much better educated and having much more reason
to appreciate the newly-proclaimed liberty, were the only elements upon
which a politically regenerated Turkey could stand. _For this reason
alone did the Armenian element become immediately a source of danger
to the new clique that had replaced Abdul Hamid._ These so-called
Young Turks turned upon the Armenians just as Abdul Hamid had turned
upon them--to prevent their becoming the leaven in the regeneration
of Turkey. The Constitution, hailed by the Armenians as the beginning
of their political emancipation, became almost immediately--and
_inevitably_--their death-warrant.

One does not need to study deeply, one has simply to read the history
of the Ottoman Empire since Great Britain and France saved the Turks
by the Crimean War, to realize that the Armenians, from the moment the
question of “reforms” was introduced by the Powers in their dealings
with the Sublime Porte, have been the unwitting victims of the cause of
civilization in the Near East. The Congress of Berlin fully recognized
this fact.

The trans-Caucasian policy of Russia, and the Balkan policy of all the
Great Powers first awakened, and has since been the exciting cause of,
the fanaticism of the Moslems of Turkey against the Armenians. Before
there was an acute “Question of the Orient,” did we ever have great
Armenian massacres? And yet, Christian Europe never made a concerted
effort to save this unhappy race from the results of Europe’s own
dealings with the Turks.

The Armenians, of course, always suffered to a certain extent from
their social and political disabilities under Moslem rule. But they
have lived for centuries in comparative security, and certainly with a
large measure of prosperity, as Ottoman subjects. Personal relations
between Turks and Armenians have been not at all bad. I have had
opportunity to observe this fact in different parts of Turkey. The
Turks are not, like the Arabs, a fanatical people by nature. The
persecution and massacre of Armenians is not, as the general European
and American public have erroneously thought, an age-old matter of
religious strife. Nor has it been, as is so frequently asserted by
those who have the effrontery to explain and attempt to condone (ye
gods!) Armenian massacres, because the Armenians are money-lenders and
oppress the simple-minded Turks. The refutation of the first of these
two prevalent beliefs is that the great Armenian massacres are events
of the last quarter of a century, while Armenians and Turks have been
living together in Asia Minor nearly seven centuries. The refutation of
the second is that the massacres have not been confined to the larger
cities, where many of the Armenians are well-to-do, but have always
taken place in exactly the same way and in exactly the same degree in
communities where the Armenians are both ignorant and poverty-stricken.

Nothing is more stupid, nothing more against nature and history, than
advocating that the solution of the Armenian question and salvation
of the Armenian race is in emigration _en masse_ to America or some
other country. The Armenians are an indigenous element in Asiatic
Turkey. Their wholesale emigration might save the lives of several
hundred thousand individuals. But it would break the hearts of most
of those who were thus saved, and it would mark the disappearance of
the Armenians as a race and a nation, just as certainly as if their
extermination by massacre were completed. What has the Armenian race
done that it should disappear? And is not _jus soli_ as strong as the
_jus patris_--especially in lands where there is sunshine?

The preservation of the Armenian element in Asia Minor is indispensable
to the well-being and prosperity of the Turks themselves. Politically,
as well as economically, it is impossible for the Turks to continue to
exist as an independent, and in any measure at all self-supporting,
nation without the help of the Armenians. The Armenian massacres
illustrate the old story of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
In their pitiful ignorance, in their frenzy of blood-lust, the Turks
are turning upon and destroying those whose existence is precious and
vital to their community and national life. Travel where you will
through Turkey, from one end of the great empire to the other, and you
find no community _that is prosperous_ without Armenians. Along the
seacoast, the Greeks play an important part in the economic life of
Turkey. But in the interior the Armenians are a _sine qua non_ to the
Turks.

Of the Armenians in Turkey one might have said without fear of
contradiction before the terrible events of the past six months,
that they were in no place numerically strong enough to jeopardize
the political independence of the Ottoman Empire, but that they were
everywhere in sufficient number to guarantee its economic independence.

Intelligent and patriotic Turks must certainly see that the attempt to
exterminate the Armenians, or to banish the remnant of them from Asia
Minor, is a mortal blow to Turkish independence, political as well as
economic. The extermination of the Armenians is to the interest of a
certain nation--but that nation is not Turkey!




CHAPTER IV

  THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT COULD HAVE PREVENTED THIS EFFORT AT
    EXTERMINATING THE ARMENIAN RACE, BUT HAS CHOSEN NOT TO DO SO. THERE
    IS GRAVE REASON TO BELIEVE THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT HAS WELCOMED, IF
    NOT ENCOURAGED, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE ARMENIANS FROM ASIA MINOR,
    FOR THE FURTHERANCE OF GERMAN POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL DESIGNS ON
    THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.


A patriotic German woman wrote from Marash on June 4, 1915, to the
_Sonnenaufgang_, organ of the _Deutscher Hülfsbund für christliches
Liebeswerk im Orient_: “Oh, if we could write all that we are seeing!”
German missionaries in Asia Minor have been fully as horror-stricken,
fully as sympathetic, and fully as indignant as the missionaries of
other nations. And I have no doubt that there are millions of Germans
to-day, who, _if they were allowed to know the truth_, would protest
bitterly to their Government against the extermination of the Armenian
nation, and petition their Government, in the name of God, to do
something to prevent Germany from being stigmatized in history as
partner in the awful crimes that are being committed in the Ottoman
Empire.

It has been shown that there never has been, and that there is not
now, reason for Moslem fanaticism against the Armenian race. Of their
own initiative, without the direct command and incitement of the
authorities and without the help of the soldiery and gendarmery,
Turks have never massacred Armenians. Since, then, this effort to
exterminate the Armenian race, made everywhere in Asiatic Turkey at
the same moment, has been due to a systematic scheme, organized and
directed from Constantinople, we must seek the responsibility among the
officials of the Turkish Government at Constantinople. The deliberate,
minutely-planned Armenian massacres and deportations, carried on
without interruption from April to November, 1915, must have been
conceived by someone, ordered by someone, and perpetrated for some
purpose.

Conceived by whom? Ordered by whom? Perpetrated for what purpose?

_The conception is not new._ It has been explained above that the
Armenians drew upon themselves the distrust and the hatred of the Young
Turks because they took the Young Turks seriously, and believed that
the Constitution was to be a real constitution. The Adana massacre was
the first effort on the part of those who usurped Abdul Hamid’s policy
and methods when they usurped his authority, to destroy the Armenians.
Back in those days I heard more than one prominent Young Turk give
hearty assent to the _bon mot_ that was then going the rounds, “The
only way to get rid of the Armenian question is to get rid of the
Armenians!” To finish the work begun at Adana has been a political
ideal for six years. The opportunity for realization came. It was
seized immediately.

_When the attack of the Allies against the Dardanelles was begun,
it was common knowledge at Constantinople that the death-warrant of
the Armenian race, long ago signed and put aside in the pigeon-holes
of the Sublime Porte and the Seraskerat, would be brought out and
put into execution._ Is it possible to believe that the German
Embassy was ignorant of this, and that Talaat bey gave the orders
without having informed Baron von Wangenheim? Is it possible that the
German Government at Berlin did not know of the plan, even if their
representative at Constantinople failed to inform them? Here are the
facts.

The extermination of a million and a half innocent, loyal to a fault,
Christian subjects of the Sultan of Turkey was planned at, and ordered
from, Constantinople.

At Constantinople, the one man whose word, supported by his Government,
would have prevented the orders from going out, was the German
Ambassador.

Although he _may_ not have known during the first week or two, the
German Ambassador was pled with, _long before it was too late_, to
use the influence of Germany to put a stop to what was to prove the
blackest page of modern history.

Since Germany refused to intervene before the extermination of the
Armenians started, is she not accessory before the fact to the murder
by sword, by starvation and thirst, by exposure, by beating, by rape,
of nearly a million human beings, whose fault was that they were “in
the way,” and whose vulnerability and defencelessness lay in the sole
fact that they were Christians?

Since Germany has persisted in refusing to intervene during the process
of extermination, is she not _particeps criminis_?

Ambassador von Wangenheim declared to Ambassador Morgenthau at
Constantinople that Germany could not, upon request of the United
States, intervene in the internal affairs of Turkey. Ambassador von
Bernstorff at Washington, when he saw what a painful impression the
newspaper accounts of the Armenian atrocities were producing on the
American public, at first denied that there had been massacres, and,
later, when it was impossible to maintain his denial in face of
established facts, declared that what had happened in Turkey was a
perfectly justifiable suppression of Armenian rebellions.

In one large city of Asiatic Turkey, an American missionary, a man
whom I know personally and whose word can be trusted implicitly, saw
a German officer directing the artillery fire of the Turks upon the
Armenian civilian population. In two other places, at least, German
consuls defended the Ottoman policy both of massacre and of deportation.

On the broader and more general moral ground of responsibility as
brother’s keeper, the German, _who alone of all European nations
have had, and still have the power to stop these massacres_, stand
condemned. It is going to be difficult for their writers, who have
been foremost in extolling the Armenian race, its virtues, and its
contributions to civilization, to defend to the satisfaction of
posterity the inertia of the German Government in the face of the
extermination of the Armenian nation.

That they kept quiet, and refused to act, when they alone could have
saved the Armenians from destruction, is the first count in the case
against the Germans. It is serious. The second count is sinister.

When we try to find the purpose behind the Armenian massacres, we
are confronted with what is, under the circumstances, an eloquent
accusation against the German Government and the German people. _The
Germans, and the Germans alone, will benefit by the extermination
of the Armenians._ I have pointed out above how the Armenians are
the essential factor, the guarantee indeed, of Turkish economic and
political independence in Asia Minor. By the same token, they appear
to be a stumbling-block to German domination. The Armenians, largely
educated in French and American schools, speak French and English.
Through their commercial relations with western Europe and America,
with England most of all, they have naturally been “in the way” of the
German commercial travellers. As the one commercial and agricultural
element in the interior of Asia Minor, capable of holding its own
against a penetration of European colonists, the Armenians are “in the
way” of the schemes for the Germanization of Anatolia. It was not for
the Bagdad Railway alone, but also for all that the Bagdad Railway
implied, that Kaiser Wilhelm II. fraternized with Abdul Hamid, after
the massacres of Armenians in 1895 and 1896.

I have not the slightest desire to be unfair to Germans as
individuals, or to insinuate what cannot reasonably be proved to
be in the German mind. Enlightened nations, however, are certainly
responsible for the acts of their Governments. The Germans have assumed
the responsibility for many terrible things in this war. They may
hope, when passions have died down and both sides are known, to clear
themselves of some charges. But there is no hope in regard to the
charge of allowing the extermination of the Armenians--a crime by which
they alone could hope to benefit.




CONCLUSION


And now, in conclusion, let me pose frankly this question: _Have
neutral nations any responsibility in regard to the Armenians?_

For neutral nations in general, the answer depends upon whether the
influence and action of a nation ought to be confined wholly to
internal affairs. Those who give to their own conscience and to God
the answer of Cain, say frankly: “No, we are not our brother’s keeper.
We have all that we can do to look after ourselves.” If this type
of mentality had controlled the councils of the nations throughout
the past twenty centuries, would there be a Christian civilization?
Would history be able to record a single altruistic deed to a nation’s
credit? Would slavery ever have been abolished? The other type is
composed of those who believe that man does not live by bread alone,
or for himself alone, and that nations, as well as individuals, have
responsibilities towards others--especially if those others are weak
and oppressed.

Let us leave wholly to one side the argument of higher morality, this
abstract, intangible argument, which, when urged, causes many to
shrug their shoulders and smile. Let us come to the concrete reason
for the direct responsibility of two nations to intervene on behalf
of the Armenians. Among neutral and passive onlookers, who have been
silent while the darkest page of modern history is being written, the
Americans and Swiss should not forget that their money and their
representatives have been working for two generations in Turkey to
elevate the Armenians. Together with French, British, Germans, and
Italians, the Americans and Swiss have helped to reawaken the national
spirit of the Armenian nation. They have infused new life into the
Armenian Church. They have made researches into Armenian history and
have given to the world the results of those researches. They have
taught the Armenians European languages, and have imparted to a race
that had become ignorant and backward, because separated from Europe,
the spirit of Occidental civilization. _Were they seeking out victims
to deck with garlands for the sacrifice? Were they fatting the calf
for the slaughter?_ Do not say no! For the practical result of their
efforts to elevate the Armenian race is that long journey from home to
the Valley of the Euphrates--now become the Valley of Death.

Let us think hard. And then, for God’s sake, let us act!




SOURCES


1. Report of American Committee on Armenian Atrocities. New York,
October, 1915.

  The report contains thirty-five extracts from the testimony of
  eye-witnesses, covering the period April 27 to August 3, 1915,
  from all parts of Asia Minor. Twenty-five representative Americans
  (including Hon. Oscar S. Strauss, twice American Ambassador to
  Turkey, Cardinal James Gibbons, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and former
  President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard University), signed this
  report, which states that each bit of testimony has been subjected
  to careful and extensive investigation, and that “the sources are
  unquestioned as to the veracity, integrity, and authority of the
  writers.”

2. Official report of the Parliamentary Debate in the House of Lords,
on Wednesday, October 6, 1915. London, Parliamentary Debates, H. of L.,
volume xix., 67.

  Interpellation of the Earl of Cromer, speech of Viscount Bryce, and
  comments of the Marquess of Crewe.

3. Lord Bryce’s revision and enlargement of the official report of his
speech, as given in “Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation,” by
Arnold J. Toynbee. London, November, 1915.

4. German missionaries’ letters to the _Sonnenaufgang_, published by
Deutscher Hülfsbund für christliches Liebeswerk im Orient.

5. Narrative of Dikran Andreasian, translated by Rev. Stephen
Trowbridge, and published in _The Star of the East_. London, November,
1915.

6. Testimony of eye-witnesses, published in the Boulogne-sur-Mer
_Telegramme_, September 17; Paris _Temps_, September 15; Limoges
_Courrier du Centre_, September 15; _Tribune de Genève_, September 4
and 24, October 14; _Journal de Genève_, October 13 and 24; _Gazette
de Lausanne_, October 24; New York _Evening Post_, October 18. Résumés
and editorial comments in Manchester _Guardian_, August 16 and October
26; London _Times_, October 8; _Frankfurter Zeitung_, October 9;
_Paris-Midi_, October 17. All these dates, of course, are in 1915.

7. Circular letters of various dates from July 6 to October 22, 1915,
sent out by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,
Boston, Mass., which are signed by James L. Barton.

8. A number of as yet unpublished personal letters. For obvious
reasons, I cannot give the names of the writers, and the places from
which they were written.

9. Personal conversations with persons of unimpeachable integrity and
unquestioned authority, who have returned between September 15 and
November 20 from Constantinople and Asia Minor. Their names must of
necessity be withheld at this moment.




FOOTNOTE:

[1] I do not mean by this statement to deny that the educated
Armenians, just as every other people under the yoke of another race,
have not longed, in their most intimate sentiments, for the day when
national aspirations would be realized. But, the Armenians are above
all a practical people, and they did not look for what they knew was
impossible of realization. In the correspondence concerning Armenian
people in the Chancelleries of the Great Powers and in the archives
of the Sublime Porte, _the question has always been to obtain reforms
that would secure for the Armenians only those privileges and only
that measure of security and freedom, to which they had the right as
Ottoman subjects to aspire_. In 1913, the Powers, _among whom was
Germany_, proposed to the Turkish Government a plan for reforms in Asia
Minor, which was accepted and decreed by Turkey, but which was not
put into execution. Up to the time of this terrible crime of the past
few months, the Armenians demanded, and were glad to have obtained in
Turkey, only those reforms that Turkey had agreed herself to put into
effect.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Underlined text is surrounded by equals signs: =underline=.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.



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