_The following pages were first read as a paper before the “Société
d’Etudes Ethnographiques.” They have since been amplified and are now
being published at the request of a number of friends, who believe that
the public should have an opportunity of judging whether or not “the
Armenian Question” has another side than that which has been recently so
assiduously promulgated throughout the Western World._
_Though the championship of Greek, Bulgarian and other similar
“Christian, civilized methods of fighting,” as contrasted with “Moslem
atrocities” in the Balkans and Asia Minor, has been so strenuously
undertaken by Lord Bryce and others, the more recent developments in
the Near East may perhaps already have opened the eyes of a great many
thinking people to the realization that, in sacrificing the traditional
friendship of the Turk to all this more or less sectarian clamour,
British diplomacy has really done nothing better than to exchange the
solid and advantageous reality for a most elusive and unreliable, if not
positively dangerous, set of shadows._
_It seems illogical that the same party which recalled the officials
(and among them our present War Minister) appointed by Lord Beaconsfield
to assist the Turkish Government in reforming their administration and
collecting the revenue in Asia Minor, and which on the advent of the
Young Turks refused to lend British Administrators to whom ample and
plenary powers were assured, should now, in its eagerness to vilify the
Turk, lose sight of their own mistakes which have led in the main to the
conditions of which it complains, and should so utterly condemn its own
former policy. Whatever hardships the Armenians may within recent years
have suffered, the responsibility for them must surely to a great extent
rest with the well-meaning idealists who, instead of trying to improve
existing conditions, inspired their helpless dupes with impracticable
aspirations which were bound to lead to disaster._
_The writer desires to thank those authors and travellers whose works
he has so freely quoted, and upon whose information he has relied for
the historical and geographical notes, as well as Professor Henry Léon,
Mr. Robert Fraser, and other friends, who have afforded him their most
valuable assistance._
_The reasons for dealing with the subject at this particular juncture are
given in the text and will, he hopes, prove satisfactory to the reader._
_C. F. DIXON-JOHNSON._
_Croft-on-Tees, Yorkshire. February, 1916._