Out of the Depths 49
What the Turkish Constitution Means for the Armenians 51
The Armenian Question 53
Open Letter to the Honorable President William Howard Taft 56
Abdul Hamid, the Triumph of Crime 58
L’Avenir 60
The Origin of the Armenians--The Introduction of Christianity
into Armenia--Decline and Grand Revival 63
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE.
They Tore the Babes from the Arms of their Mothers Frontispiece
Scene of the Massacres in Asia Minor 4
In this House 115 Women and Children were Roasted Alive 5
Ruined Church and Homes at Adana 6
General Prince Loris Melikoff 19
General Ter Goukassoff 24
Muckertich Khirimian 30
Matthevose Ezmerlian 33
Nerses Varjabetian 46
Minaret at Erivan, one of the Cities Tradition Ascribes to be
Founded by Noah 64
Great and Little Ararat 66
Abgar King of Armenia 70
Soorb Gregore Loosavoritch 74
The Cathedral of Etchmiatzi 76
WHY AND WHEREFORE.
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.
After I had laid this bitter Truth to heart, I did not have to seek for
the Why and Wherefore of the Armenian Massacres.
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.
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.
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.
The question therefore resolves itself into this critical point: “What
will Christendom do even now?”
[Illustration: SCENE OF THE MASSACRES IN ASIA MINOR.
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.]
DISINTERESTED EVIDENCE.
I have thought it advisable to insert a few extracts from accounts of
the Massacres of April, 1909, given by disinterested witnesses.
[Illustration: IN THIS HOUSE 115 WOMEN AND CHILDREN WERE ROASTED ALIVE.
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.]
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
* * * * *
“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.”
* * * * *
[Illustration: RUINED CHURCH AND HOMES AT ADANA.]
“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.”
“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.”
* * * * *
“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 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.”
“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.
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.”
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.
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.
PREFACE TO 2ND PRINTING.
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.
The illustrations and the extracts from the periodicals “Harper’s
Monthly,” “The Wide World” and the “Cosmopolitan” have been added to
the 2nd printing.
INTRODUCTION TO 2ND PRINTING.
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.
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.
“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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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:
“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.”
In “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” published by Mr. James Bryce in 1876,
there occurs in the chapter entitled “Some Political Reflections” the
following passage:
“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 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.”
In the 4th edition of the same book, published in 1896, the following
note appears to the passage I have quoted:
“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.”
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.
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.
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 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.”
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.
“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.
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?
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.
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.
“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.
“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’).”
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.
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 _coup de main_, 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 made to
the Sultan is said to have put it at 8750.[1] 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.”[2]
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.
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 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.
“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.”
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 as far back as 1907 tries to
palliate the horrors of the Hamidian régime by misrepresentations.
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.