GLADSTONE ON THE ARMENIAN MASSACRE AND ON TURKISH MISRULE.
On the eighty-fifth anniversary of Mr. W. E. Gladstone’s birth, December
29, 1894, a deputation of members of the National Church of Armenia
presented to his son, the Rev. Stephen Gladstone, rector of Hawarden, a
silver gilt chalice for the use of the church, in memory of the
ex-Premier’s sympathy with and assistance to the Armenian people. On
that occasion Mr. Gladstone made a long and eloquent speech, in the
course of which—after thanking the deputation for their token of
sympathy and their grateful references to himself—he said:
“Well, Mr. Stevenson—I address myself now perhaps more particularly to
you and to my own countrymen, to any of them who will take notice of the
deputation. I have said that in my opinion this manifestation from the
Armenian community in England and in Paris was, on my part at least,
quite undeserved. I have done nothing for you in circumstances of great
difficulty, and that, let me assure you, has not been owing to
indifference. I will explain the cause in very few words. Rumors went
abroad, growing more and more authenticated, which represented a state
of horrible and indescribable outrage in Armenia. The impulse of every
man in circumstances of that kind is to give way to a burst of strong
feeling, but I had the conviction that in a grave case of this kind
every nation is best and most properly represented by its government,
which is the organ of the nation, and which has the right to speak with
the authority of the nation.
“And do not let me be told that one nation has no authority over
another. Every nation, and if need be every human being, has authority
on behalf of humanity and of justice. (Hear, hear.) These are principles
common to mankind, and the violation of which may justly, at the proper
time, open the mouths of the very humblest among us. But in such cases
as these we must endeavor to do injustice to no one, and the more
dreadful the allegations may be, the more strictly it is our duty not to
be premature in assuming their truth, but to wait for an examination of
the case, and to see that what we say, we say upon a basis of
ascertained facts.
“Well, gentlemen, it was, my fate—my fortune, I think—about eighteen
years ago to take an active part with regard to other outrages which
first came up in the shape of rumor, but were afterwards too horribly
verified, in Bulgaria; but I never stirred in regard to those outrages
until in the first place, their existence and their character had been
established by indisputable authority; and, secondly, until I had found
myself driven to absolute despair in regard to any hopes that I could
entertain of a proper representation of British feeling on the part of
the government which was then in office. You will see, therefore, that
my conduct on this occasion has not been inconsistent with what I then
did (hear, hear), and it does not imply, old as I am, that my feelings
have been deadened in regard to matters of such a dreadful description.
(Cheers.)
“Now I remained silent because I had full confidence that the government
of the Queen would do its duty, and I still entertain that confidence.
Its power and influence are considerable; at the same time they are
limited. It is not in the power of this country, acting singly, to
undertake to represent humanity at large, and to inflict, even upon the
grossest wrongdoers, the punishments that their crimes may have
deserved; but there is such a thing as the conscience of mankind at
large, and the conscience is not limited even to Christendom. (Hear,
hear.) And there is a great power in the collected voice of outraged
humanity. What happened in Bulgaria? The Sultan and his government
absolutely denied that anything wrong had been done. Yes, but their
denial was shattered by the force of facts. The truth was exhibited to
the world. It was thought an extravagance at the time when I said: ‘It
is time that the Turk and all his belongings should go out of Bulgaria
bag and baggage.’ They did go out of Bulgaria, and they went out of a
good deal besides. But, quite independent of any sentiment of right,
justice, or humanity, common sense and common prudence ought to have
taught them not to repeat the infernal acts which disgraced the year
1876, so far as Turkey was concerned. (Cheers.)
“Now, it is certainly true that we have not arrived at the close of this
inquiry, and I will say nothing to assume that the allegations will be
verified. At the same time I cannot pretend to say that there is no
reason to anticipate an unfavorable issue. On the contrary, the
intelligence which has reached me tends to a conclusion which I still
hope may not be verified, but tends strongly to a conclusion to the
general effect that the outrages and the scenes and abominations of 1876
in Bulgaria have been repeated in 1894 in Armenia. As I have said, I
hope it is not so, and I will hope to the last, but if it is so it is
time that one general shout of execration, not of men, but of deeds, one
general shout of execration directed against deeds of wickedness, should
rise from outraged humanity, and should force itself into the ears of
the Sultan of Turkey and make him sensible, if anything can make him
sensible, of the madness of such a course.
“The history of Turkey has been a sad and painful history. That race has
not been without remarkable and even in some cases fine qualities, but
from too many points of view it has been a scourge to the world, made
use of, no doubt, by a wise Providence for the sins of the world. If
these tales of murder, violation, and outrage be true, then it will
follow that they cannot be overlooked, and they cannot be made light of.
I have lived to see the Empire of Turkey in Europe reduced to less than
one half of what it was when I was born, and why? Simply because of its
misdeeds—a great record written by the hand of Almighty God, in whom the
Turk, as a Mohammedan, believes, and believes firmly—written by the hand
of Almighty God against injustice, against lust, against the most
abominable cruelty; and if—and I hope, and I feel sure, that the
government of the Queen will do everything that can be done to pierce to
the bottom of this mystery, and to make the facts known to the world—if,
happily—I speak hoping against hope—if the reports we have read are to
be disproved or to be mitigated, then let us thank God; but if, on the
other hand, they be established, then I say it will more than ever stand
before the world that there is no lesson, however severe, that can teach
certain people the duty, the prudence, the necessity of observing in
some degree the laws of decency, and of humanity, and of justice, and
that if allegations such as these are established, it will stand as if
it were written with letters of iron on the records of the world, that
such a government as that which can countenance and cover the
perpetration of such outrages is a disgrace in the first place to
Mahomet, the Prophet whom it professes to follow, that it is a disgrace
to civilization at large, and that it is a curse to mankind. (Cheers.)
Now, that is strong language.
“Strong language ought to be used when facts are strong, and ought not
to be used without strength of facts. I have counselled you still to
retain and to keep your judgment in suspense, but as the evidence grows
and the case darkens, my hopes dwindle and decline; and as long as I
have a voice I hope that voice, upon occasions, will be uttered on
behalf of humanity and truth.” (Cheers.)[52]
In a remarkable paper entitled _Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of
the East_ called forth by the atrocities in 1876, Mr. Gladstone sums up
some of the qualities of the Turkish race and of Turkish rule as
follows:[53]
“Let me endeavor very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline, what the
Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mohammedanism
simply, but of Mohammedanism compounded with the peculiar character of a
race. They are not the mild Mohammedans of India, nor the chivalrous
Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the
whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great
anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of
blood marked the track behind them; and, as far as their dominion
reached, civilization disappeared from view. They represented everywhere
government by force as opposed to government by law. For the guide of
this life they had a relentless fatalism; for its reward hereafter, a
sensual paradise.
“They were, indeed, a tremendous incarnation of military power. This
advancing curse menaced the whole of Europe. It was only stayed—and that
not in one generation, but in many—by the heroism of the European
population of those very countries part of which form at this moment the
scene of war, and the anxious subject of diplomatic action. In the olden
time all Western Christendom sympathized with the resistance to the
common enemy; and even during the hot and fierce struggles of the
Reformation there were prayers, if I mistake not, offered up in the
English churches for the success of the emperor—the head of the Roman
Catholic power and influence—in his struggles with the Turk.
[Illustration:
KURDISH HAMIDIÉH SOLDIERS EXECUTING THE “SWORD DANCE.”
]
“But, although the Turk represented force as opposed to law, yet not
even a government of force can be maintained without the aid of an
intellectual element such as he did not possess. Hence there grew up
what has been rare in the history of the world, a kind of tolerance in
the midst of cruelty, tyranny, and rapine. Much of Christian life was
contemptuously let alone, much of the subordinate functions of
government was allowed to devolve upon the bishops; and a race of Greeks
was attracted to Constantinople which has all along made up, in some
degree, the deficiencies of Turkish Islam in the element of mind, and
which at this moment provides the Porte with its long-known and, I must
add, highly esteemed ambassador in London. Then there have been, from
time to time, but rarely, statesmen whom we have been too ready to
mistake for specimens of what Turkey might become, whereas they were, in
truth, more like _lusus naturæ_, on the favorable side,—monsters, so to
speak, of virtue or intelligence. And there were (and are) also,
scattered through the community, men who were not, indeed, real
citizens, but yet who have exhibited the true civic virtues, and who
would have been citizens, had there been a true polity around them.
Besides all this, the conduct of the race has gradually been brought
more under the eye of Europe, which it has lost its power to resist or
to defy; and its central government, in conforming perforce to many of
the forms and traditions of civilization, has occasionally caught
something of their spirit....
“I entreat my countrymen, upon whom far more than perhaps any other
people of Europe it depends, to require and to insist that our
government, which has been working in one direction, shall work in the
other, and shall apply all its vigor to concur with the other states of
Europe in obtaining the extinction of the Turkish executive power in
Bulgaria. Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible
manner—namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their
Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbachis, their Kaimakams and their
Pashas,—one and all, bag and baggage,—shall, I hope, clear out from the
province they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this
most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to the
memory of those heaps on heaps of dead; to the violated purity alike of
matron, of maiden, and of child; to the civilization which has been
affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to
the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in a
European jail, there is not a cannibal in the South Sea Islands, whose
indignation would not arise and overboil at the recital of that which
has been done; which has too late been examined, but which remains
unavenged; which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce
passions that produced it; and which may again spring up, in another
murderous harvest, from the soil soaked and reeking with blood, and in
the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. _That
such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of
our race which did them, that a door should be left open for their
ever-so-barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the
whole._[54] Better, we may justly tell the Sultan, almost any
inconvenience, difficulty, or loss associated with Bulgaria,
‘Than thou reseated in thy place of light,
The mockery of thy people and their bane.’
“We may ransack the annals of the world; but I know not what research
can furnish us with so portentous an example of the fiendish misuse of
the powers established by God ‘for the punishment of evil-doers, and for
the encouragement of them that do well.’ No government ever has so
sinned; none has so proved itself incorrigible in sin, or, which is the
same, so impotent for reformation. If it be allowable that the executive
power of Turkey should renew, at this great crisis, by permission or
authority of Europe, the charter of its existence in Bulgaria, then
there is not on record, since the beginnings of political society, a
protest that man has lodged against intolerable misgovernment, or a
stroke he has dealt at loathsome tyranny, that ought not henceforth
forward to be branded as a crime.”