I have spoken earlier in these pages of the services of the Armenians to
the Allied cause in the war. What are these services?
The Armenian name has been so long and so often associated with massacre
that it has given rise to the general but utterly unfounded belief by
those who have not gone deeper into the matter, that Armenians are
devoid of physical courage and allow themselves to be butchered like
sheep.[15] Where this belief is not based upon ignorance of the facts
and circumstances, it is, I am bound to say, a particularly dastardly
piece of calumny upon a people who have groaned for centuries under a
brutal tyrant's heel, with an indomitable spirit that has ever been and
is even to-day the Turk's despair. The struggle that has gone on for
five or six centuries between Armenian and Turk symbolizes, perhaps
better than any event in history, the invincibility of the spirit of
Christianity and liberty and the ideal of nationality against
overwhelming odds of ruthless tyranny, the savagery of the Dark Ages and
the unscrupulous and mendacious exploitation of religious passion. That
struggle has been as unequal as can well be imagined, but we have not
permitted the forces of darkness to triumph over the spirit of Light and
Liberty, though the price paid has come very near that of our
annihilation. Nevertheless, we have been able, in this world-wide
struggle, not dissimilar to our own long struggle in the moral issues
involved, to render services to the cause of the Allies, which is the
cause of Right and Justice, and therefore our cause also, quite out of
proportion, in their effect, to our numbers as a race or our
contribution of fighting men as compared with the vast armies engaged,
although that contribution has been by no means negligible.
On the eve of Turkey's entry into the war the Young Turks employed
every conceivable means--persuasion, cajolery, intimidation, the promise
of a large autonomous Armenia, etc.--to induce the Armenian party
leaders to prevail upon the Russian Armenians to join themselves in a
mass rally to the Turkish flag against Russia. They sent a number of
emissaries to Russian Armenia with the same object. The Turk must have a
peculiar understanding of human nature, and not much sense of humour, to
have the _naïveté_ to make such overtures to Armenians after having
persecuted and harried and massacred them for centuries. All the
Armenian leaders promised was a correct attitude as Ottoman subjects.
They would do neither more nor less than what they were bound to do by
the laws of the country. They could not interfere with the freedom of
action of their compatriots in the Caucasus who owed allegiance to
Russia. They kept their promise scrupulously in the first months of the
war. Armenian conscripts went to the dépôts without enthusiasm. How
could it be otherwise? What claim had the Turks upon the sympathy and
support of their Armenian subjects? Is sympathy won by tyranny, or
loyalty bred by massacre? They (the Armenians) were placed in a most
difficult position. They were naturally reluctant to fight against the
Russians, and the position was aggravated by the fact that the Russian
Caucasian army was largely composed of Russian Armenians. But in spite
of these sentimental difficulties, mobilization was completed without
any serious trouble.
Soon, however, Armenians began to desert in large numbers; the Young
Turks had joined the war against their wish and advice; they had not
their heart in the business, and, last, but not least, they were
harried, ill-treated and insulted by their Turkish officers and comrades
at every turn: there were exceptions, of course, but that was the
position generally in the closing months of 1914. Let me add that there
were large numbers of Turkish deserters also, and that the Armenian
leaders did all they could to send the deserters of their own
nationality back to the ranks, doing so forcibly in some cases. Then
came the defeat of the Turks at Sarikamysh and the ejection of Djevdet
Bey and his force from Azerbaijan. On his return to Van, Djevdet Bey
told his friends: "It is the Armenians much more than the Russians who
are fighting us."
The massacres and deportations began soon after the collapse of the
Turkish invasion of the Caucasus and Northern Persia, and it is only
after it was seen clearly that the Turks were determined to deport or
destroy them all that the Armenians in many places took up arms in
self-defence. There was no armed resistance before that, and the Turkish
and German allegations of an Armenian revolt are a barefaced invention
to justify a crime, a tithe of which not one but a hundred revolts
cannot justify or palliate. This is proved beyond all question by Mr.
Toynbee's concise and illuminating historical summary at the end of the
Blue-book on the Treatment of Armenians by the Turks during the war.
There was no revolt. But when the Armenians were driven to self-defence
under the menace of extermination, they fought with what arms they could
scrape together, with the courage of desperation. In Shahin-Karahissar
they held out for three months and were only reduced by artillery
brought from Erzerum. In Van and Jebel-Mousa they defended themselves
against heavy odds until relieved by the Russians and the Armenian
volunteers in the first case, and rescued by French and British cruisers
in the second. The Turkish force sent against the insurgents of
Jebel-Mousa was detached from the army intended for the attack on the
Suez Canal.
Of course ill-armed, poorly equipped bands without artillery, wanting in
almost all necessaries of modern warfare, brave as they may be, cannot
possibly maintain a prolonged resistance against superior forces of
regulars well supplied with artillery, machine-guns and all that is
needed in war. Nevertheless, some of these bands seem to have succeeded
in holding out for many months, and it is believed in the Caucasus that
there are groups of armed Armenians still holding out in some parts of
the higher mountains behind the Turkish lines.[16] It will be
remembered that some weeks ago--I do not recall the date--a
Constantinople telegram reprinted in _The Times_ from German papers
stated that there were 30,000 armed Armenian rebels in the vilayet of
Sivas. This is an obvious exaggeration, and it may simply mean that a
considerable number of Armenians were still defending themselves against
the menace of massacre. When the Russian army entered Trebizond a band
of some 400 armed Armenians came down from the mountains and surrendered
themselves to the Russians. Quite recently a band of seventy men cut
through the Turkish lines and gained the Russian lines in the
neighbourhood of Erzinjian.
The Turks have repeatedly declared that the "Armenian revolt" threatened
to place their army between two fires. The particle of truth that there
is in this assertion is, as may be judged by the facts so far known as
cited above, that the Armenian resistance to massacre and deportation
proved to be more serious than they had anticipated, and that they had
to detach large numbers of troops and in some cases artillery and
machine-guns to keep these "rebels" in check. It is consequently
undeniable that Armenian armed resistance to deportation and massacre
has been a considerable hindrance to the full development of Turkish
military power during the war and has, in that way, been of material,
though, indirect assistance to the Allied forces operating against the
Turks. To this may be added the demoralizing effect that the deplorable
state of affairs created by the Turks in their dominions must have
exercised on the morale of their people.
Such in general outline have been the services of the Turkish Armenians
to the Allied cause. It is not my purpose here to endeavour to appraise
the possibly ill-concealed, but not by any means ostentatious or
provocative, sympathy of the Armenians for the Allies, upon the sinister
designs of the Young Turks. I will content myself with the description
of a significant cartoon that appeared early in the war in the Turkish
comic paper _Karagöz_ in Constantinople. The cartoon depicted two Turks
discussing the war. "Where do you get your war news from?" asked Turk
number one. "I do not need war news," replied Turk number two; "I can
follow the course of the war by the expression on the faces of the
Armenians I meet. When they are happy I know the Allies are winning,
when depressed I know the Germans have had a victory."
The following extract from a dead Turkish officer's notebook, reproduced
in the _Russkaia Viedomosti_ (No. 205), throws some light on the Turkish
estimate of the value of Armenian support in the war. "If our Armenians
had been with us," wrote this Turkish officer, "we would have defeated
the Russians long ago."[17]
The services of the Russian Armenians to the Allied cause, but
principally, of course to the Russian cause during the war, have been of
a more direct and positive character and of far-reaching importance.
They may be divided into two distinct parts, namely, military and
political; and in order the better to explain the full meaning of the
Armenian "strong support of the Russian cause" (in the words of _The
Times_), I will deal with each of the two parts separately.
The Armenian population of Russian Armenia and the Caucasus numbers,
roughly, 1,750,000 souls, and there are probably another 100,000 to
200,000 Armenians scattered over the other parts of the empire. They are
liable to military service as Russian subjects, and it is estimated that
they have given to the Russian army some 160,000 men. Apart from this
not negligible number of men called to the colours in the ordinary
course of mobilization, the Armenians, as a result of an understanding
with the authorities, organized and equipped at their own expense a
separate auxiliary volunteer force under tried and experienced guerilla
leaders, such as Andranik, Kéri and others, to co-operate with the
Caucasian army. This force contained a number of Turkish Armenians,
mostly refugees from previous massacres. Some twenty thousand men
responded to the call for volunteers, though I believe not more than
about ten thousand could be armed and sent to the front. The greatest
enthusiasm prevailed. Armenian students at the Universities of Moscow
and Petrograd and educational institutions in the Caucasus vied with
each other in their eagerness to take part in the fight for the
liberation of their kinsmen from bondage. Several young lady students
offered to enlist, but I believe all but two or three were dissuaded
from taking part in actual fighting. Boys of fourteen and fifteen years
ran away from home and tramped long distances to join the volunteer
battalions. It is recorded that an Armenian widow at Kars, on hearing
that her only son had been killed in battle, exclaimed, "Curse me that I
did not give birth to ten more sons to fight and die for the freedom of
our country."
The volunteer force was not large, but it was a mobile force well
adapted to the semi-guerilla kind of warfare carried on in Armenia, and
the men knew the country. They seem to have done good work as scouts in
particular, though they took part in many severe engagements and were
mentioned once or twice in Russian _communiqués_ as "our Armenian
detachments." Generous appreciation of the services and gallantry of
the volunteers as well as of Armenians in the army has been expressed by
Russian military commanders, the Press, and public men. High military
honours were conferred upon the volunteer leaders, and His Imperial
Majesty the Czar honoured the Armenian nation by his visit to the
Armenian Cathedral in Tiflis, demonstrating his satisfaction with the
part played by Armenians in the war.[18]
There are, of course, many Armenian high officers in the Russian army,
including several generals, but so far they have not had the opportunity
of producing in this war outstanding military leaders of the calibre of
Loris Melikoff and Terkhougasoff. General Samsonoff, "the Russian
Kitchener," was killed early in the war in East Prussia in his gallant
and successful attempt to relieve the pressure on Paris.
The political effect of the strong and enthusiastic support of the
Russian cause by Armenians has been to keep in check the discontented
and fanatical section of the Tartars and other Moslems of the Caucasus,
who would have been disposed to make common cause with the Turks
whenever a favourable opportunity should present itself to do so without
much risk to themselves. The Tartars and other Moslem elements of the
Caucasus are as a whole genuinely loyal to Russia, but the existence of
a minority who would welcome the success of the Turkish invasion cannot
be denied. Some of the Ajars did, in fact, join the Turks during their
invasion of Ardahan.
All things considered, therefore, those who have any knowledge of the
racial and political conditions in the Caucasus will not, I think,
regard it as in any sense an exaggeration to assert that the
whole-hearted support of the Armenians--and I may also add, though in a
lesser degree, the Georgians--has contributed very materially to the
success of Russian arms in the Caucasian theatre of the war. The absence
of that support, or even mere formal or lukewarm support, would not
only most probably have had serious consequences for the Caucasus, it
would have left the whole of Persia at the mercy of the Turks; and who
can say what the consequences of such a catastrophe would have been on
Arabia, Mesopotamia, Afghanistan and even the northern frontiers of
India itself?
Nearly all the able-bodied Armenians in France, between 1000 and 1500
strong, joined the French Foreign Legion quite early in the war. Some
Armenians came from the United States to fight for France. Only some 250
have survived, I understand, most of whom are proud possessors of the
Military Cross.
Propaganda in neutral countries has played an important part during the
war. The just cause of the Allies has had no stauncher supporters or
better propagandists than the hundred and twenty-five thousand or more
Armenians in the United States, while the Great Tragedy of Armenia has
incidentally added to the armoury of the Allies a melancholy but
formidable moral weapon.