Listen to what the haughty young ruler of Germany says:--"It
is better that the Armenians be killed than the peace of Europe
be disturbed." The explanation is easy enough. When he visited
Constantinople half a dozen years ago, the Sultan presented him with
Arabian horses, jewelry of massive gold, and many other valuable
articles, worth in all several hundred thousand dollars; and last
summer sent him a beautiful and valuable sword made in Constantinople
by Armenians, which was carried to him by Shakir Pasha, the butcher
who was afterwards appointed by the Sultan to reform Armenia,--the
commander of the "Hamidieh Cavalry," whose work I tell of later
on. This embassy was to secure the alliance of Germany against
molestation by Russia.
The German Emperor has three motives in his present action. One is
to show gratitude for the Sultan's generosity--as though it were not
the easiest thing in the world to be munificent when it all comes
out of other people. The second is to punish Lord Salisbury for not
getting England to join the Triple Alliance, when the Emperor asked
him in person on his journey to England. When Salisbury threatened
the Sultan in the interest of Armenia, the German Emperor said,
"The English government has no right to interfere with the Turkish
Empire. Every sovereign must have the right to govern as he thinks
necessary, or he is no sovereign." He afterwards sent his Chancellor,
Prince Hohenlohe, to the Czar to arrange united resistance to England,
and afterwards sent Count Von Moltke on the same errand. And the
Czar instructed his Ambassador at Constantinople, M. Nelidoff, to
inform the Sultan that he would not support the English government
in coercing Turkey. The Sultan therefore refused Salisbury's demands,
and he dared not go on alone. The Emperor's third motive was to gain
the friendship of the Czar against France, which had lately been
taking up the Russian alliance with great fervor. Another reason is
that he hates the Armenians for having bought the German factories
and property in Amassia. He is very anxious to plant German colonies
in Turkey, of all places in the world, for profit. There are about
fifty families in Amassia, near Marsovan, and they had started various
kinds of factories there; but the shrewd and wealthy Armenians bought
them out. The Emperor is angry because his colony was not successful.
For all these reasons the German Emperor refused to send gunboats
to the Bosphorus when the other powers did; he said he saw no need
of it. He was right so far as Germans were concerned; the Sultan
was not going to allow his ally's subjects to be slaughtered and
the ally turned into an enemy. And if he could stop the massacre of
one sort of people, he could of another; nothing shows the Sultan's
deliberate purpose in the massacres better than the fact that when he
chose not to let any particular sort of people be harmed, that sort
were not harmed. But as to Germany, what hope for Armenia is there
from it? The Emperor has his own interests, and the Armenians might
be tortured or outraged to death, and he would not stir a finger.