This is apparent to the superficial observer. The scheme
of reforms devolved civil officers, judgeships, and police
participation on Mohammedans and non-Mohammedans in the six
provinces proportionately. This, while simple justice, was a
bitter pill to the Mohammedans, who had ruled the Christians with
a rod of iron for five hundred years. All that was needed to make
the scheme of reforms inoperative was to alter the proportion of
Christians to Mohammedans. This policy was at once relentlessly
and thoroughly executed. The number of the Armenians has been
diminished, first by killing at a single blow those most capable
of taking a part in any scheme of reconstruction, and secondly
by compelling the survivors to die of starvation, exposure,
and sickness, or to become Moslems.
It is the very essence of Mohammedanism that the "ghiavour"
has no right to live, save in subjection. The abortive scheme of
Europe insisting on the rights of Armenians as men, has enraged
the Moslems against them. The arrogant and non-progressive Turks
know that in a fair and equal race the Christians will outstrip
them in every department of business and industry, and they see
in any fair scheme of reforms the handwriting on the wall for
themselves. If the scheme of reforms had applied to regions where
Greeks predominate, the latter would have been killed and robbed
as readily as the Armenians have been. Are the Greek massacres of
1822 forgotten, when 50,000 were killed, or the slaughter of 12,000
Maronites and Syrians in 1860, and of 15,000 Bulgarians in 1876?