Armenia has become a touchstone of victory in the great war for freedom
and humanity.
If Armenia is granted national independence it will mean that in the
making of the peace treaty the forces of democracy and human progress
have triumphed over the forces of imperialism and short-sighted
reaction. It will mean that in the future the rights of the small
nations are to be recognized as well as those of the great. It will mean
that international justice is to be the foundation of the new world
order. The triumph of the principle that is involved will mean that the
war has been won because its moral aims have been achieved.
But if the Armenians were to be thrust back under the yoke of Turkey, it
would mean that injustice, massacre and atrocity are to be permanent
features of the world of the future. It would mean that the
justice-loving nations of the world will prepare for inevitable
conflicts that are to come. It would mean that the war which was fought
to end war has been lost.
National independence for Armenia will mean that the old order of secret
intrigue and orthodox diplomacy has given way to a new order of open
democratic diplomacy, based on the self-determination of nations and the
principles of international justice. It will mean that the peace which
ends this war will be a democratic peace, a peace of the peoples, a
peace that will last. It will mean that imperialistic aims, secret
treaties and selfish greedy interests have given way before the
conception of a world organized for righteousness and permanent peace.
National independence for Armenia will mean that the Balance of Power,
which has always considered the subject nations of Turkey as mere pawns
in a diplomatic game, has been replaced by a League of Free Nations
opening the way towards a world federation and the parliament of man. It
will mean that the old chaos of international anarchy is to be replaced
by a new world order in which peoples and nations shall be free to live
their own lives, to speak their own language, to worship in their own
religion and to develop their own civilization, in the fullest
friendship and democratic co-operation with the other free nations of
mankind.
National independence for Armenia is a touchstone of victory because it
will mean that mankind has come to recognize that there is a moral law
in the world, which applies to nations as well as to individuals. It
will mean the overthrow of imperialism, militarism and the philosophy of
force. It will mean an invaluable extension of the principle of
democracy in the world. It will mean that the way will be open to
develop the great highway between Europe and Asia amid political
conditions of a stable and durable peace. It will mean that mankind can
proceed to cultivate again the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates
and that once more after centuries of desolation this region will become
one of the garden spots of the earth.
What should be the boundaries of the new Armenian nation? I have before
me Stanford's Linguistic Map of Europe, a map based upon the most
careful scientific research and conscientious scholarship. This map
shows the area in which the Armenian speaking population is dominant as
extending to Adana and Alexandretta on the Mediterranean, almost to the
Black Sea near Trebizond, to Tiflis in the Caucasus Mountains and to
Lake Urmia near the western boundary of Persia on the East.
At the edges this Armenian territory shades over into regions occupied
by Turks and Kurds. In the interest of international justice and
permanent peace in the future, the boundaries of the new Armenia ought
to be extended as far as the Armenian race extends as an important
element of the population, because the Armenians have proved their
capacity for self-government even under the almost impossible conditions
of Turkish misrule, while Turks and Kurds have again and again proved
incapable of governing themselves, much less of governing others. The
hope for toleration of racial minorities, which is the indispensable
condition for peace in areas of mixed population, would be many times
greater in a government by the Armenians than in a government by Turks
and Kurds.
Armenia is a touchstone of victory in this war because, unlike Belgium,
it lies so far beyond the range of accurate news reports and the
limelight of public opinion, that it is likely to be overlooked unless a
settlement is approached in a new spirit of international justice. The
horrors of the Armenian massacres have been so unendurable that many
people have had to try to escape from thinking about Armenia in order to
keep their sanity in the midst of such wholesale horror. But oblivion is
no remedy for the problem of Armenia and the world of the future will
not be safe for democracy or for anything else unless Armenia and the
problem which it represents is permanently solved in the Peace
Conference. I do not believe that any indemnities or annexations of
territories or any imperialistic gain of this war is worth the life of a
single American soldier, but I do believe that only by giving Armenia
its independence, by establishing the principle of international
justice, of which Armenia is a concrete example, and by creating a
League of Free Nations as the basis of the new world order, will we be
enabled to say that the sacrifices of these young men shall not have
been in vain. Thus Armenia becomes the touchstone of victory in this
great war for freedom and humanity.