If we wish to condense all we have said in a few pages, we shall have
the following picture:
In 1914 both Turkey and Russia appealed to the Armenians by various
promises of a future autonomous Armenia to secure their assistance in
their respective military operations. Through their long and bitter
experience the Armenians knew very well that the imperialistic
governments of both Turkey and of Russia were opposed to their national
aspirations and therefore those promises had no value whatever. But,
realizing the universal significance of the present war, and considering
the fact that justice was on the side of the Entente, the Armenians, in
spite of their distrust of the Russian government, from the very
beginning, unreservedly bound themselves to the allied cause.
This decision of the Armenians cost them the sacrifice of more than
1,000,000 men in Turkish Armenia, and complete devastation of their
native land even in the first year of the war.
In spite of this terrible blow, the Armenians did not lose their vigor,
and, even though the autocratic Russian government, up to the time of
the Revolution, created all sorts of obstacles to impede their
activities, they still continued their assistance to the allied cause.
In bringing about the failure of the three Turkish offensives in 1914
and 1915 the Armenians gave the allied cause important armed assistance,
on both sides of the Turco-Russian frontier.
After the Russian Revolution, when, the Russian military forces fled
from the Caucasian front and left it unprotected from January, 1918, to
the middle of the following September, the Armenians were the only
people who resisted and delayed the Turco-German advance toward Baku.
Moreover, the Armenians accomplished all this with their own forces, all
alone, surrounded on all sides by hostile elements, without any means of
communication with their great Allies of the West. As an evidence of
this we may mention the fact that during the last eight months and a
half the Armenians have received from the Allies only 6,500,000 rubles
($3,250,000) of financial assistance, and the 2,800 British soldiers who
were too few and arrived too late to save Baku.
[Illustration: Armenian volunteers who fought on the Palestine front in
September and October, 1918, under the command of Gen. Allenby.]
Let us now look at the other side of the picture.
Had the Armenians assumed an entirely opposite attitude from what they
actually did; in other words, had they bound their fate in 1914 to the
Turco-German cause, just as the Bulgarians did in 1915, what would have
been the trend of events in the Near East? Here is a question to which,
it is quite possible, our great Allies have had no time to give any
consideration. But that very question was put before the Armenians in
1914, and with no light heart did they answer it by their decision to
join the Allies. Each and every one of them had a clear presentiment of
the terrible responsibility they assumed. Those millions of corpses of
Armenian women and children which spotted the plains in the summer of
1915, rose like phantoms before our very eyes in the August of 1914 when
we decided to resist the wild Turkish revengefulness and its frightful
outcome. Now, in October, 1918, when we are so close to the hour of the
final victory, and feel quite safe and certain that the heavy and gloomy
days of the summer of 1914 will never return, I shall permit myself to
picture in a few words, before I finish, that which would have taken
place if the Armenians had sided with the Germano-Turks in the Near East
from the beginning of the war.
First of all, those frightful Armenian massacres would not have taken
place. On the contrary, the Turks and the Germans would have tried to
win the sympathy of the Armenians in every possible way until the end of
the war.
On the other hand, so long as the Georgians and Tartars of the Caucasian
peoples were only too eager to co-operate with the Germano-Turks, as the
events of 1918 fully demonstrate, had the Armenians likewise joined them
in 1914, by cutting the railroads, the backbone of the Caucasian Russian
army, all the Caucasian country would have slipped out of the hands of
the Russians in a few weeks, and the Turco-Germans would have reached
Baku in the autumn of the same year. The Armenians, Georgians, and
Tartars of the Caucasus, united, would have been able to form with the
greatest ease an army of 700,000 men, by which they would have been able
to defend the Caucasian mountain-ridge against the Russians. Meanwhile,
the entire Turkish army would have been available to advance
immediately toward the interior of Asia and join the 18,000,000 Moslems
of Asiatic Russia. We may safely say, neither Persia nor Afghanistan
could have remained neutral on seeing such successful achievements by
the Turks.
In the course of such events Russia would have been compelled to remove
the greater portion of her forces to the East and would not have been
able to protect her Western frontiers as successfully as she did.
Therefore, quite probably, the Russian collapse would have taken place
in the summer of 1915, when the Germans occupied Russian Poland. On the
other hand, Great Britain would have been obliged to appropriate the
greater portion of her newly-formed land forces for the protection of
India, and would have been unable to rush as great a force to the
defence of heroic France as she actually did. Quite likely, under these
conditions, neither Italy nor Roumania would have abandoned her
neutrality, and thus the war might have ended in 1915 or 1916 with the
victory of the central Powers, at least on land.
It was as clear as day to the Armenians that a Germano-Turkish victory
could never satisfy their national aspirations. The most that those
nations would have done for us would have been to grant nominal rights
to the Armenia of their own choice. But it was very plain to us also
that we should not have suffered such frightful human losses had we not
sided with the Allies. We consciously chose this last alternative,
namely: we tied our fate to the allied victory; we exposed our very
existence to danger in order to realize the complete fulfillment of our
national ambition, that is, to see the re-establishment of the United
Historic Independent Armenia.
With our modest means, we have fulfilled our duty in full measure in
this great struggle in order to save civilization from an impending
doom. Now it is for our great Allies to act.
The day is not very far distant when, gathered around the great tribunal
of justice, the representatives of all the nations of the globe--guilty
or just--are to receive their punishment or reward from the hands of the
four distinguished champions of democracy, President Wilson, Premiers
Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, and Orlando. If the representatives
present themselves in the order of seniority, the first in the rank will
be the representative of the Armenian people--the aged Mother Armenia.
Behold! Into the Peace Congress Hall there enters an old woman, bathed
in blood, clothed in rags, her face covered with wrinkles 3,000 years
old, and completely exhausted. With her thoughtful eyes the venerable
Mother Armenia will survey the countenances of all those present, and
thus will she address the great figures of the world:
"Century after century my sons took part in all the strifes waged
to safeguard justice and the freedom of suffering humanity. Three
thousand years ago my sons struggled for seven hundred years
against the despotism of Babylon and Nineveh, which eventually
collapsed under the load of their own crimes. Fifteen centuries ago
the Armenians resisted for five hundred years the persecutions of
the mighty Persian Empire to preserve their Christian faith. Since
the eighth century my sons have been the vanguard of Christian
civilization in the East against Moslem invasions threatening for a
while the very existence of all Europe. If you doubt my statements,
ask the sacred mountain of Ararat; he will relate to you how all
the nations and empires, which attempted to possess by criminal
means the indisputable inheritance of my sons, have received their
just punishment.
"Let us not go very far. Here, before you, stand the
representatives of those three nations which tried to destroy my
sons before your very eyes, in order to rule those parts of our
ancestral lands, so sanctified by blood, known as Armenia. Look at
this Turk; it was he who wished to wipe the very name of Armenia
off the face of the map; but today, foiled in his attempt, he
stands there like a criminal awaiting his sentence. And where is
today the Czar of Russia, who planned to occupy Armenia without the
Armenians,--the representative of that Empire before which the
world trembled. And what has remained of the policies of the German
Empire, in whose hands is the Bagdad railroad now, built at the
cost of the blood of hundreds of thousands of Armenian women and
children? Thus, those three modern malevolent empires, which tried
to attain happiness through the blood of my sons, have received
their just punishment.
"Such will be the fate in the future of all those who shall attempt
similar crimes against Armenia. This is the message, gentlemen,
handed down to us through three thousand years of history.
"I have nothing more to add. I await your verdict with confidence."