GLADSTONE ON ARMENIA’S FATE.
At a meeting held in the Town Hall, Chester, England, a great many members of Parliament being present, the Duke of Westminster presiding, Mr. Gladstone spoke (in part) as follows:
“My Lord Duke, my Lord and Ladies and Gentlemen:
“It is perfectly true that the Government whose deeds we have to impeach is a Mohammedan Government, and it is perfectly true that the sufferers under those outrages, under those afflictions, are Christian sufferers. The Mohammedan subjects of Turkey suffer a great deal, but what they suffer is only in the way of the ordinary excesses and defects of an intolerably bad Government—perhaps the worst on the face of the earth. (Hear, hear.) I will take the liberty of reading a resolution which has been placed in my hands and which seems to me to express with firmness, but with moderation, the opinions which I am very confident this meeting will entertain, and this meeting, in entertaining such opinions, is but the representative of the country at large. (Cheers.)
“Allow me to go further and to say that the country at large in entertaining these ideas is only a representative of civilized humanity, and I will presume to speak on the ground, in part, of personal knowledge, of the opinions and sympathies that are entertained among our own Transatlantic brethren of the United States. If possible, the sentiment in America entertained on the subject of these recent occurrences is even more vivid and even stronger, if it can be, than that which beats in the hearts of the people of this country.
“The terms of the resolution are as follows:
“‘That this meeting expresses its conviction that her Majesty’s Government will have the cordial support of the entire nation, without distinction of party, in any measures which it may adopt for securing to the people of Turkish Armenia such reforms in the administration of that province as shall provide effective guarantees for the safety of life, honor, religion, and property, and that no reforms can be effective which are not placed under the continuous control of the Great Powers of Europe.’ (Cheers.)
“That means, without doubt, the Great Powers of Europe, all who choose to combine, and those great Powers which happily have combined and have already, in my judgment, pledged their honor as well as their power to the attainment of the object we have in view. (Cheers.)
“Now, it was my fate, I think six or more months ago, to address a very limited number, not a public assembly, but a limited number of Armenian gentlemen, and gentlemen interested in Armenia on this subject. There was no authoritative and impartial declaration before the world at that period on the subject of what is known as the Sassoun massacre; that massacre to which the Noble Duke has alluded and with respect to which, horrible as that massacre was, one of the most important witnesses in this case declares that it is thrown into the shade and has become pale and ineffective by the side of the unspeakable horrors which are being enacted from month to month, from week to week, and day to day in the different provinces of Armenia. (Hear, hear.) It was a duty to avoid premature judgment, and I think it was avoided. But though it is a duty to avoid exaggeration, a most sacred duty, it is a duty that has little or no place in the case before us, because it is too well known that the powers of language hardly suffice to describe what has been and is being done, and that exaggeration, if we were ever so much disposed to it, is in such a case really beyond our power. (Cheers.) Those are dreadful words to speak. It is a painful office to perform, and nothing but a strong sense of duty could gather us together between these walls or could induce a man of my age and a man who is not wholly without other difficulties to contend with to resign for the moment that repose and quietude which is the last of many great earthly blessings remaining to him in order to invite you to enter into a consideration of this question. What witnesses ought we to call before us? I should be disposed to say that it matters very little what witness you call. So far as the character of the testimony you will receive is concerned the witnesses are all agreed. At the time that I have just spoken of, six or eight months ago, they were private witnesses. Since that time, although we have not seen the detailed documents of public authority, yet we know that all the broader statements which had been made up to that time and which have made the blood of this nation run cold have been confirmed and verified. They have not been overstated, not withdrawn, not qualified, not reduced, but confirmed in all their breadth, in all that horrible substance, in all their sickening details. (Hear, hear.)
The Prison at Erzeroum.
“I will refer to the last of these witnesses, one whom I must say I am disposed to name with honor, it is Dr. Dillon, a man who, as the special commissioner of the Daily Telegraph newspaper, some months ago with care and labor, and with the hazard of his life (hear, hear), went into Turkey, laudably making use of a disguise for the purpose, and went into Armenia, so that he might make himself thoroughly master of the facts. (Cheers.) He published his results before any public authority had given utterance to its judgments and those results which he, I rather think, was the first to give to the world in a connected shape—at any rate he was very early in the field—those results have been completely confirmed and established by the inquiries of the delegates appointed by the three Powers—England, France and Russia. (Cheers.) I say he has, at the risk of his life, acquired a title to be believed, and (in the Contemporary Review) he gives us an account which bears upon it all the marks of truth, but which, at the same time that we must believe it to be true, you would say is hardly credible. Unhappily some of those matters which are not credible do, in this strange and wayward world of ours, turn out to be true; and here it is hardly credible that there can dwell in the human form a spirit of such intense and diabolical wickedness as is unhappily displayed in some of the narratives Dr. Dillon has laid before the world. I shall not quote from them in detail though I mean to make a single citation, which will be a citation, if I may say so, rather of principle than of detail. I shall not quote the details, but I will say to you that when you begin to read them you will see the truth of what I just now said—namely that we are not dealing at all with a common and ordinary question of abuses of government or the defects of them. We are dealing with something that goes far deeper, far wider, and that imposes upon us and upon you far heavier obligations.
“The whole substance of this remarkable article may be summed up in four awful words—plunder, murder, rape and torture. (‘Shame.’) Every incident turns upon one or upon several of those awful words. Plunder and murder you would think are bad enough, but plunder and murder are almost venial by the side of the work of the ravisher and the work of the torturer, as it is described in these pages, and as it is now fully and authentically known to be going on. I will keep my word, and I will not be tempted by—what shall I say?—the dramatic interests attached to such exaggeration of human action as we find here to travel into the details of the facts. They are fitter for private perusal than they are for public discussion. In all ordinary cases when we have before us instances of crime, perhaps of very horrible crime—we at once assume that in all countries, unfortunately, there are malefactors, there are plunderers whose deeds we are going to consider. Here, my lord duke, it is nothing of the kind; we have nothing to do here with what are called the dangerous classes of the community; it is not their proceedings which you are asked to consider; it is the proceedings of the Government of Constantinople and its agents. (Cheers.)
“There is not one of these misdeeds for which the Government at Constantinople is not morally responsible. (Cheers.) Now, who are these agents? Let me tell you very briefly. They fall into three classes. The first have been mentioned by the noble duke—namely the savage Kurds, who are, unhappily, the neighbors of the Armenians, the Armenians being the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, and being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world. (Cheers.) These Kurds are by them; they are wild, savage clans, organized as bands of robbers. These the Sultan and the Government at Constantinople have enrolled, though in a nominal fashion, not with a military discipline, into pretended cavalry regiments and then set them loose with the authority of soldiers of the Sultan to harry and destroy the people of Armenia. (Cheers.) Well, these Kurds are the first of the agents in this horrible business; the next are the Turkish soldiers, who are in no sense behind the Kurds in their performances; the third are the peace officers, the police and the tax gatherers of the Turkish Government; and there seems to be a deadly competition among all these classes which shall most prove itself an adept in the horrible and infernal work that is before them, but above them and more guilty than they, are the higher officers of the Turkish Government.
Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.
“I think there are certain matters, such as those which have been discussed to-day and discussed in many other forms, on which it is perfectly possible to make up our minds. And what I should say is, that the whole position may be summed up in three brief propositions. I do not know to which of these propositions to assign the less or the greater importance. It appears to me that they are probably each and every one of them absolutely indispensable. The first proposition is this, You ought to moderate your demands. You ought to ask for nothing but that which is strictly necessary, and that possibly according to all that we know of the proposals before us, the rule has been rigidly complied with. I do not hesitate to say, ladies and gentlemen, that the cleanest and clearest method of dealing with this subject, if we should have done it, would have been to tell the Turk to march out of Armenia. (Loud cheers.) He has no right to remain there, and it would have been an excellent settlement of the question. But it is by no means certain that Europe or even the three Powers would have been unanimous in seeking after that end. Therefore, let us part with everything except what is known to be indispensable. Then I come to the other two rules, and of these the first is that you should accept no Turkish promises. (Hear, hear.) They are absolutely and entirely worthless. They are worse than worthless, because they may serve to delude a few persons who, without information or experience, naturally would suppose, when promises are given, that there is something like an intentional fulfilment. Recollect that no scheme is worth having unless it be supported by efficient guarantees entirely outside the promises of the Turkish Government. (Applause.) There is another word which I must speak, and it is this: Don’t be too much afraid if you hear introduced into this discussion a word that I admit, in ordinary cases, ought to be excluded from all diplomatic proceeding, namely, the word coercion. Coercion is a word perfectly well understood in Constantinople, and it is a word highly appreciated in Constantinople. It is a drastic dose—(laughter)—which never fails of its aim when it is administered in that quarter. (Laughter.) Gentlemen, I would not use these words if I had not myself personally had large and close experience of the proceedings of the Turkish Government. I say, first make your case good, and when your case is made good, determine that it shall prevail. (Cheers.) Grammar has something to do with this case. Recollect that while the word ‘ought’ sounded in Constantinople, passes in thin air, and has no force or solidity whatever attaching to it; on the contrary, the brother or sister monosyllable, the word ‘must’ is perfectly understood—(cheers)—and it is a known fact supported by positive experience, which can be verified upon the map of Europe, that a timely and judicious use of the word never fails for its effect. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I must point out to you that we have reached a very critical position indeed. How are three great Governments in Europe, ruling a population of more than two hundred million souls, with perhaps eight or ten times the population of Turkey, with twenty times the wealth of Turkey, with fifty times the influence and power of Turkey, who have committed themselves in this matter before the world, I put it to you that if they recede before an irrational resistance—and remember that I have in the first instance postulated that our demands should be reasonable—if they recede before the irrational resistance of the Sultan and the Ottoman Government they are disgraced in the face of the world. Every motive of duty coincides with every motive of self respect, and, my lord duke, yourself let drop a word which is a frightful word, unhappily not wholly out of place, the word
‘EXTERMINATION.’
There has gone abroad, I don’t say that I feel myself competent to judge the matter, I don’t think I do, but there has gone abroad and there is widely entertained a belief that the recent proceedings of the Turkish Government in Armenia particularly, but not in Armenia exclusively, are founded upon deliberate determination to exterminate the Christians in that Empire. I hope it is not true, but at the same time I must say that there are evidences tending to support it—(hear, hear)—and the grand evidence which tends to support it is this: the perfect infatuation of the Turkish Government. The Turkish Government is evidently in such a state of infatuation that it is fain to believe it may, under certain circumstances, be infatuated enough to scheme the extermination of the Christian population. Well, this is a sad and terrible story, and I have been a very long time in telling it, but a very small part of it, but I hope that, having heard the terms of the resolution that will be submitted to you, you will agree that a case is made out. (Cheers.) I for one, for the sake of avoiding other complications, would rejoice if the Government of Turkey would come to its senses. That is, in my opinion, what we ought all to desire, and though it would be more agreeable to clear Turkey than to find her guilty of these terrible charges, yet if we have the smallest regard to humanity, if we are sensible at all of what is due to our own honor after the steps which have been taken within the last twelve or eighteen months, we must interfere. We must be careful to demand no more than what is just—but at least as much as is necessary—and we must be determined that, with the help of God that which is necessary, and that which is just shall be done, whether there will be a response or whether there be none.” (Loud cheers.)
In a letter written late in March, to the Duke of Argyle, chairman of the Armenian Relief Committee, Mr. Gladstone said, “that he hopes that nobody will suppose that deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty in Armenia will in any way diminish the force of the present appeal (for aid) to Christian pity.”
But what about this deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty? Lord Salisbury has gravely assured the nation that England is utterly powerless to alleviate the lot of the Armenians in Turkey. If this be true and the Porte should choose to finish his work of extermination, must all the world stand by and see it done and no arm be raised to defend the helpless? If so, woe to the world when the Lord God of hosts shall arise to avenge the blood of a slaughtered race.
When the first rumors of a massacre at Sassoun was confirmed in all essential details, the Government had to act quickly and somewhat decidedly, to avoid a swelling storm of indignation, that might break with serious effect upon their heads.
Two courses of action were open to England, either to use all her power of persuasion, with some strong language, by way of emphasis, to induce the Porte to bring the officials to justice and obtain a guarantee that no such massacres should be permitted in the future, or sound an alarm and call on all the Powers of Europe for an armed intervention, in which case she must be ready to cast in her heaviest weight of men and metal. As the responsibility for the terrible state of affairs in Armenia was due to England’s neglect, in not enforcing reforms, essential to prevent such awful scenes, she should have secured from the Powers their consent to let her thrash the Turks in Constantinople and Anatolia, while the fleets anchored in the Bosphorus to protect the “balance of power” when the deed was done.
A guarantee from the Powers, that England would not be permitted to occupy Constantinople, might have satisfied Russia, or have prevented any interference in the carrying out the purpose of delivering the Armenians from further outrages and massacres. In that case the dissolution of “the Sick Man” might have been the solution of the Eastern question.
At least unless England knew that the Powers would stand by her the threat of using force was stupid folly. A conference of the Powers was a necessity and the pledge of concurrence or armed neutrality should have been given before she began to bait the Sultan. It has been known for years that the Sultan is the last man to be controlled by mere sentiment. He only yields to necessity, to force actually present, to guns trained upon him. He was never scared by all the letters and the threats of the English Government. He knew the Powers were not agreed to use force.
Sir Philip Currie telegraphed to Lord Kimberley:
“I impressed upon His Excellency (said Pasha) as forcibly as I could that the only safe course for the Turkish Government was to authorize the Commission to make a fair and impartial inquiry; that failing this they would be held responsible for the cruelties perpetrated on the Armenians by the local authorities, and that the feeling aroused in Europe was such that if these cruelties were not punished, active interference from without must be looked for.”
Town and Citadel of Van.
This was an earnest, urgent, emphatic, even threatening appeal: but where was there any warrant for the last threat? There was no ultimatum ready. No nation was going to take up arms against Turkey, England least of all. There was no agreement among them to let England take up the task alone. If there had been, one battleship before Constantinople would have brought the massacres to a speedy close and could have compelled the punishment of the Governors in every vilayet where the horrors of Sassoun had been repeated with increased torment and misery. But the fact remains, and the fact is the thing emphasized, that England and all the Signatory Powers sat in masterly inactivity though with steam up at Salonica and let the deadly work go on. There is only time to notice one question, “Why did not Russia agree to the forcing the Dardanelles and coercing the Turks? The blame for the fiasco must fall upon Russia.”
How so? Could you reasonably expect Russia to assist England in performing her promises to protect Armenia when you remember the humiliation of the Berlin Treaty? If England entered into engagements she was powerless to make good, whose fault was that? And when the implicit appeal was to her Christian sympathy the Russians replied in their press: “Where were all these glorious virtues of Englishmen when Lord Beaconsfield handed back the Christian subjects of the Sultan to the dismal fate which has only now begun to excite their pity, when an improvement would suit their policy and further their designs? If England continued to be both humane and Christian while suppressing those noble impulses eighteen years ago, it is hard to understand why we can not remain both, while holding them in control to-day.”
To those who deny to Russia any disinterested motives of Christian sympathy in her war with Turkey to deliver Bulgaria from the horrible misrule of the Sultan, this refusal will furnish only another illustration of her being what they consider her, viz: a half-civilized nation.
But for England to look to a Power she considers her mortal enemy as regards the occupation of Constantinople, for help to rescue the Armenians from Kurd and Circassian and Turkish regulars, set upon them by the Porte, is the sublimity of political innocence, or the confession of utter weakness.
The Russian Bear smiled at the innocence, and with grim satisfaction, perhaps, allowed the Turk to wave back the fleets of the allied Powers from the straits of the Dardanelles and continue his fiendish massacres.
Weigh each for himself the responsibility of each of the Great Powers in any scales he may choose, distribute the guilt by a different judgment, and yet the failure of these Christian nations to unite for the deliverance of Christian Armenia from the barbarous and cruel, most lustful and brutal outrages under which they were suffering, will be stamped by history as the most awful crime against humanity upon which the sun ever gazed during all the passing years of the nineteenth century, and only to be paralleled by the apathy of Western Europe, when alone in 1453 Constantinople fought her last battle for the cross and fell under the sword and power of Islam.
CHAPTER XVIII.
AMERICA’S DUTY AND PRIVILEGE.
Our self-imposed task to voice as clearly and strongly as we could the History and Horrors of Armenia under the Curse of Islam is nearly finished. For many weeks the fires have burned hot within us, and the daily news from the land of sorrows has only made our heart beat more rapidly and our pen fly the faster that our appeal might reach your ears while yet there was time to save from utter destruction a remnant of this most ancient Christian people of whom two hundred thousand now look to England and America for daily bread.
“The Armenians are the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world.”
—Gladstone.
In all the history of the Roman Empire, from Nero down to the days of Constantine, there is no chapter so cruel, so terrible as the atrocious crimes of the present Turkish Empire. These massacres have been committed at the command of the Sultan, and with flourish of trumpets, as at Zilleh, when at noon November 28, 1895, the trumpet was blown and the Turks began to assault the Christians with the cry, “Down with Armenians. This is the Sultan’s order.”
This is the Curse of Islam that it makes it the religious duty of every follower of the prophet, from the Sultan down to the howling dervishes, to hate the Christians, to kill and plunder, rob, outrage and torture every one who will not accept the faith of Mohammed. The evident intention of the Sultan is to utterly destroy and exterminate the Christian people in Armenia.
It is reserved for the dawning of the twentieth century to see all the horrors of the conquests of Tamerlane repeated, and to realize for itself what these Christian races have suffered since the fateful year 1453, when Constantinople, the glory of Eastern Europe, fell a prey to hordes of the Ottoman Turks. It is because he has outdone the cruelties of all the ages that caused the foremost of living English poets to stigmatize the reigning Sultan as “Abdul, the Damned.”
In our helplessness we can only take refuge, perhaps, under the arms of the Almighty. Justice and judgment are the habitations of His throne and a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of His kingdom. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”
When Christendom repeats that phrase “Thy Kingdom Come” in the universal prayer it means the downfall of Islam, the overthrow of every throne of iniquity, and of all kingdoms whose foundations are laid in blood.
The kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of righteousness and between it and the cruel, lustful barbarism of Islam there can be no peace. It affords an outlet for one’s outraged feelings as the cries of smitten Armenia fill our ears, to read the woes once denounced by the prophets of Jehovah against the gigantic wickedness of empires founded in blood.
The cry of the bittern is heard in the pools of Chaldea, and the howling of jackals amid the ruins of Nineveh. The lions roam among the deserted palaces of Babylon and it shall be desolate forever.
When the judgments of the Lord are visited upon the earth the nations will learn righteousness. The ultimate issue can not be doubtful, but still the cry is, “How long, O Lord? How long?”
There are three kingdoms which are chiefly concerned in this Eastern question:—Turkey, England and Russia; and while they are debating and manœuvring, poor Armenia is being ground between the upper and nether millstones of their mutual jealousies and ambitions and the coming of the Kingdom of Righteousness is delayed.
These three nations have stood facing each other for more than a century. Russia on the one side resisting the invasions, conquests and atrocities of the Turk, England on the other his right hand of strength in time of pressure. Throughout the entire history of the Tartar invasions with all their bloody victories and cruel conquests you see Russia rising again and again across his path like a stone wall. But England, in spite of all professions to the contrary and in spite of the earnest and solemn protests of her people against the atrocities of the Sultan’s reign—and never more hot or indignant words have been uttered throughout England than during the last few months—England has always stepped in just in time to save the Empire from destruction and prolong its barbarous rule.
Is it not written large on the page of history that in 1798, when Napoleon invaded Egypt, England came to the rescue and fought France to save the Turk? In 1853, it joined France and fought Russia, when the Czar attempted to protect the Greek Christians in Turkey: and by the treaty of Paris restored to the Sultan the command of the Lower Danube, shut out the Czar from his protectorate over the Danubian provinces and closed the Black Sea against all ships of war. Worst of all the treaty adopted the Porte into the family of European nations. Mr. James Boyce, in a Century article on the Armenian question, says: “The other nations of Europe now treat the Turks as if they were a civilized state and even talk of respecting their susceptibilities.” But they have no title to be so treated and ought never to have been admitted into the rank of civilized nations. Mr. Freeman describes them as “merely a band of robbers encamped in a country whose inhabitants they despoil.” And the passionate words of Edmund Burke are quoted as he exclaimed, “What have these worse than savages to do with the Powers of Europe but to spread destruction and pestilence among them. The ministers and the policy which shall give these people any weight in Europe will deserve all the bans and curses of posterity.”
Brave and noble words, but this is just what England forced on Russia and Europe by the treaty of Paris. And again at the close of the Russo-Turkish war, when the Porte was pleading for life and had gladly accepted the San Stefano treaty, the wily Beaconsfield and the present Premier stepped in and, by the Berlin treaty, handed back to the tender mercies of the Turk more than forty thousand square miles of territory and three million Bulgarian Christians. But what do we see in 1895? England afraid in the critical moment to send her despatch boat through the Dardanelles to insist that the promised reforms in Armenia should be executed and that the massacres of Christians should be stopped. Yet for this purpose had she secured the cession of the island of Cyprus.
By declining at the last moment to give her consent to the forcing of the Dardanelles, Russia most shrewdly outwitted England and humiliated her before the world. England lost her prestige and the glory of her power was tarnished when she failed, through fear of Russia, to execute what before the world she had pledged herself to do.
We are not called upon to defend Russia’s internal policy—her argus-eyed espionage, the cruelties attending the exiling of criminals to Siberia and deporting many suspects without even a form of trial. But when Russia is called semi-civilized, or half-barbarous, and is scarcely allowed to rank among the Christian nations of Europe—we merely remark that she has no opium war laid to her charge, she never blew mutinous sepoys from the mouths of shotted guns. She has never taken possession of any Turkish territory under pretext of reforming the internal administration of the Sublime Porte. If now, by shrewd diplomacy, the Czar rules at Constantinople, while the Sultan reigns but is in reality only his vassal, there is a decided checkmate on the political chessboard of European politics since the last move at Berlin.
If it be true then the Bosphorus is free to Russia, and the Czar is at liberty to march Russian troops at any time into Armenia. Indeed the rumor was that the excessive massacres ceased immediately when the Czar said “enough.”
England was brought into this humiliating situation by her own hesitation to do the right when all Europe except Russia was a unit with her in insisting that the Sultan must be brought to terms even if they should be obliged to force the Dardanelles.
Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van.
It is remembered that Mr. Terrell openly expressed the opinion that if European pressure for reforms repulsive to the Turk, which were to admit to the army a subject race should be successful, a general massacre was sure to result unless concerted and armed coöperation among the Powers prevented it. There was no such coöperation, and accordingly on the very day that these reforms were announced, Mr. Terrell demanded immediate military protection for all missionaries, saying that if a single hair on the head of one of our missionaries was injured the Sultan must answer for it: and the protection was granted.
On December 19, 1895, the President transmitted to Congress a communication from Secretary Olney on the Armenian outrages, in response to the resolution of the Senate. Secretary Olney stated that the number of citizens of the United States resident in the Turkish Empire is not accurately known, but there are one hundred and seventy-two American missionaries and dependents scattered over Asia Minor. There are also a number of American citizens engaged in business in the Turkish dominions, and others originally Turkish subjects, but now naturalized citizens of the United States.
The bulk of this American element is to be found remote from our few Consular establishments. He bore testimony to the energy and promptness displayed by our Minister, Mr. Terrell, in taking measures for their protection which had received the moral support of naval vessels of the United States. He added that while the physical safety of the United States citizens seemed to be assured, their property had been destroyed at Harpoot and Marash, in the former case to the extent of $100,000.
The Turkish Government had been notified that it would “be held responsible for the immediate and full satisfaction of all injuries on that score.” The loss of American property at Marash had not been ascertained, but a like demand for adequate indemnity would be made as soon as the facts were known.
Of the incidents contained in the correspondence in which the rights and power of the United States to demand protection for its citizens whether missionaries from this country or naturalized Armenians returning to their native country, one is given that it may be seen that the demands of our Government for justice will always be met when backed by a warship.