PREFACE.
In offering to the public this volume on Bleeding Armenia under the Curse of Islam the writer does not seek to harrow the feelings of sensitive readers by the recital of blood-curdling outrages, tortures, murders, and butcherings; neither does he aim to discuss at any length the involved problems of the Eastern Question, but he does definitely seek to awaken interest in the history and fate of what may truly be called the Martyr Nation of the World.
It is not the isolated fact that Armenia is now undergoing a most terrible persecution, that fifty thousand or sixty thousand helpless men, women and children have already suffered death in every form which the most depraved nature, the most cruel instincts, the most bitter and fanatical hatred could devise, that so deeply arouses us; but the fact that for more than a thousand years this has been the bitter and bloody story of her wrongs—this is what staggers us.
That the reader may have some clearer conceptions of the present terrible situation in Armenia and of the causes which make her general condition one most deplorable to contemplate, its early history, civilization and conversion to Christianity is briefly sketched, and attention is called to the fact that its very geographical position has for many centuries made it the highway for the contending armies of the East and West.
Armenia has been the battle ground where diverse systems of religion and civilization have fought for supremacy. Its fate has always been to suffer, whichever power was for the time victorious. It has been sometimes ground to powder between the upper and nether millstone.
The rise of that alien system of religion which is the most bitter and relentless persecutor of the Christian faith the world has ever seen is accurately sketched, and careful attention given to it because Christian people believe it to be true that the cause of the fiercest and most vindictive hatred of the Turk to Greek, Bulgarian or Armenian is primarily his loyalty to Mohammed and his hatred of Jesus as the Christ.
It were not in the heart of humanity to kindle the passions into a flame so fierce as to consume every element of mercy and compassion, unless these were set on fire by fiendish fanaticism or religious bigotry.
In this light these persecutions are but the irregular outbreak of that spirit of opposition which will never cease so long as Islam has power to draw the sword. From the hour that the Ottoman Turk was securely seated on that eastern throne of the Cæsars, there never has been peace, and there never can be while he holds the keys to the gateway of nations.
Without laborious disquisition, with only a sincere desire to let history tell its own story, some phases of the struggle for place, preëminence and power between England and Russia, which form the heart of the Eastern Question are also presented.
No one can be in the slightest doubt as to which side of the Turkish-Armenian question the policy of England leans. There is no question as to the fact that England has been the firmest friend to Turkey for more than sixty years, and that the more she has feared the growing power of Russia the more resolutely she has stood by the Porte in spite of the atrocities which have marked the frequent persecutions of the Christian races under the sway of Islam.
Her purely selfish and commercial “interests” have caused the English government to be deaf to the cry of the decimated Bulgarians, and of Armenians to-day. The part that England played in elaborating the great treaties of Paris and of Berlin which controlled the issues of the Crimean and the Russo-Turkish wars stamps the character of her interests in the affairs of Turkey.
There is thus furnished in this historical data a broad ground on which public opinion in this country may call upon Great Britain in this hour of remorseless cruelty that she shall fulfil the treaty obligations which she most solemnly and publicly accepted and assumed and demand of the Porte at the mouth of shotted guns if need be, that the rights of Christian Armenians shall be defended and maintained by the whole power of the Turkish Empire.
The situation in Armenia is given with considerable fulness, though volumes could not contain a complete account of the sufferings that this long-doomed race has endured under the Curse of Islam.
The position that our government should occupy is that of high moral equity, the insistence upon the preservation of common rights of humanity irrespective of race or creed.
The immediate duty lying at our doors is to assist in relieving the distress even unto starvation, which hundreds of thousands of Armenians are now enduring. Many will perish before aid can reach them. What is to be done must be done quickly.
This book while making little pretension to literary polish is the result of wide historical research and has been carefully written and edited, and is now cast upon the great tide of public opinion with the hope that it may stimulate permanent interest in the great problems which are at issue in the conflict between Christianity and Islam—that it may reach and move the springs of deepest sympathy for suffering Armenians; that it may rouse a more vigorous moral indignation against such crime and cruelty, and thereby assist in creating such a just and righteous public sentiment that our government may take such a stand as shall tell speedily for the bettering of the conditions of human existence in far off Armenia.
Thus confiding in the kindly consideration of a generous public, I send forth this book on the mission to which it is hereby dedicated, viz:—to plead the cause of Bleeding Armenia which is being done to death under the Curse of Islam.