The Armenian Crisis in Turkey / The Massacre of 1894, Its Antecedents and Significance, With a Consideration of Some of the Factors Which Enter Into the Solution of This Phase of the Eastern Question

by Frederick Davis Greene

THE POSITION TAKEN IN CONSTANTINOPLE.

General Lew Wallace is understood to have been emphatically a persona grata as U. S. Minister to Turkey, in fact to have enjoyed, to a very exceptional degree, the personal confidence and friendship of His Majesty the present Sultan. The following quotation will show what treatment even he received in the discharge of his official duties in the case under consideration:

From the Regular Correspondent of the Tribune.

Constantinople, March 1, 1884.

The Porte, in deciding how far it is safe to affront foreign Governments, has even ranked the United States below some of the European States. The Porte during the past year has treated General Wallace as if he were the representative of a Danubian Principality. Remonstrance after remonstrance against fresh violations of the treaties it has left unanswered, and it has repeatedly omitted the courtesy of a bare acknowledgment of their receipt. In fact, Turkey has been relying upon the distance of the United States. Perhaps its officials even suppose that the American navy is afraid to risk adventures so far from home as the coasts of the Levant.

General Wallace found it necessary, for the sake of the safety of American citizens in Turkey, to press for some definition of the situation. During nearly five weeks he had been refused a personal interview with the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the ground of “indisposition.” During all that time the representative of that Minister declined to enter upon any discussion of the important questions at issue. Four times the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States had been turned away from the door of the Sublime Porte by the refusal of the Grand Vizier to see him. Each time plausible reasons were assigned which seemed to render any insistance on the part of the General uncourteous. Yet it became daily more evident that all these plausible excuses for declining negotiation on the injuries done by Turkey to American commerce and to American citizens were part of a settled purpose not to redress the wrongs.—New York Semi-Weekly Tribune, March 28, 1884.