Armenia and the War

by A. P. Hacobian

The formation of an autonomous Armenia, comprising the vilayets of Van, Bitlis, Erzeroum, Kharput, Diyarbekir and Eastern Sivas, also Cilicia with an outlet on the Gulf of Alexandretta, say from the port of Alexandretta to a few miles south-west of Mersina.

This State to be an internationally guaranteed neutral State with its ports and markets open to all nations. It would have an Organic Statute drawn up for it by the Protecting Powers, England, France, and Russia, giving equality before the law to all the different elements of the population with extra-territorial rights and consular courts for Europeans for a term of years. Russia to act as mandatory of the Protecting Powers, and during the first few years the executive to consist of a Governor-General or High Commissioner and a mixed Legislative Council appointed by the Protecting Powers. A Legislative Assembly to be called together as soon as the country regains its normal state.

The country being at present in a more or less chaotic state, an army of occupation will be necessary for as many years as will be required to organize and train an efficient gendarmerie from the local population. European advisers and heads of departments would be necessary, but there are large numbers of experienced Armenian administrators, magistrates, post and telegraph inspectors, engineers, etc., etc., in the Ottoman Empire as well as in the Caucasus, Egypt and the Balkans, who would gladly put their services at the disposal of their own country. Some would probably come from America, India and elsewhere. Adequate financial compensation by Turkey[30] and Germany would place at the disposal of the executive ample funds to begin the work of rebuilding the ruined towns and villages and reconstruction generally, and to carry on the Government of the country until the first year's harvest is sown and gathered and revenue begins coming into the Treasury.

This is the scheme I would propose in broad outline, it being impossible to go into details here.

"But there is not a large enough number of Armenians left to form a State," I may be told, as I have been told so often recently. (I may say here, in parenthesis, that the Turkish and German delegates cannot advance this objection, as their Governments have denied the existence of any massacres.)

That is an entirely mistaken assumption, created by the frequent but inaccurate use of the phrase "Armenian extermination." The Turks did make a final ruthless attempt to exterminate us, and have dealt us a staggering blow as a race; but, gentlemen, they have not quite succeeded in their nefarious design, and it would be a sad day, indeed, for civilization if such a design had succeeded.

There are to-day 500,000 Turkish Armenians in the parts of vilayets in occupation of the Russian armies, in the Caucasus and Northern Persia. Far from their spirits being broken, these people are animated with the unshakable determination that their beloved country shall rise again from its ashes and their nation revive and enter upon a new era of security and free development. Armenians all over the world are animated with the same spirit and determination. Of the above half-million 50,000 or 60,000, mostly able-bodied men, are in different parts of the occupied provinces. There are a little over 250,000 refugees in the Caucasus and Persia, and some 200,000 emigrants and refugees from pre-war massacres; most of them are ready to return to their homes, one potent reason for the readiness of the pre-war emigrants to return being the growing scarcity and dearness of land in the fertile parts of the Caucasus. Then there are the hundreds of thousands of Armenians in concentration camps in Northern Mesopotamia and Syria. How many are alive to return to their devastated homes, I cannot say. Perhaps the Turkish delegate will be able to inform the Conference on that point. Then there are still large numbers of Armenians—though mostly old men, women and children, so far as our information goes—in Anatolia and Thrace, and over 200,000 mostly young, intelligent, ambitious men, who have emigrated since the beginning of Abdul Hamid's reign of terror, to the United States, Egypt, the Balkans, and different other countries. A not unimportant number of these will return to their native land ready to "do their bit" in the—to them—sacred work of its reconstruction and regeneration with invincible industry.

This will give us within a very short time an Armenian population of not much under one million souls in the proposed Autonomous Armenia. It may not form a majority taken as a whole, but it will form the largest coherent ethnological element. In many important centres, such as Van, Alashgerd, etc., where there are almost no Turks left and a much smaller number of Kurds than there was before the war, it will form an absolute majority. This is an important fact which the Conference should bear in mind. Although the Armenian element is sadly reduced in numbers, the great majority of the Turkish and kindred elements in these occupied provinces have, as is their wont, followed the retreating Turkish armies and will probably never return. On the other hand, Armenians have for some time past and do still percolate through the Turkish lines in groups of various sizes and gain the Russian lines. This movement of population will almost certainly continue for some years, tending to increase the Armenian and reduce the Turkish element in the proposed Armenian State, if such a State is set up. Similar movements of populations have always taken place whenever any piece of Turkish territory has passed under Christian rule.

I may also remind the Congress that when Greece achieved her independence, the population of Greece proper did not exceed 400,000.

Another important point bearing on this question of population is the fact, to which most students of Near Eastern affairs have borne witness, that the Armenian race is endowed with extraordinary powers of recuperation, is almost entirely free from the diseases that impede the rapid growth of population, and is one of the most prolific races in the world. Their neighbours, on the evidence of travellers and students, are less free from disease and, in spite of polygamy, or perhaps partly because of it, are much less prolific.