Trebizond.
The Anglo-Turkish Convention having been made June 4th, and the Berlin Treaty not being signed until July 13th, places priority (may we not almost say entirety?) of obligation upon England, which obligation with all that it implies she fully and alone accepted when she accepted the island of Cyprus as a necessary base of operations and a promise and pledge of good faith.
The Berlin Treaty did not release England from this distinct and individual obligation nor did she wish to divide the honor of being the defender of the Armenian Christians. It may be questioned whether she had any right to expect anything more from the other signatory Powers than their moral support in any attempted enforcement of its terms.
Passing by the first part of Art. I. in the Anglo-Turkish Convention the reader is asked to give special attention to the wording of the second part: “In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reforms to be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories.”
With that clause inserted “to be agreed upon later” how could Lord Salisbury possibly dream, let alone say “that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made”? Absolutely no provision had been made to protect Armenia from Kurd or Circassian or the rapacity and cruelty and outrage of Turkish officials. And none could be made unless these two Powers alone, England and the Porte could agree upon the nature of the reforms and the manner in which they should be carried out. Was any promise, pledge or convention ever written that actually meant less? Was this honest British Statesmanship actually determining that something should be done? or was it shrewd Turkish diplomacy that will promise anything in the bond but withdraw it in the terms of later stipulations? Or was it understood that it was merely dust for the eyes of Christian Europe?
The following incident in the career of Gen. B. F. Butler was given as a newspaper item. In the course of a very spirited conversation one day a gentleman called him a knave. The general smiled and replied, “Well, did you ever hear anybody say that I was a fool?” Somebody was surely fooled by this convention. Who was it? Not Russia and certainly not the Turk. Who then? Salisbury? or England?
There were many men even in England who did not hesitate to express hottest indignation against the policy of the Government regarding her dealings with Turkey. Here are paragraphs from “The Ottoman Power in Europe” by the English historian E. A. Freeman:
“The England of Canning and Codrington, the England of Byron and Hastings has come to this, that the world knows us as the nation which upholds oppression for the sake of its own interests. We have indeed a national sin to redress and atone for. We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear. Nay, our guilt is deeper still. We have not merely looked on and passed by on the other side, but we have given our active help to the oppressors of our brothers. We have “upheld” the foulest fabric of wrong that earth ever saw, because it was deemed that the interests of England were involved in upholding the wrong and trampling down the right. * * * *
“Our national crime is that we have upheld the Turk for our own supposed interests. For these we have doomed the struggling nations to abide in their bondage. We have doomed them to stay under a rule under which the life and property of the Christian, the honor of his wife, the honor of his children of both sexes alike are at every moment at the mercy of the savages whom our august and cherished ally honors and promotes in proportion to the blackness of their deeds. We have for our own interests upheld the power which has done its foul and bloody work in Chios, at Damascus and in Bulgaria, which is still doing the same foul and bloody work wherever a victim may be found. We uphold the power whose daily work is massacre and worse than massacre. It matters not whether ten thousand or twenty thousand perish. We are still to uphold the slaughterer, for it is to our interest that he should not be shorn of his power of slaughtering.