Copyright 1896
BY
A. W. Williams
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.