| Bulgarians | 60,000 |
| Armenians | 8,000 |
| 68,000 |
Subsequent Official Estimates.
| Bulgarians and Turkish soldiers | 3,500 |
| Armenians | 900 |
| 4,400 |
We thus see that the total number of victims amounted to only about 6.4 per cent. of the figures originally circulated. Such exaggeration, deliberately made with the object of appealing to the imagination of sentimental people, is astounding in its mendacity. When we can apply the test of investigation to Lord Bryce’s estimate of 800,000 killed in the present alleged “massacres” we shall in all probability find these figures similarly excessive.
All the stories of Turkish misdeeds have proved on investigation to be gross exaggerations beyond the belief of any thoughtful person. Anyone gifted with imagination and a sufficiently prurient mind could write up the stories now being so assiduously circulated to the Press by Armenian agencies acting, undoubtedly, under instructions from a central Bureau.[10]
“The Bulgarian atrocities,” to which reference has already been made, afford a very good example of how easily a prejudiced sentimentalist can be deceived. The late Canon McColl, at Mr. Gladstone’s request, went out to the Balkans to collect evidence. On one occasion his guide (presumably a Levantine, over-anxious to please his employer and to earn some extra backsheesh) pointed out on the horizon a large number of erections, which he asserted were “hundreds of impaled Christians.” The report of this was sent home to England, where it made a great sensation as apparently irrefutable first-hand evidence, on good authority. But in the sequel conclusive proof came forth that no Christians had been either massacred or crucified anywhere near that district, and furthermore that the supposed figures were nothing but the common haycocks of the country, which are built up around a pole, and which—after the hay has been eaten by the cattle until only a few bunches are left—might bear rather the appearance suggested by the guide. Canon McColl acknowledged his mistake, but of course the mischief had been done.
Leaving aside these stories of “massacres” and extermination of the Armenians, which we believe to be, in the main, a tissue of exaggerations and invention, let us now turn to the question of “Armenian Independence” and examine whether their claim to any such independence is founded on the inherent right which all united races however small, possess to choose their own form of government.
The answer must be an emphatic negation, for the reason that the Armenians are neither the most numerous nor the most homogeneous section of the population of the country in which they live.
Sir Charles Wilson, an unbiassed authority, estimates the total Armenian population of the nine provinces of Kurdistan as being 925,000 at the most, or only 15 per cent. of the total population of 6,130,000, which is made up of 4,460,000 Moslems, 645,000 Greeks and other Christians, plus 100,000 Jews and Gypsies. And General Zelenyi, in a census made for the Caucasus Geographical Society in 1896, estimates that even in the five provinces which they most largely inhabit, the Armenians form only 26 per cent. of the entire population.
In order to make this minority less apparent, the pro-Armenians take the figures of only 6 provinces—choosing of course those most thickly populated with their friends—and add to them the Greeks, other Christians and Jews; but even then the Moslems are in large majority.