In fact, the Armenians and their friends would be glad to know what course of action they could possibly pursue which would commend them to the sympathies of Europe? If people are attacked, they must either submit, or resist, or run away. Run away the Armenians cannot, they are strictly forbidden to leave the country; and those who have succeeded in doing so have done it in spite of the Government. If they resist, they are rebels, revolutionaries, and the Sultan in killing them is only "exercising his undoubted right of punishing his revolted subjects." If they submit, which is what, except in the case of the Zeitounlis, they have almost always done, they are cowards, unworthy on that account of our sympathies. Cowards! The sands of the Colisseum and the gardens of Nero in old Rome were strewn with the bones or the ashes of just such cowards, but that is not the name by which we call them now.
"Still," it is sometimes said, "the Armenians did not suffer as Christians, but as Armenians. Other Christians, subjects of the Porte, have not been molested." That, even if true, is but half the truth. Christians who were not Armenians were not killed; Armenians who were not Christians (that is to say, who renounced Christianity) were not killed. Therefore the Armenians suffered, not as Armenians alone, and not as Christians alone, but as Armenian Christians. And those Armenians who need not have suffered if they would have ceased to be Christians, suffered definitely as Christians.
But how did the Armenians concentrate upon themselves all this furious hatred? Why should they be massacred rather than Greeks or Syrians? There are several reasons. The Greeks enjoy the protection of a foreign Government, somewhat in the same way as do the Americans and the English. The Syrians, besides being less numerous, are much more under the observation and the patronage of foreigners. "The Armenians happen to be the most numerous of the Christian races in Turkey; therefore they bear the brunt of the Crusade. The Jacobites, the Chaldeans and the Nestorians have their proportionate share."
But some say the Armenians have made themselves particularly obnoxious to the Mussulmans as money lenders and usurers; that they have shown themselves rapacious and exacting, and greedy of dishonest gain. The same accusations were brought against the Jews in the Middle Ages, and against the Russian Jews in our own day. There is, perhaps, the same amount of truth in them. Put a clever, industrious, ambitious race under the heel of an indolent, unprogressive one, and the former is sure to seize eagerly, and not to use too scrupulously, the only power within its reach, the power of the purse. As for usury, was not 33 per cent. considered a fair demand in the Dark Ages, in view of the lender's standing an even chance of getting nothing at all, or of getting something very undesirable in the shape of the rack or the dungeon? Insecurity is the parent of usury.
But, granted that the Armenians in other parts of the Turkish Empire, and even occasionally in Armenia itself, may have earned some popular hatred in this or in other ways, the vast majority of the victims have been,—not usurers, not wealthy merchants,—but industrious artisans, small shopkeepers, cultivators of the soil, with an admixture of the more educated classes, the most envenomed hatred being directed against those in any way connected with religion, whether as Gregorian priests or as Protestant pastors. Skilled craftsmen, who abounded amongst the Armenians, have been so nearly exterminated that some towns are left without a mason, a carpenter, or a shoemaker; in others the Turks have saved a few of these artificers alive, to supply them with the conveniences which they are unable or unwilling to make for themselves.
The Armenian character cannot be dismissed with a few hasty generalities. It is doubtful that any national character can be so dismissed; and the higher we rise in the scale of organic development, the more variety we find. "Ab uno disce omnes" is an indifferent rule even for the Fijian or the Samoan, but who would apply it to the Englishman or the Frenchman? The Armenian, heir of an old civilization, stands on a plane with the latter, not with the former. The worst Armenians—and naturally they are those oftenest found in foreign countries—show just the faults sure to be engendered in any race, and especially in an astute, intelligent, enterprising race, by centuries of oppression. These are, want of truthfulness and honesty, and greediness of gain. Against these, which may be called the national faults, there are great national virtues to set off—moral purity, sobriety, strong domestic affections, gratitude, fidelity to conviction, industry, and a very remarkable love of learning. The best Armenians—men like Pastor Stepanian—who have cast off the national faults and retain the national virtues, develop a very noble and singularly attractive character; and are besides, in the fullest sense of the word, gentlemen. "The wood is fine in grain, and takes the polish easily."
This deeply suffering race is not faultless—what race ever was, or is, or will be?—but it is emphatically worth saving. And it is STILL in our power to save very many,—starving men,—desolate and hopeless women,—and helpless little children. Should any reader of the foregoing pages desire to bear a hand in this good work—and even those who have little to give may save, or help to save, one woman or one child—they may learn how to do it by communicating with the Association of "Friends of Armenia," 47, Victoria Street, Westminster.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] The Turks had never succeeded in depriving the mountaineers of this district of all their firearms. Besides, they contrived in some fashion to make arms for themselves.