CHAPTER XXXII
ARMENIA, THE SUFFERING
Armenia is the Job among peoples. Her frightful sufferings seem to have no end. A little Christian island in a vast sea of Mohammedanism, she has been swept by one great tidal wave of persecution after another. Before the eyes of the modern world, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, even, a whole people has been robbed, exiled, and murdered, while the great nations have looked on apparently helpless to bring to a permanent end the horrible atrocities committed by the “unspeakable Turk.”
Millions of dollars have been spent in the past for the aid of Armenia, millions more will be required before she is freed from famine and persecution. Vast sums have been donated by Americans through their churches and missionary societies, the Red Cross, and other national and international organizations to help these people in their misery. But lasting relief cannot come until Armenia is enabled to set up a nation of her own once more, or is brought under the protection of a strong Christian power.
What the Armenians have done under oppression shows that they have great possibilities as a race. They are sometimes called the Yankees of the Orient. They are the brightest, brainiest, and shrewdest of all the people of Asia Minor. In business they are sharper than the Jews or even the Greeks. The Turks say, “Twist a Yankee and you make a Jew, twist a Jew and you make an Armenian.” The Greeks say that “one Greek is equal to two Jews, but one Armenian is equal to two Greeks.” Another current Turkish proverb is, “From the Greeks of Athens, from the Jews of Saloniki, and from the Armenians everywhere, good Lord deliver us!”
The Armenians are by no means confined to one part of the Orient. I have met them everywhere in the East and I have found them acting as heads of all kinds of businesses. There are many rich Armenians in India. Coming from Singapore to Calcutta I travelled with a wealthy Armenian jeweller who told me he was on his way back from Hong Kong where he had gone to sell pearls to the Chinese. I found Armenian conductors on the Egyptian railways, and when I went over the transcontinental railroad to Paris the guards on the train and the men who took up my tickets were Armenians who spoke English and French. There are hundreds of thousands of Armenians in Europe. There are a large number in Persia, and in different parts of Turkey there are said to be about one million. There are a great many in Constantinople where they manage most of the banking business and own large mercantile establishments. When I got money on my letter of credit in Constantinople it was an Armenian clerk who figured up the exchange and an Armenian cashier who handed out the money. Whenever there are riots in that city nearly all the stores are closed because their Armenian owners fear they may be looted by the mob. When I visited the Turkish government departments I found that, though the chief officers were Turks, the clerks were in most cases Armenians, and the cleverest man I met in Turkey was one of the Sultan’s secretaries, a man of Armenian birth. There are also Armenian engineers, architects, and doctors in Constantinople. The Armenians of Armenia proper, however, are almost all farmers, most of whom have become poverty-stricken through the exorbitant taxes of the Sultan.
At Jerusalem I saw a large number of Armenian pilgrims who had come from all parts of Asia Minor to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They have a Patriarch at Jerusalem who leads them in these celebrations. He is a tall, thin man with a long gray beard and a face not unlike that of the typical Georgia cracker. He usually wears a long gown and has a little skull cap on the crown of his head. During the Easter celebration he wears a tiara blazing with diamonds and his gown is a gorgeous silk robe decorated with diamonds. The Armenian Christians have doctrines much like those of the Greek Church. They have monasteries and churches scattered throughout Asia Minor.
Armenia was the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as a state religion. This she did at the beginning of the fourth century and twelve years before the conversion of the Roman emperor, Constantine. Ever since she has been persecuted by a succession of enemies and conquerors of other faiths. Almost as soon as Christianity had been adopted, the Armenians were commanded by the Persians, their overlords at that time, to give up their faith and adopt the Persian religion of fire-worship. They replied: “No one can move us from our belief, neither angels nor men, fire nor sword. Here below we will choose no other God, and in heaven no other Lord but Jesus Christ.” And they have stuck to their declaration through all the horrors and persecutions brought upon them by Persians, Saracens, Tartars, Mamelukes, and Turks.
At her height Armenia was a flourishing country with a population of some thirty millions. But from the time of the great dispersal that resulted from the invasion of the Moslem hordes in the seventh century, the Armenians, like the Jews, have been decimated, their country has been ravaged, and the people have been scattered all over Europe and Asia.
The Armenians assert that their country is the holiest land upon earth. It lies in Asia Minor, southeast of the Black Sea and between it and Persia. Mount Ararat is situated in Armenia, and some of the monasteries claim to have pieces of the identical ark in which Noah landed upon this mountain. A ravine near by is pointed out as the site of Noah’s vineyard. The vineyard has a monastery connected with it, and the monks show a withered old vine which they assert is the very one from which Noah brewed the wine that made him drunk. He cursed it so effectually after he got over his spree that it has borne no grapes unto this day. Noah’s wife is said to be buried on Mount Ararat. The Armenians trace their ancestry back to Japheth in one great genealogical tree. They also have a tradition that the Garden of Eden was located in Armenia, almost in the centre of the region where the worst massacres have occurred, but it is now one of the barren parts of the country. The Armenians believe that the Wise Men of the East, who followed the Star of Bethlehem to find the young Christ, came from their country and that the Star first appeared in the heavens not far from Mount Ararat.
According to another curious Armenian tradition, when Adam was in the Garden of Eden his body was covered with nails, like those we have on our fingers and toes. These nails overlapped each other like the scales of a fish, thus giving him an invulnerable armour. After the fall they all dropped off except those from the ends of his fingers and toes. They remain to this day to remind man of his lost immortality. The Armenians say that when God made Adam of clay, he had a little piece left over. He threw this upon the ground, and as it fell it became gold and formed all the gold of the world. These people are devoted to the Bible, and take their religion very seriously. They could have made their peace with the Turks long, long ago if they had been willing to accept Mohammedanism.