Note carefully what Salisbury says first; then what he says afterward. First he says there is complete concert among the powers, then he says there is not; first he threatens the Sultan, then he is friendly. First he seems to be a brave and noble statesman, then a cowardly politician.
Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador at Constantinople, is a brave and noble gentleman. He was sent there by the Liberal government, before Salisbury’s accession. He has done a great deal for the Armenian cause. But after Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister, he called him to London and instructed him to have cordial relations with the Sultan, and now he can do nothing.
Finally there appear to be two Englands, conservative England and liberal England, slave England and free England, selfish England and noble and sympathetic England, false England and true England. The head of conservative, selfish, false, oppressive England is Lord Salisbury. The head of liberal, free, noble, and true England is Mr. Gladstone. Therefore nothing for Armenia can be expected from the Conservatives, while much may be hoped from the Liberals. Gladstone is an old man, but God will raise a Joshua to succeed Moses; Gladstone will see the Armenian nation free, and then he will die.
GERMANY AND THE ARMENIAN QUESTION.
Listen to what the haughty young ruler of Germany says:—“It is better that the Armenians be killed than the peace of Europe be disturbed.” The explanation is easy enough. When he visited Constantinople half a dozen years ago, the Sultan presented him with Arabian horses, jewelry of massive gold, and many other valuable articles, worth in all several hundred thousand dollars; and last summer sent him a beautiful and valuable sword made in Constantinople by Armenians, which was carried to him by Shakir Pasha, the butcher who was afterwards appointed by the Sultan to reform Armenia,—the commander of the “Hamidieh Cavalry,” whose work I tell of later on. This embassy was to secure the alliance of Germany against molestation by Russia.
The German Emperor has three motives in his present action. One is to show gratitude for the Sultan’s generosity—as though it were not the easiest thing in the world to be munificent when it all comes out of other people. The second is to punish Lord Salisbury for not getting England to join the Triple Alliance, when the Emperor asked him in person on his journey to England. When Salisbury threatened the Sultan in the interest of Armenia, the German Emperor said, “The English government has no right to interfere with the Turkish Empire. Every sovereign must have the right to govern as he thinks necessary, or he is no sovereign.” He afterwards sent his Chancellor, Prince Hohenlohe, to the Czar to arrange united resistance to England, and afterwards sent Count Von Moltke on the same errand. And the Czar instructed his Ambassador at Constantinople, M. Nelidoff, to inform the Sultan that he would not support the English government in coercing Turkey. The Sultan therefore refused Salisbury’s demands, and he dared not go on alone. The Emperor’s third motive was to gain the friendship of the Czar against France, which had lately been taking up the Russian alliance with great fervor. Another reason is that he hates the Armenians for having bought the German factories and property in Amassia. He is very anxious to plant German colonies in Turkey, of all places in the world, for profit. There are about fifty families in Amassia, near Marsovan, and they had started various kinds of factories there; but the shrewd and wealthy Armenians bought them out. The Emperor is angry because his colony was not successful.
For all these reasons the German Emperor refused to send gunboats to the Bosphorus when the other powers did; he said he saw no need of it. He was right so far as Germans were concerned; the Sultan was not going to allow his ally’s subjects to be slaughtered and the ally turned into an enemy. And if he could stop the massacre of one sort of people, he could of another; nothing shows the Sultan’s deliberate purpose in the massacres better than the fact that when he chose not to let any particular sort of people be harmed, that sort were not harmed. But as to Germany, what hope for Armenia is there from it? The Emperor has his own interests, and the Armenians might be tortured or outraged to death, and he would not stir a finger.