GEORGIANS.
Why the Sultan orders the Turks, Kurds, or other followers to destroy the Armenians, whereby more than 100,000 of them have recently been killed, and 500,000 been rendered homeless and left to die of starvation in the streets and fields, or why the Sultan ordered all who are spared to accept the Mohammedan religion, is never referred to with any sort of correctness by the newspapers or periodicals in their accounts of the dreadful atrocities taking place in Armenia, and therefore the people are left in ignorance and doubt respecting the true situation both as to the causes and the atrocities themselves.
FIRST CAUSE.
The first cause is a very simple one. That the Armenians are Christians, and the Turks, Kurds, Circassians, and Georgians in Turkey are Mohammedans, and the Mohammedan religion urges brutality. It has already been shown to be not a religion, but a system of falsehood, hatred, cruelty, lust, and sensuality; of course, these things combined can only result in corruption. It would seem that Mohammed must have taken his inspiration from both the domestic fowl and a bull. A rooster is a polygamist; he has his hens without limit. So Mohammed, the professed prophet, had wives without limit. He claimed to have received a revelation from Heaven directing him to take to himself any woman he pleased, no matter whether she was married and had a husband or not; that made no difference with Mohammed. He took any woman he wanted, and if her husband objected he was sure to be put to death. Mohammedans cannot differ from their prophet, they follow him, they strive to imitate him just as much as true Christians strive to follow and imitate Christ. Further, cocks, as a rule, have crowing spells five times in twenty-four hours, and generally mount a high place and do their screaming there. So the Mohammedan priests, who are called Moezzins, ascend a minaret, or a tower, and five times in twenty four hours they call the people to worship. There is so little confidence placed in the priests or criers that the people prefer to have a blind one go on the minaret to give the calls, so that he may not see their women unveiled in their houses.
From a bull, because he is not only immoderately lustful, but fierce and destructive; and the farmers say that the older he grows, the worse he is in both respects. It is certainly so with Mohammedans,—naturally enough, for nothing is so lickerish as an old man who has been sensual all his life, and cruelty is a trait which grows with indulgence. The Sultan grows more of a beast, and more of a fiend as he grows older, and all the Mohammedans are of the same stripe. Armenian men and Armenian women alike dread the approach of an old Turk far more than of a young one. Unless one has witnessed a fight between bulls, he can have little idea of Turkish warfare. No animal fight can approach it in ferocity or insatiability; when a bull conquers another, he never leaves him until he gores him to death. So when Mohammedans conquer a nation, be sure they will exterminate it. To them mercy means apostasy; to leave a man alive or a woman unravished is to be false to the precepts of Mohammed. They cannot help it, it is their religion; a religion for wild animals. Their priests go to the mosques and preach to them thus: “Believers in Mohammed, love your fellow believers, but hate and kill all others; they are Giaours, heathen dogs, filthy hogs.” To kill a Christian and to kill a hog is all the same to a Mohammedan; there is as little sin in one as the other. The priests say, “Ask them to accept our religion; if they do, you must not harm them; but if they will not, kill them, for they have no right to live in a Mohammedan country. It is not only no sin, but a great virtue; the more Christians you kill, the greater reward you will have from Allah and his prophet Mohammed.” The Turks are slaughtering the Armenians to earn this reward. Of course if the men apostatize they are spared; but the Turk has no notion of losing the gratification of his lust on the women in that way. A woman who falls into their hands need not hope to keep her virtue on any terms, even by abjuring her religion; they violate her first, and force her to become a Mohammedan afterwards.
Let it be fully understood throughout the Christian world that the massacre is a religious demand; the Turks have to comply. As a Christian tries to be faithful to Christ and his teachings, so the Turks are trying to be faithful to their prophet and his. They go to the mosques and pray, “Allah, help us; strengthen our hands and sharpen our swords to kill the infidel Armenians.” Then they come from the mosques and begin to kill, and plunder, and outrage, and commit every sort of indescribable atrocities on the peaceable and defenseless Armenians. And it will grow worse instead of better, since so-called Christian nations have given the Sultan public notice that they will not interfere with him. Do not be deceived by his lying reports; there was no Armenian rebellion; they could not rebel; they did not kill the Turks, they never dreamed of such madness. This awful fate has fallen on them purely and simply for being Christians.