Armenia and Her People; or, The Story of Armenia by an Armenian

by George H. Filian

This seems frivolous and incredible, but it is true; namely, a dream of the Sultan.

Some six years ago, a report was circulated in Constantinople about this dream. It was, that in his sleep the Sultan saw a little tree planted in the center of his kingdom. It began to grow larger and larger, till it covered the whole Turkish Empire, and overshadowed even the mountains. All the nations of Turkey dwelt under its glorious and majestic shade. Still it grew, till the branches crossed the oceans and covered all the other kingdoms, finally the whole world. He woke, but the dream troubled him deeply, and he called some of the ulemas or wise men, of whom he always has a number in his palace, to interpret it for him. They explained it by saying that the tree was Christianity; Christian missionary work in the heart of his empire. It was a menace to his throne and country, and would grow till it covered the world. The Sultan, alarmed and angry, asked what he should do. The ulemas advised him to cut it down while it was small, and he has been doing his best to follow their advice. He did not dare to kill the missionaries, but he is accomplishing the same result by destroying their churches and schools and forbidding any more to be built, confiscating all religious books, and killing the native Christian ministers. He has employed every device to force the missionaries to depart by paralyzing their work; if they chose to stay, he would accuse them of inciting the natives to revolt. He has succeeded so far; plunder, burning, torture, murder, violation and forced conversion of Christian women, have practically put an end to missionary work. Now the time has come to kill the missionaries; and he will very likely find some excuse for doing it—he has an arsenal of falsehoods always at his command. Quite likely he will say the Armenians killed them, and then murder more Armenians in reprisal. His cunning is as infinite as his cruelty. He gives a charter to a missionary institution and destroys ten others. He invites Minister Terrell to the palace, gives him grand receptions, and loads him with promises and flatteries, and all the time goes on obliterating the schools and churches and killing the native pastors. He creates a ruin; when the European powers protest, he says he will make amends, and he does it by perpetrating a greater one, in which the first is forgotten. He massacres hundreds in a city; when the powers protest, he says he will restore order, and does it by ordering thousands killed in another city, and the first is again forgotten. His atrocities increase as he finds that he is to be unmolested; he is resolute to cut down that spreading tree, and has already cut thousands of branches from it. And the Christian nations look on and say they cannot help it. They know perfectly well what is going on, but their “interests” of one sort or another will not permit them to remove that awful blot on civilization.

THIRD CAUSE.

The Mohammedan population in Turkey is decreasing, and the Christians are increasing. When the present Sultan captured the throne from his brother Murad, Turkey had 40,000,000 people; as soon as he girded the sword of Osman, he began the great battle with Russia, and after the Turko-Russian war he found himself with 18,000,000. Who are the lost? Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, a part of Macedonia, Cyprus, and a part of Armenia. Practically the whole of Europe was lost for Turkey except Constantinople and the district Edirne or Adrianople. Turkey is not an empire any more, but it is a little kingdom; rather a little feudal system, or more accurately still, a little anarchy. If it were not for mutual European jealousy, the Sultan could not keep his anarchism. Yet many still think that the Ottoman Empire is a great one, a powerful government. They look at the Sultan and his dominion through a magnifying glass. This shows ignorance. The Turks are decayed and are decaying. The sick man of Turkey is the dead man of Turkey, and ought to be buried, but the European powers do not bury him because there are precious stones and jewelry in the coffin; no matter how bad the corpse smells, they will endure it. And the bad smell of the Sultan is killing hundreds of thousands of Christians; but the dead stays where it is, and may stay for some years, but the end will come before many have gone by. When I say that the days of the Sultan are numbered, and the brutal Turkish mis-rule will cease, many Americans will rejoin “that the same has often been said long years since, though the empire remains to-day, and seems likely to remain.” The fact is, however, that during my own life more than half of it has gone to pieces, and the fragment which remains will go to pieces soon. Permit me to say that all former prophecies have been mistaken because those who made them have judged and misjudged the situation from an occidental standpoint; I judge it from that of a native, who knows the realities as only a native can. What can an English ambassador or an American minister in Constantinople, staying perhaps two or three years, and entertained and decorated by the crafty Sultan, know about the internal state of Turkey? Having traveled through the country, lived and preached for years at a time; preached in different cities, including Constantinople, I can see signs of a break-up that a foreigner would not notice.

The reason the Turkish population does not increase is this: The army has to be made up of Mohammedans, partly because the Sultan does not put arms into the hands of the Christians, for obvious reasons, since they have no motive to uphold and every motive to fight him, and partly because to be a soldier in Turkey is a holy service, the privilege of Mohammedans alone. As there is a large standing army, nearly all the Mohammedan youths have to become soldiers. Their service begins when they are about twenty years old. The shortest term is five years; for many it is ten; and even after that, there are many who cannot escape. If a young Mohammedan is not married at twenty, obviously he cannot marry until twenty-five anyway, and perhaps thirty,—very late for a country population; if he is married his wife is virtually a widow for five to ten years. Now the reader can see my drift. With marriages so late, and husbands so long absent, Turkish families are small; they do not make good the deaths. And there is a still plainer cause: The soldiers being very poorly fed, and constant fighting going on, ninety per cent. die in the army, and so never have any families; the flower of the nation perishes barren. Those who survive and return are pale and sick, good for nothing, a burden to their families and to the nation. The Armenians have to support the Sultan’s army, since they do not furnish it, but they rear families, and are drowning out the Turks.

Another cause of decrease is the pilgrimage to Mecca, where Mohammed was born. On an average, a million pilgrims go there every year,—of course not all from Turkey, but most of them, and every year about 50,000 of them die of cholera before reaching home, from the Holy Well (Zemzem sooyi), which is full of unholy foulness; even those who live and return home take that water to their families, and many of the latter die too. Cholera is perpetual in Turkey, and it originates at Mecca. When I was in Marsovan twelve at one time went on the pilgrimage and only four returned. It is a great virtue to die where Mohammed was born, or to drink that water and die, and they are going to him at a rapid rate. Last year, when the English, Russian, and French consuls at Jiddeh, the seaport of Mecca, established a quarantine to detain those coming from Mecca and bringing cholera, they were murdered by the Mohammedan Arabs, who said they were interfering with the sacred religion, and the Sultan had to pay the indemnity.

Still another reason is the shocking increase of abortions among the wealthy town dwellers. The Mohammedan women are growing to love selfish indulgences better than the duties and delights of motherhood. They do not wish to be “bothered” by children, and they take medicine to prevent having them. Where the women come to this, it is better for a race to die out; they have outlived their purpose.

A fourth cause is polygamy. People naturally think that marrying more than one wife should increase the number of children; but the facts emphatically prove the reverse. The polygamous Turks do not increase as fast as the Christians who have but one wife.

For the fifth, the Turks are an exceedingly sensual race, by nature and education, as I have shown. The very religion that should help to make them pure, helps to make them vile. Lust leads them, and they follow; nature prompts, and their religion requires it. I am truly ashamed to tell it, but even when they go to their mosques to worship, they manifest their sensuality. Not only the relations of male and female are very rank, but between male and male they are worse; between the old Turks and young Turks, the very boys, the relations are too disgusting to describe. All such moral corruptions not only weaken a people’s forces morally, but physically as well; they substitute barren lusts for legitimate gratifications, selfish passions for mutual ones.