An intelligent German Government would, in face of the increasingly evident Young Turkish spirit, have used every means in their power to retain the sympathies of the Armenians, and indeed to win them in greater numbers. The Armenians waited for us, trembled with impatience for us, to give a definite ruling. Their disappointment, their hatred of us is unbounded now—and rightly so—and if a German ever again wants to take up business in the East he will have to reckon with this afflicted people so long as one of them exists.
To answer the Armenian question in the way I have done here, one does not necessarily need to have the slightest liking or the least sympathy for them as a race. (I have, however, intimated that they deserve at least that much from their high intellectual and social abilities.) One only requires to have a feeling for humanity to abhor the way in which hundreds of thousands of these unfortunate people were disposed of; one only requires to understand the commercial and social needs of a vast country like Turkey, so undeveloped and yet so capable of development, to place the highest value on the preservation of this restless, active, and eminently useful element; one only requires to open one's eyes and look at the facts dispassionately to deny utterly and absolutely what the Turks have tried to make the world believe about the Armenians, in order that they might go on with their work of extermination in peace and quiet; one only requires to have a slight feeling of one's dignity as a German to refuse to condone the pitiful cowardice of our Government over the Armenian question.
The mixture of cowardice, lack of conscience, and lack of foresight of which our Government has been guilty in Armenian affairs is quite enough to undermine completely the political loyalty of any thinking man who has any regard for humanity and civilisation. Every German cannot be expected to bear as light-heartedly as the diplomats of Pera the shame of having history point to the fact that the annihilation, with every refinement of cruelty, of a people of high social development, numbering over one and a half million, was contemporaneous with Germany's greatest power in Turkey.
In long confidential reports to my paper I made perfectly clear to them the whole position with regard to the Armenian persecutions and the brutal jingoistic spirit of the Young Turks apparent in them. The Foreign Office, too, took notice of these reports. But I saw no trace of the fruits of this knowledge in the attitude of my paper.
The determination never to re-enter the editorial offices of that paper came to me on that dramatic occasion when my wife hurled her denunciation of Germany in my teeth. I at least owe a personal debt of gratitude to the poor murdered and tortured Armenians, for it is to them I owe my moral and political enfranchisement.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This and other works on the subject came to my notice for the first time a few days before going to press. Before that (in Turkey, Austria, and Germany) they were quite unprocurable.