“The history of Turkey is a sad and painful one.... I have lived to see the empire of Turkey in Europe reduced to less than one-half of what it was when I was born, and why? Simply because of its misdeeds, and the great record written by the hand of Almighty God against this injustice, lust, and most abominable cruelty. If, happily (I speak, hoping against hope), the reports be disproved or mitigated, let us thank God. If, on the other hand, they be established, it will more than ever stand before the world that there is a lesson, however severe it may be, that can teach certain people the duty of prudence and the necessity of observing the laws of decency, humanity, and justice.... If the facts are established, it should be written in letters of iron upon the records of the world that a government which could be guilty of countenancing and covering up such atrocities is a disgrace to Mohamet, the prophet; a disgrace to civilization at large, and a disgrace to mankind.... I have counseled you to be still and keep your judgments in suspense; but as the evidence grows the case darkens and my hopes dwindle and decline; and as long as I have voice, it will be uttered on behalf of humanity and truth.”[137]
Mr. Gladstone’s address on the Bulgarian massacre of 1876 was reprinted in the Christian Register, Boston, Mass., Dec. 1, 1894. I quote the following passage from it:
“There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a cannibal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not arise and overboil at the recital of that which has been done; which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged; which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions that produced it; and which may again spring up, in another murderous harvest, from the soil soaked and reeked with blood, and in the air, tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that a door should be left open for their ever-so-barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the whole.”
The door in Bulgaria was closed, but a wide door was left open in Armenia, and England made herself a defender of the Turk that he may do as he pleases.[138]
According to the following despatch after six or more months of dilly-dallying, the European delegates to the Commission quitted their Turkish colleagues in disgust.
Constantinople, June 10, 1895.—“The Moosh Commission closed on Friday, so far as the work of the European delegates is concerned. They were compelled to tell the Turkish delegates that they could have nothing more to do with them. From the first the attitude of the Turkish delegates has been invariably and increasingly dishonest. According to the statements of those interested in the workings of the commission, the representatives of the sultan have not manifested honor, truth, or decency. They have made no efforts to determine the cause of the outrages in Armenia.
“The rupture between the Turkish and European commissioners was caused by the refusal of the Turks, on purely farcical grounds, to hear important witnesses upon matters pertaining to the questions at issue. It was evident that the Turks were afraid that the tissue of falsehoods that they have thrown around the situation in Armenia would be broken down....”
The following is the report of the European delegates of the Commission:
“We [Wilbert, Shipley, and Pyevalsky, the French, English and Russian consuls] have, in our report, given it as our conviction, arrived at from the evidence brought before us, that the Armenians were massacred without distinction of age or sex; and indeed, for a period of some three weeks, viz.: from the 12th of August to the 4th of September (1894 O. S.), it is not too much to say that the Armenians were absolutely hunted like wild beasts, being killed wherever they were met; and if the slaughter was not greater, it was, we believe, solely owing to the vastness of the mountain ranges of that district, which enabled the people to scatter, and so facilitated their escape. In fact, and speaking with a full sense of responsibility, we are compelled to say that the conviction has forced itself upon us that it was not so much the capture of the agitator Mourad, or the suppression of a pseudo-revolt, as the extermination, pure and simple, of the Gheligrizan and Talori districts.”[139]
Before closing this chapter I quote one more reference to the Sassoun massacre and the work of the commission from Dr. J. Lepsius of Berlin, whose book was published in 1896, under the title of “Armenia and Europe.”