Here is a vast Mohammedan country, the Sovereign of which is acknowledged by international law to be the Sultan of Turkey. This country belonged to the Turks even before the discovery of America. To-day it is honeycombed with Christian, mostly Protestant, missionary schools, the avowed object of which is to educate a small Christian minority—be it admitted the most thrifty, shrewd, pushing, and intriguing of all Eastern races—in the Christian religion and at the same time in modern European ideas, and to bid them look to the Western world outside Turkey as their natural protector. This was bound to make these Asiatics discontented with their Asiatic status. It is denied that proselytism in any form was attempted or intended. I was informed by an American missionary at Bitlis, who had lived thirty years in Turkey, that formerly there was only one small Protestant Armenian sect in the whole of Armenia, and this was in the little town of Hunuesch, between Erzeroum and Bitlis. Yet statistics show that the pupils of the 621 Protestant schools distributed throughout Asiatic Turkey in 1896 numbered 27,000. Thus, whether proselytism has been intended or attempted, or not, it has, de facto, taken place on a large scale, for the existence of 27,000 Protestants, school pupils constantly renewed with each succeeding generation, out of a total Armenian population of half to three-quarters of a million (say a million if you will),[[9]] represents a preponderant percentage of Protestants among them. These are not views, but facts, which can be easily verified, and with regard to which the reader may draw his own conclusions.
[9]. According to Cuinet, the number of Armenians in the Turkish Empire some years ago was 1,144,000, of which about two-thirds would fall to Asiatic Turkey proper; whereas in Russian Transcaucasia there were said to be nearly 1,000,000 Armenians, and about 100,000 in Persia. The Armenians are thus scarcely more numerous in Asiatic Turkey than the Italians and Belgians in France, distributed over a country twice the size of France.
I met missionaries everywhere in Turkey. I was in their houses as far west as Macedonia, and as far east as Bitlis, near Lake Van, on the frontier of Persia. They nearly all evinced a marked anxiety not to be held responsible, however remotely or indirectly, for the revolutionary movement in Turkey, which in its turn was the source of the massacres that took place, and I willingly believe that they never really intended to provoke disturbance or encourage rebellion against the Turkish authorities. Still there cannot be any doubt that their teaching—not their doctrines, perhaps—had the result, probably never intended, and one it has taken a couple of generations to attain, of fostering the Armenian revolutionary movement throughout Asiatic Turkey. Everything had been carefully prepared in Asia and in the Press of Europe and America before the Armenian outbreak to boom a second Bulgaria. The project failed because, as compared with the years 1876–77, Liberalism as an aggressively agitating force happened to be under an eclipse in Europe in 1895–96. Asiatic Turkey is honeycombed with European and United States Consuls. These gentlemen occupy a quasi-diplomatic status, although in some places there are next to no national interests to be protected.[[10]] Their dragomans and servants are mostly Armenians. When these Consuls walk abroad, accompanied by their armed bodyguard, it is as superior beings, as petty Ambassadors. They are entitled to address the Turkish Governor-Generals with almost Ambassadorial authority. They report the outcome of their investigations to their Ambassador at Constantinople, who thereupon proceeds to examine and cross-examine the Turkish Government at the Sublime Porte on the basis of the Consul’s communications. This activity was at work long before the outbreak of the Armenian massacres, and yet there are still people who are surprised if the Turks do not seem to love the Christians. Imagine the great towns in England, or the United States, or France, or Germany favoured by the presence of Moslem Consuls walking abroad like Ambassadors, with extra-territorial immunities, present in every law court, and reporting every petty larceny that takes place to their Ambassador! What would be the feelings in the above Christian countries towards these Moslem Consuls?
[10]. American interests in Anatolia are mainly those of the missionary establishments, schools, hospitals, workshops, etc.
The English Vice-Consul at Bitlis read us some extracts from his latest report to Constantinople. They consisted of a number of incidents of petty wrongs regarding internal administration in Turkey—arbitrary enforcement of local dues, petty larceny among Turks or what not—matters mostly reported to him by his Armenian dragoman.
“But are not these purely internal local concerns?” I queried.
“Yes, to be sure,” was the reply.
“Well,” I rejoined, “if you are hereafter appointed to a Consular post in Russia, and you make similar reports to the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, and the Russians find it out, don’t you think you would run a fair chance of the Russians making your official position rather uncomfortable for you?”
“I fancy I should,” was his jocular reply.
Incidents such as this show the vexations which the Turks have had to put up with in their own country at the hands of the Christians. Some time ago an English Consular official in Persia wrote an article on Persian administration in an English magazine, with the result that the Shah of Persia successfully insisted that he should not return to Teheran.