Thanks to this awakening, a little late but still in time, and thanks especially to this activity, Turkey has to-day become a “Fatherland,” like Sweden, Spain, or Switzerland. Our country is no longer an estate or fief for anybody; it is the country of a people which has just been recalled to life, and which aspires, in its independence and liberty, to happiness and glory.
It is to this happy change that Mr. Traub referred in his lecture. The German deputy was one of the first to proclaim that henceforth the Turkish People will be the only masters in their own house and that nobody may any longer think of exploiting it or in any way tread their rights under foot. We are particularly pleased that an eminent representative of the noble nation which is our friend and ally speaks in this manner.
ANNEXE B: LETTER FROM MR. E. VARTANIAN, AN ARMENIAN-AMERICAN VOLUNTEER IN THE RUSSIAN SERVICE, TO HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW IN EGYPT; DATED 9th/22nd JULY, 1915, AND PUBLISHED IN THE ARMENIAN JOURNAL “HOUSSAPER,” OF CAIRO.
We have been here three days. Some of us are going to be sent to Erivan; the rest of us are starting in two days for Van.
The enthusiasm here is very great. There are already 20,000 volunteers at the front, and they are trying to increase the number to 30,000. Each district we occupy is placed under Armenian administration, and an Armenian post is running from Igdir to Van. The Russian Government is showing great goodwill towards the Armenians and doing everything in its power for the liberation of Turkish Armenia.
When we disembarked at Archangel the Government gave us every possible assistance. It even undertook the transport of our baggage, and gave us free passes, second class, to Petrograd.
At Petrograd we received an equally hearty welcome, and the Governor of the city presented each of us with a medal in token of his sympathy. The Armenian colony put us up in the best hotels, entertained us at the best restaurants, and could not make enough of us. This lasted for five days, and then we continued our journey, again at the Government’s expense, to Tiflis.
Everywhere on the way the population received us with cheers and offerings of flowers. Just as we were leaving Archangel, a young Russian lady came with flowers and offered one to each of us. I also saw a quite poor man who was so moved by the speech in Russian that one of our comrades had made, that he came and put his tobacco into the pipe of a comrade standing next to me, and kept nothing for himself but a bare half-pipeful. A third, an old man, was so moved by the speech that he began to cry and nearly made off, but a little while after I saw him standing in front of the carriage window and, with a shaking hand, holding out a hard-boiled egg to our comrade the chemist Roupen Stepanian. Probably it was his one meal for the day.
And so at every step we found ourselves in the midst of affecting scenes. At Petrograd Railway Station the crowd was enormous. There was an Armenian lady there who offered each of us a rose. There were boys and young men who wept because they could not come with us. At Rostov a young Russian joined our ranks. He was caught more than once by his parents at the stations further down the line, but he always succeeded in escaping them and rejoining us. We have christened him Stepan.
When we arrived at Tiflis, we marched singing to the offices of the Central Armenian Bureau, with our flag unfurled in front of us, and the people marched on either side of us in such a crowd that the trams were forced to stop running.