But professed infidels like Talaat and Enver are not swayed by religious bigotry. It was national and political bigotry that was the ruling motive with them. They only consented to the sparing of apostates because apostasy in those regions sets the seal upon the abjuration of nationality. And in the Ottoman Empire they meant the Turk to reign alone. In their extirpation of the Armenians the Young Turks were carrying out a deliberate national policy, conceived by the Old Turks more than a generation before. And the Young Turks, taking it over, had only been waiting their opportunity till the preoccupation of Europe should leave their hands untied.
It only remains to add that the Yezidis were not massacred. And, even in such a plethora of massacres, it is strange they should have suffered such neglect. We can only suppose that Melek Taüs, seeing all idle hands so desirably occupied, devoted his unaccustomed leisure to taking care of his own.[{392}]
CHAPTER XVIII
DEAD SEA FRUIT
THE tale of the British administration of Mesopotamia (or Irak) is the familiar one of magnificent work done by men on the spot, which is yet hampered by the feebleness and indecision of “statesmen” at home, coupled with the activities of newspapers interested mainly in what an expert of old time, George III., called “that damnably dirty business, party politics.” The tale, however—though one that is well worth the telling—is too long a one to be put in at the end of a book dealing with only a part of the land concerned, and here we must confine ourselves to that of which we have personal knowledge—viz., the fortunes of the tormented Assyrian nation after they reached “the haven where they would be,” the protection of the British. General affairs can only be touched on so far as they concern this people.
We left the nation established in the huge refugee camp at Baqubah, near Baghdad, where they became one of the sights and sensations of Mesopotamia. They considered that their troubles were over at last, and, indeed, one of their number even broke out into English poetry to celebrate the fact, and presented his ode (which he would have been better advised to write in Syriac) to the General Officer commanding the camp:
We wish to express our thanks and great wish
To all our friends, especially the British;
For we are under the protection of the world’s greatest monarch,
Who to us in this wilderness is like the shadow of the rock.
All gentlemen from the headquarters,
Soldiers, sergeants, corporals, and officers,
All sisters and doctors, with bottles number one, two, three,
They have from typhoid and relapsing fever made us free!
The idea of the people was that they would very speedily be put back, under British protection, in their old homes; and that full compensation (and incidentally full revenge) for all past sufferings and losses would be assured them. They were the allies of the victors in the war; and there was, of course, no limit either to the power or the wealth of their British protectors. The inability of European statesmen to make a peace at all,[168] and the fact that the British Government, in consequence, could not make up its mind what it wanted to do, or could do, either with the country at large or with this relatively small factor in it, were matters simply outside their mental horizon. “Our own country, under British protection,” was their simple and intelligible demand; a “benevolent” government was all that British authorities could promise them in return, and, meantime, there was nothing to do but to wait. If you maintain anyone in idleness, you soon produce a pauper with all a pauper’s vices. Assyrians proved no exception to that rule, and paupers they soon became, taking all that was given, and expecting more. They declined to do even necessary camp work without payment; and the quarrelsomeness and disposition to intrigue that have been their bane since the beginning appeared among them again.
One thing, however, they could do which was useful—they could fight. A double battalion of infantry, with one mounted company, was raised from among them, and put under picked British officers. Such officers, as has been shown many a time, can make good soldiers out of far worse material than warlike mountaineers; and the mutual regard that is usual in such cases soon grew up between the officers and their men. “See that lad there?” said one of these officers to the writer. “He sprained his ankle on the way down, but he turned up on parade with it next day hideously swollen. He only burst out crying when I told him he must not march, and went off to a bonesetter, who slashed it all round with a blunt knife and rubbed in gunpowder. Then[{394}] he turned up again, begging to be allowed to march with the regiment!”