CHAPTER VI.THE BULGARIAN MASSACRE.We must pass over in silence a period of four hundred years in the history of the Ottoman Empire to open its blood-stained pages in our own era at the narrative of the Bulgarian massacres. The centuries and the peoples have been under the rule of the barbarian; the story is one of continued persecution, outrage, and massacre. The Turk never changes. What he has always done he always will do. And as long as any Christian lands or people remain under his power and at his mercy, so long will there be discontents, disturbances, revolts and massacres. The only way to end these is to end the rule of the Turk. Reform—not to say regeneration, is an impossibility. He is an alien in race and religion. His spirit is fierce and fanatical: his rule that of the dark ages, the rule of a tyrant without conscience or remorse.In the early part of this century the oppression of the Turk became unbearable, and throughout the empire the Greek Christians rose in rebellion.Europe was at last horrified by the massacre on the island of Chios, April 11, 1822, when the entire population of forty thousand Greeks was put to the sword. Bravely did the Greeks fight for their freedom. The Sultan called to his aid the Khedive of Egypt, and for three years did they ravage Crete and the Peloponnesus, committing every crime and fiendish outragethat even a Turk could think of from 1824 to 1827. At last Byron roused the spirit of England. The patience of Europe was worn out. England, France and Russia united to crush the power of the barbarian and to set free his victims, as the wild beast would not let go his prey till it was dragged out of his teeth.In November, 1827, was fought the great battle of Navarino. The Turkish and Egyptian fleet was destroyed. Greece was saved.The Russian protectorate over the Eastern Christians was confirmed and renewed: and also her right to free navigation in the Black Sea and the straits. Scarcely had this “fit of generous enthusiasm on behalf of the struggling Greeks” passed, than England under another minister began to regret the part she had taken. The glorious victory of Navarino was spoken of as an “untoward event.” Austria and France shared in her misgivings. She suddenly began to talk about the necessity of muzzling the Russian Bear, and upholding Turkey in behalf of British interests.Ostensibly through fear of Russian aggression, but really from the preponderance of commercial interests, England has now for more than sixty years been the upholder and defender of the Turkish government. The sarcasm of Freeman, the historian, is cutting and pitiless as he reviews the policy of England up to the hour of the terrible outrages perpetrated against the Bulgarians, and her crime against humanity that followed the fall of Plevna.Through fear of Russia, England induced the powers to sign a convention in 1841 by which it was agreed that no foreign fleets should enter the straits in time of peace.The result of this convention was to shut up thefleet of Russia in the Black Sea, making of it to her, merely an inland lake.By a successful stroke of policy Louis Napoleon III., President of the Republic of France, had himself elected Emperor in November, 1852. To signalize his accession he sought to pose as an ally of England. It was his policy to pick quarrels with the great military powers of Europe and then get some other nation to help him out. He began with Russia over the holy shrines in Jerusalem by seeking to have the privileges of the Latin Church enlarged. The Greek Church appealed to the Czar of Russia, the head of the Church, and then it was carried to the Porte.In the spring of 1853, Prince Menchikoff was sent to Constantinople. Firstly, to negotiate on the question of the shrines, which question was settled with Russia’s acquiescence. Secondly, to extract from Porte a note confirming the treaties that had conferred on Russia the Protectorate of the Christians of the Ottoman Empire.The second demand was made necessary by the renewed exactions under which some of these populations were then suffering: as it “happened,” says an English writer, that Omar Pacha, at the head of a Turkish force, was operating against the Christians of Montenegro. And something of the sort was always happening somewhere. For the Turkish policy towards the Christian has always been the same from the beginning of its power and will continue the same to the end.When the English Ambassador, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, returned to Constantinople, in April, 1853, after an absence of eight months, he was directed “to warn the Porte that the accumulated grievances offoreign nations which the Porte is unable or unwilling to redress, the mal-administration of its own affairs * * * may lead to a general revolt among the Christian subjects of the Porte * * that perseverance in his (the Sultan’s) present conduct must end in alienating the sympathies of the British nation and make it impossible for Her Majesty’s government to overlook the exigencies of Christendom exposed to the natural consequence of his unwise policy and reckless mal-administration.”The demand of Russia was refused and Prince Menchikoff left Constantinople May 21st, 1853.A few days later the Sultan issues a firman in which he promises again that he will maintain all the rights and privileges of the Greek Christians, and appeals to his allies.He was merely throwing dust in the air for the wind to blow away, though he thought he could fool Europe with his waste breath.On the 13th of June the allied English and French fleets anchored in Besika Bay, the nearest point they could reach without the violation of the treaties.The Czar Nicholas at once ordered his army to cross the Pruth and enter Moldavia, July 2d. Yet this occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia could not be considered an invasion of the Ottoman territory, nor a “Casus belli, per se,” for these provinces were autonomous and under Russian protection since the treaty of Bucharest, while according to the same treaty the Turks had no right to send troops into their territory.Taking Armenian Prisoners to the Grand Zaptie Prison.Taking Armenian Prisoners to the Grand Zaptie Prison.The unanimous judgment of Europe was expressed in what is known as the “Vienna Note” and in urging its acceptance upon the Porte they practically acknowledgedthe justice of the Czar’s demand and signed their own condemnation in the war that ensued.VIENNA NOTE.“The government of His Majesty, the Sultan, will remain faithful to the letter and to the spirit of the treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople regarding the protection of the Christian Church.”Now the English Ambassador had received instructions to bring his whole influence to bear upon the Turks, “and to impress them with the strong and earnest manner in which the Vienna Note was recommended to the acceptance of the Porte, not only by Her Majesty’s government, but also by the Cabinets of Austria, France and Prussia.”Before the presentation of the “Vienna Note” Lord Stratford had informed the Porte with much circumstance and in his most impressive manner that the British fleet in Besika Bay was at his disposal; while therefore he read his instructions with most perfunctory obedience to the Ottoman Cabinet, his whole demeanor was urging them to disregard the note.The duplicity of the French Emperor was more culpable as before the rejection of the Vienna Note and while the powers were still deliberating in concert he craftily succeeded in drawing England into a special alliance with France: and on receipt of some hysterical despatch from his Ambassador he insisted with the English cabinet that it was “indispensably necessary” that their combined fleets should, in violation of the convention of 1841 enter the straits before there had been a declaration of war on any side. That very day without asking any information from the EnglishAmbassador Lord Clarendon telegraphed to Lord Stratford: “Your Excellency is instructed to send for the British fleet to Constantinople.”The Sultan now amended the “Vienna Note” by inserting the words, “by the Sublime Porte,” which completely destroyed the power of the existing treaty, making it read: “The government of His Majesty the Sultan, will remain faithful to the stipulations of the treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople regarding the protection, ‘by the Sublime Porte’ of the Christian religion.”In other words, the wolf solemnly engaged to protect the lambs for himself, and all the world knows what that means: and we know it now in 1896 by forty years more of broken promises and horrible atrocities. What insane folly to believe the Turk. The Czar did not, and rejected the amended note.Seven days after his rejection of the Sultan’s proposal in obedience to the telegram from Lord Clarendon two English and two French ships entered the Dardanelles on September 14th, and on the strength of their presence and implied support, the Sultan declared war against Russia on the fifth of October, 1853. Thus did Louis Napoleon III. precipitate England into what Count Nesselrode declared to be the most unjustifiable and the most unintelligible of wars.Czar Nicholas replied to this, by a counter declaration of war on November 1st, 1853, solemnly declaring to the Powers of Europe “that the sole aim of his endeavors was to assure the rights of his co-religionists, and to protect them from every form of oppression.”The work of two centuries was undone for Russia. She lost the Black Sea and the protectorate of theChristians of the Ottoman empire that she had wrung from the Porte by a succession of victorious campaigns. Instead of the powerful champion which they lost the poor Christians of the empire were granted another firman in which the Sultan repeated all his lying promises of former years. Not only so but the powers bound themselves not to interfere with the internal administration of affairs in the Turkish Empire.The Christian nations in solemn treaty pledged themselves to let the Turk do what he would with the people under his yoke and promised that they would do nothing to help them. They disclaimed any right to interfere with the relations existing between the Sultan and his subjects: the relations between the robber and his victim, the master and the slave, the tyrant and the oppressed.Future generations will stand aghast at the hideous spectacle of three civilized nations fighting side by side with and for barbarian Moslems to crush the noble champion of their fellow Christians and fellow slaves compelled by their victories to languish beneath the yoke of these savage aliens.All reverence to the heroes of the Light Brigade“Stormed at with shot and shell,Boldly they rode and well;Into the jaws of DeathInto the mouth of HellRode the six hundred.”All reverence to millions of others, who at the voice of command if not of duty, gave themselves up for an unholy cause and perished by thousands of hunger and cold and disease on the bleak shores of the Crimea.Froude says “that the whole power of England andFrance supported passively by Austria, and actively by Sardinia and Turkey, succeeded with communications, secure and rapid with every advantage for procuring supplies, in partially conquering a single stronghold. It was a great victory but it was achieved at a cost to England alone of eighty millions (sterling) of money and perhaps fifty thousand lives.”While Alexander writes (Manifesto 1856), “For eleven months Sebastopol was held against the allied aggressors: and in the whole empire from the shores of the Pacific to the Baltic, one thought, one resolution was dominant to fulfil duty, to protect the Fatherland at any cost of property and life. Husbandmen who had never left the fields they cultivated hastened to take up arms for the holy struggle and were not inferior to experienced warriors in bravery and renunciation.”And this war was fought by France and England, not in the cause of freedom; not to redress the wrongs of the oppressed; not to help forward the wheels of progress. No, but to pave the way for the bloody atrocities which in 1876 called forth one long cry of horror and indignation throughout Christendom, while these in turn were to pale before the horrors of 1895–6 to which commercial England has turned a deaf ear, leaving Armenia helpless in the jaws of the wolf.The Crimean War as fostered by England and France with the avowed purpose of upholding the power of the Turk really brought into action two new elements of weakness. First: up to 1856 Turkey had been free from foreign creditors, but the opening of the Dardanelles brought commerce and a foreign loan, and on the steps of indebtedness followed extravagance,speculation and national bankruptcy. The most wanton and unbridled extravagance reigned at the palace. The corruptions produced by the foreign loans found their way into every artery of the state and poisoned the very existence of the country. New loans could only be obtained by promises which it was impossible to fulfil and which were made without any intention of carrying them out.The navy was improved, the soldiers were better armed; a large part of the money was squandered on absurd building projects; while vast sums were spent on precious stones and personal pleasures.These loans were liberally subscribed in England, and Englishmen helped the Sultan to spend it lavishly. The origin of the troubles of 1876–7 in Bosnia and Herzegovina was said to be the heavy burden of the increased taxes imposed to pay the expenses of a visit to the Paris Exposition, and the European capitals in 1867 made by the Sultan accompanied by his son, two nephews and an expensive suite.But a second and more dangerous evil was this:—The self-exclusion of any right of interference on the part of the Powers threw the control of affairs into the hands of a ring in whose power the Sultan has been but little more than a puppet as the events of recent years have clearly shown.In 1875 the situation was thus reviewed by Gladstone, sincerely penitent for the part he had taken in the Crimean War. “Twenty years ago,” he said, “France and England determined to try a great experiment in remodeling the administrative system of Turkey with the hope of curing its intolerable deficiencies. For this purpose having defended her integrity theymade also her independence secure, and they devised at Constantinople the reforms which were publicly enacted in an imperial Firman or Hati Humayoun.”“The successes of the Crimean War purchased * * * by a vast expenditure of French and English life and treasure gave to Turkey, for the first time, perhaps, in her blood-stained history, twenty years of repose not disturbed either by herself or by any foreign power. The Cretan insurrection imparted a shock to confidence but it was composed and Turkey was again trusted. The insurrections of 1875, much more thoroughly examined, have disclosed the total failure of the Porte to fulfil the engagements which she had contracted under circumstances peculiarly binding on interest, on honor and on gratitude.”So totally, indeed, had the Turks failed to keep any of their promises of reform and so hopeless did the condition of these hapless Christians appear, that they at first refused the mediation of the Powers, declaring that they preferred death to Turkish rule.“If you are not willing to help us to attain our liberty,” they said, “at least you can not compel us to enter into slavery again. We will never fall into the hands of the Turks alive.”About this time Turkey partially repudiated her national debt, pledging for the payment of the interest for some five years the tribute from Egypt and the tobacco revenue. Bondholders became aroused. Commercial interests, not interests of humanity, prompted some action; for if the Christians, who are the cultivators of the soil, were exterminated, what would become of their per cents.?The Powers intervened by the Protocol, known asthe Andrassy Note, which proposed among others the following measures:—1. Religious liberty, full and entire.2. Abolition of the farming of taxes.3. A law to guarantee that the direct taxation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina should be employed for the immediate interests of the provinces.4. A special commission composed of an equal number of Mussulmans and Christians to superintend the execution of the reforms proclaimed and proposed.5. The amelioration of the rural population.The representatives of the six powers under instructions from their governments supported these measures of reform before the Porte, all of them heartily, except the English minister, Sir Henry Elliott, who acting evidently under secret instructions, expressed his belief that they would amount to nothing; and his fear that they trenched upon the right of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs without foreign interference. The Grand Vizier did not reject them, but replied that he was preparing a constitution which would, he believed, embody these and other measures of reform.The Powers believed or affected to believe these brilliant promises. England even tendered to the Sultan the cordial expression of her hopes that “he would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects and restoring order.” And this meant, as England ought to have known and as all the world knows now, that the Turks might put it down in the only way the Turk ever does put down a rebellion—with fiercest cruelty. It meant liberty from British interference while they proceeded to slay, kill, torture, burn, outrage,violate men, women and children with fiendish lust and delight.These promises of reform were made February 10, 1876, and the Turks’answer to the cordial expression of the hope of England that they would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects, was the awful Bulgarian horrors executed by the orders of the Porte during the first two weeks in May.The whole civilized world shuddered. Just as the gates of the Centennial were being thrown open to welcome the nations to the celebration of the glorious victories of peace and the triumphs of art, the unspeakable Turk let loose upon the defenceless Bulgarians the Bashi-Bazouks. These were irregular troops, the scum and offscouring of the Oriental cities, gathered from the prisons, jails and slums: the vilest wretches to be found on the face of the earth without military knowledge, ability, courage or discipline—men fit only for the work of murder, lust, rapine and cruelty on which they were sent by the Sublime Porte, the Infernal Tyrant.On the 14th of May, 1876, the representatives of Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Germany met at Berlin without any knowledge of the massacres, and desirous of sustaining the good intentions of the Grand Vizier, agreed upon the paper known as the “Berlin Memorandum” which provided for a guaranty by the great Powers of the several reforms which had been proclaimed, but were not yet put in force. Five of the Powers signed it, but Great Britain refused, on the ground that it must obviously and inevitably lead to the military occupation of Turkey.Miserable subterfuge—didn’t she “occupy Egypt” a little later to securethe payment of the interest on her bonds: but she had no “interest” in breaking the bonds and chains of Christian populations of Turkey. She knew very well that the Sublime Porte would never execute a reform except under compulsion.The action of the British Ministry greatly encouraged the Turks, and gave them very naturally the impression that England sympathized with them, and would help them to subjugate the Christian races.The British Ministry at first professed ignorance of the massacres: then thought the Bulgarians as much to blame as the Turk—the lamb as the wolf that devoured him—the helpless, disarmed Armenians as the Turkish soldiers that swept down upon them from the mountains—and at last compelled to acknowledge the enormity of the conduct of the Turks, said they had been greatly provoked by the Russian emissaries who were stirring up revolution among the Christians.Instantly Great Britain sent her Mediterranean fleet again to Besika Bay, where it arrived May 21st, only seven days from the first meeting of the Powers. The Minister said it was to protect English subjects, the Turks said it was to protect them. From what, pray? It was never clearly explained why; but it looked then and it looks now as if England were ready to champion the Turk as she had done in the Crimean War. It must have made every Englishman with a conscience or heart in him, blush for shame that the Turks themselves and all the rest of the world took it for granted that the presence of this fleet in Turkish waters was a friendly demonstration on the part of the English towards the Sultan: that in fact they were going tostand by and keep off the great Powers while the Turks continued to “restore order.”The English people however were roused to such indignation by these massacres and by the course of the government, that under the lead of Mr. Gladstone they very soon made their Ministers understand that they were not at liberty to sustain Turkey in such acts of oppression or to alienate the friendship of Russia.Great men like John Bright, always the friend of Russia, Gladstone, Freeman and others publicly denounced England as the accomplice of the Turks in their deeds of horror by the moral and material support she had so freely given them in recent years.We need not trace the details of these horrors here but quote the eloquent and stirring language of the greatest statesman of the age:—“There has been perpetrated,” said Gladstone, “under the authority of a Government to which all the time we have been giving the strongest moral support and for part of the time material support, crimes and outrages so vast in scale as to exceed all modern examples and so unutterably vile as well as fierce in character that it passes the power of heart to conceive and of tongue and pen adequately to describe them. These are the Bulgarian horrors. 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 been too late examined but which remains unavenged—which has left behind the fierce passions that produced it and which may spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil reeked with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crimeand shame. That such things should be done is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race that did them; that a door should be left open for their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the whole.”Grand and noble words and yet the hand of the English Government not only left that door open but fastened it open and kept it open till again in Armenia the Bulgarian horrors were reproduced on a vaster and more terrible scale if the Turk ever can be worse than the history of centuries has so often declared and revealed him.The Turkish government made some feeble attempts to disavow the Bulgarian atrocities. But the Turk is an unmitigated liar. Freeman, the historian does not hesitate to say that the Ring at Constantinople worked with a deliberate policy to oppress and if possible to destroy the whole Bulgarian people. The first means they took was to plant large colonies of savage Circassians in Bulgaria who were allowed to commit any kind of outrage on their defenceless Christian neighbors without redress. They could drive the Christians from their homes, rob their houses, destroy their crops, ravish their women, and if any dared to resist their violence they were killed without hesitation. If any dared to complain against the Circassians they were summarily punished. But worse than this was the quartering of Turkish troops upon the peasants and the landholders whose dastardly outrages upon the wives and daughters of the Bulgarians were fiendish and constant. Neither woman’s honor nor human life was safe where they were.When flesh and blood could bear no more there wassome slight uprising of an unarmed people and then the fury of Circassian and of Bashi-Bazouk was let loose upon them.Freeman says again, “there can be no doubt that the massacre was deliberately ordered by the Ring at Constantinople, the Highnesses and the Excellencies of polite diplomacy. This is proved by the fact that they honored and decorated the chief doers of the massacre, while they neglected and sometimes punished those Turkish officers who acted at all in a humane way. To this day (April, 1877) in defiance of all remonstrances from the European powers, the chief doers of the massacres remain unpunished, while we still hear of Bulgarians being punished for their share in the attempt to free their country.”For a true statement of some of the facts in the case, for the full truth can never be told, the world is indebted to the Government of the United States, which sent a special commission of inquiry to Bulgaria, and History will owe them a debt of gratitude for having furnished reliable documents on this matter in which every European State was more or less exposed to an imputation of bias. As Mr. Gladstone observed: “America had neither alliances with Turkey nor grudges against her nor purposes to gain by her destruction. She entered into this matter simply on the ground of its broad human character and moment. She had no ‘American interests’ to tempt her from her integrity and to vitiate her aims.”Mr. Eugene Schuyler, American Secretary of Legation at Constantinople, who visited the ruined villages in July and August, 1876, made his report to the United States Minister Plenipotentiary November 20th.In that report he says that “in the districts he visited at least nine thousand houses were burned, seventy-two thousand persons were left without roof or shelter and ten thousand nine hundred and eighty-four persons were numbered as killed. Many more were killed in the roads, in the fields, in the mountains; so that he numbers the slain at about fifteen thousand,—but adds many more died subsequently from disease, exposure and in prison.” He says that he could only find proof of the death of one hundred and fifteen Mussulmans. “Neither Turkish women nor Turkish children were killed in cold blood. No Mussulman women were violated. No Mussulman was tortured. No purely Turkish village (with one exception) was attacked or burned. No Mussulman house was pillaged. No mosque was desecrated.”The storm of indignation which followed the publication of the reports of Mr. Schuyler and Mr. Baring the British commissioner, was so terrible that even a Disraeli cabinet did not dare to enter into another monstrous alliance with the Turks against the only champion of the Christians. But official neutrality did not prevent the Turks from recruiting many officers in England; in spite of it British guineas and firearms strengthened their powers of resistance against Russia.It is a terrible indictment that may be brought against England that the question of righteousness never seems to enter into the questions of her foreign “policy,” but only the question of interest and that chiefly the interest which is reckoned in pounds, shillings and pence.From a letter dated September 4th, 1876, publishedin one of the English Blue Books, addressed to the Earl of Derby by Sir Henry Elliot, English Ambassador at Constantinople,—the Sir Henry who would not support the Andrassy Note because he feared that the provisions of it trenched upon the rights of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs,—the following quotation is taken, viz:—“An insurrection or civil war is everywhere accompanied by cruelties and abominable excesses, this being tenfold the case in oriental countries where people are divided into antagonistic creeds and races. * * * To the accusation of being a blind partisan of the Turks, I will only answer that my conduct here has never been guided by any sentimental affection for them, but by a firm determination to uphold the interests of Great Britain to the utmost of my power, and that those interests are deeply engaged in preventing the disruption of the Turkish Empire, is a conviction which I share in common with the most eminent statesmen who have directed our foreign policy. (This is the key to every position assumed by British diplomacy at the Porte. Never a question of righteousness.)“We may, and must feel indignant at the needless and monstrous severity with which the Bulgarian insurrection was put down, but the necessity which exists for England to prevent changes from occurring here which would be most detrimental to ourselves, is not affected by the question whether it was ten thousand or twenty thousand persons who perished in the suppression.“We have been upholding what we know to be a semi-civilized nation, liable under certain circumstances to be carried into fearful excesses: but the fact of thishaving now been brought home to us all, cannot be a sufficient reason for abandoning a policy which is the only one that can be followed with due regard to our interests.”It is enough to take one’s breath away to read such words as these. They are clear enough. They declare what is the settled policy of the English government. Towards Turkey? Not alone, but towards the world. Her interests are purely commercial.—Interests payable in gold: always and everywhere. What are her interests in Venezuela? In the Bering Sea fisheries? In the Transvaal? In India and in China?The integrity of the Turkish Empire must be maintained. All else is mere diplomatic froth, waste breath and ink in the torrents of her speeches and her correspondence with the Porte; and the Turk knows it, and Russia knows it and the world knows it. England is pilloried to-day for her selfishness, if not for her unrighteousness, in all her dealings with the rest of the earth. It is her government, not her people that the world arraigns.Mr. Freeman is scathing and unsparing in his denunciation of the government’s position; but that he was not more severe than just the issue plainly declared, and we tarry on this situation a moment longer because of its special bearing upon the situation as regards the massacres in Armenia.War had been declared by Servia and Montenegro against Turkey on the 2d of July, 1876, which had thus far resulted in victory for Montenegro and defeat for Servia. This situation still further increased the anxieties of the great powers. Not that they cared for Turkey only because they could not agree on how itshould be carved up. They would all like a generous slice if each could have the portion that he liked best.When it became evident that there wasnohope of any good resulting from notes and memorandums, the British Government suggested a conference of the powers which had been parties to the Treaty of Paris to meet at Constantinople in December 1876: and in order to open the way for this conference, proposed an armistice of six weeks between Turkey and Servia.The Turkish government proposed six months: the Russians demanded an immediate armistice of from four to six weeks and threatened to break off diplomatic relations at once if it was not granted. The Turkish government complied with the demand.In an interview with the British Minister, November 2d, 1876, the Emperor Alexander pledged his sacred word of honor in the most earnest and solemn manner that he had no intention of acquiring Constantinople, and that if necessity compelled him to occupy a portion of Bulgaria it would only be provisionally and until the peace and safety of the Christian population could be secured.A few days later—November 10th, the Emperor made a speech at Moscow in which he said: “I have striven and shall still strive to obtain a real improvement of the position of the Christians in the East by peaceful means. But should I see that we cannot obtain such guarantees as are necessary for carrying out what we have a right to demand of the Porte I am firmly determined to act independently; and I am convinced, that in this case the whole of Russia will respond to my summons should I consider it necessary and should the honor of Russia require it.”British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.The preliminary conference at Constantinople was opened on the 11th of December, and was participated in by representatives from Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy.The conference was foredoomed to end in failure, for by the treaty of Paris the Powers had no right to interfere, and they were all too righteous to sin against that treaty, though Bulgaria should be utterly wasted with fire and sword.The Marquis of Salisbury, now Prime Minister, was the chief representative of Great Britain, and in a speech before the House of Lords thus defined the purposes of the conference and its failure. After speaking of previous treaties and the changes that had taken place both in Turkey and Great Britain which prevented the latter from maintaining exactly the same attitude towards Turkey which she did in 1856, he went on to say: “If the alliance was broken up, if our exertions for the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire were to cease * * * assuredly it was our duty to exhaust appeal, remonstrance and exhortation before deserting a cause we had hitherto maintained. * * * We went to stop a great and menacing danger, namely the prospect of a war between Russia and the Porte. It was in pointing out that evil that our moral influence on the Porte rested. We said to Turkey, “Unless you do this or that, this terrible danger which may well involve the loss of your Empire is ready to fall upon you. We hope that our influence and advice may be able to avert it:indeed we come here for that purpose, but we warn you that we shall accept no responsibility for the future, if you treat our advice with disdain. * * * It seems to me, as it must to everybody else, that the refusalof the Turk is a mystery: for the infatuation of that cause seems to be so tremendous.”The refusal of the Turk is no mystery to-day. There was no infatuation about it. The Porte knew that his speech meant no harm to Turkey: that he had come to avert the loss of the Empire. He knew very well that whatever the issue of the war might be on the battlefield, England would never let Russia profit by her victories. Hence the Porte in sublime contempt snapped its fingers in the face of the Conference and politely bowed it out of existence. The issue proved that the Turks knew exactly the man and the nation they were dealing with. Yet the English people thought the Government really meant to do something to help the cause of the persecuted Bulgarians: just as they thought for awhile that Salisbury as Prime Minister meant, really intended to do something in the cause of Armenia.England has not changed in her traditional policy towards the Turk. She has not deserted the cause she has maintained for now some sixty years, and she never will desert it until she and Russia can agree about the division of the spoils: then her love for the Turk will vanish as a mist before the rising sun of her own increasing power and splendor.
CHAPTER VI.THE BULGARIAN MASSACRE.We must pass over in silence a period of four hundred years in the history of the Ottoman Empire to open its blood-stained pages in our own era at the narrative of the Bulgarian massacres. The centuries and the peoples have been under the rule of the barbarian; the story is one of continued persecution, outrage, and massacre. The Turk never changes. What he has always done he always will do. And as long as any Christian lands or people remain under his power and at his mercy, so long will there be discontents, disturbances, revolts and massacres. The only way to end these is to end the rule of the Turk. Reform—not to say regeneration, is an impossibility. He is an alien in race and religion. His spirit is fierce and fanatical: his rule that of the dark ages, the rule of a tyrant without conscience or remorse.In the early part of this century the oppression of the Turk became unbearable, and throughout the empire the Greek Christians rose in rebellion.Europe was at last horrified by the massacre on the island of Chios, April 11, 1822, when the entire population of forty thousand Greeks was put to the sword. Bravely did the Greeks fight for their freedom. The Sultan called to his aid the Khedive of Egypt, and for three years did they ravage Crete and the Peloponnesus, committing every crime and fiendish outragethat even a Turk could think of from 1824 to 1827. At last Byron roused the spirit of England. The patience of Europe was worn out. England, France and Russia united to crush the power of the barbarian and to set free his victims, as the wild beast would not let go his prey till it was dragged out of his teeth.In November, 1827, was fought the great battle of Navarino. The Turkish and Egyptian fleet was destroyed. Greece was saved.The Russian protectorate over the Eastern Christians was confirmed and renewed: and also her right to free navigation in the Black Sea and the straits. Scarcely had this “fit of generous enthusiasm on behalf of the struggling Greeks” passed, than England under another minister began to regret the part she had taken. The glorious victory of Navarino was spoken of as an “untoward event.” Austria and France shared in her misgivings. She suddenly began to talk about the necessity of muzzling the Russian Bear, and upholding Turkey in behalf of British interests.Ostensibly through fear of Russian aggression, but really from the preponderance of commercial interests, England has now for more than sixty years been the upholder and defender of the Turkish government. The sarcasm of Freeman, the historian, is cutting and pitiless as he reviews the policy of England up to the hour of the terrible outrages perpetrated against the Bulgarians, and her crime against humanity that followed the fall of Plevna.Through fear of Russia, England induced the powers to sign a convention in 1841 by which it was agreed that no foreign fleets should enter the straits in time of peace.The result of this convention was to shut up thefleet of Russia in the Black Sea, making of it to her, merely an inland lake.By a successful stroke of policy Louis Napoleon III., President of the Republic of France, had himself elected Emperor in November, 1852. To signalize his accession he sought to pose as an ally of England. It was his policy to pick quarrels with the great military powers of Europe and then get some other nation to help him out. He began with Russia over the holy shrines in Jerusalem by seeking to have the privileges of the Latin Church enlarged. The Greek Church appealed to the Czar of Russia, the head of the Church, and then it was carried to the Porte.In the spring of 1853, Prince Menchikoff was sent to Constantinople. Firstly, to negotiate on the question of the shrines, which question was settled with Russia’s acquiescence. Secondly, to extract from Porte a note confirming the treaties that had conferred on Russia the Protectorate of the Christians of the Ottoman Empire.The second demand was made necessary by the renewed exactions under which some of these populations were then suffering: as it “happened,” says an English writer, that Omar Pacha, at the head of a Turkish force, was operating against the Christians of Montenegro. And something of the sort was always happening somewhere. For the Turkish policy towards the Christian has always been the same from the beginning of its power and will continue the same to the end.When the English Ambassador, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, returned to Constantinople, in April, 1853, after an absence of eight months, he was directed “to warn the Porte that the accumulated grievances offoreign nations which the Porte is unable or unwilling to redress, the mal-administration of its own affairs * * * may lead to a general revolt among the Christian subjects of the Porte * * that perseverance in his (the Sultan’s) present conduct must end in alienating the sympathies of the British nation and make it impossible for Her Majesty’s government to overlook the exigencies of Christendom exposed to the natural consequence of his unwise policy and reckless mal-administration.”The demand of Russia was refused and Prince Menchikoff left Constantinople May 21st, 1853.A few days later the Sultan issues a firman in which he promises again that he will maintain all the rights and privileges of the Greek Christians, and appeals to his allies.He was merely throwing dust in the air for the wind to blow away, though he thought he could fool Europe with his waste breath.On the 13th of June the allied English and French fleets anchored in Besika Bay, the nearest point they could reach without the violation of the treaties.The Czar Nicholas at once ordered his army to cross the Pruth and enter Moldavia, July 2d. Yet this occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia could not be considered an invasion of the Ottoman territory, nor a “Casus belli, per se,” for these provinces were autonomous and under Russian protection since the treaty of Bucharest, while according to the same treaty the Turks had no right to send troops into their territory.Taking Armenian Prisoners to the Grand Zaptie Prison.Taking Armenian Prisoners to the Grand Zaptie Prison.The unanimous judgment of Europe was expressed in what is known as the “Vienna Note” and in urging its acceptance upon the Porte they practically acknowledgedthe justice of the Czar’s demand and signed their own condemnation in the war that ensued.VIENNA NOTE.“The government of His Majesty, the Sultan, will remain faithful to the letter and to the spirit of the treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople regarding the protection of the Christian Church.”Now the English Ambassador had received instructions to bring his whole influence to bear upon the Turks, “and to impress them with the strong and earnest manner in which the Vienna Note was recommended to the acceptance of the Porte, not only by Her Majesty’s government, but also by the Cabinets of Austria, France and Prussia.”Before the presentation of the “Vienna Note” Lord Stratford had informed the Porte with much circumstance and in his most impressive manner that the British fleet in Besika Bay was at his disposal; while therefore he read his instructions with most perfunctory obedience to the Ottoman Cabinet, his whole demeanor was urging them to disregard the note.The duplicity of the French Emperor was more culpable as before the rejection of the Vienna Note and while the powers were still deliberating in concert he craftily succeeded in drawing England into a special alliance with France: and on receipt of some hysterical despatch from his Ambassador he insisted with the English cabinet that it was “indispensably necessary” that their combined fleets should, in violation of the convention of 1841 enter the straits before there had been a declaration of war on any side. That very day without asking any information from the EnglishAmbassador Lord Clarendon telegraphed to Lord Stratford: “Your Excellency is instructed to send for the British fleet to Constantinople.”The Sultan now amended the “Vienna Note” by inserting the words, “by the Sublime Porte,” which completely destroyed the power of the existing treaty, making it read: “The government of His Majesty the Sultan, will remain faithful to the stipulations of the treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople regarding the protection, ‘by the Sublime Porte’ of the Christian religion.”In other words, the wolf solemnly engaged to protect the lambs for himself, and all the world knows what that means: and we know it now in 1896 by forty years more of broken promises and horrible atrocities. What insane folly to believe the Turk. The Czar did not, and rejected the amended note.Seven days after his rejection of the Sultan’s proposal in obedience to the telegram from Lord Clarendon two English and two French ships entered the Dardanelles on September 14th, and on the strength of their presence and implied support, the Sultan declared war against Russia on the fifth of October, 1853. Thus did Louis Napoleon III. precipitate England into what Count Nesselrode declared to be the most unjustifiable and the most unintelligible of wars.Czar Nicholas replied to this, by a counter declaration of war on November 1st, 1853, solemnly declaring to the Powers of Europe “that the sole aim of his endeavors was to assure the rights of his co-religionists, and to protect them from every form of oppression.”The work of two centuries was undone for Russia. She lost the Black Sea and the protectorate of theChristians of the Ottoman empire that she had wrung from the Porte by a succession of victorious campaigns. Instead of the powerful champion which they lost the poor Christians of the empire were granted another firman in which the Sultan repeated all his lying promises of former years. Not only so but the powers bound themselves not to interfere with the internal administration of affairs in the Turkish Empire.The Christian nations in solemn treaty pledged themselves to let the Turk do what he would with the people under his yoke and promised that they would do nothing to help them. They disclaimed any right to interfere with the relations existing between the Sultan and his subjects: the relations between the robber and his victim, the master and the slave, the tyrant and the oppressed.Future generations will stand aghast at the hideous spectacle of three civilized nations fighting side by side with and for barbarian Moslems to crush the noble champion of their fellow Christians and fellow slaves compelled by their victories to languish beneath the yoke of these savage aliens.All reverence to the heroes of the Light Brigade“Stormed at with shot and shell,Boldly they rode and well;Into the jaws of DeathInto the mouth of HellRode the six hundred.”All reverence to millions of others, who at the voice of command if not of duty, gave themselves up for an unholy cause and perished by thousands of hunger and cold and disease on the bleak shores of the Crimea.Froude says “that the whole power of England andFrance supported passively by Austria, and actively by Sardinia and Turkey, succeeded with communications, secure and rapid with every advantage for procuring supplies, in partially conquering a single stronghold. It was a great victory but it was achieved at a cost to England alone of eighty millions (sterling) of money and perhaps fifty thousand lives.”While Alexander writes (Manifesto 1856), “For eleven months Sebastopol was held against the allied aggressors: and in the whole empire from the shores of the Pacific to the Baltic, one thought, one resolution was dominant to fulfil duty, to protect the Fatherland at any cost of property and life. Husbandmen who had never left the fields they cultivated hastened to take up arms for the holy struggle and were not inferior to experienced warriors in bravery and renunciation.”And this war was fought by France and England, not in the cause of freedom; not to redress the wrongs of the oppressed; not to help forward the wheels of progress. No, but to pave the way for the bloody atrocities which in 1876 called forth one long cry of horror and indignation throughout Christendom, while these in turn were to pale before the horrors of 1895–6 to which commercial England has turned a deaf ear, leaving Armenia helpless in the jaws of the wolf.The Crimean War as fostered by England and France with the avowed purpose of upholding the power of the Turk really brought into action two new elements of weakness. First: up to 1856 Turkey had been free from foreign creditors, but the opening of the Dardanelles brought commerce and a foreign loan, and on the steps of indebtedness followed extravagance,speculation and national bankruptcy. The most wanton and unbridled extravagance reigned at the palace. The corruptions produced by the foreign loans found their way into every artery of the state and poisoned the very existence of the country. New loans could only be obtained by promises which it was impossible to fulfil and which were made without any intention of carrying them out.The navy was improved, the soldiers were better armed; a large part of the money was squandered on absurd building projects; while vast sums were spent on precious stones and personal pleasures.These loans were liberally subscribed in England, and Englishmen helped the Sultan to spend it lavishly. The origin of the troubles of 1876–7 in Bosnia and Herzegovina was said to be the heavy burden of the increased taxes imposed to pay the expenses of a visit to the Paris Exposition, and the European capitals in 1867 made by the Sultan accompanied by his son, two nephews and an expensive suite.But a second and more dangerous evil was this:—The self-exclusion of any right of interference on the part of the Powers threw the control of affairs into the hands of a ring in whose power the Sultan has been but little more than a puppet as the events of recent years have clearly shown.In 1875 the situation was thus reviewed by Gladstone, sincerely penitent for the part he had taken in the Crimean War. “Twenty years ago,” he said, “France and England determined to try a great experiment in remodeling the administrative system of Turkey with the hope of curing its intolerable deficiencies. For this purpose having defended her integrity theymade also her independence secure, and they devised at Constantinople the reforms which were publicly enacted in an imperial Firman or Hati Humayoun.”“The successes of the Crimean War purchased * * * by a vast expenditure of French and English life and treasure gave to Turkey, for the first time, perhaps, in her blood-stained history, twenty years of repose not disturbed either by herself or by any foreign power. The Cretan insurrection imparted a shock to confidence but it was composed and Turkey was again trusted. The insurrections of 1875, much more thoroughly examined, have disclosed the total failure of the Porte to fulfil the engagements which she had contracted under circumstances peculiarly binding on interest, on honor and on gratitude.”So totally, indeed, had the Turks failed to keep any of their promises of reform and so hopeless did the condition of these hapless Christians appear, that they at first refused the mediation of the Powers, declaring that they preferred death to Turkish rule.“If you are not willing to help us to attain our liberty,” they said, “at least you can not compel us to enter into slavery again. We will never fall into the hands of the Turks alive.”About this time Turkey partially repudiated her national debt, pledging for the payment of the interest for some five years the tribute from Egypt and the tobacco revenue. Bondholders became aroused. Commercial interests, not interests of humanity, prompted some action; for if the Christians, who are the cultivators of the soil, were exterminated, what would become of their per cents.?The Powers intervened by the Protocol, known asthe Andrassy Note, which proposed among others the following measures:—1. Religious liberty, full and entire.2. Abolition of the farming of taxes.3. A law to guarantee that the direct taxation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina should be employed for the immediate interests of the provinces.4. A special commission composed of an equal number of Mussulmans and Christians to superintend the execution of the reforms proclaimed and proposed.5. The amelioration of the rural population.The representatives of the six powers under instructions from their governments supported these measures of reform before the Porte, all of them heartily, except the English minister, Sir Henry Elliott, who acting evidently under secret instructions, expressed his belief that they would amount to nothing; and his fear that they trenched upon the right of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs without foreign interference. The Grand Vizier did not reject them, but replied that he was preparing a constitution which would, he believed, embody these and other measures of reform.The Powers believed or affected to believe these brilliant promises. England even tendered to the Sultan the cordial expression of her hopes that “he would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects and restoring order.” And this meant, as England ought to have known and as all the world knows now, that the Turks might put it down in the only way the Turk ever does put down a rebellion—with fiercest cruelty. It meant liberty from British interference while they proceeded to slay, kill, torture, burn, outrage,violate men, women and children with fiendish lust and delight.These promises of reform were made February 10, 1876, and the Turks’answer to the cordial expression of the hope of England that they would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects, was the awful Bulgarian horrors executed by the orders of the Porte during the first two weeks in May.The whole civilized world shuddered. Just as the gates of the Centennial were being thrown open to welcome the nations to the celebration of the glorious victories of peace and the triumphs of art, the unspeakable Turk let loose upon the defenceless Bulgarians the Bashi-Bazouks. These were irregular troops, the scum and offscouring of the Oriental cities, gathered from the prisons, jails and slums: the vilest wretches to be found on the face of the earth without military knowledge, ability, courage or discipline—men fit only for the work of murder, lust, rapine and cruelty on which they were sent by the Sublime Porte, the Infernal Tyrant.On the 14th of May, 1876, the representatives of Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Germany met at Berlin without any knowledge of the massacres, and desirous of sustaining the good intentions of the Grand Vizier, agreed upon the paper known as the “Berlin Memorandum” which provided for a guaranty by the great Powers of the several reforms which had been proclaimed, but were not yet put in force. Five of the Powers signed it, but Great Britain refused, on the ground that it must obviously and inevitably lead to the military occupation of Turkey.Miserable subterfuge—didn’t she “occupy Egypt” a little later to securethe payment of the interest on her bonds: but she had no “interest” in breaking the bonds and chains of Christian populations of Turkey. She knew very well that the Sublime Porte would never execute a reform except under compulsion.The action of the British Ministry greatly encouraged the Turks, and gave them very naturally the impression that England sympathized with them, and would help them to subjugate the Christian races.The British Ministry at first professed ignorance of the massacres: then thought the Bulgarians as much to blame as the Turk—the lamb as the wolf that devoured him—the helpless, disarmed Armenians as the Turkish soldiers that swept down upon them from the mountains—and at last compelled to acknowledge the enormity of the conduct of the Turks, said they had been greatly provoked by the Russian emissaries who were stirring up revolution among the Christians.Instantly Great Britain sent her Mediterranean fleet again to Besika Bay, where it arrived May 21st, only seven days from the first meeting of the Powers. The Minister said it was to protect English subjects, the Turks said it was to protect them. From what, pray? It was never clearly explained why; but it looked then and it looks now as if England were ready to champion the Turk as she had done in the Crimean War. It must have made every Englishman with a conscience or heart in him, blush for shame that the Turks themselves and all the rest of the world took it for granted that the presence of this fleet in Turkish waters was a friendly demonstration on the part of the English towards the Sultan: that in fact they were going tostand by and keep off the great Powers while the Turks continued to “restore order.”The English people however were roused to such indignation by these massacres and by the course of the government, that under the lead of Mr. Gladstone they very soon made their Ministers understand that they were not at liberty to sustain Turkey in such acts of oppression or to alienate the friendship of Russia.Great men like John Bright, always the friend of Russia, Gladstone, Freeman and others publicly denounced England as the accomplice of the Turks in their deeds of horror by the moral and material support she had so freely given them in recent years.We need not trace the details of these horrors here but quote the eloquent and stirring language of the greatest statesman of the age:—“There has been perpetrated,” said Gladstone, “under the authority of a Government to which all the time we have been giving the strongest moral support and for part of the time material support, crimes and outrages so vast in scale as to exceed all modern examples and so unutterably vile as well as fierce in character that it passes the power of heart to conceive and of tongue and pen adequately to describe them. These are the Bulgarian horrors. 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 been too late examined but which remains unavenged—which has left behind the fierce passions that produced it and which may spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil reeked with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crimeand shame. That such things should be done is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race that did them; that a door should be left open for their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the whole.”Grand and noble words and yet the hand of the English Government not only left that door open but fastened it open and kept it open till again in Armenia the Bulgarian horrors were reproduced on a vaster and more terrible scale if the Turk ever can be worse than the history of centuries has so often declared and revealed him.The Turkish government made some feeble attempts to disavow the Bulgarian atrocities. But the Turk is an unmitigated liar. Freeman, the historian does not hesitate to say that the Ring at Constantinople worked with a deliberate policy to oppress and if possible to destroy the whole Bulgarian people. The first means they took was to plant large colonies of savage Circassians in Bulgaria who were allowed to commit any kind of outrage on their defenceless Christian neighbors without redress. They could drive the Christians from their homes, rob their houses, destroy their crops, ravish their women, and if any dared to resist their violence they were killed without hesitation. If any dared to complain against the Circassians they were summarily punished. But worse than this was the quartering of Turkish troops upon the peasants and the landholders whose dastardly outrages upon the wives and daughters of the Bulgarians were fiendish and constant. Neither woman’s honor nor human life was safe where they were.When flesh and blood could bear no more there wassome slight uprising of an unarmed people and then the fury of Circassian and of Bashi-Bazouk was let loose upon them.Freeman says again, “there can be no doubt that the massacre was deliberately ordered by the Ring at Constantinople, the Highnesses and the Excellencies of polite diplomacy. This is proved by the fact that they honored and decorated the chief doers of the massacre, while they neglected and sometimes punished those Turkish officers who acted at all in a humane way. To this day (April, 1877) in defiance of all remonstrances from the European powers, the chief doers of the massacres remain unpunished, while we still hear of Bulgarians being punished for their share in the attempt to free their country.”For a true statement of some of the facts in the case, for the full truth can never be told, the world is indebted to the Government of the United States, which sent a special commission of inquiry to Bulgaria, and History will owe them a debt of gratitude for having furnished reliable documents on this matter in which every European State was more or less exposed to an imputation of bias. As Mr. Gladstone observed: “America had neither alliances with Turkey nor grudges against her nor purposes to gain by her destruction. She entered into this matter simply on the ground of its broad human character and moment. She had no ‘American interests’ to tempt her from her integrity and to vitiate her aims.”Mr. Eugene Schuyler, American Secretary of Legation at Constantinople, who visited the ruined villages in July and August, 1876, made his report to the United States Minister Plenipotentiary November 20th.In that report he says that “in the districts he visited at least nine thousand houses were burned, seventy-two thousand persons were left without roof or shelter and ten thousand nine hundred and eighty-four persons were numbered as killed. Many more were killed in the roads, in the fields, in the mountains; so that he numbers the slain at about fifteen thousand,—but adds many more died subsequently from disease, exposure and in prison.” He says that he could only find proof of the death of one hundred and fifteen Mussulmans. “Neither Turkish women nor Turkish children were killed in cold blood. No Mussulman women were violated. No Mussulman was tortured. No purely Turkish village (with one exception) was attacked or burned. No Mussulman house was pillaged. No mosque was desecrated.”The storm of indignation which followed the publication of the reports of Mr. Schuyler and Mr. Baring the British commissioner, was so terrible that even a Disraeli cabinet did not dare to enter into another monstrous alliance with the Turks against the only champion of the Christians. But official neutrality did not prevent the Turks from recruiting many officers in England; in spite of it British guineas and firearms strengthened their powers of resistance against Russia.It is a terrible indictment that may be brought against England that the question of righteousness never seems to enter into the questions of her foreign “policy,” but only the question of interest and that chiefly the interest which is reckoned in pounds, shillings and pence.From a letter dated September 4th, 1876, publishedin one of the English Blue Books, addressed to the Earl of Derby by Sir Henry Elliot, English Ambassador at Constantinople,—the Sir Henry who would not support the Andrassy Note because he feared that the provisions of it trenched upon the rights of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs,—the following quotation is taken, viz:—“An insurrection or civil war is everywhere accompanied by cruelties and abominable excesses, this being tenfold the case in oriental countries where people are divided into antagonistic creeds and races. * * * To the accusation of being a blind partisan of the Turks, I will only answer that my conduct here has never been guided by any sentimental affection for them, but by a firm determination to uphold the interests of Great Britain to the utmost of my power, and that those interests are deeply engaged in preventing the disruption of the Turkish Empire, is a conviction which I share in common with the most eminent statesmen who have directed our foreign policy. (This is the key to every position assumed by British diplomacy at the Porte. Never a question of righteousness.)“We may, and must feel indignant at the needless and monstrous severity with which the Bulgarian insurrection was put down, but the necessity which exists for England to prevent changes from occurring here which would be most detrimental to ourselves, is not affected by the question whether it was ten thousand or twenty thousand persons who perished in the suppression.“We have been upholding what we know to be a semi-civilized nation, liable under certain circumstances to be carried into fearful excesses: but the fact of thishaving now been brought home to us all, cannot be a sufficient reason for abandoning a policy which is the only one that can be followed with due regard to our interests.”It is enough to take one’s breath away to read such words as these. They are clear enough. They declare what is the settled policy of the English government. Towards Turkey? Not alone, but towards the world. Her interests are purely commercial.—Interests payable in gold: always and everywhere. What are her interests in Venezuela? In the Bering Sea fisheries? In the Transvaal? In India and in China?The integrity of the Turkish Empire must be maintained. All else is mere diplomatic froth, waste breath and ink in the torrents of her speeches and her correspondence with the Porte; and the Turk knows it, and Russia knows it and the world knows it. England is pilloried to-day for her selfishness, if not for her unrighteousness, in all her dealings with the rest of the earth. It is her government, not her people that the world arraigns.Mr. Freeman is scathing and unsparing in his denunciation of the government’s position; but that he was not more severe than just the issue plainly declared, and we tarry on this situation a moment longer because of its special bearing upon the situation as regards the massacres in Armenia.War had been declared by Servia and Montenegro against Turkey on the 2d of July, 1876, which had thus far resulted in victory for Montenegro and defeat for Servia. This situation still further increased the anxieties of the great powers. Not that they cared for Turkey only because they could not agree on how itshould be carved up. They would all like a generous slice if each could have the portion that he liked best.When it became evident that there wasnohope of any good resulting from notes and memorandums, the British Government suggested a conference of the powers which had been parties to the Treaty of Paris to meet at Constantinople in December 1876: and in order to open the way for this conference, proposed an armistice of six weeks between Turkey and Servia.The Turkish government proposed six months: the Russians demanded an immediate armistice of from four to six weeks and threatened to break off diplomatic relations at once if it was not granted. The Turkish government complied with the demand.In an interview with the British Minister, November 2d, 1876, the Emperor Alexander pledged his sacred word of honor in the most earnest and solemn manner that he had no intention of acquiring Constantinople, and that if necessity compelled him to occupy a portion of Bulgaria it would only be provisionally and until the peace and safety of the Christian population could be secured.A few days later—November 10th, the Emperor made a speech at Moscow in which he said: “I have striven and shall still strive to obtain a real improvement of the position of the Christians in the East by peaceful means. But should I see that we cannot obtain such guarantees as are necessary for carrying out what we have a right to demand of the Porte I am firmly determined to act independently; and I am convinced, that in this case the whole of Russia will respond to my summons should I consider it necessary and should the honor of Russia require it.”British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.The preliminary conference at Constantinople was opened on the 11th of December, and was participated in by representatives from Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy.The conference was foredoomed to end in failure, for by the treaty of Paris the Powers had no right to interfere, and they were all too righteous to sin against that treaty, though Bulgaria should be utterly wasted with fire and sword.The Marquis of Salisbury, now Prime Minister, was the chief representative of Great Britain, and in a speech before the House of Lords thus defined the purposes of the conference and its failure. After speaking of previous treaties and the changes that had taken place both in Turkey and Great Britain which prevented the latter from maintaining exactly the same attitude towards Turkey which she did in 1856, he went on to say: “If the alliance was broken up, if our exertions for the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire were to cease * * * assuredly it was our duty to exhaust appeal, remonstrance and exhortation before deserting a cause we had hitherto maintained. * * * We went to stop a great and menacing danger, namely the prospect of a war between Russia and the Porte. It was in pointing out that evil that our moral influence on the Porte rested. We said to Turkey, “Unless you do this or that, this terrible danger which may well involve the loss of your Empire is ready to fall upon you. We hope that our influence and advice may be able to avert it:indeed we come here for that purpose, but we warn you that we shall accept no responsibility for the future, if you treat our advice with disdain. * * * It seems to me, as it must to everybody else, that the refusalof the Turk is a mystery: for the infatuation of that cause seems to be so tremendous.”The refusal of the Turk is no mystery to-day. There was no infatuation about it. The Porte knew that his speech meant no harm to Turkey: that he had come to avert the loss of the Empire. He knew very well that whatever the issue of the war might be on the battlefield, England would never let Russia profit by her victories. Hence the Porte in sublime contempt snapped its fingers in the face of the Conference and politely bowed it out of existence. The issue proved that the Turks knew exactly the man and the nation they were dealing with. Yet the English people thought the Government really meant to do something to help the cause of the persecuted Bulgarians: just as they thought for awhile that Salisbury as Prime Minister meant, really intended to do something in the cause of Armenia.England has not changed in her traditional policy towards the Turk. She has not deserted the cause she has maintained for now some sixty years, and she never will desert it until she and Russia can agree about the division of the spoils: then her love for the Turk will vanish as a mist before the rising sun of her own increasing power and splendor.
CHAPTER VI.THE BULGARIAN MASSACRE.
We must pass over in silence a period of four hundred years in the history of the Ottoman Empire to open its blood-stained pages in our own era at the narrative of the Bulgarian massacres. The centuries and the peoples have been under the rule of the barbarian; the story is one of continued persecution, outrage, and massacre. The Turk never changes. What he has always done he always will do. And as long as any Christian lands or people remain under his power and at his mercy, so long will there be discontents, disturbances, revolts and massacres. The only way to end these is to end the rule of the Turk. Reform—not to say regeneration, is an impossibility. He is an alien in race and religion. His spirit is fierce and fanatical: his rule that of the dark ages, the rule of a tyrant without conscience or remorse.In the early part of this century the oppression of the Turk became unbearable, and throughout the empire the Greek Christians rose in rebellion.Europe was at last horrified by the massacre on the island of Chios, April 11, 1822, when the entire population of forty thousand Greeks was put to the sword. Bravely did the Greeks fight for their freedom. The Sultan called to his aid the Khedive of Egypt, and for three years did they ravage Crete and the Peloponnesus, committing every crime and fiendish outragethat even a Turk could think of from 1824 to 1827. At last Byron roused the spirit of England. The patience of Europe was worn out. England, France and Russia united to crush the power of the barbarian and to set free his victims, as the wild beast would not let go his prey till it was dragged out of his teeth.In November, 1827, was fought the great battle of Navarino. The Turkish and Egyptian fleet was destroyed. Greece was saved.The Russian protectorate over the Eastern Christians was confirmed and renewed: and also her right to free navigation in the Black Sea and the straits. Scarcely had this “fit of generous enthusiasm on behalf of the struggling Greeks” passed, than England under another minister began to regret the part she had taken. The glorious victory of Navarino was spoken of as an “untoward event.” Austria and France shared in her misgivings. She suddenly began to talk about the necessity of muzzling the Russian Bear, and upholding Turkey in behalf of British interests.Ostensibly through fear of Russian aggression, but really from the preponderance of commercial interests, England has now for more than sixty years been the upholder and defender of the Turkish government. The sarcasm of Freeman, the historian, is cutting and pitiless as he reviews the policy of England up to the hour of the terrible outrages perpetrated against the Bulgarians, and her crime against humanity that followed the fall of Plevna.Through fear of Russia, England induced the powers to sign a convention in 1841 by which it was agreed that no foreign fleets should enter the straits in time of peace.The result of this convention was to shut up thefleet of Russia in the Black Sea, making of it to her, merely an inland lake.By a successful stroke of policy Louis Napoleon III., President of the Republic of France, had himself elected Emperor in November, 1852. To signalize his accession he sought to pose as an ally of England. It was his policy to pick quarrels with the great military powers of Europe and then get some other nation to help him out. He began with Russia over the holy shrines in Jerusalem by seeking to have the privileges of the Latin Church enlarged. The Greek Church appealed to the Czar of Russia, the head of the Church, and then it was carried to the Porte.In the spring of 1853, Prince Menchikoff was sent to Constantinople. Firstly, to negotiate on the question of the shrines, which question was settled with Russia’s acquiescence. Secondly, to extract from Porte a note confirming the treaties that had conferred on Russia the Protectorate of the Christians of the Ottoman Empire.The second demand was made necessary by the renewed exactions under which some of these populations were then suffering: as it “happened,” says an English writer, that Omar Pacha, at the head of a Turkish force, was operating against the Christians of Montenegro. And something of the sort was always happening somewhere. For the Turkish policy towards the Christian has always been the same from the beginning of its power and will continue the same to the end.When the English Ambassador, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, returned to Constantinople, in April, 1853, after an absence of eight months, he was directed “to warn the Porte that the accumulated grievances offoreign nations which the Porte is unable or unwilling to redress, the mal-administration of its own affairs * * * may lead to a general revolt among the Christian subjects of the Porte * * that perseverance in his (the Sultan’s) present conduct must end in alienating the sympathies of the British nation and make it impossible for Her Majesty’s government to overlook the exigencies of Christendom exposed to the natural consequence of his unwise policy and reckless mal-administration.”The demand of Russia was refused and Prince Menchikoff left Constantinople May 21st, 1853.A few days later the Sultan issues a firman in which he promises again that he will maintain all the rights and privileges of the Greek Christians, and appeals to his allies.He was merely throwing dust in the air for the wind to blow away, though he thought he could fool Europe with his waste breath.On the 13th of June the allied English and French fleets anchored in Besika Bay, the nearest point they could reach without the violation of the treaties.The Czar Nicholas at once ordered his army to cross the Pruth and enter Moldavia, July 2d. Yet this occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia could not be considered an invasion of the Ottoman territory, nor a “Casus belli, per se,” for these provinces were autonomous and under Russian protection since the treaty of Bucharest, while according to the same treaty the Turks had no right to send troops into their territory.Taking Armenian Prisoners to the Grand Zaptie Prison.Taking Armenian Prisoners to the Grand Zaptie Prison.The unanimous judgment of Europe was expressed in what is known as the “Vienna Note” and in urging its acceptance upon the Porte they practically acknowledgedthe justice of the Czar’s demand and signed their own condemnation in the war that ensued.VIENNA NOTE.“The government of His Majesty, the Sultan, will remain faithful to the letter and to the spirit of the treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople regarding the protection of the Christian Church.”Now the English Ambassador had received instructions to bring his whole influence to bear upon the Turks, “and to impress them with the strong and earnest manner in which the Vienna Note was recommended to the acceptance of the Porte, not only by Her Majesty’s government, but also by the Cabinets of Austria, France and Prussia.”Before the presentation of the “Vienna Note” Lord Stratford had informed the Porte with much circumstance and in his most impressive manner that the British fleet in Besika Bay was at his disposal; while therefore he read his instructions with most perfunctory obedience to the Ottoman Cabinet, his whole demeanor was urging them to disregard the note.The duplicity of the French Emperor was more culpable as before the rejection of the Vienna Note and while the powers were still deliberating in concert he craftily succeeded in drawing England into a special alliance with France: and on receipt of some hysterical despatch from his Ambassador he insisted with the English cabinet that it was “indispensably necessary” that their combined fleets should, in violation of the convention of 1841 enter the straits before there had been a declaration of war on any side. That very day without asking any information from the EnglishAmbassador Lord Clarendon telegraphed to Lord Stratford: “Your Excellency is instructed to send for the British fleet to Constantinople.”The Sultan now amended the “Vienna Note” by inserting the words, “by the Sublime Porte,” which completely destroyed the power of the existing treaty, making it read: “The government of His Majesty the Sultan, will remain faithful to the stipulations of the treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople regarding the protection, ‘by the Sublime Porte’ of the Christian religion.”In other words, the wolf solemnly engaged to protect the lambs for himself, and all the world knows what that means: and we know it now in 1896 by forty years more of broken promises and horrible atrocities. What insane folly to believe the Turk. The Czar did not, and rejected the amended note.Seven days after his rejection of the Sultan’s proposal in obedience to the telegram from Lord Clarendon two English and two French ships entered the Dardanelles on September 14th, and on the strength of their presence and implied support, the Sultan declared war against Russia on the fifth of October, 1853. Thus did Louis Napoleon III. precipitate England into what Count Nesselrode declared to be the most unjustifiable and the most unintelligible of wars.Czar Nicholas replied to this, by a counter declaration of war on November 1st, 1853, solemnly declaring to the Powers of Europe “that the sole aim of his endeavors was to assure the rights of his co-religionists, and to protect them from every form of oppression.”The work of two centuries was undone for Russia. She lost the Black Sea and the protectorate of theChristians of the Ottoman empire that she had wrung from the Porte by a succession of victorious campaigns. Instead of the powerful champion which they lost the poor Christians of the empire were granted another firman in which the Sultan repeated all his lying promises of former years. Not only so but the powers bound themselves not to interfere with the internal administration of affairs in the Turkish Empire.The Christian nations in solemn treaty pledged themselves to let the Turk do what he would with the people under his yoke and promised that they would do nothing to help them. They disclaimed any right to interfere with the relations existing between the Sultan and his subjects: the relations between the robber and his victim, the master and the slave, the tyrant and the oppressed.Future generations will stand aghast at the hideous spectacle of three civilized nations fighting side by side with and for barbarian Moslems to crush the noble champion of their fellow Christians and fellow slaves compelled by their victories to languish beneath the yoke of these savage aliens.All reverence to the heroes of the Light Brigade“Stormed at with shot and shell,Boldly they rode and well;Into the jaws of DeathInto the mouth of HellRode the six hundred.”All reverence to millions of others, who at the voice of command if not of duty, gave themselves up for an unholy cause and perished by thousands of hunger and cold and disease on the bleak shores of the Crimea.Froude says “that the whole power of England andFrance supported passively by Austria, and actively by Sardinia and Turkey, succeeded with communications, secure and rapid with every advantage for procuring supplies, in partially conquering a single stronghold. It was a great victory but it was achieved at a cost to England alone of eighty millions (sterling) of money and perhaps fifty thousand lives.”While Alexander writes (Manifesto 1856), “For eleven months Sebastopol was held against the allied aggressors: and in the whole empire from the shores of the Pacific to the Baltic, one thought, one resolution was dominant to fulfil duty, to protect the Fatherland at any cost of property and life. Husbandmen who had never left the fields they cultivated hastened to take up arms for the holy struggle and were not inferior to experienced warriors in bravery and renunciation.”And this war was fought by France and England, not in the cause of freedom; not to redress the wrongs of the oppressed; not to help forward the wheels of progress. No, but to pave the way for the bloody atrocities which in 1876 called forth one long cry of horror and indignation throughout Christendom, while these in turn were to pale before the horrors of 1895–6 to which commercial England has turned a deaf ear, leaving Armenia helpless in the jaws of the wolf.The Crimean War as fostered by England and France with the avowed purpose of upholding the power of the Turk really brought into action two new elements of weakness. First: up to 1856 Turkey had been free from foreign creditors, but the opening of the Dardanelles brought commerce and a foreign loan, and on the steps of indebtedness followed extravagance,speculation and national bankruptcy. The most wanton and unbridled extravagance reigned at the palace. The corruptions produced by the foreign loans found their way into every artery of the state and poisoned the very existence of the country. New loans could only be obtained by promises which it was impossible to fulfil and which were made without any intention of carrying them out.The navy was improved, the soldiers were better armed; a large part of the money was squandered on absurd building projects; while vast sums were spent on precious stones and personal pleasures.These loans were liberally subscribed in England, and Englishmen helped the Sultan to spend it lavishly. The origin of the troubles of 1876–7 in Bosnia and Herzegovina was said to be the heavy burden of the increased taxes imposed to pay the expenses of a visit to the Paris Exposition, and the European capitals in 1867 made by the Sultan accompanied by his son, two nephews and an expensive suite.But a second and more dangerous evil was this:—The self-exclusion of any right of interference on the part of the Powers threw the control of affairs into the hands of a ring in whose power the Sultan has been but little more than a puppet as the events of recent years have clearly shown.In 1875 the situation was thus reviewed by Gladstone, sincerely penitent for the part he had taken in the Crimean War. “Twenty years ago,” he said, “France and England determined to try a great experiment in remodeling the administrative system of Turkey with the hope of curing its intolerable deficiencies. For this purpose having defended her integrity theymade also her independence secure, and they devised at Constantinople the reforms which were publicly enacted in an imperial Firman or Hati Humayoun.”“The successes of the Crimean War purchased * * * by a vast expenditure of French and English life and treasure gave to Turkey, for the first time, perhaps, in her blood-stained history, twenty years of repose not disturbed either by herself or by any foreign power. The Cretan insurrection imparted a shock to confidence but it was composed and Turkey was again trusted. The insurrections of 1875, much more thoroughly examined, have disclosed the total failure of the Porte to fulfil the engagements which she had contracted under circumstances peculiarly binding on interest, on honor and on gratitude.”So totally, indeed, had the Turks failed to keep any of their promises of reform and so hopeless did the condition of these hapless Christians appear, that they at first refused the mediation of the Powers, declaring that they preferred death to Turkish rule.“If you are not willing to help us to attain our liberty,” they said, “at least you can not compel us to enter into slavery again. We will never fall into the hands of the Turks alive.”About this time Turkey partially repudiated her national debt, pledging for the payment of the interest for some five years the tribute from Egypt and the tobacco revenue. Bondholders became aroused. Commercial interests, not interests of humanity, prompted some action; for if the Christians, who are the cultivators of the soil, were exterminated, what would become of their per cents.?The Powers intervened by the Protocol, known asthe Andrassy Note, which proposed among others the following measures:—1. Religious liberty, full and entire.2. Abolition of the farming of taxes.3. A law to guarantee that the direct taxation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina should be employed for the immediate interests of the provinces.4. A special commission composed of an equal number of Mussulmans and Christians to superintend the execution of the reforms proclaimed and proposed.5. The amelioration of the rural population.The representatives of the six powers under instructions from their governments supported these measures of reform before the Porte, all of them heartily, except the English minister, Sir Henry Elliott, who acting evidently under secret instructions, expressed his belief that they would amount to nothing; and his fear that they trenched upon the right of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs without foreign interference. The Grand Vizier did not reject them, but replied that he was preparing a constitution which would, he believed, embody these and other measures of reform.The Powers believed or affected to believe these brilliant promises. England even tendered to the Sultan the cordial expression of her hopes that “he would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects and restoring order.” And this meant, as England ought to have known and as all the world knows now, that the Turks might put it down in the only way the Turk ever does put down a rebellion—with fiercest cruelty. It meant liberty from British interference while they proceeded to slay, kill, torture, burn, outrage,violate men, women and children with fiendish lust and delight.These promises of reform were made February 10, 1876, and the Turks’answer to the cordial expression of the hope of England that they would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects, was the awful Bulgarian horrors executed by the orders of the Porte during the first two weeks in May.The whole civilized world shuddered. Just as the gates of the Centennial were being thrown open to welcome the nations to the celebration of the glorious victories of peace and the triumphs of art, the unspeakable Turk let loose upon the defenceless Bulgarians the Bashi-Bazouks. These were irregular troops, the scum and offscouring of the Oriental cities, gathered from the prisons, jails and slums: the vilest wretches to be found on the face of the earth without military knowledge, ability, courage or discipline—men fit only for the work of murder, lust, rapine and cruelty on which they were sent by the Sublime Porte, the Infernal Tyrant.On the 14th of May, 1876, the representatives of Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Germany met at Berlin without any knowledge of the massacres, and desirous of sustaining the good intentions of the Grand Vizier, agreed upon the paper known as the “Berlin Memorandum” which provided for a guaranty by the great Powers of the several reforms which had been proclaimed, but were not yet put in force. Five of the Powers signed it, but Great Britain refused, on the ground that it must obviously and inevitably lead to the military occupation of Turkey.Miserable subterfuge—didn’t she “occupy Egypt” a little later to securethe payment of the interest on her bonds: but she had no “interest” in breaking the bonds and chains of Christian populations of Turkey. She knew very well that the Sublime Porte would never execute a reform except under compulsion.The action of the British Ministry greatly encouraged the Turks, and gave them very naturally the impression that England sympathized with them, and would help them to subjugate the Christian races.The British Ministry at first professed ignorance of the massacres: then thought the Bulgarians as much to blame as the Turk—the lamb as the wolf that devoured him—the helpless, disarmed Armenians as the Turkish soldiers that swept down upon them from the mountains—and at last compelled to acknowledge the enormity of the conduct of the Turks, said they had been greatly provoked by the Russian emissaries who were stirring up revolution among the Christians.Instantly Great Britain sent her Mediterranean fleet again to Besika Bay, where it arrived May 21st, only seven days from the first meeting of the Powers. The Minister said it was to protect English subjects, the Turks said it was to protect them. From what, pray? It was never clearly explained why; but it looked then and it looks now as if England were ready to champion the Turk as she had done in the Crimean War. It must have made every Englishman with a conscience or heart in him, blush for shame that the Turks themselves and all the rest of the world took it for granted that the presence of this fleet in Turkish waters was a friendly demonstration on the part of the English towards the Sultan: that in fact they were going tostand by and keep off the great Powers while the Turks continued to “restore order.”The English people however were roused to such indignation by these massacres and by the course of the government, that under the lead of Mr. Gladstone they very soon made their Ministers understand that they were not at liberty to sustain Turkey in such acts of oppression or to alienate the friendship of Russia.Great men like John Bright, always the friend of Russia, Gladstone, Freeman and others publicly denounced England as the accomplice of the Turks in their deeds of horror by the moral and material support she had so freely given them in recent years.We need not trace the details of these horrors here but quote the eloquent and stirring language of the greatest statesman of the age:—“There has been perpetrated,” said Gladstone, “under the authority of a Government to which all the time we have been giving the strongest moral support and for part of the time material support, crimes and outrages so vast in scale as to exceed all modern examples and so unutterably vile as well as fierce in character that it passes the power of heart to conceive and of tongue and pen adequately to describe them. These are the Bulgarian horrors. 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 been too late examined but which remains unavenged—which has left behind the fierce passions that produced it and which may spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil reeked with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crimeand shame. That such things should be done is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race that did them; that a door should be left open for their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the whole.”Grand and noble words and yet the hand of the English Government not only left that door open but fastened it open and kept it open till again in Armenia the Bulgarian horrors were reproduced on a vaster and more terrible scale if the Turk ever can be worse than the history of centuries has so often declared and revealed him.The Turkish government made some feeble attempts to disavow the Bulgarian atrocities. But the Turk is an unmitigated liar. Freeman, the historian does not hesitate to say that the Ring at Constantinople worked with a deliberate policy to oppress and if possible to destroy the whole Bulgarian people. The first means they took was to plant large colonies of savage Circassians in Bulgaria who were allowed to commit any kind of outrage on their defenceless Christian neighbors without redress. They could drive the Christians from their homes, rob their houses, destroy their crops, ravish their women, and if any dared to resist their violence they were killed without hesitation. If any dared to complain against the Circassians they were summarily punished. But worse than this was the quartering of Turkish troops upon the peasants and the landholders whose dastardly outrages upon the wives and daughters of the Bulgarians were fiendish and constant. Neither woman’s honor nor human life was safe where they were.When flesh and blood could bear no more there wassome slight uprising of an unarmed people and then the fury of Circassian and of Bashi-Bazouk was let loose upon them.Freeman says again, “there can be no doubt that the massacre was deliberately ordered by the Ring at Constantinople, the Highnesses and the Excellencies of polite diplomacy. This is proved by the fact that they honored and decorated the chief doers of the massacre, while they neglected and sometimes punished those Turkish officers who acted at all in a humane way. To this day (April, 1877) in defiance of all remonstrances from the European powers, the chief doers of the massacres remain unpunished, while we still hear of Bulgarians being punished for their share in the attempt to free their country.”For a true statement of some of the facts in the case, for the full truth can never be told, the world is indebted to the Government of the United States, which sent a special commission of inquiry to Bulgaria, and History will owe them a debt of gratitude for having furnished reliable documents on this matter in which every European State was more or less exposed to an imputation of bias. As Mr. Gladstone observed: “America had neither alliances with Turkey nor grudges against her nor purposes to gain by her destruction. She entered into this matter simply on the ground of its broad human character and moment. She had no ‘American interests’ to tempt her from her integrity and to vitiate her aims.”Mr. Eugene Schuyler, American Secretary of Legation at Constantinople, who visited the ruined villages in July and August, 1876, made his report to the United States Minister Plenipotentiary November 20th.In that report he says that “in the districts he visited at least nine thousand houses were burned, seventy-two thousand persons were left without roof or shelter and ten thousand nine hundred and eighty-four persons were numbered as killed. Many more were killed in the roads, in the fields, in the mountains; so that he numbers the slain at about fifteen thousand,—but adds many more died subsequently from disease, exposure and in prison.” He says that he could only find proof of the death of one hundred and fifteen Mussulmans. “Neither Turkish women nor Turkish children were killed in cold blood. No Mussulman women were violated. No Mussulman was tortured. No purely Turkish village (with one exception) was attacked or burned. No Mussulman house was pillaged. No mosque was desecrated.”The storm of indignation which followed the publication of the reports of Mr. Schuyler and Mr. Baring the British commissioner, was so terrible that even a Disraeli cabinet did not dare to enter into another monstrous alliance with the Turks against the only champion of the Christians. But official neutrality did not prevent the Turks from recruiting many officers in England; in spite of it British guineas and firearms strengthened their powers of resistance against Russia.It is a terrible indictment that may be brought against England that the question of righteousness never seems to enter into the questions of her foreign “policy,” but only the question of interest and that chiefly the interest which is reckoned in pounds, shillings and pence.From a letter dated September 4th, 1876, publishedin one of the English Blue Books, addressed to the Earl of Derby by Sir Henry Elliot, English Ambassador at Constantinople,—the Sir Henry who would not support the Andrassy Note because he feared that the provisions of it trenched upon the rights of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs,—the following quotation is taken, viz:—“An insurrection or civil war is everywhere accompanied by cruelties and abominable excesses, this being tenfold the case in oriental countries where people are divided into antagonistic creeds and races. * * * To the accusation of being a blind partisan of the Turks, I will only answer that my conduct here has never been guided by any sentimental affection for them, but by a firm determination to uphold the interests of Great Britain to the utmost of my power, and that those interests are deeply engaged in preventing the disruption of the Turkish Empire, is a conviction which I share in common with the most eminent statesmen who have directed our foreign policy. (This is the key to every position assumed by British diplomacy at the Porte. Never a question of righteousness.)“We may, and must feel indignant at the needless and monstrous severity with which the Bulgarian insurrection was put down, but the necessity which exists for England to prevent changes from occurring here which would be most detrimental to ourselves, is not affected by the question whether it was ten thousand or twenty thousand persons who perished in the suppression.“We have been upholding what we know to be a semi-civilized nation, liable under certain circumstances to be carried into fearful excesses: but the fact of thishaving now been brought home to us all, cannot be a sufficient reason for abandoning a policy which is the only one that can be followed with due regard to our interests.”It is enough to take one’s breath away to read such words as these. They are clear enough. They declare what is the settled policy of the English government. Towards Turkey? Not alone, but towards the world. Her interests are purely commercial.—Interests payable in gold: always and everywhere. What are her interests in Venezuela? In the Bering Sea fisheries? In the Transvaal? In India and in China?The integrity of the Turkish Empire must be maintained. All else is mere diplomatic froth, waste breath and ink in the torrents of her speeches and her correspondence with the Porte; and the Turk knows it, and Russia knows it and the world knows it. England is pilloried to-day for her selfishness, if not for her unrighteousness, in all her dealings with the rest of the earth. It is her government, not her people that the world arraigns.Mr. Freeman is scathing and unsparing in his denunciation of the government’s position; but that he was not more severe than just the issue plainly declared, and we tarry on this situation a moment longer because of its special bearing upon the situation as regards the massacres in Armenia.War had been declared by Servia and Montenegro against Turkey on the 2d of July, 1876, which had thus far resulted in victory for Montenegro and defeat for Servia. This situation still further increased the anxieties of the great powers. Not that they cared for Turkey only because they could not agree on how itshould be carved up. They would all like a generous slice if each could have the portion that he liked best.When it became evident that there wasnohope of any good resulting from notes and memorandums, the British Government suggested a conference of the powers which had been parties to the Treaty of Paris to meet at Constantinople in December 1876: and in order to open the way for this conference, proposed an armistice of six weeks between Turkey and Servia.The Turkish government proposed six months: the Russians demanded an immediate armistice of from four to six weeks and threatened to break off diplomatic relations at once if it was not granted. The Turkish government complied with the demand.In an interview with the British Minister, November 2d, 1876, the Emperor Alexander pledged his sacred word of honor in the most earnest and solemn manner that he had no intention of acquiring Constantinople, and that if necessity compelled him to occupy a portion of Bulgaria it would only be provisionally and until the peace and safety of the Christian population could be secured.A few days later—November 10th, the Emperor made a speech at Moscow in which he said: “I have striven and shall still strive to obtain a real improvement of the position of the Christians in the East by peaceful means. But should I see that we cannot obtain such guarantees as are necessary for carrying out what we have a right to demand of the Porte I am firmly determined to act independently; and I am convinced, that in this case the whole of Russia will respond to my summons should I consider it necessary and should the honor of Russia require it.”British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.The preliminary conference at Constantinople was opened on the 11th of December, and was participated in by representatives from Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy.The conference was foredoomed to end in failure, for by the treaty of Paris the Powers had no right to interfere, and they were all too righteous to sin against that treaty, though Bulgaria should be utterly wasted with fire and sword.The Marquis of Salisbury, now Prime Minister, was the chief representative of Great Britain, and in a speech before the House of Lords thus defined the purposes of the conference and its failure. After speaking of previous treaties and the changes that had taken place both in Turkey and Great Britain which prevented the latter from maintaining exactly the same attitude towards Turkey which she did in 1856, he went on to say: “If the alliance was broken up, if our exertions for the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire were to cease * * * assuredly it was our duty to exhaust appeal, remonstrance and exhortation before deserting a cause we had hitherto maintained. * * * We went to stop a great and menacing danger, namely the prospect of a war between Russia and the Porte. It was in pointing out that evil that our moral influence on the Porte rested. We said to Turkey, “Unless you do this or that, this terrible danger which may well involve the loss of your Empire is ready to fall upon you. We hope that our influence and advice may be able to avert it:indeed we come here for that purpose, but we warn you that we shall accept no responsibility for the future, if you treat our advice with disdain. * * * It seems to me, as it must to everybody else, that the refusalof the Turk is a mystery: for the infatuation of that cause seems to be so tremendous.”The refusal of the Turk is no mystery to-day. There was no infatuation about it. The Porte knew that his speech meant no harm to Turkey: that he had come to avert the loss of the Empire. He knew very well that whatever the issue of the war might be on the battlefield, England would never let Russia profit by her victories. Hence the Porte in sublime contempt snapped its fingers in the face of the Conference and politely bowed it out of existence. The issue proved that the Turks knew exactly the man and the nation they were dealing with. Yet the English people thought the Government really meant to do something to help the cause of the persecuted Bulgarians: just as they thought for awhile that Salisbury as Prime Minister meant, really intended to do something in the cause of Armenia.England has not changed in her traditional policy towards the Turk. She has not deserted the cause she has maintained for now some sixty years, and she never will desert it until she and Russia can agree about the division of the spoils: then her love for the Turk will vanish as a mist before the rising sun of her own increasing power and splendor.
We must pass over in silence a period of four hundred years in the history of the Ottoman Empire to open its blood-stained pages in our own era at the narrative of the Bulgarian massacres. The centuries and the peoples have been under the rule of the barbarian; the story is one of continued persecution, outrage, and massacre. The Turk never changes. What he has always done he always will do. And as long as any Christian lands or people remain under his power and at his mercy, so long will there be discontents, disturbances, revolts and massacres. The only way to end these is to end the rule of the Turk. Reform—not to say regeneration, is an impossibility. He is an alien in race and religion. His spirit is fierce and fanatical: his rule that of the dark ages, the rule of a tyrant without conscience or remorse.
In the early part of this century the oppression of the Turk became unbearable, and throughout the empire the Greek Christians rose in rebellion.
Europe was at last horrified by the massacre on the island of Chios, April 11, 1822, when the entire population of forty thousand Greeks was put to the sword. Bravely did the Greeks fight for their freedom. The Sultan called to his aid the Khedive of Egypt, and for three years did they ravage Crete and the Peloponnesus, committing every crime and fiendish outragethat even a Turk could think of from 1824 to 1827. At last Byron roused the spirit of England. The patience of Europe was worn out. England, France and Russia united to crush the power of the barbarian and to set free his victims, as the wild beast would not let go his prey till it was dragged out of his teeth.
In November, 1827, was fought the great battle of Navarino. The Turkish and Egyptian fleet was destroyed. Greece was saved.
The Russian protectorate over the Eastern Christians was confirmed and renewed: and also her right to free navigation in the Black Sea and the straits. Scarcely had this “fit of generous enthusiasm on behalf of the struggling Greeks” passed, than England under another minister began to regret the part she had taken. The glorious victory of Navarino was spoken of as an “untoward event.” Austria and France shared in her misgivings. She suddenly began to talk about the necessity of muzzling the Russian Bear, and upholding Turkey in behalf of British interests.
Ostensibly through fear of Russian aggression, but really from the preponderance of commercial interests, England has now for more than sixty years been the upholder and defender of the Turkish government. The sarcasm of Freeman, the historian, is cutting and pitiless as he reviews the policy of England up to the hour of the terrible outrages perpetrated against the Bulgarians, and her crime against humanity that followed the fall of Plevna.
Through fear of Russia, England induced the powers to sign a convention in 1841 by which it was agreed that no foreign fleets should enter the straits in time of peace.
The result of this convention was to shut up thefleet of Russia in the Black Sea, making of it to her, merely an inland lake.
By a successful stroke of policy Louis Napoleon III., President of the Republic of France, had himself elected Emperor in November, 1852. To signalize his accession he sought to pose as an ally of England. It was his policy to pick quarrels with the great military powers of Europe and then get some other nation to help him out. He began with Russia over the holy shrines in Jerusalem by seeking to have the privileges of the Latin Church enlarged. The Greek Church appealed to the Czar of Russia, the head of the Church, and then it was carried to the Porte.
In the spring of 1853, Prince Menchikoff was sent to Constantinople. Firstly, to negotiate on the question of the shrines, which question was settled with Russia’s acquiescence. Secondly, to extract from Porte a note confirming the treaties that had conferred on Russia the Protectorate of the Christians of the Ottoman Empire.
The second demand was made necessary by the renewed exactions under which some of these populations were then suffering: as it “happened,” says an English writer, that Omar Pacha, at the head of a Turkish force, was operating against the Christians of Montenegro. And something of the sort was always happening somewhere. For the Turkish policy towards the Christian has always been the same from the beginning of its power and will continue the same to the end.
When the English Ambassador, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, returned to Constantinople, in April, 1853, after an absence of eight months, he was directed “to warn the Porte that the accumulated grievances offoreign nations which the Porte is unable or unwilling to redress, the mal-administration of its own affairs * * * may lead to a general revolt among the Christian subjects of the Porte * * that perseverance in his (the Sultan’s) present conduct must end in alienating the sympathies of the British nation and make it impossible for Her Majesty’s government to overlook the exigencies of Christendom exposed to the natural consequence of his unwise policy and reckless mal-administration.”
The demand of Russia was refused and Prince Menchikoff left Constantinople May 21st, 1853.
A few days later the Sultan issues a firman in which he promises again that he will maintain all the rights and privileges of the Greek Christians, and appeals to his allies.
He was merely throwing dust in the air for the wind to blow away, though he thought he could fool Europe with his waste breath.
On the 13th of June the allied English and French fleets anchored in Besika Bay, the nearest point they could reach without the violation of the treaties.
The Czar Nicholas at once ordered his army to cross the Pruth and enter Moldavia, July 2d. Yet this occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia could not be considered an invasion of the Ottoman territory, nor a “Casus belli, per se,” for these provinces were autonomous and under Russian protection since the treaty of Bucharest, while according to the same treaty the Turks had no right to send troops into their territory.
Taking Armenian Prisoners to the Grand Zaptie Prison.Taking Armenian Prisoners to the Grand Zaptie Prison.
Taking Armenian Prisoners to the Grand Zaptie Prison.
The unanimous judgment of Europe was expressed in what is known as the “Vienna Note” and in urging its acceptance upon the Porte they practically acknowledgedthe justice of the Czar’s demand and signed their own condemnation in the war that ensued.
VIENNA NOTE.“The government of His Majesty, the Sultan, will remain faithful to the letter and to the spirit of the treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople regarding the protection of the Christian Church.”Now the English Ambassador had received instructions to bring his whole influence to bear upon the Turks, “and to impress them with the strong and earnest manner in which the Vienna Note was recommended to the acceptance of the Porte, not only by Her Majesty’s government, but also by the Cabinets of Austria, France and Prussia.”Before the presentation of the “Vienna Note” Lord Stratford had informed the Porte with much circumstance and in his most impressive manner that the British fleet in Besika Bay was at his disposal; while therefore he read his instructions with most perfunctory obedience to the Ottoman Cabinet, his whole demeanor was urging them to disregard the note.The duplicity of the French Emperor was more culpable as before the rejection of the Vienna Note and while the powers were still deliberating in concert he craftily succeeded in drawing England into a special alliance with France: and on receipt of some hysterical despatch from his Ambassador he insisted with the English cabinet that it was “indispensably necessary” that their combined fleets should, in violation of the convention of 1841 enter the straits before there had been a declaration of war on any side. That very day without asking any information from the EnglishAmbassador Lord Clarendon telegraphed to Lord Stratford: “Your Excellency is instructed to send for the British fleet to Constantinople.”The Sultan now amended the “Vienna Note” by inserting the words, “by the Sublime Porte,” which completely destroyed the power of the existing treaty, making it read: “The government of His Majesty the Sultan, will remain faithful to the stipulations of the treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople regarding the protection, ‘by the Sublime Porte’ of the Christian religion.”In other words, the wolf solemnly engaged to protect the lambs for himself, and all the world knows what that means: and we know it now in 1896 by forty years more of broken promises and horrible atrocities. What insane folly to believe the Turk. The Czar did not, and rejected the amended note.Seven days after his rejection of the Sultan’s proposal in obedience to the telegram from Lord Clarendon two English and two French ships entered the Dardanelles on September 14th, and on the strength of their presence and implied support, the Sultan declared war against Russia on the fifth of October, 1853. Thus did Louis Napoleon III. precipitate England into what Count Nesselrode declared to be the most unjustifiable and the most unintelligible of wars.Czar Nicholas replied to this, by a counter declaration of war on November 1st, 1853, solemnly declaring to the Powers of Europe “that the sole aim of his endeavors was to assure the rights of his co-religionists, and to protect them from every form of oppression.”The work of two centuries was undone for Russia. She lost the Black Sea and the protectorate of theChristians of the Ottoman empire that she had wrung from the Porte by a succession of victorious campaigns. Instead of the powerful champion which they lost the poor Christians of the empire were granted another firman in which the Sultan repeated all his lying promises of former years. Not only so but the powers bound themselves not to interfere with the internal administration of affairs in the Turkish Empire.The Christian nations in solemn treaty pledged themselves to let the Turk do what he would with the people under his yoke and promised that they would do nothing to help them. They disclaimed any right to interfere with the relations existing between the Sultan and his subjects: the relations between the robber and his victim, the master and the slave, the tyrant and the oppressed.Future generations will stand aghast at the hideous spectacle of three civilized nations fighting side by side with and for barbarian Moslems to crush the noble champion of their fellow Christians and fellow slaves compelled by their victories to languish beneath the yoke of these savage aliens.All reverence to the heroes of the Light Brigade“Stormed at with shot and shell,Boldly they rode and well;Into the jaws of DeathInto the mouth of HellRode the six hundred.”All reverence to millions of others, who at the voice of command if not of duty, gave themselves up for an unholy cause and perished by thousands of hunger and cold and disease on the bleak shores of the Crimea.Froude says “that the whole power of England andFrance supported passively by Austria, and actively by Sardinia and Turkey, succeeded with communications, secure and rapid with every advantage for procuring supplies, in partially conquering a single stronghold. It was a great victory but it was achieved at a cost to England alone of eighty millions (sterling) of money and perhaps fifty thousand lives.”While Alexander writes (Manifesto 1856), “For eleven months Sebastopol was held against the allied aggressors: and in the whole empire from the shores of the Pacific to the Baltic, one thought, one resolution was dominant to fulfil duty, to protect the Fatherland at any cost of property and life. Husbandmen who had never left the fields they cultivated hastened to take up arms for the holy struggle and were not inferior to experienced warriors in bravery and renunciation.”And this war was fought by France and England, not in the cause of freedom; not to redress the wrongs of the oppressed; not to help forward the wheels of progress. No, but to pave the way for the bloody atrocities which in 1876 called forth one long cry of horror and indignation throughout Christendom, while these in turn were to pale before the horrors of 1895–6 to which commercial England has turned a deaf ear, leaving Armenia helpless in the jaws of the wolf.The Crimean War as fostered by England and France with the avowed purpose of upholding the power of the Turk really brought into action two new elements of weakness. First: up to 1856 Turkey had been free from foreign creditors, but the opening of the Dardanelles brought commerce and a foreign loan, and on the steps of indebtedness followed extravagance,speculation and national bankruptcy. The most wanton and unbridled extravagance reigned at the palace. The corruptions produced by the foreign loans found their way into every artery of the state and poisoned the very existence of the country. New loans could only be obtained by promises which it was impossible to fulfil and which were made without any intention of carrying them out.The navy was improved, the soldiers were better armed; a large part of the money was squandered on absurd building projects; while vast sums were spent on precious stones and personal pleasures.These loans were liberally subscribed in England, and Englishmen helped the Sultan to spend it lavishly. The origin of the troubles of 1876–7 in Bosnia and Herzegovina was said to be the heavy burden of the increased taxes imposed to pay the expenses of a visit to the Paris Exposition, and the European capitals in 1867 made by the Sultan accompanied by his son, two nephews and an expensive suite.But a second and more dangerous evil was this:—The self-exclusion of any right of interference on the part of the Powers threw the control of affairs into the hands of a ring in whose power the Sultan has been but little more than a puppet as the events of recent years have clearly shown.In 1875 the situation was thus reviewed by Gladstone, sincerely penitent for the part he had taken in the Crimean War. “Twenty years ago,” he said, “France and England determined to try a great experiment in remodeling the administrative system of Turkey with the hope of curing its intolerable deficiencies. For this purpose having defended her integrity theymade also her independence secure, and they devised at Constantinople the reforms which were publicly enacted in an imperial Firman or Hati Humayoun.”“The successes of the Crimean War purchased * * * by a vast expenditure of French and English life and treasure gave to Turkey, for the first time, perhaps, in her blood-stained history, twenty years of repose not disturbed either by herself or by any foreign power. The Cretan insurrection imparted a shock to confidence but it was composed and Turkey was again trusted. The insurrections of 1875, much more thoroughly examined, have disclosed the total failure of the Porte to fulfil the engagements which she had contracted under circumstances peculiarly binding on interest, on honor and on gratitude.”So totally, indeed, had the Turks failed to keep any of their promises of reform and so hopeless did the condition of these hapless Christians appear, that they at first refused the mediation of the Powers, declaring that they preferred death to Turkish rule.“If you are not willing to help us to attain our liberty,” they said, “at least you can not compel us to enter into slavery again. We will never fall into the hands of the Turks alive.”About this time Turkey partially repudiated her national debt, pledging for the payment of the interest for some five years the tribute from Egypt and the tobacco revenue. Bondholders became aroused. Commercial interests, not interests of humanity, prompted some action; for if the Christians, who are the cultivators of the soil, were exterminated, what would become of their per cents.?The Powers intervened by the Protocol, known asthe Andrassy Note, which proposed among others the following measures:—1. Religious liberty, full and entire.2. Abolition of the farming of taxes.3. A law to guarantee that the direct taxation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina should be employed for the immediate interests of the provinces.4. A special commission composed of an equal number of Mussulmans and Christians to superintend the execution of the reforms proclaimed and proposed.5. The amelioration of the rural population.The representatives of the six powers under instructions from their governments supported these measures of reform before the Porte, all of them heartily, except the English minister, Sir Henry Elliott, who acting evidently under secret instructions, expressed his belief that they would amount to nothing; and his fear that they trenched upon the right of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs without foreign interference. The Grand Vizier did not reject them, but replied that he was preparing a constitution which would, he believed, embody these and other measures of reform.The Powers believed or affected to believe these brilliant promises. England even tendered to the Sultan the cordial expression of her hopes that “he would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects and restoring order.” And this meant, as England ought to have known and as all the world knows now, that the Turks might put it down in the only way the Turk ever does put down a rebellion—with fiercest cruelty. It meant liberty from British interference while they proceeded to slay, kill, torture, burn, outrage,violate men, women and children with fiendish lust and delight.These promises of reform were made February 10, 1876, and the Turks’answer to the cordial expression of the hope of England that they would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects, was the awful Bulgarian horrors executed by the orders of the Porte during the first two weeks in May.The whole civilized world shuddered. Just as the gates of the Centennial were being thrown open to welcome the nations to the celebration of the glorious victories of peace and the triumphs of art, the unspeakable Turk let loose upon the defenceless Bulgarians the Bashi-Bazouks. These were irregular troops, the scum and offscouring of the Oriental cities, gathered from the prisons, jails and slums: the vilest wretches to be found on the face of the earth without military knowledge, ability, courage or discipline—men fit only for the work of murder, lust, rapine and cruelty on which they were sent by the Sublime Porte, the Infernal Tyrant.On the 14th of May, 1876, the representatives of Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Germany met at Berlin without any knowledge of the massacres, and desirous of sustaining the good intentions of the Grand Vizier, agreed upon the paper known as the “Berlin Memorandum” which provided for a guaranty by the great Powers of the several reforms which had been proclaimed, but were not yet put in force. Five of the Powers signed it, but Great Britain refused, on the ground that it must obviously and inevitably lead to the military occupation of Turkey.Miserable subterfuge—didn’t she “occupy Egypt” a little later to securethe payment of the interest on her bonds: but she had no “interest” in breaking the bonds and chains of Christian populations of Turkey. She knew very well that the Sublime Porte would never execute a reform except under compulsion.The action of the British Ministry greatly encouraged the Turks, and gave them very naturally the impression that England sympathized with them, and would help them to subjugate the Christian races.The British Ministry at first professed ignorance of the massacres: then thought the Bulgarians as much to blame as the Turk—the lamb as the wolf that devoured him—the helpless, disarmed Armenians as the Turkish soldiers that swept down upon them from the mountains—and at last compelled to acknowledge the enormity of the conduct of the Turks, said they had been greatly provoked by the Russian emissaries who were stirring up revolution among the Christians.Instantly Great Britain sent her Mediterranean fleet again to Besika Bay, where it arrived May 21st, only seven days from the first meeting of the Powers. The Minister said it was to protect English subjects, the Turks said it was to protect them. From what, pray? It was never clearly explained why; but it looked then and it looks now as if England were ready to champion the Turk as she had done in the Crimean War. It must have made every Englishman with a conscience or heart in him, blush for shame that the Turks themselves and all the rest of the world took it for granted that the presence of this fleet in Turkish waters was a friendly demonstration on the part of the English towards the Sultan: that in fact they were going tostand by and keep off the great Powers while the Turks continued to “restore order.”The English people however were roused to such indignation by these massacres and by the course of the government, that under the lead of Mr. Gladstone they very soon made their Ministers understand that they were not at liberty to sustain Turkey in such acts of oppression or to alienate the friendship of Russia.Great men like John Bright, always the friend of Russia, Gladstone, Freeman and others publicly denounced England as the accomplice of the Turks in their deeds of horror by the moral and material support she had so freely given them in recent years.We need not trace the details of these horrors here but quote the eloquent and stirring language of the greatest statesman of the age:—“There has been perpetrated,” said Gladstone, “under the authority of a Government to which all the time we have been giving the strongest moral support and for part of the time material support, crimes and outrages so vast in scale as to exceed all modern examples and so unutterably vile as well as fierce in character that it passes the power of heart to conceive and of tongue and pen adequately to describe them. These are the Bulgarian horrors. 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 been too late examined but which remains unavenged—which has left behind the fierce passions that produced it and which may spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil reeked with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crimeand shame. That such things should be done is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race that did them; that a door should be left open for their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the whole.”Grand and noble words and yet the hand of the English Government not only left that door open but fastened it open and kept it open till again in Armenia the Bulgarian horrors were reproduced on a vaster and more terrible scale if the Turk ever can be worse than the history of centuries has so often declared and revealed him.The Turkish government made some feeble attempts to disavow the Bulgarian atrocities. But the Turk is an unmitigated liar. Freeman, the historian does not hesitate to say that the Ring at Constantinople worked with a deliberate policy to oppress and if possible to destroy the whole Bulgarian people. The first means they took was to plant large colonies of savage Circassians in Bulgaria who were allowed to commit any kind of outrage on their defenceless Christian neighbors without redress. They could drive the Christians from their homes, rob their houses, destroy their crops, ravish their women, and if any dared to resist their violence they were killed without hesitation. If any dared to complain against the Circassians they were summarily punished. But worse than this was the quartering of Turkish troops upon the peasants and the landholders whose dastardly outrages upon the wives and daughters of the Bulgarians were fiendish and constant. Neither woman’s honor nor human life was safe where they were.When flesh and blood could bear no more there wassome slight uprising of an unarmed people and then the fury of Circassian and of Bashi-Bazouk was let loose upon them.Freeman says again, “there can be no doubt that the massacre was deliberately ordered by the Ring at Constantinople, the Highnesses and the Excellencies of polite diplomacy. This is proved by the fact that they honored and decorated the chief doers of the massacre, while they neglected and sometimes punished those Turkish officers who acted at all in a humane way. To this day (April, 1877) in defiance of all remonstrances from the European powers, the chief doers of the massacres remain unpunished, while we still hear of Bulgarians being punished for their share in the attempt to free their country.”For a true statement of some of the facts in the case, for the full truth can never be told, the world is indebted to the Government of the United States, which sent a special commission of inquiry to Bulgaria, and History will owe them a debt of gratitude for having furnished reliable documents on this matter in which every European State was more or less exposed to an imputation of bias. As Mr. Gladstone observed: “America had neither alliances with Turkey nor grudges against her nor purposes to gain by her destruction. She entered into this matter simply on the ground of its broad human character and moment. She had no ‘American interests’ to tempt her from her integrity and to vitiate her aims.”Mr. Eugene Schuyler, American Secretary of Legation at Constantinople, who visited the ruined villages in July and August, 1876, made his report to the United States Minister Plenipotentiary November 20th.In that report he says that “in the districts he visited at least nine thousand houses were burned, seventy-two thousand persons were left without roof or shelter and ten thousand nine hundred and eighty-four persons were numbered as killed. Many more were killed in the roads, in the fields, in the mountains; so that he numbers the slain at about fifteen thousand,—but adds many more died subsequently from disease, exposure and in prison.” He says that he could only find proof of the death of one hundred and fifteen Mussulmans. “Neither Turkish women nor Turkish children were killed in cold blood. No Mussulman women were violated. No Mussulman was tortured. No purely Turkish village (with one exception) was attacked or burned. No Mussulman house was pillaged. No mosque was desecrated.”The storm of indignation which followed the publication of the reports of Mr. Schuyler and Mr. Baring the British commissioner, was so terrible that even a Disraeli cabinet did not dare to enter into another monstrous alliance with the Turks against the only champion of the Christians. But official neutrality did not prevent the Turks from recruiting many officers in England; in spite of it British guineas and firearms strengthened their powers of resistance against Russia.It is a terrible indictment that may be brought against England that the question of righteousness never seems to enter into the questions of her foreign “policy,” but only the question of interest and that chiefly the interest which is reckoned in pounds, shillings and pence.From a letter dated September 4th, 1876, publishedin one of the English Blue Books, addressed to the Earl of Derby by Sir Henry Elliot, English Ambassador at Constantinople,—the Sir Henry who would not support the Andrassy Note because he feared that the provisions of it trenched upon the rights of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs,—the following quotation is taken, viz:—“An insurrection or civil war is everywhere accompanied by cruelties and abominable excesses, this being tenfold the case in oriental countries where people are divided into antagonistic creeds and races. * * * To the accusation of being a blind partisan of the Turks, I will only answer that my conduct here has never been guided by any sentimental affection for them, but by a firm determination to uphold the interests of Great Britain to the utmost of my power, and that those interests are deeply engaged in preventing the disruption of the Turkish Empire, is a conviction which I share in common with the most eminent statesmen who have directed our foreign policy. (This is the key to every position assumed by British diplomacy at the Porte. Never a question of righteousness.)“We may, and must feel indignant at the needless and monstrous severity with which the Bulgarian insurrection was put down, but the necessity which exists for England to prevent changes from occurring here which would be most detrimental to ourselves, is not affected by the question whether it was ten thousand or twenty thousand persons who perished in the suppression.“We have been upholding what we know to be a semi-civilized nation, liable under certain circumstances to be carried into fearful excesses: but the fact of thishaving now been brought home to us all, cannot be a sufficient reason for abandoning a policy which is the only one that can be followed with due regard to our interests.”It is enough to take one’s breath away to read such words as these. They are clear enough. They declare what is the settled policy of the English government. Towards Turkey? Not alone, but towards the world. Her interests are purely commercial.—Interests payable in gold: always and everywhere. What are her interests in Venezuela? In the Bering Sea fisheries? In the Transvaal? In India and in China?The integrity of the Turkish Empire must be maintained. All else is mere diplomatic froth, waste breath and ink in the torrents of her speeches and her correspondence with the Porte; and the Turk knows it, and Russia knows it and the world knows it. England is pilloried to-day for her selfishness, if not for her unrighteousness, in all her dealings with the rest of the earth. It is her government, not her people that the world arraigns.Mr. Freeman is scathing and unsparing in his denunciation of the government’s position; but that he was not more severe than just the issue plainly declared, and we tarry on this situation a moment longer because of its special bearing upon the situation as regards the massacres in Armenia.War had been declared by Servia and Montenegro against Turkey on the 2d of July, 1876, which had thus far resulted in victory for Montenegro and defeat for Servia. This situation still further increased the anxieties of the great powers. Not that they cared for Turkey only because they could not agree on how itshould be carved up. They would all like a generous slice if each could have the portion that he liked best.When it became evident that there wasnohope of any good resulting from notes and memorandums, the British Government suggested a conference of the powers which had been parties to the Treaty of Paris to meet at Constantinople in December 1876: and in order to open the way for this conference, proposed an armistice of six weeks between Turkey and Servia.The Turkish government proposed six months: the Russians demanded an immediate armistice of from four to six weeks and threatened to break off diplomatic relations at once if it was not granted. The Turkish government complied with the demand.In an interview with the British Minister, November 2d, 1876, the Emperor Alexander pledged his sacred word of honor in the most earnest and solemn manner that he had no intention of acquiring Constantinople, and that if necessity compelled him to occupy a portion of Bulgaria it would only be provisionally and until the peace and safety of the Christian population could be secured.A few days later—November 10th, the Emperor made a speech at Moscow in which he said: “I have striven and shall still strive to obtain a real improvement of the position of the Christians in the East by peaceful means. But should I see that we cannot obtain such guarantees as are necessary for carrying out what we have a right to demand of the Porte I am firmly determined to act independently; and I am convinced, that in this case the whole of Russia will respond to my summons should I consider it necessary and should the honor of Russia require it.”British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.The preliminary conference at Constantinople was opened on the 11th of December, and was participated in by representatives from Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy.The conference was foredoomed to end in failure, for by the treaty of Paris the Powers had no right to interfere, and they were all too righteous to sin against that treaty, though Bulgaria should be utterly wasted with fire and sword.The Marquis of Salisbury, now Prime Minister, was the chief representative of Great Britain, and in a speech before the House of Lords thus defined the purposes of the conference and its failure. After speaking of previous treaties and the changes that had taken place both in Turkey and Great Britain which prevented the latter from maintaining exactly the same attitude towards Turkey which she did in 1856, he went on to say: “If the alliance was broken up, if our exertions for the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire were to cease * * * assuredly it was our duty to exhaust appeal, remonstrance and exhortation before deserting a cause we had hitherto maintained. * * * We went to stop a great and menacing danger, namely the prospect of a war between Russia and the Porte. It was in pointing out that evil that our moral influence on the Porte rested. We said to Turkey, “Unless you do this or that, this terrible danger which may well involve the loss of your Empire is ready to fall upon you. We hope that our influence and advice may be able to avert it:indeed we come here for that purpose, but we warn you that we shall accept no responsibility for the future, if you treat our advice with disdain. * * * It seems to me, as it must to everybody else, that the refusalof the Turk is a mystery: for the infatuation of that cause seems to be so tremendous.”The refusal of the Turk is no mystery to-day. There was no infatuation about it. The Porte knew that his speech meant no harm to Turkey: that he had come to avert the loss of the Empire. He knew very well that whatever the issue of the war might be on the battlefield, England would never let Russia profit by her victories. Hence the Porte in sublime contempt snapped its fingers in the face of the Conference and politely bowed it out of existence. The issue proved that the Turks knew exactly the man and the nation they were dealing with. Yet the English people thought the Government really meant to do something to help the cause of the persecuted Bulgarians: just as they thought for awhile that Salisbury as Prime Minister meant, really intended to do something in the cause of Armenia.England has not changed in her traditional policy towards the Turk. She has not deserted the cause she has maintained for now some sixty years, and she never will desert it until she and Russia can agree about the division of the spoils: then her love for the Turk will vanish as a mist before the rising sun of her own increasing power and splendor.
VIENNA NOTE.
“The government of His Majesty, the Sultan, will remain faithful to the letter and to the spirit of the treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople regarding the protection of the Christian Church.”Now the English Ambassador had received instructions to bring his whole influence to bear upon the Turks, “and to impress them with the strong and earnest manner in which the Vienna Note was recommended to the acceptance of the Porte, not only by Her Majesty’s government, but also by the Cabinets of Austria, France and Prussia.”Before the presentation of the “Vienna Note” Lord Stratford had informed the Porte with much circumstance and in his most impressive manner that the British fleet in Besika Bay was at his disposal; while therefore he read his instructions with most perfunctory obedience to the Ottoman Cabinet, his whole demeanor was urging them to disregard the note.The duplicity of the French Emperor was more culpable as before the rejection of the Vienna Note and while the powers were still deliberating in concert he craftily succeeded in drawing England into a special alliance with France: and on receipt of some hysterical despatch from his Ambassador he insisted with the English cabinet that it was “indispensably necessary” that their combined fleets should, in violation of the convention of 1841 enter the straits before there had been a declaration of war on any side. That very day without asking any information from the EnglishAmbassador Lord Clarendon telegraphed to Lord Stratford: “Your Excellency is instructed to send for the British fleet to Constantinople.”The Sultan now amended the “Vienna Note” by inserting the words, “by the Sublime Porte,” which completely destroyed the power of the existing treaty, making it read: “The government of His Majesty the Sultan, will remain faithful to the stipulations of the treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople regarding the protection, ‘by the Sublime Porte’ of the Christian religion.”In other words, the wolf solemnly engaged to protect the lambs for himself, and all the world knows what that means: and we know it now in 1896 by forty years more of broken promises and horrible atrocities. What insane folly to believe the Turk. The Czar did not, and rejected the amended note.Seven days after his rejection of the Sultan’s proposal in obedience to the telegram from Lord Clarendon two English and two French ships entered the Dardanelles on September 14th, and on the strength of their presence and implied support, the Sultan declared war against Russia on the fifth of October, 1853. Thus did Louis Napoleon III. precipitate England into what Count Nesselrode declared to be the most unjustifiable and the most unintelligible of wars.Czar Nicholas replied to this, by a counter declaration of war on November 1st, 1853, solemnly declaring to the Powers of Europe “that the sole aim of his endeavors was to assure the rights of his co-religionists, and to protect them from every form of oppression.”The work of two centuries was undone for Russia. She lost the Black Sea and the protectorate of theChristians of the Ottoman empire that she had wrung from the Porte by a succession of victorious campaigns. Instead of the powerful champion which they lost the poor Christians of the empire were granted another firman in which the Sultan repeated all his lying promises of former years. Not only so but the powers bound themselves not to interfere with the internal administration of affairs in the Turkish Empire.The Christian nations in solemn treaty pledged themselves to let the Turk do what he would with the people under his yoke and promised that they would do nothing to help them. They disclaimed any right to interfere with the relations existing between the Sultan and his subjects: the relations between the robber and his victim, the master and the slave, the tyrant and the oppressed.Future generations will stand aghast at the hideous spectacle of three civilized nations fighting side by side with and for barbarian Moslems to crush the noble champion of their fellow Christians and fellow slaves compelled by their victories to languish beneath the yoke of these savage aliens.All reverence to the heroes of the Light Brigade“Stormed at with shot and shell,Boldly they rode and well;Into the jaws of DeathInto the mouth of HellRode the six hundred.”All reverence to millions of others, who at the voice of command if not of duty, gave themselves up for an unholy cause and perished by thousands of hunger and cold and disease on the bleak shores of the Crimea.Froude says “that the whole power of England andFrance supported passively by Austria, and actively by Sardinia and Turkey, succeeded with communications, secure and rapid with every advantage for procuring supplies, in partially conquering a single stronghold. It was a great victory but it was achieved at a cost to England alone of eighty millions (sterling) of money and perhaps fifty thousand lives.”While Alexander writes (Manifesto 1856), “For eleven months Sebastopol was held against the allied aggressors: and in the whole empire from the shores of the Pacific to the Baltic, one thought, one resolution was dominant to fulfil duty, to protect the Fatherland at any cost of property and life. Husbandmen who had never left the fields they cultivated hastened to take up arms for the holy struggle and were not inferior to experienced warriors in bravery and renunciation.”And this war was fought by France and England, not in the cause of freedom; not to redress the wrongs of the oppressed; not to help forward the wheels of progress. No, but to pave the way for the bloody atrocities which in 1876 called forth one long cry of horror and indignation throughout Christendom, while these in turn were to pale before the horrors of 1895–6 to which commercial England has turned a deaf ear, leaving Armenia helpless in the jaws of the wolf.The Crimean War as fostered by England and France with the avowed purpose of upholding the power of the Turk really brought into action two new elements of weakness. First: up to 1856 Turkey had been free from foreign creditors, but the opening of the Dardanelles brought commerce and a foreign loan, and on the steps of indebtedness followed extravagance,speculation and national bankruptcy. The most wanton and unbridled extravagance reigned at the palace. The corruptions produced by the foreign loans found their way into every artery of the state and poisoned the very existence of the country. New loans could only be obtained by promises which it was impossible to fulfil and which were made without any intention of carrying them out.The navy was improved, the soldiers were better armed; a large part of the money was squandered on absurd building projects; while vast sums were spent on precious stones and personal pleasures.These loans were liberally subscribed in England, and Englishmen helped the Sultan to spend it lavishly. The origin of the troubles of 1876–7 in Bosnia and Herzegovina was said to be the heavy burden of the increased taxes imposed to pay the expenses of a visit to the Paris Exposition, and the European capitals in 1867 made by the Sultan accompanied by his son, two nephews and an expensive suite.But a second and more dangerous evil was this:—The self-exclusion of any right of interference on the part of the Powers threw the control of affairs into the hands of a ring in whose power the Sultan has been but little more than a puppet as the events of recent years have clearly shown.In 1875 the situation was thus reviewed by Gladstone, sincerely penitent for the part he had taken in the Crimean War. “Twenty years ago,” he said, “France and England determined to try a great experiment in remodeling the administrative system of Turkey with the hope of curing its intolerable deficiencies. For this purpose having defended her integrity theymade also her independence secure, and they devised at Constantinople the reforms which were publicly enacted in an imperial Firman or Hati Humayoun.”“The successes of the Crimean War purchased * * * by a vast expenditure of French and English life and treasure gave to Turkey, for the first time, perhaps, in her blood-stained history, twenty years of repose not disturbed either by herself or by any foreign power. The Cretan insurrection imparted a shock to confidence but it was composed and Turkey was again trusted. The insurrections of 1875, much more thoroughly examined, have disclosed the total failure of the Porte to fulfil the engagements which she had contracted under circumstances peculiarly binding on interest, on honor and on gratitude.”So totally, indeed, had the Turks failed to keep any of their promises of reform and so hopeless did the condition of these hapless Christians appear, that they at first refused the mediation of the Powers, declaring that they preferred death to Turkish rule.“If you are not willing to help us to attain our liberty,” they said, “at least you can not compel us to enter into slavery again. We will never fall into the hands of the Turks alive.”About this time Turkey partially repudiated her national debt, pledging for the payment of the interest for some five years the tribute from Egypt and the tobacco revenue. Bondholders became aroused. Commercial interests, not interests of humanity, prompted some action; for if the Christians, who are the cultivators of the soil, were exterminated, what would become of their per cents.?The Powers intervened by the Protocol, known asthe Andrassy Note, which proposed among others the following measures:—1. Religious liberty, full and entire.2. Abolition of the farming of taxes.3. A law to guarantee that the direct taxation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina should be employed for the immediate interests of the provinces.4. A special commission composed of an equal number of Mussulmans and Christians to superintend the execution of the reforms proclaimed and proposed.5. The amelioration of the rural population.The representatives of the six powers under instructions from their governments supported these measures of reform before the Porte, all of them heartily, except the English minister, Sir Henry Elliott, who acting evidently under secret instructions, expressed his belief that they would amount to nothing; and his fear that they trenched upon the right of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs without foreign interference. The Grand Vizier did not reject them, but replied that he was preparing a constitution which would, he believed, embody these and other measures of reform.The Powers believed or affected to believe these brilliant promises. England even tendered to the Sultan the cordial expression of her hopes that “he would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects and restoring order.” And this meant, as England ought to have known and as all the world knows now, that the Turks might put it down in the only way the Turk ever does put down a rebellion—with fiercest cruelty. It meant liberty from British interference while they proceeded to slay, kill, torture, burn, outrage,violate men, women and children with fiendish lust and delight.These promises of reform were made February 10, 1876, and the Turks’answer to the cordial expression of the hope of England that they would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects, was the awful Bulgarian horrors executed by the orders of the Porte during the first two weeks in May.The whole civilized world shuddered. Just as the gates of the Centennial were being thrown open to welcome the nations to the celebration of the glorious victories of peace and the triumphs of art, the unspeakable Turk let loose upon the defenceless Bulgarians the Bashi-Bazouks. These were irregular troops, the scum and offscouring of the Oriental cities, gathered from the prisons, jails and slums: the vilest wretches to be found on the face of the earth without military knowledge, ability, courage or discipline—men fit only for the work of murder, lust, rapine and cruelty on which they were sent by the Sublime Porte, the Infernal Tyrant.On the 14th of May, 1876, the representatives of Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Germany met at Berlin without any knowledge of the massacres, and desirous of sustaining the good intentions of the Grand Vizier, agreed upon the paper known as the “Berlin Memorandum” which provided for a guaranty by the great Powers of the several reforms which had been proclaimed, but were not yet put in force. Five of the Powers signed it, but Great Britain refused, on the ground that it must obviously and inevitably lead to the military occupation of Turkey.Miserable subterfuge—didn’t she “occupy Egypt” a little later to securethe payment of the interest on her bonds: but she had no “interest” in breaking the bonds and chains of Christian populations of Turkey. She knew very well that the Sublime Porte would never execute a reform except under compulsion.The action of the British Ministry greatly encouraged the Turks, and gave them very naturally the impression that England sympathized with them, and would help them to subjugate the Christian races.The British Ministry at first professed ignorance of the massacres: then thought the Bulgarians as much to blame as the Turk—the lamb as the wolf that devoured him—the helpless, disarmed Armenians as the Turkish soldiers that swept down upon them from the mountains—and at last compelled to acknowledge the enormity of the conduct of the Turks, said they had been greatly provoked by the Russian emissaries who were stirring up revolution among the Christians.Instantly Great Britain sent her Mediterranean fleet again to Besika Bay, where it arrived May 21st, only seven days from the first meeting of the Powers. The Minister said it was to protect English subjects, the Turks said it was to protect them. From what, pray? It was never clearly explained why; but it looked then and it looks now as if England were ready to champion the Turk as she had done in the Crimean War. It must have made every Englishman with a conscience or heart in him, blush for shame that the Turks themselves and all the rest of the world took it for granted that the presence of this fleet in Turkish waters was a friendly demonstration on the part of the English towards the Sultan: that in fact they were going tostand by and keep off the great Powers while the Turks continued to “restore order.”The English people however were roused to such indignation by these massacres and by the course of the government, that under the lead of Mr. Gladstone they very soon made their Ministers understand that they were not at liberty to sustain Turkey in such acts of oppression or to alienate the friendship of Russia.Great men like John Bright, always the friend of Russia, Gladstone, Freeman and others publicly denounced England as the accomplice of the Turks in their deeds of horror by the moral and material support she had so freely given them in recent years.We need not trace the details of these horrors here but quote the eloquent and stirring language of the greatest statesman of the age:—“There has been perpetrated,” said Gladstone, “under the authority of a Government to which all the time we have been giving the strongest moral support and for part of the time material support, crimes and outrages so vast in scale as to exceed all modern examples and so unutterably vile as well as fierce in character that it passes the power of heart to conceive and of tongue and pen adequately to describe them. These are the Bulgarian horrors. 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 been too late examined but which remains unavenged—which has left behind the fierce passions that produced it and which may spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil reeked with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crimeand shame. That such things should be done is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race that did them; that a door should be left open for their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the whole.”Grand and noble words and yet the hand of the English Government not only left that door open but fastened it open and kept it open till again in Armenia the Bulgarian horrors were reproduced on a vaster and more terrible scale if the Turk ever can be worse than the history of centuries has so often declared and revealed him.The Turkish government made some feeble attempts to disavow the Bulgarian atrocities. But the Turk is an unmitigated liar. Freeman, the historian does not hesitate to say that the Ring at Constantinople worked with a deliberate policy to oppress and if possible to destroy the whole Bulgarian people. The first means they took was to plant large colonies of savage Circassians in Bulgaria who were allowed to commit any kind of outrage on their defenceless Christian neighbors without redress. They could drive the Christians from their homes, rob their houses, destroy their crops, ravish their women, and if any dared to resist their violence they were killed without hesitation. If any dared to complain against the Circassians they were summarily punished. But worse than this was the quartering of Turkish troops upon the peasants and the landholders whose dastardly outrages upon the wives and daughters of the Bulgarians were fiendish and constant. Neither woman’s honor nor human life was safe where they were.When flesh and blood could bear no more there wassome slight uprising of an unarmed people and then the fury of Circassian and of Bashi-Bazouk was let loose upon them.Freeman says again, “there can be no doubt that the massacre was deliberately ordered by the Ring at Constantinople, the Highnesses and the Excellencies of polite diplomacy. This is proved by the fact that they honored and decorated the chief doers of the massacre, while they neglected and sometimes punished those Turkish officers who acted at all in a humane way. To this day (April, 1877) in defiance of all remonstrances from the European powers, the chief doers of the massacres remain unpunished, while we still hear of Bulgarians being punished for their share in the attempt to free their country.”For a true statement of some of the facts in the case, for the full truth can never be told, the world is indebted to the Government of the United States, which sent a special commission of inquiry to Bulgaria, and History will owe them a debt of gratitude for having furnished reliable documents on this matter in which every European State was more or less exposed to an imputation of bias. As Mr. Gladstone observed: “America had neither alliances with Turkey nor grudges against her nor purposes to gain by her destruction. She entered into this matter simply on the ground of its broad human character and moment. She had no ‘American interests’ to tempt her from her integrity and to vitiate her aims.”Mr. Eugene Schuyler, American Secretary of Legation at Constantinople, who visited the ruined villages in July and August, 1876, made his report to the United States Minister Plenipotentiary November 20th.In that report he says that “in the districts he visited at least nine thousand houses were burned, seventy-two thousand persons were left without roof or shelter and ten thousand nine hundred and eighty-four persons were numbered as killed. Many more were killed in the roads, in the fields, in the mountains; so that he numbers the slain at about fifteen thousand,—but adds many more died subsequently from disease, exposure and in prison.” He says that he could only find proof of the death of one hundred and fifteen Mussulmans. “Neither Turkish women nor Turkish children were killed in cold blood. No Mussulman women were violated. No Mussulman was tortured. No purely Turkish village (with one exception) was attacked or burned. No Mussulman house was pillaged. No mosque was desecrated.”The storm of indignation which followed the publication of the reports of Mr. Schuyler and Mr. Baring the British commissioner, was so terrible that even a Disraeli cabinet did not dare to enter into another monstrous alliance with the Turks against the only champion of the Christians. But official neutrality did not prevent the Turks from recruiting many officers in England; in spite of it British guineas and firearms strengthened their powers of resistance against Russia.It is a terrible indictment that may be brought against England that the question of righteousness never seems to enter into the questions of her foreign “policy,” but only the question of interest and that chiefly the interest which is reckoned in pounds, shillings and pence.From a letter dated September 4th, 1876, publishedin one of the English Blue Books, addressed to the Earl of Derby by Sir Henry Elliot, English Ambassador at Constantinople,—the Sir Henry who would not support the Andrassy Note because he feared that the provisions of it trenched upon the rights of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs,—the following quotation is taken, viz:—“An insurrection or civil war is everywhere accompanied by cruelties and abominable excesses, this being tenfold the case in oriental countries where people are divided into antagonistic creeds and races. * * * To the accusation of being a blind partisan of the Turks, I will only answer that my conduct here has never been guided by any sentimental affection for them, but by a firm determination to uphold the interests of Great Britain to the utmost of my power, and that those interests are deeply engaged in preventing the disruption of the Turkish Empire, is a conviction which I share in common with the most eminent statesmen who have directed our foreign policy. (This is the key to every position assumed by British diplomacy at the Porte. Never a question of righteousness.)“We may, and must feel indignant at the needless and monstrous severity with which the Bulgarian insurrection was put down, but the necessity which exists for England to prevent changes from occurring here which would be most detrimental to ourselves, is not affected by the question whether it was ten thousand or twenty thousand persons who perished in the suppression.“We have been upholding what we know to be a semi-civilized nation, liable under certain circumstances to be carried into fearful excesses: but the fact of thishaving now been brought home to us all, cannot be a sufficient reason for abandoning a policy which is the only one that can be followed with due regard to our interests.”It is enough to take one’s breath away to read such words as these. They are clear enough. They declare what is the settled policy of the English government. Towards Turkey? Not alone, but towards the world. Her interests are purely commercial.—Interests payable in gold: always and everywhere. What are her interests in Venezuela? In the Bering Sea fisheries? In the Transvaal? In India and in China?The integrity of the Turkish Empire must be maintained. All else is mere diplomatic froth, waste breath and ink in the torrents of her speeches and her correspondence with the Porte; and the Turk knows it, and Russia knows it and the world knows it. England is pilloried to-day for her selfishness, if not for her unrighteousness, in all her dealings with the rest of the earth. It is her government, not her people that the world arraigns.Mr. Freeman is scathing and unsparing in his denunciation of the government’s position; but that he was not more severe than just the issue plainly declared, and we tarry on this situation a moment longer because of its special bearing upon the situation as regards the massacres in Armenia.War had been declared by Servia and Montenegro against Turkey on the 2d of July, 1876, which had thus far resulted in victory for Montenegro and defeat for Servia. This situation still further increased the anxieties of the great powers. Not that they cared for Turkey only because they could not agree on how itshould be carved up. They would all like a generous slice if each could have the portion that he liked best.When it became evident that there wasnohope of any good resulting from notes and memorandums, the British Government suggested a conference of the powers which had been parties to the Treaty of Paris to meet at Constantinople in December 1876: and in order to open the way for this conference, proposed an armistice of six weeks between Turkey and Servia.The Turkish government proposed six months: the Russians demanded an immediate armistice of from four to six weeks and threatened to break off diplomatic relations at once if it was not granted. The Turkish government complied with the demand.In an interview with the British Minister, November 2d, 1876, the Emperor Alexander pledged his sacred word of honor in the most earnest and solemn manner that he had no intention of acquiring Constantinople, and that if necessity compelled him to occupy a portion of Bulgaria it would only be provisionally and until the peace and safety of the Christian population could be secured.A few days later—November 10th, the Emperor made a speech at Moscow in which he said: “I have striven and shall still strive to obtain a real improvement of the position of the Christians in the East by peaceful means. But should I see that we cannot obtain such guarantees as are necessary for carrying out what we have a right to demand of the Porte I am firmly determined to act independently; and I am convinced, that in this case the whole of Russia will respond to my summons should I consider it necessary and should the honor of Russia require it.”British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.The preliminary conference at Constantinople was opened on the 11th of December, and was participated in by representatives from Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy.The conference was foredoomed to end in failure, for by the treaty of Paris the Powers had no right to interfere, and they were all too righteous to sin against that treaty, though Bulgaria should be utterly wasted with fire and sword.The Marquis of Salisbury, now Prime Minister, was the chief representative of Great Britain, and in a speech before the House of Lords thus defined the purposes of the conference and its failure. After speaking of previous treaties and the changes that had taken place both in Turkey and Great Britain which prevented the latter from maintaining exactly the same attitude towards Turkey which she did in 1856, he went on to say: “If the alliance was broken up, if our exertions for the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire were to cease * * * assuredly it was our duty to exhaust appeal, remonstrance and exhortation before deserting a cause we had hitherto maintained. * * * We went to stop a great and menacing danger, namely the prospect of a war between Russia and the Porte. It was in pointing out that evil that our moral influence on the Porte rested. We said to Turkey, “Unless you do this or that, this terrible danger which may well involve the loss of your Empire is ready to fall upon you. We hope that our influence and advice may be able to avert it:indeed we come here for that purpose, but we warn you that we shall accept no responsibility for the future, if you treat our advice with disdain. * * * It seems to me, as it must to everybody else, that the refusalof the Turk is a mystery: for the infatuation of that cause seems to be so tremendous.”The refusal of the Turk is no mystery to-day. There was no infatuation about it. The Porte knew that his speech meant no harm to Turkey: that he had come to avert the loss of the Empire. He knew very well that whatever the issue of the war might be on the battlefield, England would never let Russia profit by her victories. Hence the Porte in sublime contempt snapped its fingers in the face of the Conference and politely bowed it out of existence. The issue proved that the Turks knew exactly the man and the nation they were dealing with. Yet the English people thought the Government really meant to do something to help the cause of the persecuted Bulgarians: just as they thought for awhile that Salisbury as Prime Minister meant, really intended to do something in the cause of Armenia.England has not changed in her traditional policy towards the Turk. She has not deserted the cause she has maintained for now some sixty years, and she never will desert it until she and Russia can agree about the division of the spoils: then her love for the Turk will vanish as a mist before the rising sun of her own increasing power and splendor.
“The government of His Majesty, the Sultan, will remain faithful to the letter and to the spirit of the treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople regarding the protection of the Christian Church.”
Now the English Ambassador had received instructions to bring his whole influence to bear upon the Turks, “and to impress them with the strong and earnest manner in which the Vienna Note was recommended to the acceptance of the Porte, not only by Her Majesty’s government, but also by the Cabinets of Austria, France and Prussia.”
Before the presentation of the “Vienna Note” Lord Stratford had informed the Porte with much circumstance and in his most impressive manner that the British fleet in Besika Bay was at his disposal; while therefore he read his instructions with most perfunctory obedience to the Ottoman Cabinet, his whole demeanor was urging them to disregard the note.
The duplicity of the French Emperor was more culpable as before the rejection of the Vienna Note and while the powers were still deliberating in concert he craftily succeeded in drawing England into a special alliance with France: and on receipt of some hysterical despatch from his Ambassador he insisted with the English cabinet that it was “indispensably necessary” that their combined fleets should, in violation of the convention of 1841 enter the straits before there had been a declaration of war on any side. That very day without asking any information from the EnglishAmbassador Lord Clarendon telegraphed to Lord Stratford: “Your Excellency is instructed to send for the British fleet to Constantinople.”
The Sultan now amended the “Vienna Note” by inserting the words, “by the Sublime Porte,” which completely destroyed the power of the existing treaty, making it read: “The government of His Majesty the Sultan, will remain faithful to the stipulations of the treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople regarding the protection, ‘by the Sublime Porte’ of the Christian religion.”
In other words, the wolf solemnly engaged to protect the lambs for himself, and all the world knows what that means: and we know it now in 1896 by forty years more of broken promises and horrible atrocities. What insane folly to believe the Turk. The Czar did not, and rejected the amended note.
Seven days after his rejection of the Sultan’s proposal in obedience to the telegram from Lord Clarendon two English and two French ships entered the Dardanelles on September 14th, and on the strength of their presence and implied support, the Sultan declared war against Russia on the fifth of October, 1853. Thus did Louis Napoleon III. precipitate England into what Count Nesselrode declared to be the most unjustifiable and the most unintelligible of wars.
Czar Nicholas replied to this, by a counter declaration of war on November 1st, 1853, solemnly declaring to the Powers of Europe “that the sole aim of his endeavors was to assure the rights of his co-religionists, and to protect them from every form of oppression.”
The work of two centuries was undone for Russia. She lost the Black Sea and the protectorate of theChristians of the Ottoman empire that she had wrung from the Porte by a succession of victorious campaigns. Instead of the powerful champion which they lost the poor Christians of the empire were granted another firman in which the Sultan repeated all his lying promises of former years. Not only so but the powers bound themselves not to interfere with the internal administration of affairs in the Turkish Empire.
The Christian nations in solemn treaty pledged themselves to let the Turk do what he would with the people under his yoke and promised that they would do nothing to help them. They disclaimed any right to interfere with the relations existing between the Sultan and his subjects: the relations between the robber and his victim, the master and the slave, the tyrant and the oppressed.
Future generations will stand aghast at the hideous spectacle of three civilized nations fighting side by side with and for barbarian Moslems to crush the noble champion of their fellow Christians and fellow slaves compelled by their victories to languish beneath the yoke of these savage aliens.
All reverence to the heroes of the Light Brigade
“Stormed at with shot and shell,Boldly they rode and well;Into the jaws of DeathInto the mouth of HellRode the six hundred.”
“Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well;
Into the jaws of Death
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.”
All reverence to millions of others, who at the voice of command if not of duty, gave themselves up for an unholy cause and perished by thousands of hunger and cold and disease on the bleak shores of the Crimea.
Froude says “that the whole power of England andFrance supported passively by Austria, and actively by Sardinia and Turkey, succeeded with communications, secure and rapid with every advantage for procuring supplies, in partially conquering a single stronghold. It was a great victory but it was achieved at a cost to England alone of eighty millions (sterling) of money and perhaps fifty thousand lives.”
While Alexander writes (Manifesto 1856), “For eleven months Sebastopol was held against the allied aggressors: and in the whole empire from the shores of the Pacific to the Baltic, one thought, one resolution was dominant to fulfil duty, to protect the Fatherland at any cost of property and life. Husbandmen who had never left the fields they cultivated hastened to take up arms for the holy struggle and were not inferior to experienced warriors in bravery and renunciation.”
And this war was fought by France and England, not in the cause of freedom; not to redress the wrongs of the oppressed; not to help forward the wheels of progress. No, but to pave the way for the bloody atrocities which in 1876 called forth one long cry of horror and indignation throughout Christendom, while these in turn were to pale before the horrors of 1895–6 to which commercial England has turned a deaf ear, leaving Armenia helpless in the jaws of the wolf.
The Crimean War as fostered by England and France with the avowed purpose of upholding the power of the Turk really brought into action two new elements of weakness. First: up to 1856 Turkey had been free from foreign creditors, but the opening of the Dardanelles brought commerce and a foreign loan, and on the steps of indebtedness followed extravagance,speculation and national bankruptcy. The most wanton and unbridled extravagance reigned at the palace. The corruptions produced by the foreign loans found their way into every artery of the state and poisoned the very existence of the country. New loans could only be obtained by promises which it was impossible to fulfil and which were made without any intention of carrying them out.
The navy was improved, the soldiers were better armed; a large part of the money was squandered on absurd building projects; while vast sums were spent on precious stones and personal pleasures.
These loans were liberally subscribed in England, and Englishmen helped the Sultan to spend it lavishly. The origin of the troubles of 1876–7 in Bosnia and Herzegovina was said to be the heavy burden of the increased taxes imposed to pay the expenses of a visit to the Paris Exposition, and the European capitals in 1867 made by the Sultan accompanied by his son, two nephews and an expensive suite.
But a second and more dangerous evil was this:—The self-exclusion of any right of interference on the part of the Powers threw the control of affairs into the hands of a ring in whose power the Sultan has been but little more than a puppet as the events of recent years have clearly shown.
In 1875 the situation was thus reviewed by Gladstone, sincerely penitent for the part he had taken in the Crimean War. “Twenty years ago,” he said, “France and England determined to try a great experiment in remodeling the administrative system of Turkey with the hope of curing its intolerable deficiencies. For this purpose having defended her integrity theymade also her independence secure, and they devised at Constantinople the reforms which were publicly enacted in an imperial Firman or Hati Humayoun.”
“The successes of the Crimean War purchased * * * by a vast expenditure of French and English life and treasure gave to Turkey, for the first time, perhaps, in her blood-stained history, twenty years of repose not disturbed either by herself or by any foreign power. The Cretan insurrection imparted a shock to confidence but it was composed and Turkey was again trusted. The insurrections of 1875, much more thoroughly examined, have disclosed the total failure of the Porte to fulfil the engagements which she had contracted under circumstances peculiarly binding on interest, on honor and on gratitude.”
So totally, indeed, had the Turks failed to keep any of their promises of reform and so hopeless did the condition of these hapless Christians appear, that they at first refused the mediation of the Powers, declaring that they preferred death to Turkish rule.
“If you are not willing to help us to attain our liberty,” they said, “at least you can not compel us to enter into slavery again. We will never fall into the hands of the Turks alive.”
About this time Turkey partially repudiated her national debt, pledging for the payment of the interest for some five years the tribute from Egypt and the tobacco revenue. Bondholders became aroused. Commercial interests, not interests of humanity, prompted some action; for if the Christians, who are the cultivators of the soil, were exterminated, what would become of their per cents.?
The Powers intervened by the Protocol, known asthe Andrassy Note, which proposed among others the following measures:—
1. Religious liberty, full and entire.
2. Abolition of the farming of taxes.
3. A law to guarantee that the direct taxation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina should be employed for the immediate interests of the provinces.
4. A special commission composed of an equal number of Mussulmans and Christians to superintend the execution of the reforms proclaimed and proposed.
5. The amelioration of the rural population.
The representatives of the six powers under instructions from their governments supported these measures of reform before the Porte, all of them heartily, except the English minister, Sir Henry Elliott, who acting evidently under secret instructions, expressed his belief that they would amount to nothing; and his fear that they trenched upon the right of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs without foreign interference. The Grand Vizier did not reject them, but replied that he was preparing a constitution which would, he believed, embody these and other measures of reform.
The Powers believed or affected to believe these brilliant promises. England even tendered to the Sultan the cordial expression of her hopes that “he would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects and restoring order.” And this meant, as England ought to have known and as all the world knows now, that the Turks might put it down in the only way the Turk ever does put down a rebellion—with fiercest cruelty. It meant liberty from British interference while they proceeded to slay, kill, torture, burn, outrage,violate men, women and children with fiendish lust and delight.
These promises of reform were made February 10, 1876, and the Turks’answer to the cordial expression of the hope of England that they would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects, was the awful Bulgarian horrors executed by the orders of the Porte during the first two weeks in May.
The whole civilized world shuddered. Just as the gates of the Centennial were being thrown open to welcome the nations to the celebration of the glorious victories of peace and the triumphs of art, the unspeakable Turk let loose upon the defenceless Bulgarians the Bashi-Bazouks. These were irregular troops, the scum and offscouring of the Oriental cities, gathered from the prisons, jails and slums: the vilest wretches to be found on the face of the earth without military knowledge, ability, courage or discipline—men fit only for the work of murder, lust, rapine and cruelty on which they were sent by the Sublime Porte, the Infernal Tyrant.
On the 14th of May, 1876, the representatives of Russia, Austria, Hungary, and Germany met at Berlin without any knowledge of the massacres, and desirous of sustaining the good intentions of the Grand Vizier, agreed upon the paper known as the “Berlin Memorandum” which provided for a guaranty by the great Powers of the several reforms which had been proclaimed, but were not yet put in force. Five of the Powers signed it, but Great Britain refused, on the ground that it must obviously and inevitably lead to the military occupation of Turkey.Miserable subterfuge—didn’t she “occupy Egypt” a little later to securethe payment of the interest on her bonds: but she had no “interest” in breaking the bonds and chains of Christian populations of Turkey. She knew very well that the Sublime Porte would never execute a reform except under compulsion.
The action of the British Ministry greatly encouraged the Turks, and gave them very naturally the impression that England sympathized with them, and would help them to subjugate the Christian races.
The British Ministry at first professed ignorance of the massacres: then thought the Bulgarians as much to blame as the Turk—the lamb as the wolf that devoured him—the helpless, disarmed Armenians as the Turkish soldiers that swept down upon them from the mountains—and at last compelled to acknowledge the enormity of the conduct of the Turks, said they had been greatly provoked by the Russian emissaries who were stirring up revolution among the Christians.
Instantly Great Britain sent her Mediterranean fleet again to Besika Bay, where it arrived May 21st, only seven days from the first meeting of the Powers. The Minister said it was to protect English subjects, the Turks said it was to protect them. From what, pray? It was never clearly explained why; but it looked then and it looks now as if England were ready to champion the Turk as she had done in the Crimean War. It must have made every Englishman with a conscience or heart in him, blush for shame that the Turks themselves and all the rest of the world took it for granted that the presence of this fleet in Turkish waters was a friendly demonstration on the part of the English towards the Sultan: that in fact they were going tostand by and keep off the great Powers while the Turks continued to “restore order.”
The English people however were roused to such indignation by these massacres and by the course of the government, that under the lead of Mr. Gladstone they very soon made their Ministers understand that they were not at liberty to sustain Turkey in such acts of oppression or to alienate the friendship of Russia.
Great men like John Bright, always the friend of Russia, Gladstone, Freeman and others publicly denounced England as the accomplice of the Turks in their deeds of horror by the moral and material support she had so freely given them in recent years.
We need not trace the details of these horrors here but quote the eloquent and stirring language of the greatest statesman of the age:—
“There has been perpetrated,” said Gladstone, “under the authority of a Government to which all the time we have been giving the strongest moral support and for part of the time material support, crimes and outrages so vast in scale as to exceed all modern examples and so unutterably vile as well as fierce in character that it passes the power of heart to conceive and of tongue and pen adequately to describe them. These are the Bulgarian horrors. 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 been too late examined but which remains unavenged—which has left behind the fierce passions that produced it and which may spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil reeked with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crimeand shame. That such things should be done is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race that did them; that a door should be left open for their ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the whole.”
Grand and noble words and yet the hand of the English Government not only left that door open but fastened it open and kept it open till again in Armenia the Bulgarian horrors were reproduced on a vaster and more terrible scale if the Turk ever can be worse than the history of centuries has so often declared and revealed him.
The Turkish government made some feeble attempts to disavow the Bulgarian atrocities. But the Turk is an unmitigated liar. Freeman, the historian does not hesitate to say that the Ring at Constantinople worked with a deliberate policy to oppress and if possible to destroy the whole Bulgarian people. The first means they took was to plant large colonies of savage Circassians in Bulgaria who were allowed to commit any kind of outrage on their defenceless Christian neighbors without redress. They could drive the Christians from their homes, rob their houses, destroy their crops, ravish their women, and if any dared to resist their violence they were killed without hesitation. If any dared to complain against the Circassians they were summarily punished. But worse than this was the quartering of Turkish troops upon the peasants and the landholders whose dastardly outrages upon the wives and daughters of the Bulgarians were fiendish and constant. Neither woman’s honor nor human life was safe where they were.
When flesh and blood could bear no more there wassome slight uprising of an unarmed people and then the fury of Circassian and of Bashi-Bazouk was let loose upon them.
Freeman says again, “there can be no doubt that the massacre was deliberately ordered by the Ring at Constantinople, the Highnesses and the Excellencies of polite diplomacy. This is proved by the fact that they honored and decorated the chief doers of the massacre, while they neglected and sometimes punished those Turkish officers who acted at all in a humane way. To this day (April, 1877) in defiance of all remonstrances from the European powers, the chief doers of the massacres remain unpunished, while we still hear of Bulgarians being punished for their share in the attempt to free their country.”
For a true statement of some of the facts in the case, for the full truth can never be told, the world is indebted to the Government of the United States, which sent a special commission of inquiry to Bulgaria, and History will owe them a debt of gratitude for having furnished reliable documents on this matter in which every European State was more or less exposed to an imputation of bias. As Mr. Gladstone observed: “America had neither alliances with Turkey nor grudges against her nor purposes to gain by her destruction. She entered into this matter simply on the ground of its broad human character and moment. She had no ‘American interests’ to tempt her from her integrity and to vitiate her aims.”
Mr. Eugene Schuyler, American Secretary of Legation at Constantinople, who visited the ruined villages in July and August, 1876, made his report to the United States Minister Plenipotentiary November 20th.In that report he says that “in the districts he visited at least nine thousand houses were burned, seventy-two thousand persons were left without roof or shelter and ten thousand nine hundred and eighty-four persons were numbered as killed. Many more were killed in the roads, in the fields, in the mountains; so that he numbers the slain at about fifteen thousand,—but adds many more died subsequently from disease, exposure and in prison.” He says that he could only find proof of the death of one hundred and fifteen Mussulmans. “Neither Turkish women nor Turkish children were killed in cold blood. No Mussulman women were violated. No Mussulman was tortured. No purely Turkish village (with one exception) was attacked or burned. No Mussulman house was pillaged. No mosque was desecrated.”
The storm of indignation which followed the publication of the reports of Mr. Schuyler and Mr. Baring the British commissioner, was so terrible that even a Disraeli cabinet did not dare to enter into another monstrous alliance with the Turks against the only champion of the Christians. But official neutrality did not prevent the Turks from recruiting many officers in England; in spite of it British guineas and firearms strengthened their powers of resistance against Russia.
It is a terrible indictment that may be brought against England that the question of righteousness never seems to enter into the questions of her foreign “policy,” but only the question of interest and that chiefly the interest which is reckoned in pounds, shillings and pence.
From a letter dated September 4th, 1876, publishedin one of the English Blue Books, addressed to the Earl of Derby by Sir Henry Elliot, English Ambassador at Constantinople,—the Sir Henry who would not support the Andrassy Note because he feared that the provisions of it trenched upon the rights of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs,—the following quotation is taken, viz:—
“An insurrection or civil war is everywhere accompanied by cruelties and abominable excesses, this being tenfold the case in oriental countries where people are divided into antagonistic creeds and races. * * * To the accusation of being a blind partisan of the Turks, I will only answer that my conduct here has never been guided by any sentimental affection for them, but by a firm determination to uphold the interests of Great Britain to the utmost of my power, and that those interests are deeply engaged in preventing the disruption of the Turkish Empire, is a conviction which I share in common with the most eminent statesmen who have directed our foreign policy. (This is the key to every position assumed by British diplomacy at the Porte. Never a question of righteousness.)
“We may, and must feel indignant at the needless and monstrous severity with which the Bulgarian insurrection was put down, but the necessity which exists for England to prevent changes from occurring here which would be most detrimental to ourselves, is not affected by the question whether it was ten thousand or twenty thousand persons who perished in the suppression.
“We have been upholding what we know to be a semi-civilized nation, liable under certain circumstances to be carried into fearful excesses: but the fact of thishaving now been brought home to us all, cannot be a sufficient reason for abandoning a policy which is the only one that can be followed with due regard to our interests.”
It is enough to take one’s breath away to read such words as these. They are clear enough. They declare what is the settled policy of the English government. Towards Turkey? Not alone, but towards the world. Her interests are purely commercial.—Interests payable in gold: always and everywhere. What are her interests in Venezuela? In the Bering Sea fisheries? In the Transvaal? In India and in China?
The integrity of the Turkish Empire must be maintained. All else is mere diplomatic froth, waste breath and ink in the torrents of her speeches and her correspondence with the Porte; and the Turk knows it, and Russia knows it and the world knows it. England is pilloried to-day for her selfishness, if not for her unrighteousness, in all her dealings with the rest of the earth. It is her government, not her people that the world arraigns.
Mr. Freeman is scathing and unsparing in his denunciation of the government’s position; but that he was not more severe than just the issue plainly declared, and we tarry on this situation a moment longer because of its special bearing upon the situation as regards the massacres in Armenia.
War had been declared by Servia and Montenegro against Turkey on the 2d of July, 1876, which had thus far resulted in victory for Montenegro and defeat for Servia. This situation still further increased the anxieties of the great powers. Not that they cared for Turkey only because they could not agree on how itshould be carved up. They would all like a generous slice if each could have the portion that he liked best.
When it became evident that there wasnohope of any good resulting from notes and memorandums, the British Government suggested a conference of the powers which had been parties to the Treaty of Paris to meet at Constantinople in December 1876: and in order to open the way for this conference, proposed an armistice of six weeks between Turkey and Servia.
The Turkish government proposed six months: the Russians demanded an immediate armistice of from four to six weeks and threatened to break off diplomatic relations at once if it was not granted. The Turkish government complied with the demand.
In an interview with the British Minister, November 2d, 1876, the Emperor Alexander pledged his sacred word of honor in the most earnest and solemn manner that he had no intention of acquiring Constantinople, and that if necessity compelled him to occupy a portion of Bulgaria it would only be provisionally and until the peace and safety of the Christian population could be secured.
A few days later—November 10th, the Emperor made a speech at Moscow in which he said: “I have striven and shall still strive to obtain a real improvement of the position of the Christians in the East by peaceful means. But should I see that we cannot obtain such guarantees as are necessary for carrying out what we have a right to demand of the Porte I am firmly determined to act independently; and I am convinced, that in this case the whole of Russia will respond to my summons should I consider it necessary and should the honor of Russia require it.”
British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.
British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question.
The preliminary conference at Constantinople was opened on the 11th of December, and was participated in by representatives from Great Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy.
The conference was foredoomed to end in failure, for by the treaty of Paris the Powers had no right to interfere, and they were all too righteous to sin against that treaty, though Bulgaria should be utterly wasted with fire and sword.
The Marquis of Salisbury, now Prime Minister, was the chief representative of Great Britain, and in a speech before the House of Lords thus defined the purposes of the conference and its failure. After speaking of previous treaties and the changes that had taken place both in Turkey and Great Britain which prevented the latter from maintaining exactly the same attitude towards Turkey which she did in 1856, he went on to say: “If the alliance was broken up, if our exertions for the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire were to cease * * * assuredly it was our duty to exhaust appeal, remonstrance and exhortation before deserting a cause we had hitherto maintained. * * * We went to stop a great and menacing danger, namely the prospect of a war between Russia and the Porte. It was in pointing out that evil that our moral influence on the Porte rested. We said to Turkey, “Unless you do this or that, this terrible danger which may well involve the loss of your Empire is ready to fall upon you. We hope that our influence and advice may be able to avert it:indeed we come here for that purpose, but we warn you that we shall accept no responsibility for the future, if you treat our advice with disdain. * * * It seems to me, as it must to everybody else, that the refusalof the Turk is a mystery: for the infatuation of that cause seems to be so tremendous.”
The refusal of the Turk is no mystery to-day. There was no infatuation about it. The Porte knew that his speech meant no harm to Turkey: that he had come to avert the loss of the Empire. He knew very well that whatever the issue of the war might be on the battlefield, England would never let Russia profit by her victories. Hence the Porte in sublime contempt snapped its fingers in the face of the Conference and politely bowed it out of existence. The issue proved that the Turks knew exactly the man and the nation they were dealing with. Yet the English people thought the Government really meant to do something to help the cause of the persecuted Bulgarians: just as they thought for awhile that Salisbury as Prime Minister meant, really intended to do something in the cause of Armenia.
England has not changed in her traditional policy towards the Turk. She has not deserted the cause she has maintained for now some sixty years, and she never will desert it until she and Russia can agree about the division of the spoils: then her love for the Turk will vanish as a mist before the rising sun of her own increasing power and splendor.