CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER VIII.THE SULTAN ABDUL HAMID.It does not lie within the plan of this volume to review at any length the history of Turkey, or to sketch the lives of the Sultans who have reigned during the century; it will answer, however, to make our work intelligible and clear, if the life of the reigning Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II. is presented briefly.He is the second son of Abdul Medjid, who was Sultan from 1839 to 1861. He was born September 5th, 1842; and his mother having died when he was quite young, he was adopted by his father’s second wife, herself childless, who was very wealthy and made him her heir. His early life was quiet and uneventful; his boyhood was a continual scene of merry idleness. His education consisting mostly in amusements and tricks devised for his entertainment by the court slaves: and in an unusually early and complete initiation into the depravities of harem life. Indeed up to manhood all the learning he had acquired, amounted to but little more than the ability to read in the Arabic and Turkish tongues. His mother had died of consumption and his constitution was delicate. He had inherited a taste for drink, but his doctor who was a Greek, assured him it would be his destruction. “Then I will never touch wine or liquor again,” said Abdul Hamid, and he kept his word.The turning point in his life came, when in 1867 hisUncle Abdul Aziz, then Sultan, took his own son and his two nephews, Murad and Hamid, to the Paris Exposition, England and Germany. He saw with a quick and appreciative eye. He acquired a taste for political geography, and for European dress, customs and interests. What he then learned was to modify very considerably the subsequent course of his life. From April, 1876, both he and his brother Murad were kept under strict surveillance and not allowed to take any part in the political movements going on in Constantinople.Abdul Aziz, the reigning Sultan, was determined to defy the Turkish law of succession and proclaim his son in June, as heir presumptive to the throne, thus displacing Murad and Hamid, who both were before him in rights of succession. At this crisis, Midhat Pasha, the leading and most progressive statesman and strong adherent of Murad, planned a revolution and Abdul Aziz, was deposed and Murad was proclaimed Sultan, May 31st, and so recognized by the Western powers: but he was never girded with the sword of Othman in the Mosque of Eyout, a ceremony equivalent to a Western Coronation.His ill-health, increased by excessive use of liquor and the mistaken treatment of his physician, rendered him mentally incapable of ruling: though a celebrated Dr. Liedersdorf, sent for from Vienna, is said to have stated, “If I had Sultan Murad under my own care in Vienna, I would have him all right in six weeks.”In consequence of this mental indisposition, Murad V. was deposed August 30th, and Abdul Hamid II. was proclaimed on August 31st, and girded with thesword of Othman a few days later. He was then living in a small palace in the Valley of Sweet Waters, which he inherited from his father. He was very fond of agriculture, and amused himself by cultivating a model farm. To his mother, who is said to have been an Armenian from Georgia, in Russia, he owed a quality very rare in the family of the Sultans, the spirit of economy. He never allowed his expenses to exceed his income before he came to the throne. In this charming retreat he resided quietly with his wife and two children, all eating at the same table, and showing in his dress and surroundings his preference for European modes of life. The only concession he made to Orientalism in personal dress, was in wearing the “fez,” which he disliked, but continued to wear as the necessary token of his nationality.Six weeks after he was proclaimed Sultan, it was announced that a scheme of reform for the whole Ottoman Empire, was in course of preparation. It was published in January, and while it was a much less sweeping reform than Midhat wished, it provided for a Senate and a House of Representatives, which last was to take control of the finances, the system of taxation was to be revised and better laws were to be enacted for the provinces.Election to the lower house was to be by universal suffrage; for the upper house electors were restricted to two classes: the noble and the educated.Abdul Hamid cordially disapproved of this check on the absolute power enjoyed by predecessors.He was willing to do justice and to temper it with mercy, but to be placed in the position of a servant to his people was odious to himself.At a council held, when only his other ministers were present, the Sultan asked, what should be done with Midhat Pasha. Two of those present said: “Let him die.” But Abdul Hamid was not bloodthirsty, hence he only banished him to Arabia where two years later he was poisoned.The Sultan was restive under the constitution and the Pashas, against whose cruelty and extortion the most of the reforms were aimed, sided with their sovereign. In 1875, Midhat Pasha had outlined the situation thus to the English Ambassador:“The Sultan’s Empire is being rapidly brought to destruction; corruption has reached a pitch that it has never before attained. The service of the state is starved, while untold millions are being poured into the palaces and the provinces are being ruined by the uncontrolled exactions of the Governors who purchase their appointments at the palace: and nothing can save the country but a complete change of system.”And the very worst governed portion of all his Empire was Armenia. We are officially told that its government for the last thirty years has been horrible.In an Armenian village recently plundered by bandits, the famous Hungarian Professor, Arminius Vambery, an intimate friend of the Sultan, once asked, “Why do you not get help from the Governor of Erzeroum?” “Because,” answered the villagers, “he is at the head of the robbers. God alone and his representative on earth—the Russian Czar, can help us.” This brigandage, is one of the greatest curses of the Turkish Empire, exercising a rule of terror and oppression, and now legalized, apparently, by the transformation ofthe Kurdish horsemen—robbers—into the Hamidieh—the Sultan’s own Cavalry.Types and Costumes—Kurdish Gentlemen.Types and Costumes—Kurdish Gentlemen.Such being the spirit of the Pashas who had grown rich by plunder and official theft, of course they were opposed to the Constitution, and by the will of the Sultan it was abrogated after two sessions had been held. This was soon followed by the dismissal of the Ministers who had formed the triumvirate, and the Sultan resumed his despotic and absolute sway. Assured that England would not suffer the dismemberment of his Empire we have seen him refusing to guarantee the enforcement of promised reforms and provoking the war with Russia; but as we have already told this story, we will give some pictures of the Sultan as drawn by his admirers; leaving the horrors of the Armenian massacres to bear witness as to the honesty of his professed devotion to the welfare of his Christian subjects and his promises to observe the terms of said treaty in the amelioration of the condition of all who were suffering under the murderous oppression of Kurds and Circassians.Professor Vambery, a most remarkable linguist who writes and speaks all the languages of Europe like a native, spent some time in Turkey a few years ago and was received into closest conference by the Sultan.—Here are extracts from what he has written of him:“I must own that the education of Abdul Hamid, like that of all Oriental princes was defective, very defective indeed; but an iron will, good judgment and rare acuteness have made good this short-coming; and he not only knows the multifarious relations and intricacies of his own much tried Empire but is thoroughly conversant with European politics: and I amnot going far from fact when I state that it has been solely the moderation and self-restraint of Sultan Abdul Hamid which has saved us hitherto from a general European conflagration. As to his personal character, I have found the present ruler of the Ottoman Empire of great politeness, amiability and extreme gentleness. When sitting opposite to him during my private interviews, I could not avoid being struck by his extremely modest attitude, by his quiet manners and by the bashful look of his eyes. * * At his table, though wine is served to European guests, it is not offered to the Sultan or any other Mohammedan.“His views on religion, politics and education have a decidedly modern tone, and yet he is a firm believer in the tenets of his religion, and likes to assemble around him the foremost Mollahs and pious Sheiks on whom he profusely bestows imperial favors; but he does not forget from time to time to send presents to the Greek and the Armenian patriarchates, and nothing is more ludicrous than to hear this prince accused by a certain class of politicians in Europe of being a fanatic and an enemy to Christians,—a prince who by appointing a Christian for his chief medical attendant and a Christian for his chief minister of finance, did not hesitate to intrust most important duties to non-Mohammedans. * * *”[Doubtless he wanted the best men he could find as his physician and minister of finance, and these men were found among the Christians. Let the last year tell whether he be the friend or the enemy of the Christians.]“In reference to the charge of ruthless despotism laid upon Sultan Abdul Hamid in connection with hisabrogation of the charter granted during the first months of his reign, I will quote his own words. He said to me one day:—‘In Europe the soil was prepared centuries ago for liberal institutions, and now I am asked to transplant a sapling to the foreign, stony and rugged ground of Asiatic life. Let me clear away the thistles, and stones, let me till the soil, and provide for irrigation because rain is very scarce in Asia and then we may transport the new plant; and believe me that nobody will be more delighted at its thriving than myself.’”Thus far the professor. And now, it is to be wondered if he calls the extermination of the Armenians the clearing away of the thistles and does he propose to irrigate the soil of Armenia with the blood of its noblest race. Is he not rather slitting the veins of Asia Minor and pouring out its heart’s best blood?That the Sultan was a warm personal friend of Gen. Lew Wallace does not make him any the less a despot; neither because Hon. S. S. Cox, who succeeded Gen. Wallace was an admirer of the Sultan as the following quotation will show; does that make him the less a fanatic and the most remorseless shedder of blood that Europe has seen since the days of Tamerlane.“The Sultan is of middle size and of Turkish type. He wears a full black beard, is of a dark complexion and has very expressive eyes. His forehead is large, indicative of intellectual power. He is very gracious in manner though at times seemingly a little embarrassed. * * *“As Caliph he is the divine representative of Mohammed. His family line runs back with unbroken links to the thirteenth century. He is one of the most industrious,painstaking, honest, conscientious and vigilant rulers of the world. He is amiable and just withal. His every word betokens a good heart and a sagacious head. [What a comment the horrors of the many months just past furnishes to this flattering estimate a Mohammedian conscience!]“He is an early riser. After he leaves his seraglio and has partaken of a slight repast his secretaries wait on him with portfolios. He peruses all the official correspondence and current reports. He gives up his time till noon to work of this character. Then his breakfast is served. After that he walks in his park and gardens, looks in at his aviaries, perhaps stirs up his menagerie, makes an inspection of his two hundred horses in their fine stables, indulges his little daughters in a row upon the fairy lake which he has had constructed, and it may be attends a performance at the little theatre provided for his children in the palace. At 5 P. M. having accomplished most of his official work, he mounts his favorite white horse, Ferhan, a war-scarred veteran for a ride in the park. The park of the palace Yildiz where he lives comprises some thousand acres. It is surrounded by high walls and protected by the soldiery.”But all this does not tell us what the man at heart is any more than if some flatterer of Nero should expatiate on the esthetic taste of Nero and his love of the fine arts and his skill as a violinist when he sat at night in his marble palace and enjoyed the blazing magnificence of Rome. It is as foreign to the present situation as if some one should praise the skill of Nero’s horsemanship as he drove his mettled steeds with firm reins along the course lighted by the blazing torchesof the tar-besmeared Christians, whom he accused of having set the city on fire.The persistence with which the Sultan has followed out his purpose of exterminating the Armenians, in the face of a horrified and indignant Christendom, marks his audacity and contempt of Christians as sublime in height, as infernal in spirit, and bottomless in its cruelty.Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire can scarcely find polite words enough to express his contempt for the forms of early Christianity and praised the Turks as possessing the rarest of qualities when he said: “The Turks are distinguished for their patience, discipline, sobriety, bravery, honesty and modesty,” and Hon. Sunset Cox echoed the same when he wrote, “It is because of these solid characteristics, and in spite of the harem, in spite of autocratic power, in spite of the Janissary and the seraglio that this race and rule remain potent in the Orient. His heart (the heart of the present Sultan) is touched by suffering, and his views lean strongly to that toleration of the various races and religions of his realm, which other and more boastful nations would do well to imitate.”The facts given in the chapters on The Reign of Terror will be sufficient commentary on such praise.Probably no building in all Europe has so many associations with tragical events as that of the palace of the Sultan of Turkey—the autocrat whose rule is absolute over more than thirty million subjects. From this palace go forth the edicts which involve the death of thousands and which control the governments of distant provinces. Fifty years ago the Sultans governed a huge territory in Europe, but one province after anotherhas been freed from their yoke, until Turkey in Europe has dwindled in size to less than half its former area. But the Asiatic possession of the Sultan have not diminished, and the events in Armenia which have recently horrified the whole world, show what that possession means. Nor are these massacres a new or unparalleled feature of Turkish rule. Similar horrors have been perpetrated before under the cognizance of the Sultans and the only reason why the indignation now aroused on the subject is deeper and more intense, is that it is now impossible to conceal them, and in the days of the telegraph and cheap newspapers they are set in the light of publicity. The Turk is no worse now than he has always been, and is only trying to govern at the end of the nineteenth century as he governed in the sixteenth. As an eminent writer has said: “The Turk is still the aboriginal savage encamped on the ruins of a civilization which he destroyed.”In some respects Abdul Hamid is better than his predecessors, and until the reports of the Armenian horrors were published, he was believed to be a great deal better; but they have proved that he has the same nature, and is at heart as fierce and relentless as they. The character of the man is of so much greater moment to his subjects than in other lands, because of the utter absence of even the semblance of constitutional government. The government of Turkey is a despotism pure and simple. It is tempered only by the dread of assassination or deposition, and even those calamities may come rather from a wise and merciful policy than from massacre. The Pashas who surround the Sultan, the successors of those who deposed his uncle and his brother, applaud the atrocities,and are willing instruments in the perpetration of them. The danger to the Sultan’s person is far more likely to come through weakness and lack of vigor in persecution than from indignation at wholesale slaughter. The Sultan fully appreciates this fact, and lives in constant dread of treachery.An interesting story of the present Sultan is related by Mr. W. T. Stead, in an article in hisReview of Reviews, which in some measure explains the singular mixture in his character of fanaticism, such as that which produced the Armenian massacres, with the marked ability and intelligence he displays in the conduct of national affairs. It appears that when he was a mere youth, he was conspicuous even in Constantinople, which is notorious for its immorality, for the gross excesses of his private life. There was then little probability of his ever ascending the throne, and as he was condemned by his position to a life of idleness, he plunged into all the wickedness of the capital, and lived a life of debauchery. Suddenly he changed his course. He quitted his evil ways and became a devout follower of Mohammed, was attentive at the Mosque and gave all his thoughts to his religion. From that time until now his religious enthusiasm has been the most prominent feature of his character. But with the change came a fierce intolerance, a desire that others should follow his example and determination, evinced since his accession, that in his own dominions no enemy of the Prophet, nor any who did not avow themselves his followers, should have peace or rest until they accepted the faith. This spirit accounts for the crusade against the Armenians whom he hates because they are Christians.The real cause for all the trouble in the Turkish Empire will be found to lie within the spirit and purpose of the Sultan himself. His conduct towards the Powers will serve to most abundantly confirm this view.The condition of Armenia under Turkish rule has for many years been a scandal to Christendom. After the horrors of the Blood bath of Sassoun had been made known to the world a commission of the Powers were sent to investigate and report on the massacres which had been perpetrated.The investigation of the latest atrocities showed that the Armenians had been wantonly tortured and murdered, and that indescribable atrocities had been perpetrated. Men, women, and children were proved to have been hacked to pieces, and no respect had been shown to age or sex. Whole villages had been depopulated, and the fact of any community being Christian seemed to have been sufficient to provoke the murderous hostility of the authorities. Where the Turks did not commit the outrages themselves, they remained inactive while the Kurds committed them, and their inactivity amounted to connivance, because the Armenians are not allowed to arm themselves for their own protection. There was legitimate grounds for foreign powers urging reforms upon the Sultan, as in 1878, when the Berlin Congress was inclined to strip him of his Armenian provinces, he promised that Armenia should be governed better than it had been, and England became sponsor for the performance of his promises. Under those conditions the Sultan was allowed to retain the provinces, and his failure to effect the reforms was therefore a distinct breach of faith. TheAmbassadors of England, France and Russia accordingly presented to the Sultan on May 11th a demand for twelve specific changes in the government of Armenia. The scheme outlined included the appointment of a High Commissioner, with whom should be associated a commission to sit at Constantinople, for the purpose of carrying out all reforms. The full details of the plan were not made public, but among the suggestions made were these: The appointment of governors and vice-governors in six Armenian vilayets—Van, Erzeroum, Sivas, Bitlis, Harpoot, and Trebizond; that either the governor or the vice-governor of each vilayet should be a Christian; that the collection of taxes be on a better basis; with various other reforms in the judicial and administrative departments: especially that torture should be abolished; the gendarmérie to be recruited from Christians as well as Mohammedans, and the practical disarmament of the Kurds. Note the names of these vilayets as they are the centers of the horrible massacres that followed the Porte’s true answer to all its own promises of reform.To this project of reforms the following memorandum was attached:—“The appended scheme, containing the general statement of the modifications which it would be necessary to introduce in regard to the administration, financial and judicial organization of the vilayets mentioned, it has appeared useful to indicate in a separate memorandum certain measures exceeding the scope of an administrative regulation, but which form the very basis of this regulation and the adoption of which by the Porte is a matter of primary importance.”These different points are:1. The eventual reduction of the number of vilayets.2. The guarantee for the selection of the valis.3. Amnesty for Armenians sentenced or in prison on political charges.4. The return of the Armenian emigrants or exiles.5. The final settlement of pending legal proceedings for common law crimes and offences.6. The inspection of prisons and an inquiry into the condition of the prisoners.7. The appointment of a high commission of surveillance for the application of reforms in the provinces.8. The creation of a permanent committee of control at Constantinople.9. Reparation for the loss suffered by the Armenians who were victims of the events at Sassoun, Talori, etc.10. The regularization of matters connected with religious conversion.11. The maintenance and strict application of the rights and privileges conceded to the Armenians.12. The position of the Armenians in the other vilayets of Asiatic Turkey.After much delay the Porte replied that it could not accept the proposals made. Of course not. Why should the Sultan do anything to favor the Armenians or even to prevent the recurrence of these terrible outrages unless compelled to do so by something more than advice! Yet the Sultan would be anxious to know what the three Powers would do about it. He was not kept long in suspense, so far as England was concerned. Orders were issued for the English fleet to proceed to Constantinople, and France and Russia were informed of the fact. The news reached the Sultanand appears to have convinced him that it was not safe to trifle any longer with the demands of the powers. He accordingly telegraphed that he would accede to the principle of reform outlined for him.The Sultan, learning also that the British Cabinet had met to consider Turkey’s reply to the plan of reform for Armenia, submitted by Great Britain, France and Russia, telegraphed to Rustem Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador in London, instructing him to ask the Earl of Kimberly, the British Foreign Minister, to postpone a decision in the matter.The Earl of Kimberly acceded to the request. In the meanwhile the Porte handed to the British, French and Russian Ambassadors a fresh and satisfactory reply, acceding to the principle of control by the Powers, but asking that the period be limited to three years.While these promises were being so freely made, letters from Armenia, in July, represented Turkish cruelty as unabated; the position of affairs never so grave and critical; and the Armenians to have reached the ultimate limit of despair. Yet in August the world was informed that Turkey had decided to accept in their entirety the Armenian reforms demanded by the Powers, and that the acceptance of these reforms was primarily due to the pressure brought to bear on the government by Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador, who communicated to the government a confidential note from Lord Salisbury to the effect that the Porte must accept the proposals of the powers unconditionally, or England would use sharper means than those adopted by Lord Rosebery to settle affairs in Armenia.The summer passed in fruitless and endless negotiations. Later in September a press telegram from London voiced the situation as follows:—“European diplomacy seems already weary of the question, which Turkish diplomacy has handled with an evident ability, based upon temporization and inertia, as well as upon its knowledge of the jealousy existing between the three Powers which proclaim so loudly that they want nothing else but the happiness of the Armenians.“The question has not progressed one iota, despite all the negotiations, memoranda, appointments of commissions, and even the (awful!) rumor, one month ago, of the assembling of the British fleet in Besika Bay, at the entrance of the Dardanelles. England, France and Russia, however, had the way clear before them, if they had been really in accord and seriously willing to accomplish the humanitarian mission they pretended to assume. Article sixty-one of the Berlin Treaty gave the Powers the right to see that the same rights granted to Bulgaria should be granted also to Armenia. This article has remained a dead letter in regard to the latter country since 1878. When the Sassoun atrocities were recently committed, the Powers merely sent to the Porte a memorandum, requesting it to cease its persecution of Armenians. During two or three months the European Ministers at Pera awaited the decision of the Sultan. Whenever they sent their dragomans to the Foreign Minister, Said Pasha caused his secretary to answer in the Spanish manner, ‘hasta la mañana’ (to-morrow a reply will be given). Finally the three Powers thought of using the rights conferred upon them by Article sixty-one, and required Abdul Hamid to consentthat a European Commission of Control should be sent to Armenia, in order to see that reforms be practically applied there. The Sultan will fight stubbornly before accepting them, which would amount to the abandonment of a portion of his sovereignty, and it remains to be seen how much the Powers, jealous of their respective influence at the Porte, are in earnest and how anxious they are promptly to enforce the acceptation of their Control Commission.”The Turks continued to play a waiting game in Armenian affairs. Remembering the treaty of Berlin, they were shrewd enough to play off one Power against another so as to retain absolute control over their internal affairs, though they had forfeited all right to rule by their outrageous and brutal massacres. The Congress of Berlin was at the time a costly thing to the Eastern Christians but was destined to prove almost their utter ruin.The Turks did not find it hard to pick flaws in the plan of administrative reform when they did not intend to have any reform. The whole scheme was without any security against the renewal of the Sassoun massacres. Everybody who was interested in Armenia protested against the plan, but it was the best that mere diplomacy could do.Thus the summer passed filled with plenty of promises, but without any fulfilment, until suddenly the signal was given and the horrors of Sassoun were reënacted throughout all the provinces of Armenia.At a mass meeting of Armenians held in New York, free expression was given to the feeling of horror with which the news of the Turks’ outrages was received there. There seemed to be no doubt in the minds of thesepeople as to the truth of the reports from Asia Minor, and many were of the opinion that still more terrible news would be received. Mr. Dionian presided, and in calling the meeting to order, said that Armenia and Turkey could never be friends, and that Armenia must either be liberated or annihilated.Dr. P. Ayvard also spoke, and then Dr. S. Aparcian offered resolutions, which were unanimously adopted, saying in part:—Resolved, That we most respectfully and appealingly call upon all the great Powers of Europe, and of our adopted and well loved country of America, to the deplorable condition of Armenia, and trust that the moral interests of Europe will demand taking immediate steps to put an end to this rule of anarchy and lawlessness prevailing there, and that the United States of America will give their moral support.Knowing the Turk as they did, the Armenians in this country were prepared for the confirmation of these reports. In due time it came.A prominent Turk laughed when he saw the report, and said it was a mere fabrication, and that if there was any slaughter it was not committed by the Turks. As to the Turks being opposed to the Armenians because of their being Christians, he said: “People who have lived in the Orient know that to be absurd. We have Christians and Jews among us, and as long as they obey the laws of the land they are treated the same as the members of our faith. Of course,” he added, “when people become revolutionists and conspire against our Government, then we take measures to punish them. The Armenians are revolutionists, and their revolutionary societies exist in every city in this country, while the head-centre is at Naples.”The Turk laughed and blamed the Armenian revolutionists. The Porte denied the outrages at first then charged the trouble to the Armenians, until the terrible situation at Trebizond and Erzeroum could no longer be kept from the knowledge of Christendom. The prisons in Trebizond were filled with wounded and helpless Armenians: the Mohammedans were well armed and the governor entirely in sympathy with, even if not the instigator of the outrages.Meanwhile the European manager of the United Press at Constantinople gave the first detailed account of the appalling massacres to which Armenian Christians had been subjected since the Sultan Abdul Hamid gave perfidious assent to the reforms demanded by the European Powers. The harrowing and shameful facts were told on the authority of American Christian men, who witnessed them, and their narrative had the unqualified endorsement of Mr. Terrell, the United States Minister to Turkey. In view of such conclusive testimony to the duplicity and faithlessness of an incorrigible ruler, it seems incredible that Christian peoples will let their rescuing hands be stayed any longer by sordid jealousy and greed, or that they will any longer consent to bear a share of the responsibility for such crimes against humanity. The blood of the slaughtered thousands of their fellow Christians in Armenia cries against them from the ground.By this trustworthy evidence the conclusion was justified that within the six provinces mainly concerned in the proposed reforms, no fewer than fifteen thousand Armenians were assassinated, while the number of those rendered homeless and robbed of all their possessions, did not fall short of two hundred thousand.The places and dates exposed the aim of the hellish atrocities committed, and drove home the guilt to their authors and accomplices. On October 20, the Sultan authorized Kiamil Pasha, his Grand Vizier, to accept the reforms proposed for the Armenian provinces by the European Powers, and to promise that they should be forthwith carried out. On the next day, October 21, when there had been ample time for the reception of orders telegraphed from Constantinople, the Kurds and Turks throughout Armenia, openly incited and assisted by the regular troops, entered on a scheme of wholesale murder and devastation. The purpose of this preconcerted iniquity, as disclosed by its disgraceful antecedents and its horrible results, was to vent upon the helpless Armenians the venom and the spite engendered by enforced submission to the will of the Christian Powers. It was to enforce at one vindictive stroke the programme of extermination devised in 1890, but prosecuted hitherto with some show of secrecy and caution. It was to make of Armenia a solitude, and then with satanic mockery, to offer exact fulfilment of the pledge of peace and of reform.A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum.A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum.All the circumstances showed that with this flagitious rupture of the Sultan’s plighted word, the person directly and primarily chargeable was the Sultan himself. He sanctioned the plot of extermination, if he did not personally concoct it in 1890, the relentless though disavowed execution of which at last provoked the interposition of Christian Powers. No sooner had Kiamil Pasha been reluctantly permitted to agree to the reforms exacted for Armenia, than he was summarily dismissed by Abdul Hamid from the Grand Vizierate, lest he shouldexecute the agreement in good faith. The new Ministers selected by the Sultan were drawn mainly from the scum of Constantinople, and their first act was to protest that time must be given to the Porte for the proper enforcement of the reform project. Time was needed to render reforms superfluous through the sweeping destruction of its intended beneficiaries. It was needed to perpetrate the design of annihilation on a scale of vast proportions. The Sultan well wished to hide his privity to such a devilish transaction, but he dared not disavow his agents, lest they should divulge his instructions. Accordingly, when high Turkish officials, unmistakably implicated in the Armenian enormities, were subjected to the nominal penalty of a recall at the imperative instance of England’s representative, they were decorated and promoted by Abdul Hamid, whose secret aims and wishes were thus betrayed.On November 10, the Kurds made an attack on Harpoot, but were easily repulsed. On November 11, a party of the soldiers and leading Turks met the Kurds in conference, during the progress of which a bugle was sounded, at which signal the soldiers withdrew. The Kurds thereupon advanced with yells. There was no effort on the part of the soldiers and Armenians to resist, and the Turks joined in the killing and plundering. The Armenian school was burned, and then began an attack upon the Christian quarter, the buildings in which were also set on fire. The Christians were without weapons of any sort, and trusted entirely to the Government to protect them. The Armenians remained in the girls’ seminary until that building was set on fire, and then they appealed to the Governor for protection. They obtained a guard of soldiers, all buttwo of whom afterward deserted. These two remained and carried out the orders issued to them, to fight the fires which had been kindled.The burning continued for three days. The Armenians were stripped of everything but their clothing. All the Christian villages around were burned by the Kurds. The outrages continued unchecked until the Government at Constantinople ordered the troops to take action. Fourteen Kurds were then shot, when the murders and pillaging ceased instantly. The districts of Diarbekir, Malatia, Arabkir, Kyin and Palu were made desolate. Thirty-five villages were destroyed, and thousands of the inhabitants embraced Islamism in consequence of the pressure brought to bear upon them.The Turkish troops which were on their way to Zeitoun to suppress the trouble there, were concentrated at Marash, where they awaited the return of the delegation sent to Zeitoun to negotiate with the Armenians in control there for their surrender.The Government said they were projecting more extensive relief work, and would welcome foreign aid through a joint commission.Despite this promise of greater relief, the Government was bent on continuing the work of extermination—all promises to the contrary notwithstanding.The tidal wave of horror and indignation swept over Europe, and found expression in most intense and emphatic speech; it was even felt in the Cabinets of Diplomacy and in Constantinople. There seemed to be more iron in their blood and energy in their action and purpose in their speech.The general situation was not changed, but it wasapparent that a change was about to take place. The representatives of the Powers, some of whom were awaiting instructions from their Governments in regard to the matter of sending additional guardboats into the Bosphorus, seemed to be unanimous in their insistence on the issue of permits for the admission of such boats by the Sultan, and the Ambassadors held a meeting to consider the situation as presented by the Sultan’s refusal to permit the passage of the additional boats through the straits, and to decide on a concerted plan of action.For several days the wires were hot with the assertion that all the Powers were united and determined to carry their demands to a successful termination. The Sultan was unofficially informed that if he continued to maintain his stubborn attitude, a forced entry of the Dardanelles would possibly be made.As previously, and with equal pertinence, at this hour of crisis the continental press devoted much space to the affairs of the Orient, and the Sultan was the recipient of much newspaper advice. One writer in particular urged him to remain master of the situation, and to show himself promptly disposed to fulfil his engagements. In that case the crisis would remain an internal one; but if it should assume an international aspect it would be peacefully adjusted on the basis of the maintenance of the integrity of Turkey which would be asserted by France and Russia, the two Pacific Powers. It was also telegraphed from Constantinople that the Czar, in reply to a personal appeal from the Sultan, consented to waive the Russian demand for a second guardship in the Bosphorus. At the same time she was prepared toresent any aggressive action that England might undertake alone.The Sultan knew very well that there would be no concerted action of the Powers—that England and Russia would never agree as to any joint action, and yet to give color of necessity to his refusal, it was given out that the Powers had decided to depose him, using for this purpose the forces aboard the secondguardshipwhich they demanded should be permitted to enter the Bosphorus. This was to stir up the populace against the Powers. Then to furnish another excuse the report was circulated that the Sultan was in daily fear of sharing the fate of Ishmail Pasha at the hands of the Softas and the Young Turkish party.The Sultan’s letter to Lord Salisbury was often quoted as a confirmation of the report that the Sultan was panic stricken. It will be recalled that Lord Salisbury in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet on November 9th, declared that, if the Sultan will not heartily resolve to do justice to them, the most ingenious constitution that can be framed will not avail to protect the Armenians; that through the Sultan alone can any real permanent blessings be conferred on his subjects. “What if the Sultan,” exclaimed the British Prime Minister—“What if the Sultan is not persuaded? I am bound to say that the news reaching us from Constantinople does not give much cheerfulness in that respect. You will readily understand that I can only speak briefly on such a matter. It would be dangerous to express the opinions that are on my lips lest they injure the cause of peace and good order.”These words seemed to be freighted with someominous significance, and they would have been, if there had been any purpose to make them mean anything.In a remarkable letter to Lord Salisbury which he read publicly at a conference in London, the Sultan used a most beseeching tone to show that the possible dissolution of his Empire was lying heavy on his mind. It sounded like a most abject plea for mercy, a cry for the postponement of the fate which the Powers seemed to be preparing for the terrified monarch. In this note the Sultan said:“I repeat, I will execute the reforms. I will take the paper containing them, place it before me and see that it is put in force. This is my earnest determination and I give my word of honor, I wish Lord Salisbury to know this and I beg and desire his Lordship, having confidence in these declarations, to make another speech by virtue of the friendly feeling and disposition he has for me and my country. I shall await the result of this message with the greatest anxiety.”It will be noted that the Sultan’s communication contained no denial that there are wrongs to be remedied in the administration of his government in Armenia and elsewhere. There is no plea that the terms of solemn treaty obligations have been observed. The letter is a tacit confession that the interposition of the Powers as far as it had gone was justifiable and that the reports of the atrocities in Asia Minor, which were at first strenuously denied by the Turkish Government, were true.It was only a shrewd plea of helplessness to persuade the Powers not to enforce their demands and nothing more. In his rejoinder to the Sultan’s letter, LordSalisbury substantially admits the hopelessness of reform under the Sultan’s government as now constituted and administered.A few days after this correspondence the fear of the Sultan seemed to have vanished, and he was brave enough to refuse permission to the Powers to send extra guardboats into the Bosphorus.At this time it looked as if Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador, would act alone, and that he really meant to force the passage of the Dardanelles.But the Sultan knew he would not dare to do it, and he knew also that the Powers were not agreed to use force. England proved herself impotent before the crafty diplomacy of thetimidSultan.It is folly at this day to pretend to believe that the Sultan ever intended of his “spontaneous good-will” to protect the Armenians even as human beings from the cruelty of Kurd or Turkish officials.The horrors of December and January give the lie direct to every promise made at Constantinople. The Sultan had outwitted England, if indeed England ever were in earnest, and by circulating a rumor of a Turco-Russian alliance, most effectually checked all danger of intervention by force—the only argument to which the Turk will ever yield—and proceeded to commit yet greater crimes if that were possible.Under the very eyes of the Russian, English, and French delegates at Moush, the witnesses who had the courage to speak the truth to the representatives of the Powers were thrown into prison, and not a hand was raised to protect them: and within a stone’s throw of the foreign consuls and the missionaries, loyal Armenians were being hung up by the heels, the hair of their headsand beards plucked out one by one, their bodies branded with red-hot irons, and defiled in beastly ways, and their wives and daughters dishonored before their very eyes. And all that philanthropic England has to offer its protégés, for whose protection she holds Cyprus as a pledge, is eloquent sympathy.She received Cyprus by secret convention, and now holds it as the price of innocent blood. The rewards of iniquity are in her hand. It was worse than folly; it was the refinement of cruelty to send a commission to investigate the outrages in Armenia, thereby irritating the Turk to the height of possible fury as his deeds were proclaimed to the world and then leave him free to wreak his compressed wrath upon the Christians for whose protection no hand would be uplifted. The Powers saw Armenia in misery, bleeding, dying, and passed by on the other side, saying, we are bound by the terms of the Berlin Treaty not to interfere with Turkey in the administration of her domestic affairs; we are sorry for you; we wish the Sultan would listen to our advice and not be quite so severe in his chastisement, but really you must have given him some cause for his anger.Yes, such provocation as the lamb gave to the wolf that charged it with soiling the water, though it was drinking much farther down the stream.The humiliation of England as one of the Great Powers was complete when in the House of Commons March 16th, in reply to questions that were put to him Mr. Curzon Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs was obliged to say that reports received by the Government confirmed the statements that a great number of forced conversions from Christianity to Islamism were stillbeing made in Asia Minor. Under the circumstances of cruelty and systematic debauchery of defenceless Christian women through the devastated districts of Anatolia, he said, the British Consuls in Asia Minor had been instructed to report such cases, and representations in regard to them were constantly being made to the Government in Constantinople.Representations were constantly being made! What did the Porte care for representations? How England was compelled to quaff the contempt even of the Turk who laughs or sneers as his mood may be over these representations of English Consuls and missionaries. The Sublime Porte—which means the Sultan—cabled the Turkish Legation at Washington to deny most emphatically the statements that appeared in the American religious press regarding forcible conversions to Islam.The Sublime Porte affirmed that “the stories related therein are mere inventions of revolutionists, and their friends intended to attract the sympathy of credulous people. There is no forcible conversion to Islamism in Turkey and no animosity against Protestantism.” This is sublime impudence. The statements thus contradicted, represented conditions certified to by official reports, by careful investigations made by correspondents of newspapers in England and the United States, and by hundreds of private letters from persons in the region where the massacres occurred. Moreover, this declaration of the Sultan is contradicted by centuries of Mohammedan history, by the ruins of ancient churches throughout all Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and by daily prayer concerning the Christians:—“Oh Allah make their children orphans, * * givethem and their families * * their women, their children, * * their possessions and their race, their wealth and their lands as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures.”The Softas are, properly speaking, the pupils who are engaged in the study of Mussulman theology and law in the medresses, or schools attached to the mosques, the range of their studies, however, being practically limited to learning to read the Koran. The Softas take their name from a corruption of the past-participle soukhte—burned—applied to them because they are supposed to be consumed by the love of study of sacred things, and devoted to a life of meditation. The Softas follow their studies in the school building, sleeping and eating at theimaretts, where free lodgings and food are provided for them out of the legacies of the pious. If their families can afford to do so, they furnish them with clothing and bedding; if not, these are given to them from the same charitable fund. The number of Softas is very large, for one reason because of their exemption from military service. After long-continued study of Arabic, and the Koran and its commentaries, the Softa, after an examination which, though nominally arduous, is almost invariably passed successfully, takes the title of Khodja.The Khodja—khavadje, reader or singer—a scholar who has taken his diploma in the medresse, teaches for several years, in fact till he has conducted a class of Softas through the same course he had himself taken, when, on application to the Ministry of Worship, at whose head is the Sheikh-ul-Islam, and, after a severe examination, he receives the title of Ulema. The Mussulman does not arrive at this dignity until he hasreached the age of thirty or thirty-five. It confers numerous privileges, for those doctors escape military service, unless in the event of the djihad, or sacred war, and from their ranks are filled the Judgeships, the curacies (so to speak) of the mosques, the professorships in the medresses, the trusteeships connected with the administration of the trust funds for pious and charitable purposes, etc., etc.The Imaums—who are the real priests and have charge of the public religious service—are selected from among the Ulema. The title of Imaum comes from the Arabic, and is the equivalent of leader or outpost. There is as a rule one Imaum to each mosque of minor importance—messdjid—while two, or, at most, three, one of whom is designated the chief authority, are appointed to the principal mosques—djamis. Even the Ulema—the word is plural and signifies wise men—are subject to military duty when a holy war is proclaimed.The term Softa includes all the grades above mentioned, from the Imaum, or priest, to the Softa proper, or mere students of the Koran. They are usually distinguishable in Turkey by wearing a white turban around their fez, or skull cap. Sultan Abdul Medjid some years ago endeavored to induce his subjects to wear a European dress, and succeeded so far that almost without exception every one except the very lowest in the public service adopted it. But the Softas to a man retain the old-fashioned baggy, slouchy dress which Abdul Medjid wished to get rid of.Who can believe that through fear of the uprising of a few thousand Softas, the Sultan planned a fanatical uprising of the Kurds in distant Armenia. How couldthat benefit the Softas save as it were permitted them to beat, kill and plunder the Armenians in Stamboul?If the fear of the Softas prompted it, still what a heartless wretch to doom seventy-five thousand to death and hundreds of thousands to starvation and outrage when to admit the fleets of Europe would have protected him from any possible insurrection in Constantinople.The Turkish Government itself was directly and actively responsible for the outrages in Asia Minor; it not merely permitted, but actually ordered them. But there was in Constantinople itself a most serious conspiracy against the dynasty, which threatened to turn out the Sultan and revolutionize the whole form of government. As a sort of counter-irritant, which haply might cure this, the Government might have indeed resorted to any extravagance or conduct elsewhere. More than one monarch has begun a foreign war to quell disaffection at home. Why should not the Porte think a general harrying of the Armenians a ready way of allaying incipient disloyalty among the Faithful?This conspiracy was made by what was known as the Young Turkey party. It included most of the Softas, and students in all colleges, and many lawyers, doctors, officers of the army and navy, and even civil servants of the Porte. Back of these were multitudes of the general populace. There were many who denied Abdul Hamid’s legal right to be Sultan while his elder brother was living. There were others, numbered by millions, who held that the Caliph must be an Arab and that the Sultan was therefore not to be recognized as the true Commander of the Faithful. Moreover, many, indeed all the leaders of Young Turkey, demandedthe carrying out of the Hatt of 1877, establishing a Constitution and Parliament, and denounced the suppression of that promised system as a gross breach of faith and wrong to the people of the Empire. It may not be generally remembered; men’s memories are so short; but it is a fact that a constitutional government was once officially proclaimed in Turkey. The plan was conceived by Midhat Pasha, then Grand Vizier, and formally approved by the Sultan. A Constitution was promulgated. A Parliament, consisting of a Senate and an elective Assembly, was created, and its first session was opened by Abdul Hamid in person on March 19, 1877. Later in the same year its second session was opened, and the Sultan publicly declared that the Constitution should thenceforth be the supreme law of the land, in practice as well as in theory. But before the end of the year one designing politician managed to get Parliament involved in a corrupt job, and then, to avoid investigation, persuaded the Sultan to issue a decree abrogating the Constitution and abolishing Parliament! It was acoupd’état, and it was successful; thanks largely to the indifference of the Powers, and especially of England.The Young Turkey leaders demanded the restoration of the Constitution. In order to accomplish that they proposed to get rid, in some way, of the Sultan who first decreed and then abrogated that instrument. There were threats of assassination, and something like a reign of terror prevailed at Yildiz Kiosk. The Sultan took as many precautions against treachery as ever did the Russian Czar. The man who brought about the abolition of the Parliament by his rascality was a cabinet minister. He, too, was threatened withdeath. The strictest repression was practiced. The merest hint was enough to cause a man’s arrest and summary execution. But in spite of all, the revolutionary movement grew. Mysterious placards appeared on the walls, calling for fulfilment of the Hatt of 1877. The name of Midhat Pasha, who suffered martyrdom for having given Turkey a Constitution, was spoken now and then, in whispers only, but in tones of grateful reverence. A whisper of “The Constitution,” too, went round. Army and navy were becoming secretly leavened with the idea. The Sultan and his Ministers did not know whom to trust.And now that we have seen what a fiasco this brilliantly projected great naval demonstration proved itself to be; and how cleverly the Sultan played his pawns against Castles and Kings and Queens, and checkmated all the Powers of Europe, we will leave him in his hell of infamy bathed in the blood of nearly a hundred thousand slain, with the voices of agonized and outraged mothers and daughters raining maledictions upon his accursed head, while we try to be patient until the rod of the Almighty shall smite the wicked, till the day of reckoning and of vengeance shall come in the day of the Lord at hand. We leave the Sultan in his palace to the companionship, perhaps the guidance, of Khalil Rifaat Pasha, the new Grand Vizier, the voice of history and the righteous judgments of God, but as for Islam, as a system of government over Christian populations, we can but pray daily for its speedy, utter and final overthrow.

CHAPTER VIII.THE SULTAN ABDUL HAMID.It does not lie within the plan of this volume to review at any length the history of Turkey, or to sketch the lives of the Sultans who have reigned during the century; it will answer, however, to make our work intelligible and clear, if the life of the reigning Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II. is presented briefly.He is the second son of Abdul Medjid, who was Sultan from 1839 to 1861. He was born September 5th, 1842; and his mother having died when he was quite young, he was adopted by his father’s second wife, herself childless, who was very wealthy and made him her heir. His early life was quiet and uneventful; his boyhood was a continual scene of merry idleness. His education consisting mostly in amusements and tricks devised for his entertainment by the court slaves: and in an unusually early and complete initiation into the depravities of harem life. Indeed up to manhood all the learning he had acquired, amounted to but little more than the ability to read in the Arabic and Turkish tongues. His mother had died of consumption and his constitution was delicate. He had inherited a taste for drink, but his doctor who was a Greek, assured him it would be his destruction. “Then I will never touch wine or liquor again,” said Abdul Hamid, and he kept his word.The turning point in his life came, when in 1867 hisUncle Abdul Aziz, then Sultan, took his own son and his two nephews, Murad and Hamid, to the Paris Exposition, England and Germany. He saw with a quick and appreciative eye. He acquired a taste for political geography, and for European dress, customs and interests. What he then learned was to modify very considerably the subsequent course of his life. From April, 1876, both he and his brother Murad were kept under strict surveillance and not allowed to take any part in the political movements going on in Constantinople.Abdul Aziz, the reigning Sultan, was determined to defy the Turkish law of succession and proclaim his son in June, as heir presumptive to the throne, thus displacing Murad and Hamid, who both were before him in rights of succession. At this crisis, Midhat Pasha, the leading and most progressive statesman and strong adherent of Murad, planned a revolution and Abdul Aziz, was deposed and Murad was proclaimed Sultan, May 31st, and so recognized by the Western powers: but he was never girded with the sword of Othman in the Mosque of Eyout, a ceremony equivalent to a Western Coronation.His ill-health, increased by excessive use of liquor and the mistaken treatment of his physician, rendered him mentally incapable of ruling: though a celebrated Dr. Liedersdorf, sent for from Vienna, is said to have stated, “If I had Sultan Murad under my own care in Vienna, I would have him all right in six weeks.”In consequence of this mental indisposition, Murad V. was deposed August 30th, and Abdul Hamid II. was proclaimed on August 31st, and girded with thesword of Othman a few days later. He was then living in a small palace in the Valley of Sweet Waters, which he inherited from his father. He was very fond of agriculture, and amused himself by cultivating a model farm. To his mother, who is said to have been an Armenian from Georgia, in Russia, he owed a quality very rare in the family of the Sultans, the spirit of economy. He never allowed his expenses to exceed his income before he came to the throne. In this charming retreat he resided quietly with his wife and two children, all eating at the same table, and showing in his dress and surroundings his preference for European modes of life. The only concession he made to Orientalism in personal dress, was in wearing the “fez,” which he disliked, but continued to wear as the necessary token of his nationality.Six weeks after he was proclaimed Sultan, it was announced that a scheme of reform for the whole Ottoman Empire, was in course of preparation. It was published in January, and while it was a much less sweeping reform than Midhat wished, it provided for a Senate and a House of Representatives, which last was to take control of the finances, the system of taxation was to be revised and better laws were to be enacted for the provinces.Election to the lower house was to be by universal suffrage; for the upper house electors were restricted to two classes: the noble and the educated.Abdul Hamid cordially disapproved of this check on the absolute power enjoyed by predecessors.He was willing to do justice and to temper it with mercy, but to be placed in the position of a servant to his people was odious to himself.At a council held, when only his other ministers were present, the Sultan asked, what should be done with Midhat Pasha. Two of those present said: “Let him die.” But Abdul Hamid was not bloodthirsty, hence he only banished him to Arabia where two years later he was poisoned.The Sultan was restive under the constitution and the Pashas, against whose cruelty and extortion the most of the reforms were aimed, sided with their sovereign. In 1875, Midhat Pasha had outlined the situation thus to the English Ambassador:“The Sultan’s Empire is being rapidly brought to destruction; corruption has reached a pitch that it has never before attained. The service of the state is starved, while untold millions are being poured into the palaces and the provinces are being ruined by the uncontrolled exactions of the Governors who purchase their appointments at the palace: and nothing can save the country but a complete change of system.”And the very worst governed portion of all his Empire was Armenia. We are officially told that its government for the last thirty years has been horrible.In an Armenian village recently plundered by bandits, the famous Hungarian Professor, Arminius Vambery, an intimate friend of the Sultan, once asked, “Why do you not get help from the Governor of Erzeroum?” “Because,” answered the villagers, “he is at the head of the robbers. God alone and his representative on earth—the Russian Czar, can help us.” This brigandage, is one of the greatest curses of the Turkish Empire, exercising a rule of terror and oppression, and now legalized, apparently, by the transformation ofthe Kurdish horsemen—robbers—into the Hamidieh—the Sultan’s own Cavalry.Types and Costumes—Kurdish Gentlemen.Types and Costumes—Kurdish Gentlemen.Such being the spirit of the Pashas who had grown rich by plunder and official theft, of course they were opposed to the Constitution, and by the will of the Sultan it was abrogated after two sessions had been held. This was soon followed by the dismissal of the Ministers who had formed the triumvirate, and the Sultan resumed his despotic and absolute sway. Assured that England would not suffer the dismemberment of his Empire we have seen him refusing to guarantee the enforcement of promised reforms and provoking the war with Russia; but as we have already told this story, we will give some pictures of the Sultan as drawn by his admirers; leaving the horrors of the Armenian massacres to bear witness as to the honesty of his professed devotion to the welfare of his Christian subjects and his promises to observe the terms of said treaty in the amelioration of the condition of all who were suffering under the murderous oppression of Kurds and Circassians.Professor Vambery, a most remarkable linguist who writes and speaks all the languages of Europe like a native, spent some time in Turkey a few years ago and was received into closest conference by the Sultan.—Here are extracts from what he has written of him:“I must own that the education of Abdul Hamid, like that of all Oriental princes was defective, very defective indeed; but an iron will, good judgment and rare acuteness have made good this short-coming; and he not only knows the multifarious relations and intricacies of his own much tried Empire but is thoroughly conversant with European politics: and I amnot going far from fact when I state that it has been solely the moderation and self-restraint of Sultan Abdul Hamid which has saved us hitherto from a general European conflagration. As to his personal character, I have found the present ruler of the Ottoman Empire of great politeness, amiability and extreme gentleness. When sitting opposite to him during my private interviews, I could not avoid being struck by his extremely modest attitude, by his quiet manners and by the bashful look of his eyes. * * At his table, though wine is served to European guests, it is not offered to the Sultan or any other Mohammedan.“His views on religion, politics and education have a decidedly modern tone, and yet he is a firm believer in the tenets of his religion, and likes to assemble around him the foremost Mollahs and pious Sheiks on whom he profusely bestows imperial favors; but he does not forget from time to time to send presents to the Greek and the Armenian patriarchates, and nothing is more ludicrous than to hear this prince accused by a certain class of politicians in Europe of being a fanatic and an enemy to Christians,—a prince who by appointing a Christian for his chief medical attendant and a Christian for his chief minister of finance, did not hesitate to intrust most important duties to non-Mohammedans. * * *”[Doubtless he wanted the best men he could find as his physician and minister of finance, and these men were found among the Christians. Let the last year tell whether he be the friend or the enemy of the Christians.]“In reference to the charge of ruthless despotism laid upon Sultan Abdul Hamid in connection with hisabrogation of the charter granted during the first months of his reign, I will quote his own words. He said to me one day:—‘In Europe the soil was prepared centuries ago for liberal institutions, and now I am asked to transplant a sapling to the foreign, stony and rugged ground of Asiatic life. Let me clear away the thistles, and stones, let me till the soil, and provide for irrigation because rain is very scarce in Asia and then we may transport the new plant; and believe me that nobody will be more delighted at its thriving than myself.’”Thus far the professor. And now, it is to be wondered if he calls the extermination of the Armenians the clearing away of the thistles and does he propose to irrigate the soil of Armenia with the blood of its noblest race. Is he not rather slitting the veins of Asia Minor and pouring out its heart’s best blood?That the Sultan was a warm personal friend of Gen. Lew Wallace does not make him any the less a despot; neither because Hon. S. S. Cox, who succeeded Gen. Wallace was an admirer of the Sultan as the following quotation will show; does that make him the less a fanatic and the most remorseless shedder of blood that Europe has seen since the days of Tamerlane.“The Sultan is of middle size and of Turkish type. He wears a full black beard, is of a dark complexion and has very expressive eyes. His forehead is large, indicative of intellectual power. He is very gracious in manner though at times seemingly a little embarrassed. * * *“As Caliph he is the divine representative of Mohammed. His family line runs back with unbroken links to the thirteenth century. He is one of the most industrious,painstaking, honest, conscientious and vigilant rulers of the world. He is amiable and just withal. His every word betokens a good heart and a sagacious head. [What a comment the horrors of the many months just past furnishes to this flattering estimate a Mohammedian conscience!]“He is an early riser. After he leaves his seraglio and has partaken of a slight repast his secretaries wait on him with portfolios. He peruses all the official correspondence and current reports. He gives up his time till noon to work of this character. Then his breakfast is served. After that he walks in his park and gardens, looks in at his aviaries, perhaps stirs up his menagerie, makes an inspection of his two hundred horses in their fine stables, indulges his little daughters in a row upon the fairy lake which he has had constructed, and it may be attends a performance at the little theatre provided for his children in the palace. At 5 P. M. having accomplished most of his official work, he mounts his favorite white horse, Ferhan, a war-scarred veteran for a ride in the park. The park of the palace Yildiz where he lives comprises some thousand acres. It is surrounded by high walls and protected by the soldiery.”But all this does not tell us what the man at heart is any more than if some flatterer of Nero should expatiate on the esthetic taste of Nero and his love of the fine arts and his skill as a violinist when he sat at night in his marble palace and enjoyed the blazing magnificence of Rome. It is as foreign to the present situation as if some one should praise the skill of Nero’s horsemanship as he drove his mettled steeds with firm reins along the course lighted by the blazing torchesof the tar-besmeared Christians, whom he accused of having set the city on fire.The persistence with which the Sultan has followed out his purpose of exterminating the Armenians, in the face of a horrified and indignant Christendom, marks his audacity and contempt of Christians as sublime in height, as infernal in spirit, and bottomless in its cruelty.Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire can scarcely find polite words enough to express his contempt for the forms of early Christianity and praised the Turks as possessing the rarest of qualities when he said: “The Turks are distinguished for their patience, discipline, sobriety, bravery, honesty and modesty,” and Hon. Sunset Cox echoed the same when he wrote, “It is because of these solid characteristics, and in spite of the harem, in spite of autocratic power, in spite of the Janissary and the seraglio that this race and rule remain potent in the Orient. His heart (the heart of the present Sultan) is touched by suffering, and his views lean strongly to that toleration of the various races and religions of his realm, which other and more boastful nations would do well to imitate.”The facts given in the chapters on The Reign of Terror will be sufficient commentary on such praise.Probably no building in all Europe has so many associations with tragical events as that of the palace of the Sultan of Turkey—the autocrat whose rule is absolute over more than thirty million subjects. From this palace go forth the edicts which involve the death of thousands and which control the governments of distant provinces. Fifty years ago the Sultans governed a huge territory in Europe, but one province after anotherhas been freed from their yoke, until Turkey in Europe has dwindled in size to less than half its former area. But the Asiatic possession of the Sultan have not diminished, and the events in Armenia which have recently horrified the whole world, show what that possession means. Nor are these massacres a new or unparalleled feature of Turkish rule. Similar horrors have been perpetrated before under the cognizance of the Sultans and the only reason why the indignation now aroused on the subject is deeper and more intense, is that it is now impossible to conceal them, and in the days of the telegraph and cheap newspapers they are set in the light of publicity. The Turk is no worse now than he has always been, and is only trying to govern at the end of the nineteenth century as he governed in the sixteenth. As an eminent writer has said: “The Turk is still the aboriginal savage encamped on the ruins of a civilization which he destroyed.”In some respects Abdul Hamid is better than his predecessors, and until the reports of the Armenian horrors were published, he was believed to be a great deal better; but they have proved that he has the same nature, and is at heart as fierce and relentless as they. The character of the man is of so much greater moment to his subjects than in other lands, because of the utter absence of even the semblance of constitutional government. The government of Turkey is a despotism pure and simple. It is tempered only by the dread of assassination or deposition, and even those calamities may come rather from a wise and merciful policy than from massacre. The Pashas who surround the Sultan, the successors of those who deposed his uncle and his brother, applaud the atrocities,and are willing instruments in the perpetration of them. The danger to the Sultan’s person is far more likely to come through weakness and lack of vigor in persecution than from indignation at wholesale slaughter. The Sultan fully appreciates this fact, and lives in constant dread of treachery.An interesting story of the present Sultan is related by Mr. W. T. Stead, in an article in hisReview of Reviews, which in some measure explains the singular mixture in his character of fanaticism, such as that which produced the Armenian massacres, with the marked ability and intelligence he displays in the conduct of national affairs. It appears that when he was a mere youth, he was conspicuous even in Constantinople, which is notorious for its immorality, for the gross excesses of his private life. There was then little probability of his ever ascending the throne, and as he was condemned by his position to a life of idleness, he plunged into all the wickedness of the capital, and lived a life of debauchery. Suddenly he changed his course. He quitted his evil ways and became a devout follower of Mohammed, was attentive at the Mosque and gave all his thoughts to his religion. From that time until now his religious enthusiasm has been the most prominent feature of his character. But with the change came a fierce intolerance, a desire that others should follow his example and determination, evinced since his accession, that in his own dominions no enemy of the Prophet, nor any who did not avow themselves his followers, should have peace or rest until they accepted the faith. This spirit accounts for the crusade against the Armenians whom he hates because they are Christians.The real cause for all the trouble in the Turkish Empire will be found to lie within the spirit and purpose of the Sultan himself. His conduct towards the Powers will serve to most abundantly confirm this view.The condition of Armenia under Turkish rule has for many years been a scandal to Christendom. After the horrors of the Blood bath of Sassoun had been made known to the world a commission of the Powers were sent to investigate and report on the massacres which had been perpetrated.The investigation of the latest atrocities showed that the Armenians had been wantonly tortured and murdered, and that indescribable atrocities had been perpetrated. Men, women, and children were proved to have been hacked to pieces, and no respect had been shown to age or sex. Whole villages had been depopulated, and the fact of any community being Christian seemed to have been sufficient to provoke the murderous hostility of the authorities. Where the Turks did not commit the outrages themselves, they remained inactive while the Kurds committed them, and their inactivity amounted to connivance, because the Armenians are not allowed to arm themselves for their own protection. There was legitimate grounds for foreign powers urging reforms upon the Sultan, as in 1878, when the Berlin Congress was inclined to strip him of his Armenian provinces, he promised that Armenia should be governed better than it had been, and England became sponsor for the performance of his promises. Under those conditions the Sultan was allowed to retain the provinces, and his failure to effect the reforms was therefore a distinct breach of faith. TheAmbassadors of England, France and Russia accordingly presented to the Sultan on May 11th a demand for twelve specific changes in the government of Armenia. The scheme outlined included the appointment of a High Commissioner, with whom should be associated a commission to sit at Constantinople, for the purpose of carrying out all reforms. The full details of the plan were not made public, but among the suggestions made were these: The appointment of governors and vice-governors in six Armenian vilayets—Van, Erzeroum, Sivas, Bitlis, Harpoot, and Trebizond; that either the governor or the vice-governor of each vilayet should be a Christian; that the collection of taxes be on a better basis; with various other reforms in the judicial and administrative departments: especially that torture should be abolished; the gendarmérie to be recruited from Christians as well as Mohammedans, and the practical disarmament of the Kurds. Note the names of these vilayets as they are the centers of the horrible massacres that followed the Porte’s true answer to all its own promises of reform.To this project of reforms the following memorandum was attached:—“The appended scheme, containing the general statement of the modifications which it would be necessary to introduce in regard to the administration, financial and judicial organization of the vilayets mentioned, it has appeared useful to indicate in a separate memorandum certain measures exceeding the scope of an administrative regulation, but which form the very basis of this regulation and the adoption of which by the Porte is a matter of primary importance.”These different points are:1. The eventual reduction of the number of vilayets.2. The guarantee for the selection of the valis.3. Amnesty for Armenians sentenced or in prison on political charges.4. The return of the Armenian emigrants or exiles.5. The final settlement of pending legal proceedings for common law crimes and offences.6. The inspection of prisons and an inquiry into the condition of the prisoners.7. The appointment of a high commission of surveillance for the application of reforms in the provinces.8. The creation of a permanent committee of control at Constantinople.9. Reparation for the loss suffered by the Armenians who were victims of the events at Sassoun, Talori, etc.10. The regularization of matters connected with religious conversion.11. The maintenance and strict application of the rights and privileges conceded to the Armenians.12. The position of the Armenians in the other vilayets of Asiatic Turkey.After much delay the Porte replied that it could not accept the proposals made. Of course not. Why should the Sultan do anything to favor the Armenians or even to prevent the recurrence of these terrible outrages unless compelled to do so by something more than advice! Yet the Sultan would be anxious to know what the three Powers would do about it. He was not kept long in suspense, so far as England was concerned. Orders were issued for the English fleet to proceed to Constantinople, and France and Russia were informed of the fact. The news reached the Sultanand appears to have convinced him that it was not safe to trifle any longer with the demands of the powers. He accordingly telegraphed that he would accede to the principle of reform outlined for him.The Sultan, learning also that the British Cabinet had met to consider Turkey’s reply to the plan of reform for Armenia, submitted by Great Britain, France and Russia, telegraphed to Rustem Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador in London, instructing him to ask the Earl of Kimberly, the British Foreign Minister, to postpone a decision in the matter.The Earl of Kimberly acceded to the request. In the meanwhile the Porte handed to the British, French and Russian Ambassadors a fresh and satisfactory reply, acceding to the principle of control by the Powers, but asking that the period be limited to three years.While these promises were being so freely made, letters from Armenia, in July, represented Turkish cruelty as unabated; the position of affairs never so grave and critical; and the Armenians to have reached the ultimate limit of despair. Yet in August the world was informed that Turkey had decided to accept in their entirety the Armenian reforms demanded by the Powers, and that the acceptance of these reforms was primarily due to the pressure brought to bear on the government by Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador, who communicated to the government a confidential note from Lord Salisbury to the effect that the Porte must accept the proposals of the powers unconditionally, or England would use sharper means than those adopted by Lord Rosebery to settle affairs in Armenia.The summer passed in fruitless and endless negotiations. Later in September a press telegram from London voiced the situation as follows:—“European diplomacy seems already weary of the question, which Turkish diplomacy has handled with an evident ability, based upon temporization and inertia, as well as upon its knowledge of the jealousy existing between the three Powers which proclaim so loudly that they want nothing else but the happiness of the Armenians.“The question has not progressed one iota, despite all the negotiations, memoranda, appointments of commissions, and even the (awful!) rumor, one month ago, of the assembling of the British fleet in Besika Bay, at the entrance of the Dardanelles. England, France and Russia, however, had the way clear before them, if they had been really in accord and seriously willing to accomplish the humanitarian mission they pretended to assume. Article sixty-one of the Berlin Treaty gave the Powers the right to see that the same rights granted to Bulgaria should be granted also to Armenia. This article has remained a dead letter in regard to the latter country since 1878. When the Sassoun atrocities were recently committed, the Powers merely sent to the Porte a memorandum, requesting it to cease its persecution of Armenians. During two or three months the European Ministers at Pera awaited the decision of the Sultan. Whenever they sent their dragomans to the Foreign Minister, Said Pasha caused his secretary to answer in the Spanish manner, ‘hasta la mañana’ (to-morrow a reply will be given). Finally the three Powers thought of using the rights conferred upon them by Article sixty-one, and required Abdul Hamid to consentthat a European Commission of Control should be sent to Armenia, in order to see that reforms be practically applied there. The Sultan will fight stubbornly before accepting them, which would amount to the abandonment of a portion of his sovereignty, and it remains to be seen how much the Powers, jealous of their respective influence at the Porte, are in earnest and how anxious they are promptly to enforce the acceptation of their Control Commission.”The Turks continued to play a waiting game in Armenian affairs. Remembering the treaty of Berlin, they were shrewd enough to play off one Power against another so as to retain absolute control over their internal affairs, though they had forfeited all right to rule by their outrageous and brutal massacres. The Congress of Berlin was at the time a costly thing to the Eastern Christians but was destined to prove almost their utter ruin.The Turks did not find it hard to pick flaws in the plan of administrative reform when they did not intend to have any reform. The whole scheme was without any security against the renewal of the Sassoun massacres. Everybody who was interested in Armenia protested against the plan, but it was the best that mere diplomacy could do.Thus the summer passed filled with plenty of promises, but without any fulfilment, until suddenly the signal was given and the horrors of Sassoun were reënacted throughout all the provinces of Armenia.At a mass meeting of Armenians held in New York, free expression was given to the feeling of horror with which the news of the Turks’ outrages was received there. There seemed to be no doubt in the minds of thesepeople as to the truth of the reports from Asia Minor, and many were of the opinion that still more terrible news would be received. Mr. Dionian presided, and in calling the meeting to order, said that Armenia and Turkey could never be friends, and that Armenia must either be liberated or annihilated.Dr. P. Ayvard also spoke, and then Dr. S. Aparcian offered resolutions, which were unanimously adopted, saying in part:—Resolved, That we most respectfully and appealingly call upon all the great Powers of Europe, and of our adopted and well loved country of America, to the deplorable condition of Armenia, and trust that the moral interests of Europe will demand taking immediate steps to put an end to this rule of anarchy and lawlessness prevailing there, and that the United States of America will give their moral support.Knowing the Turk as they did, the Armenians in this country were prepared for the confirmation of these reports. In due time it came.A prominent Turk laughed when he saw the report, and said it was a mere fabrication, and that if there was any slaughter it was not committed by the Turks. As to the Turks being opposed to the Armenians because of their being Christians, he said: “People who have lived in the Orient know that to be absurd. We have Christians and Jews among us, and as long as they obey the laws of the land they are treated the same as the members of our faith. Of course,” he added, “when people become revolutionists and conspire against our Government, then we take measures to punish them. The Armenians are revolutionists, and their revolutionary societies exist in every city in this country, while the head-centre is at Naples.”The Turk laughed and blamed the Armenian revolutionists. The Porte denied the outrages at first then charged the trouble to the Armenians, until the terrible situation at Trebizond and Erzeroum could no longer be kept from the knowledge of Christendom. The prisons in Trebizond were filled with wounded and helpless Armenians: the Mohammedans were well armed and the governor entirely in sympathy with, even if not the instigator of the outrages.Meanwhile the European manager of the United Press at Constantinople gave the first detailed account of the appalling massacres to which Armenian Christians had been subjected since the Sultan Abdul Hamid gave perfidious assent to the reforms demanded by the European Powers. The harrowing and shameful facts were told on the authority of American Christian men, who witnessed them, and their narrative had the unqualified endorsement of Mr. Terrell, the United States Minister to Turkey. In view of such conclusive testimony to the duplicity and faithlessness of an incorrigible ruler, it seems incredible that Christian peoples will let their rescuing hands be stayed any longer by sordid jealousy and greed, or that they will any longer consent to bear a share of the responsibility for such crimes against humanity. The blood of the slaughtered thousands of their fellow Christians in Armenia cries against them from the ground.By this trustworthy evidence the conclusion was justified that within the six provinces mainly concerned in the proposed reforms, no fewer than fifteen thousand Armenians were assassinated, while the number of those rendered homeless and robbed of all their possessions, did not fall short of two hundred thousand.The places and dates exposed the aim of the hellish atrocities committed, and drove home the guilt to their authors and accomplices. On October 20, the Sultan authorized Kiamil Pasha, his Grand Vizier, to accept the reforms proposed for the Armenian provinces by the European Powers, and to promise that they should be forthwith carried out. On the next day, October 21, when there had been ample time for the reception of orders telegraphed from Constantinople, the Kurds and Turks throughout Armenia, openly incited and assisted by the regular troops, entered on a scheme of wholesale murder and devastation. The purpose of this preconcerted iniquity, as disclosed by its disgraceful antecedents and its horrible results, was to vent upon the helpless Armenians the venom and the spite engendered by enforced submission to the will of the Christian Powers. It was to enforce at one vindictive stroke the programme of extermination devised in 1890, but prosecuted hitherto with some show of secrecy and caution. It was to make of Armenia a solitude, and then with satanic mockery, to offer exact fulfilment of the pledge of peace and of reform.A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum.A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum.All the circumstances showed that with this flagitious rupture of the Sultan’s plighted word, the person directly and primarily chargeable was the Sultan himself. He sanctioned the plot of extermination, if he did not personally concoct it in 1890, the relentless though disavowed execution of which at last provoked the interposition of Christian Powers. No sooner had Kiamil Pasha been reluctantly permitted to agree to the reforms exacted for Armenia, than he was summarily dismissed by Abdul Hamid from the Grand Vizierate, lest he shouldexecute the agreement in good faith. The new Ministers selected by the Sultan were drawn mainly from the scum of Constantinople, and their first act was to protest that time must be given to the Porte for the proper enforcement of the reform project. Time was needed to render reforms superfluous through the sweeping destruction of its intended beneficiaries. It was needed to perpetrate the design of annihilation on a scale of vast proportions. The Sultan well wished to hide his privity to such a devilish transaction, but he dared not disavow his agents, lest they should divulge his instructions. Accordingly, when high Turkish officials, unmistakably implicated in the Armenian enormities, were subjected to the nominal penalty of a recall at the imperative instance of England’s representative, they were decorated and promoted by Abdul Hamid, whose secret aims and wishes were thus betrayed.On November 10, the Kurds made an attack on Harpoot, but were easily repulsed. On November 11, a party of the soldiers and leading Turks met the Kurds in conference, during the progress of which a bugle was sounded, at which signal the soldiers withdrew. The Kurds thereupon advanced with yells. There was no effort on the part of the soldiers and Armenians to resist, and the Turks joined in the killing and plundering. The Armenian school was burned, and then began an attack upon the Christian quarter, the buildings in which were also set on fire. The Christians were without weapons of any sort, and trusted entirely to the Government to protect them. The Armenians remained in the girls’ seminary until that building was set on fire, and then they appealed to the Governor for protection. They obtained a guard of soldiers, all buttwo of whom afterward deserted. These two remained and carried out the orders issued to them, to fight the fires which had been kindled.The burning continued for three days. The Armenians were stripped of everything but their clothing. All the Christian villages around were burned by the Kurds. The outrages continued unchecked until the Government at Constantinople ordered the troops to take action. Fourteen Kurds were then shot, when the murders and pillaging ceased instantly. The districts of Diarbekir, Malatia, Arabkir, Kyin and Palu were made desolate. Thirty-five villages were destroyed, and thousands of the inhabitants embraced Islamism in consequence of the pressure brought to bear upon them.The Turkish troops which were on their way to Zeitoun to suppress the trouble there, were concentrated at Marash, where they awaited the return of the delegation sent to Zeitoun to negotiate with the Armenians in control there for their surrender.The Government said they were projecting more extensive relief work, and would welcome foreign aid through a joint commission.Despite this promise of greater relief, the Government was bent on continuing the work of extermination—all promises to the contrary notwithstanding.The tidal wave of horror and indignation swept over Europe, and found expression in most intense and emphatic speech; it was even felt in the Cabinets of Diplomacy and in Constantinople. There seemed to be more iron in their blood and energy in their action and purpose in their speech.The general situation was not changed, but it wasapparent that a change was about to take place. The representatives of the Powers, some of whom were awaiting instructions from their Governments in regard to the matter of sending additional guardboats into the Bosphorus, seemed to be unanimous in their insistence on the issue of permits for the admission of such boats by the Sultan, and the Ambassadors held a meeting to consider the situation as presented by the Sultan’s refusal to permit the passage of the additional boats through the straits, and to decide on a concerted plan of action.For several days the wires were hot with the assertion that all the Powers were united and determined to carry their demands to a successful termination. The Sultan was unofficially informed that if he continued to maintain his stubborn attitude, a forced entry of the Dardanelles would possibly be made.As previously, and with equal pertinence, at this hour of crisis the continental press devoted much space to the affairs of the Orient, and the Sultan was the recipient of much newspaper advice. One writer in particular urged him to remain master of the situation, and to show himself promptly disposed to fulfil his engagements. In that case the crisis would remain an internal one; but if it should assume an international aspect it would be peacefully adjusted on the basis of the maintenance of the integrity of Turkey which would be asserted by France and Russia, the two Pacific Powers. It was also telegraphed from Constantinople that the Czar, in reply to a personal appeal from the Sultan, consented to waive the Russian demand for a second guardship in the Bosphorus. At the same time she was prepared toresent any aggressive action that England might undertake alone.The Sultan knew very well that there would be no concerted action of the Powers—that England and Russia would never agree as to any joint action, and yet to give color of necessity to his refusal, it was given out that the Powers had decided to depose him, using for this purpose the forces aboard the secondguardshipwhich they demanded should be permitted to enter the Bosphorus. This was to stir up the populace against the Powers. Then to furnish another excuse the report was circulated that the Sultan was in daily fear of sharing the fate of Ishmail Pasha at the hands of the Softas and the Young Turkish party.The Sultan’s letter to Lord Salisbury was often quoted as a confirmation of the report that the Sultan was panic stricken. It will be recalled that Lord Salisbury in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet on November 9th, declared that, if the Sultan will not heartily resolve to do justice to them, the most ingenious constitution that can be framed will not avail to protect the Armenians; that through the Sultan alone can any real permanent blessings be conferred on his subjects. “What if the Sultan,” exclaimed the British Prime Minister—“What if the Sultan is not persuaded? I am bound to say that the news reaching us from Constantinople does not give much cheerfulness in that respect. You will readily understand that I can only speak briefly on such a matter. It would be dangerous to express the opinions that are on my lips lest they injure the cause of peace and good order.”These words seemed to be freighted with someominous significance, and they would have been, if there had been any purpose to make them mean anything.In a remarkable letter to Lord Salisbury which he read publicly at a conference in London, the Sultan used a most beseeching tone to show that the possible dissolution of his Empire was lying heavy on his mind. It sounded like a most abject plea for mercy, a cry for the postponement of the fate which the Powers seemed to be preparing for the terrified monarch. In this note the Sultan said:“I repeat, I will execute the reforms. I will take the paper containing them, place it before me and see that it is put in force. This is my earnest determination and I give my word of honor, I wish Lord Salisbury to know this and I beg and desire his Lordship, having confidence in these declarations, to make another speech by virtue of the friendly feeling and disposition he has for me and my country. I shall await the result of this message with the greatest anxiety.”It will be noted that the Sultan’s communication contained no denial that there are wrongs to be remedied in the administration of his government in Armenia and elsewhere. There is no plea that the terms of solemn treaty obligations have been observed. The letter is a tacit confession that the interposition of the Powers as far as it had gone was justifiable and that the reports of the atrocities in Asia Minor, which were at first strenuously denied by the Turkish Government, were true.It was only a shrewd plea of helplessness to persuade the Powers not to enforce their demands and nothing more. In his rejoinder to the Sultan’s letter, LordSalisbury substantially admits the hopelessness of reform under the Sultan’s government as now constituted and administered.A few days after this correspondence the fear of the Sultan seemed to have vanished, and he was brave enough to refuse permission to the Powers to send extra guardboats into the Bosphorus.At this time it looked as if Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador, would act alone, and that he really meant to force the passage of the Dardanelles.But the Sultan knew he would not dare to do it, and he knew also that the Powers were not agreed to use force. England proved herself impotent before the crafty diplomacy of thetimidSultan.It is folly at this day to pretend to believe that the Sultan ever intended of his “spontaneous good-will” to protect the Armenians even as human beings from the cruelty of Kurd or Turkish officials.The horrors of December and January give the lie direct to every promise made at Constantinople. The Sultan had outwitted England, if indeed England ever were in earnest, and by circulating a rumor of a Turco-Russian alliance, most effectually checked all danger of intervention by force—the only argument to which the Turk will ever yield—and proceeded to commit yet greater crimes if that were possible.Under the very eyes of the Russian, English, and French delegates at Moush, the witnesses who had the courage to speak the truth to the representatives of the Powers were thrown into prison, and not a hand was raised to protect them: and within a stone’s throw of the foreign consuls and the missionaries, loyal Armenians were being hung up by the heels, the hair of their headsand beards plucked out one by one, their bodies branded with red-hot irons, and defiled in beastly ways, and their wives and daughters dishonored before their very eyes. And all that philanthropic England has to offer its protégés, for whose protection she holds Cyprus as a pledge, is eloquent sympathy.She received Cyprus by secret convention, and now holds it as the price of innocent blood. The rewards of iniquity are in her hand. It was worse than folly; it was the refinement of cruelty to send a commission to investigate the outrages in Armenia, thereby irritating the Turk to the height of possible fury as his deeds were proclaimed to the world and then leave him free to wreak his compressed wrath upon the Christians for whose protection no hand would be uplifted. The Powers saw Armenia in misery, bleeding, dying, and passed by on the other side, saying, we are bound by the terms of the Berlin Treaty not to interfere with Turkey in the administration of her domestic affairs; we are sorry for you; we wish the Sultan would listen to our advice and not be quite so severe in his chastisement, but really you must have given him some cause for his anger.Yes, such provocation as the lamb gave to the wolf that charged it with soiling the water, though it was drinking much farther down the stream.The humiliation of England as one of the Great Powers was complete when in the House of Commons March 16th, in reply to questions that were put to him Mr. Curzon Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs was obliged to say that reports received by the Government confirmed the statements that a great number of forced conversions from Christianity to Islamism were stillbeing made in Asia Minor. Under the circumstances of cruelty and systematic debauchery of defenceless Christian women through the devastated districts of Anatolia, he said, the British Consuls in Asia Minor had been instructed to report such cases, and representations in regard to them were constantly being made to the Government in Constantinople.Representations were constantly being made! What did the Porte care for representations? How England was compelled to quaff the contempt even of the Turk who laughs or sneers as his mood may be over these representations of English Consuls and missionaries. The Sublime Porte—which means the Sultan—cabled the Turkish Legation at Washington to deny most emphatically the statements that appeared in the American religious press regarding forcible conversions to Islam.The Sublime Porte affirmed that “the stories related therein are mere inventions of revolutionists, and their friends intended to attract the sympathy of credulous people. There is no forcible conversion to Islamism in Turkey and no animosity against Protestantism.” This is sublime impudence. The statements thus contradicted, represented conditions certified to by official reports, by careful investigations made by correspondents of newspapers in England and the United States, and by hundreds of private letters from persons in the region where the massacres occurred. Moreover, this declaration of the Sultan is contradicted by centuries of Mohammedan history, by the ruins of ancient churches throughout all Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and by daily prayer concerning the Christians:—“Oh Allah make their children orphans, * * givethem and their families * * their women, their children, * * their possessions and their race, their wealth and their lands as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures.”The Softas are, properly speaking, the pupils who are engaged in the study of Mussulman theology and law in the medresses, or schools attached to the mosques, the range of their studies, however, being practically limited to learning to read the Koran. The Softas take their name from a corruption of the past-participle soukhte—burned—applied to them because they are supposed to be consumed by the love of study of sacred things, and devoted to a life of meditation. The Softas follow their studies in the school building, sleeping and eating at theimaretts, where free lodgings and food are provided for them out of the legacies of the pious. If their families can afford to do so, they furnish them with clothing and bedding; if not, these are given to them from the same charitable fund. The number of Softas is very large, for one reason because of their exemption from military service. After long-continued study of Arabic, and the Koran and its commentaries, the Softa, after an examination which, though nominally arduous, is almost invariably passed successfully, takes the title of Khodja.The Khodja—khavadje, reader or singer—a scholar who has taken his diploma in the medresse, teaches for several years, in fact till he has conducted a class of Softas through the same course he had himself taken, when, on application to the Ministry of Worship, at whose head is the Sheikh-ul-Islam, and, after a severe examination, he receives the title of Ulema. The Mussulman does not arrive at this dignity until he hasreached the age of thirty or thirty-five. It confers numerous privileges, for those doctors escape military service, unless in the event of the djihad, or sacred war, and from their ranks are filled the Judgeships, the curacies (so to speak) of the mosques, the professorships in the medresses, the trusteeships connected with the administration of the trust funds for pious and charitable purposes, etc., etc.The Imaums—who are the real priests and have charge of the public religious service—are selected from among the Ulema. The title of Imaum comes from the Arabic, and is the equivalent of leader or outpost. There is as a rule one Imaum to each mosque of minor importance—messdjid—while two, or, at most, three, one of whom is designated the chief authority, are appointed to the principal mosques—djamis. Even the Ulema—the word is plural and signifies wise men—are subject to military duty when a holy war is proclaimed.The term Softa includes all the grades above mentioned, from the Imaum, or priest, to the Softa proper, or mere students of the Koran. They are usually distinguishable in Turkey by wearing a white turban around their fez, or skull cap. Sultan Abdul Medjid some years ago endeavored to induce his subjects to wear a European dress, and succeeded so far that almost without exception every one except the very lowest in the public service adopted it. But the Softas to a man retain the old-fashioned baggy, slouchy dress which Abdul Medjid wished to get rid of.Who can believe that through fear of the uprising of a few thousand Softas, the Sultan planned a fanatical uprising of the Kurds in distant Armenia. How couldthat benefit the Softas save as it were permitted them to beat, kill and plunder the Armenians in Stamboul?If the fear of the Softas prompted it, still what a heartless wretch to doom seventy-five thousand to death and hundreds of thousands to starvation and outrage when to admit the fleets of Europe would have protected him from any possible insurrection in Constantinople.The Turkish Government itself was directly and actively responsible for the outrages in Asia Minor; it not merely permitted, but actually ordered them. But there was in Constantinople itself a most serious conspiracy against the dynasty, which threatened to turn out the Sultan and revolutionize the whole form of government. As a sort of counter-irritant, which haply might cure this, the Government might have indeed resorted to any extravagance or conduct elsewhere. More than one monarch has begun a foreign war to quell disaffection at home. Why should not the Porte think a general harrying of the Armenians a ready way of allaying incipient disloyalty among the Faithful?This conspiracy was made by what was known as the Young Turkey party. It included most of the Softas, and students in all colleges, and many lawyers, doctors, officers of the army and navy, and even civil servants of the Porte. Back of these were multitudes of the general populace. There were many who denied Abdul Hamid’s legal right to be Sultan while his elder brother was living. There were others, numbered by millions, who held that the Caliph must be an Arab and that the Sultan was therefore not to be recognized as the true Commander of the Faithful. Moreover, many, indeed all the leaders of Young Turkey, demandedthe carrying out of the Hatt of 1877, establishing a Constitution and Parliament, and denounced the suppression of that promised system as a gross breach of faith and wrong to the people of the Empire. It may not be generally remembered; men’s memories are so short; but it is a fact that a constitutional government was once officially proclaimed in Turkey. The plan was conceived by Midhat Pasha, then Grand Vizier, and formally approved by the Sultan. A Constitution was promulgated. A Parliament, consisting of a Senate and an elective Assembly, was created, and its first session was opened by Abdul Hamid in person on March 19, 1877. Later in the same year its second session was opened, and the Sultan publicly declared that the Constitution should thenceforth be the supreme law of the land, in practice as well as in theory. But before the end of the year one designing politician managed to get Parliament involved in a corrupt job, and then, to avoid investigation, persuaded the Sultan to issue a decree abrogating the Constitution and abolishing Parliament! It was acoupd’état, and it was successful; thanks largely to the indifference of the Powers, and especially of England.The Young Turkey leaders demanded the restoration of the Constitution. In order to accomplish that they proposed to get rid, in some way, of the Sultan who first decreed and then abrogated that instrument. There were threats of assassination, and something like a reign of terror prevailed at Yildiz Kiosk. The Sultan took as many precautions against treachery as ever did the Russian Czar. The man who brought about the abolition of the Parliament by his rascality was a cabinet minister. He, too, was threatened withdeath. The strictest repression was practiced. The merest hint was enough to cause a man’s arrest and summary execution. But in spite of all, the revolutionary movement grew. Mysterious placards appeared on the walls, calling for fulfilment of the Hatt of 1877. The name of Midhat Pasha, who suffered martyrdom for having given Turkey a Constitution, was spoken now and then, in whispers only, but in tones of grateful reverence. A whisper of “The Constitution,” too, went round. Army and navy were becoming secretly leavened with the idea. The Sultan and his Ministers did not know whom to trust.And now that we have seen what a fiasco this brilliantly projected great naval demonstration proved itself to be; and how cleverly the Sultan played his pawns against Castles and Kings and Queens, and checkmated all the Powers of Europe, we will leave him in his hell of infamy bathed in the blood of nearly a hundred thousand slain, with the voices of agonized and outraged mothers and daughters raining maledictions upon his accursed head, while we try to be patient until the rod of the Almighty shall smite the wicked, till the day of reckoning and of vengeance shall come in the day of the Lord at hand. We leave the Sultan in his palace to the companionship, perhaps the guidance, of Khalil Rifaat Pasha, the new Grand Vizier, the voice of history and the righteous judgments of God, but as for Islam, as a system of government over Christian populations, we can but pray daily for its speedy, utter and final overthrow.

CHAPTER VIII.THE SULTAN ABDUL HAMID.

It does not lie within the plan of this volume to review at any length the history of Turkey, or to sketch the lives of the Sultans who have reigned during the century; it will answer, however, to make our work intelligible and clear, if the life of the reigning Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II. is presented briefly.He is the second son of Abdul Medjid, who was Sultan from 1839 to 1861. He was born September 5th, 1842; and his mother having died when he was quite young, he was adopted by his father’s second wife, herself childless, who was very wealthy and made him her heir. His early life was quiet and uneventful; his boyhood was a continual scene of merry idleness. His education consisting mostly in amusements and tricks devised for his entertainment by the court slaves: and in an unusually early and complete initiation into the depravities of harem life. Indeed up to manhood all the learning he had acquired, amounted to but little more than the ability to read in the Arabic and Turkish tongues. His mother had died of consumption and his constitution was delicate. He had inherited a taste for drink, but his doctor who was a Greek, assured him it would be his destruction. “Then I will never touch wine or liquor again,” said Abdul Hamid, and he kept his word.The turning point in his life came, when in 1867 hisUncle Abdul Aziz, then Sultan, took his own son and his two nephews, Murad and Hamid, to the Paris Exposition, England and Germany. He saw with a quick and appreciative eye. He acquired a taste for political geography, and for European dress, customs and interests. What he then learned was to modify very considerably the subsequent course of his life. From April, 1876, both he and his brother Murad were kept under strict surveillance and not allowed to take any part in the political movements going on in Constantinople.Abdul Aziz, the reigning Sultan, was determined to defy the Turkish law of succession and proclaim his son in June, as heir presumptive to the throne, thus displacing Murad and Hamid, who both were before him in rights of succession. At this crisis, Midhat Pasha, the leading and most progressive statesman and strong adherent of Murad, planned a revolution and Abdul Aziz, was deposed and Murad was proclaimed Sultan, May 31st, and so recognized by the Western powers: but he was never girded with the sword of Othman in the Mosque of Eyout, a ceremony equivalent to a Western Coronation.His ill-health, increased by excessive use of liquor and the mistaken treatment of his physician, rendered him mentally incapable of ruling: though a celebrated Dr. Liedersdorf, sent for from Vienna, is said to have stated, “If I had Sultan Murad under my own care in Vienna, I would have him all right in six weeks.”In consequence of this mental indisposition, Murad V. was deposed August 30th, and Abdul Hamid II. was proclaimed on August 31st, and girded with thesword of Othman a few days later. He was then living in a small palace in the Valley of Sweet Waters, which he inherited from his father. He was very fond of agriculture, and amused himself by cultivating a model farm. To his mother, who is said to have been an Armenian from Georgia, in Russia, he owed a quality very rare in the family of the Sultans, the spirit of economy. He never allowed his expenses to exceed his income before he came to the throne. In this charming retreat he resided quietly with his wife and two children, all eating at the same table, and showing in his dress and surroundings his preference for European modes of life. The only concession he made to Orientalism in personal dress, was in wearing the “fez,” which he disliked, but continued to wear as the necessary token of his nationality.Six weeks after he was proclaimed Sultan, it was announced that a scheme of reform for the whole Ottoman Empire, was in course of preparation. It was published in January, and while it was a much less sweeping reform than Midhat wished, it provided for a Senate and a House of Representatives, which last was to take control of the finances, the system of taxation was to be revised and better laws were to be enacted for the provinces.Election to the lower house was to be by universal suffrage; for the upper house electors were restricted to two classes: the noble and the educated.Abdul Hamid cordially disapproved of this check on the absolute power enjoyed by predecessors.He was willing to do justice and to temper it with mercy, but to be placed in the position of a servant to his people was odious to himself.At a council held, when only his other ministers were present, the Sultan asked, what should be done with Midhat Pasha. Two of those present said: “Let him die.” But Abdul Hamid was not bloodthirsty, hence he only banished him to Arabia where two years later he was poisoned.The Sultan was restive under the constitution and the Pashas, against whose cruelty and extortion the most of the reforms were aimed, sided with their sovereign. In 1875, Midhat Pasha had outlined the situation thus to the English Ambassador:“The Sultan’s Empire is being rapidly brought to destruction; corruption has reached a pitch that it has never before attained. The service of the state is starved, while untold millions are being poured into the palaces and the provinces are being ruined by the uncontrolled exactions of the Governors who purchase their appointments at the palace: and nothing can save the country but a complete change of system.”And the very worst governed portion of all his Empire was Armenia. We are officially told that its government for the last thirty years has been horrible.In an Armenian village recently plundered by bandits, the famous Hungarian Professor, Arminius Vambery, an intimate friend of the Sultan, once asked, “Why do you not get help from the Governor of Erzeroum?” “Because,” answered the villagers, “he is at the head of the robbers. God alone and his representative on earth—the Russian Czar, can help us.” This brigandage, is one of the greatest curses of the Turkish Empire, exercising a rule of terror and oppression, and now legalized, apparently, by the transformation ofthe Kurdish horsemen—robbers—into the Hamidieh—the Sultan’s own Cavalry.Types and Costumes—Kurdish Gentlemen.Types and Costumes—Kurdish Gentlemen.Such being the spirit of the Pashas who had grown rich by plunder and official theft, of course they were opposed to the Constitution, and by the will of the Sultan it was abrogated after two sessions had been held. This was soon followed by the dismissal of the Ministers who had formed the triumvirate, and the Sultan resumed his despotic and absolute sway. Assured that England would not suffer the dismemberment of his Empire we have seen him refusing to guarantee the enforcement of promised reforms and provoking the war with Russia; but as we have already told this story, we will give some pictures of the Sultan as drawn by his admirers; leaving the horrors of the Armenian massacres to bear witness as to the honesty of his professed devotion to the welfare of his Christian subjects and his promises to observe the terms of said treaty in the amelioration of the condition of all who were suffering under the murderous oppression of Kurds and Circassians.Professor Vambery, a most remarkable linguist who writes and speaks all the languages of Europe like a native, spent some time in Turkey a few years ago and was received into closest conference by the Sultan.—Here are extracts from what he has written of him:“I must own that the education of Abdul Hamid, like that of all Oriental princes was defective, very defective indeed; but an iron will, good judgment and rare acuteness have made good this short-coming; and he not only knows the multifarious relations and intricacies of his own much tried Empire but is thoroughly conversant with European politics: and I amnot going far from fact when I state that it has been solely the moderation and self-restraint of Sultan Abdul Hamid which has saved us hitherto from a general European conflagration. As to his personal character, I have found the present ruler of the Ottoman Empire of great politeness, amiability and extreme gentleness. When sitting opposite to him during my private interviews, I could not avoid being struck by his extremely modest attitude, by his quiet manners and by the bashful look of his eyes. * * At his table, though wine is served to European guests, it is not offered to the Sultan or any other Mohammedan.“His views on religion, politics and education have a decidedly modern tone, and yet he is a firm believer in the tenets of his religion, and likes to assemble around him the foremost Mollahs and pious Sheiks on whom he profusely bestows imperial favors; but he does not forget from time to time to send presents to the Greek and the Armenian patriarchates, and nothing is more ludicrous than to hear this prince accused by a certain class of politicians in Europe of being a fanatic and an enemy to Christians,—a prince who by appointing a Christian for his chief medical attendant and a Christian for his chief minister of finance, did not hesitate to intrust most important duties to non-Mohammedans. * * *”[Doubtless he wanted the best men he could find as his physician and minister of finance, and these men were found among the Christians. Let the last year tell whether he be the friend or the enemy of the Christians.]“In reference to the charge of ruthless despotism laid upon Sultan Abdul Hamid in connection with hisabrogation of the charter granted during the first months of his reign, I will quote his own words. He said to me one day:—‘In Europe the soil was prepared centuries ago for liberal institutions, and now I am asked to transplant a sapling to the foreign, stony and rugged ground of Asiatic life. Let me clear away the thistles, and stones, let me till the soil, and provide for irrigation because rain is very scarce in Asia and then we may transport the new plant; and believe me that nobody will be more delighted at its thriving than myself.’”Thus far the professor. And now, it is to be wondered if he calls the extermination of the Armenians the clearing away of the thistles and does he propose to irrigate the soil of Armenia with the blood of its noblest race. Is he not rather slitting the veins of Asia Minor and pouring out its heart’s best blood?That the Sultan was a warm personal friend of Gen. Lew Wallace does not make him any the less a despot; neither because Hon. S. S. Cox, who succeeded Gen. Wallace was an admirer of the Sultan as the following quotation will show; does that make him the less a fanatic and the most remorseless shedder of blood that Europe has seen since the days of Tamerlane.“The Sultan is of middle size and of Turkish type. He wears a full black beard, is of a dark complexion and has very expressive eyes. His forehead is large, indicative of intellectual power. He is very gracious in manner though at times seemingly a little embarrassed. * * *“As Caliph he is the divine representative of Mohammed. His family line runs back with unbroken links to the thirteenth century. He is one of the most industrious,painstaking, honest, conscientious and vigilant rulers of the world. He is amiable and just withal. His every word betokens a good heart and a sagacious head. [What a comment the horrors of the many months just past furnishes to this flattering estimate a Mohammedian conscience!]“He is an early riser. After he leaves his seraglio and has partaken of a slight repast his secretaries wait on him with portfolios. He peruses all the official correspondence and current reports. He gives up his time till noon to work of this character. Then his breakfast is served. After that he walks in his park and gardens, looks in at his aviaries, perhaps stirs up his menagerie, makes an inspection of his two hundred horses in their fine stables, indulges his little daughters in a row upon the fairy lake which he has had constructed, and it may be attends a performance at the little theatre provided for his children in the palace. At 5 P. M. having accomplished most of his official work, he mounts his favorite white horse, Ferhan, a war-scarred veteran for a ride in the park. The park of the palace Yildiz where he lives comprises some thousand acres. It is surrounded by high walls and protected by the soldiery.”But all this does not tell us what the man at heart is any more than if some flatterer of Nero should expatiate on the esthetic taste of Nero and his love of the fine arts and his skill as a violinist when he sat at night in his marble palace and enjoyed the blazing magnificence of Rome. It is as foreign to the present situation as if some one should praise the skill of Nero’s horsemanship as he drove his mettled steeds with firm reins along the course lighted by the blazing torchesof the tar-besmeared Christians, whom he accused of having set the city on fire.The persistence with which the Sultan has followed out his purpose of exterminating the Armenians, in the face of a horrified and indignant Christendom, marks his audacity and contempt of Christians as sublime in height, as infernal in spirit, and bottomless in its cruelty.Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire can scarcely find polite words enough to express his contempt for the forms of early Christianity and praised the Turks as possessing the rarest of qualities when he said: “The Turks are distinguished for their patience, discipline, sobriety, bravery, honesty and modesty,” and Hon. Sunset Cox echoed the same when he wrote, “It is because of these solid characteristics, and in spite of the harem, in spite of autocratic power, in spite of the Janissary and the seraglio that this race and rule remain potent in the Orient. His heart (the heart of the present Sultan) is touched by suffering, and his views lean strongly to that toleration of the various races and religions of his realm, which other and more boastful nations would do well to imitate.”The facts given in the chapters on The Reign of Terror will be sufficient commentary on such praise.Probably no building in all Europe has so many associations with tragical events as that of the palace of the Sultan of Turkey—the autocrat whose rule is absolute over more than thirty million subjects. From this palace go forth the edicts which involve the death of thousands and which control the governments of distant provinces. Fifty years ago the Sultans governed a huge territory in Europe, but one province after anotherhas been freed from their yoke, until Turkey in Europe has dwindled in size to less than half its former area. But the Asiatic possession of the Sultan have not diminished, and the events in Armenia which have recently horrified the whole world, show what that possession means. Nor are these massacres a new or unparalleled feature of Turkish rule. Similar horrors have been perpetrated before under the cognizance of the Sultans and the only reason why the indignation now aroused on the subject is deeper and more intense, is that it is now impossible to conceal them, and in the days of the telegraph and cheap newspapers they are set in the light of publicity. The Turk is no worse now than he has always been, and is only trying to govern at the end of the nineteenth century as he governed in the sixteenth. As an eminent writer has said: “The Turk is still the aboriginal savage encamped on the ruins of a civilization which he destroyed.”In some respects Abdul Hamid is better than his predecessors, and until the reports of the Armenian horrors were published, he was believed to be a great deal better; but they have proved that he has the same nature, and is at heart as fierce and relentless as they. The character of the man is of so much greater moment to his subjects than in other lands, because of the utter absence of even the semblance of constitutional government. The government of Turkey is a despotism pure and simple. It is tempered only by the dread of assassination or deposition, and even those calamities may come rather from a wise and merciful policy than from massacre. The Pashas who surround the Sultan, the successors of those who deposed his uncle and his brother, applaud the atrocities,and are willing instruments in the perpetration of them. The danger to the Sultan’s person is far more likely to come through weakness and lack of vigor in persecution than from indignation at wholesale slaughter. The Sultan fully appreciates this fact, and lives in constant dread of treachery.An interesting story of the present Sultan is related by Mr. W. T. Stead, in an article in hisReview of Reviews, which in some measure explains the singular mixture in his character of fanaticism, such as that which produced the Armenian massacres, with the marked ability and intelligence he displays in the conduct of national affairs. It appears that when he was a mere youth, he was conspicuous even in Constantinople, which is notorious for its immorality, for the gross excesses of his private life. There was then little probability of his ever ascending the throne, and as he was condemned by his position to a life of idleness, he plunged into all the wickedness of the capital, and lived a life of debauchery. Suddenly he changed his course. He quitted his evil ways and became a devout follower of Mohammed, was attentive at the Mosque and gave all his thoughts to his religion. From that time until now his religious enthusiasm has been the most prominent feature of his character. But with the change came a fierce intolerance, a desire that others should follow his example and determination, evinced since his accession, that in his own dominions no enemy of the Prophet, nor any who did not avow themselves his followers, should have peace or rest until they accepted the faith. This spirit accounts for the crusade against the Armenians whom he hates because they are Christians.The real cause for all the trouble in the Turkish Empire will be found to lie within the spirit and purpose of the Sultan himself. His conduct towards the Powers will serve to most abundantly confirm this view.The condition of Armenia under Turkish rule has for many years been a scandal to Christendom. After the horrors of the Blood bath of Sassoun had been made known to the world a commission of the Powers were sent to investigate and report on the massacres which had been perpetrated.The investigation of the latest atrocities showed that the Armenians had been wantonly tortured and murdered, and that indescribable atrocities had been perpetrated. Men, women, and children were proved to have been hacked to pieces, and no respect had been shown to age or sex. Whole villages had been depopulated, and the fact of any community being Christian seemed to have been sufficient to provoke the murderous hostility of the authorities. Where the Turks did not commit the outrages themselves, they remained inactive while the Kurds committed them, and their inactivity amounted to connivance, because the Armenians are not allowed to arm themselves for their own protection. There was legitimate grounds for foreign powers urging reforms upon the Sultan, as in 1878, when the Berlin Congress was inclined to strip him of his Armenian provinces, he promised that Armenia should be governed better than it had been, and England became sponsor for the performance of his promises. Under those conditions the Sultan was allowed to retain the provinces, and his failure to effect the reforms was therefore a distinct breach of faith. TheAmbassadors of England, France and Russia accordingly presented to the Sultan on May 11th a demand for twelve specific changes in the government of Armenia. The scheme outlined included the appointment of a High Commissioner, with whom should be associated a commission to sit at Constantinople, for the purpose of carrying out all reforms. The full details of the plan were not made public, but among the suggestions made were these: The appointment of governors and vice-governors in six Armenian vilayets—Van, Erzeroum, Sivas, Bitlis, Harpoot, and Trebizond; that either the governor or the vice-governor of each vilayet should be a Christian; that the collection of taxes be on a better basis; with various other reforms in the judicial and administrative departments: especially that torture should be abolished; the gendarmérie to be recruited from Christians as well as Mohammedans, and the practical disarmament of the Kurds. Note the names of these vilayets as they are the centers of the horrible massacres that followed the Porte’s true answer to all its own promises of reform.To this project of reforms the following memorandum was attached:—“The appended scheme, containing the general statement of the modifications which it would be necessary to introduce in regard to the administration, financial and judicial organization of the vilayets mentioned, it has appeared useful to indicate in a separate memorandum certain measures exceeding the scope of an administrative regulation, but which form the very basis of this regulation and the adoption of which by the Porte is a matter of primary importance.”These different points are:1. The eventual reduction of the number of vilayets.2. The guarantee for the selection of the valis.3. Amnesty for Armenians sentenced or in prison on political charges.4. The return of the Armenian emigrants or exiles.5. The final settlement of pending legal proceedings for common law crimes and offences.6. The inspection of prisons and an inquiry into the condition of the prisoners.7. The appointment of a high commission of surveillance for the application of reforms in the provinces.8. The creation of a permanent committee of control at Constantinople.9. Reparation for the loss suffered by the Armenians who were victims of the events at Sassoun, Talori, etc.10. The regularization of matters connected with religious conversion.11. The maintenance and strict application of the rights and privileges conceded to the Armenians.12. The position of the Armenians in the other vilayets of Asiatic Turkey.After much delay the Porte replied that it could not accept the proposals made. Of course not. Why should the Sultan do anything to favor the Armenians or even to prevent the recurrence of these terrible outrages unless compelled to do so by something more than advice! Yet the Sultan would be anxious to know what the three Powers would do about it. He was not kept long in suspense, so far as England was concerned. Orders were issued for the English fleet to proceed to Constantinople, and France and Russia were informed of the fact. The news reached the Sultanand appears to have convinced him that it was not safe to trifle any longer with the demands of the powers. He accordingly telegraphed that he would accede to the principle of reform outlined for him.The Sultan, learning also that the British Cabinet had met to consider Turkey’s reply to the plan of reform for Armenia, submitted by Great Britain, France and Russia, telegraphed to Rustem Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador in London, instructing him to ask the Earl of Kimberly, the British Foreign Minister, to postpone a decision in the matter.The Earl of Kimberly acceded to the request. In the meanwhile the Porte handed to the British, French and Russian Ambassadors a fresh and satisfactory reply, acceding to the principle of control by the Powers, but asking that the period be limited to three years.While these promises were being so freely made, letters from Armenia, in July, represented Turkish cruelty as unabated; the position of affairs never so grave and critical; and the Armenians to have reached the ultimate limit of despair. Yet in August the world was informed that Turkey had decided to accept in their entirety the Armenian reforms demanded by the Powers, and that the acceptance of these reforms was primarily due to the pressure brought to bear on the government by Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador, who communicated to the government a confidential note from Lord Salisbury to the effect that the Porte must accept the proposals of the powers unconditionally, or England would use sharper means than those adopted by Lord Rosebery to settle affairs in Armenia.The summer passed in fruitless and endless negotiations. Later in September a press telegram from London voiced the situation as follows:—“European diplomacy seems already weary of the question, which Turkish diplomacy has handled with an evident ability, based upon temporization and inertia, as well as upon its knowledge of the jealousy existing between the three Powers which proclaim so loudly that they want nothing else but the happiness of the Armenians.“The question has not progressed one iota, despite all the negotiations, memoranda, appointments of commissions, and even the (awful!) rumor, one month ago, of the assembling of the British fleet in Besika Bay, at the entrance of the Dardanelles. England, France and Russia, however, had the way clear before them, if they had been really in accord and seriously willing to accomplish the humanitarian mission they pretended to assume. Article sixty-one of the Berlin Treaty gave the Powers the right to see that the same rights granted to Bulgaria should be granted also to Armenia. This article has remained a dead letter in regard to the latter country since 1878. When the Sassoun atrocities were recently committed, the Powers merely sent to the Porte a memorandum, requesting it to cease its persecution of Armenians. During two or three months the European Ministers at Pera awaited the decision of the Sultan. Whenever they sent their dragomans to the Foreign Minister, Said Pasha caused his secretary to answer in the Spanish manner, ‘hasta la mañana’ (to-morrow a reply will be given). Finally the three Powers thought of using the rights conferred upon them by Article sixty-one, and required Abdul Hamid to consentthat a European Commission of Control should be sent to Armenia, in order to see that reforms be practically applied there. The Sultan will fight stubbornly before accepting them, which would amount to the abandonment of a portion of his sovereignty, and it remains to be seen how much the Powers, jealous of their respective influence at the Porte, are in earnest and how anxious they are promptly to enforce the acceptation of their Control Commission.”The Turks continued to play a waiting game in Armenian affairs. Remembering the treaty of Berlin, they were shrewd enough to play off one Power against another so as to retain absolute control over their internal affairs, though they had forfeited all right to rule by their outrageous and brutal massacres. The Congress of Berlin was at the time a costly thing to the Eastern Christians but was destined to prove almost their utter ruin.The Turks did not find it hard to pick flaws in the plan of administrative reform when they did not intend to have any reform. The whole scheme was without any security against the renewal of the Sassoun massacres. Everybody who was interested in Armenia protested against the plan, but it was the best that mere diplomacy could do.Thus the summer passed filled with plenty of promises, but without any fulfilment, until suddenly the signal was given and the horrors of Sassoun were reënacted throughout all the provinces of Armenia.At a mass meeting of Armenians held in New York, free expression was given to the feeling of horror with which the news of the Turks’ outrages was received there. There seemed to be no doubt in the minds of thesepeople as to the truth of the reports from Asia Minor, and many were of the opinion that still more terrible news would be received. Mr. Dionian presided, and in calling the meeting to order, said that Armenia and Turkey could never be friends, and that Armenia must either be liberated or annihilated.Dr. P. Ayvard also spoke, and then Dr. S. Aparcian offered resolutions, which were unanimously adopted, saying in part:—Resolved, That we most respectfully and appealingly call upon all the great Powers of Europe, and of our adopted and well loved country of America, to the deplorable condition of Armenia, and trust that the moral interests of Europe will demand taking immediate steps to put an end to this rule of anarchy and lawlessness prevailing there, and that the United States of America will give their moral support.Knowing the Turk as they did, the Armenians in this country were prepared for the confirmation of these reports. In due time it came.A prominent Turk laughed when he saw the report, and said it was a mere fabrication, and that if there was any slaughter it was not committed by the Turks. As to the Turks being opposed to the Armenians because of their being Christians, he said: “People who have lived in the Orient know that to be absurd. We have Christians and Jews among us, and as long as they obey the laws of the land they are treated the same as the members of our faith. Of course,” he added, “when people become revolutionists and conspire against our Government, then we take measures to punish them. The Armenians are revolutionists, and their revolutionary societies exist in every city in this country, while the head-centre is at Naples.”The Turk laughed and blamed the Armenian revolutionists. The Porte denied the outrages at first then charged the trouble to the Armenians, until the terrible situation at Trebizond and Erzeroum could no longer be kept from the knowledge of Christendom. The prisons in Trebizond were filled with wounded and helpless Armenians: the Mohammedans were well armed and the governor entirely in sympathy with, even if not the instigator of the outrages.Meanwhile the European manager of the United Press at Constantinople gave the first detailed account of the appalling massacres to which Armenian Christians had been subjected since the Sultan Abdul Hamid gave perfidious assent to the reforms demanded by the European Powers. The harrowing and shameful facts were told on the authority of American Christian men, who witnessed them, and their narrative had the unqualified endorsement of Mr. Terrell, the United States Minister to Turkey. In view of such conclusive testimony to the duplicity and faithlessness of an incorrigible ruler, it seems incredible that Christian peoples will let their rescuing hands be stayed any longer by sordid jealousy and greed, or that they will any longer consent to bear a share of the responsibility for such crimes against humanity. The blood of the slaughtered thousands of their fellow Christians in Armenia cries against them from the ground.By this trustworthy evidence the conclusion was justified that within the six provinces mainly concerned in the proposed reforms, no fewer than fifteen thousand Armenians were assassinated, while the number of those rendered homeless and robbed of all their possessions, did not fall short of two hundred thousand.The places and dates exposed the aim of the hellish atrocities committed, and drove home the guilt to their authors and accomplices. On October 20, the Sultan authorized Kiamil Pasha, his Grand Vizier, to accept the reforms proposed for the Armenian provinces by the European Powers, and to promise that they should be forthwith carried out. On the next day, October 21, when there had been ample time for the reception of orders telegraphed from Constantinople, the Kurds and Turks throughout Armenia, openly incited and assisted by the regular troops, entered on a scheme of wholesale murder and devastation. The purpose of this preconcerted iniquity, as disclosed by its disgraceful antecedents and its horrible results, was to vent upon the helpless Armenians the venom and the spite engendered by enforced submission to the will of the Christian Powers. It was to enforce at one vindictive stroke the programme of extermination devised in 1890, but prosecuted hitherto with some show of secrecy and caution. It was to make of Armenia a solitude, and then with satanic mockery, to offer exact fulfilment of the pledge of peace and of reform.A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum.A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum.All the circumstances showed that with this flagitious rupture of the Sultan’s plighted word, the person directly and primarily chargeable was the Sultan himself. He sanctioned the plot of extermination, if he did not personally concoct it in 1890, the relentless though disavowed execution of which at last provoked the interposition of Christian Powers. No sooner had Kiamil Pasha been reluctantly permitted to agree to the reforms exacted for Armenia, than he was summarily dismissed by Abdul Hamid from the Grand Vizierate, lest he shouldexecute the agreement in good faith. The new Ministers selected by the Sultan were drawn mainly from the scum of Constantinople, and their first act was to protest that time must be given to the Porte for the proper enforcement of the reform project. Time was needed to render reforms superfluous through the sweeping destruction of its intended beneficiaries. It was needed to perpetrate the design of annihilation on a scale of vast proportions. The Sultan well wished to hide his privity to such a devilish transaction, but he dared not disavow his agents, lest they should divulge his instructions. Accordingly, when high Turkish officials, unmistakably implicated in the Armenian enormities, were subjected to the nominal penalty of a recall at the imperative instance of England’s representative, they were decorated and promoted by Abdul Hamid, whose secret aims and wishes were thus betrayed.On November 10, the Kurds made an attack on Harpoot, but were easily repulsed. On November 11, a party of the soldiers and leading Turks met the Kurds in conference, during the progress of which a bugle was sounded, at which signal the soldiers withdrew. The Kurds thereupon advanced with yells. There was no effort on the part of the soldiers and Armenians to resist, and the Turks joined in the killing and plundering. The Armenian school was burned, and then began an attack upon the Christian quarter, the buildings in which were also set on fire. The Christians were without weapons of any sort, and trusted entirely to the Government to protect them. The Armenians remained in the girls’ seminary until that building was set on fire, and then they appealed to the Governor for protection. They obtained a guard of soldiers, all buttwo of whom afterward deserted. These two remained and carried out the orders issued to them, to fight the fires which had been kindled.The burning continued for three days. The Armenians were stripped of everything but their clothing. All the Christian villages around were burned by the Kurds. The outrages continued unchecked until the Government at Constantinople ordered the troops to take action. Fourteen Kurds were then shot, when the murders and pillaging ceased instantly. The districts of Diarbekir, Malatia, Arabkir, Kyin and Palu were made desolate. Thirty-five villages were destroyed, and thousands of the inhabitants embraced Islamism in consequence of the pressure brought to bear upon them.The Turkish troops which were on their way to Zeitoun to suppress the trouble there, were concentrated at Marash, where they awaited the return of the delegation sent to Zeitoun to negotiate with the Armenians in control there for their surrender.The Government said they were projecting more extensive relief work, and would welcome foreign aid through a joint commission.Despite this promise of greater relief, the Government was bent on continuing the work of extermination—all promises to the contrary notwithstanding.The tidal wave of horror and indignation swept over Europe, and found expression in most intense and emphatic speech; it was even felt in the Cabinets of Diplomacy and in Constantinople. There seemed to be more iron in their blood and energy in their action and purpose in their speech.The general situation was not changed, but it wasapparent that a change was about to take place. The representatives of the Powers, some of whom were awaiting instructions from their Governments in regard to the matter of sending additional guardboats into the Bosphorus, seemed to be unanimous in their insistence on the issue of permits for the admission of such boats by the Sultan, and the Ambassadors held a meeting to consider the situation as presented by the Sultan’s refusal to permit the passage of the additional boats through the straits, and to decide on a concerted plan of action.For several days the wires were hot with the assertion that all the Powers were united and determined to carry their demands to a successful termination. The Sultan was unofficially informed that if he continued to maintain his stubborn attitude, a forced entry of the Dardanelles would possibly be made.As previously, and with equal pertinence, at this hour of crisis the continental press devoted much space to the affairs of the Orient, and the Sultan was the recipient of much newspaper advice. One writer in particular urged him to remain master of the situation, and to show himself promptly disposed to fulfil his engagements. In that case the crisis would remain an internal one; but if it should assume an international aspect it would be peacefully adjusted on the basis of the maintenance of the integrity of Turkey which would be asserted by France and Russia, the two Pacific Powers. It was also telegraphed from Constantinople that the Czar, in reply to a personal appeal from the Sultan, consented to waive the Russian demand for a second guardship in the Bosphorus. At the same time she was prepared toresent any aggressive action that England might undertake alone.The Sultan knew very well that there would be no concerted action of the Powers—that England and Russia would never agree as to any joint action, and yet to give color of necessity to his refusal, it was given out that the Powers had decided to depose him, using for this purpose the forces aboard the secondguardshipwhich they demanded should be permitted to enter the Bosphorus. This was to stir up the populace against the Powers. Then to furnish another excuse the report was circulated that the Sultan was in daily fear of sharing the fate of Ishmail Pasha at the hands of the Softas and the Young Turkish party.The Sultan’s letter to Lord Salisbury was often quoted as a confirmation of the report that the Sultan was panic stricken. It will be recalled that Lord Salisbury in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet on November 9th, declared that, if the Sultan will not heartily resolve to do justice to them, the most ingenious constitution that can be framed will not avail to protect the Armenians; that through the Sultan alone can any real permanent blessings be conferred on his subjects. “What if the Sultan,” exclaimed the British Prime Minister—“What if the Sultan is not persuaded? I am bound to say that the news reaching us from Constantinople does not give much cheerfulness in that respect. You will readily understand that I can only speak briefly on such a matter. It would be dangerous to express the opinions that are on my lips lest they injure the cause of peace and good order.”These words seemed to be freighted with someominous significance, and they would have been, if there had been any purpose to make them mean anything.In a remarkable letter to Lord Salisbury which he read publicly at a conference in London, the Sultan used a most beseeching tone to show that the possible dissolution of his Empire was lying heavy on his mind. It sounded like a most abject plea for mercy, a cry for the postponement of the fate which the Powers seemed to be preparing for the terrified monarch. In this note the Sultan said:“I repeat, I will execute the reforms. I will take the paper containing them, place it before me and see that it is put in force. This is my earnest determination and I give my word of honor, I wish Lord Salisbury to know this and I beg and desire his Lordship, having confidence in these declarations, to make another speech by virtue of the friendly feeling and disposition he has for me and my country. I shall await the result of this message with the greatest anxiety.”It will be noted that the Sultan’s communication contained no denial that there are wrongs to be remedied in the administration of his government in Armenia and elsewhere. There is no plea that the terms of solemn treaty obligations have been observed. The letter is a tacit confession that the interposition of the Powers as far as it had gone was justifiable and that the reports of the atrocities in Asia Minor, which were at first strenuously denied by the Turkish Government, were true.It was only a shrewd plea of helplessness to persuade the Powers not to enforce their demands and nothing more. In his rejoinder to the Sultan’s letter, LordSalisbury substantially admits the hopelessness of reform under the Sultan’s government as now constituted and administered.A few days after this correspondence the fear of the Sultan seemed to have vanished, and he was brave enough to refuse permission to the Powers to send extra guardboats into the Bosphorus.At this time it looked as if Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador, would act alone, and that he really meant to force the passage of the Dardanelles.But the Sultan knew he would not dare to do it, and he knew also that the Powers were not agreed to use force. England proved herself impotent before the crafty diplomacy of thetimidSultan.It is folly at this day to pretend to believe that the Sultan ever intended of his “spontaneous good-will” to protect the Armenians even as human beings from the cruelty of Kurd or Turkish officials.The horrors of December and January give the lie direct to every promise made at Constantinople. The Sultan had outwitted England, if indeed England ever were in earnest, and by circulating a rumor of a Turco-Russian alliance, most effectually checked all danger of intervention by force—the only argument to which the Turk will ever yield—and proceeded to commit yet greater crimes if that were possible.Under the very eyes of the Russian, English, and French delegates at Moush, the witnesses who had the courage to speak the truth to the representatives of the Powers were thrown into prison, and not a hand was raised to protect them: and within a stone’s throw of the foreign consuls and the missionaries, loyal Armenians were being hung up by the heels, the hair of their headsand beards plucked out one by one, their bodies branded with red-hot irons, and defiled in beastly ways, and their wives and daughters dishonored before their very eyes. And all that philanthropic England has to offer its protégés, for whose protection she holds Cyprus as a pledge, is eloquent sympathy.She received Cyprus by secret convention, and now holds it as the price of innocent blood. The rewards of iniquity are in her hand. It was worse than folly; it was the refinement of cruelty to send a commission to investigate the outrages in Armenia, thereby irritating the Turk to the height of possible fury as his deeds were proclaimed to the world and then leave him free to wreak his compressed wrath upon the Christians for whose protection no hand would be uplifted. The Powers saw Armenia in misery, bleeding, dying, and passed by on the other side, saying, we are bound by the terms of the Berlin Treaty not to interfere with Turkey in the administration of her domestic affairs; we are sorry for you; we wish the Sultan would listen to our advice and not be quite so severe in his chastisement, but really you must have given him some cause for his anger.Yes, such provocation as the lamb gave to the wolf that charged it with soiling the water, though it was drinking much farther down the stream.The humiliation of England as one of the Great Powers was complete when in the House of Commons March 16th, in reply to questions that were put to him Mr. Curzon Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs was obliged to say that reports received by the Government confirmed the statements that a great number of forced conversions from Christianity to Islamism were stillbeing made in Asia Minor. Under the circumstances of cruelty and systematic debauchery of defenceless Christian women through the devastated districts of Anatolia, he said, the British Consuls in Asia Minor had been instructed to report such cases, and representations in regard to them were constantly being made to the Government in Constantinople.Representations were constantly being made! What did the Porte care for representations? How England was compelled to quaff the contempt even of the Turk who laughs or sneers as his mood may be over these representations of English Consuls and missionaries. The Sublime Porte—which means the Sultan—cabled the Turkish Legation at Washington to deny most emphatically the statements that appeared in the American religious press regarding forcible conversions to Islam.The Sublime Porte affirmed that “the stories related therein are mere inventions of revolutionists, and their friends intended to attract the sympathy of credulous people. There is no forcible conversion to Islamism in Turkey and no animosity against Protestantism.” This is sublime impudence. The statements thus contradicted, represented conditions certified to by official reports, by careful investigations made by correspondents of newspapers in England and the United States, and by hundreds of private letters from persons in the region where the massacres occurred. Moreover, this declaration of the Sultan is contradicted by centuries of Mohammedan history, by the ruins of ancient churches throughout all Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and by daily prayer concerning the Christians:—“Oh Allah make their children orphans, * * givethem and their families * * their women, their children, * * their possessions and their race, their wealth and their lands as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures.”The Softas are, properly speaking, the pupils who are engaged in the study of Mussulman theology and law in the medresses, or schools attached to the mosques, the range of their studies, however, being practically limited to learning to read the Koran. The Softas take their name from a corruption of the past-participle soukhte—burned—applied to them because they are supposed to be consumed by the love of study of sacred things, and devoted to a life of meditation. The Softas follow their studies in the school building, sleeping and eating at theimaretts, where free lodgings and food are provided for them out of the legacies of the pious. If their families can afford to do so, they furnish them with clothing and bedding; if not, these are given to them from the same charitable fund. The number of Softas is very large, for one reason because of their exemption from military service. After long-continued study of Arabic, and the Koran and its commentaries, the Softa, after an examination which, though nominally arduous, is almost invariably passed successfully, takes the title of Khodja.The Khodja—khavadje, reader or singer—a scholar who has taken his diploma in the medresse, teaches for several years, in fact till he has conducted a class of Softas through the same course he had himself taken, when, on application to the Ministry of Worship, at whose head is the Sheikh-ul-Islam, and, after a severe examination, he receives the title of Ulema. The Mussulman does not arrive at this dignity until he hasreached the age of thirty or thirty-five. It confers numerous privileges, for those doctors escape military service, unless in the event of the djihad, or sacred war, and from their ranks are filled the Judgeships, the curacies (so to speak) of the mosques, the professorships in the medresses, the trusteeships connected with the administration of the trust funds for pious and charitable purposes, etc., etc.The Imaums—who are the real priests and have charge of the public religious service—are selected from among the Ulema. The title of Imaum comes from the Arabic, and is the equivalent of leader or outpost. There is as a rule one Imaum to each mosque of minor importance—messdjid—while two, or, at most, three, one of whom is designated the chief authority, are appointed to the principal mosques—djamis. Even the Ulema—the word is plural and signifies wise men—are subject to military duty when a holy war is proclaimed.The term Softa includes all the grades above mentioned, from the Imaum, or priest, to the Softa proper, or mere students of the Koran. They are usually distinguishable in Turkey by wearing a white turban around their fez, or skull cap. Sultan Abdul Medjid some years ago endeavored to induce his subjects to wear a European dress, and succeeded so far that almost without exception every one except the very lowest in the public service adopted it. But the Softas to a man retain the old-fashioned baggy, slouchy dress which Abdul Medjid wished to get rid of.Who can believe that through fear of the uprising of a few thousand Softas, the Sultan planned a fanatical uprising of the Kurds in distant Armenia. How couldthat benefit the Softas save as it were permitted them to beat, kill and plunder the Armenians in Stamboul?If the fear of the Softas prompted it, still what a heartless wretch to doom seventy-five thousand to death and hundreds of thousands to starvation and outrage when to admit the fleets of Europe would have protected him from any possible insurrection in Constantinople.The Turkish Government itself was directly and actively responsible for the outrages in Asia Minor; it not merely permitted, but actually ordered them. But there was in Constantinople itself a most serious conspiracy against the dynasty, which threatened to turn out the Sultan and revolutionize the whole form of government. As a sort of counter-irritant, which haply might cure this, the Government might have indeed resorted to any extravagance or conduct elsewhere. More than one monarch has begun a foreign war to quell disaffection at home. Why should not the Porte think a general harrying of the Armenians a ready way of allaying incipient disloyalty among the Faithful?This conspiracy was made by what was known as the Young Turkey party. It included most of the Softas, and students in all colleges, and many lawyers, doctors, officers of the army and navy, and even civil servants of the Porte. Back of these were multitudes of the general populace. There were many who denied Abdul Hamid’s legal right to be Sultan while his elder brother was living. There were others, numbered by millions, who held that the Caliph must be an Arab and that the Sultan was therefore not to be recognized as the true Commander of the Faithful. Moreover, many, indeed all the leaders of Young Turkey, demandedthe carrying out of the Hatt of 1877, establishing a Constitution and Parliament, and denounced the suppression of that promised system as a gross breach of faith and wrong to the people of the Empire. It may not be generally remembered; men’s memories are so short; but it is a fact that a constitutional government was once officially proclaimed in Turkey. The plan was conceived by Midhat Pasha, then Grand Vizier, and formally approved by the Sultan. A Constitution was promulgated. A Parliament, consisting of a Senate and an elective Assembly, was created, and its first session was opened by Abdul Hamid in person on March 19, 1877. Later in the same year its second session was opened, and the Sultan publicly declared that the Constitution should thenceforth be the supreme law of the land, in practice as well as in theory. But before the end of the year one designing politician managed to get Parliament involved in a corrupt job, and then, to avoid investigation, persuaded the Sultan to issue a decree abrogating the Constitution and abolishing Parliament! It was acoupd’état, and it was successful; thanks largely to the indifference of the Powers, and especially of England.The Young Turkey leaders demanded the restoration of the Constitution. In order to accomplish that they proposed to get rid, in some way, of the Sultan who first decreed and then abrogated that instrument. There were threats of assassination, and something like a reign of terror prevailed at Yildiz Kiosk. The Sultan took as many precautions against treachery as ever did the Russian Czar. The man who brought about the abolition of the Parliament by his rascality was a cabinet minister. He, too, was threatened withdeath. The strictest repression was practiced. The merest hint was enough to cause a man’s arrest and summary execution. But in spite of all, the revolutionary movement grew. Mysterious placards appeared on the walls, calling for fulfilment of the Hatt of 1877. The name of Midhat Pasha, who suffered martyrdom for having given Turkey a Constitution, was spoken now and then, in whispers only, but in tones of grateful reverence. A whisper of “The Constitution,” too, went round. Army and navy were becoming secretly leavened with the idea. The Sultan and his Ministers did not know whom to trust.And now that we have seen what a fiasco this brilliantly projected great naval demonstration proved itself to be; and how cleverly the Sultan played his pawns against Castles and Kings and Queens, and checkmated all the Powers of Europe, we will leave him in his hell of infamy bathed in the blood of nearly a hundred thousand slain, with the voices of agonized and outraged mothers and daughters raining maledictions upon his accursed head, while we try to be patient until the rod of the Almighty shall smite the wicked, till the day of reckoning and of vengeance shall come in the day of the Lord at hand. We leave the Sultan in his palace to the companionship, perhaps the guidance, of Khalil Rifaat Pasha, the new Grand Vizier, the voice of history and the righteous judgments of God, but as for Islam, as a system of government over Christian populations, we can but pray daily for its speedy, utter and final overthrow.

It does not lie within the plan of this volume to review at any length the history of Turkey, or to sketch the lives of the Sultans who have reigned during the century; it will answer, however, to make our work intelligible and clear, if the life of the reigning Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II. is presented briefly.

He is the second son of Abdul Medjid, who was Sultan from 1839 to 1861. He was born September 5th, 1842; and his mother having died when he was quite young, he was adopted by his father’s second wife, herself childless, who was very wealthy and made him her heir. His early life was quiet and uneventful; his boyhood was a continual scene of merry idleness. His education consisting mostly in amusements and tricks devised for his entertainment by the court slaves: and in an unusually early and complete initiation into the depravities of harem life. Indeed up to manhood all the learning he had acquired, amounted to but little more than the ability to read in the Arabic and Turkish tongues. His mother had died of consumption and his constitution was delicate. He had inherited a taste for drink, but his doctor who was a Greek, assured him it would be his destruction. “Then I will never touch wine or liquor again,” said Abdul Hamid, and he kept his word.

The turning point in his life came, when in 1867 hisUncle Abdul Aziz, then Sultan, took his own son and his two nephews, Murad and Hamid, to the Paris Exposition, England and Germany. He saw with a quick and appreciative eye. He acquired a taste for political geography, and for European dress, customs and interests. What he then learned was to modify very considerably the subsequent course of his life. From April, 1876, both he and his brother Murad were kept under strict surveillance and not allowed to take any part in the political movements going on in Constantinople.

Abdul Aziz, the reigning Sultan, was determined to defy the Turkish law of succession and proclaim his son in June, as heir presumptive to the throne, thus displacing Murad and Hamid, who both were before him in rights of succession. At this crisis, Midhat Pasha, the leading and most progressive statesman and strong adherent of Murad, planned a revolution and Abdul Aziz, was deposed and Murad was proclaimed Sultan, May 31st, and so recognized by the Western powers: but he was never girded with the sword of Othman in the Mosque of Eyout, a ceremony equivalent to a Western Coronation.

His ill-health, increased by excessive use of liquor and the mistaken treatment of his physician, rendered him mentally incapable of ruling: though a celebrated Dr. Liedersdorf, sent for from Vienna, is said to have stated, “If I had Sultan Murad under my own care in Vienna, I would have him all right in six weeks.”

In consequence of this mental indisposition, Murad V. was deposed August 30th, and Abdul Hamid II. was proclaimed on August 31st, and girded with thesword of Othman a few days later. He was then living in a small palace in the Valley of Sweet Waters, which he inherited from his father. He was very fond of agriculture, and amused himself by cultivating a model farm. To his mother, who is said to have been an Armenian from Georgia, in Russia, he owed a quality very rare in the family of the Sultans, the spirit of economy. He never allowed his expenses to exceed his income before he came to the throne. In this charming retreat he resided quietly with his wife and two children, all eating at the same table, and showing in his dress and surroundings his preference for European modes of life. The only concession he made to Orientalism in personal dress, was in wearing the “fez,” which he disliked, but continued to wear as the necessary token of his nationality.

Six weeks after he was proclaimed Sultan, it was announced that a scheme of reform for the whole Ottoman Empire, was in course of preparation. It was published in January, and while it was a much less sweeping reform than Midhat wished, it provided for a Senate and a House of Representatives, which last was to take control of the finances, the system of taxation was to be revised and better laws were to be enacted for the provinces.

Election to the lower house was to be by universal suffrage; for the upper house electors were restricted to two classes: the noble and the educated.

Abdul Hamid cordially disapproved of this check on the absolute power enjoyed by predecessors.

He was willing to do justice and to temper it with mercy, but to be placed in the position of a servant to his people was odious to himself.

At a council held, when only his other ministers were present, the Sultan asked, what should be done with Midhat Pasha. Two of those present said: “Let him die.” But Abdul Hamid was not bloodthirsty, hence he only banished him to Arabia where two years later he was poisoned.

The Sultan was restive under the constitution and the Pashas, against whose cruelty and extortion the most of the reforms were aimed, sided with their sovereign. In 1875, Midhat Pasha had outlined the situation thus to the English Ambassador:

“The Sultan’s Empire is being rapidly brought to destruction; corruption has reached a pitch that it has never before attained. The service of the state is starved, while untold millions are being poured into the palaces and the provinces are being ruined by the uncontrolled exactions of the Governors who purchase their appointments at the palace: and nothing can save the country but a complete change of system.”

And the very worst governed portion of all his Empire was Armenia. We are officially told that its government for the last thirty years has been horrible.

In an Armenian village recently plundered by bandits, the famous Hungarian Professor, Arminius Vambery, an intimate friend of the Sultan, once asked, “Why do you not get help from the Governor of Erzeroum?” “Because,” answered the villagers, “he is at the head of the robbers. God alone and his representative on earth—the Russian Czar, can help us.” This brigandage, is one of the greatest curses of the Turkish Empire, exercising a rule of terror and oppression, and now legalized, apparently, by the transformation ofthe Kurdish horsemen—robbers—into the Hamidieh—the Sultan’s own Cavalry.

Types and Costumes—Kurdish Gentlemen.Types and Costumes—Kurdish Gentlemen.

Types and Costumes—Kurdish Gentlemen.

Such being the spirit of the Pashas who had grown rich by plunder and official theft, of course they were opposed to the Constitution, and by the will of the Sultan it was abrogated after two sessions had been held. This was soon followed by the dismissal of the Ministers who had formed the triumvirate, and the Sultan resumed his despotic and absolute sway. Assured that England would not suffer the dismemberment of his Empire we have seen him refusing to guarantee the enforcement of promised reforms and provoking the war with Russia; but as we have already told this story, we will give some pictures of the Sultan as drawn by his admirers; leaving the horrors of the Armenian massacres to bear witness as to the honesty of his professed devotion to the welfare of his Christian subjects and his promises to observe the terms of said treaty in the amelioration of the condition of all who were suffering under the murderous oppression of Kurds and Circassians.

Professor Vambery, a most remarkable linguist who writes and speaks all the languages of Europe like a native, spent some time in Turkey a few years ago and was received into closest conference by the Sultan.—Here are extracts from what he has written of him:

“I must own that the education of Abdul Hamid, like that of all Oriental princes was defective, very defective indeed; but an iron will, good judgment and rare acuteness have made good this short-coming; and he not only knows the multifarious relations and intricacies of his own much tried Empire but is thoroughly conversant with European politics: and I amnot going far from fact when I state that it has been solely the moderation and self-restraint of Sultan Abdul Hamid which has saved us hitherto from a general European conflagration. As to his personal character, I have found the present ruler of the Ottoman Empire of great politeness, amiability and extreme gentleness. When sitting opposite to him during my private interviews, I could not avoid being struck by his extremely modest attitude, by his quiet manners and by the bashful look of his eyes. * * At his table, though wine is served to European guests, it is not offered to the Sultan or any other Mohammedan.

“His views on religion, politics and education have a decidedly modern tone, and yet he is a firm believer in the tenets of his religion, and likes to assemble around him the foremost Mollahs and pious Sheiks on whom he profusely bestows imperial favors; but he does not forget from time to time to send presents to the Greek and the Armenian patriarchates, and nothing is more ludicrous than to hear this prince accused by a certain class of politicians in Europe of being a fanatic and an enemy to Christians,—a prince who by appointing a Christian for his chief medical attendant and a Christian for his chief minister of finance, did not hesitate to intrust most important duties to non-Mohammedans. * * *”

[Doubtless he wanted the best men he could find as his physician and minister of finance, and these men were found among the Christians. Let the last year tell whether he be the friend or the enemy of the Christians.]

“In reference to the charge of ruthless despotism laid upon Sultan Abdul Hamid in connection with hisabrogation of the charter granted during the first months of his reign, I will quote his own words. He said to me one day:—‘In Europe the soil was prepared centuries ago for liberal institutions, and now I am asked to transplant a sapling to the foreign, stony and rugged ground of Asiatic life. Let me clear away the thistles, and stones, let me till the soil, and provide for irrigation because rain is very scarce in Asia and then we may transport the new plant; and believe me that nobody will be more delighted at its thriving than myself.’”

Thus far the professor. And now, it is to be wondered if he calls the extermination of the Armenians the clearing away of the thistles and does he propose to irrigate the soil of Armenia with the blood of its noblest race. Is he not rather slitting the veins of Asia Minor and pouring out its heart’s best blood?

That the Sultan was a warm personal friend of Gen. Lew Wallace does not make him any the less a despot; neither because Hon. S. S. Cox, who succeeded Gen. Wallace was an admirer of the Sultan as the following quotation will show; does that make him the less a fanatic and the most remorseless shedder of blood that Europe has seen since the days of Tamerlane.

“The Sultan is of middle size and of Turkish type. He wears a full black beard, is of a dark complexion and has very expressive eyes. His forehead is large, indicative of intellectual power. He is very gracious in manner though at times seemingly a little embarrassed. * * *

“As Caliph he is the divine representative of Mohammed. His family line runs back with unbroken links to the thirteenth century. He is one of the most industrious,painstaking, honest, conscientious and vigilant rulers of the world. He is amiable and just withal. His every word betokens a good heart and a sagacious head. [What a comment the horrors of the many months just past furnishes to this flattering estimate a Mohammedian conscience!]

“He is an early riser. After he leaves his seraglio and has partaken of a slight repast his secretaries wait on him with portfolios. He peruses all the official correspondence and current reports. He gives up his time till noon to work of this character. Then his breakfast is served. After that he walks in his park and gardens, looks in at his aviaries, perhaps stirs up his menagerie, makes an inspection of his two hundred horses in their fine stables, indulges his little daughters in a row upon the fairy lake which he has had constructed, and it may be attends a performance at the little theatre provided for his children in the palace. At 5 P. M. having accomplished most of his official work, he mounts his favorite white horse, Ferhan, a war-scarred veteran for a ride in the park. The park of the palace Yildiz where he lives comprises some thousand acres. It is surrounded by high walls and protected by the soldiery.”

But all this does not tell us what the man at heart is any more than if some flatterer of Nero should expatiate on the esthetic taste of Nero and his love of the fine arts and his skill as a violinist when he sat at night in his marble palace and enjoyed the blazing magnificence of Rome. It is as foreign to the present situation as if some one should praise the skill of Nero’s horsemanship as he drove his mettled steeds with firm reins along the course lighted by the blazing torchesof the tar-besmeared Christians, whom he accused of having set the city on fire.

The persistence with which the Sultan has followed out his purpose of exterminating the Armenians, in the face of a horrified and indignant Christendom, marks his audacity and contempt of Christians as sublime in height, as infernal in spirit, and bottomless in its cruelty.

Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire can scarcely find polite words enough to express his contempt for the forms of early Christianity and praised the Turks as possessing the rarest of qualities when he said: “The Turks are distinguished for their patience, discipline, sobriety, bravery, honesty and modesty,” and Hon. Sunset Cox echoed the same when he wrote, “It is because of these solid characteristics, and in spite of the harem, in spite of autocratic power, in spite of the Janissary and the seraglio that this race and rule remain potent in the Orient. His heart (the heart of the present Sultan) is touched by suffering, and his views lean strongly to that toleration of the various races and religions of his realm, which other and more boastful nations would do well to imitate.”

The facts given in the chapters on The Reign of Terror will be sufficient commentary on such praise.

Probably no building in all Europe has so many associations with tragical events as that of the palace of the Sultan of Turkey—the autocrat whose rule is absolute over more than thirty million subjects. From this palace go forth the edicts which involve the death of thousands and which control the governments of distant provinces. Fifty years ago the Sultans governed a huge territory in Europe, but one province after anotherhas been freed from their yoke, until Turkey in Europe has dwindled in size to less than half its former area. But the Asiatic possession of the Sultan have not diminished, and the events in Armenia which have recently horrified the whole world, show what that possession means. Nor are these massacres a new or unparalleled feature of Turkish rule. Similar horrors have been perpetrated before under the cognizance of the Sultans and the only reason why the indignation now aroused on the subject is deeper and more intense, is that it is now impossible to conceal them, and in the days of the telegraph and cheap newspapers they are set in the light of publicity. The Turk is no worse now than he has always been, and is only trying to govern at the end of the nineteenth century as he governed in the sixteenth. As an eminent writer has said: “The Turk is still the aboriginal savage encamped on the ruins of a civilization which he destroyed.”

In some respects Abdul Hamid is better than his predecessors, and until the reports of the Armenian horrors were published, he was believed to be a great deal better; but they have proved that he has the same nature, and is at heart as fierce and relentless as they. The character of the man is of so much greater moment to his subjects than in other lands, because of the utter absence of even the semblance of constitutional government. The government of Turkey is a despotism pure and simple. It is tempered only by the dread of assassination or deposition, and even those calamities may come rather from a wise and merciful policy than from massacre. The Pashas who surround the Sultan, the successors of those who deposed his uncle and his brother, applaud the atrocities,and are willing instruments in the perpetration of them. The danger to the Sultan’s person is far more likely to come through weakness and lack of vigor in persecution than from indignation at wholesale slaughter. The Sultan fully appreciates this fact, and lives in constant dread of treachery.

An interesting story of the present Sultan is related by Mr. W. T. Stead, in an article in hisReview of Reviews, which in some measure explains the singular mixture in his character of fanaticism, such as that which produced the Armenian massacres, with the marked ability and intelligence he displays in the conduct of national affairs. It appears that when he was a mere youth, he was conspicuous even in Constantinople, which is notorious for its immorality, for the gross excesses of his private life. There was then little probability of his ever ascending the throne, and as he was condemned by his position to a life of idleness, he plunged into all the wickedness of the capital, and lived a life of debauchery. Suddenly he changed his course. He quitted his evil ways and became a devout follower of Mohammed, was attentive at the Mosque and gave all his thoughts to his religion. From that time until now his religious enthusiasm has been the most prominent feature of his character. But with the change came a fierce intolerance, a desire that others should follow his example and determination, evinced since his accession, that in his own dominions no enemy of the Prophet, nor any who did not avow themselves his followers, should have peace or rest until they accepted the faith. This spirit accounts for the crusade against the Armenians whom he hates because they are Christians.

The real cause for all the trouble in the Turkish Empire will be found to lie within the spirit and purpose of the Sultan himself. His conduct towards the Powers will serve to most abundantly confirm this view.

The condition of Armenia under Turkish rule has for many years been a scandal to Christendom. After the horrors of the Blood bath of Sassoun had been made known to the world a commission of the Powers were sent to investigate and report on the massacres which had been perpetrated.

The investigation of the latest atrocities showed that the Armenians had been wantonly tortured and murdered, and that indescribable atrocities had been perpetrated. Men, women, and children were proved to have been hacked to pieces, and no respect had been shown to age or sex. Whole villages had been depopulated, and the fact of any community being Christian seemed to have been sufficient to provoke the murderous hostility of the authorities. Where the Turks did not commit the outrages themselves, they remained inactive while the Kurds committed them, and their inactivity amounted to connivance, because the Armenians are not allowed to arm themselves for their own protection. There was legitimate grounds for foreign powers urging reforms upon the Sultan, as in 1878, when the Berlin Congress was inclined to strip him of his Armenian provinces, he promised that Armenia should be governed better than it had been, and England became sponsor for the performance of his promises. Under those conditions the Sultan was allowed to retain the provinces, and his failure to effect the reforms was therefore a distinct breach of faith. TheAmbassadors of England, France and Russia accordingly presented to the Sultan on May 11th a demand for twelve specific changes in the government of Armenia. The scheme outlined included the appointment of a High Commissioner, with whom should be associated a commission to sit at Constantinople, for the purpose of carrying out all reforms. The full details of the plan were not made public, but among the suggestions made were these: The appointment of governors and vice-governors in six Armenian vilayets—Van, Erzeroum, Sivas, Bitlis, Harpoot, and Trebizond; that either the governor or the vice-governor of each vilayet should be a Christian; that the collection of taxes be on a better basis; with various other reforms in the judicial and administrative departments: especially that torture should be abolished; the gendarmérie to be recruited from Christians as well as Mohammedans, and the practical disarmament of the Kurds. Note the names of these vilayets as they are the centers of the horrible massacres that followed the Porte’s true answer to all its own promises of reform.

To this project of reforms the following memorandum was attached:—

“The appended scheme, containing the general statement of the modifications which it would be necessary to introduce in regard to the administration, financial and judicial organization of the vilayets mentioned, it has appeared useful to indicate in a separate memorandum certain measures exceeding the scope of an administrative regulation, but which form the very basis of this regulation and the adoption of which by the Porte is a matter of primary importance.”

These different points are:

1. The eventual reduction of the number of vilayets.

2. The guarantee for the selection of the valis.

3. Amnesty for Armenians sentenced or in prison on political charges.

4. The return of the Armenian emigrants or exiles.

5. The final settlement of pending legal proceedings for common law crimes and offences.

6. The inspection of prisons and an inquiry into the condition of the prisoners.

7. The appointment of a high commission of surveillance for the application of reforms in the provinces.

8. The creation of a permanent committee of control at Constantinople.

9. Reparation for the loss suffered by the Armenians who were victims of the events at Sassoun, Talori, etc.

10. The regularization of matters connected with religious conversion.

11. The maintenance and strict application of the rights and privileges conceded to the Armenians.

12. The position of the Armenians in the other vilayets of Asiatic Turkey.

After much delay the Porte replied that it could not accept the proposals made. Of course not. Why should the Sultan do anything to favor the Armenians or even to prevent the recurrence of these terrible outrages unless compelled to do so by something more than advice! Yet the Sultan would be anxious to know what the three Powers would do about it. He was not kept long in suspense, so far as England was concerned. Orders were issued for the English fleet to proceed to Constantinople, and France and Russia were informed of the fact. The news reached the Sultanand appears to have convinced him that it was not safe to trifle any longer with the demands of the powers. He accordingly telegraphed that he would accede to the principle of reform outlined for him.

The Sultan, learning also that the British Cabinet had met to consider Turkey’s reply to the plan of reform for Armenia, submitted by Great Britain, France and Russia, telegraphed to Rustem Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador in London, instructing him to ask the Earl of Kimberly, the British Foreign Minister, to postpone a decision in the matter.

The Earl of Kimberly acceded to the request. In the meanwhile the Porte handed to the British, French and Russian Ambassadors a fresh and satisfactory reply, acceding to the principle of control by the Powers, but asking that the period be limited to three years.

While these promises were being so freely made, letters from Armenia, in July, represented Turkish cruelty as unabated; the position of affairs never so grave and critical; and the Armenians to have reached the ultimate limit of despair. Yet in August the world was informed that Turkey had decided to accept in their entirety the Armenian reforms demanded by the Powers, and that the acceptance of these reforms was primarily due to the pressure brought to bear on the government by Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador, who communicated to the government a confidential note from Lord Salisbury to the effect that the Porte must accept the proposals of the powers unconditionally, or England would use sharper means than those adopted by Lord Rosebery to settle affairs in Armenia.

The summer passed in fruitless and endless negotiations. Later in September a press telegram from London voiced the situation as follows:—

“European diplomacy seems already weary of the question, which Turkish diplomacy has handled with an evident ability, based upon temporization and inertia, as well as upon its knowledge of the jealousy existing between the three Powers which proclaim so loudly that they want nothing else but the happiness of the Armenians.

“The question has not progressed one iota, despite all the negotiations, memoranda, appointments of commissions, and even the (awful!) rumor, one month ago, of the assembling of the British fleet in Besika Bay, at the entrance of the Dardanelles. England, France and Russia, however, had the way clear before them, if they had been really in accord and seriously willing to accomplish the humanitarian mission they pretended to assume. Article sixty-one of the Berlin Treaty gave the Powers the right to see that the same rights granted to Bulgaria should be granted also to Armenia. This article has remained a dead letter in regard to the latter country since 1878. When the Sassoun atrocities were recently committed, the Powers merely sent to the Porte a memorandum, requesting it to cease its persecution of Armenians. During two or three months the European Ministers at Pera awaited the decision of the Sultan. Whenever they sent their dragomans to the Foreign Minister, Said Pasha caused his secretary to answer in the Spanish manner, ‘hasta la mañana’ (to-morrow a reply will be given). Finally the three Powers thought of using the rights conferred upon them by Article sixty-one, and required Abdul Hamid to consentthat a European Commission of Control should be sent to Armenia, in order to see that reforms be practically applied there. The Sultan will fight stubbornly before accepting them, which would amount to the abandonment of a portion of his sovereignty, and it remains to be seen how much the Powers, jealous of their respective influence at the Porte, are in earnest and how anxious they are promptly to enforce the acceptation of their Control Commission.”

The Turks continued to play a waiting game in Armenian affairs. Remembering the treaty of Berlin, they were shrewd enough to play off one Power against another so as to retain absolute control over their internal affairs, though they had forfeited all right to rule by their outrageous and brutal massacres. The Congress of Berlin was at the time a costly thing to the Eastern Christians but was destined to prove almost their utter ruin.

The Turks did not find it hard to pick flaws in the plan of administrative reform when they did not intend to have any reform. The whole scheme was without any security against the renewal of the Sassoun massacres. Everybody who was interested in Armenia protested against the plan, but it was the best that mere diplomacy could do.

Thus the summer passed filled with plenty of promises, but without any fulfilment, until suddenly the signal was given and the horrors of Sassoun were reënacted throughout all the provinces of Armenia.

At a mass meeting of Armenians held in New York, free expression was given to the feeling of horror with which the news of the Turks’ outrages was received there. There seemed to be no doubt in the minds of thesepeople as to the truth of the reports from Asia Minor, and many were of the opinion that still more terrible news would be received. Mr. Dionian presided, and in calling the meeting to order, said that Armenia and Turkey could never be friends, and that Armenia must either be liberated or annihilated.

Dr. P. Ayvard also spoke, and then Dr. S. Aparcian offered resolutions, which were unanimously adopted, saying in part:—

Resolved, That we most respectfully and appealingly call upon all the great Powers of Europe, and of our adopted and well loved country of America, to the deplorable condition of Armenia, and trust that the moral interests of Europe will demand taking immediate steps to put an end to this rule of anarchy and lawlessness prevailing there, and that the United States of America will give their moral support.

Resolved, That we most respectfully and appealingly call upon all the great Powers of Europe, and of our adopted and well loved country of America, to the deplorable condition of Armenia, and trust that the moral interests of Europe will demand taking immediate steps to put an end to this rule of anarchy and lawlessness prevailing there, and that the United States of America will give their moral support.

Knowing the Turk as they did, the Armenians in this country were prepared for the confirmation of these reports. In due time it came.

A prominent Turk laughed when he saw the report, and said it was a mere fabrication, and that if there was any slaughter it was not committed by the Turks. As to the Turks being opposed to the Armenians because of their being Christians, he said: “People who have lived in the Orient know that to be absurd. We have Christians and Jews among us, and as long as they obey the laws of the land they are treated the same as the members of our faith. Of course,” he added, “when people become revolutionists and conspire against our Government, then we take measures to punish them. The Armenians are revolutionists, and their revolutionary societies exist in every city in this country, while the head-centre is at Naples.”

The Turk laughed and blamed the Armenian revolutionists. The Porte denied the outrages at first then charged the trouble to the Armenians, until the terrible situation at Trebizond and Erzeroum could no longer be kept from the knowledge of Christendom. The prisons in Trebizond were filled with wounded and helpless Armenians: the Mohammedans were well armed and the governor entirely in sympathy with, even if not the instigator of the outrages.

Meanwhile the European manager of the United Press at Constantinople gave the first detailed account of the appalling massacres to which Armenian Christians had been subjected since the Sultan Abdul Hamid gave perfidious assent to the reforms demanded by the European Powers. The harrowing and shameful facts were told on the authority of American Christian men, who witnessed them, and their narrative had the unqualified endorsement of Mr. Terrell, the United States Minister to Turkey. In view of such conclusive testimony to the duplicity and faithlessness of an incorrigible ruler, it seems incredible that Christian peoples will let their rescuing hands be stayed any longer by sordid jealousy and greed, or that they will any longer consent to bear a share of the responsibility for such crimes against humanity. The blood of the slaughtered thousands of their fellow Christians in Armenia cries against them from the ground.

By this trustworthy evidence the conclusion was justified that within the six provinces mainly concerned in the proposed reforms, no fewer than fifteen thousand Armenians were assassinated, while the number of those rendered homeless and robbed of all their possessions, did not fall short of two hundred thousand.The places and dates exposed the aim of the hellish atrocities committed, and drove home the guilt to their authors and accomplices. On October 20, the Sultan authorized Kiamil Pasha, his Grand Vizier, to accept the reforms proposed for the Armenian provinces by the European Powers, and to promise that they should be forthwith carried out. On the next day, October 21, when there had been ample time for the reception of orders telegraphed from Constantinople, the Kurds and Turks throughout Armenia, openly incited and assisted by the regular troops, entered on a scheme of wholesale murder and devastation. The purpose of this preconcerted iniquity, as disclosed by its disgraceful antecedents and its horrible results, was to vent upon the helpless Armenians the venom and the spite engendered by enforced submission to the will of the Christian Powers. It was to enforce at one vindictive stroke the programme of extermination devised in 1890, but prosecuted hitherto with some show of secrecy and caution. It was to make of Armenia a solitude, and then with satanic mockery, to offer exact fulfilment of the pledge of peace and of reform.

A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum.A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum.

A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum.

All the circumstances showed that with this flagitious rupture of the Sultan’s plighted word, the person directly and primarily chargeable was the Sultan himself. He sanctioned the plot of extermination, if he did not personally concoct it in 1890, the relentless though disavowed execution of which at last provoked the interposition of Christian Powers. No sooner had Kiamil Pasha been reluctantly permitted to agree to the reforms exacted for Armenia, than he was summarily dismissed by Abdul Hamid from the Grand Vizierate, lest he shouldexecute the agreement in good faith. The new Ministers selected by the Sultan were drawn mainly from the scum of Constantinople, and their first act was to protest that time must be given to the Porte for the proper enforcement of the reform project. Time was needed to render reforms superfluous through the sweeping destruction of its intended beneficiaries. It was needed to perpetrate the design of annihilation on a scale of vast proportions. The Sultan well wished to hide his privity to such a devilish transaction, but he dared not disavow his agents, lest they should divulge his instructions. Accordingly, when high Turkish officials, unmistakably implicated in the Armenian enormities, were subjected to the nominal penalty of a recall at the imperative instance of England’s representative, they were decorated and promoted by Abdul Hamid, whose secret aims and wishes were thus betrayed.

On November 10, the Kurds made an attack on Harpoot, but were easily repulsed. On November 11, a party of the soldiers and leading Turks met the Kurds in conference, during the progress of which a bugle was sounded, at which signal the soldiers withdrew. The Kurds thereupon advanced with yells. There was no effort on the part of the soldiers and Armenians to resist, and the Turks joined in the killing and plundering. The Armenian school was burned, and then began an attack upon the Christian quarter, the buildings in which were also set on fire. The Christians were without weapons of any sort, and trusted entirely to the Government to protect them. The Armenians remained in the girls’ seminary until that building was set on fire, and then they appealed to the Governor for protection. They obtained a guard of soldiers, all buttwo of whom afterward deserted. These two remained and carried out the orders issued to them, to fight the fires which had been kindled.

The burning continued for three days. The Armenians were stripped of everything but their clothing. All the Christian villages around were burned by the Kurds. The outrages continued unchecked until the Government at Constantinople ordered the troops to take action. Fourteen Kurds were then shot, when the murders and pillaging ceased instantly. The districts of Diarbekir, Malatia, Arabkir, Kyin and Palu were made desolate. Thirty-five villages were destroyed, and thousands of the inhabitants embraced Islamism in consequence of the pressure brought to bear upon them.

The Turkish troops which were on their way to Zeitoun to suppress the trouble there, were concentrated at Marash, where they awaited the return of the delegation sent to Zeitoun to negotiate with the Armenians in control there for their surrender.

The Government said they were projecting more extensive relief work, and would welcome foreign aid through a joint commission.

Despite this promise of greater relief, the Government was bent on continuing the work of extermination—all promises to the contrary notwithstanding.

The tidal wave of horror and indignation swept over Europe, and found expression in most intense and emphatic speech; it was even felt in the Cabinets of Diplomacy and in Constantinople. There seemed to be more iron in their blood and energy in their action and purpose in their speech.

The general situation was not changed, but it wasapparent that a change was about to take place. The representatives of the Powers, some of whom were awaiting instructions from their Governments in regard to the matter of sending additional guardboats into the Bosphorus, seemed to be unanimous in their insistence on the issue of permits for the admission of such boats by the Sultan, and the Ambassadors held a meeting to consider the situation as presented by the Sultan’s refusal to permit the passage of the additional boats through the straits, and to decide on a concerted plan of action.

For several days the wires were hot with the assertion that all the Powers were united and determined to carry their demands to a successful termination. The Sultan was unofficially informed that if he continued to maintain his stubborn attitude, a forced entry of the Dardanelles would possibly be made.

As previously, and with equal pertinence, at this hour of crisis the continental press devoted much space to the affairs of the Orient, and the Sultan was the recipient of much newspaper advice. One writer in particular urged him to remain master of the situation, and to show himself promptly disposed to fulfil his engagements. In that case the crisis would remain an internal one; but if it should assume an international aspect it would be peacefully adjusted on the basis of the maintenance of the integrity of Turkey which would be asserted by France and Russia, the two Pacific Powers. It was also telegraphed from Constantinople that the Czar, in reply to a personal appeal from the Sultan, consented to waive the Russian demand for a second guardship in the Bosphorus. At the same time she was prepared toresent any aggressive action that England might undertake alone.

The Sultan knew very well that there would be no concerted action of the Powers—that England and Russia would never agree as to any joint action, and yet to give color of necessity to his refusal, it was given out that the Powers had decided to depose him, using for this purpose the forces aboard the secondguardshipwhich they demanded should be permitted to enter the Bosphorus. This was to stir up the populace against the Powers. Then to furnish another excuse the report was circulated that the Sultan was in daily fear of sharing the fate of Ishmail Pasha at the hands of the Softas and the Young Turkish party.

The Sultan’s letter to Lord Salisbury was often quoted as a confirmation of the report that the Sultan was panic stricken. It will be recalled that Lord Salisbury in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet on November 9th, declared that, if the Sultan will not heartily resolve to do justice to them, the most ingenious constitution that can be framed will not avail to protect the Armenians; that through the Sultan alone can any real permanent blessings be conferred on his subjects. “What if the Sultan,” exclaimed the British Prime Minister—

“What if the Sultan is not persuaded? I am bound to say that the news reaching us from Constantinople does not give much cheerfulness in that respect. You will readily understand that I can only speak briefly on such a matter. It would be dangerous to express the opinions that are on my lips lest they injure the cause of peace and good order.”

These words seemed to be freighted with someominous significance, and they would have been, if there had been any purpose to make them mean anything.

In a remarkable letter to Lord Salisbury which he read publicly at a conference in London, the Sultan used a most beseeching tone to show that the possible dissolution of his Empire was lying heavy on his mind. It sounded like a most abject plea for mercy, a cry for the postponement of the fate which the Powers seemed to be preparing for the terrified monarch. In this note the Sultan said:

“I repeat, I will execute the reforms. I will take the paper containing them, place it before me and see that it is put in force. This is my earnest determination and I give my word of honor, I wish Lord Salisbury to know this and I beg and desire his Lordship, having confidence in these declarations, to make another speech by virtue of the friendly feeling and disposition he has for me and my country. I shall await the result of this message with the greatest anxiety.”

It will be noted that the Sultan’s communication contained no denial that there are wrongs to be remedied in the administration of his government in Armenia and elsewhere. There is no plea that the terms of solemn treaty obligations have been observed. The letter is a tacit confession that the interposition of the Powers as far as it had gone was justifiable and that the reports of the atrocities in Asia Minor, which were at first strenuously denied by the Turkish Government, were true.

It was only a shrewd plea of helplessness to persuade the Powers not to enforce their demands and nothing more. In his rejoinder to the Sultan’s letter, LordSalisbury substantially admits the hopelessness of reform under the Sultan’s government as now constituted and administered.

A few days after this correspondence the fear of the Sultan seemed to have vanished, and he was brave enough to refuse permission to the Powers to send extra guardboats into the Bosphorus.

At this time it looked as if Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador, would act alone, and that he really meant to force the passage of the Dardanelles.

But the Sultan knew he would not dare to do it, and he knew also that the Powers were not agreed to use force. England proved herself impotent before the crafty diplomacy of thetimidSultan.

It is folly at this day to pretend to believe that the Sultan ever intended of his “spontaneous good-will” to protect the Armenians even as human beings from the cruelty of Kurd or Turkish officials.

The horrors of December and January give the lie direct to every promise made at Constantinople. The Sultan had outwitted England, if indeed England ever were in earnest, and by circulating a rumor of a Turco-Russian alliance, most effectually checked all danger of intervention by force—the only argument to which the Turk will ever yield—and proceeded to commit yet greater crimes if that were possible.

Under the very eyes of the Russian, English, and French delegates at Moush, the witnesses who had the courage to speak the truth to the representatives of the Powers were thrown into prison, and not a hand was raised to protect them: and within a stone’s throw of the foreign consuls and the missionaries, loyal Armenians were being hung up by the heels, the hair of their headsand beards plucked out one by one, their bodies branded with red-hot irons, and defiled in beastly ways, and their wives and daughters dishonored before their very eyes. And all that philanthropic England has to offer its protégés, for whose protection she holds Cyprus as a pledge, is eloquent sympathy.

She received Cyprus by secret convention, and now holds it as the price of innocent blood. The rewards of iniquity are in her hand. It was worse than folly; it was the refinement of cruelty to send a commission to investigate the outrages in Armenia, thereby irritating the Turk to the height of possible fury as his deeds were proclaimed to the world and then leave him free to wreak his compressed wrath upon the Christians for whose protection no hand would be uplifted. The Powers saw Armenia in misery, bleeding, dying, and passed by on the other side, saying, we are bound by the terms of the Berlin Treaty not to interfere with Turkey in the administration of her domestic affairs; we are sorry for you; we wish the Sultan would listen to our advice and not be quite so severe in his chastisement, but really you must have given him some cause for his anger.

Yes, such provocation as the lamb gave to the wolf that charged it with soiling the water, though it was drinking much farther down the stream.

The humiliation of England as one of the Great Powers was complete when in the House of Commons March 16th, in reply to questions that were put to him Mr. Curzon Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs was obliged to say that reports received by the Government confirmed the statements that a great number of forced conversions from Christianity to Islamism were stillbeing made in Asia Minor. Under the circumstances of cruelty and systematic debauchery of defenceless Christian women through the devastated districts of Anatolia, he said, the British Consuls in Asia Minor had been instructed to report such cases, and representations in regard to them were constantly being made to the Government in Constantinople.

Representations were constantly being made! What did the Porte care for representations? How England was compelled to quaff the contempt even of the Turk who laughs or sneers as his mood may be over these representations of English Consuls and missionaries. The Sublime Porte—which means the Sultan—cabled the Turkish Legation at Washington to deny most emphatically the statements that appeared in the American religious press regarding forcible conversions to Islam.

The Sublime Porte affirmed that “the stories related therein are mere inventions of revolutionists, and their friends intended to attract the sympathy of credulous people. There is no forcible conversion to Islamism in Turkey and no animosity against Protestantism.” This is sublime impudence. The statements thus contradicted, represented conditions certified to by official reports, by careful investigations made by correspondents of newspapers in England and the United States, and by hundreds of private letters from persons in the region where the massacres occurred. Moreover, this declaration of the Sultan is contradicted by centuries of Mohammedan history, by the ruins of ancient churches throughout all Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and by daily prayer concerning the Christians:—

“Oh Allah make their children orphans, * * givethem and their families * * their women, their children, * * their possessions and their race, their wealth and their lands as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures.”

The Softas are, properly speaking, the pupils who are engaged in the study of Mussulman theology and law in the medresses, or schools attached to the mosques, the range of their studies, however, being practically limited to learning to read the Koran. The Softas take their name from a corruption of the past-participle soukhte—burned—applied to them because they are supposed to be consumed by the love of study of sacred things, and devoted to a life of meditation. The Softas follow their studies in the school building, sleeping and eating at theimaretts, where free lodgings and food are provided for them out of the legacies of the pious. If their families can afford to do so, they furnish them with clothing and bedding; if not, these are given to them from the same charitable fund. The number of Softas is very large, for one reason because of their exemption from military service. After long-continued study of Arabic, and the Koran and its commentaries, the Softa, after an examination which, though nominally arduous, is almost invariably passed successfully, takes the title of Khodja.

The Khodja—khavadje, reader or singer—a scholar who has taken his diploma in the medresse, teaches for several years, in fact till he has conducted a class of Softas through the same course he had himself taken, when, on application to the Ministry of Worship, at whose head is the Sheikh-ul-Islam, and, after a severe examination, he receives the title of Ulema. The Mussulman does not arrive at this dignity until he hasreached the age of thirty or thirty-five. It confers numerous privileges, for those doctors escape military service, unless in the event of the djihad, or sacred war, and from their ranks are filled the Judgeships, the curacies (so to speak) of the mosques, the professorships in the medresses, the trusteeships connected with the administration of the trust funds for pious and charitable purposes, etc., etc.

The Imaums—who are the real priests and have charge of the public religious service—are selected from among the Ulema. The title of Imaum comes from the Arabic, and is the equivalent of leader or outpost. There is as a rule one Imaum to each mosque of minor importance—messdjid—while two, or, at most, three, one of whom is designated the chief authority, are appointed to the principal mosques—djamis. Even the Ulema—the word is plural and signifies wise men—are subject to military duty when a holy war is proclaimed.

The term Softa includes all the grades above mentioned, from the Imaum, or priest, to the Softa proper, or mere students of the Koran. They are usually distinguishable in Turkey by wearing a white turban around their fez, or skull cap. Sultan Abdul Medjid some years ago endeavored to induce his subjects to wear a European dress, and succeeded so far that almost without exception every one except the very lowest in the public service adopted it. But the Softas to a man retain the old-fashioned baggy, slouchy dress which Abdul Medjid wished to get rid of.

Who can believe that through fear of the uprising of a few thousand Softas, the Sultan planned a fanatical uprising of the Kurds in distant Armenia. How couldthat benefit the Softas save as it were permitted them to beat, kill and plunder the Armenians in Stamboul?

If the fear of the Softas prompted it, still what a heartless wretch to doom seventy-five thousand to death and hundreds of thousands to starvation and outrage when to admit the fleets of Europe would have protected him from any possible insurrection in Constantinople.

The Turkish Government itself was directly and actively responsible for the outrages in Asia Minor; it not merely permitted, but actually ordered them. But there was in Constantinople itself a most serious conspiracy against the dynasty, which threatened to turn out the Sultan and revolutionize the whole form of government. As a sort of counter-irritant, which haply might cure this, the Government might have indeed resorted to any extravagance or conduct elsewhere. More than one monarch has begun a foreign war to quell disaffection at home. Why should not the Porte think a general harrying of the Armenians a ready way of allaying incipient disloyalty among the Faithful?

This conspiracy was made by what was known as the Young Turkey party. It included most of the Softas, and students in all colleges, and many lawyers, doctors, officers of the army and navy, and even civil servants of the Porte. Back of these were multitudes of the general populace. There were many who denied Abdul Hamid’s legal right to be Sultan while his elder brother was living. There were others, numbered by millions, who held that the Caliph must be an Arab and that the Sultan was therefore not to be recognized as the true Commander of the Faithful. Moreover, many, indeed all the leaders of Young Turkey, demandedthe carrying out of the Hatt of 1877, establishing a Constitution and Parliament, and denounced the suppression of that promised system as a gross breach of faith and wrong to the people of the Empire. It may not be generally remembered; men’s memories are so short; but it is a fact that a constitutional government was once officially proclaimed in Turkey. The plan was conceived by Midhat Pasha, then Grand Vizier, and formally approved by the Sultan. A Constitution was promulgated. A Parliament, consisting of a Senate and an elective Assembly, was created, and its first session was opened by Abdul Hamid in person on March 19, 1877. Later in the same year its second session was opened, and the Sultan publicly declared that the Constitution should thenceforth be the supreme law of the land, in practice as well as in theory. But before the end of the year one designing politician managed to get Parliament involved in a corrupt job, and then, to avoid investigation, persuaded the Sultan to issue a decree abrogating the Constitution and abolishing Parliament! It was acoupd’état, and it was successful; thanks largely to the indifference of the Powers, and especially of England.

The Young Turkey leaders demanded the restoration of the Constitution. In order to accomplish that they proposed to get rid, in some way, of the Sultan who first decreed and then abrogated that instrument. There were threats of assassination, and something like a reign of terror prevailed at Yildiz Kiosk. The Sultan took as many precautions against treachery as ever did the Russian Czar. The man who brought about the abolition of the Parliament by his rascality was a cabinet minister. He, too, was threatened withdeath. The strictest repression was practiced. The merest hint was enough to cause a man’s arrest and summary execution. But in spite of all, the revolutionary movement grew. Mysterious placards appeared on the walls, calling for fulfilment of the Hatt of 1877. The name of Midhat Pasha, who suffered martyrdom for having given Turkey a Constitution, was spoken now and then, in whispers only, but in tones of grateful reverence. A whisper of “The Constitution,” too, went round. Army and navy were becoming secretly leavened with the idea. The Sultan and his Ministers did not know whom to trust.

And now that we have seen what a fiasco this brilliantly projected great naval demonstration proved itself to be; and how cleverly the Sultan played his pawns against Castles and Kings and Queens, and checkmated all the Powers of Europe, we will leave him in his hell of infamy bathed in the blood of nearly a hundred thousand slain, with the voices of agonized and outraged mothers and daughters raining maledictions upon his accursed head, while we try to be patient until the rod of the Almighty shall smite the wicked, till the day of reckoning and of vengeance shall come in the day of the Lord at hand. We leave the Sultan in his palace to the companionship, perhaps the guidance, of Khalil Rifaat Pasha, the new Grand Vizier, the voice of history and the righteous judgments of God, but as for Islam, as a system of government over Christian populations, we can but pray daily for its speedy, utter and final overthrow.

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