CHAPTER XVII.THE GREATEST CRIME OF THE CENTURY.That the Powers of Europe, having their fleets lying at anchor in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas within a day’s sail of Constantinople, should stand by and permit the Sultan to slaughter the helpless Armenians by the tens of thousands is the greatest crime of the century.The mutual jealousies and distrusts and diverse ambitions of the Powers of Europe have been as fatal and as horrible in result as the cruel wrath of a Nero, when for the first time he smote the early Christians with the clenched fist of the Roman Empire. Would that some hand could strip off the blood-soaked, dagger-pierced garments of nearly a hundred thousand martyred dead, and lay them at the feet of the nations who were consenting unto their death. Far be it from us to attempt to divide, or measure, or weigh out the guilt that lies with common shame upon them all; but that the burden rests with unequal weight upon the Powers a brief recital of some of the facts of history will show.In little more than three hundred (322) days the Russian Army had swept from the Danube, through Bulgaria, over the passes of the Balkans across the plains of Adrianople, breaking and scattering the power of the Turkish armies until in February, 1878, nearly one hundred thousand victorious troops encamped before the gates of Constantinople which lay defeated and helpless at the feet of the conquering Czar.General Grant said that for Russia not to enter Constantinople at that conjuncture was the greatest mistake a nation ever made. Could he have foreseen the misrule of the coming years culminating in the recent awful massacres, he would have called the failure a crime and not a blunder.But Alexander had not entered upon the war for the sake of conquest, but to punish Turkey for her crimes against the Bulgarians and to deliver them from her power. Hence the terms of the treaty of San Stefano were specially in the interest of the subject Christian races that were under the rule of the Sublime Porte.The treaty established the independence and boundaries of Montenegro, Servia and Roumania. It constituted Bulgaria an autonomous principality with a Christian government, a national militia, with fixed tribute; its boundaries carefully defined, included over sixty-five thousand square miles with a population of nearly four million Christian people. The Ottoman army was to be withdrawn and the irregular forces, the Bashi-Bazouks and the Circassians were to be absolutely excluded from it. The Russian army of occupation was to consist of fifty thousand men to remain until the new government should be firmly established (for the term approximately of two years.) All Danubian fortresses were to be razed and Bessarabia restored to Russia. Kars, Batoum, Ardahan, Bayazet and certain surrounding territory to be ceded to Russia, and Armenia to be guaranteed protection against Kurds and Circassians, and besides this territory, a war indemnity of a paltry $250,000,000. This is all that Russia claimed for herself at the close of a victorious campaign that had cost her $600,000,000 and the loss ofnearly one hundred thousand men. This was the sacrifice she had offered to free her Bulgarian fellow Christians from the power of the Turk. Russia was the master of the situation and had well earned the right to dictate her own terms when the Sultan sued for peace.Already the British Government had declared that they would not permit any power to interfere with the freedom of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, and that they should protect Constantinople from becoming the prize of conquest. The Parliament had been convened in January (17th) 1878, and in the Queen’s speech there was this sentence: “I can not conceal from myself that should hostilities be unfortunately prolonged some unexpected occurrence may render it incumbent on me to adopt measures of precaution. Such measures could not be effectually taken without adequate preparation and I trust to the liberality of my Parliament to supply the means which may be required for that purpose.”In the debate that followed the Marquis of Salisbury said, “If you will not trust the government provide yourselves a government you will trust.”The danger flag was wavedominouslybearing the insignia of the Russian bear. On February 8th, the House voted a war credit of an additional $30,000,000, and on the same day five British war vessels were ordered to Constantinople. Troops were ordered to Malta from India, and Disraeli, the Premier, significantly declared “that in a righteous cause England would commence a fight that would not end till right was done.”On March 17th, the ratifications of the treaty betweenRussia and Turkey were exchanged at St. Petersburg. Now note the situation. Russia has but three or four towns and the fortress of Kars on the frontiers of Armenia, and the seaport of Batoum, from which to compel the Porte to protect the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians. But there is a Bulgaria freed from Turkish despotism. Four millions of Christians are given the privilege of self government while still tributary to the Porte. The frontier of Russia is restored as it was before the treaty of Paris by the addition of Bessarabia. This is the only political advantage to compensate for the expenditure of blood and treasure in the liberation of Bulgaria. What does England want? What does she mean to fight for? How is she injured? The Dardanelles are opened for the free passage of merchant vessels both in peace and war. What right has she to interfere now that the treaty has been signed?Yet on March 28th, the Disraeli government announces that the first class of the Army reserve numbering thirteen thousand, and the militia reserve of about twenty-five thousand men were to be called out. This determination led to the resignation of Lord Derby as Foreign Secretary and the Marquis of Salisbury was appointed in his place. On April 1st, Salisbury addressed a circular to the Powers, and after giving Russia’s refusal to consent to England’s demand (by what right?) relative to placing the treaty as a whole before the Congress—which Germany was endeavoring to secure to avoid another war—he goes on to complain of the terms imposed by Russia on Turkey: and the violation of the treaty of Paris, etc. Prince Gortchakoff in his reply among other questions asks Lord Salisburyhow he would reconcile these treaties with the benevolent ends to which the united action of Europe had always been directed and the attainment of which one learns with pleasure the English government desires, namely, good government, peace and liberty for the oppressed populations.A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum.A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum.Having allowed Russia single handed to chastise the Turks for the massacre of the Bulgarians—and we think that any one can see that she had done it with neatness and despatch, and had delivered four million Christians from the cursed rule of Islam, England now comes forward and demands that the treaty of San Stefano shall be broken and a new one made. We may well exclaim “Cui bono?” In whose interest? For the greater security of the Christians in Bulgaria? For larger liberty and protection to the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians, or the protection of the Balkan populations from Circassians and Bashi-Bazouks?No indeed! Noble, Christian England in her sympathy for the suffering Bulgarians wanted a Congress called to give back into the hands of the Turk, Bashi-Bazouk and Circassian more than three million Christians and forty thousand square miles of territory which might have formed the home of a strong, progressive Christian nation under the terms of the San Stefano treaty.Having thus purposed to give back these millions into the jaws of the wolf, she yet desired to pose as the chief guardian of Armenia, and said to Turkey now give me Cyprus and I will protect you against Russia, and we can let Kurds and Circassians alone for awhile.Thus while urging a Congress of the Powers, already on June 4th, 1878, England had secured the Island ofCyprus, and alone Christian England had agreed to defend by force of arms the integrity and the independence of the Turkish Dominions.On June 13th, the Congress was called, Prince Bismarck occupying the presidential chair. Beaconsfield and Salisbury and the Ambassador at Berlin representing England, Russia, Austria, France, Italy and Turkey also having their respective representatives.At the twentieth and last meeting held July 13th, the treaty of Berlin was signed. Thus by the conduct and the persistence of the English government alone was the calling of the Congress made necessary or possible, and by the spirit of England was the Congress dominated, and its final deliverances controlled. At the behest of England were millions of Bulgarians and Armenians handed over again to the tender mercies of the wicked Turk, and Russia was robbed of the glory of her victories.An international crime like this must cry to Heaven for vengeance and the most powerful and enlightened nation that insisted on it and forced it through is also the most guilty. On their return to England Beaconsfield and Salisbury received an ovation, and the Queen conferred the Order of the Garter on these two Lords who had delivered the lives and welfare of millions of Christians back into the hands of the unspeakable Turk.That England’s attitude has not been too strongly emphasized, read this quotation from Lord Salisbury’s summing up of the situation in 1879:“The Sultan’s dominions he informed the Powers have been provided with a defensible frontier far removed from his capital. * * Rich and extensive provinces have been restored to his rule, at the sametime that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made which will, it may be hoped assure their loyalty, and prevent the recurrence of calamities which have brought the Ottoman Power to the verge of ruin. Arrangements of a different kind, having the same end in view, have provided for the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan security for the present, and hope of prosperity and stability in the future. Whether use will be made of this, probably the last opportunity which has thus been obtained for Turkey by the interposition of the Powers of Europe, of England in particular, (note this phrase) or whether it is to be thrown away, will depend upon the sincerity with which Turkish statesmen now address themselves to the duties of good government and the task of reform.”One would suppose from the terms of the treaties that the Bulgarian war had been undertaken for the sole and express purpose of establishing and assuring the integrity and independence of Turkey, the entrenchment of the Bashi-Bazouks in Bulgaria and for protecting the fierce wolves that dwell in the mountains of Kurdestan from the helpless lambs that infest the valleys of Armenia. In Russia the Berlin Treaty called out the most indignant disapprobation. It was said to be “a colossal absurdity, a blundering failure, an impudent outrage.” The nation had been robbed of all reward for the sacrifices she had made in the name of humanity: and before the people Alexander had been humiliated. He saw the incompleteness of his work, felt his inability to deal with the forces that were at that time massed against him and felt bitterly the reproach of the army and of those who had suffered the loss of kindred and friends in a useless and expensive war.Russian diplomacy at Berlin was felt to be more disastrous than the war, while the nation had been decked with a fool’s cap and bells and their honor trampled under foot.England had taken on her hands a most difficult task, viz: To be the Protector of the Armenians, while at the same time she wore the belt as champion defender of Turkey against all comers. The Protector of the Christians, and the Christian Champion of Islam!!TREATY OF BERLIN.Art. LXI.The sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application.ANGLO-TURKISH (CYPRUS) CONVENTION.Art. I.If Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall be retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by Russia to take possession of any further territory of His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in Asia, as fixed by the Definitive Treaty of Peace, England engages to join His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in defending them by force of arms.In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reforms,to be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories; and in order toenable England to make necessary provisions for executing her engagement, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England.Trebizond.Trebizond.The Anglo-Turkish Convention having been made June 4th, and the Berlin Treaty not being signed until July 13th, places priority (may we not almost say entirety?) of obligation upon England, which obligation with all that it implies she fully and alone accepted when she accepted the island of Cyprus as a necessary base of operations and a promise and pledge of good faith.The Berlin Treaty did not release England from this distinct and individual obligation nor did she wish to divide the honor of being the defender of the Armenian Christians. It may be questioned whether she had any right to expect anything more from the other signatory Powers than their moral support in any attempted enforcement of its terms.Passing by the first part of Art. I. in the Anglo-Turkish Convention the reader is asked to give special attention to the wording of the second part: “In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reformsto be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories.”With that clause inserted “to be agreed upon later” how could Lord Salisbury possibly dream, let alone say “that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made”? Absolutely no provision had been made to protect Armenia from Kurd or Circassian or the rapacity and cruelty and outrage of Turkish officials.And none could be made unless these two Powers alone, England and the Porte could agree upon the nature of the reforms and the manner in which they should be carried out. Was any promise, pledge or convention ever written that actually meant less? Was this honest British Statesmanship actually determining that something should be done? or was it shrewd Turkish diplomacy that will promise anything in the bond but withdraw it in the terms of later stipulations? Or was it understood that it was merely dust for the eyes of Christian Europe?The following incident in the career of Gen. B. F. Butler was given as a newspaper item. In the course of a very spirited conversation one day a gentleman called him a knave. The general smiled and replied, “Well, did you ever hear anybody say that I was a fool?” Somebody was surely fooled by this convention. Who was it? Not Russia and certainly not the Turk. Who then? Salisbury? or England?There were many men even in England who did not hesitate to express hottest indignation against the policy of the Government regarding her dealings with Turkey. Here are paragraphs from “The Ottoman Power in Europe” by the English historianE. A. Freeman:“The England of Canning and Codrington, the England of Byron and Hastings has come to this, that the world knows us as the nation which upholds oppression for the sake of its own interests. We have indeed a national sin to redress and atone for. We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear. Nay, our guilt is deeper still. We have notmerely looked on and passed by on the other side, but we have given our active help to the oppressors of our brothers. We have “upheld” the foulest fabric of wrong that earth ever saw, because it was deemed that the interests of England were involved in upholding the wrong and trampling down the right. * * * *“Our national crime is that we have upheld the Turk for our own supposed interests. For these we have doomed the struggling nations to abide in their bondage. We have doomed them to stay under a rule under which the life and property of the Christian, the honor of his wife, the honor of his children of both sexes alike are at every moment at the mercy of the savages whom our august and cherished ally honors and promotes in proportion to the blackness of their deeds. We have for our own interests upheld the power which has done its foul and bloody work in Chios, at Damascus and in Bulgaria, which is still doing the same foul and bloody work wherever a victim may be found. We uphold the power whose daily work is massacre and worse than massacre. It matters not whether ten thousand or twenty thousand perish. We are still to uphold the slaughterer, for it is to our interest that he should not be shorn of his power of slaughtering.“Now if there be any such thing as right and wrong in public affairs, if moral considerations are ever to come in to determine the actions of nations, it is hard to see how there can be deeper national guilt than this. Unjust wars, aggressions and conquests are bad enough, but they are hardly so bad as the calm, unblushing upholding of wrong for our own interests. * * * * We look on, we count the cost, we see how the wrong-doer deals with his victim and we determine to upholdthe wrong-doer because we think that to uphold him will suit some interest of our own. There is noquestionof national glory, no question of national honor; nothing which can stir up even a false enthusiasm. It is a calm mercantile calculation that the wrongs of millions of men will pay.“The revenue returns of Egypt for 1890 were over $50,000,000. If we knew how large a part of this went to bondholders in London, we would know something about England’s interest in Egypt. If we knew how large a portion of the Turkish debt of above $500,000,000, is held in London, we would know something about the interest the British government has in maintaining the integrity of Turkey.“England wouldn’t care if that Turkey were carved to-morrow if only she could hold Constantinople and administer on the dead Sultan’s estate until all the obligations she holds should be paid off. She would rather like to occupy Stamboul on those conditions—Armenia, Kurds, Circassians and all.”But to return from our digression which was meant to show something of the nature of the interest England had in bringing Bulgaria again under Turkish rule and taxation, we remark that with this Cypress Convention already a deed accomplished what other European powers would care a fig about seeing to the execution of possible reforms in Armenia. What happened is notorious. A few ineffectual attempts to agree upon reforms and when agreed upon many excuses for not carrying them out and there the whole matter of reform was practically dropped; but Cypress was retained as counsel fees possibly for securing such a favorable revision of the terms of the San StefanoTreaty in the interests of Turkey—of the Moslem not of the Christian.For the sake of retaining influence with the Sublime Porte and to outwit the possible plans and intrigues of the Russian Ambassador, scared by visions in the night of some muscovite move towards Constantinople. England for fifteen years connived at a state of things which was decimating and impoverishing the provinces of Armenia, and costing more lives and causing more suffering in the aggregate than the massacres of Sassoun.Often the question was asked, “Where is England’s guarantee to Armenian and Macedonian Christians now?” The Russian press was not slow to give prominence to these reports of continually increasing oppressions and pillage, of outrage and murder.But nothing pierced the political-commercial conscience of England until tidings of the most horrible massacres committed three months before began to creep over the mountains of Armenia and find their way to England and America.When for very shame they could shut their ears to the clamor no longer the British Government demanded a commission—it’s great on commissions. The British Ambassador intimated to the Porte that if steps were not taken to satisfy her Majesty’s Government that the Sultan’s promise (respecting the commission) would be fulfilled, “they might find it necessary to inquire into the treatment of the Armenians, and that they might also be forced to publish the consular reports from the Asiatic provinces which had been so long withheld!”What fires of shame should burn on cheek and foreheadof the English Government that nothing had been done to stop those outrages till indifference and inactivity had given the impression that nobody cared what became of the Armenians.At last the heart of England flamed out in pity and her conscience fired the brain to hot and earnest and even vehement utterance, and hundreds of public meetings were held. Instinctively all eyes turned to Gladstone to voice the sorrow, the pity or the indignation of a Christian people who felt themselves in some measure responsible for the deliverance of Armenia from further horrors.GLADSTONE ON ARMENIA’S FATE.At a meeting held in the Town Hall, Chester, England, a great many members of Parliament being present, the Duke of Westminster presiding, Mr. Gladstone spoke (in part) as follows:“My Lord Duke, my Lord and Ladies and Gentlemen:“It is perfectly true that the Government whose deeds we have to impeach is a Mohammedan Government, and it is perfectly true that the sufferers under those outrages, under those afflictions, are Christian sufferers. The Mohammedan subjects of Turkey suffer a great deal, but what they suffer is only in the way of the ordinary excesses and defects of an intolerably bad Government—perhaps the worst on the face of the earth. (Hear, hear.) I will take the liberty of reading a resolution which has been placed in my hands and which seems to me to express with firmness, but with moderation, the opinions which I am very confidentthis meeting will entertain, and this meeting, in entertaining such opinions, is but the representative of the country at large. (Cheers.)“Allow me to go further and to say that the country at large in entertaining these ideas is only a representative of civilized humanity, and I will presume to speak on the ground, in part, of personal knowledge, of the opinions and sympathies that are entertained among our own Transatlantic brethren of the United States. If possible, the sentiment in America entertained on the subject of these recent occurrences is even more vivid and even stronger, if it can be, than that which beats in the hearts of the people of this country.“The terms of the resolution are as follows:“‘That this meeting expresses its conviction that her Majesty’s Government will have the cordial support of the entire nation, without distinction of party, in any measures which it may adopt for securing to the people of Turkish Armenia such reforms in the administration of that province as shall provide effective guarantees for the safety of life, honor, religion, and property, and that no reforms can be effective which are not placed under the continuous control of the Great Powers of Europe.’ (Cheers.)“That means, without doubt, the Great Powers of Europe, all who choose to combine, and those great Powers which happily have combined and have already, in my judgment, pledged their honor as well as their power to the attainment of the object we have in view. (Cheers.)“Now, it was my fate, I think six or more months ago, to address a very limited number, not a public assembly, but a limited number of Armenian gentlemen, andgentlemen interested in Armenia on this subject. There was no authoritative and impartial declaration before the world at that period on the subject of what is known as the Sassoun massacre; that massacre to which the Noble Duke has alluded and with respect to which, horrible as that massacre was, one of the most important witnesses in this case declares that it is thrown into the shade and has become pale and ineffective by the side of the unspeakable horrors which are being enacted from month to month, from week to week, and day to day in the different provinces of Armenia. (Hear, hear.) It was a duty to avoid premature judgment, and I think it was avoided. But though it is a duty to avoid exaggeration, a most sacred duty, it is a duty that has little or no place in the case before us, because it is too well known that the powers of language hardly suffice to describe what has been and is being done, and that exaggeration, if we were ever so much disposed to it, is in such a case really beyond our power. (Cheers.) Those are dreadful words to speak. It is a painful office to perform, and nothing but a strong sense of duty could gather us together between these walls or could induce a man of my age and a man who is not wholly without other difficulties to contend with to resign for the moment that repose and quietude which is the last of many great earthly blessings remaining to him in order to invite you to enter into a consideration of this question. What witnesses ought we to call before us? I should be disposed to say that it matters very little what witness you call. So far as the character of the testimony you will receive is concerned the witnesses are all agreed. At the time that I have just spoken of, six or eight monthsago, they were private witnesses. Since that time, although we have not seen the detailed documents of public authority, yet we know that all the broader statements which had been made up to that time and which have made the blood of this nation run cold have been confirmed and verified. They have not been overstated, not withdrawn, not qualified, not reduced, but confirmed in all their breadth, in all that horrible substance, in all their sickening details. (Hear, hear.)The Prison at Erzeroum.The Prison at Erzeroum.“I will refer to the last of these witnesses, one whom I must say I am disposed to name with honor, it is Dr. Dillon, a man who, as the special commissioner of theDaily Telegraphnewspaper, some months ago with care and labor, and with the hazard of his life (hear, hear), went into Turkey, laudably making use of a disguise for the purpose, and went into Armenia, so that he might make himself thoroughly master of the facts. (Cheers.) He published his results before any public authority had given utterance to its judgments and those results which he, I rather think, was the first to give to the world in a connected shape—at any rate he was very early in the field—those results have been completely confirmed and established by the inquiries of the delegates appointed by the three Powers—England, France and Russia. (Cheers.) I say he has, at the risk of his life, acquired a title to be believed, and (in theContemporary Review) he gives us an account which bears upon it all the marks of truth, but which, at the same time that we must believe it to be true, you would say is hardly credible. Unhappily some of those matters which are not credible do, in this strange and wayward world of ours, turn out to be true; and here it is hardly credible that there candwell in the human form a spirit of such intense and diabolical wickedness as is unhappily displayed in some of the narratives Dr. Dillon has laid before the world. I shall not quote from them in detail though I mean to make a single citation, which will be a citation, if I may say so, rather of principle than of detail. I shall not quote the details, but I will say to you that when you begin to read them you will see the truth of what I just now said—namely that we are not dealing at all with a common and ordinary question of abuses of government or the defects of them. We are dealing with something that goes far deeper, far wider, and that imposes upon us and upon you far heavier obligations.“The whole substance of this remarkable article may be summed up in four awful words—plunder, murder, rape and torture. (‘Shame.’) Every incident turns upon one or upon several of those awful words. Plunder and murder you would think are bad enough, but plunder and murder are almost venial by the side of the work of the ravisher and the work of the torturer, as it is described in these pages, and as it is now fully and authentically known to be going on. I will keep my word, and I will not be tempted by—what shall I say?—the dramatic interests attached to such exaggeration of human action as we find here to travel into the details of the facts. They are fitter for private perusal than they are for public discussion. In all ordinary cases when we have before us instances of crime, perhaps of very horrible crime—we at once assume that in all countries, unfortunately, there are malefactors, there are plunderers whose deeds we are going to consider. Here, my lord duke, it is nothing of the kind; we have nothing to do here with what are called thedangerous classes of the community; it is not their proceedings which you are asked to consider; it is the proceedings of the Government of Constantinople and its agents. (Cheers.)“There is not one of these misdeeds for which the Government at Constantinople is not morally responsible. (Cheers.) Now, who are these agents? Let me tell you very briefly. They fall into three classes. The first have been mentioned by the noble duke—namely the savage Kurds, who are, unhappily, the neighbors of the Armenians, the Armenians being the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, and being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world. (Cheers.) These Kurds are by them; they are wild, savage clans, organized as bands of robbers. These the Sultan and the Government at Constantinople have enrolled, though in a nominal fashion, not with a military discipline, into pretended cavalry regiments and then set them loose with the authority of soldiers of the Sultan to harry and destroy the people of Armenia. (Cheers.) Well, these Kurds are the first of the agents in this horrible business; the next are the Turkish soldiers, who are in no sense behind the Kurds in their performances; the third are the peace officers, the police and the tax gatherers of the Turkish Government; and there seems to be a deadly competition among all these classes which shall most prove itself an adept in the horrible and infernal work that is before them, but above them and more guilty than they, are the higher officers of the Turkish Government.Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.“I think there are certain matters, such as thosewhich have been discussed to-day and discussed in many other forms, on which it is perfectly possible to make up our minds. And what I should say is, that the whole position may be summed up in three brief propositions. I do not know to which of these propositions to assign the less or the greater importance. It appears to me that they are probably each and every one of them absolutely indispensable. The first proposition is this, You ought to moderate your demands. You ought to ask for nothing but that which is strictly necessary, and that possibly according to all that we know of the proposals before us, the rule has been rigidly complied with. I do not hesitate to say, ladies and gentlemen, that the cleanest and clearest method of dealing with this subject, if we should have done it, would have been to tell the Turk to march out of Armenia. (Loud cheers.) He has no right to remain there, and it would have been an excellent settlement of the question. But it is by no means certain that Europe or even the three Powers would have been unanimous in seeking after that end. Therefore, let us part with everything except what is known to be indispensable. Then I come to the other two rules, and of these the first is that you should accept no Turkish promises. (Hear, hear.) They are absolutely and entirely worthless. They are worse than worthless, because they may serve to delude a few persons who, without information or experience, naturally would suppose, when promises are given, that there is something like an intentional fulfilment. Recollect that no scheme is worth having unless it be supported by efficient guarantees entirely outside the promises of the Turkish Government. (Applause.) There is another word which I must speak,and it is this: Don’t be too much afraid if you hear introduced into this discussion a word that I admit, in ordinary cases, ought to be excluded from all diplomatic proceeding, namely, the word coercion. Coercion is a word perfectly well understood in Constantinople, and it is a word highly appreciated in Constantinople. It is a drastic dose—(laughter)—which never fails of its aim when it is administered in that quarter. (Laughter.) Gentlemen, I would not use these words if I had not myself personally had large and close experience of the proceedings of the Turkish Government. I say, first make your case good, and when your case is made good, determine that it shall prevail. (Cheers.) Grammar has something to do with this case. Recollect that while the word ‘ought’ sounded in Constantinople, passes in thin air, and has no force or solidity whatever attaching to it; on the contrary, the brother or sister monosyllable, the word ‘must’ is perfectly understood—(cheers)—and it is a known fact supported by positive experience, which can be verified upon the map of Europe, that a timely and judicious use of the word never fails for its effect. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I must point out to you that we have reached a very critical position indeed. How are three great Governments in Europe, ruling a population of more than two hundred million souls, with perhaps eight or ten times the population of Turkey, with twenty times the wealth of Turkey, with fifty times the influence and power of Turkey, who have committed themselves in this matter before the world, I put it to you that if they recede before an irrational resistance—and remember that I have in the first instance postulated that our demands should be reasonable—if they recede before the irrational resistanceof the Sultan and the Ottoman Government they are disgraced in the face of the world. Every motive of duty coincides with every motive of self respect, and, my lord duke, yourself let drop a word which is a frightful word, unhappily not wholly out of place, the word‘EXTERMINATION.’There has gone abroad, I don’t say that I feel myself competent to judge the matter, I don’t think I do, but there has gone abroad and there is widely entertained a belief that the recent proceedings of the Turkish Government in Armenia particularly, but not in Armenia exclusively, are founded upon deliberate determination to exterminate the Christians in that Empire. I hope it is not true, but at the same time I must say that there are evidences tending to support it—(hear, hear)—and the grand evidence which tends to support it is this: the perfect infatuation of the Turkish Government. The Turkish Government is evidently in such a state of infatuation that it is fain to believe it may, under certain circumstances, be infatuated enough to scheme the extermination of the Christian population. Well, this is a sad and terrible story, and I have been a very long time in telling it, but a very small part of it, but I hope that, having heard the terms of the resolution that will be submitted to you, you will agree that a case is made out. (Cheers.) I for one, for the sake of avoiding other complications, would rejoice if the Government of Turkey would come to its senses. That is, in my opinion, what we ought all to desire, and though it would be more agreeable to clear Turkey than to find her guilty of these terrible charges, yet if wehave the smallest regard to humanity, if we are sensible at all of what is due to our own honor after the steps which have been taken within the last twelve or eighteen months, we must interfere. We must be careful to demand no more than what is just—but at least as much as is necessary—and we must be determined that, with the help of God that which is necessary, and that which is just shall be done, whether there will be a response or whether there be none.” (Loud cheers.)In a letter written late in March, to the Duke of Argyle, chairman of the Armenian Relief Committee, Mr. Gladstone said, “that he hopes that nobody will suppose that deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty in Armenia will in any way diminish the force of the present appeal (for aid) to Christian pity.”But what about this deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty? Lord Salisbury has gravely assured the nation that England is utterly powerless to alleviate the lot of the Armenians in Turkey. If this be true and the Porte should choose to finish his work of extermination, must all the world stand by and see it done and no arm be raised to defend the helpless? If so, woe to the world when the Lord God of hosts shall arise to avenge the blood of a slaughtered race.When the first rumors of a massacre at Sassoun was confirmed in all essential details, the Government had to act quickly and somewhat decidedly, to avoid a swelling storm of indignation, that might break with serious effect upon their heads.Two courses of action were open to England, either to use all her power of persuasion, with some stronglanguage, by way of emphasis, to induce the Porte to bring the officials to justice and obtain a guarantee that no such massacres should be permitted in the future, or sound an alarm and call on all the Powers of Europe for an armed intervention, in which case she must be ready to cast in her heaviest weight of men and metal. As the responsibility for the terrible state of affairs in Armenia was due to England’s neglect, in not enforcing reforms, essential to prevent such awful scenes, she should have secured from the Powers their consent to let her thrash the Turks in Constantinople and Anatolia, while the fleets anchored in the Bosphorus to protect the “balance of power” when the deed was done.A guarantee from the Powers, that England would not be permitted to occupy Constantinople, might have satisfied Russia, or have prevented any interference in the carrying out the purpose of delivering the Armenians from further outrages and massacres. In that case the dissolution of “the Sick Man” might have been the solution of the Eastern question.At least unless England knew that the Powers would stand by her the threat of using force was stupid folly. A conference of the Powers was a necessity and the pledge of concurrence or armed neutrality should have been given before she began to bait the Sultan. It has been known for years that the Sultan is the last man to be controlled by mere sentiment. He only yields to necessity, to force actually present, to guns trained upon him. He was never scared by all the letters and the threats of the English Government. He knew the Powers were not agreed to use force.Sir Philip Currie telegraphed to Lord Kimberley:“I impressed upon His Excellency (said Pasha) asforcibly as I could that the only safe course for the Turkish Government was to authorize the Commission to make a fair and impartial inquiry; that failing this they would be held responsible for the cruelties perpetrated on the Armenians by the local authorities, and that the feeling aroused in Europe was such that if these cruelties were not punished, active interference from without must be looked for.”Town and Citadel of Van.Town and Citadel of Van.This was an earnest, urgent, emphatic, even threatening appeal: but where was there any warrant for the last threat? There was no ultimatum ready. No nation was going to take up arms against Turkey, England least of all. There was no agreement among them to let England take up the task alone. If there had been, one battleship before Constantinople would have brought the massacres to a speedy close and could have compelled the punishment of the Governors in every vilayet where the horrors of Sassoun had been repeated with increased torment and misery. But the fact remains, and the fact is the thing emphasized, that England and all the Signatory Powers sat in masterly inactivity though with steam up at Salonica and let the deadly work go on. There is only time to notice one question, “Why did not Russia agree to the forcing the Dardanelles and coercing the Turks? The blame for the fiasco must fall upon Russia.”How so? Could you reasonably expect Russia to assist England in performing her promises to protect Armenia when you remember the humiliation of the Berlin Treaty? If England entered into engagements she was powerless to make good, whose fault was that? And when the implicit appeal was to her Christian sympathy the Russians replied in their press:“Where were all these glorious virtues of Englishmen when Lord Beaconsfield handed back the Christian subjects of the Sultan to the dismal fate which has only now begun to excite their pity, when an improvement would suit their policy and further their designs? If England continued to be both humane and Christian while suppressing those noble impulses eighteen years ago, it is hard to understand why we can not remain both, while holding them in control to-day.”To those who deny to Russia any disinterested motives of Christian sympathy in her war with Turkey to deliver Bulgaria from the horrible misrule of the Sultan, this refusal will furnish only another illustration of her being what they consider her, viz: a half-civilized nation.But for England to look to a Power she considers her mortal enemy as regards the occupation of Constantinople, for help to rescue the Armenians from Kurd and Circassian and Turkish regulars, set upon them by the Porte, is the sublimity of political innocence, or the confession of utter weakness.The Russian Bear smiled at the innocence, and with grim satisfaction, perhaps, allowed the Turk to wave back the fleets of the allied Powers from the straits of the Dardanelles and continue his fiendish massacres.Weigh each for himself the responsibility of each of the Great Powers in any scales he may choose, distribute the guilt by a different judgment, and yet the failure of these Christian nations to unite for the deliverance of Christian Armenia from the barbarous and cruel, most lustful and brutal outrages under which they were suffering, will be stamped by history as the most awful crime against humanity upon which the sunever gazed during all the passing years of the nineteenth century, and only to be paralleled by the apathy of Western Europe, when alone in 1453 Constantinople fought her last battle for the cross and fell under the sword and power of Islam.
CHAPTER XVII.THE GREATEST CRIME OF THE CENTURY.That the Powers of Europe, having their fleets lying at anchor in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas within a day’s sail of Constantinople, should stand by and permit the Sultan to slaughter the helpless Armenians by the tens of thousands is the greatest crime of the century.The mutual jealousies and distrusts and diverse ambitions of the Powers of Europe have been as fatal and as horrible in result as the cruel wrath of a Nero, when for the first time he smote the early Christians with the clenched fist of the Roman Empire. Would that some hand could strip off the blood-soaked, dagger-pierced garments of nearly a hundred thousand martyred dead, and lay them at the feet of the nations who were consenting unto their death. Far be it from us to attempt to divide, or measure, or weigh out the guilt that lies with common shame upon them all; but that the burden rests with unequal weight upon the Powers a brief recital of some of the facts of history will show.In little more than three hundred (322) days the Russian Army had swept from the Danube, through Bulgaria, over the passes of the Balkans across the plains of Adrianople, breaking and scattering the power of the Turkish armies until in February, 1878, nearly one hundred thousand victorious troops encamped before the gates of Constantinople which lay defeated and helpless at the feet of the conquering Czar.General Grant said that for Russia not to enter Constantinople at that conjuncture was the greatest mistake a nation ever made. Could he have foreseen the misrule of the coming years culminating in the recent awful massacres, he would have called the failure a crime and not a blunder.But Alexander had not entered upon the war for the sake of conquest, but to punish Turkey for her crimes against the Bulgarians and to deliver them from her power. Hence the terms of the treaty of San Stefano were specially in the interest of the subject Christian races that were under the rule of the Sublime Porte.The treaty established the independence and boundaries of Montenegro, Servia and Roumania. It constituted Bulgaria an autonomous principality with a Christian government, a national militia, with fixed tribute; its boundaries carefully defined, included over sixty-five thousand square miles with a population of nearly four million Christian people. The Ottoman army was to be withdrawn and the irregular forces, the Bashi-Bazouks and the Circassians were to be absolutely excluded from it. The Russian army of occupation was to consist of fifty thousand men to remain until the new government should be firmly established (for the term approximately of two years.) All Danubian fortresses were to be razed and Bessarabia restored to Russia. Kars, Batoum, Ardahan, Bayazet and certain surrounding territory to be ceded to Russia, and Armenia to be guaranteed protection against Kurds and Circassians, and besides this territory, a war indemnity of a paltry $250,000,000. This is all that Russia claimed for herself at the close of a victorious campaign that had cost her $600,000,000 and the loss ofnearly one hundred thousand men. This was the sacrifice she had offered to free her Bulgarian fellow Christians from the power of the Turk. Russia was the master of the situation and had well earned the right to dictate her own terms when the Sultan sued for peace.Already the British Government had declared that they would not permit any power to interfere with the freedom of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, and that they should protect Constantinople from becoming the prize of conquest. The Parliament had been convened in January (17th) 1878, and in the Queen’s speech there was this sentence: “I can not conceal from myself that should hostilities be unfortunately prolonged some unexpected occurrence may render it incumbent on me to adopt measures of precaution. Such measures could not be effectually taken without adequate preparation and I trust to the liberality of my Parliament to supply the means which may be required for that purpose.”In the debate that followed the Marquis of Salisbury said, “If you will not trust the government provide yourselves a government you will trust.”The danger flag was wavedominouslybearing the insignia of the Russian bear. On February 8th, the House voted a war credit of an additional $30,000,000, and on the same day five British war vessels were ordered to Constantinople. Troops were ordered to Malta from India, and Disraeli, the Premier, significantly declared “that in a righteous cause England would commence a fight that would not end till right was done.”On March 17th, the ratifications of the treaty betweenRussia and Turkey were exchanged at St. Petersburg. Now note the situation. Russia has but three or four towns and the fortress of Kars on the frontiers of Armenia, and the seaport of Batoum, from which to compel the Porte to protect the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians. But there is a Bulgaria freed from Turkish despotism. Four millions of Christians are given the privilege of self government while still tributary to the Porte. The frontier of Russia is restored as it was before the treaty of Paris by the addition of Bessarabia. This is the only political advantage to compensate for the expenditure of blood and treasure in the liberation of Bulgaria. What does England want? What does she mean to fight for? How is she injured? The Dardanelles are opened for the free passage of merchant vessels both in peace and war. What right has she to interfere now that the treaty has been signed?Yet on March 28th, the Disraeli government announces that the first class of the Army reserve numbering thirteen thousand, and the militia reserve of about twenty-five thousand men were to be called out. This determination led to the resignation of Lord Derby as Foreign Secretary and the Marquis of Salisbury was appointed in his place. On April 1st, Salisbury addressed a circular to the Powers, and after giving Russia’s refusal to consent to England’s demand (by what right?) relative to placing the treaty as a whole before the Congress—which Germany was endeavoring to secure to avoid another war—he goes on to complain of the terms imposed by Russia on Turkey: and the violation of the treaty of Paris, etc. Prince Gortchakoff in his reply among other questions asks Lord Salisburyhow he would reconcile these treaties with the benevolent ends to which the united action of Europe had always been directed and the attainment of which one learns with pleasure the English government desires, namely, good government, peace and liberty for the oppressed populations.A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum.A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum.Having allowed Russia single handed to chastise the Turks for the massacre of the Bulgarians—and we think that any one can see that she had done it with neatness and despatch, and had delivered four million Christians from the cursed rule of Islam, England now comes forward and demands that the treaty of San Stefano shall be broken and a new one made. We may well exclaim “Cui bono?” In whose interest? For the greater security of the Christians in Bulgaria? For larger liberty and protection to the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians, or the protection of the Balkan populations from Circassians and Bashi-Bazouks?No indeed! Noble, Christian England in her sympathy for the suffering Bulgarians wanted a Congress called to give back into the hands of the Turk, Bashi-Bazouk and Circassian more than three million Christians and forty thousand square miles of territory which might have formed the home of a strong, progressive Christian nation under the terms of the San Stefano treaty.Having thus purposed to give back these millions into the jaws of the wolf, she yet desired to pose as the chief guardian of Armenia, and said to Turkey now give me Cyprus and I will protect you against Russia, and we can let Kurds and Circassians alone for awhile.Thus while urging a Congress of the Powers, already on June 4th, 1878, England had secured the Island ofCyprus, and alone Christian England had agreed to defend by force of arms the integrity and the independence of the Turkish Dominions.On June 13th, the Congress was called, Prince Bismarck occupying the presidential chair. Beaconsfield and Salisbury and the Ambassador at Berlin representing England, Russia, Austria, France, Italy and Turkey also having their respective representatives.At the twentieth and last meeting held July 13th, the treaty of Berlin was signed. Thus by the conduct and the persistence of the English government alone was the calling of the Congress made necessary or possible, and by the spirit of England was the Congress dominated, and its final deliverances controlled. At the behest of England were millions of Bulgarians and Armenians handed over again to the tender mercies of the wicked Turk, and Russia was robbed of the glory of her victories.An international crime like this must cry to Heaven for vengeance and the most powerful and enlightened nation that insisted on it and forced it through is also the most guilty. On their return to England Beaconsfield and Salisbury received an ovation, and the Queen conferred the Order of the Garter on these two Lords who had delivered the lives and welfare of millions of Christians back into the hands of the unspeakable Turk.That England’s attitude has not been too strongly emphasized, read this quotation from Lord Salisbury’s summing up of the situation in 1879:“The Sultan’s dominions he informed the Powers have been provided with a defensible frontier far removed from his capital. * * Rich and extensive provinces have been restored to his rule, at the sametime that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made which will, it may be hoped assure their loyalty, and prevent the recurrence of calamities which have brought the Ottoman Power to the verge of ruin. Arrangements of a different kind, having the same end in view, have provided for the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan security for the present, and hope of prosperity and stability in the future. Whether use will be made of this, probably the last opportunity which has thus been obtained for Turkey by the interposition of the Powers of Europe, of England in particular, (note this phrase) or whether it is to be thrown away, will depend upon the sincerity with which Turkish statesmen now address themselves to the duties of good government and the task of reform.”One would suppose from the terms of the treaties that the Bulgarian war had been undertaken for the sole and express purpose of establishing and assuring the integrity and independence of Turkey, the entrenchment of the Bashi-Bazouks in Bulgaria and for protecting the fierce wolves that dwell in the mountains of Kurdestan from the helpless lambs that infest the valleys of Armenia. In Russia the Berlin Treaty called out the most indignant disapprobation. It was said to be “a colossal absurdity, a blundering failure, an impudent outrage.” The nation had been robbed of all reward for the sacrifices she had made in the name of humanity: and before the people Alexander had been humiliated. He saw the incompleteness of his work, felt his inability to deal with the forces that were at that time massed against him and felt bitterly the reproach of the army and of those who had suffered the loss of kindred and friends in a useless and expensive war.Russian diplomacy at Berlin was felt to be more disastrous than the war, while the nation had been decked with a fool’s cap and bells and their honor trampled under foot.England had taken on her hands a most difficult task, viz: To be the Protector of the Armenians, while at the same time she wore the belt as champion defender of Turkey against all comers. The Protector of the Christians, and the Christian Champion of Islam!!TREATY OF BERLIN.Art. LXI.The sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application.ANGLO-TURKISH (CYPRUS) CONVENTION.Art. I.If Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall be retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by Russia to take possession of any further territory of His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in Asia, as fixed by the Definitive Treaty of Peace, England engages to join His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in defending them by force of arms.In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reforms,to be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories; and in order toenable England to make necessary provisions for executing her engagement, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England.Trebizond.Trebizond.The Anglo-Turkish Convention having been made June 4th, and the Berlin Treaty not being signed until July 13th, places priority (may we not almost say entirety?) of obligation upon England, which obligation with all that it implies she fully and alone accepted when she accepted the island of Cyprus as a necessary base of operations and a promise and pledge of good faith.The Berlin Treaty did not release England from this distinct and individual obligation nor did she wish to divide the honor of being the defender of the Armenian Christians. It may be questioned whether she had any right to expect anything more from the other signatory Powers than their moral support in any attempted enforcement of its terms.Passing by the first part of Art. I. in the Anglo-Turkish Convention the reader is asked to give special attention to the wording of the second part: “In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reformsto be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories.”With that clause inserted “to be agreed upon later” how could Lord Salisbury possibly dream, let alone say “that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made”? Absolutely no provision had been made to protect Armenia from Kurd or Circassian or the rapacity and cruelty and outrage of Turkish officials.And none could be made unless these two Powers alone, England and the Porte could agree upon the nature of the reforms and the manner in which they should be carried out. Was any promise, pledge or convention ever written that actually meant less? Was this honest British Statesmanship actually determining that something should be done? or was it shrewd Turkish diplomacy that will promise anything in the bond but withdraw it in the terms of later stipulations? Or was it understood that it was merely dust for the eyes of Christian Europe?The following incident in the career of Gen. B. F. Butler was given as a newspaper item. In the course of a very spirited conversation one day a gentleman called him a knave. The general smiled and replied, “Well, did you ever hear anybody say that I was a fool?” Somebody was surely fooled by this convention. Who was it? Not Russia and certainly not the Turk. Who then? Salisbury? or England?There were many men even in England who did not hesitate to express hottest indignation against the policy of the Government regarding her dealings with Turkey. Here are paragraphs from “The Ottoman Power in Europe” by the English historianE. A. Freeman:“The England of Canning and Codrington, the England of Byron and Hastings has come to this, that the world knows us as the nation which upholds oppression for the sake of its own interests. We have indeed a national sin to redress and atone for. We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear. Nay, our guilt is deeper still. We have notmerely looked on and passed by on the other side, but we have given our active help to the oppressors of our brothers. We have “upheld” the foulest fabric of wrong that earth ever saw, because it was deemed that the interests of England were involved in upholding the wrong and trampling down the right. * * * *“Our national crime is that we have upheld the Turk for our own supposed interests. For these we have doomed the struggling nations to abide in their bondage. We have doomed them to stay under a rule under which the life and property of the Christian, the honor of his wife, the honor of his children of both sexes alike are at every moment at the mercy of the savages whom our august and cherished ally honors and promotes in proportion to the blackness of their deeds. We have for our own interests upheld the power which has done its foul and bloody work in Chios, at Damascus and in Bulgaria, which is still doing the same foul and bloody work wherever a victim may be found. We uphold the power whose daily work is massacre and worse than massacre. It matters not whether ten thousand or twenty thousand perish. We are still to uphold the slaughterer, for it is to our interest that he should not be shorn of his power of slaughtering.“Now if there be any such thing as right and wrong in public affairs, if moral considerations are ever to come in to determine the actions of nations, it is hard to see how there can be deeper national guilt than this. Unjust wars, aggressions and conquests are bad enough, but they are hardly so bad as the calm, unblushing upholding of wrong for our own interests. * * * * We look on, we count the cost, we see how the wrong-doer deals with his victim and we determine to upholdthe wrong-doer because we think that to uphold him will suit some interest of our own. There is noquestionof national glory, no question of national honor; nothing which can stir up even a false enthusiasm. It is a calm mercantile calculation that the wrongs of millions of men will pay.“The revenue returns of Egypt for 1890 were over $50,000,000. If we knew how large a part of this went to bondholders in London, we would know something about England’s interest in Egypt. If we knew how large a portion of the Turkish debt of above $500,000,000, is held in London, we would know something about the interest the British government has in maintaining the integrity of Turkey.“England wouldn’t care if that Turkey were carved to-morrow if only she could hold Constantinople and administer on the dead Sultan’s estate until all the obligations she holds should be paid off. She would rather like to occupy Stamboul on those conditions—Armenia, Kurds, Circassians and all.”But to return from our digression which was meant to show something of the nature of the interest England had in bringing Bulgaria again under Turkish rule and taxation, we remark that with this Cypress Convention already a deed accomplished what other European powers would care a fig about seeing to the execution of possible reforms in Armenia. What happened is notorious. A few ineffectual attempts to agree upon reforms and when agreed upon many excuses for not carrying them out and there the whole matter of reform was practically dropped; but Cypress was retained as counsel fees possibly for securing such a favorable revision of the terms of the San StefanoTreaty in the interests of Turkey—of the Moslem not of the Christian.For the sake of retaining influence with the Sublime Porte and to outwit the possible plans and intrigues of the Russian Ambassador, scared by visions in the night of some muscovite move towards Constantinople. England for fifteen years connived at a state of things which was decimating and impoverishing the provinces of Armenia, and costing more lives and causing more suffering in the aggregate than the massacres of Sassoun.Often the question was asked, “Where is England’s guarantee to Armenian and Macedonian Christians now?” The Russian press was not slow to give prominence to these reports of continually increasing oppressions and pillage, of outrage and murder.But nothing pierced the political-commercial conscience of England until tidings of the most horrible massacres committed three months before began to creep over the mountains of Armenia and find their way to England and America.When for very shame they could shut their ears to the clamor no longer the British Government demanded a commission—it’s great on commissions. The British Ambassador intimated to the Porte that if steps were not taken to satisfy her Majesty’s Government that the Sultan’s promise (respecting the commission) would be fulfilled, “they might find it necessary to inquire into the treatment of the Armenians, and that they might also be forced to publish the consular reports from the Asiatic provinces which had been so long withheld!”What fires of shame should burn on cheek and foreheadof the English Government that nothing had been done to stop those outrages till indifference and inactivity had given the impression that nobody cared what became of the Armenians.At last the heart of England flamed out in pity and her conscience fired the brain to hot and earnest and even vehement utterance, and hundreds of public meetings were held. Instinctively all eyes turned to Gladstone to voice the sorrow, the pity or the indignation of a Christian people who felt themselves in some measure responsible for the deliverance of Armenia from further horrors.GLADSTONE ON ARMENIA’S FATE.At a meeting held in the Town Hall, Chester, England, a great many members of Parliament being present, the Duke of Westminster presiding, Mr. Gladstone spoke (in part) as follows:“My Lord Duke, my Lord and Ladies and Gentlemen:“It is perfectly true that the Government whose deeds we have to impeach is a Mohammedan Government, and it is perfectly true that the sufferers under those outrages, under those afflictions, are Christian sufferers. The Mohammedan subjects of Turkey suffer a great deal, but what they suffer is only in the way of the ordinary excesses and defects of an intolerably bad Government—perhaps the worst on the face of the earth. (Hear, hear.) I will take the liberty of reading a resolution which has been placed in my hands and which seems to me to express with firmness, but with moderation, the opinions which I am very confidentthis meeting will entertain, and this meeting, in entertaining such opinions, is but the representative of the country at large. (Cheers.)“Allow me to go further and to say that the country at large in entertaining these ideas is only a representative of civilized humanity, and I will presume to speak on the ground, in part, of personal knowledge, of the opinions and sympathies that are entertained among our own Transatlantic brethren of the United States. If possible, the sentiment in America entertained on the subject of these recent occurrences is even more vivid and even stronger, if it can be, than that which beats in the hearts of the people of this country.“The terms of the resolution are as follows:“‘That this meeting expresses its conviction that her Majesty’s Government will have the cordial support of the entire nation, without distinction of party, in any measures which it may adopt for securing to the people of Turkish Armenia such reforms in the administration of that province as shall provide effective guarantees for the safety of life, honor, religion, and property, and that no reforms can be effective which are not placed under the continuous control of the Great Powers of Europe.’ (Cheers.)“That means, without doubt, the Great Powers of Europe, all who choose to combine, and those great Powers which happily have combined and have already, in my judgment, pledged their honor as well as their power to the attainment of the object we have in view. (Cheers.)“Now, it was my fate, I think six or more months ago, to address a very limited number, not a public assembly, but a limited number of Armenian gentlemen, andgentlemen interested in Armenia on this subject. There was no authoritative and impartial declaration before the world at that period on the subject of what is known as the Sassoun massacre; that massacre to which the Noble Duke has alluded and with respect to which, horrible as that massacre was, one of the most important witnesses in this case declares that it is thrown into the shade and has become pale and ineffective by the side of the unspeakable horrors which are being enacted from month to month, from week to week, and day to day in the different provinces of Armenia. (Hear, hear.) It was a duty to avoid premature judgment, and I think it was avoided. But though it is a duty to avoid exaggeration, a most sacred duty, it is a duty that has little or no place in the case before us, because it is too well known that the powers of language hardly suffice to describe what has been and is being done, and that exaggeration, if we were ever so much disposed to it, is in such a case really beyond our power. (Cheers.) Those are dreadful words to speak. It is a painful office to perform, and nothing but a strong sense of duty could gather us together between these walls or could induce a man of my age and a man who is not wholly without other difficulties to contend with to resign for the moment that repose and quietude which is the last of many great earthly blessings remaining to him in order to invite you to enter into a consideration of this question. What witnesses ought we to call before us? I should be disposed to say that it matters very little what witness you call. So far as the character of the testimony you will receive is concerned the witnesses are all agreed. At the time that I have just spoken of, six or eight monthsago, they were private witnesses. Since that time, although we have not seen the detailed documents of public authority, yet we know that all the broader statements which had been made up to that time and which have made the blood of this nation run cold have been confirmed and verified. They have not been overstated, not withdrawn, not qualified, not reduced, but confirmed in all their breadth, in all that horrible substance, in all their sickening details. (Hear, hear.)The Prison at Erzeroum.The Prison at Erzeroum.“I will refer to the last of these witnesses, one whom I must say I am disposed to name with honor, it is Dr. Dillon, a man who, as the special commissioner of theDaily Telegraphnewspaper, some months ago with care and labor, and with the hazard of his life (hear, hear), went into Turkey, laudably making use of a disguise for the purpose, and went into Armenia, so that he might make himself thoroughly master of the facts. (Cheers.) He published his results before any public authority had given utterance to its judgments and those results which he, I rather think, was the first to give to the world in a connected shape—at any rate he was very early in the field—those results have been completely confirmed and established by the inquiries of the delegates appointed by the three Powers—England, France and Russia. (Cheers.) I say he has, at the risk of his life, acquired a title to be believed, and (in theContemporary Review) he gives us an account which bears upon it all the marks of truth, but which, at the same time that we must believe it to be true, you would say is hardly credible. Unhappily some of those matters which are not credible do, in this strange and wayward world of ours, turn out to be true; and here it is hardly credible that there candwell in the human form a spirit of such intense and diabolical wickedness as is unhappily displayed in some of the narratives Dr. Dillon has laid before the world. I shall not quote from them in detail though I mean to make a single citation, which will be a citation, if I may say so, rather of principle than of detail. I shall not quote the details, but I will say to you that when you begin to read them you will see the truth of what I just now said—namely that we are not dealing at all with a common and ordinary question of abuses of government or the defects of them. We are dealing with something that goes far deeper, far wider, and that imposes upon us and upon you far heavier obligations.“The whole substance of this remarkable article may be summed up in four awful words—plunder, murder, rape and torture. (‘Shame.’) Every incident turns upon one or upon several of those awful words. Plunder and murder you would think are bad enough, but plunder and murder are almost venial by the side of the work of the ravisher and the work of the torturer, as it is described in these pages, and as it is now fully and authentically known to be going on. I will keep my word, and I will not be tempted by—what shall I say?—the dramatic interests attached to such exaggeration of human action as we find here to travel into the details of the facts. They are fitter for private perusal than they are for public discussion. In all ordinary cases when we have before us instances of crime, perhaps of very horrible crime—we at once assume that in all countries, unfortunately, there are malefactors, there are plunderers whose deeds we are going to consider. Here, my lord duke, it is nothing of the kind; we have nothing to do here with what are called thedangerous classes of the community; it is not their proceedings which you are asked to consider; it is the proceedings of the Government of Constantinople and its agents. (Cheers.)“There is not one of these misdeeds for which the Government at Constantinople is not morally responsible. (Cheers.) Now, who are these agents? Let me tell you very briefly. They fall into three classes. The first have been mentioned by the noble duke—namely the savage Kurds, who are, unhappily, the neighbors of the Armenians, the Armenians being the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, and being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world. (Cheers.) These Kurds are by them; they are wild, savage clans, organized as bands of robbers. These the Sultan and the Government at Constantinople have enrolled, though in a nominal fashion, not with a military discipline, into pretended cavalry regiments and then set them loose with the authority of soldiers of the Sultan to harry and destroy the people of Armenia. (Cheers.) Well, these Kurds are the first of the agents in this horrible business; the next are the Turkish soldiers, who are in no sense behind the Kurds in their performances; the third are the peace officers, the police and the tax gatherers of the Turkish Government; and there seems to be a deadly competition among all these classes which shall most prove itself an adept in the horrible and infernal work that is before them, but above them and more guilty than they, are the higher officers of the Turkish Government.Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.“I think there are certain matters, such as thosewhich have been discussed to-day and discussed in many other forms, on which it is perfectly possible to make up our minds. And what I should say is, that the whole position may be summed up in three brief propositions. I do not know to which of these propositions to assign the less or the greater importance. It appears to me that they are probably each and every one of them absolutely indispensable. The first proposition is this, You ought to moderate your demands. You ought to ask for nothing but that which is strictly necessary, and that possibly according to all that we know of the proposals before us, the rule has been rigidly complied with. I do not hesitate to say, ladies and gentlemen, that the cleanest and clearest method of dealing with this subject, if we should have done it, would have been to tell the Turk to march out of Armenia. (Loud cheers.) He has no right to remain there, and it would have been an excellent settlement of the question. But it is by no means certain that Europe or even the three Powers would have been unanimous in seeking after that end. Therefore, let us part with everything except what is known to be indispensable. Then I come to the other two rules, and of these the first is that you should accept no Turkish promises. (Hear, hear.) They are absolutely and entirely worthless. They are worse than worthless, because they may serve to delude a few persons who, without information or experience, naturally would suppose, when promises are given, that there is something like an intentional fulfilment. Recollect that no scheme is worth having unless it be supported by efficient guarantees entirely outside the promises of the Turkish Government. (Applause.) There is another word which I must speak,and it is this: Don’t be too much afraid if you hear introduced into this discussion a word that I admit, in ordinary cases, ought to be excluded from all diplomatic proceeding, namely, the word coercion. Coercion is a word perfectly well understood in Constantinople, and it is a word highly appreciated in Constantinople. It is a drastic dose—(laughter)—which never fails of its aim when it is administered in that quarter. (Laughter.) Gentlemen, I would not use these words if I had not myself personally had large and close experience of the proceedings of the Turkish Government. I say, first make your case good, and when your case is made good, determine that it shall prevail. (Cheers.) Grammar has something to do with this case. Recollect that while the word ‘ought’ sounded in Constantinople, passes in thin air, and has no force or solidity whatever attaching to it; on the contrary, the brother or sister monosyllable, the word ‘must’ is perfectly understood—(cheers)—and it is a known fact supported by positive experience, which can be verified upon the map of Europe, that a timely and judicious use of the word never fails for its effect. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I must point out to you that we have reached a very critical position indeed. How are three great Governments in Europe, ruling a population of more than two hundred million souls, with perhaps eight or ten times the population of Turkey, with twenty times the wealth of Turkey, with fifty times the influence and power of Turkey, who have committed themselves in this matter before the world, I put it to you that if they recede before an irrational resistance—and remember that I have in the first instance postulated that our demands should be reasonable—if they recede before the irrational resistanceof the Sultan and the Ottoman Government they are disgraced in the face of the world. Every motive of duty coincides with every motive of self respect, and, my lord duke, yourself let drop a word which is a frightful word, unhappily not wholly out of place, the word‘EXTERMINATION.’There has gone abroad, I don’t say that I feel myself competent to judge the matter, I don’t think I do, but there has gone abroad and there is widely entertained a belief that the recent proceedings of the Turkish Government in Armenia particularly, but not in Armenia exclusively, are founded upon deliberate determination to exterminate the Christians in that Empire. I hope it is not true, but at the same time I must say that there are evidences tending to support it—(hear, hear)—and the grand evidence which tends to support it is this: the perfect infatuation of the Turkish Government. The Turkish Government is evidently in such a state of infatuation that it is fain to believe it may, under certain circumstances, be infatuated enough to scheme the extermination of the Christian population. Well, this is a sad and terrible story, and I have been a very long time in telling it, but a very small part of it, but I hope that, having heard the terms of the resolution that will be submitted to you, you will agree that a case is made out. (Cheers.) I for one, for the sake of avoiding other complications, would rejoice if the Government of Turkey would come to its senses. That is, in my opinion, what we ought all to desire, and though it would be more agreeable to clear Turkey than to find her guilty of these terrible charges, yet if wehave the smallest regard to humanity, if we are sensible at all of what is due to our own honor after the steps which have been taken within the last twelve or eighteen months, we must interfere. We must be careful to demand no more than what is just—but at least as much as is necessary—and we must be determined that, with the help of God that which is necessary, and that which is just shall be done, whether there will be a response or whether there be none.” (Loud cheers.)In a letter written late in March, to the Duke of Argyle, chairman of the Armenian Relief Committee, Mr. Gladstone said, “that he hopes that nobody will suppose that deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty in Armenia will in any way diminish the force of the present appeal (for aid) to Christian pity.”But what about this deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty? Lord Salisbury has gravely assured the nation that England is utterly powerless to alleviate the lot of the Armenians in Turkey. If this be true and the Porte should choose to finish his work of extermination, must all the world stand by and see it done and no arm be raised to defend the helpless? If so, woe to the world when the Lord God of hosts shall arise to avenge the blood of a slaughtered race.When the first rumors of a massacre at Sassoun was confirmed in all essential details, the Government had to act quickly and somewhat decidedly, to avoid a swelling storm of indignation, that might break with serious effect upon their heads.Two courses of action were open to England, either to use all her power of persuasion, with some stronglanguage, by way of emphasis, to induce the Porte to bring the officials to justice and obtain a guarantee that no such massacres should be permitted in the future, or sound an alarm and call on all the Powers of Europe for an armed intervention, in which case she must be ready to cast in her heaviest weight of men and metal. As the responsibility for the terrible state of affairs in Armenia was due to England’s neglect, in not enforcing reforms, essential to prevent such awful scenes, she should have secured from the Powers their consent to let her thrash the Turks in Constantinople and Anatolia, while the fleets anchored in the Bosphorus to protect the “balance of power” when the deed was done.A guarantee from the Powers, that England would not be permitted to occupy Constantinople, might have satisfied Russia, or have prevented any interference in the carrying out the purpose of delivering the Armenians from further outrages and massacres. In that case the dissolution of “the Sick Man” might have been the solution of the Eastern question.At least unless England knew that the Powers would stand by her the threat of using force was stupid folly. A conference of the Powers was a necessity and the pledge of concurrence or armed neutrality should have been given before she began to bait the Sultan. It has been known for years that the Sultan is the last man to be controlled by mere sentiment. He only yields to necessity, to force actually present, to guns trained upon him. He was never scared by all the letters and the threats of the English Government. He knew the Powers were not agreed to use force.Sir Philip Currie telegraphed to Lord Kimberley:“I impressed upon His Excellency (said Pasha) asforcibly as I could that the only safe course for the Turkish Government was to authorize the Commission to make a fair and impartial inquiry; that failing this they would be held responsible for the cruelties perpetrated on the Armenians by the local authorities, and that the feeling aroused in Europe was such that if these cruelties were not punished, active interference from without must be looked for.”Town and Citadel of Van.Town and Citadel of Van.This was an earnest, urgent, emphatic, even threatening appeal: but where was there any warrant for the last threat? There was no ultimatum ready. No nation was going to take up arms against Turkey, England least of all. There was no agreement among them to let England take up the task alone. If there had been, one battleship before Constantinople would have brought the massacres to a speedy close and could have compelled the punishment of the Governors in every vilayet where the horrors of Sassoun had been repeated with increased torment and misery. But the fact remains, and the fact is the thing emphasized, that England and all the Signatory Powers sat in masterly inactivity though with steam up at Salonica and let the deadly work go on. There is only time to notice one question, “Why did not Russia agree to the forcing the Dardanelles and coercing the Turks? The blame for the fiasco must fall upon Russia.”How so? Could you reasonably expect Russia to assist England in performing her promises to protect Armenia when you remember the humiliation of the Berlin Treaty? If England entered into engagements she was powerless to make good, whose fault was that? And when the implicit appeal was to her Christian sympathy the Russians replied in their press:“Where were all these glorious virtues of Englishmen when Lord Beaconsfield handed back the Christian subjects of the Sultan to the dismal fate which has only now begun to excite their pity, when an improvement would suit their policy and further their designs? If England continued to be both humane and Christian while suppressing those noble impulses eighteen years ago, it is hard to understand why we can not remain both, while holding them in control to-day.”To those who deny to Russia any disinterested motives of Christian sympathy in her war with Turkey to deliver Bulgaria from the horrible misrule of the Sultan, this refusal will furnish only another illustration of her being what they consider her, viz: a half-civilized nation.But for England to look to a Power she considers her mortal enemy as regards the occupation of Constantinople, for help to rescue the Armenians from Kurd and Circassian and Turkish regulars, set upon them by the Porte, is the sublimity of political innocence, or the confession of utter weakness.The Russian Bear smiled at the innocence, and with grim satisfaction, perhaps, allowed the Turk to wave back the fleets of the allied Powers from the straits of the Dardanelles and continue his fiendish massacres.Weigh each for himself the responsibility of each of the Great Powers in any scales he may choose, distribute the guilt by a different judgment, and yet the failure of these Christian nations to unite for the deliverance of Christian Armenia from the barbarous and cruel, most lustful and brutal outrages under which they were suffering, will be stamped by history as the most awful crime against humanity upon which the sunever gazed during all the passing years of the nineteenth century, and only to be paralleled by the apathy of Western Europe, when alone in 1453 Constantinople fought her last battle for the cross and fell under the sword and power of Islam.
CHAPTER XVII.THE GREATEST CRIME OF THE CENTURY.
That the Powers of Europe, having their fleets lying at anchor in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas within a day’s sail of Constantinople, should stand by and permit the Sultan to slaughter the helpless Armenians by the tens of thousands is the greatest crime of the century.The mutual jealousies and distrusts and diverse ambitions of the Powers of Europe have been as fatal and as horrible in result as the cruel wrath of a Nero, when for the first time he smote the early Christians with the clenched fist of the Roman Empire. Would that some hand could strip off the blood-soaked, dagger-pierced garments of nearly a hundred thousand martyred dead, and lay them at the feet of the nations who were consenting unto their death. Far be it from us to attempt to divide, or measure, or weigh out the guilt that lies with common shame upon them all; but that the burden rests with unequal weight upon the Powers a brief recital of some of the facts of history will show.In little more than three hundred (322) days the Russian Army had swept from the Danube, through Bulgaria, over the passes of the Balkans across the plains of Adrianople, breaking and scattering the power of the Turkish armies until in February, 1878, nearly one hundred thousand victorious troops encamped before the gates of Constantinople which lay defeated and helpless at the feet of the conquering Czar.General Grant said that for Russia not to enter Constantinople at that conjuncture was the greatest mistake a nation ever made. Could he have foreseen the misrule of the coming years culminating in the recent awful massacres, he would have called the failure a crime and not a blunder.But Alexander had not entered upon the war for the sake of conquest, but to punish Turkey for her crimes against the Bulgarians and to deliver them from her power. Hence the terms of the treaty of San Stefano were specially in the interest of the subject Christian races that were under the rule of the Sublime Porte.The treaty established the independence and boundaries of Montenegro, Servia and Roumania. It constituted Bulgaria an autonomous principality with a Christian government, a national militia, with fixed tribute; its boundaries carefully defined, included over sixty-five thousand square miles with a population of nearly four million Christian people. The Ottoman army was to be withdrawn and the irregular forces, the Bashi-Bazouks and the Circassians were to be absolutely excluded from it. The Russian army of occupation was to consist of fifty thousand men to remain until the new government should be firmly established (for the term approximately of two years.) All Danubian fortresses were to be razed and Bessarabia restored to Russia. Kars, Batoum, Ardahan, Bayazet and certain surrounding territory to be ceded to Russia, and Armenia to be guaranteed protection against Kurds and Circassians, and besides this territory, a war indemnity of a paltry $250,000,000. This is all that Russia claimed for herself at the close of a victorious campaign that had cost her $600,000,000 and the loss ofnearly one hundred thousand men. This was the sacrifice she had offered to free her Bulgarian fellow Christians from the power of the Turk. Russia was the master of the situation and had well earned the right to dictate her own terms when the Sultan sued for peace.Already the British Government had declared that they would not permit any power to interfere with the freedom of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, and that they should protect Constantinople from becoming the prize of conquest. The Parliament had been convened in January (17th) 1878, and in the Queen’s speech there was this sentence: “I can not conceal from myself that should hostilities be unfortunately prolonged some unexpected occurrence may render it incumbent on me to adopt measures of precaution. Such measures could not be effectually taken without adequate preparation and I trust to the liberality of my Parliament to supply the means which may be required for that purpose.”In the debate that followed the Marquis of Salisbury said, “If you will not trust the government provide yourselves a government you will trust.”The danger flag was wavedominouslybearing the insignia of the Russian bear. On February 8th, the House voted a war credit of an additional $30,000,000, and on the same day five British war vessels were ordered to Constantinople. Troops were ordered to Malta from India, and Disraeli, the Premier, significantly declared “that in a righteous cause England would commence a fight that would not end till right was done.”On March 17th, the ratifications of the treaty betweenRussia and Turkey were exchanged at St. Petersburg. Now note the situation. Russia has but three or four towns and the fortress of Kars on the frontiers of Armenia, and the seaport of Batoum, from which to compel the Porte to protect the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians. But there is a Bulgaria freed from Turkish despotism. Four millions of Christians are given the privilege of self government while still tributary to the Porte. The frontier of Russia is restored as it was before the treaty of Paris by the addition of Bessarabia. This is the only political advantage to compensate for the expenditure of blood and treasure in the liberation of Bulgaria. What does England want? What does she mean to fight for? How is she injured? The Dardanelles are opened for the free passage of merchant vessels both in peace and war. What right has she to interfere now that the treaty has been signed?Yet on March 28th, the Disraeli government announces that the first class of the Army reserve numbering thirteen thousand, and the militia reserve of about twenty-five thousand men were to be called out. This determination led to the resignation of Lord Derby as Foreign Secretary and the Marquis of Salisbury was appointed in his place. On April 1st, Salisbury addressed a circular to the Powers, and after giving Russia’s refusal to consent to England’s demand (by what right?) relative to placing the treaty as a whole before the Congress—which Germany was endeavoring to secure to avoid another war—he goes on to complain of the terms imposed by Russia on Turkey: and the violation of the treaty of Paris, etc. Prince Gortchakoff in his reply among other questions asks Lord Salisburyhow he would reconcile these treaties with the benevolent ends to which the united action of Europe had always been directed and the attainment of which one learns with pleasure the English government desires, namely, good government, peace and liberty for the oppressed populations.A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum.A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum.Having allowed Russia single handed to chastise the Turks for the massacre of the Bulgarians—and we think that any one can see that she had done it with neatness and despatch, and had delivered four million Christians from the cursed rule of Islam, England now comes forward and demands that the treaty of San Stefano shall be broken and a new one made. We may well exclaim “Cui bono?” In whose interest? For the greater security of the Christians in Bulgaria? For larger liberty and protection to the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians, or the protection of the Balkan populations from Circassians and Bashi-Bazouks?No indeed! Noble, Christian England in her sympathy for the suffering Bulgarians wanted a Congress called to give back into the hands of the Turk, Bashi-Bazouk and Circassian more than three million Christians and forty thousand square miles of territory which might have formed the home of a strong, progressive Christian nation under the terms of the San Stefano treaty.Having thus purposed to give back these millions into the jaws of the wolf, she yet desired to pose as the chief guardian of Armenia, and said to Turkey now give me Cyprus and I will protect you against Russia, and we can let Kurds and Circassians alone for awhile.Thus while urging a Congress of the Powers, already on June 4th, 1878, England had secured the Island ofCyprus, and alone Christian England had agreed to defend by force of arms the integrity and the independence of the Turkish Dominions.On June 13th, the Congress was called, Prince Bismarck occupying the presidential chair. Beaconsfield and Salisbury and the Ambassador at Berlin representing England, Russia, Austria, France, Italy and Turkey also having their respective representatives.At the twentieth and last meeting held July 13th, the treaty of Berlin was signed. Thus by the conduct and the persistence of the English government alone was the calling of the Congress made necessary or possible, and by the spirit of England was the Congress dominated, and its final deliverances controlled. At the behest of England were millions of Bulgarians and Armenians handed over again to the tender mercies of the wicked Turk, and Russia was robbed of the glory of her victories.An international crime like this must cry to Heaven for vengeance and the most powerful and enlightened nation that insisted on it and forced it through is also the most guilty. On their return to England Beaconsfield and Salisbury received an ovation, and the Queen conferred the Order of the Garter on these two Lords who had delivered the lives and welfare of millions of Christians back into the hands of the unspeakable Turk.That England’s attitude has not been too strongly emphasized, read this quotation from Lord Salisbury’s summing up of the situation in 1879:“The Sultan’s dominions he informed the Powers have been provided with a defensible frontier far removed from his capital. * * Rich and extensive provinces have been restored to his rule, at the sametime that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made which will, it may be hoped assure their loyalty, and prevent the recurrence of calamities which have brought the Ottoman Power to the verge of ruin. Arrangements of a different kind, having the same end in view, have provided for the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan security for the present, and hope of prosperity and stability in the future. Whether use will be made of this, probably the last opportunity which has thus been obtained for Turkey by the interposition of the Powers of Europe, of England in particular, (note this phrase) or whether it is to be thrown away, will depend upon the sincerity with which Turkish statesmen now address themselves to the duties of good government and the task of reform.”One would suppose from the terms of the treaties that the Bulgarian war had been undertaken for the sole and express purpose of establishing and assuring the integrity and independence of Turkey, the entrenchment of the Bashi-Bazouks in Bulgaria and for protecting the fierce wolves that dwell in the mountains of Kurdestan from the helpless lambs that infest the valleys of Armenia. In Russia the Berlin Treaty called out the most indignant disapprobation. It was said to be “a colossal absurdity, a blundering failure, an impudent outrage.” The nation had been robbed of all reward for the sacrifices she had made in the name of humanity: and before the people Alexander had been humiliated. He saw the incompleteness of his work, felt his inability to deal with the forces that were at that time massed against him and felt bitterly the reproach of the army and of those who had suffered the loss of kindred and friends in a useless and expensive war.Russian diplomacy at Berlin was felt to be more disastrous than the war, while the nation had been decked with a fool’s cap and bells and their honor trampled under foot.England had taken on her hands a most difficult task, viz: To be the Protector of the Armenians, while at the same time she wore the belt as champion defender of Turkey against all comers. The Protector of the Christians, and the Christian Champion of Islam!!TREATY OF BERLIN.Art. LXI.The sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application.ANGLO-TURKISH (CYPRUS) CONVENTION.Art. I.If Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall be retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by Russia to take possession of any further territory of His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in Asia, as fixed by the Definitive Treaty of Peace, England engages to join His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in defending them by force of arms.In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reforms,to be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories; and in order toenable England to make necessary provisions for executing her engagement, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England.Trebizond.Trebizond.The Anglo-Turkish Convention having been made June 4th, and the Berlin Treaty not being signed until July 13th, places priority (may we not almost say entirety?) of obligation upon England, which obligation with all that it implies she fully and alone accepted when she accepted the island of Cyprus as a necessary base of operations and a promise and pledge of good faith.The Berlin Treaty did not release England from this distinct and individual obligation nor did she wish to divide the honor of being the defender of the Armenian Christians. It may be questioned whether she had any right to expect anything more from the other signatory Powers than their moral support in any attempted enforcement of its terms.Passing by the first part of Art. I. in the Anglo-Turkish Convention the reader is asked to give special attention to the wording of the second part: “In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reformsto be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories.”With that clause inserted “to be agreed upon later” how could Lord Salisbury possibly dream, let alone say “that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made”? Absolutely no provision had been made to protect Armenia from Kurd or Circassian or the rapacity and cruelty and outrage of Turkish officials.And none could be made unless these two Powers alone, England and the Porte could agree upon the nature of the reforms and the manner in which they should be carried out. Was any promise, pledge or convention ever written that actually meant less? Was this honest British Statesmanship actually determining that something should be done? or was it shrewd Turkish diplomacy that will promise anything in the bond but withdraw it in the terms of later stipulations? Or was it understood that it was merely dust for the eyes of Christian Europe?The following incident in the career of Gen. B. F. Butler was given as a newspaper item. In the course of a very spirited conversation one day a gentleman called him a knave. The general smiled and replied, “Well, did you ever hear anybody say that I was a fool?” Somebody was surely fooled by this convention. Who was it? Not Russia and certainly not the Turk. Who then? Salisbury? or England?There were many men even in England who did not hesitate to express hottest indignation against the policy of the Government regarding her dealings with Turkey. Here are paragraphs from “The Ottoman Power in Europe” by the English historianE. A. Freeman:“The England of Canning and Codrington, the England of Byron and Hastings has come to this, that the world knows us as the nation which upholds oppression for the sake of its own interests. We have indeed a national sin to redress and atone for. We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear. Nay, our guilt is deeper still. We have notmerely looked on and passed by on the other side, but we have given our active help to the oppressors of our brothers. We have “upheld” the foulest fabric of wrong that earth ever saw, because it was deemed that the interests of England were involved in upholding the wrong and trampling down the right. * * * *“Our national crime is that we have upheld the Turk for our own supposed interests. For these we have doomed the struggling nations to abide in their bondage. We have doomed them to stay under a rule under which the life and property of the Christian, the honor of his wife, the honor of his children of both sexes alike are at every moment at the mercy of the savages whom our august and cherished ally honors and promotes in proportion to the blackness of their deeds. We have for our own interests upheld the power which has done its foul and bloody work in Chios, at Damascus and in Bulgaria, which is still doing the same foul and bloody work wherever a victim may be found. We uphold the power whose daily work is massacre and worse than massacre. It matters not whether ten thousand or twenty thousand perish. We are still to uphold the slaughterer, for it is to our interest that he should not be shorn of his power of slaughtering.“Now if there be any such thing as right and wrong in public affairs, if moral considerations are ever to come in to determine the actions of nations, it is hard to see how there can be deeper national guilt than this. Unjust wars, aggressions and conquests are bad enough, but they are hardly so bad as the calm, unblushing upholding of wrong for our own interests. * * * * We look on, we count the cost, we see how the wrong-doer deals with his victim and we determine to upholdthe wrong-doer because we think that to uphold him will suit some interest of our own. There is noquestionof national glory, no question of national honor; nothing which can stir up even a false enthusiasm. It is a calm mercantile calculation that the wrongs of millions of men will pay.“The revenue returns of Egypt for 1890 were over $50,000,000. If we knew how large a part of this went to bondholders in London, we would know something about England’s interest in Egypt. If we knew how large a portion of the Turkish debt of above $500,000,000, is held in London, we would know something about the interest the British government has in maintaining the integrity of Turkey.“England wouldn’t care if that Turkey were carved to-morrow if only she could hold Constantinople and administer on the dead Sultan’s estate until all the obligations she holds should be paid off. She would rather like to occupy Stamboul on those conditions—Armenia, Kurds, Circassians and all.”But to return from our digression which was meant to show something of the nature of the interest England had in bringing Bulgaria again under Turkish rule and taxation, we remark that with this Cypress Convention already a deed accomplished what other European powers would care a fig about seeing to the execution of possible reforms in Armenia. What happened is notorious. A few ineffectual attempts to agree upon reforms and when agreed upon many excuses for not carrying them out and there the whole matter of reform was practically dropped; but Cypress was retained as counsel fees possibly for securing such a favorable revision of the terms of the San StefanoTreaty in the interests of Turkey—of the Moslem not of the Christian.For the sake of retaining influence with the Sublime Porte and to outwit the possible plans and intrigues of the Russian Ambassador, scared by visions in the night of some muscovite move towards Constantinople. England for fifteen years connived at a state of things which was decimating and impoverishing the provinces of Armenia, and costing more lives and causing more suffering in the aggregate than the massacres of Sassoun.Often the question was asked, “Where is England’s guarantee to Armenian and Macedonian Christians now?” The Russian press was not slow to give prominence to these reports of continually increasing oppressions and pillage, of outrage and murder.But nothing pierced the political-commercial conscience of England until tidings of the most horrible massacres committed three months before began to creep over the mountains of Armenia and find their way to England and America.When for very shame they could shut their ears to the clamor no longer the British Government demanded a commission—it’s great on commissions. The British Ambassador intimated to the Porte that if steps were not taken to satisfy her Majesty’s Government that the Sultan’s promise (respecting the commission) would be fulfilled, “they might find it necessary to inquire into the treatment of the Armenians, and that they might also be forced to publish the consular reports from the Asiatic provinces which had been so long withheld!”What fires of shame should burn on cheek and foreheadof the English Government that nothing had been done to stop those outrages till indifference and inactivity had given the impression that nobody cared what became of the Armenians.At last the heart of England flamed out in pity and her conscience fired the brain to hot and earnest and even vehement utterance, and hundreds of public meetings were held. Instinctively all eyes turned to Gladstone to voice the sorrow, the pity or the indignation of a Christian people who felt themselves in some measure responsible for the deliverance of Armenia from further horrors.GLADSTONE ON ARMENIA’S FATE.At a meeting held in the Town Hall, Chester, England, a great many members of Parliament being present, the Duke of Westminster presiding, Mr. Gladstone spoke (in part) as follows:“My Lord Duke, my Lord and Ladies and Gentlemen:“It is perfectly true that the Government whose deeds we have to impeach is a Mohammedan Government, and it is perfectly true that the sufferers under those outrages, under those afflictions, are Christian sufferers. The Mohammedan subjects of Turkey suffer a great deal, but what they suffer is only in the way of the ordinary excesses and defects of an intolerably bad Government—perhaps the worst on the face of the earth. (Hear, hear.) I will take the liberty of reading a resolution which has been placed in my hands and which seems to me to express with firmness, but with moderation, the opinions which I am very confidentthis meeting will entertain, and this meeting, in entertaining such opinions, is but the representative of the country at large. (Cheers.)“Allow me to go further and to say that the country at large in entertaining these ideas is only a representative of civilized humanity, and I will presume to speak on the ground, in part, of personal knowledge, of the opinions and sympathies that are entertained among our own Transatlantic brethren of the United States. If possible, the sentiment in America entertained on the subject of these recent occurrences is even more vivid and even stronger, if it can be, than that which beats in the hearts of the people of this country.“The terms of the resolution are as follows:“‘That this meeting expresses its conviction that her Majesty’s Government will have the cordial support of the entire nation, without distinction of party, in any measures which it may adopt for securing to the people of Turkish Armenia such reforms in the administration of that province as shall provide effective guarantees for the safety of life, honor, religion, and property, and that no reforms can be effective which are not placed under the continuous control of the Great Powers of Europe.’ (Cheers.)“That means, without doubt, the Great Powers of Europe, all who choose to combine, and those great Powers which happily have combined and have already, in my judgment, pledged their honor as well as their power to the attainment of the object we have in view. (Cheers.)“Now, it was my fate, I think six or more months ago, to address a very limited number, not a public assembly, but a limited number of Armenian gentlemen, andgentlemen interested in Armenia on this subject. There was no authoritative and impartial declaration before the world at that period on the subject of what is known as the Sassoun massacre; that massacre to which the Noble Duke has alluded and with respect to which, horrible as that massacre was, one of the most important witnesses in this case declares that it is thrown into the shade and has become pale and ineffective by the side of the unspeakable horrors which are being enacted from month to month, from week to week, and day to day in the different provinces of Armenia. (Hear, hear.) It was a duty to avoid premature judgment, and I think it was avoided. But though it is a duty to avoid exaggeration, a most sacred duty, it is a duty that has little or no place in the case before us, because it is too well known that the powers of language hardly suffice to describe what has been and is being done, and that exaggeration, if we were ever so much disposed to it, is in such a case really beyond our power. (Cheers.) Those are dreadful words to speak. It is a painful office to perform, and nothing but a strong sense of duty could gather us together between these walls or could induce a man of my age and a man who is not wholly without other difficulties to contend with to resign for the moment that repose and quietude which is the last of many great earthly blessings remaining to him in order to invite you to enter into a consideration of this question. What witnesses ought we to call before us? I should be disposed to say that it matters very little what witness you call. So far as the character of the testimony you will receive is concerned the witnesses are all agreed. At the time that I have just spoken of, six or eight monthsago, they were private witnesses. Since that time, although we have not seen the detailed documents of public authority, yet we know that all the broader statements which had been made up to that time and which have made the blood of this nation run cold have been confirmed and verified. They have not been overstated, not withdrawn, not qualified, not reduced, but confirmed in all their breadth, in all that horrible substance, in all their sickening details. (Hear, hear.)The Prison at Erzeroum.The Prison at Erzeroum.“I will refer to the last of these witnesses, one whom I must say I am disposed to name with honor, it is Dr. Dillon, a man who, as the special commissioner of theDaily Telegraphnewspaper, some months ago with care and labor, and with the hazard of his life (hear, hear), went into Turkey, laudably making use of a disguise for the purpose, and went into Armenia, so that he might make himself thoroughly master of the facts. (Cheers.) He published his results before any public authority had given utterance to its judgments and those results which he, I rather think, was the first to give to the world in a connected shape—at any rate he was very early in the field—those results have been completely confirmed and established by the inquiries of the delegates appointed by the three Powers—England, France and Russia. (Cheers.) I say he has, at the risk of his life, acquired a title to be believed, and (in theContemporary Review) he gives us an account which bears upon it all the marks of truth, but which, at the same time that we must believe it to be true, you would say is hardly credible. Unhappily some of those matters which are not credible do, in this strange and wayward world of ours, turn out to be true; and here it is hardly credible that there candwell in the human form a spirit of such intense and diabolical wickedness as is unhappily displayed in some of the narratives Dr. Dillon has laid before the world. I shall not quote from them in detail though I mean to make a single citation, which will be a citation, if I may say so, rather of principle than of detail. I shall not quote the details, but I will say to you that when you begin to read them you will see the truth of what I just now said—namely that we are not dealing at all with a common and ordinary question of abuses of government or the defects of them. We are dealing with something that goes far deeper, far wider, and that imposes upon us and upon you far heavier obligations.“The whole substance of this remarkable article may be summed up in four awful words—plunder, murder, rape and torture. (‘Shame.’) Every incident turns upon one or upon several of those awful words. Plunder and murder you would think are bad enough, but plunder and murder are almost venial by the side of the work of the ravisher and the work of the torturer, as it is described in these pages, and as it is now fully and authentically known to be going on. I will keep my word, and I will not be tempted by—what shall I say?—the dramatic interests attached to such exaggeration of human action as we find here to travel into the details of the facts. They are fitter for private perusal than they are for public discussion. In all ordinary cases when we have before us instances of crime, perhaps of very horrible crime—we at once assume that in all countries, unfortunately, there are malefactors, there are plunderers whose deeds we are going to consider. Here, my lord duke, it is nothing of the kind; we have nothing to do here with what are called thedangerous classes of the community; it is not their proceedings which you are asked to consider; it is the proceedings of the Government of Constantinople and its agents. (Cheers.)“There is not one of these misdeeds for which the Government at Constantinople is not morally responsible. (Cheers.) Now, who are these agents? Let me tell you very briefly. They fall into three classes. The first have been mentioned by the noble duke—namely the savage Kurds, who are, unhappily, the neighbors of the Armenians, the Armenians being the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, and being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world. (Cheers.) These Kurds are by them; they are wild, savage clans, organized as bands of robbers. These the Sultan and the Government at Constantinople have enrolled, though in a nominal fashion, not with a military discipline, into pretended cavalry regiments and then set them loose with the authority of soldiers of the Sultan to harry and destroy the people of Armenia. (Cheers.) Well, these Kurds are the first of the agents in this horrible business; the next are the Turkish soldiers, who are in no sense behind the Kurds in their performances; the third are the peace officers, the police and the tax gatherers of the Turkish Government; and there seems to be a deadly competition among all these classes which shall most prove itself an adept in the horrible and infernal work that is before them, but above them and more guilty than they, are the higher officers of the Turkish Government.Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.“I think there are certain matters, such as thosewhich have been discussed to-day and discussed in many other forms, on which it is perfectly possible to make up our minds. And what I should say is, that the whole position may be summed up in three brief propositions. I do not know to which of these propositions to assign the less or the greater importance. It appears to me that they are probably each and every one of them absolutely indispensable. The first proposition is this, You ought to moderate your demands. You ought to ask for nothing but that which is strictly necessary, and that possibly according to all that we know of the proposals before us, the rule has been rigidly complied with. I do not hesitate to say, ladies and gentlemen, that the cleanest and clearest method of dealing with this subject, if we should have done it, would have been to tell the Turk to march out of Armenia. (Loud cheers.) He has no right to remain there, and it would have been an excellent settlement of the question. But it is by no means certain that Europe or even the three Powers would have been unanimous in seeking after that end. Therefore, let us part with everything except what is known to be indispensable. Then I come to the other two rules, and of these the first is that you should accept no Turkish promises. (Hear, hear.) They are absolutely and entirely worthless. They are worse than worthless, because they may serve to delude a few persons who, without information or experience, naturally would suppose, when promises are given, that there is something like an intentional fulfilment. Recollect that no scheme is worth having unless it be supported by efficient guarantees entirely outside the promises of the Turkish Government. (Applause.) There is another word which I must speak,and it is this: Don’t be too much afraid if you hear introduced into this discussion a word that I admit, in ordinary cases, ought to be excluded from all diplomatic proceeding, namely, the word coercion. Coercion is a word perfectly well understood in Constantinople, and it is a word highly appreciated in Constantinople. It is a drastic dose—(laughter)—which never fails of its aim when it is administered in that quarter. (Laughter.) Gentlemen, I would not use these words if I had not myself personally had large and close experience of the proceedings of the Turkish Government. I say, first make your case good, and when your case is made good, determine that it shall prevail. (Cheers.) Grammar has something to do with this case. Recollect that while the word ‘ought’ sounded in Constantinople, passes in thin air, and has no force or solidity whatever attaching to it; on the contrary, the brother or sister monosyllable, the word ‘must’ is perfectly understood—(cheers)—and it is a known fact supported by positive experience, which can be verified upon the map of Europe, that a timely and judicious use of the word never fails for its effect. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I must point out to you that we have reached a very critical position indeed. How are three great Governments in Europe, ruling a population of more than two hundred million souls, with perhaps eight or ten times the population of Turkey, with twenty times the wealth of Turkey, with fifty times the influence and power of Turkey, who have committed themselves in this matter before the world, I put it to you that if they recede before an irrational resistance—and remember that I have in the first instance postulated that our demands should be reasonable—if they recede before the irrational resistanceof the Sultan and the Ottoman Government they are disgraced in the face of the world. Every motive of duty coincides with every motive of self respect, and, my lord duke, yourself let drop a word which is a frightful word, unhappily not wholly out of place, the word‘EXTERMINATION.’There has gone abroad, I don’t say that I feel myself competent to judge the matter, I don’t think I do, but there has gone abroad and there is widely entertained a belief that the recent proceedings of the Turkish Government in Armenia particularly, but not in Armenia exclusively, are founded upon deliberate determination to exterminate the Christians in that Empire. I hope it is not true, but at the same time I must say that there are evidences tending to support it—(hear, hear)—and the grand evidence which tends to support it is this: the perfect infatuation of the Turkish Government. The Turkish Government is evidently in such a state of infatuation that it is fain to believe it may, under certain circumstances, be infatuated enough to scheme the extermination of the Christian population. Well, this is a sad and terrible story, and I have been a very long time in telling it, but a very small part of it, but I hope that, having heard the terms of the resolution that will be submitted to you, you will agree that a case is made out. (Cheers.) I for one, for the sake of avoiding other complications, would rejoice if the Government of Turkey would come to its senses. That is, in my opinion, what we ought all to desire, and though it would be more agreeable to clear Turkey than to find her guilty of these terrible charges, yet if wehave the smallest regard to humanity, if we are sensible at all of what is due to our own honor after the steps which have been taken within the last twelve or eighteen months, we must interfere. We must be careful to demand no more than what is just—but at least as much as is necessary—and we must be determined that, with the help of God that which is necessary, and that which is just shall be done, whether there will be a response or whether there be none.” (Loud cheers.)In a letter written late in March, to the Duke of Argyle, chairman of the Armenian Relief Committee, Mr. Gladstone said, “that he hopes that nobody will suppose that deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty in Armenia will in any way diminish the force of the present appeal (for aid) to Christian pity.”But what about this deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty? Lord Salisbury has gravely assured the nation that England is utterly powerless to alleviate the lot of the Armenians in Turkey. If this be true and the Porte should choose to finish his work of extermination, must all the world stand by and see it done and no arm be raised to defend the helpless? If so, woe to the world when the Lord God of hosts shall arise to avenge the blood of a slaughtered race.When the first rumors of a massacre at Sassoun was confirmed in all essential details, the Government had to act quickly and somewhat decidedly, to avoid a swelling storm of indignation, that might break with serious effect upon their heads.Two courses of action were open to England, either to use all her power of persuasion, with some stronglanguage, by way of emphasis, to induce the Porte to bring the officials to justice and obtain a guarantee that no such massacres should be permitted in the future, or sound an alarm and call on all the Powers of Europe for an armed intervention, in which case she must be ready to cast in her heaviest weight of men and metal. As the responsibility for the terrible state of affairs in Armenia was due to England’s neglect, in not enforcing reforms, essential to prevent such awful scenes, she should have secured from the Powers their consent to let her thrash the Turks in Constantinople and Anatolia, while the fleets anchored in the Bosphorus to protect the “balance of power” when the deed was done.A guarantee from the Powers, that England would not be permitted to occupy Constantinople, might have satisfied Russia, or have prevented any interference in the carrying out the purpose of delivering the Armenians from further outrages and massacres. In that case the dissolution of “the Sick Man” might have been the solution of the Eastern question.At least unless England knew that the Powers would stand by her the threat of using force was stupid folly. A conference of the Powers was a necessity and the pledge of concurrence or armed neutrality should have been given before she began to bait the Sultan. It has been known for years that the Sultan is the last man to be controlled by mere sentiment. He only yields to necessity, to force actually present, to guns trained upon him. He was never scared by all the letters and the threats of the English Government. He knew the Powers were not agreed to use force.Sir Philip Currie telegraphed to Lord Kimberley:“I impressed upon His Excellency (said Pasha) asforcibly as I could that the only safe course for the Turkish Government was to authorize the Commission to make a fair and impartial inquiry; that failing this they would be held responsible for the cruelties perpetrated on the Armenians by the local authorities, and that the feeling aroused in Europe was such that if these cruelties were not punished, active interference from without must be looked for.”Town and Citadel of Van.Town and Citadel of Van.This was an earnest, urgent, emphatic, even threatening appeal: but where was there any warrant for the last threat? There was no ultimatum ready. No nation was going to take up arms against Turkey, England least of all. There was no agreement among them to let England take up the task alone. If there had been, one battleship before Constantinople would have brought the massacres to a speedy close and could have compelled the punishment of the Governors in every vilayet where the horrors of Sassoun had been repeated with increased torment and misery. But the fact remains, and the fact is the thing emphasized, that England and all the Signatory Powers sat in masterly inactivity though with steam up at Salonica and let the deadly work go on. There is only time to notice one question, “Why did not Russia agree to the forcing the Dardanelles and coercing the Turks? The blame for the fiasco must fall upon Russia.”How so? Could you reasonably expect Russia to assist England in performing her promises to protect Armenia when you remember the humiliation of the Berlin Treaty? If England entered into engagements she was powerless to make good, whose fault was that? And when the implicit appeal was to her Christian sympathy the Russians replied in their press:“Where were all these glorious virtues of Englishmen when Lord Beaconsfield handed back the Christian subjects of the Sultan to the dismal fate which has only now begun to excite their pity, when an improvement would suit their policy and further their designs? If England continued to be both humane and Christian while suppressing those noble impulses eighteen years ago, it is hard to understand why we can not remain both, while holding them in control to-day.”To those who deny to Russia any disinterested motives of Christian sympathy in her war with Turkey to deliver Bulgaria from the horrible misrule of the Sultan, this refusal will furnish only another illustration of her being what they consider her, viz: a half-civilized nation.But for England to look to a Power she considers her mortal enemy as regards the occupation of Constantinople, for help to rescue the Armenians from Kurd and Circassian and Turkish regulars, set upon them by the Porte, is the sublimity of political innocence, or the confession of utter weakness.The Russian Bear smiled at the innocence, and with grim satisfaction, perhaps, allowed the Turk to wave back the fleets of the allied Powers from the straits of the Dardanelles and continue his fiendish massacres.Weigh each for himself the responsibility of each of the Great Powers in any scales he may choose, distribute the guilt by a different judgment, and yet the failure of these Christian nations to unite for the deliverance of Christian Armenia from the barbarous and cruel, most lustful and brutal outrages under which they were suffering, will be stamped by history as the most awful crime against humanity upon which the sunever gazed during all the passing years of the nineteenth century, and only to be paralleled by the apathy of Western Europe, when alone in 1453 Constantinople fought her last battle for the cross and fell under the sword and power of Islam.
That the Powers of Europe, having their fleets lying at anchor in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas within a day’s sail of Constantinople, should stand by and permit the Sultan to slaughter the helpless Armenians by the tens of thousands is the greatest crime of the century.
The mutual jealousies and distrusts and diverse ambitions of the Powers of Europe have been as fatal and as horrible in result as the cruel wrath of a Nero, when for the first time he smote the early Christians with the clenched fist of the Roman Empire. Would that some hand could strip off the blood-soaked, dagger-pierced garments of nearly a hundred thousand martyred dead, and lay them at the feet of the nations who were consenting unto their death. Far be it from us to attempt to divide, or measure, or weigh out the guilt that lies with common shame upon them all; but that the burden rests with unequal weight upon the Powers a brief recital of some of the facts of history will show.
In little more than three hundred (322) days the Russian Army had swept from the Danube, through Bulgaria, over the passes of the Balkans across the plains of Adrianople, breaking and scattering the power of the Turkish armies until in February, 1878, nearly one hundred thousand victorious troops encamped before the gates of Constantinople which lay defeated and helpless at the feet of the conquering Czar.
General Grant said that for Russia not to enter Constantinople at that conjuncture was the greatest mistake a nation ever made. Could he have foreseen the misrule of the coming years culminating in the recent awful massacres, he would have called the failure a crime and not a blunder.
But Alexander had not entered upon the war for the sake of conquest, but to punish Turkey for her crimes against the Bulgarians and to deliver them from her power. Hence the terms of the treaty of San Stefano were specially in the interest of the subject Christian races that were under the rule of the Sublime Porte.
The treaty established the independence and boundaries of Montenegro, Servia and Roumania. It constituted Bulgaria an autonomous principality with a Christian government, a national militia, with fixed tribute; its boundaries carefully defined, included over sixty-five thousand square miles with a population of nearly four million Christian people. The Ottoman army was to be withdrawn and the irregular forces, the Bashi-Bazouks and the Circassians were to be absolutely excluded from it. The Russian army of occupation was to consist of fifty thousand men to remain until the new government should be firmly established (for the term approximately of two years.) All Danubian fortresses were to be razed and Bessarabia restored to Russia. Kars, Batoum, Ardahan, Bayazet and certain surrounding territory to be ceded to Russia, and Armenia to be guaranteed protection against Kurds and Circassians, and besides this territory, a war indemnity of a paltry $250,000,000. This is all that Russia claimed for herself at the close of a victorious campaign that had cost her $600,000,000 and the loss ofnearly one hundred thousand men. This was the sacrifice she had offered to free her Bulgarian fellow Christians from the power of the Turk. Russia was the master of the situation and had well earned the right to dictate her own terms when the Sultan sued for peace.
Already the British Government had declared that they would not permit any power to interfere with the freedom of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, and that they should protect Constantinople from becoming the prize of conquest. The Parliament had been convened in January (17th) 1878, and in the Queen’s speech there was this sentence: “I can not conceal from myself that should hostilities be unfortunately prolonged some unexpected occurrence may render it incumbent on me to adopt measures of precaution. Such measures could not be effectually taken without adequate preparation and I trust to the liberality of my Parliament to supply the means which may be required for that purpose.”
In the debate that followed the Marquis of Salisbury said, “If you will not trust the government provide yourselves a government you will trust.”
The danger flag was wavedominouslybearing the insignia of the Russian bear. On February 8th, the House voted a war credit of an additional $30,000,000, and on the same day five British war vessels were ordered to Constantinople. Troops were ordered to Malta from India, and Disraeli, the Premier, significantly declared “that in a righteous cause England would commence a fight that would not end till right was done.”
On March 17th, the ratifications of the treaty betweenRussia and Turkey were exchanged at St. Petersburg. Now note the situation. Russia has but three or four towns and the fortress of Kars on the frontiers of Armenia, and the seaport of Batoum, from which to compel the Porte to protect the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians. But there is a Bulgaria freed from Turkish despotism. Four millions of Christians are given the privilege of self government while still tributary to the Porte. The frontier of Russia is restored as it was before the treaty of Paris by the addition of Bessarabia. This is the only political advantage to compensate for the expenditure of blood and treasure in the liberation of Bulgaria. What does England want? What does she mean to fight for? How is she injured? The Dardanelles are opened for the free passage of merchant vessels both in peace and war. What right has she to interfere now that the treaty has been signed?
Yet on March 28th, the Disraeli government announces that the first class of the Army reserve numbering thirteen thousand, and the militia reserve of about twenty-five thousand men were to be called out. This determination led to the resignation of Lord Derby as Foreign Secretary and the Marquis of Salisbury was appointed in his place. On April 1st, Salisbury addressed a circular to the Powers, and after giving Russia’s refusal to consent to England’s demand (by what right?) relative to placing the treaty as a whole before the Congress—which Germany was endeavoring to secure to avoid another war—he goes on to complain of the terms imposed by Russia on Turkey: and the violation of the treaty of Paris, etc. Prince Gortchakoff in his reply among other questions asks Lord Salisburyhow he would reconcile these treaties with the benevolent ends to which the united action of Europe had always been directed and the attainment of which one learns with pleasure the English government desires, namely, good government, peace and liberty for the oppressed populations.
A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum.A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum.
A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum.
Having allowed Russia single handed to chastise the Turks for the massacre of the Bulgarians—and we think that any one can see that she had done it with neatness and despatch, and had delivered four million Christians from the cursed rule of Islam, England now comes forward and demands that the treaty of San Stefano shall be broken and a new one made. We may well exclaim “Cui bono?” In whose interest? For the greater security of the Christians in Bulgaria? For larger liberty and protection to the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians, or the protection of the Balkan populations from Circassians and Bashi-Bazouks?
No indeed! Noble, Christian England in her sympathy for the suffering Bulgarians wanted a Congress called to give back into the hands of the Turk, Bashi-Bazouk and Circassian more than three million Christians and forty thousand square miles of territory which might have formed the home of a strong, progressive Christian nation under the terms of the San Stefano treaty.
Having thus purposed to give back these millions into the jaws of the wolf, she yet desired to pose as the chief guardian of Armenia, and said to Turkey now give me Cyprus and I will protect you against Russia, and we can let Kurds and Circassians alone for awhile.
Thus while urging a Congress of the Powers, already on June 4th, 1878, England had secured the Island ofCyprus, and alone Christian England had agreed to defend by force of arms the integrity and the independence of the Turkish Dominions.
On June 13th, the Congress was called, Prince Bismarck occupying the presidential chair. Beaconsfield and Salisbury and the Ambassador at Berlin representing England, Russia, Austria, France, Italy and Turkey also having their respective representatives.
At the twentieth and last meeting held July 13th, the treaty of Berlin was signed. Thus by the conduct and the persistence of the English government alone was the calling of the Congress made necessary or possible, and by the spirit of England was the Congress dominated, and its final deliverances controlled. At the behest of England were millions of Bulgarians and Armenians handed over again to the tender mercies of the wicked Turk, and Russia was robbed of the glory of her victories.
An international crime like this must cry to Heaven for vengeance and the most powerful and enlightened nation that insisted on it and forced it through is also the most guilty. On their return to England Beaconsfield and Salisbury received an ovation, and the Queen conferred the Order of the Garter on these two Lords who had delivered the lives and welfare of millions of Christians back into the hands of the unspeakable Turk.
That England’s attitude has not been too strongly emphasized, read this quotation from Lord Salisbury’s summing up of the situation in 1879:
“The Sultan’s dominions he informed the Powers have been provided with a defensible frontier far removed from his capital. * * Rich and extensive provinces have been restored to his rule, at the sametime that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made which will, it may be hoped assure their loyalty, and prevent the recurrence of calamities which have brought the Ottoman Power to the verge of ruin. Arrangements of a different kind, having the same end in view, have provided for the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan security for the present, and hope of prosperity and stability in the future. Whether use will be made of this, probably the last opportunity which has thus been obtained for Turkey by the interposition of the Powers of Europe, of England in particular, (note this phrase) or whether it is to be thrown away, will depend upon the sincerity with which Turkish statesmen now address themselves to the duties of good government and the task of reform.”
One would suppose from the terms of the treaties that the Bulgarian war had been undertaken for the sole and express purpose of establishing and assuring the integrity and independence of Turkey, the entrenchment of the Bashi-Bazouks in Bulgaria and for protecting the fierce wolves that dwell in the mountains of Kurdestan from the helpless lambs that infest the valleys of Armenia. In Russia the Berlin Treaty called out the most indignant disapprobation. It was said to be “a colossal absurdity, a blundering failure, an impudent outrage.” The nation had been robbed of all reward for the sacrifices she had made in the name of humanity: and before the people Alexander had been humiliated. He saw the incompleteness of his work, felt his inability to deal with the forces that were at that time massed against him and felt bitterly the reproach of the army and of those who had suffered the loss of kindred and friends in a useless and expensive war.Russian diplomacy at Berlin was felt to be more disastrous than the war, while the nation had been decked with a fool’s cap and bells and their honor trampled under foot.
England had taken on her hands a most difficult task, viz: To be the Protector of the Armenians, while at the same time she wore the belt as champion defender of Turkey against all comers. The Protector of the Christians, and the Christian Champion of Islam!!
TREATY OF BERLIN.Art. LXI.The sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application.
TREATY OF BERLIN.
Art. LXI.The sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application.
Art. LXI.The sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application.
ANGLO-TURKISH (CYPRUS) CONVENTION.Art. I.If Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall be retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by Russia to take possession of any further territory of His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in Asia, as fixed by the Definitive Treaty of Peace, England engages to join His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in defending them by force of arms.In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reforms,to be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories; and in order toenable England to make necessary provisions for executing her engagement, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England.Trebizond.Trebizond.The Anglo-Turkish Convention having been made June 4th, and the Berlin Treaty not being signed until July 13th, places priority (may we not almost say entirety?) of obligation upon England, which obligation with all that it implies she fully and alone accepted when she accepted the island of Cyprus as a necessary base of operations and a promise and pledge of good faith.The Berlin Treaty did not release England from this distinct and individual obligation nor did she wish to divide the honor of being the defender of the Armenian Christians. It may be questioned whether she had any right to expect anything more from the other signatory Powers than their moral support in any attempted enforcement of its terms.Passing by the first part of Art. I. in the Anglo-Turkish Convention the reader is asked to give special attention to the wording of the second part: “In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reformsto be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories.”With that clause inserted “to be agreed upon later” how could Lord Salisbury possibly dream, let alone say “that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made”? Absolutely no provision had been made to protect Armenia from Kurd or Circassian or the rapacity and cruelty and outrage of Turkish officials.And none could be made unless these two Powers alone, England and the Porte could agree upon the nature of the reforms and the manner in which they should be carried out. Was any promise, pledge or convention ever written that actually meant less? Was this honest British Statesmanship actually determining that something should be done? or was it shrewd Turkish diplomacy that will promise anything in the bond but withdraw it in the terms of later stipulations? Or was it understood that it was merely dust for the eyes of Christian Europe?The following incident in the career of Gen. B. F. Butler was given as a newspaper item. In the course of a very spirited conversation one day a gentleman called him a knave. The general smiled and replied, “Well, did you ever hear anybody say that I was a fool?” Somebody was surely fooled by this convention. Who was it? Not Russia and certainly not the Turk. Who then? Salisbury? or England?There were many men even in England who did not hesitate to express hottest indignation against the policy of the Government regarding her dealings with Turkey. Here are paragraphs from “The Ottoman Power in Europe” by the English historianE. A. Freeman:“The England of Canning and Codrington, the England of Byron and Hastings has come to this, that the world knows us as the nation which upholds oppression for the sake of its own interests. We have indeed a national sin to redress and atone for. We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear. Nay, our guilt is deeper still. We have notmerely looked on and passed by on the other side, but we have given our active help to the oppressors of our brothers. We have “upheld” the foulest fabric of wrong that earth ever saw, because it was deemed that the interests of England were involved in upholding the wrong and trampling down the right. * * * *“Our national crime is that we have upheld the Turk for our own supposed interests. For these we have doomed the struggling nations to abide in their bondage. We have doomed them to stay under a rule under which the life and property of the Christian, the honor of his wife, the honor of his children of both sexes alike are at every moment at the mercy of the savages whom our august and cherished ally honors and promotes in proportion to the blackness of their deeds. We have for our own interests upheld the power which has done its foul and bloody work in Chios, at Damascus and in Bulgaria, which is still doing the same foul and bloody work wherever a victim may be found. We uphold the power whose daily work is massacre and worse than massacre. It matters not whether ten thousand or twenty thousand perish. We are still to uphold the slaughterer, for it is to our interest that he should not be shorn of his power of slaughtering.“Now if there be any such thing as right and wrong in public affairs, if moral considerations are ever to come in to determine the actions of nations, it is hard to see how there can be deeper national guilt than this. Unjust wars, aggressions and conquests are bad enough, but they are hardly so bad as the calm, unblushing upholding of wrong for our own interests. * * * * We look on, we count the cost, we see how the wrong-doer deals with his victim and we determine to upholdthe wrong-doer because we think that to uphold him will suit some interest of our own. There is noquestionof national glory, no question of national honor; nothing which can stir up even a false enthusiasm. It is a calm mercantile calculation that the wrongs of millions of men will pay.“The revenue returns of Egypt for 1890 were over $50,000,000. If we knew how large a part of this went to bondholders in London, we would know something about England’s interest in Egypt. If we knew how large a portion of the Turkish debt of above $500,000,000, is held in London, we would know something about the interest the British government has in maintaining the integrity of Turkey.“England wouldn’t care if that Turkey were carved to-morrow if only she could hold Constantinople and administer on the dead Sultan’s estate until all the obligations she holds should be paid off. She would rather like to occupy Stamboul on those conditions—Armenia, Kurds, Circassians and all.”But to return from our digression which was meant to show something of the nature of the interest England had in bringing Bulgaria again under Turkish rule and taxation, we remark that with this Cypress Convention already a deed accomplished what other European powers would care a fig about seeing to the execution of possible reforms in Armenia. What happened is notorious. A few ineffectual attempts to agree upon reforms and when agreed upon many excuses for not carrying them out and there the whole matter of reform was practically dropped; but Cypress was retained as counsel fees possibly for securing such a favorable revision of the terms of the San StefanoTreaty in the interests of Turkey—of the Moslem not of the Christian.For the sake of retaining influence with the Sublime Porte and to outwit the possible plans and intrigues of the Russian Ambassador, scared by visions in the night of some muscovite move towards Constantinople. England for fifteen years connived at a state of things which was decimating and impoverishing the provinces of Armenia, and costing more lives and causing more suffering in the aggregate than the massacres of Sassoun.Often the question was asked, “Where is England’s guarantee to Armenian and Macedonian Christians now?” The Russian press was not slow to give prominence to these reports of continually increasing oppressions and pillage, of outrage and murder.But nothing pierced the political-commercial conscience of England until tidings of the most horrible massacres committed three months before began to creep over the mountains of Armenia and find their way to England and America.When for very shame they could shut their ears to the clamor no longer the British Government demanded a commission—it’s great on commissions. The British Ambassador intimated to the Porte that if steps were not taken to satisfy her Majesty’s Government that the Sultan’s promise (respecting the commission) would be fulfilled, “they might find it necessary to inquire into the treatment of the Armenians, and that they might also be forced to publish the consular reports from the Asiatic provinces which had been so long withheld!”What fires of shame should burn on cheek and foreheadof the English Government that nothing had been done to stop those outrages till indifference and inactivity had given the impression that nobody cared what became of the Armenians.At last the heart of England flamed out in pity and her conscience fired the brain to hot and earnest and even vehement utterance, and hundreds of public meetings were held. Instinctively all eyes turned to Gladstone to voice the sorrow, the pity or the indignation of a Christian people who felt themselves in some measure responsible for the deliverance of Armenia from further horrors.
ANGLO-TURKISH (CYPRUS) CONVENTION.
Art. I.If Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall be retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by Russia to take possession of any further territory of His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in Asia, as fixed by the Definitive Treaty of Peace, England engages to join His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in defending them by force of arms.In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reforms,to be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories; and in order toenable England to make necessary provisions for executing her engagement, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England.Trebizond.Trebizond.The Anglo-Turkish Convention having been made June 4th, and the Berlin Treaty not being signed until July 13th, places priority (may we not almost say entirety?) of obligation upon England, which obligation with all that it implies she fully and alone accepted when she accepted the island of Cyprus as a necessary base of operations and a promise and pledge of good faith.The Berlin Treaty did not release England from this distinct and individual obligation nor did she wish to divide the honor of being the defender of the Armenian Christians. It may be questioned whether she had any right to expect anything more from the other signatory Powers than their moral support in any attempted enforcement of its terms.Passing by the first part of Art. I. in the Anglo-Turkish Convention the reader is asked to give special attention to the wording of the second part: “In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reformsto be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories.”With that clause inserted “to be agreed upon later” how could Lord Salisbury possibly dream, let alone say “that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made”? Absolutely no provision had been made to protect Armenia from Kurd or Circassian or the rapacity and cruelty and outrage of Turkish officials.And none could be made unless these two Powers alone, England and the Porte could agree upon the nature of the reforms and the manner in which they should be carried out. Was any promise, pledge or convention ever written that actually meant less? Was this honest British Statesmanship actually determining that something should be done? or was it shrewd Turkish diplomacy that will promise anything in the bond but withdraw it in the terms of later stipulations? Or was it understood that it was merely dust for the eyes of Christian Europe?The following incident in the career of Gen. B. F. Butler was given as a newspaper item. In the course of a very spirited conversation one day a gentleman called him a knave. The general smiled and replied, “Well, did you ever hear anybody say that I was a fool?” Somebody was surely fooled by this convention. Who was it? Not Russia and certainly not the Turk. Who then? Salisbury? or England?There were many men even in England who did not hesitate to express hottest indignation against the policy of the Government regarding her dealings with Turkey. Here are paragraphs from “The Ottoman Power in Europe” by the English historianE. A. Freeman:“The England of Canning and Codrington, the England of Byron and Hastings has come to this, that the world knows us as the nation which upholds oppression for the sake of its own interests. We have indeed a national sin to redress and atone for. We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear. Nay, our guilt is deeper still. We have notmerely looked on and passed by on the other side, but we have given our active help to the oppressors of our brothers. We have “upheld” the foulest fabric of wrong that earth ever saw, because it was deemed that the interests of England were involved in upholding the wrong and trampling down the right. * * * *“Our national crime is that we have upheld the Turk for our own supposed interests. For these we have doomed the struggling nations to abide in their bondage. We have doomed them to stay under a rule under which the life and property of the Christian, the honor of his wife, the honor of his children of both sexes alike are at every moment at the mercy of the savages whom our august and cherished ally honors and promotes in proportion to the blackness of their deeds. We have for our own interests upheld the power which has done its foul and bloody work in Chios, at Damascus and in Bulgaria, which is still doing the same foul and bloody work wherever a victim may be found. We uphold the power whose daily work is massacre and worse than massacre. It matters not whether ten thousand or twenty thousand perish. We are still to uphold the slaughterer, for it is to our interest that he should not be shorn of his power of slaughtering.“Now if there be any such thing as right and wrong in public affairs, if moral considerations are ever to come in to determine the actions of nations, it is hard to see how there can be deeper national guilt than this. Unjust wars, aggressions and conquests are bad enough, but they are hardly so bad as the calm, unblushing upholding of wrong for our own interests. * * * * We look on, we count the cost, we see how the wrong-doer deals with his victim and we determine to upholdthe wrong-doer because we think that to uphold him will suit some interest of our own. There is noquestionof national glory, no question of national honor; nothing which can stir up even a false enthusiasm. It is a calm mercantile calculation that the wrongs of millions of men will pay.“The revenue returns of Egypt for 1890 were over $50,000,000. If we knew how large a part of this went to bondholders in London, we would know something about England’s interest in Egypt. If we knew how large a portion of the Turkish debt of above $500,000,000, is held in London, we would know something about the interest the British government has in maintaining the integrity of Turkey.“England wouldn’t care if that Turkey were carved to-morrow if only she could hold Constantinople and administer on the dead Sultan’s estate until all the obligations she holds should be paid off. She would rather like to occupy Stamboul on those conditions—Armenia, Kurds, Circassians and all.”But to return from our digression which was meant to show something of the nature of the interest England had in bringing Bulgaria again under Turkish rule and taxation, we remark that with this Cypress Convention already a deed accomplished what other European powers would care a fig about seeing to the execution of possible reforms in Armenia. What happened is notorious. A few ineffectual attempts to agree upon reforms and when agreed upon many excuses for not carrying them out and there the whole matter of reform was practically dropped; but Cypress was retained as counsel fees possibly for securing such a favorable revision of the terms of the San StefanoTreaty in the interests of Turkey—of the Moslem not of the Christian.For the sake of retaining influence with the Sublime Porte and to outwit the possible plans and intrigues of the Russian Ambassador, scared by visions in the night of some muscovite move towards Constantinople. England for fifteen years connived at a state of things which was decimating and impoverishing the provinces of Armenia, and costing more lives and causing more suffering in the aggregate than the massacres of Sassoun.Often the question was asked, “Where is England’s guarantee to Armenian and Macedonian Christians now?” The Russian press was not slow to give prominence to these reports of continually increasing oppressions and pillage, of outrage and murder.But nothing pierced the political-commercial conscience of England until tidings of the most horrible massacres committed three months before began to creep over the mountains of Armenia and find their way to England and America.When for very shame they could shut their ears to the clamor no longer the British Government demanded a commission—it’s great on commissions. The British Ambassador intimated to the Porte that if steps were not taken to satisfy her Majesty’s Government that the Sultan’s promise (respecting the commission) would be fulfilled, “they might find it necessary to inquire into the treatment of the Armenians, and that they might also be forced to publish the consular reports from the Asiatic provinces which had been so long withheld!”What fires of shame should burn on cheek and foreheadof the English Government that nothing had been done to stop those outrages till indifference and inactivity had given the impression that nobody cared what became of the Armenians.At last the heart of England flamed out in pity and her conscience fired the brain to hot and earnest and even vehement utterance, and hundreds of public meetings were held. Instinctively all eyes turned to Gladstone to voice the sorrow, the pity or the indignation of a Christian people who felt themselves in some measure responsible for the deliverance of Armenia from further horrors.
Art. I.If Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall be retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made at any future time by Russia to take possession of any further territory of His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in Asia, as fixed by the Definitive Treaty of Peace, England engages to join His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, in defending them by force of arms.
In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reforms,to be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories; and in order toenable England to make necessary provisions for executing her engagement, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England.
Trebizond.Trebizond.
Trebizond.
The Anglo-Turkish Convention having been made June 4th, and the Berlin Treaty not being signed until July 13th, places priority (may we not almost say entirety?) of obligation upon England, which obligation with all that it implies she fully and alone accepted when she accepted the island of Cyprus as a necessary base of operations and a promise and pledge of good faith.
The Berlin Treaty did not release England from this distinct and individual obligation nor did she wish to divide the honor of being the defender of the Armenian Christians. It may be questioned whether she had any right to expect anything more from the other signatory Powers than their moral support in any attempted enforcement of its terms.
Passing by the first part of Art. I. in the Anglo-Turkish Convention the reader is asked to give special attention to the wording of the second part: “In return, His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reformsto be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories.”
With that clause inserted “to be agreed upon later” how could Lord Salisbury possibly dream, let alone say “that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made”? Absolutely no provision had been made to protect Armenia from Kurd or Circassian or the rapacity and cruelty and outrage of Turkish officials.And none could be made unless these two Powers alone, England and the Porte could agree upon the nature of the reforms and the manner in which they should be carried out. Was any promise, pledge or convention ever written that actually meant less? Was this honest British Statesmanship actually determining that something should be done? or was it shrewd Turkish diplomacy that will promise anything in the bond but withdraw it in the terms of later stipulations? Or was it understood that it was merely dust for the eyes of Christian Europe?
The following incident in the career of Gen. B. F. Butler was given as a newspaper item. In the course of a very spirited conversation one day a gentleman called him a knave. The general smiled and replied, “Well, did you ever hear anybody say that I was a fool?” Somebody was surely fooled by this convention. Who was it? Not Russia and certainly not the Turk. Who then? Salisbury? or England?
There were many men even in England who did not hesitate to express hottest indignation against the policy of the Government regarding her dealings with Turkey. Here are paragraphs from “The Ottoman Power in Europe” by the English historianE. A. Freeman:
“The England of Canning and Codrington, the England of Byron and Hastings has come to this, that the world knows us as the nation which upholds oppression for the sake of its own interests. We have indeed a national sin to redress and atone for. We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear. Nay, our guilt is deeper still. We have notmerely looked on and passed by on the other side, but we have given our active help to the oppressors of our brothers. We have “upheld” the foulest fabric of wrong that earth ever saw, because it was deemed that the interests of England were involved in upholding the wrong and trampling down the right. * * * *
“Our national crime is that we have upheld the Turk for our own supposed interests. For these we have doomed the struggling nations to abide in their bondage. We have doomed them to stay under a rule under which the life and property of the Christian, the honor of his wife, the honor of his children of both sexes alike are at every moment at the mercy of the savages whom our august and cherished ally honors and promotes in proportion to the blackness of their deeds. We have for our own interests upheld the power which has done its foul and bloody work in Chios, at Damascus and in Bulgaria, which is still doing the same foul and bloody work wherever a victim may be found. We uphold the power whose daily work is massacre and worse than massacre. It matters not whether ten thousand or twenty thousand perish. We are still to uphold the slaughterer, for it is to our interest that he should not be shorn of his power of slaughtering.
“Now if there be any such thing as right and wrong in public affairs, if moral considerations are ever to come in to determine the actions of nations, it is hard to see how there can be deeper national guilt than this. Unjust wars, aggressions and conquests are bad enough, but they are hardly so bad as the calm, unblushing upholding of wrong for our own interests. * * * * We look on, we count the cost, we see how the wrong-doer deals with his victim and we determine to upholdthe wrong-doer because we think that to uphold him will suit some interest of our own. There is noquestionof national glory, no question of national honor; nothing which can stir up even a false enthusiasm. It is a calm mercantile calculation that the wrongs of millions of men will pay.
“The revenue returns of Egypt for 1890 were over $50,000,000. If we knew how large a part of this went to bondholders in London, we would know something about England’s interest in Egypt. If we knew how large a portion of the Turkish debt of above $500,000,000, is held in London, we would know something about the interest the British government has in maintaining the integrity of Turkey.
“England wouldn’t care if that Turkey were carved to-morrow if only she could hold Constantinople and administer on the dead Sultan’s estate until all the obligations she holds should be paid off. She would rather like to occupy Stamboul on those conditions—Armenia, Kurds, Circassians and all.”
But to return from our digression which was meant to show something of the nature of the interest England had in bringing Bulgaria again under Turkish rule and taxation, we remark that with this Cypress Convention already a deed accomplished what other European powers would care a fig about seeing to the execution of possible reforms in Armenia. What happened is notorious. A few ineffectual attempts to agree upon reforms and when agreed upon many excuses for not carrying them out and there the whole matter of reform was practically dropped; but Cypress was retained as counsel fees possibly for securing such a favorable revision of the terms of the San StefanoTreaty in the interests of Turkey—of the Moslem not of the Christian.
For the sake of retaining influence with the Sublime Porte and to outwit the possible plans and intrigues of the Russian Ambassador, scared by visions in the night of some muscovite move towards Constantinople. England for fifteen years connived at a state of things which was decimating and impoverishing the provinces of Armenia, and costing more lives and causing more suffering in the aggregate than the massacres of Sassoun.
Often the question was asked, “Where is England’s guarantee to Armenian and Macedonian Christians now?” The Russian press was not slow to give prominence to these reports of continually increasing oppressions and pillage, of outrage and murder.
But nothing pierced the political-commercial conscience of England until tidings of the most horrible massacres committed three months before began to creep over the mountains of Armenia and find their way to England and America.
When for very shame they could shut their ears to the clamor no longer the British Government demanded a commission—it’s great on commissions. The British Ambassador intimated to the Porte that if steps were not taken to satisfy her Majesty’s Government that the Sultan’s promise (respecting the commission) would be fulfilled, “they might find it necessary to inquire into the treatment of the Armenians, and that they might also be forced to publish the consular reports from the Asiatic provinces which had been so long withheld!”
What fires of shame should burn on cheek and foreheadof the English Government that nothing had been done to stop those outrages till indifference and inactivity had given the impression that nobody cared what became of the Armenians.
At last the heart of England flamed out in pity and her conscience fired the brain to hot and earnest and even vehement utterance, and hundreds of public meetings were held. Instinctively all eyes turned to Gladstone to voice the sorrow, the pity or the indignation of a Christian people who felt themselves in some measure responsible for the deliverance of Armenia from further horrors.
GLADSTONE ON ARMENIA’S FATE.At a meeting held in the Town Hall, Chester, England, a great many members of Parliament being present, the Duke of Westminster presiding, Mr. Gladstone spoke (in part) as follows:“My Lord Duke, my Lord and Ladies and Gentlemen:“It is perfectly true that the Government whose deeds we have to impeach is a Mohammedan Government, and it is perfectly true that the sufferers under those outrages, under those afflictions, are Christian sufferers. The Mohammedan subjects of Turkey suffer a great deal, but what they suffer is only in the way of the ordinary excesses and defects of an intolerably bad Government—perhaps the worst on the face of the earth. (Hear, hear.) I will take the liberty of reading a resolution which has been placed in my hands and which seems to me to express with firmness, but with moderation, the opinions which I am very confidentthis meeting will entertain, and this meeting, in entertaining such opinions, is but the representative of the country at large. (Cheers.)“Allow me to go further and to say that the country at large in entertaining these ideas is only a representative of civilized humanity, and I will presume to speak on the ground, in part, of personal knowledge, of the opinions and sympathies that are entertained among our own Transatlantic brethren of the United States. If possible, the sentiment in America entertained on the subject of these recent occurrences is even more vivid and even stronger, if it can be, than that which beats in the hearts of the people of this country.“The terms of the resolution are as follows:“‘That this meeting expresses its conviction that her Majesty’s Government will have the cordial support of the entire nation, without distinction of party, in any measures which it may adopt for securing to the people of Turkish Armenia such reforms in the administration of that province as shall provide effective guarantees for the safety of life, honor, religion, and property, and that no reforms can be effective which are not placed under the continuous control of the Great Powers of Europe.’ (Cheers.)“That means, without doubt, the Great Powers of Europe, all who choose to combine, and those great Powers which happily have combined and have already, in my judgment, pledged their honor as well as their power to the attainment of the object we have in view. (Cheers.)“Now, it was my fate, I think six or more months ago, to address a very limited number, not a public assembly, but a limited number of Armenian gentlemen, andgentlemen interested in Armenia on this subject. There was no authoritative and impartial declaration before the world at that period on the subject of what is known as the Sassoun massacre; that massacre to which the Noble Duke has alluded and with respect to which, horrible as that massacre was, one of the most important witnesses in this case declares that it is thrown into the shade and has become pale and ineffective by the side of the unspeakable horrors which are being enacted from month to month, from week to week, and day to day in the different provinces of Armenia. (Hear, hear.) It was a duty to avoid premature judgment, and I think it was avoided. But though it is a duty to avoid exaggeration, a most sacred duty, it is a duty that has little or no place in the case before us, because it is too well known that the powers of language hardly suffice to describe what has been and is being done, and that exaggeration, if we were ever so much disposed to it, is in such a case really beyond our power. (Cheers.) Those are dreadful words to speak. It is a painful office to perform, and nothing but a strong sense of duty could gather us together between these walls or could induce a man of my age and a man who is not wholly without other difficulties to contend with to resign for the moment that repose and quietude which is the last of many great earthly blessings remaining to him in order to invite you to enter into a consideration of this question. What witnesses ought we to call before us? I should be disposed to say that it matters very little what witness you call. So far as the character of the testimony you will receive is concerned the witnesses are all agreed. At the time that I have just spoken of, six or eight monthsago, they were private witnesses. Since that time, although we have not seen the detailed documents of public authority, yet we know that all the broader statements which had been made up to that time and which have made the blood of this nation run cold have been confirmed and verified. They have not been overstated, not withdrawn, not qualified, not reduced, but confirmed in all their breadth, in all that horrible substance, in all their sickening details. (Hear, hear.)The Prison at Erzeroum.The Prison at Erzeroum.“I will refer to the last of these witnesses, one whom I must say I am disposed to name with honor, it is Dr. Dillon, a man who, as the special commissioner of theDaily Telegraphnewspaper, some months ago with care and labor, and with the hazard of his life (hear, hear), went into Turkey, laudably making use of a disguise for the purpose, and went into Armenia, so that he might make himself thoroughly master of the facts. (Cheers.) He published his results before any public authority had given utterance to its judgments and those results which he, I rather think, was the first to give to the world in a connected shape—at any rate he was very early in the field—those results have been completely confirmed and established by the inquiries of the delegates appointed by the three Powers—England, France and Russia. (Cheers.) I say he has, at the risk of his life, acquired a title to be believed, and (in theContemporary Review) he gives us an account which bears upon it all the marks of truth, but which, at the same time that we must believe it to be true, you would say is hardly credible. Unhappily some of those matters which are not credible do, in this strange and wayward world of ours, turn out to be true; and here it is hardly credible that there candwell in the human form a spirit of such intense and diabolical wickedness as is unhappily displayed in some of the narratives Dr. Dillon has laid before the world. I shall not quote from them in detail though I mean to make a single citation, which will be a citation, if I may say so, rather of principle than of detail. I shall not quote the details, but I will say to you that when you begin to read them you will see the truth of what I just now said—namely that we are not dealing at all with a common and ordinary question of abuses of government or the defects of them. We are dealing with something that goes far deeper, far wider, and that imposes upon us and upon you far heavier obligations.“The whole substance of this remarkable article may be summed up in four awful words—plunder, murder, rape and torture. (‘Shame.’) Every incident turns upon one or upon several of those awful words. Plunder and murder you would think are bad enough, but plunder and murder are almost venial by the side of the work of the ravisher and the work of the torturer, as it is described in these pages, and as it is now fully and authentically known to be going on. I will keep my word, and I will not be tempted by—what shall I say?—the dramatic interests attached to such exaggeration of human action as we find here to travel into the details of the facts. They are fitter for private perusal than they are for public discussion. In all ordinary cases when we have before us instances of crime, perhaps of very horrible crime—we at once assume that in all countries, unfortunately, there are malefactors, there are plunderers whose deeds we are going to consider. Here, my lord duke, it is nothing of the kind; we have nothing to do here with what are called thedangerous classes of the community; it is not their proceedings which you are asked to consider; it is the proceedings of the Government of Constantinople and its agents. (Cheers.)“There is not one of these misdeeds for which the Government at Constantinople is not morally responsible. (Cheers.) Now, who are these agents? Let me tell you very briefly. They fall into three classes. The first have been mentioned by the noble duke—namely the savage Kurds, who are, unhappily, the neighbors of the Armenians, the Armenians being the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, and being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world. (Cheers.) These Kurds are by them; they are wild, savage clans, organized as bands of robbers. These the Sultan and the Government at Constantinople have enrolled, though in a nominal fashion, not with a military discipline, into pretended cavalry regiments and then set them loose with the authority of soldiers of the Sultan to harry and destroy the people of Armenia. (Cheers.) Well, these Kurds are the first of the agents in this horrible business; the next are the Turkish soldiers, who are in no sense behind the Kurds in their performances; the third are the peace officers, the police and the tax gatherers of the Turkish Government; and there seems to be a deadly competition among all these classes which shall most prove itself an adept in the horrible and infernal work that is before them, but above them and more guilty than they, are the higher officers of the Turkish Government.Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.“I think there are certain matters, such as thosewhich have been discussed to-day and discussed in many other forms, on which it is perfectly possible to make up our minds. And what I should say is, that the whole position may be summed up in three brief propositions. I do not know to which of these propositions to assign the less or the greater importance. It appears to me that they are probably each and every one of them absolutely indispensable. The first proposition is this, You ought to moderate your demands. You ought to ask for nothing but that which is strictly necessary, and that possibly according to all that we know of the proposals before us, the rule has been rigidly complied with. I do not hesitate to say, ladies and gentlemen, that the cleanest and clearest method of dealing with this subject, if we should have done it, would have been to tell the Turk to march out of Armenia. (Loud cheers.) He has no right to remain there, and it would have been an excellent settlement of the question. But it is by no means certain that Europe or even the three Powers would have been unanimous in seeking after that end. Therefore, let us part with everything except what is known to be indispensable. Then I come to the other two rules, and of these the first is that you should accept no Turkish promises. (Hear, hear.) They are absolutely and entirely worthless. They are worse than worthless, because they may serve to delude a few persons who, without information or experience, naturally would suppose, when promises are given, that there is something like an intentional fulfilment. Recollect that no scheme is worth having unless it be supported by efficient guarantees entirely outside the promises of the Turkish Government. (Applause.) There is another word which I must speak,and it is this: Don’t be too much afraid if you hear introduced into this discussion a word that I admit, in ordinary cases, ought to be excluded from all diplomatic proceeding, namely, the word coercion. Coercion is a word perfectly well understood in Constantinople, and it is a word highly appreciated in Constantinople. It is a drastic dose—(laughter)—which never fails of its aim when it is administered in that quarter. (Laughter.) Gentlemen, I would not use these words if I had not myself personally had large and close experience of the proceedings of the Turkish Government. I say, first make your case good, and when your case is made good, determine that it shall prevail. (Cheers.) Grammar has something to do with this case. Recollect that while the word ‘ought’ sounded in Constantinople, passes in thin air, and has no force or solidity whatever attaching to it; on the contrary, the brother or sister monosyllable, the word ‘must’ is perfectly understood—(cheers)—and it is a known fact supported by positive experience, which can be verified upon the map of Europe, that a timely and judicious use of the word never fails for its effect. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I must point out to you that we have reached a very critical position indeed. How are three great Governments in Europe, ruling a population of more than two hundred million souls, with perhaps eight or ten times the population of Turkey, with twenty times the wealth of Turkey, with fifty times the influence and power of Turkey, who have committed themselves in this matter before the world, I put it to you that if they recede before an irrational resistance—and remember that I have in the first instance postulated that our demands should be reasonable—if they recede before the irrational resistanceof the Sultan and the Ottoman Government they are disgraced in the face of the world. Every motive of duty coincides with every motive of self respect, and, my lord duke, yourself let drop a word which is a frightful word, unhappily not wholly out of place, the word‘EXTERMINATION.’There has gone abroad, I don’t say that I feel myself competent to judge the matter, I don’t think I do, but there has gone abroad and there is widely entertained a belief that the recent proceedings of the Turkish Government in Armenia particularly, but not in Armenia exclusively, are founded upon deliberate determination to exterminate the Christians in that Empire. I hope it is not true, but at the same time I must say that there are evidences tending to support it—(hear, hear)—and the grand evidence which tends to support it is this: the perfect infatuation of the Turkish Government. The Turkish Government is evidently in such a state of infatuation that it is fain to believe it may, under certain circumstances, be infatuated enough to scheme the extermination of the Christian population. Well, this is a sad and terrible story, and I have been a very long time in telling it, but a very small part of it, but I hope that, having heard the terms of the resolution that will be submitted to you, you will agree that a case is made out. (Cheers.) I for one, for the sake of avoiding other complications, would rejoice if the Government of Turkey would come to its senses. That is, in my opinion, what we ought all to desire, and though it would be more agreeable to clear Turkey than to find her guilty of these terrible charges, yet if wehave the smallest regard to humanity, if we are sensible at all of what is due to our own honor after the steps which have been taken within the last twelve or eighteen months, we must interfere. We must be careful to demand no more than what is just—but at least as much as is necessary—and we must be determined that, with the help of God that which is necessary, and that which is just shall be done, whether there will be a response or whether there be none.” (Loud cheers.)In a letter written late in March, to the Duke of Argyle, chairman of the Armenian Relief Committee, Mr. Gladstone said, “that he hopes that nobody will suppose that deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty in Armenia will in any way diminish the force of the present appeal (for aid) to Christian pity.”But what about this deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty? Lord Salisbury has gravely assured the nation that England is utterly powerless to alleviate the lot of the Armenians in Turkey. If this be true and the Porte should choose to finish his work of extermination, must all the world stand by and see it done and no arm be raised to defend the helpless? If so, woe to the world when the Lord God of hosts shall arise to avenge the blood of a slaughtered race.When the first rumors of a massacre at Sassoun was confirmed in all essential details, the Government had to act quickly and somewhat decidedly, to avoid a swelling storm of indignation, that might break with serious effect upon their heads.Two courses of action were open to England, either to use all her power of persuasion, with some stronglanguage, by way of emphasis, to induce the Porte to bring the officials to justice and obtain a guarantee that no such massacres should be permitted in the future, or sound an alarm and call on all the Powers of Europe for an armed intervention, in which case she must be ready to cast in her heaviest weight of men and metal. As the responsibility for the terrible state of affairs in Armenia was due to England’s neglect, in not enforcing reforms, essential to prevent such awful scenes, she should have secured from the Powers their consent to let her thrash the Turks in Constantinople and Anatolia, while the fleets anchored in the Bosphorus to protect the “balance of power” when the deed was done.A guarantee from the Powers, that England would not be permitted to occupy Constantinople, might have satisfied Russia, or have prevented any interference in the carrying out the purpose of delivering the Armenians from further outrages and massacres. In that case the dissolution of “the Sick Man” might have been the solution of the Eastern question.At least unless England knew that the Powers would stand by her the threat of using force was stupid folly. A conference of the Powers was a necessity and the pledge of concurrence or armed neutrality should have been given before she began to bait the Sultan. It has been known for years that the Sultan is the last man to be controlled by mere sentiment. He only yields to necessity, to force actually present, to guns trained upon him. He was never scared by all the letters and the threats of the English Government. He knew the Powers were not agreed to use force.Sir Philip Currie telegraphed to Lord Kimberley:“I impressed upon His Excellency (said Pasha) asforcibly as I could that the only safe course for the Turkish Government was to authorize the Commission to make a fair and impartial inquiry; that failing this they would be held responsible for the cruelties perpetrated on the Armenians by the local authorities, and that the feeling aroused in Europe was such that if these cruelties were not punished, active interference from without must be looked for.”Town and Citadel of Van.Town and Citadel of Van.This was an earnest, urgent, emphatic, even threatening appeal: but where was there any warrant for the last threat? There was no ultimatum ready. No nation was going to take up arms against Turkey, England least of all. There was no agreement among them to let England take up the task alone. If there had been, one battleship before Constantinople would have brought the massacres to a speedy close and could have compelled the punishment of the Governors in every vilayet where the horrors of Sassoun had been repeated with increased torment and misery. But the fact remains, and the fact is the thing emphasized, that England and all the Signatory Powers sat in masterly inactivity though with steam up at Salonica and let the deadly work go on. There is only time to notice one question, “Why did not Russia agree to the forcing the Dardanelles and coercing the Turks? The blame for the fiasco must fall upon Russia.”How so? Could you reasonably expect Russia to assist England in performing her promises to protect Armenia when you remember the humiliation of the Berlin Treaty? If England entered into engagements she was powerless to make good, whose fault was that? And when the implicit appeal was to her Christian sympathy the Russians replied in their press:“Where were all these glorious virtues of Englishmen when Lord Beaconsfield handed back the Christian subjects of the Sultan to the dismal fate which has only now begun to excite their pity, when an improvement would suit their policy and further their designs? If England continued to be both humane and Christian while suppressing those noble impulses eighteen years ago, it is hard to understand why we can not remain both, while holding them in control to-day.”To those who deny to Russia any disinterested motives of Christian sympathy in her war with Turkey to deliver Bulgaria from the horrible misrule of the Sultan, this refusal will furnish only another illustration of her being what they consider her, viz: a half-civilized nation.But for England to look to a Power she considers her mortal enemy as regards the occupation of Constantinople, for help to rescue the Armenians from Kurd and Circassian and Turkish regulars, set upon them by the Porte, is the sublimity of political innocence, or the confession of utter weakness.The Russian Bear smiled at the innocence, and with grim satisfaction, perhaps, allowed the Turk to wave back the fleets of the allied Powers from the straits of the Dardanelles and continue his fiendish massacres.Weigh each for himself the responsibility of each of the Great Powers in any scales he may choose, distribute the guilt by a different judgment, and yet the failure of these Christian nations to unite for the deliverance of Christian Armenia from the barbarous and cruel, most lustful and brutal outrages under which they were suffering, will be stamped by history as the most awful crime against humanity upon which the sunever gazed during all the passing years of the nineteenth century, and only to be paralleled by the apathy of Western Europe, when alone in 1453 Constantinople fought her last battle for the cross and fell under the sword and power of Islam.
GLADSTONE ON ARMENIA’S FATE.
At a meeting held in the Town Hall, Chester, England, a great many members of Parliament being present, the Duke of Westminster presiding, Mr. Gladstone spoke (in part) as follows:“My Lord Duke, my Lord and Ladies and Gentlemen:“It is perfectly true that the Government whose deeds we have to impeach is a Mohammedan Government, and it is perfectly true that the sufferers under those outrages, under those afflictions, are Christian sufferers. The Mohammedan subjects of Turkey suffer a great deal, but what they suffer is only in the way of the ordinary excesses and defects of an intolerably bad Government—perhaps the worst on the face of the earth. (Hear, hear.) I will take the liberty of reading a resolution which has been placed in my hands and which seems to me to express with firmness, but with moderation, the opinions which I am very confidentthis meeting will entertain, and this meeting, in entertaining such opinions, is but the representative of the country at large. (Cheers.)“Allow me to go further and to say that the country at large in entertaining these ideas is only a representative of civilized humanity, and I will presume to speak on the ground, in part, of personal knowledge, of the opinions and sympathies that are entertained among our own Transatlantic brethren of the United States. If possible, the sentiment in America entertained on the subject of these recent occurrences is even more vivid and even stronger, if it can be, than that which beats in the hearts of the people of this country.“The terms of the resolution are as follows:“‘That this meeting expresses its conviction that her Majesty’s Government will have the cordial support of the entire nation, without distinction of party, in any measures which it may adopt for securing to the people of Turkish Armenia such reforms in the administration of that province as shall provide effective guarantees for the safety of life, honor, religion, and property, and that no reforms can be effective which are not placed under the continuous control of the Great Powers of Europe.’ (Cheers.)“That means, without doubt, the Great Powers of Europe, all who choose to combine, and those great Powers which happily have combined and have already, in my judgment, pledged their honor as well as their power to the attainment of the object we have in view. (Cheers.)“Now, it was my fate, I think six or more months ago, to address a very limited number, not a public assembly, but a limited number of Armenian gentlemen, andgentlemen interested in Armenia on this subject. There was no authoritative and impartial declaration before the world at that period on the subject of what is known as the Sassoun massacre; that massacre to which the Noble Duke has alluded and with respect to which, horrible as that massacre was, one of the most important witnesses in this case declares that it is thrown into the shade and has become pale and ineffective by the side of the unspeakable horrors which are being enacted from month to month, from week to week, and day to day in the different provinces of Armenia. (Hear, hear.) It was a duty to avoid premature judgment, and I think it was avoided. But though it is a duty to avoid exaggeration, a most sacred duty, it is a duty that has little or no place in the case before us, because it is too well known that the powers of language hardly suffice to describe what has been and is being done, and that exaggeration, if we were ever so much disposed to it, is in such a case really beyond our power. (Cheers.) Those are dreadful words to speak. It is a painful office to perform, and nothing but a strong sense of duty could gather us together between these walls or could induce a man of my age and a man who is not wholly without other difficulties to contend with to resign for the moment that repose and quietude which is the last of many great earthly blessings remaining to him in order to invite you to enter into a consideration of this question. What witnesses ought we to call before us? I should be disposed to say that it matters very little what witness you call. So far as the character of the testimony you will receive is concerned the witnesses are all agreed. At the time that I have just spoken of, six or eight monthsago, they were private witnesses. Since that time, although we have not seen the detailed documents of public authority, yet we know that all the broader statements which had been made up to that time and which have made the blood of this nation run cold have been confirmed and verified. They have not been overstated, not withdrawn, not qualified, not reduced, but confirmed in all their breadth, in all that horrible substance, in all their sickening details. (Hear, hear.)The Prison at Erzeroum.The Prison at Erzeroum.“I will refer to the last of these witnesses, one whom I must say I am disposed to name with honor, it is Dr. Dillon, a man who, as the special commissioner of theDaily Telegraphnewspaper, some months ago with care and labor, and with the hazard of his life (hear, hear), went into Turkey, laudably making use of a disguise for the purpose, and went into Armenia, so that he might make himself thoroughly master of the facts. (Cheers.) He published his results before any public authority had given utterance to its judgments and those results which he, I rather think, was the first to give to the world in a connected shape—at any rate he was very early in the field—those results have been completely confirmed and established by the inquiries of the delegates appointed by the three Powers—England, France and Russia. (Cheers.) I say he has, at the risk of his life, acquired a title to be believed, and (in theContemporary Review) he gives us an account which bears upon it all the marks of truth, but which, at the same time that we must believe it to be true, you would say is hardly credible. Unhappily some of those matters which are not credible do, in this strange and wayward world of ours, turn out to be true; and here it is hardly credible that there candwell in the human form a spirit of such intense and diabolical wickedness as is unhappily displayed in some of the narratives Dr. Dillon has laid before the world. I shall not quote from them in detail though I mean to make a single citation, which will be a citation, if I may say so, rather of principle than of detail. I shall not quote the details, but I will say to you that when you begin to read them you will see the truth of what I just now said—namely that we are not dealing at all with a common and ordinary question of abuses of government or the defects of them. We are dealing with something that goes far deeper, far wider, and that imposes upon us and upon you far heavier obligations.“The whole substance of this remarkable article may be summed up in four awful words—plunder, murder, rape and torture. (‘Shame.’) Every incident turns upon one or upon several of those awful words. Plunder and murder you would think are bad enough, but plunder and murder are almost venial by the side of the work of the ravisher and the work of the torturer, as it is described in these pages, and as it is now fully and authentically known to be going on. I will keep my word, and I will not be tempted by—what shall I say?—the dramatic interests attached to such exaggeration of human action as we find here to travel into the details of the facts. They are fitter for private perusal than they are for public discussion. In all ordinary cases when we have before us instances of crime, perhaps of very horrible crime—we at once assume that in all countries, unfortunately, there are malefactors, there are plunderers whose deeds we are going to consider. Here, my lord duke, it is nothing of the kind; we have nothing to do here with what are called thedangerous classes of the community; it is not their proceedings which you are asked to consider; it is the proceedings of the Government of Constantinople and its agents. (Cheers.)“There is not one of these misdeeds for which the Government at Constantinople is not morally responsible. (Cheers.) Now, who are these agents? Let me tell you very briefly. They fall into three classes. The first have been mentioned by the noble duke—namely the savage Kurds, who are, unhappily, the neighbors of the Armenians, the Armenians being the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, and being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world. (Cheers.) These Kurds are by them; they are wild, savage clans, organized as bands of robbers. These the Sultan and the Government at Constantinople have enrolled, though in a nominal fashion, not with a military discipline, into pretended cavalry regiments and then set them loose with the authority of soldiers of the Sultan to harry and destroy the people of Armenia. (Cheers.) Well, these Kurds are the first of the agents in this horrible business; the next are the Turkish soldiers, who are in no sense behind the Kurds in their performances; the third are the peace officers, the police and the tax gatherers of the Turkish Government; and there seems to be a deadly competition among all these classes which shall most prove itself an adept in the horrible and infernal work that is before them, but above them and more guilty than they, are the higher officers of the Turkish Government.Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.“I think there are certain matters, such as thosewhich have been discussed to-day and discussed in many other forms, on which it is perfectly possible to make up our minds. And what I should say is, that the whole position may be summed up in three brief propositions. I do not know to which of these propositions to assign the less or the greater importance. It appears to me that they are probably each and every one of them absolutely indispensable. The first proposition is this, You ought to moderate your demands. You ought to ask for nothing but that which is strictly necessary, and that possibly according to all that we know of the proposals before us, the rule has been rigidly complied with. I do not hesitate to say, ladies and gentlemen, that the cleanest and clearest method of dealing with this subject, if we should have done it, would have been to tell the Turk to march out of Armenia. (Loud cheers.) He has no right to remain there, and it would have been an excellent settlement of the question. But it is by no means certain that Europe or even the three Powers would have been unanimous in seeking after that end. Therefore, let us part with everything except what is known to be indispensable. Then I come to the other two rules, and of these the first is that you should accept no Turkish promises. (Hear, hear.) They are absolutely and entirely worthless. They are worse than worthless, because they may serve to delude a few persons who, without information or experience, naturally would suppose, when promises are given, that there is something like an intentional fulfilment. Recollect that no scheme is worth having unless it be supported by efficient guarantees entirely outside the promises of the Turkish Government. (Applause.) There is another word which I must speak,and it is this: Don’t be too much afraid if you hear introduced into this discussion a word that I admit, in ordinary cases, ought to be excluded from all diplomatic proceeding, namely, the word coercion. Coercion is a word perfectly well understood in Constantinople, and it is a word highly appreciated in Constantinople. It is a drastic dose—(laughter)—which never fails of its aim when it is administered in that quarter. (Laughter.) Gentlemen, I would not use these words if I had not myself personally had large and close experience of the proceedings of the Turkish Government. I say, first make your case good, and when your case is made good, determine that it shall prevail. (Cheers.) Grammar has something to do with this case. Recollect that while the word ‘ought’ sounded in Constantinople, passes in thin air, and has no force or solidity whatever attaching to it; on the contrary, the brother or sister monosyllable, the word ‘must’ is perfectly understood—(cheers)—and it is a known fact supported by positive experience, which can be verified upon the map of Europe, that a timely and judicious use of the word never fails for its effect. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I must point out to you that we have reached a very critical position indeed. How are three great Governments in Europe, ruling a population of more than two hundred million souls, with perhaps eight or ten times the population of Turkey, with twenty times the wealth of Turkey, with fifty times the influence and power of Turkey, who have committed themselves in this matter before the world, I put it to you that if they recede before an irrational resistance—and remember that I have in the first instance postulated that our demands should be reasonable—if they recede before the irrational resistanceof the Sultan and the Ottoman Government they are disgraced in the face of the world. Every motive of duty coincides with every motive of self respect, and, my lord duke, yourself let drop a word which is a frightful word, unhappily not wholly out of place, the word‘EXTERMINATION.’There has gone abroad, I don’t say that I feel myself competent to judge the matter, I don’t think I do, but there has gone abroad and there is widely entertained a belief that the recent proceedings of the Turkish Government in Armenia particularly, but not in Armenia exclusively, are founded upon deliberate determination to exterminate the Christians in that Empire. I hope it is not true, but at the same time I must say that there are evidences tending to support it—(hear, hear)—and the grand evidence which tends to support it is this: the perfect infatuation of the Turkish Government. The Turkish Government is evidently in such a state of infatuation that it is fain to believe it may, under certain circumstances, be infatuated enough to scheme the extermination of the Christian population. Well, this is a sad and terrible story, and I have been a very long time in telling it, but a very small part of it, but I hope that, having heard the terms of the resolution that will be submitted to you, you will agree that a case is made out. (Cheers.) I for one, for the sake of avoiding other complications, would rejoice if the Government of Turkey would come to its senses. That is, in my opinion, what we ought all to desire, and though it would be more agreeable to clear Turkey than to find her guilty of these terrible charges, yet if wehave the smallest regard to humanity, if we are sensible at all of what is due to our own honor after the steps which have been taken within the last twelve or eighteen months, we must interfere. We must be careful to demand no more than what is just—but at least as much as is necessary—and we must be determined that, with the help of God that which is necessary, and that which is just shall be done, whether there will be a response or whether there be none.” (Loud cheers.)In a letter written late in March, to the Duke of Argyle, chairman of the Armenian Relief Committee, Mr. Gladstone said, “that he hopes that nobody will suppose that deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty in Armenia will in any way diminish the force of the present appeal (for aid) to Christian pity.”But what about this deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty? Lord Salisbury has gravely assured the nation that England is utterly powerless to alleviate the lot of the Armenians in Turkey. If this be true and the Porte should choose to finish his work of extermination, must all the world stand by and see it done and no arm be raised to defend the helpless? If so, woe to the world when the Lord God of hosts shall arise to avenge the blood of a slaughtered race.When the first rumors of a massacre at Sassoun was confirmed in all essential details, the Government had to act quickly and somewhat decidedly, to avoid a swelling storm of indignation, that might break with serious effect upon their heads.Two courses of action were open to England, either to use all her power of persuasion, with some stronglanguage, by way of emphasis, to induce the Porte to bring the officials to justice and obtain a guarantee that no such massacres should be permitted in the future, or sound an alarm and call on all the Powers of Europe for an armed intervention, in which case she must be ready to cast in her heaviest weight of men and metal. As the responsibility for the terrible state of affairs in Armenia was due to England’s neglect, in not enforcing reforms, essential to prevent such awful scenes, she should have secured from the Powers their consent to let her thrash the Turks in Constantinople and Anatolia, while the fleets anchored in the Bosphorus to protect the “balance of power” when the deed was done.A guarantee from the Powers, that England would not be permitted to occupy Constantinople, might have satisfied Russia, or have prevented any interference in the carrying out the purpose of delivering the Armenians from further outrages and massacres. In that case the dissolution of “the Sick Man” might have been the solution of the Eastern question.At least unless England knew that the Powers would stand by her the threat of using force was stupid folly. A conference of the Powers was a necessity and the pledge of concurrence or armed neutrality should have been given before she began to bait the Sultan. It has been known for years that the Sultan is the last man to be controlled by mere sentiment. He only yields to necessity, to force actually present, to guns trained upon him. He was never scared by all the letters and the threats of the English Government. He knew the Powers were not agreed to use force.Sir Philip Currie telegraphed to Lord Kimberley:“I impressed upon His Excellency (said Pasha) asforcibly as I could that the only safe course for the Turkish Government was to authorize the Commission to make a fair and impartial inquiry; that failing this they would be held responsible for the cruelties perpetrated on the Armenians by the local authorities, and that the feeling aroused in Europe was such that if these cruelties were not punished, active interference from without must be looked for.”Town and Citadel of Van.Town and Citadel of Van.This was an earnest, urgent, emphatic, even threatening appeal: but where was there any warrant for the last threat? There was no ultimatum ready. No nation was going to take up arms against Turkey, England least of all. There was no agreement among them to let England take up the task alone. If there had been, one battleship before Constantinople would have brought the massacres to a speedy close and could have compelled the punishment of the Governors in every vilayet where the horrors of Sassoun had been repeated with increased torment and misery. But the fact remains, and the fact is the thing emphasized, that England and all the Signatory Powers sat in masterly inactivity though with steam up at Salonica and let the deadly work go on. There is only time to notice one question, “Why did not Russia agree to the forcing the Dardanelles and coercing the Turks? The blame for the fiasco must fall upon Russia.”How so? Could you reasonably expect Russia to assist England in performing her promises to protect Armenia when you remember the humiliation of the Berlin Treaty? If England entered into engagements she was powerless to make good, whose fault was that? And when the implicit appeal was to her Christian sympathy the Russians replied in their press:“Where were all these glorious virtues of Englishmen when Lord Beaconsfield handed back the Christian subjects of the Sultan to the dismal fate which has only now begun to excite their pity, when an improvement would suit their policy and further their designs? If England continued to be both humane and Christian while suppressing those noble impulses eighteen years ago, it is hard to understand why we can not remain both, while holding them in control to-day.”To those who deny to Russia any disinterested motives of Christian sympathy in her war with Turkey to deliver Bulgaria from the horrible misrule of the Sultan, this refusal will furnish only another illustration of her being what they consider her, viz: a half-civilized nation.But for England to look to a Power she considers her mortal enemy as regards the occupation of Constantinople, for help to rescue the Armenians from Kurd and Circassian and Turkish regulars, set upon them by the Porte, is the sublimity of political innocence, or the confession of utter weakness.The Russian Bear smiled at the innocence, and with grim satisfaction, perhaps, allowed the Turk to wave back the fleets of the allied Powers from the straits of the Dardanelles and continue his fiendish massacres.Weigh each for himself the responsibility of each of the Great Powers in any scales he may choose, distribute the guilt by a different judgment, and yet the failure of these Christian nations to unite for the deliverance of Christian Armenia from the barbarous and cruel, most lustful and brutal outrages under which they were suffering, will be stamped by history as the most awful crime against humanity upon which the sunever gazed during all the passing years of the nineteenth century, and only to be paralleled by the apathy of Western Europe, when alone in 1453 Constantinople fought her last battle for the cross and fell under the sword and power of Islam.
At a meeting held in the Town Hall, Chester, England, a great many members of Parliament being present, the Duke of Westminster presiding, Mr. Gladstone spoke (in part) as follows:
“My Lord Duke, my Lord and Ladies and Gentlemen:
“It is perfectly true that the Government whose deeds we have to impeach is a Mohammedan Government, and it is perfectly true that the sufferers under those outrages, under those afflictions, are Christian sufferers. The Mohammedan subjects of Turkey suffer a great deal, but what they suffer is only in the way of the ordinary excesses and defects of an intolerably bad Government—perhaps the worst on the face of the earth. (Hear, hear.) I will take the liberty of reading a resolution which has been placed in my hands and which seems to me to express with firmness, but with moderation, the opinions which I am very confidentthis meeting will entertain, and this meeting, in entertaining such opinions, is but the representative of the country at large. (Cheers.)
“Allow me to go further and to say that the country at large in entertaining these ideas is only a representative of civilized humanity, and I will presume to speak on the ground, in part, of personal knowledge, of the opinions and sympathies that are entertained among our own Transatlantic brethren of the United States. If possible, the sentiment in America entertained on the subject of these recent occurrences is even more vivid and even stronger, if it can be, than that which beats in the hearts of the people of this country.
“The terms of the resolution are as follows:
“‘That this meeting expresses its conviction that her Majesty’s Government will have the cordial support of the entire nation, without distinction of party, in any measures which it may adopt for securing to the people of Turkish Armenia such reforms in the administration of that province as shall provide effective guarantees for the safety of life, honor, religion, and property, and that no reforms can be effective which are not placed under the continuous control of the Great Powers of Europe.’ (Cheers.)
“That means, without doubt, the Great Powers of Europe, all who choose to combine, and those great Powers which happily have combined and have already, in my judgment, pledged their honor as well as their power to the attainment of the object we have in view. (Cheers.)
“Now, it was my fate, I think six or more months ago, to address a very limited number, not a public assembly, but a limited number of Armenian gentlemen, andgentlemen interested in Armenia on this subject. There was no authoritative and impartial declaration before the world at that period on the subject of what is known as the Sassoun massacre; that massacre to which the Noble Duke has alluded and with respect to which, horrible as that massacre was, one of the most important witnesses in this case declares that it is thrown into the shade and has become pale and ineffective by the side of the unspeakable horrors which are being enacted from month to month, from week to week, and day to day in the different provinces of Armenia. (Hear, hear.) It was a duty to avoid premature judgment, and I think it was avoided. But though it is a duty to avoid exaggeration, a most sacred duty, it is a duty that has little or no place in the case before us, because it is too well known that the powers of language hardly suffice to describe what has been and is being done, and that exaggeration, if we were ever so much disposed to it, is in such a case really beyond our power. (Cheers.) Those are dreadful words to speak. It is a painful office to perform, and nothing but a strong sense of duty could gather us together between these walls or could induce a man of my age and a man who is not wholly without other difficulties to contend with to resign for the moment that repose and quietude which is the last of many great earthly blessings remaining to him in order to invite you to enter into a consideration of this question. What witnesses ought we to call before us? I should be disposed to say that it matters very little what witness you call. So far as the character of the testimony you will receive is concerned the witnesses are all agreed. At the time that I have just spoken of, six or eight monthsago, they were private witnesses. Since that time, although we have not seen the detailed documents of public authority, yet we know that all the broader statements which had been made up to that time and which have made the blood of this nation run cold have been confirmed and verified. They have not been overstated, not withdrawn, not qualified, not reduced, but confirmed in all their breadth, in all that horrible substance, in all their sickening details. (Hear, hear.)
The Prison at Erzeroum.The Prison at Erzeroum.
The Prison at Erzeroum.
“I will refer to the last of these witnesses, one whom I must say I am disposed to name with honor, it is Dr. Dillon, a man who, as the special commissioner of theDaily Telegraphnewspaper, some months ago with care and labor, and with the hazard of his life (hear, hear), went into Turkey, laudably making use of a disguise for the purpose, and went into Armenia, so that he might make himself thoroughly master of the facts. (Cheers.) He published his results before any public authority had given utterance to its judgments and those results which he, I rather think, was the first to give to the world in a connected shape—at any rate he was very early in the field—those results have been completely confirmed and established by the inquiries of the delegates appointed by the three Powers—England, France and Russia. (Cheers.) I say he has, at the risk of his life, acquired a title to be believed, and (in theContemporary Review) he gives us an account which bears upon it all the marks of truth, but which, at the same time that we must believe it to be true, you would say is hardly credible. Unhappily some of those matters which are not credible do, in this strange and wayward world of ours, turn out to be true; and here it is hardly credible that there candwell in the human form a spirit of such intense and diabolical wickedness as is unhappily displayed in some of the narratives Dr. Dillon has laid before the world. I shall not quote from them in detail though I mean to make a single citation, which will be a citation, if I may say so, rather of principle than of detail. I shall not quote the details, but I will say to you that when you begin to read them you will see the truth of what I just now said—namely that we are not dealing at all with a common and ordinary question of abuses of government or the defects of them. We are dealing with something that goes far deeper, far wider, and that imposes upon us and upon you far heavier obligations.
“The whole substance of this remarkable article may be summed up in four awful words—plunder, murder, rape and torture. (‘Shame.’) Every incident turns upon one or upon several of those awful words. Plunder and murder you would think are bad enough, but plunder and murder are almost venial by the side of the work of the ravisher and the work of the torturer, as it is described in these pages, and as it is now fully and authentically known to be going on. I will keep my word, and I will not be tempted by—what shall I say?—the dramatic interests attached to such exaggeration of human action as we find here to travel into the details of the facts. They are fitter for private perusal than they are for public discussion. In all ordinary cases when we have before us instances of crime, perhaps of very horrible crime—we at once assume that in all countries, unfortunately, there are malefactors, there are plunderers whose deeds we are going to consider. Here, my lord duke, it is nothing of the kind; we have nothing to do here with what are called thedangerous classes of the community; it is not their proceedings which you are asked to consider; it is the proceedings of the Government of Constantinople and its agents. (Cheers.)
“There is not one of these misdeeds for which the Government at Constantinople is not morally responsible. (Cheers.) Now, who are these agents? Let me tell you very briefly. They fall into three classes. The first have been mentioned by the noble duke—namely the savage Kurds, who are, unhappily, the neighbors of the Armenians, the Armenians being the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, and being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world. (Cheers.) These Kurds are by them; they are wild, savage clans, organized as bands of robbers. These the Sultan and the Government at Constantinople have enrolled, though in a nominal fashion, not with a military discipline, into pretended cavalry regiments and then set them loose with the authority of soldiers of the Sultan to harry and destroy the people of Armenia. (Cheers.) Well, these Kurds are the first of the agents in this horrible business; the next are the Turkish soldiers, who are in no sense behind the Kurds in their performances; the third are the peace officers, the police and the tax gatherers of the Turkish Government; and there seems to be a deadly competition among all these classes which shall most prove itself an adept in the horrible and infernal work that is before them, but above them and more guilty than they, are the higher officers of the Turkish Government.
Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.
Principal Street and Bazars of Erzeroum.
“I think there are certain matters, such as thosewhich have been discussed to-day and discussed in many other forms, on which it is perfectly possible to make up our minds. And what I should say is, that the whole position may be summed up in three brief propositions. I do not know to which of these propositions to assign the less or the greater importance. It appears to me that they are probably each and every one of them absolutely indispensable. The first proposition is this, You ought to moderate your demands. You ought to ask for nothing but that which is strictly necessary, and that possibly according to all that we know of the proposals before us, the rule has been rigidly complied with. I do not hesitate to say, ladies and gentlemen, that the cleanest and clearest method of dealing with this subject, if we should have done it, would have been to tell the Turk to march out of Armenia. (Loud cheers.) He has no right to remain there, and it would have been an excellent settlement of the question. But it is by no means certain that Europe or even the three Powers would have been unanimous in seeking after that end. Therefore, let us part with everything except what is known to be indispensable. Then I come to the other two rules, and of these the first is that you should accept no Turkish promises. (Hear, hear.) They are absolutely and entirely worthless. They are worse than worthless, because they may serve to delude a few persons who, without information or experience, naturally would suppose, when promises are given, that there is something like an intentional fulfilment. Recollect that no scheme is worth having unless it be supported by efficient guarantees entirely outside the promises of the Turkish Government. (Applause.) There is another word which I must speak,and it is this: Don’t be too much afraid if you hear introduced into this discussion a word that I admit, in ordinary cases, ought to be excluded from all diplomatic proceeding, namely, the word coercion. Coercion is a word perfectly well understood in Constantinople, and it is a word highly appreciated in Constantinople. It is a drastic dose—(laughter)—which never fails of its aim when it is administered in that quarter. (Laughter.) Gentlemen, I would not use these words if I had not myself personally had large and close experience of the proceedings of the Turkish Government. I say, first make your case good, and when your case is made good, determine that it shall prevail. (Cheers.) Grammar has something to do with this case. Recollect that while the word ‘ought’ sounded in Constantinople, passes in thin air, and has no force or solidity whatever attaching to it; on the contrary, the brother or sister monosyllable, the word ‘must’ is perfectly understood—(cheers)—and it is a known fact supported by positive experience, which can be verified upon the map of Europe, that a timely and judicious use of the word never fails for its effect. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I must point out to you that we have reached a very critical position indeed. How are three great Governments in Europe, ruling a population of more than two hundred million souls, with perhaps eight or ten times the population of Turkey, with twenty times the wealth of Turkey, with fifty times the influence and power of Turkey, who have committed themselves in this matter before the world, I put it to you that if they recede before an irrational resistance—and remember that I have in the first instance postulated that our demands should be reasonable—if they recede before the irrational resistanceof the Sultan and the Ottoman Government they are disgraced in the face of the world. Every motive of duty coincides with every motive of self respect, and, my lord duke, yourself let drop a word which is a frightful word, unhappily not wholly out of place, the word
‘EXTERMINATION.’
There has gone abroad, I don’t say that I feel myself competent to judge the matter, I don’t think I do, but there has gone abroad and there is widely entertained a belief that the recent proceedings of the Turkish Government in Armenia particularly, but not in Armenia exclusively, are founded upon deliberate determination to exterminate the Christians in that Empire. I hope it is not true, but at the same time I must say that there are evidences tending to support it—(hear, hear)—and the grand evidence which tends to support it is this: the perfect infatuation of the Turkish Government. The Turkish Government is evidently in such a state of infatuation that it is fain to believe it may, under certain circumstances, be infatuated enough to scheme the extermination of the Christian population. Well, this is a sad and terrible story, and I have been a very long time in telling it, but a very small part of it, but I hope that, having heard the terms of the resolution that will be submitted to you, you will agree that a case is made out. (Cheers.) I for one, for the sake of avoiding other complications, would rejoice if the Government of Turkey would come to its senses. That is, in my opinion, what we ought all to desire, and though it would be more agreeable to clear Turkey than to find her guilty of these terrible charges, yet if wehave the smallest regard to humanity, if we are sensible at all of what is due to our own honor after the steps which have been taken within the last twelve or eighteen months, we must interfere. We must be careful to demand no more than what is just—but at least as much as is necessary—and we must be determined that, with the help of God that which is necessary, and that which is just shall be done, whether there will be a response or whether there be none.” (Loud cheers.)
In a letter written late in March, to the Duke of Argyle, chairman of the Armenian Relief Committee, Mr. Gladstone said, “that he hopes that nobody will suppose that deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty in Armenia will in any way diminish the force of the present appeal (for aid) to Christian pity.”
But what about this deplorable and ignominious failure of Europe to do her duty? Lord Salisbury has gravely assured the nation that England is utterly powerless to alleviate the lot of the Armenians in Turkey. If this be true and the Porte should choose to finish his work of extermination, must all the world stand by and see it done and no arm be raised to defend the helpless? If so, woe to the world when the Lord God of hosts shall arise to avenge the blood of a slaughtered race.
When the first rumors of a massacre at Sassoun was confirmed in all essential details, the Government had to act quickly and somewhat decidedly, to avoid a swelling storm of indignation, that might break with serious effect upon their heads.
Two courses of action were open to England, either to use all her power of persuasion, with some stronglanguage, by way of emphasis, to induce the Porte to bring the officials to justice and obtain a guarantee that no such massacres should be permitted in the future, or sound an alarm and call on all the Powers of Europe for an armed intervention, in which case she must be ready to cast in her heaviest weight of men and metal. As the responsibility for the terrible state of affairs in Armenia was due to England’s neglect, in not enforcing reforms, essential to prevent such awful scenes, she should have secured from the Powers their consent to let her thrash the Turks in Constantinople and Anatolia, while the fleets anchored in the Bosphorus to protect the “balance of power” when the deed was done.
A guarantee from the Powers, that England would not be permitted to occupy Constantinople, might have satisfied Russia, or have prevented any interference in the carrying out the purpose of delivering the Armenians from further outrages and massacres. In that case the dissolution of “the Sick Man” might have been the solution of the Eastern question.
At least unless England knew that the Powers would stand by her the threat of using force was stupid folly. A conference of the Powers was a necessity and the pledge of concurrence or armed neutrality should have been given before she began to bait the Sultan. It has been known for years that the Sultan is the last man to be controlled by mere sentiment. He only yields to necessity, to force actually present, to guns trained upon him. He was never scared by all the letters and the threats of the English Government. He knew the Powers were not agreed to use force.
Sir Philip Currie telegraphed to Lord Kimberley:
“I impressed upon His Excellency (said Pasha) asforcibly as I could that the only safe course for the Turkish Government was to authorize the Commission to make a fair and impartial inquiry; that failing this they would be held responsible for the cruelties perpetrated on the Armenians by the local authorities, and that the feeling aroused in Europe was such that if these cruelties were not punished, active interference from without must be looked for.”
Town and Citadel of Van.Town and Citadel of Van.
Town and Citadel of Van.
This was an earnest, urgent, emphatic, even threatening appeal: but where was there any warrant for the last threat? There was no ultimatum ready. No nation was going to take up arms against Turkey, England least of all. There was no agreement among them to let England take up the task alone. If there had been, one battleship before Constantinople would have brought the massacres to a speedy close and could have compelled the punishment of the Governors in every vilayet where the horrors of Sassoun had been repeated with increased torment and misery. But the fact remains, and the fact is the thing emphasized, that England and all the Signatory Powers sat in masterly inactivity though with steam up at Salonica and let the deadly work go on. There is only time to notice one question, “Why did not Russia agree to the forcing the Dardanelles and coercing the Turks? The blame for the fiasco must fall upon Russia.”
How so? Could you reasonably expect Russia to assist England in performing her promises to protect Armenia when you remember the humiliation of the Berlin Treaty? If England entered into engagements she was powerless to make good, whose fault was that? And when the implicit appeal was to her Christian sympathy the Russians replied in their press:“Where were all these glorious virtues of Englishmen when Lord Beaconsfield handed back the Christian subjects of the Sultan to the dismal fate which has only now begun to excite their pity, when an improvement would suit their policy and further their designs? If England continued to be both humane and Christian while suppressing those noble impulses eighteen years ago, it is hard to understand why we can not remain both, while holding them in control to-day.”
To those who deny to Russia any disinterested motives of Christian sympathy in her war with Turkey to deliver Bulgaria from the horrible misrule of the Sultan, this refusal will furnish only another illustration of her being what they consider her, viz: a half-civilized nation.
But for England to look to a Power she considers her mortal enemy as regards the occupation of Constantinople, for help to rescue the Armenians from Kurd and Circassian and Turkish regulars, set upon them by the Porte, is the sublimity of political innocence, or the confession of utter weakness.
The Russian Bear smiled at the innocence, and with grim satisfaction, perhaps, allowed the Turk to wave back the fleets of the allied Powers from the straits of the Dardanelles and continue his fiendish massacres.
Weigh each for himself the responsibility of each of the Great Powers in any scales he may choose, distribute the guilt by a different judgment, and yet the failure of these Christian nations to unite for the deliverance of Christian Armenia from the barbarous and cruel, most lustful and brutal outrages under which they were suffering, will be stamped by history as the most awful crime against humanity upon which the sunever gazed during all the passing years of the nineteenth century, and only to be paralleled by the apathy of Western Europe, when alone in 1453 Constantinople fought her last battle for the cross and fell under the sword and power of Islam.