CHAPTER XVIII.AMERICA’S DUTY AND PRIVILEGE.Our self-imposed task to voice as clearly and strongly as we could the History and Horrors of Armenia under the Curse of Islam is nearly finished. For many weeks the fires have burned hot within us, and the daily news from the land of sorrows has only made our heart beat more rapidly and our pen fly the faster that our appeal might reach your ears while yet there was time to save from utter destruction a remnant of this most ancient Christian people of whom two hundred thousand now look to England and America for daily bread.“The Armenians are the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world.”—Gladstone.In all the history of the Roman Empire, from Nero down to the days of Constantine, there is no chapter so cruel, so terrible as the atrocious crimes of the present Turkish Empire. These massacres have been committed at the command of the Sultan, and with flourish of trumpets, as at Zilleh, when at noon November 28, 1895, the trumpet was blown and the Turks began to assault the Christians with the cry, “Down with Armenians. This is the Sultan’s order.”This is the Curse of Islam that it makes it the religiousduty of every follower of the prophet, from the Sultan down to the howling dervishes, to hate the Christians, to kill and plunder, rob, outrage and torture every one who will not accept the faith of Mohammed. The evident intention of the Sultan is to utterly destroy and exterminate the Christian people in Armenia.It is reserved for the dawning of the twentieth century to see all the horrors of the conquests of Tamerlane repeated, and to realize for itself what these Christian races have suffered since the fateful year 1453, when Constantinople, the glory of Eastern Europe, fell a prey to hordes of the Ottoman Turks. It is because he has outdone the cruelties of all the ages that caused the foremost of living English poets to stigmatize the reigning Sultan as “Abdul, the Damned.”In our helplessness we can only take refuge, perhaps, under the arms of the Almighty. Justice and judgment are the habitations of His throne and a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of His kingdom. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”When Christendom repeats that phrase “Thy Kingdom Come” in the universal prayer it means the downfall of Islam, the overthrow of every throne of iniquity, and of all kingdoms whose foundations are laid in blood.The kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of righteousness and between it and the cruel, lustful barbarism of Islam there can be no peace. It affords an outlet for one’s outraged feelings as the cries of smitten Armenia fill our ears, to read the woes once denounced by the prophets of Jehovah against the gigantic wickedness of empires founded in blood.The cry of the bittern is heard in the pools of Chaldea, and the howling of jackals amid the ruins of Nineveh.The lions roam among the deserted palaces of Babylon and it shall be desolate forever.When the judgments of the Lord are visited upon the earth the nations will learn righteousness. The ultimate issue can not be doubtful, but still the cry is, “How long, O Lord? How long?”There are three kingdoms which are chiefly concerned in this Eastern question:—Turkey, England and Russia; and while they are debating and manœuvring, poor Armenia is being ground between the upper and nether millstones of their mutual jealousies and ambitions and the coming of the Kingdom of Righteousness is delayed.These three nations have stood facing each other for more than a century. Russia on the one side resisting the invasions, conquests and atrocities of the Turk, England on the other his right hand of strength in time of pressure. Throughout the entire history of the Tartar invasions with all their bloody victories and cruel conquests you see Russia rising again and again across his path like a stone wall. But England, in spite of all professions to the contrary and in spite of the earnest and solemn protests of her people against the atrocities of the Sultan’s reign—and never more hot or indignant words have been uttered throughout England than during the last few months—England has always stepped in just in time to save the Empire from destruction and prolong its barbarous rule.Is it not written large on the page of history that in 1798, when Napoleon invaded Egypt, England came to the rescue and fought France to save the Turk? In 1853, it joined France and fought Russia, when the Czar attempted to protect the Greek Christians in Turkey:and by the treaty of Paris restored to the Sultan the command of the Lower Danube, shut out the Czar from his protectorate over the Danubian provinces and closed the Black Sea against all ships of war. Worst of all the treaty adopted the Porte into the family of European nations. Mr. James Boyce, in aCenturyarticle on the Armenian question, says: “The other nations of Europe now treat the Turks as if they were a civilized state and even talk of respecting their susceptibilities.” But they have no title to be so treated and ought never to have been admitted into the rank of civilized nations. Mr. Freeman describes them as “merely a band of robbers encamped in a country whose inhabitants they despoil.” And the passionate words of Edmund Burke are quoted as he exclaimed, “What have these worse than savages to do with the Powers of Europe but to spread destruction and pestilence among them. The ministers and the policy which shall give these people any weight in Europe will deserve all the bans and curses of posterity.”Brave and noble words, but this is just what England forced on Russia and Europe by the treaty of Paris. And again at the close of the Russo-Turkish war, when the Porte was pleading for life and had gladly accepted the San Stefano treaty, the wily Beaconsfield and the present Premier stepped in and, by the Berlin treaty, handed back to the tender mercies of the Turk more than forty thousand square miles of territory and three million Bulgarian Christians. But what do we see in 1895? England afraid in the critical moment to send her despatch boat through the Dardanelles to insist that the promised reforms in Armenia should be executed and that the massacres of Christians should be stopped.Yet for this purpose had she secured the cession of the island of Cyprus.By declining at the last moment to give her consent to the forcing of the Dardanelles, Russia most shrewdly outwitted England and humiliated her before the world. England lost her prestige and the glory of her power was tarnished when she failed, through fear of Russia, to execute what before the world she had pledged herself to do.We are not called upon to defend Russia’s internal policy—her argus-eyed espionage, the cruelties attending the exiling of criminals to Siberia and deporting many suspects without even a form of trial. But when Russia is called semi-civilized, or half-barbarous, and is scarcely allowed to rank among the Christian nations of Europe—we merely remark that she has no opium war laid to her charge, she never blew mutinous sepoys from the mouths of shotted guns. She has never taken possession of any Turkish territory under pretext of reforming the internal administration of the Sublime Porte. If now, by shrewd diplomacy, the Czar rules at Constantinople, while the Sultan reigns but is in reality only his vassal, there is a decided checkmate on the political chessboard of European politics since the last move at Berlin.If it be true then the Bosphorus is free to Russia, and the Czar is at liberty to march Russian troops at any time into Armenia. Indeed the rumor was that the excessive massacres ceased immediately when the Czar said “enough.”England was brought into this humiliating situation by her own hesitation to do the right when all Europe except Russia was a unit with her in insisting that theSultan must be brought to terms even if they should be obliged to force the Dardanelles.Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van.Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van.It is remembered that Mr. Terrell openly expressed the opinion that if European pressure for reforms repulsive to the Turk, which were to admit to the army a subject race should be successful, a general massacre was sure to result unless concerted and armed coöperation among the Powers prevented it. There was no such coöperation, and accordingly on the very day that these reforms were announced, Mr. Terrell demanded immediate military protection for all missionaries, saying that if a single hair on the head of one of our missionaries was injured the Sultan must answer for it: and the protection was granted.On December 19, 1895, the President transmitted to Congress a communication from Secretary Olney on the Armenian outrages, in response to the resolution of the Senate. Secretary Olney stated that the number of citizens of the United States resident in the Turkish Empire is not accurately known, but there are one hundred and seventy-two American missionaries and dependents scattered over Asia Minor. There are also a number of American citizens engaged in business in the Turkish dominions, and others originally Turkish subjects, but now naturalized citizens of the United States.The bulk of this American element is to be found remote from our few Consular establishments. He bore testimony to the energy and promptness displayed by our Minister, Mr. Terrell, in taking measures for their protection which had received the moral support of naval vessels of the United States. He added that whilethe physical safety of the United States citizens seemed to be assured, their property had been destroyed at Harpoot and Marash, in the former case to the extent of $100,000.The Turkish Government had been notified that it would “be held responsible for the immediate and full satisfaction of all injuries on that score.” The loss of American property at Marash had not been ascertained, but a like demand for adequate indemnity would be made as soon as the facts were known.Of the incidents contained in the correspondence in which the rights and power of the United States to demand protection for its citizens whether missionaries from this country or naturalized Armenians returning to their native country, one is given that it may be seen that the demands of our Government for justice will always be met when backed by a warship.THE CASE OF DR. CHRISTIE.“On the night of the 4th of August last the premises of Dr. Christie, principal of St. Paul’s Institute, at Tarsus, who was spending the summer months at the neighboring village of Namroun, were invaded by an armed mob, obviously collected in pursuance of a preconcerted plan, and an outrageous attack made on a defenceless native servant of Dr. Christie and some students of the institute who were then at Namroun. The authors of this brutal attack were abundantly identified, and through the prompt intervention of the United States Consul at Beirut and the Consular agent at Mersine—the nearest port—a number of arrests were made. Notwithstanding the peremptory demands ofthe United States Minister for simple justice the assailants, when taken before the local Judge of Tarsus, were released.“So grave did this miscarriage of justice appear that an early occasion was taken to send the ‘Marblehead’ to Mersine to investigate the incident and lend all proper moral aid to Consular representatives of the United States in pressing for due redress. Their efforts to this end were most cordially seconded by the Mutessarif (Prefect) of Mersine and on October 28 last the accused, to the number of eight, were brought to trial at Tarsus, and convicted upon the evidence, subsequently confessing their guilt.“Having established his rights, and in view of the dismissal of the Tarsus Judge who had conducted the preliminary inquest, and a promise to degrade the incompetent Mudir of Namroun, Dr. Christie interceded with the Court for clemency to the individual culprits, upon whom light sentences of imprisonment were passed. The signal rebuke administered in high places where responsibility really existed and was abused, coupled with the establishment of the important principle that American domicile in Turkey may not be violated with impunity, renders the conclusion of this incident satisfactory.”The correspondence closed with the statement by Secretary Olney that a telegram just received from Minister Terrell, under date of the 16th, expressed the gravest apprehensions concerning the ultimate fate of American citizens in the disturbed region unless the appalling massacres can be stopped by the united efforts of the Christian Powers. He saw no hope, however, of a European conceit to that end. He saidthat if the missionaries wished to leave Turkey he could procure their transportation to Christian ports; if the men wished to remain he could get escorts for all to the seacoast, whereupon the men could return; but he added that the women and children should quit Turkey.HEROISM OF MISSIONARIES.The missionaries of the American Board throughout Anatolia declined to follow the advice of minister Terrell and seek a place of safety, feeling it to be their duty to care for the property of the Boards,to preserve the schools from being scattered and destroyed, and by their presence restrain the impulses of fanatical Moslems and make safer the conditions of native Christians. “If we fall martyrs to our desire to prevent horrible massacres so be it. God has plenty of workers to take our places.”Nobly did they stand in their places protecting lives and property as far as possible.At Oorfa there were but two lady teachers Miss Shattuck and Miss Mellinger. They were four days’ journey from any other American missionaries. But when the massacre began they threw open the mission premises and through all that reign of horror they preserved two hundred and forty-six women and children from assault and death.More than three thousand men, women and children, who had fled to the Armenian church suffered most horrible cruelties before the church was set on fire: most of them were burned alive. Some sixty or a hundred escaped by secret stairs. This large stone church, now purified, is used as a hospital for some eight hundredArmenians and these two women have sole care of them. What heroism!But more than that the Sublime Porte had learned the temper of our government and knew that damages would have to be paid for all mission property destroyed, hence the Governor of the city sent a double guard of soldiers to protect the premises from fire or assault. The mob was never so desperate as not to realize that they must obey orders. This fact makes the responsibility of the Powers the more fearful as the pressure of an ultimatum at Constantinople backed by a war fleet would have been instantly felt to the extremity of the remotest vilayet.At Harpoot the bullets fell thick around the missionaries, but they were divinely protected, and saved the lives of many of their scholars; at Marash, the lady missionaries stood bravely in front of their students in the college, ready to die, if the call came; but they were unharmed. “I thought our time had come,” wrote one worthy missionary, afterward, and he added, “and if we were to lay down our lives there, we felt that we would not have chosen it otherwise.” But they were preserved for still further duty in the Lord’s vineyard, and it is largely due to their humane efforts to-day that any relief work is being done in Armenia at all.Not one of the American missionaries deserted his post, not even one of the women missionaries. Never has there been a time in the history of Turkey when a brave and faithful missionary counted for so much, and never has the power of the United States counted for as much.The presence of these Christian men and women hasbeen a comfort and protection to thousands of those afflicted, frightened and smitten people. Many a martyr has been strengthened to bear the awful agonies of torture by their devotion in the midst of most terrible scenes. Alone has some noble Americanwomandragged from the hands of a mob a young girl screaming for life. Mr. Wingate and Miss Burrage were alone in the city of Cæsarea on that fearful 30th of November and nobly did they defend the persecuted, saving many lives. Mr. Wingate took a policeman, went to a Turkish house and demanded a bride and a daughter, who had been carried off and got them both. The people in all that region are ready to kiss his feet.But time would fail to tell you of the noble deeds wrought by brave, devoted women at Sivas, Hadjin, Adana, Oorfa and among the villages of Mesopotamia. Only the recording angels at the last day can fully recite their deeds of heroism. At the great crisis in their life’s work, nobly did they fulfill their highest, holiest duty.DUTY OF THE POWERS.Action of the United States Senate—a protest against European apathy in not compelling Turkey to observe the Berlin Treaty:On January 22, 1896, Mr. Cullom, from the Senate committee on foreign relations, reported a resolution in the Senate relative to the Armenian troubles. It recited the provision of the treaty of Berlin as to religious freedom and resolved that it is the imperative duty of the United States to express the hope that the European powers will bring about the carrying out ofthe treaty, and requested the President to transmit this resolution to the Powers.CULLOM’S ARMENIAN RESOLUTION.Mr. Cullom (Rep., Ill.) reported from the Senate committee on foreign relations the following Armenian resolution:“Whereas, The supplementary treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, between the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia contains the following provisions:“‘LXI.—The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out without further delay the ameliorations 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, and will superintend their application.’“‘LXII.—The Sublime Porte having expressed the wish to maintain the principle of religious liberty, to give it the widest scope, the contracting parties take note of this spontaneous declaration. In no part of the Ottoman Empire shall difference of religion be alleged against an individual as a ground for exclusion or incapacity as regards the discharge of civil and political rights, admission to the police service, functions and honors, and the exercise of the different professions and industries. All persons shall be admitted without distinction of religion to give evidence before the tribunals. Liberty and outward exercise of all forms of worship are assured to all, and no hindrance shall be offered either to hierarchial organization of the various communions or to their relations with theirspiritual chiefs. The right of official protection by the diplomatic and consular agents of the powers in Turkey is recognized both as regards the above mentioned persons and their religious, charitable, and other establishments in the holy places;’ and,“Whereas, The extent and object of the above cited provisions of said treaty are to place the Christian subjects of the Porte under the protection of the other signatories thereto, and to secure to such Christian subjects full liberty of religious worship and belief, the equal benefit of the laws, and all the privileges and immunities belonging to any subject of the Turkish empire; and,“Whereas, By said treaty the Christian powers parties thereto, having established under the consent of Turkey their right to accomplish and secure the above recited objects; and,“Whereas, The American people, in common with all Christian people everywhere, have beheld with horror the recent appalling outrages and massacres of which the Christian population of Turkey have been made the victims,“Resolved, by the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, That it is an imperative duty in the interests of humanity to express the earnest hope that the European concert brought about by the treaty referred to may speedily be given its just effects in such decisive measures as shall stay the hand of fanaticism and lawless violence and as shall secure to the unoffending Christians of the Turkish Empire all the rights belonging to them, both as men and as Christians and as beneficiaries of the explicit provisions of the treaty above recited.“Resolved, That the President be requested to communicate these resolutions to the governments of Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia.“Resolved, further, That the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, will support the President in the most vigorous action he may take for the protection and security of American citizens in Turkey, and to obtain redress for injuries committed on the persons or property of such citizens.”Mr. Cullom said the resolution was reported by the unanimous vote of the committee, and he desired immediate action.Mr. Gray (Dem., Del.) said he did not anticipate any objection to the resolution, but it was of such importance that there should be time for consideration of the terms of the resolution.Mr. Cullom acceded to this suggestion, giving notice that he would ask for action to-morrow.On the 24th, the resolutions were brought up and Senator Cullom took the floor and spoke of the serious conditions prevailing in Turkey. He said that he was appalled by the carnival of blood prevailing. A massacre of innocence, unparalleled for ages, had been perpetrated. The evidence of the bloody enormities was given by all classes and nationalities until it was beyond the slightest doubt. A Turkish army had bayonetted, robbed, murdered and flayed alive the people of Armenia. There was no war, but a pitiless, merciless tornado of ruin, bloodshed and death. The demon of fanaticism had been let loose. There was a responsibility somewhere. It did not rest with the slavish ruler of Turkey, the Sultan. Back of this were the disputes of the countries of the European alliance,seeking their territorial advantages. These countries were responsible. The Sultan was but a puppet in their hands. It was a matter of regret and embarrassment, continued Mr. Cullom, that the policy of the United States was such as to prevent the sending of a fleet to Turkish waters to put a stop to the bloody rule prevailing. But Europe had assumed the obligation of protection to Armenia. The people of the United States were intensely interested in seeing the obligation executed and the purpose of these resolutions was to plead with the greatest earnestness for the protection of Armenia. It was amazing to people of the United States to witness this appalling slaughter and at the same time to see the indifference of the Christian powers. There was a double obligation upon England and yet nothing had been done to stay the hand of the Sultan, except by fruitless diplomatic correspondence. No event of the centuries called so loudly to the civilized world as this slaughter in Turkey, the greatest, the Senator believed, in the history of the world.Then Senator Frye, of Maine, arose and addressing the chair began an address that electrified an audience which constantly grew until the galleries were crowded.In the midst of his speech with intensely dramatic earnestness and thrilling effect Senator Frye cried aloud: “I would gladly have this Congress send a memorial to Russia, saying, ‘Take Armenia under your protection, and the United States will stand by you with all its power and resources.’” The words are strong but the manner and emphasis of the orator cannot be described. Every Senator upon the floor gave expression of approval. Many of them clappedtheir hands. The people in the galleries broke forth in prolonged applause, which the voice of the Vice President found difficulty in checking.The scene was one of the most dramatic ever witnessed in the Senate. Again and again Senator Frye gave expression to aggressive views of a similar character, and from beginning to close of his address he received the closest attention and frequent applause. He declared that Great Britain is no friend of this country, nor of any country. Great Britain should have taken part in the suppression of the slaughters in Armenia, but she has not done so. The other countries of Europe are equally derelict.Mr. Frye declared the United States had never given its assent to the agreement of the European powers closing the Dardanelles, and proceeded with much vigor and earnestness to say that if necessary in order to protect American citizens he would order the American ships to sail up the Dardanelles, regardless of the European alliance, and when in front of Constantinople demand the protection of our people within the Sultan’s dominions. The resolutions were adopted with great applause without a dissenting vote.The action of our government has been energetic and effective in preserving the lives of the American missionaries in Anatolia. It has been conclusively shown that the Sultan has a considerate regard to an emphatic demand when backed by a battleship. It is a serious question whether the time has not come for the United States to rise to the higher question of privilege, and demand in the name of common humanity that the massacres shall cease and the Christian populations be protected according to the provisions of theBerlin Treaty, and the former promises of the Sublime Porte, “that no one shall be compelled to change his religion.”The latest reports from Constantinople asserted that there have been many thousands of forced conversions to Islam and that scores of Armenians who had accepted Islam but did not live up to all its requirements with sufficient zeal to please the Turks have been put to death since the wholesale massacres have ceased.How much longer can human nature stand the strain? What greater—greater outrages can be conceived of to rouse the Christian conscience, than have filled our ears for months? It was published in London as very important news that Sir Philip Currie was the first Ambassador invited this year to take “iftar” at the Palace. The audience lasted half an hour and was very cordial. “It is understood that the Sultan renewed his assurances regarding the execution of reforms.” Thereupon the English Government washes its hands in Pilate’s basin and rids itself of all responsibility.If we haven’t any treaty rights in this matter in God’s name let us assert the higher law of human rights—the right of every man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let us declare through Congress our judgment to the Porte that the hour has come for armed interference in the cause of outraged humanity.Mr. Chauncey M. Depew having been invited to deliver an address in Detroit, Mich., in the interest of Armenia, not being able to attend, wrote a letter to Gen. Alger, the chairman of the meeting, from which we quote as follows:“The air is full just now of wars and rumors of wars. The fighting blood of all the peoples of all civilized countries seems to be warmed to the battle point. But, while there is a great and dangerous excitement over a boundary line in Venezuela and a filibustering expedition in South Africa, the peoples of Europe and of the United States remain unmoved and undisturbed by the burnings, sackings, slaughter and every form of savage murder and lust perpetrated upon the Christians of Armenia simply because of their adherence to the faith of Christendom. I have seen congregations weep at the presentation of the tortures and massacres of Christian martyrs under Nero and Diocletian two thousand years ago. Where are the tears for Christian men tortured and killed, Christian women outraged and slain, Christian children tossed upon the bayonets of a savage soldiery yesterday, last week and last month, with the frightful assurance that they will continue to be slaughtered and outraged and tortured and tossed upon bayonets to-morrow, the day after and next month and for months to come?“Much as I believe in peace and its blessings, much as I detest war and its horrors, much as I feel that great provocations and the most imminent dangers to the liberty or the existence of the territories or the safety of the citizens of the country will justify an appeal to the arbitrament of arms, nevertheless I do feel that by a concert of action of Christian nations, of which the United States should be one, such a presentation should be made to the Sultan and his advisers as would stop these horrors and save our Christian brethren.”The case of Rev. Mr. Knapp, of Bitlis, who is to besent to Constantinople for trial on the charge of sedition, will afford a splendid occasion for a naval display. Let the question be opened up whether these treaty obligations of the Porte mean anything outside the reach of a warship. How can we maintain our traditions as the friend of the oppressed and downtrodden of earth if we let the brutal fanatical Sultan riot still in plunder, lust and blood?Did we care for the poor manacled negro undergoing the horrors of the Middle Passage? Did we have any interest in healing “the open sore of the world?” Did we once have spirit enough to demand of the Bey of Algiers the release of all Christian slaves, the abandonment of the piracy he had practiced for years, and compel him to forego the tribute exacted from all nations?And have we no voice, no heart, no sympathy, no power to demand that the Sultan shall stop his awful carnage of blood and prove before the bar of all Christendom by what right he any longer shall reign?We can do this because the Eastern Question does not exist for us. Higher questions of humanity demand the first consideration. We can interfere in defence of the lives and property of Christians in Turkey without violating the Monroe Doctrine and would merit the gratitude of Europe and the world, if the final decision should be that the Sultan had forfeited by the slaughter of one hundred thousand men, women and children with the fiendish accompaniments of outrage, violation, torture, all right to be treated as anything else than an enemy of humanity, and a wild beast to be caged and gazed upon with execration and horror.Are not the lives and happiness of a half millionArmenians left homeless and penniless and who still tremble with fear and terror at the sight of their relentless foes of more consequence than the boundary line of Venezuela? And yet for the location of an imaginary line the President’s message came perilously near being a threat of war.Had the President written as strong a message as that to the Sultan in November or December, 1895, and sent it with an escort of three battleships under the Stars and Stripes (stars for heroes, stripes for tyrants) demanding that the massacres cease at once or Yildiz Palace would be bombarded, the telegraph wires might have melted under the hot haste with which every Governor had been ordered to call off the hounds of hell from their battening on human blood. (I beg pardon of the hounds, hyenas, tigers and all other wild beasts for using their names in simile or metaphor to describe the swiftness, eagerness or ferocity of Kurd or Turk. It is only the poverty of language that makes such use allowable.)But there is another thing we can do and England has shown us how to do it, scores of times, if not hundreds of times, in her own history. The American Board has suffered the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the destruction of missionary property; American citizens have suffered great money losses and their work has been broken up in many quarters; many churches in all parts of Anatolia, built wholly or in part with contributions from America, have been laid in ruins; they have gone down in ashes and pillage under the trampling hordes of Islam; the cost of relief has been enormous and the extra cost to all the missionaries has been very great, to say nothing of all theindignities to which they have been subjected (and in British estimation outrage upon the dignity of an Englishman is placed at very high figures.) Now let these damages be tabulated at full value and the bill presented to the Sublime Porte payable on demand and let us land a few marines at Stamboul and open out a few port holes upon the Palace and wake Mr. Sultan to the fact that it is quite as serious an affair to pluck the feathers of the American eagle as it is to twist the tail of the British lion.As Mr. Talmage has said in his own inimitable style: “When the English lion and the Russian bear put their paws on that Turkey, the American eagle ought to put in its bill.”Seriously this demand ought to be made with such energy, decision and despatch with such a demand for adequate protection and guarantee of inviolability of domicile both as to churches, colleges, schools and private residences of missionaries with a demand for necessary papers for all the consuls we may choose to send into Anatolia, that the Sultan would have very little time for the next few weeks to talk to his three hundred and sixty-five wives, or lay out any new plans for reforming the Armenians out of existence.Another thing is possible, and possible only to America, viz: The calling of an International Conference—say on the Island of Cyprus, which England holds as a pledge that she will see that necessary reforms shall be executed—to discuss the further existence of the power of the Porte.After the battle of Waterloo the Powers of Europe dealt with Napoleon as an enemy of the human race, of the peace and prosperity of every realm and notliking to take him off suddenly, they took him off to the island of St. Helena, where English ships and soldiers guarded him from all danger till the angel of death, black or white, called him before a higher tribunal.There would be some grim justice in the retribution if the Sultan should be exiled to the island of Cyprus where he could be supported without cost to Europe according to Article III. of the Annex to the Cyprus Convention. It is understood “that England will pay to the Porte whatever is the present excess of revenue over expenditure in the island.”One gunboat could guard the island, and Abdul-Hamid II., after whom there should be no III., could dwell in peaceful security, unless through his seared Islamic conscience some dreams of blood should come, or shrieks of outraged womanhood be heard above the waves of the resounding sea.It has been said that if the contents of the Blue Book on Armenia were known Lord Salisbury would be mobbed in the streets of London. TheChristian Herald, of New York, has also stated that a number of official documents has come into its possession which form such an indictment against the Turk as has never yet been framed in the Saxon tongue. “It may never be necessary to drag this shameful exhibit to the light, nor will it ever be done save as a last resort in the interest of justice and mercy.”As nothing which has yet been told has touched the springs of power in Europe or America, save to start a few rills of generosity for pity’s sake and a few tears which a dainty lace handkerchief could wipe away, it would seem as if justice to the Turk and mercy to the Armenians demanded that these official documents,whether in England or America, should be given to the light, if perchance at last the nations of Christendom might be roused to action before the country shall be utterly laid waste and the only service left us shall be to lay a cross upon the grave of Bleeding Armenia.Armenia has stood the only Christian race and nation in Asia, for more than a thousand years, despite the oft repeated threat, Islam or Death. At any hour, in any age its glorious roll of martyrs would have been filled up and its blood would have ceased to flow, if it had been willing to deny the Christ and swear allegiance to the false Prophet.The History of this Martyr Nation that has been written in tears and blood as thus rehearsed to you will, I trust, not have been told in vain. May the voice of an outraged humanity be heard above the din of all conflicting political alliances demanding mercy and justice for the perishing.I believe our indignation would burst into fiercest flame if these awful atrocities could but be realized; and to noble, free and Christian America might be the honor of leading in a glorious crusade for the deliverance of crushed, desolated and bleeding Armenia from the accursed rule of Islam.THE END.
CHAPTER XVIII.AMERICA’S DUTY AND PRIVILEGE.Our self-imposed task to voice as clearly and strongly as we could the History and Horrors of Armenia under the Curse of Islam is nearly finished. For many weeks the fires have burned hot within us, and the daily news from the land of sorrows has only made our heart beat more rapidly and our pen fly the faster that our appeal might reach your ears while yet there was time to save from utter destruction a remnant of this most ancient Christian people of whom two hundred thousand now look to England and America for daily bread.“The Armenians are the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world.”—Gladstone.In all the history of the Roman Empire, from Nero down to the days of Constantine, there is no chapter so cruel, so terrible as the atrocious crimes of the present Turkish Empire. These massacres have been committed at the command of the Sultan, and with flourish of trumpets, as at Zilleh, when at noon November 28, 1895, the trumpet was blown and the Turks began to assault the Christians with the cry, “Down with Armenians. This is the Sultan’s order.”This is the Curse of Islam that it makes it the religiousduty of every follower of the prophet, from the Sultan down to the howling dervishes, to hate the Christians, to kill and plunder, rob, outrage and torture every one who will not accept the faith of Mohammed. The evident intention of the Sultan is to utterly destroy and exterminate the Christian people in Armenia.It is reserved for the dawning of the twentieth century to see all the horrors of the conquests of Tamerlane repeated, and to realize for itself what these Christian races have suffered since the fateful year 1453, when Constantinople, the glory of Eastern Europe, fell a prey to hordes of the Ottoman Turks. It is because he has outdone the cruelties of all the ages that caused the foremost of living English poets to stigmatize the reigning Sultan as “Abdul, the Damned.”In our helplessness we can only take refuge, perhaps, under the arms of the Almighty. Justice and judgment are the habitations of His throne and a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of His kingdom. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”When Christendom repeats that phrase “Thy Kingdom Come” in the universal prayer it means the downfall of Islam, the overthrow of every throne of iniquity, and of all kingdoms whose foundations are laid in blood.The kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of righteousness and between it and the cruel, lustful barbarism of Islam there can be no peace. It affords an outlet for one’s outraged feelings as the cries of smitten Armenia fill our ears, to read the woes once denounced by the prophets of Jehovah against the gigantic wickedness of empires founded in blood.The cry of the bittern is heard in the pools of Chaldea, and the howling of jackals amid the ruins of Nineveh.The lions roam among the deserted palaces of Babylon and it shall be desolate forever.When the judgments of the Lord are visited upon the earth the nations will learn righteousness. The ultimate issue can not be doubtful, but still the cry is, “How long, O Lord? How long?”There are three kingdoms which are chiefly concerned in this Eastern question:—Turkey, England and Russia; and while they are debating and manœuvring, poor Armenia is being ground between the upper and nether millstones of their mutual jealousies and ambitions and the coming of the Kingdom of Righteousness is delayed.These three nations have stood facing each other for more than a century. Russia on the one side resisting the invasions, conquests and atrocities of the Turk, England on the other his right hand of strength in time of pressure. Throughout the entire history of the Tartar invasions with all their bloody victories and cruel conquests you see Russia rising again and again across his path like a stone wall. But England, in spite of all professions to the contrary and in spite of the earnest and solemn protests of her people against the atrocities of the Sultan’s reign—and never more hot or indignant words have been uttered throughout England than during the last few months—England has always stepped in just in time to save the Empire from destruction and prolong its barbarous rule.Is it not written large on the page of history that in 1798, when Napoleon invaded Egypt, England came to the rescue and fought France to save the Turk? In 1853, it joined France and fought Russia, when the Czar attempted to protect the Greek Christians in Turkey:and by the treaty of Paris restored to the Sultan the command of the Lower Danube, shut out the Czar from his protectorate over the Danubian provinces and closed the Black Sea against all ships of war. Worst of all the treaty adopted the Porte into the family of European nations. Mr. James Boyce, in aCenturyarticle on the Armenian question, says: “The other nations of Europe now treat the Turks as if they were a civilized state and even talk of respecting their susceptibilities.” But they have no title to be so treated and ought never to have been admitted into the rank of civilized nations. Mr. Freeman describes them as “merely a band of robbers encamped in a country whose inhabitants they despoil.” And the passionate words of Edmund Burke are quoted as he exclaimed, “What have these worse than savages to do with the Powers of Europe but to spread destruction and pestilence among them. The ministers and the policy which shall give these people any weight in Europe will deserve all the bans and curses of posterity.”Brave and noble words, but this is just what England forced on Russia and Europe by the treaty of Paris. And again at the close of the Russo-Turkish war, when the Porte was pleading for life and had gladly accepted the San Stefano treaty, the wily Beaconsfield and the present Premier stepped in and, by the Berlin treaty, handed back to the tender mercies of the Turk more than forty thousand square miles of territory and three million Bulgarian Christians. But what do we see in 1895? England afraid in the critical moment to send her despatch boat through the Dardanelles to insist that the promised reforms in Armenia should be executed and that the massacres of Christians should be stopped.Yet for this purpose had she secured the cession of the island of Cyprus.By declining at the last moment to give her consent to the forcing of the Dardanelles, Russia most shrewdly outwitted England and humiliated her before the world. England lost her prestige and the glory of her power was tarnished when she failed, through fear of Russia, to execute what before the world she had pledged herself to do.We are not called upon to defend Russia’s internal policy—her argus-eyed espionage, the cruelties attending the exiling of criminals to Siberia and deporting many suspects without even a form of trial. But when Russia is called semi-civilized, or half-barbarous, and is scarcely allowed to rank among the Christian nations of Europe—we merely remark that she has no opium war laid to her charge, she never blew mutinous sepoys from the mouths of shotted guns. She has never taken possession of any Turkish territory under pretext of reforming the internal administration of the Sublime Porte. If now, by shrewd diplomacy, the Czar rules at Constantinople, while the Sultan reigns but is in reality only his vassal, there is a decided checkmate on the political chessboard of European politics since the last move at Berlin.If it be true then the Bosphorus is free to Russia, and the Czar is at liberty to march Russian troops at any time into Armenia. Indeed the rumor was that the excessive massacres ceased immediately when the Czar said “enough.”England was brought into this humiliating situation by her own hesitation to do the right when all Europe except Russia was a unit with her in insisting that theSultan must be brought to terms even if they should be obliged to force the Dardanelles.Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van.Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van.It is remembered that Mr. Terrell openly expressed the opinion that if European pressure for reforms repulsive to the Turk, which were to admit to the army a subject race should be successful, a general massacre was sure to result unless concerted and armed coöperation among the Powers prevented it. There was no such coöperation, and accordingly on the very day that these reforms were announced, Mr. Terrell demanded immediate military protection for all missionaries, saying that if a single hair on the head of one of our missionaries was injured the Sultan must answer for it: and the protection was granted.On December 19, 1895, the President transmitted to Congress a communication from Secretary Olney on the Armenian outrages, in response to the resolution of the Senate. Secretary Olney stated that the number of citizens of the United States resident in the Turkish Empire is not accurately known, but there are one hundred and seventy-two American missionaries and dependents scattered over Asia Minor. There are also a number of American citizens engaged in business in the Turkish dominions, and others originally Turkish subjects, but now naturalized citizens of the United States.The bulk of this American element is to be found remote from our few Consular establishments. He bore testimony to the energy and promptness displayed by our Minister, Mr. Terrell, in taking measures for their protection which had received the moral support of naval vessels of the United States. He added that whilethe physical safety of the United States citizens seemed to be assured, their property had been destroyed at Harpoot and Marash, in the former case to the extent of $100,000.The Turkish Government had been notified that it would “be held responsible for the immediate and full satisfaction of all injuries on that score.” The loss of American property at Marash had not been ascertained, but a like demand for adequate indemnity would be made as soon as the facts were known.Of the incidents contained in the correspondence in which the rights and power of the United States to demand protection for its citizens whether missionaries from this country or naturalized Armenians returning to their native country, one is given that it may be seen that the demands of our Government for justice will always be met when backed by a warship.THE CASE OF DR. CHRISTIE.“On the night of the 4th of August last the premises of Dr. Christie, principal of St. Paul’s Institute, at Tarsus, who was spending the summer months at the neighboring village of Namroun, were invaded by an armed mob, obviously collected in pursuance of a preconcerted plan, and an outrageous attack made on a defenceless native servant of Dr. Christie and some students of the institute who were then at Namroun. The authors of this brutal attack were abundantly identified, and through the prompt intervention of the United States Consul at Beirut and the Consular agent at Mersine—the nearest port—a number of arrests were made. Notwithstanding the peremptory demands ofthe United States Minister for simple justice the assailants, when taken before the local Judge of Tarsus, were released.“So grave did this miscarriage of justice appear that an early occasion was taken to send the ‘Marblehead’ to Mersine to investigate the incident and lend all proper moral aid to Consular representatives of the United States in pressing for due redress. Their efforts to this end were most cordially seconded by the Mutessarif (Prefect) of Mersine and on October 28 last the accused, to the number of eight, were brought to trial at Tarsus, and convicted upon the evidence, subsequently confessing their guilt.“Having established his rights, and in view of the dismissal of the Tarsus Judge who had conducted the preliminary inquest, and a promise to degrade the incompetent Mudir of Namroun, Dr. Christie interceded with the Court for clemency to the individual culprits, upon whom light sentences of imprisonment were passed. The signal rebuke administered in high places where responsibility really existed and was abused, coupled with the establishment of the important principle that American domicile in Turkey may not be violated with impunity, renders the conclusion of this incident satisfactory.”The correspondence closed with the statement by Secretary Olney that a telegram just received from Minister Terrell, under date of the 16th, expressed the gravest apprehensions concerning the ultimate fate of American citizens in the disturbed region unless the appalling massacres can be stopped by the united efforts of the Christian Powers. He saw no hope, however, of a European conceit to that end. He saidthat if the missionaries wished to leave Turkey he could procure their transportation to Christian ports; if the men wished to remain he could get escorts for all to the seacoast, whereupon the men could return; but he added that the women and children should quit Turkey.HEROISM OF MISSIONARIES.The missionaries of the American Board throughout Anatolia declined to follow the advice of minister Terrell and seek a place of safety, feeling it to be their duty to care for the property of the Boards,to preserve the schools from being scattered and destroyed, and by their presence restrain the impulses of fanatical Moslems and make safer the conditions of native Christians. “If we fall martyrs to our desire to prevent horrible massacres so be it. God has plenty of workers to take our places.”Nobly did they stand in their places protecting lives and property as far as possible.At Oorfa there were but two lady teachers Miss Shattuck and Miss Mellinger. They were four days’ journey from any other American missionaries. But when the massacre began they threw open the mission premises and through all that reign of horror they preserved two hundred and forty-six women and children from assault and death.More than three thousand men, women and children, who had fled to the Armenian church suffered most horrible cruelties before the church was set on fire: most of them were burned alive. Some sixty or a hundred escaped by secret stairs. This large stone church, now purified, is used as a hospital for some eight hundredArmenians and these two women have sole care of them. What heroism!But more than that the Sublime Porte had learned the temper of our government and knew that damages would have to be paid for all mission property destroyed, hence the Governor of the city sent a double guard of soldiers to protect the premises from fire or assault. The mob was never so desperate as not to realize that they must obey orders. This fact makes the responsibility of the Powers the more fearful as the pressure of an ultimatum at Constantinople backed by a war fleet would have been instantly felt to the extremity of the remotest vilayet.At Harpoot the bullets fell thick around the missionaries, but they were divinely protected, and saved the lives of many of their scholars; at Marash, the lady missionaries stood bravely in front of their students in the college, ready to die, if the call came; but they were unharmed. “I thought our time had come,” wrote one worthy missionary, afterward, and he added, “and if we were to lay down our lives there, we felt that we would not have chosen it otherwise.” But they were preserved for still further duty in the Lord’s vineyard, and it is largely due to their humane efforts to-day that any relief work is being done in Armenia at all.Not one of the American missionaries deserted his post, not even one of the women missionaries. Never has there been a time in the history of Turkey when a brave and faithful missionary counted for so much, and never has the power of the United States counted for as much.The presence of these Christian men and women hasbeen a comfort and protection to thousands of those afflicted, frightened and smitten people. Many a martyr has been strengthened to bear the awful agonies of torture by their devotion in the midst of most terrible scenes. Alone has some noble Americanwomandragged from the hands of a mob a young girl screaming for life. Mr. Wingate and Miss Burrage were alone in the city of Cæsarea on that fearful 30th of November and nobly did they defend the persecuted, saving many lives. Mr. Wingate took a policeman, went to a Turkish house and demanded a bride and a daughter, who had been carried off and got them both. The people in all that region are ready to kiss his feet.But time would fail to tell you of the noble deeds wrought by brave, devoted women at Sivas, Hadjin, Adana, Oorfa and among the villages of Mesopotamia. Only the recording angels at the last day can fully recite their deeds of heroism. At the great crisis in their life’s work, nobly did they fulfill their highest, holiest duty.DUTY OF THE POWERS.Action of the United States Senate—a protest against European apathy in not compelling Turkey to observe the Berlin Treaty:On January 22, 1896, Mr. Cullom, from the Senate committee on foreign relations, reported a resolution in the Senate relative to the Armenian troubles. It recited the provision of the treaty of Berlin as to religious freedom and resolved that it is the imperative duty of the United States to express the hope that the European powers will bring about the carrying out ofthe treaty, and requested the President to transmit this resolution to the Powers.CULLOM’S ARMENIAN RESOLUTION.Mr. Cullom (Rep., Ill.) reported from the Senate committee on foreign relations the following Armenian resolution:“Whereas, The supplementary treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, between the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia contains the following provisions:“‘LXI.—The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out without further delay the ameliorations 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, and will superintend their application.’“‘LXII.—The Sublime Porte having expressed the wish to maintain the principle of religious liberty, to give it the widest scope, the contracting parties take note of this spontaneous declaration. In no part of the Ottoman Empire shall difference of religion be alleged against an individual as a ground for exclusion or incapacity as regards the discharge of civil and political rights, admission to the police service, functions and honors, and the exercise of the different professions and industries. All persons shall be admitted without distinction of religion to give evidence before the tribunals. Liberty and outward exercise of all forms of worship are assured to all, and no hindrance shall be offered either to hierarchial organization of the various communions or to their relations with theirspiritual chiefs. The right of official protection by the diplomatic and consular agents of the powers in Turkey is recognized both as regards the above mentioned persons and their religious, charitable, and other establishments in the holy places;’ and,“Whereas, The extent and object of the above cited provisions of said treaty are to place the Christian subjects of the Porte under the protection of the other signatories thereto, and to secure to such Christian subjects full liberty of religious worship and belief, the equal benefit of the laws, and all the privileges and immunities belonging to any subject of the Turkish empire; and,“Whereas, By said treaty the Christian powers parties thereto, having established under the consent of Turkey their right to accomplish and secure the above recited objects; and,“Whereas, The American people, in common with all Christian people everywhere, have beheld with horror the recent appalling outrages and massacres of which the Christian population of Turkey have been made the victims,“Resolved, by the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, That it is an imperative duty in the interests of humanity to express the earnest hope that the European concert brought about by the treaty referred to may speedily be given its just effects in such decisive measures as shall stay the hand of fanaticism and lawless violence and as shall secure to the unoffending Christians of the Turkish Empire all the rights belonging to them, both as men and as Christians and as beneficiaries of the explicit provisions of the treaty above recited.“Resolved, That the President be requested to communicate these resolutions to the governments of Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia.“Resolved, further, That the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, will support the President in the most vigorous action he may take for the protection and security of American citizens in Turkey, and to obtain redress for injuries committed on the persons or property of such citizens.”Mr. Cullom said the resolution was reported by the unanimous vote of the committee, and he desired immediate action.Mr. Gray (Dem., Del.) said he did not anticipate any objection to the resolution, but it was of such importance that there should be time for consideration of the terms of the resolution.Mr. Cullom acceded to this suggestion, giving notice that he would ask for action to-morrow.On the 24th, the resolutions were brought up and Senator Cullom took the floor and spoke of the serious conditions prevailing in Turkey. He said that he was appalled by the carnival of blood prevailing. A massacre of innocence, unparalleled for ages, had been perpetrated. The evidence of the bloody enormities was given by all classes and nationalities until it was beyond the slightest doubt. A Turkish army had bayonetted, robbed, murdered and flayed alive the people of Armenia. There was no war, but a pitiless, merciless tornado of ruin, bloodshed and death. The demon of fanaticism had been let loose. There was a responsibility somewhere. It did not rest with the slavish ruler of Turkey, the Sultan. Back of this were the disputes of the countries of the European alliance,seeking their territorial advantages. These countries were responsible. The Sultan was but a puppet in their hands. It was a matter of regret and embarrassment, continued Mr. Cullom, that the policy of the United States was such as to prevent the sending of a fleet to Turkish waters to put a stop to the bloody rule prevailing. But Europe had assumed the obligation of protection to Armenia. The people of the United States were intensely interested in seeing the obligation executed and the purpose of these resolutions was to plead with the greatest earnestness for the protection of Armenia. It was amazing to people of the United States to witness this appalling slaughter and at the same time to see the indifference of the Christian powers. There was a double obligation upon England and yet nothing had been done to stay the hand of the Sultan, except by fruitless diplomatic correspondence. No event of the centuries called so loudly to the civilized world as this slaughter in Turkey, the greatest, the Senator believed, in the history of the world.Then Senator Frye, of Maine, arose and addressing the chair began an address that electrified an audience which constantly grew until the galleries were crowded.In the midst of his speech with intensely dramatic earnestness and thrilling effect Senator Frye cried aloud: “I would gladly have this Congress send a memorial to Russia, saying, ‘Take Armenia under your protection, and the United States will stand by you with all its power and resources.’” The words are strong but the manner and emphasis of the orator cannot be described. Every Senator upon the floor gave expression of approval. Many of them clappedtheir hands. The people in the galleries broke forth in prolonged applause, which the voice of the Vice President found difficulty in checking.The scene was one of the most dramatic ever witnessed in the Senate. Again and again Senator Frye gave expression to aggressive views of a similar character, and from beginning to close of his address he received the closest attention and frequent applause. He declared that Great Britain is no friend of this country, nor of any country. Great Britain should have taken part in the suppression of the slaughters in Armenia, but she has not done so. The other countries of Europe are equally derelict.Mr. Frye declared the United States had never given its assent to the agreement of the European powers closing the Dardanelles, and proceeded with much vigor and earnestness to say that if necessary in order to protect American citizens he would order the American ships to sail up the Dardanelles, regardless of the European alliance, and when in front of Constantinople demand the protection of our people within the Sultan’s dominions. The resolutions were adopted with great applause without a dissenting vote.The action of our government has been energetic and effective in preserving the lives of the American missionaries in Anatolia. It has been conclusively shown that the Sultan has a considerate regard to an emphatic demand when backed by a battleship. It is a serious question whether the time has not come for the United States to rise to the higher question of privilege, and demand in the name of common humanity that the massacres shall cease and the Christian populations be protected according to the provisions of theBerlin Treaty, and the former promises of the Sublime Porte, “that no one shall be compelled to change his religion.”The latest reports from Constantinople asserted that there have been many thousands of forced conversions to Islam and that scores of Armenians who had accepted Islam but did not live up to all its requirements with sufficient zeal to please the Turks have been put to death since the wholesale massacres have ceased.How much longer can human nature stand the strain? What greater—greater outrages can be conceived of to rouse the Christian conscience, than have filled our ears for months? It was published in London as very important news that Sir Philip Currie was the first Ambassador invited this year to take “iftar” at the Palace. The audience lasted half an hour and was very cordial. “It is understood that the Sultan renewed his assurances regarding the execution of reforms.” Thereupon the English Government washes its hands in Pilate’s basin and rids itself of all responsibility.If we haven’t any treaty rights in this matter in God’s name let us assert the higher law of human rights—the right of every man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let us declare through Congress our judgment to the Porte that the hour has come for armed interference in the cause of outraged humanity.Mr. Chauncey M. Depew having been invited to deliver an address in Detroit, Mich., in the interest of Armenia, not being able to attend, wrote a letter to Gen. Alger, the chairman of the meeting, from which we quote as follows:“The air is full just now of wars and rumors of wars. The fighting blood of all the peoples of all civilized countries seems to be warmed to the battle point. But, while there is a great and dangerous excitement over a boundary line in Venezuela and a filibustering expedition in South Africa, the peoples of Europe and of the United States remain unmoved and undisturbed by the burnings, sackings, slaughter and every form of savage murder and lust perpetrated upon the Christians of Armenia simply because of their adherence to the faith of Christendom. I have seen congregations weep at the presentation of the tortures and massacres of Christian martyrs under Nero and Diocletian two thousand years ago. Where are the tears for Christian men tortured and killed, Christian women outraged and slain, Christian children tossed upon the bayonets of a savage soldiery yesterday, last week and last month, with the frightful assurance that they will continue to be slaughtered and outraged and tortured and tossed upon bayonets to-morrow, the day after and next month and for months to come?“Much as I believe in peace and its blessings, much as I detest war and its horrors, much as I feel that great provocations and the most imminent dangers to the liberty or the existence of the territories or the safety of the citizens of the country will justify an appeal to the arbitrament of arms, nevertheless I do feel that by a concert of action of Christian nations, of which the United States should be one, such a presentation should be made to the Sultan and his advisers as would stop these horrors and save our Christian brethren.”The case of Rev. Mr. Knapp, of Bitlis, who is to besent to Constantinople for trial on the charge of sedition, will afford a splendid occasion for a naval display. Let the question be opened up whether these treaty obligations of the Porte mean anything outside the reach of a warship. How can we maintain our traditions as the friend of the oppressed and downtrodden of earth if we let the brutal fanatical Sultan riot still in plunder, lust and blood?Did we care for the poor manacled negro undergoing the horrors of the Middle Passage? Did we have any interest in healing “the open sore of the world?” Did we once have spirit enough to demand of the Bey of Algiers the release of all Christian slaves, the abandonment of the piracy he had practiced for years, and compel him to forego the tribute exacted from all nations?And have we no voice, no heart, no sympathy, no power to demand that the Sultan shall stop his awful carnage of blood and prove before the bar of all Christendom by what right he any longer shall reign?We can do this because the Eastern Question does not exist for us. Higher questions of humanity demand the first consideration. We can interfere in defence of the lives and property of Christians in Turkey without violating the Monroe Doctrine and would merit the gratitude of Europe and the world, if the final decision should be that the Sultan had forfeited by the slaughter of one hundred thousand men, women and children with the fiendish accompaniments of outrage, violation, torture, all right to be treated as anything else than an enemy of humanity, and a wild beast to be caged and gazed upon with execration and horror.Are not the lives and happiness of a half millionArmenians left homeless and penniless and who still tremble with fear and terror at the sight of their relentless foes of more consequence than the boundary line of Venezuela? And yet for the location of an imaginary line the President’s message came perilously near being a threat of war.Had the President written as strong a message as that to the Sultan in November or December, 1895, and sent it with an escort of three battleships under the Stars and Stripes (stars for heroes, stripes for tyrants) demanding that the massacres cease at once or Yildiz Palace would be bombarded, the telegraph wires might have melted under the hot haste with which every Governor had been ordered to call off the hounds of hell from their battening on human blood. (I beg pardon of the hounds, hyenas, tigers and all other wild beasts for using their names in simile or metaphor to describe the swiftness, eagerness or ferocity of Kurd or Turk. It is only the poverty of language that makes such use allowable.)But there is another thing we can do and England has shown us how to do it, scores of times, if not hundreds of times, in her own history. The American Board has suffered the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the destruction of missionary property; American citizens have suffered great money losses and their work has been broken up in many quarters; many churches in all parts of Anatolia, built wholly or in part with contributions from America, have been laid in ruins; they have gone down in ashes and pillage under the trampling hordes of Islam; the cost of relief has been enormous and the extra cost to all the missionaries has been very great, to say nothing of all theindignities to which they have been subjected (and in British estimation outrage upon the dignity of an Englishman is placed at very high figures.) Now let these damages be tabulated at full value and the bill presented to the Sublime Porte payable on demand and let us land a few marines at Stamboul and open out a few port holes upon the Palace and wake Mr. Sultan to the fact that it is quite as serious an affair to pluck the feathers of the American eagle as it is to twist the tail of the British lion.As Mr. Talmage has said in his own inimitable style: “When the English lion and the Russian bear put their paws on that Turkey, the American eagle ought to put in its bill.”Seriously this demand ought to be made with such energy, decision and despatch with such a demand for adequate protection and guarantee of inviolability of domicile both as to churches, colleges, schools and private residences of missionaries with a demand for necessary papers for all the consuls we may choose to send into Anatolia, that the Sultan would have very little time for the next few weeks to talk to his three hundred and sixty-five wives, or lay out any new plans for reforming the Armenians out of existence.Another thing is possible, and possible only to America, viz: The calling of an International Conference—say on the Island of Cyprus, which England holds as a pledge that she will see that necessary reforms shall be executed—to discuss the further existence of the power of the Porte.After the battle of Waterloo the Powers of Europe dealt with Napoleon as an enemy of the human race, of the peace and prosperity of every realm and notliking to take him off suddenly, they took him off to the island of St. Helena, where English ships and soldiers guarded him from all danger till the angel of death, black or white, called him before a higher tribunal.There would be some grim justice in the retribution if the Sultan should be exiled to the island of Cyprus where he could be supported without cost to Europe according to Article III. of the Annex to the Cyprus Convention. It is understood “that England will pay to the Porte whatever is the present excess of revenue over expenditure in the island.”One gunboat could guard the island, and Abdul-Hamid II., after whom there should be no III., could dwell in peaceful security, unless through his seared Islamic conscience some dreams of blood should come, or shrieks of outraged womanhood be heard above the waves of the resounding sea.It has been said that if the contents of the Blue Book on Armenia were known Lord Salisbury would be mobbed in the streets of London. TheChristian Herald, of New York, has also stated that a number of official documents has come into its possession which form such an indictment against the Turk as has never yet been framed in the Saxon tongue. “It may never be necessary to drag this shameful exhibit to the light, nor will it ever be done save as a last resort in the interest of justice and mercy.”As nothing which has yet been told has touched the springs of power in Europe or America, save to start a few rills of generosity for pity’s sake and a few tears which a dainty lace handkerchief could wipe away, it would seem as if justice to the Turk and mercy to the Armenians demanded that these official documents,whether in England or America, should be given to the light, if perchance at last the nations of Christendom might be roused to action before the country shall be utterly laid waste and the only service left us shall be to lay a cross upon the grave of Bleeding Armenia.Armenia has stood the only Christian race and nation in Asia, for more than a thousand years, despite the oft repeated threat, Islam or Death. At any hour, in any age its glorious roll of martyrs would have been filled up and its blood would have ceased to flow, if it had been willing to deny the Christ and swear allegiance to the false Prophet.The History of this Martyr Nation that has been written in tears and blood as thus rehearsed to you will, I trust, not have been told in vain. May the voice of an outraged humanity be heard above the din of all conflicting political alliances demanding mercy and justice for the perishing.I believe our indignation would burst into fiercest flame if these awful atrocities could but be realized; and to noble, free and Christian America might be the honor of leading in a glorious crusade for the deliverance of crushed, desolated and bleeding Armenia from the accursed rule of Islam.THE END.
CHAPTER XVIII.AMERICA’S DUTY AND PRIVILEGE.
Our self-imposed task to voice as clearly and strongly as we could the History and Horrors of Armenia under the Curse of Islam is nearly finished. For many weeks the fires have burned hot within us, and the daily news from the land of sorrows has only made our heart beat more rapidly and our pen fly the faster that our appeal might reach your ears while yet there was time to save from utter destruction a remnant of this most ancient Christian people of whom two hundred thousand now look to England and America for daily bread.“The Armenians are the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world.”—Gladstone.In all the history of the Roman Empire, from Nero down to the days of Constantine, there is no chapter so cruel, so terrible as the atrocious crimes of the present Turkish Empire. These massacres have been committed at the command of the Sultan, and with flourish of trumpets, as at Zilleh, when at noon November 28, 1895, the trumpet was blown and the Turks began to assault the Christians with the cry, “Down with Armenians. This is the Sultan’s order.”This is the Curse of Islam that it makes it the religiousduty of every follower of the prophet, from the Sultan down to the howling dervishes, to hate the Christians, to kill and plunder, rob, outrage and torture every one who will not accept the faith of Mohammed. The evident intention of the Sultan is to utterly destroy and exterminate the Christian people in Armenia.It is reserved for the dawning of the twentieth century to see all the horrors of the conquests of Tamerlane repeated, and to realize for itself what these Christian races have suffered since the fateful year 1453, when Constantinople, the glory of Eastern Europe, fell a prey to hordes of the Ottoman Turks. It is because he has outdone the cruelties of all the ages that caused the foremost of living English poets to stigmatize the reigning Sultan as “Abdul, the Damned.”In our helplessness we can only take refuge, perhaps, under the arms of the Almighty. Justice and judgment are the habitations of His throne and a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of His kingdom. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”When Christendom repeats that phrase “Thy Kingdom Come” in the universal prayer it means the downfall of Islam, the overthrow of every throne of iniquity, and of all kingdoms whose foundations are laid in blood.The kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of righteousness and between it and the cruel, lustful barbarism of Islam there can be no peace. It affords an outlet for one’s outraged feelings as the cries of smitten Armenia fill our ears, to read the woes once denounced by the prophets of Jehovah against the gigantic wickedness of empires founded in blood.The cry of the bittern is heard in the pools of Chaldea, and the howling of jackals amid the ruins of Nineveh.The lions roam among the deserted palaces of Babylon and it shall be desolate forever.When the judgments of the Lord are visited upon the earth the nations will learn righteousness. The ultimate issue can not be doubtful, but still the cry is, “How long, O Lord? How long?”There are three kingdoms which are chiefly concerned in this Eastern question:—Turkey, England and Russia; and while they are debating and manœuvring, poor Armenia is being ground between the upper and nether millstones of their mutual jealousies and ambitions and the coming of the Kingdom of Righteousness is delayed.These three nations have stood facing each other for more than a century. Russia on the one side resisting the invasions, conquests and atrocities of the Turk, England on the other his right hand of strength in time of pressure. Throughout the entire history of the Tartar invasions with all their bloody victories and cruel conquests you see Russia rising again and again across his path like a stone wall. But England, in spite of all professions to the contrary and in spite of the earnest and solemn protests of her people against the atrocities of the Sultan’s reign—and never more hot or indignant words have been uttered throughout England than during the last few months—England has always stepped in just in time to save the Empire from destruction and prolong its barbarous rule.Is it not written large on the page of history that in 1798, when Napoleon invaded Egypt, England came to the rescue and fought France to save the Turk? In 1853, it joined France and fought Russia, when the Czar attempted to protect the Greek Christians in Turkey:and by the treaty of Paris restored to the Sultan the command of the Lower Danube, shut out the Czar from his protectorate over the Danubian provinces and closed the Black Sea against all ships of war. Worst of all the treaty adopted the Porte into the family of European nations. Mr. James Boyce, in aCenturyarticle on the Armenian question, says: “The other nations of Europe now treat the Turks as if they were a civilized state and even talk of respecting their susceptibilities.” But they have no title to be so treated and ought never to have been admitted into the rank of civilized nations. Mr. Freeman describes them as “merely a band of robbers encamped in a country whose inhabitants they despoil.” And the passionate words of Edmund Burke are quoted as he exclaimed, “What have these worse than savages to do with the Powers of Europe but to spread destruction and pestilence among them. The ministers and the policy which shall give these people any weight in Europe will deserve all the bans and curses of posterity.”Brave and noble words, but this is just what England forced on Russia and Europe by the treaty of Paris. And again at the close of the Russo-Turkish war, when the Porte was pleading for life and had gladly accepted the San Stefano treaty, the wily Beaconsfield and the present Premier stepped in and, by the Berlin treaty, handed back to the tender mercies of the Turk more than forty thousand square miles of territory and three million Bulgarian Christians. But what do we see in 1895? England afraid in the critical moment to send her despatch boat through the Dardanelles to insist that the promised reforms in Armenia should be executed and that the massacres of Christians should be stopped.Yet for this purpose had she secured the cession of the island of Cyprus.By declining at the last moment to give her consent to the forcing of the Dardanelles, Russia most shrewdly outwitted England and humiliated her before the world. England lost her prestige and the glory of her power was tarnished when she failed, through fear of Russia, to execute what before the world she had pledged herself to do.We are not called upon to defend Russia’s internal policy—her argus-eyed espionage, the cruelties attending the exiling of criminals to Siberia and deporting many suspects without even a form of trial. But when Russia is called semi-civilized, or half-barbarous, and is scarcely allowed to rank among the Christian nations of Europe—we merely remark that she has no opium war laid to her charge, she never blew mutinous sepoys from the mouths of shotted guns. She has never taken possession of any Turkish territory under pretext of reforming the internal administration of the Sublime Porte. If now, by shrewd diplomacy, the Czar rules at Constantinople, while the Sultan reigns but is in reality only his vassal, there is a decided checkmate on the political chessboard of European politics since the last move at Berlin.If it be true then the Bosphorus is free to Russia, and the Czar is at liberty to march Russian troops at any time into Armenia. Indeed the rumor was that the excessive massacres ceased immediately when the Czar said “enough.”England was brought into this humiliating situation by her own hesitation to do the right when all Europe except Russia was a unit with her in insisting that theSultan must be brought to terms even if they should be obliged to force the Dardanelles.Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van.Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van.It is remembered that Mr. Terrell openly expressed the opinion that if European pressure for reforms repulsive to the Turk, which were to admit to the army a subject race should be successful, a general massacre was sure to result unless concerted and armed coöperation among the Powers prevented it. There was no such coöperation, and accordingly on the very day that these reforms were announced, Mr. Terrell demanded immediate military protection for all missionaries, saying that if a single hair on the head of one of our missionaries was injured the Sultan must answer for it: and the protection was granted.On December 19, 1895, the President transmitted to Congress a communication from Secretary Olney on the Armenian outrages, in response to the resolution of the Senate. Secretary Olney stated that the number of citizens of the United States resident in the Turkish Empire is not accurately known, but there are one hundred and seventy-two American missionaries and dependents scattered over Asia Minor. There are also a number of American citizens engaged in business in the Turkish dominions, and others originally Turkish subjects, but now naturalized citizens of the United States.The bulk of this American element is to be found remote from our few Consular establishments. He bore testimony to the energy and promptness displayed by our Minister, Mr. Terrell, in taking measures for their protection which had received the moral support of naval vessels of the United States. He added that whilethe physical safety of the United States citizens seemed to be assured, their property had been destroyed at Harpoot and Marash, in the former case to the extent of $100,000.The Turkish Government had been notified that it would “be held responsible for the immediate and full satisfaction of all injuries on that score.” The loss of American property at Marash had not been ascertained, but a like demand for adequate indemnity would be made as soon as the facts were known.Of the incidents contained in the correspondence in which the rights and power of the United States to demand protection for its citizens whether missionaries from this country or naturalized Armenians returning to their native country, one is given that it may be seen that the demands of our Government for justice will always be met when backed by a warship.THE CASE OF DR. CHRISTIE.“On the night of the 4th of August last the premises of Dr. Christie, principal of St. Paul’s Institute, at Tarsus, who was spending the summer months at the neighboring village of Namroun, were invaded by an armed mob, obviously collected in pursuance of a preconcerted plan, and an outrageous attack made on a defenceless native servant of Dr. Christie and some students of the institute who were then at Namroun. The authors of this brutal attack were abundantly identified, and through the prompt intervention of the United States Consul at Beirut and the Consular agent at Mersine—the nearest port—a number of arrests were made. Notwithstanding the peremptory demands ofthe United States Minister for simple justice the assailants, when taken before the local Judge of Tarsus, were released.“So grave did this miscarriage of justice appear that an early occasion was taken to send the ‘Marblehead’ to Mersine to investigate the incident and lend all proper moral aid to Consular representatives of the United States in pressing for due redress. Their efforts to this end were most cordially seconded by the Mutessarif (Prefect) of Mersine and on October 28 last the accused, to the number of eight, were brought to trial at Tarsus, and convicted upon the evidence, subsequently confessing their guilt.“Having established his rights, and in view of the dismissal of the Tarsus Judge who had conducted the preliminary inquest, and a promise to degrade the incompetent Mudir of Namroun, Dr. Christie interceded with the Court for clemency to the individual culprits, upon whom light sentences of imprisonment were passed. The signal rebuke administered in high places where responsibility really existed and was abused, coupled with the establishment of the important principle that American domicile in Turkey may not be violated with impunity, renders the conclusion of this incident satisfactory.”The correspondence closed with the statement by Secretary Olney that a telegram just received from Minister Terrell, under date of the 16th, expressed the gravest apprehensions concerning the ultimate fate of American citizens in the disturbed region unless the appalling massacres can be stopped by the united efforts of the Christian Powers. He saw no hope, however, of a European conceit to that end. He saidthat if the missionaries wished to leave Turkey he could procure their transportation to Christian ports; if the men wished to remain he could get escorts for all to the seacoast, whereupon the men could return; but he added that the women and children should quit Turkey.HEROISM OF MISSIONARIES.The missionaries of the American Board throughout Anatolia declined to follow the advice of minister Terrell and seek a place of safety, feeling it to be their duty to care for the property of the Boards,to preserve the schools from being scattered and destroyed, and by their presence restrain the impulses of fanatical Moslems and make safer the conditions of native Christians. “If we fall martyrs to our desire to prevent horrible massacres so be it. God has plenty of workers to take our places.”Nobly did they stand in their places protecting lives and property as far as possible.At Oorfa there were but two lady teachers Miss Shattuck and Miss Mellinger. They were four days’ journey from any other American missionaries. But when the massacre began they threw open the mission premises and through all that reign of horror they preserved two hundred and forty-six women and children from assault and death.More than three thousand men, women and children, who had fled to the Armenian church suffered most horrible cruelties before the church was set on fire: most of them were burned alive. Some sixty or a hundred escaped by secret stairs. This large stone church, now purified, is used as a hospital for some eight hundredArmenians and these two women have sole care of them. What heroism!But more than that the Sublime Porte had learned the temper of our government and knew that damages would have to be paid for all mission property destroyed, hence the Governor of the city sent a double guard of soldiers to protect the premises from fire or assault. The mob was never so desperate as not to realize that they must obey orders. This fact makes the responsibility of the Powers the more fearful as the pressure of an ultimatum at Constantinople backed by a war fleet would have been instantly felt to the extremity of the remotest vilayet.At Harpoot the bullets fell thick around the missionaries, but they were divinely protected, and saved the lives of many of their scholars; at Marash, the lady missionaries stood bravely in front of their students in the college, ready to die, if the call came; but they were unharmed. “I thought our time had come,” wrote one worthy missionary, afterward, and he added, “and if we were to lay down our lives there, we felt that we would not have chosen it otherwise.” But they were preserved for still further duty in the Lord’s vineyard, and it is largely due to their humane efforts to-day that any relief work is being done in Armenia at all.Not one of the American missionaries deserted his post, not even one of the women missionaries. Never has there been a time in the history of Turkey when a brave and faithful missionary counted for so much, and never has the power of the United States counted for as much.The presence of these Christian men and women hasbeen a comfort and protection to thousands of those afflicted, frightened and smitten people. Many a martyr has been strengthened to bear the awful agonies of torture by their devotion in the midst of most terrible scenes. Alone has some noble Americanwomandragged from the hands of a mob a young girl screaming for life. Mr. Wingate and Miss Burrage were alone in the city of Cæsarea on that fearful 30th of November and nobly did they defend the persecuted, saving many lives. Mr. Wingate took a policeman, went to a Turkish house and demanded a bride and a daughter, who had been carried off and got them both. The people in all that region are ready to kiss his feet.But time would fail to tell you of the noble deeds wrought by brave, devoted women at Sivas, Hadjin, Adana, Oorfa and among the villages of Mesopotamia. Only the recording angels at the last day can fully recite their deeds of heroism. At the great crisis in their life’s work, nobly did they fulfill their highest, holiest duty.DUTY OF THE POWERS.Action of the United States Senate—a protest against European apathy in not compelling Turkey to observe the Berlin Treaty:On January 22, 1896, Mr. Cullom, from the Senate committee on foreign relations, reported a resolution in the Senate relative to the Armenian troubles. It recited the provision of the treaty of Berlin as to religious freedom and resolved that it is the imperative duty of the United States to express the hope that the European powers will bring about the carrying out ofthe treaty, and requested the President to transmit this resolution to the Powers.CULLOM’S ARMENIAN RESOLUTION.Mr. Cullom (Rep., Ill.) reported from the Senate committee on foreign relations the following Armenian resolution:“Whereas, The supplementary treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, between the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia contains the following provisions:“‘LXI.—The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out without further delay the ameliorations 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, and will superintend their application.’“‘LXII.—The Sublime Porte having expressed the wish to maintain the principle of religious liberty, to give it the widest scope, the contracting parties take note of this spontaneous declaration. In no part of the Ottoman Empire shall difference of religion be alleged against an individual as a ground for exclusion or incapacity as regards the discharge of civil and political rights, admission to the police service, functions and honors, and the exercise of the different professions and industries. All persons shall be admitted without distinction of religion to give evidence before the tribunals. Liberty and outward exercise of all forms of worship are assured to all, and no hindrance shall be offered either to hierarchial organization of the various communions or to their relations with theirspiritual chiefs. The right of official protection by the diplomatic and consular agents of the powers in Turkey is recognized both as regards the above mentioned persons and their religious, charitable, and other establishments in the holy places;’ and,“Whereas, The extent and object of the above cited provisions of said treaty are to place the Christian subjects of the Porte under the protection of the other signatories thereto, and to secure to such Christian subjects full liberty of religious worship and belief, the equal benefit of the laws, and all the privileges and immunities belonging to any subject of the Turkish empire; and,“Whereas, By said treaty the Christian powers parties thereto, having established under the consent of Turkey their right to accomplish and secure the above recited objects; and,“Whereas, The American people, in common with all Christian people everywhere, have beheld with horror the recent appalling outrages and massacres of which the Christian population of Turkey have been made the victims,“Resolved, by the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, That it is an imperative duty in the interests of humanity to express the earnest hope that the European concert brought about by the treaty referred to may speedily be given its just effects in such decisive measures as shall stay the hand of fanaticism and lawless violence and as shall secure to the unoffending Christians of the Turkish Empire all the rights belonging to them, both as men and as Christians and as beneficiaries of the explicit provisions of the treaty above recited.“Resolved, That the President be requested to communicate these resolutions to the governments of Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia.“Resolved, further, That the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, will support the President in the most vigorous action he may take for the protection and security of American citizens in Turkey, and to obtain redress for injuries committed on the persons or property of such citizens.”Mr. Cullom said the resolution was reported by the unanimous vote of the committee, and he desired immediate action.Mr. Gray (Dem., Del.) said he did not anticipate any objection to the resolution, but it was of such importance that there should be time for consideration of the terms of the resolution.Mr. Cullom acceded to this suggestion, giving notice that he would ask for action to-morrow.On the 24th, the resolutions were brought up and Senator Cullom took the floor and spoke of the serious conditions prevailing in Turkey. He said that he was appalled by the carnival of blood prevailing. A massacre of innocence, unparalleled for ages, had been perpetrated. The evidence of the bloody enormities was given by all classes and nationalities until it was beyond the slightest doubt. A Turkish army had bayonetted, robbed, murdered and flayed alive the people of Armenia. There was no war, but a pitiless, merciless tornado of ruin, bloodshed and death. The demon of fanaticism had been let loose. There was a responsibility somewhere. It did not rest with the slavish ruler of Turkey, the Sultan. Back of this were the disputes of the countries of the European alliance,seeking their territorial advantages. These countries were responsible. The Sultan was but a puppet in their hands. It was a matter of regret and embarrassment, continued Mr. Cullom, that the policy of the United States was such as to prevent the sending of a fleet to Turkish waters to put a stop to the bloody rule prevailing. But Europe had assumed the obligation of protection to Armenia. The people of the United States were intensely interested in seeing the obligation executed and the purpose of these resolutions was to plead with the greatest earnestness for the protection of Armenia. It was amazing to people of the United States to witness this appalling slaughter and at the same time to see the indifference of the Christian powers. There was a double obligation upon England and yet nothing had been done to stay the hand of the Sultan, except by fruitless diplomatic correspondence. No event of the centuries called so loudly to the civilized world as this slaughter in Turkey, the greatest, the Senator believed, in the history of the world.Then Senator Frye, of Maine, arose and addressing the chair began an address that electrified an audience which constantly grew until the galleries were crowded.In the midst of his speech with intensely dramatic earnestness and thrilling effect Senator Frye cried aloud: “I would gladly have this Congress send a memorial to Russia, saying, ‘Take Armenia under your protection, and the United States will stand by you with all its power and resources.’” The words are strong but the manner and emphasis of the orator cannot be described. Every Senator upon the floor gave expression of approval. Many of them clappedtheir hands. The people in the galleries broke forth in prolonged applause, which the voice of the Vice President found difficulty in checking.The scene was one of the most dramatic ever witnessed in the Senate. Again and again Senator Frye gave expression to aggressive views of a similar character, and from beginning to close of his address he received the closest attention and frequent applause. He declared that Great Britain is no friend of this country, nor of any country. Great Britain should have taken part in the suppression of the slaughters in Armenia, but she has not done so. The other countries of Europe are equally derelict.Mr. Frye declared the United States had never given its assent to the agreement of the European powers closing the Dardanelles, and proceeded with much vigor and earnestness to say that if necessary in order to protect American citizens he would order the American ships to sail up the Dardanelles, regardless of the European alliance, and when in front of Constantinople demand the protection of our people within the Sultan’s dominions. The resolutions were adopted with great applause without a dissenting vote.The action of our government has been energetic and effective in preserving the lives of the American missionaries in Anatolia. It has been conclusively shown that the Sultan has a considerate regard to an emphatic demand when backed by a battleship. It is a serious question whether the time has not come for the United States to rise to the higher question of privilege, and demand in the name of common humanity that the massacres shall cease and the Christian populations be protected according to the provisions of theBerlin Treaty, and the former promises of the Sublime Porte, “that no one shall be compelled to change his religion.”The latest reports from Constantinople asserted that there have been many thousands of forced conversions to Islam and that scores of Armenians who had accepted Islam but did not live up to all its requirements with sufficient zeal to please the Turks have been put to death since the wholesale massacres have ceased.How much longer can human nature stand the strain? What greater—greater outrages can be conceived of to rouse the Christian conscience, than have filled our ears for months? It was published in London as very important news that Sir Philip Currie was the first Ambassador invited this year to take “iftar” at the Palace. The audience lasted half an hour and was very cordial. “It is understood that the Sultan renewed his assurances regarding the execution of reforms.” Thereupon the English Government washes its hands in Pilate’s basin and rids itself of all responsibility.If we haven’t any treaty rights in this matter in God’s name let us assert the higher law of human rights—the right of every man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let us declare through Congress our judgment to the Porte that the hour has come for armed interference in the cause of outraged humanity.Mr. Chauncey M. Depew having been invited to deliver an address in Detroit, Mich., in the interest of Armenia, not being able to attend, wrote a letter to Gen. Alger, the chairman of the meeting, from which we quote as follows:“The air is full just now of wars and rumors of wars. The fighting blood of all the peoples of all civilized countries seems to be warmed to the battle point. But, while there is a great and dangerous excitement over a boundary line in Venezuela and a filibustering expedition in South Africa, the peoples of Europe and of the United States remain unmoved and undisturbed by the burnings, sackings, slaughter and every form of savage murder and lust perpetrated upon the Christians of Armenia simply because of their adherence to the faith of Christendom. I have seen congregations weep at the presentation of the tortures and massacres of Christian martyrs under Nero and Diocletian two thousand years ago. Where are the tears for Christian men tortured and killed, Christian women outraged and slain, Christian children tossed upon the bayonets of a savage soldiery yesterday, last week and last month, with the frightful assurance that they will continue to be slaughtered and outraged and tortured and tossed upon bayonets to-morrow, the day after and next month and for months to come?“Much as I believe in peace and its blessings, much as I detest war and its horrors, much as I feel that great provocations and the most imminent dangers to the liberty or the existence of the territories or the safety of the citizens of the country will justify an appeal to the arbitrament of arms, nevertheless I do feel that by a concert of action of Christian nations, of which the United States should be one, such a presentation should be made to the Sultan and his advisers as would stop these horrors and save our Christian brethren.”The case of Rev. Mr. Knapp, of Bitlis, who is to besent to Constantinople for trial on the charge of sedition, will afford a splendid occasion for a naval display. Let the question be opened up whether these treaty obligations of the Porte mean anything outside the reach of a warship. How can we maintain our traditions as the friend of the oppressed and downtrodden of earth if we let the brutal fanatical Sultan riot still in plunder, lust and blood?Did we care for the poor manacled negro undergoing the horrors of the Middle Passage? Did we have any interest in healing “the open sore of the world?” Did we once have spirit enough to demand of the Bey of Algiers the release of all Christian slaves, the abandonment of the piracy he had practiced for years, and compel him to forego the tribute exacted from all nations?And have we no voice, no heart, no sympathy, no power to demand that the Sultan shall stop his awful carnage of blood and prove before the bar of all Christendom by what right he any longer shall reign?We can do this because the Eastern Question does not exist for us. Higher questions of humanity demand the first consideration. We can interfere in defence of the lives and property of Christians in Turkey without violating the Monroe Doctrine and would merit the gratitude of Europe and the world, if the final decision should be that the Sultan had forfeited by the slaughter of one hundred thousand men, women and children with the fiendish accompaniments of outrage, violation, torture, all right to be treated as anything else than an enemy of humanity, and a wild beast to be caged and gazed upon with execration and horror.Are not the lives and happiness of a half millionArmenians left homeless and penniless and who still tremble with fear and terror at the sight of their relentless foes of more consequence than the boundary line of Venezuela? And yet for the location of an imaginary line the President’s message came perilously near being a threat of war.Had the President written as strong a message as that to the Sultan in November or December, 1895, and sent it with an escort of three battleships under the Stars and Stripes (stars for heroes, stripes for tyrants) demanding that the massacres cease at once or Yildiz Palace would be bombarded, the telegraph wires might have melted under the hot haste with which every Governor had been ordered to call off the hounds of hell from their battening on human blood. (I beg pardon of the hounds, hyenas, tigers and all other wild beasts for using their names in simile or metaphor to describe the swiftness, eagerness or ferocity of Kurd or Turk. It is only the poverty of language that makes such use allowable.)But there is another thing we can do and England has shown us how to do it, scores of times, if not hundreds of times, in her own history. The American Board has suffered the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the destruction of missionary property; American citizens have suffered great money losses and their work has been broken up in many quarters; many churches in all parts of Anatolia, built wholly or in part with contributions from America, have been laid in ruins; they have gone down in ashes and pillage under the trampling hordes of Islam; the cost of relief has been enormous and the extra cost to all the missionaries has been very great, to say nothing of all theindignities to which they have been subjected (and in British estimation outrage upon the dignity of an Englishman is placed at very high figures.) Now let these damages be tabulated at full value and the bill presented to the Sublime Porte payable on demand and let us land a few marines at Stamboul and open out a few port holes upon the Palace and wake Mr. Sultan to the fact that it is quite as serious an affair to pluck the feathers of the American eagle as it is to twist the tail of the British lion.As Mr. Talmage has said in his own inimitable style: “When the English lion and the Russian bear put their paws on that Turkey, the American eagle ought to put in its bill.”Seriously this demand ought to be made with such energy, decision and despatch with such a demand for adequate protection and guarantee of inviolability of domicile both as to churches, colleges, schools and private residences of missionaries with a demand for necessary papers for all the consuls we may choose to send into Anatolia, that the Sultan would have very little time for the next few weeks to talk to his three hundred and sixty-five wives, or lay out any new plans for reforming the Armenians out of existence.Another thing is possible, and possible only to America, viz: The calling of an International Conference—say on the Island of Cyprus, which England holds as a pledge that she will see that necessary reforms shall be executed—to discuss the further existence of the power of the Porte.After the battle of Waterloo the Powers of Europe dealt with Napoleon as an enemy of the human race, of the peace and prosperity of every realm and notliking to take him off suddenly, they took him off to the island of St. Helena, where English ships and soldiers guarded him from all danger till the angel of death, black or white, called him before a higher tribunal.There would be some grim justice in the retribution if the Sultan should be exiled to the island of Cyprus where he could be supported without cost to Europe according to Article III. of the Annex to the Cyprus Convention. It is understood “that England will pay to the Porte whatever is the present excess of revenue over expenditure in the island.”One gunboat could guard the island, and Abdul-Hamid II., after whom there should be no III., could dwell in peaceful security, unless through his seared Islamic conscience some dreams of blood should come, or shrieks of outraged womanhood be heard above the waves of the resounding sea.It has been said that if the contents of the Blue Book on Armenia were known Lord Salisbury would be mobbed in the streets of London. TheChristian Herald, of New York, has also stated that a number of official documents has come into its possession which form such an indictment against the Turk as has never yet been framed in the Saxon tongue. “It may never be necessary to drag this shameful exhibit to the light, nor will it ever be done save as a last resort in the interest of justice and mercy.”As nothing which has yet been told has touched the springs of power in Europe or America, save to start a few rills of generosity for pity’s sake and a few tears which a dainty lace handkerchief could wipe away, it would seem as if justice to the Turk and mercy to the Armenians demanded that these official documents,whether in England or America, should be given to the light, if perchance at last the nations of Christendom might be roused to action before the country shall be utterly laid waste and the only service left us shall be to lay a cross upon the grave of Bleeding Armenia.Armenia has stood the only Christian race and nation in Asia, for more than a thousand years, despite the oft repeated threat, Islam or Death. At any hour, in any age its glorious roll of martyrs would have been filled up and its blood would have ceased to flow, if it had been willing to deny the Christ and swear allegiance to the false Prophet.The History of this Martyr Nation that has been written in tears and blood as thus rehearsed to you will, I trust, not have been told in vain. May the voice of an outraged humanity be heard above the din of all conflicting political alliances demanding mercy and justice for the perishing.I believe our indignation would burst into fiercest flame if these awful atrocities could but be realized; and to noble, free and Christian America might be the honor of leading in a glorious crusade for the deliverance of crushed, desolated and bleeding Armenia from the accursed rule of Islam.THE END.
Our self-imposed task to voice as clearly and strongly as we could the History and Horrors of Armenia under the Curse of Islam is nearly finished. For many weeks the fires have burned hot within us, and the daily news from the land of sorrows has only made our heart beat more rapidly and our pen fly the faster that our appeal might reach your ears while yet there was time to save from utter destruction a remnant of this most ancient Christian people of whom two hundred thousand now look to England and America for daily bread.
“The Armenians are the representatives of one of the oldest civilized Christian races, being beyond all doubt one of the most pacific, one of the most industrious, and one of the most intelligent races in the world.”
—Gladstone.
In all the history of the Roman Empire, from Nero down to the days of Constantine, there is no chapter so cruel, so terrible as the atrocious crimes of the present Turkish Empire. These massacres have been committed at the command of the Sultan, and with flourish of trumpets, as at Zilleh, when at noon November 28, 1895, the trumpet was blown and the Turks began to assault the Christians with the cry, “Down with Armenians. This is the Sultan’s order.”
This is the Curse of Islam that it makes it the religiousduty of every follower of the prophet, from the Sultan down to the howling dervishes, to hate the Christians, to kill and plunder, rob, outrage and torture every one who will not accept the faith of Mohammed. The evident intention of the Sultan is to utterly destroy and exterminate the Christian people in Armenia.
It is reserved for the dawning of the twentieth century to see all the horrors of the conquests of Tamerlane repeated, and to realize for itself what these Christian races have suffered since the fateful year 1453, when Constantinople, the glory of Eastern Europe, fell a prey to hordes of the Ottoman Turks. It is because he has outdone the cruelties of all the ages that caused the foremost of living English poets to stigmatize the reigning Sultan as “Abdul, the Damned.”
In our helplessness we can only take refuge, perhaps, under the arms of the Almighty. Justice and judgment are the habitations of His throne and a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of His kingdom. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”
When Christendom repeats that phrase “Thy Kingdom Come” in the universal prayer it means the downfall of Islam, the overthrow of every throne of iniquity, and of all kingdoms whose foundations are laid in blood.
The kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of righteousness and between it and the cruel, lustful barbarism of Islam there can be no peace. It affords an outlet for one’s outraged feelings as the cries of smitten Armenia fill our ears, to read the woes once denounced by the prophets of Jehovah against the gigantic wickedness of empires founded in blood.
The cry of the bittern is heard in the pools of Chaldea, and the howling of jackals amid the ruins of Nineveh.The lions roam among the deserted palaces of Babylon and it shall be desolate forever.
When the judgments of the Lord are visited upon the earth the nations will learn righteousness. The ultimate issue can not be doubtful, but still the cry is, “How long, O Lord? How long?”
There are three kingdoms which are chiefly concerned in this Eastern question:—Turkey, England and Russia; and while they are debating and manœuvring, poor Armenia is being ground between the upper and nether millstones of their mutual jealousies and ambitions and the coming of the Kingdom of Righteousness is delayed.
These three nations have stood facing each other for more than a century. Russia on the one side resisting the invasions, conquests and atrocities of the Turk, England on the other his right hand of strength in time of pressure. Throughout the entire history of the Tartar invasions with all their bloody victories and cruel conquests you see Russia rising again and again across his path like a stone wall. But England, in spite of all professions to the contrary and in spite of the earnest and solemn protests of her people against the atrocities of the Sultan’s reign—and never more hot or indignant words have been uttered throughout England than during the last few months—England has always stepped in just in time to save the Empire from destruction and prolong its barbarous rule.
Is it not written large on the page of history that in 1798, when Napoleon invaded Egypt, England came to the rescue and fought France to save the Turk? In 1853, it joined France and fought Russia, when the Czar attempted to protect the Greek Christians in Turkey:and by the treaty of Paris restored to the Sultan the command of the Lower Danube, shut out the Czar from his protectorate over the Danubian provinces and closed the Black Sea against all ships of war. Worst of all the treaty adopted the Porte into the family of European nations. Mr. James Boyce, in aCenturyarticle on the Armenian question, says: “The other nations of Europe now treat the Turks as if they were a civilized state and even talk of respecting their susceptibilities.” But they have no title to be so treated and ought never to have been admitted into the rank of civilized nations. Mr. Freeman describes them as “merely a band of robbers encamped in a country whose inhabitants they despoil.” And the passionate words of Edmund Burke are quoted as he exclaimed, “What have these worse than savages to do with the Powers of Europe but to spread destruction and pestilence among them. The ministers and the policy which shall give these people any weight in Europe will deserve all the bans and curses of posterity.”
Brave and noble words, but this is just what England forced on Russia and Europe by the treaty of Paris. And again at the close of the Russo-Turkish war, when the Porte was pleading for life and had gladly accepted the San Stefano treaty, the wily Beaconsfield and the present Premier stepped in and, by the Berlin treaty, handed back to the tender mercies of the Turk more than forty thousand square miles of territory and three million Bulgarian Christians. But what do we see in 1895? England afraid in the critical moment to send her despatch boat through the Dardanelles to insist that the promised reforms in Armenia should be executed and that the massacres of Christians should be stopped.Yet for this purpose had she secured the cession of the island of Cyprus.
By declining at the last moment to give her consent to the forcing of the Dardanelles, Russia most shrewdly outwitted England and humiliated her before the world. England lost her prestige and the glory of her power was tarnished when she failed, through fear of Russia, to execute what before the world she had pledged herself to do.
We are not called upon to defend Russia’s internal policy—her argus-eyed espionage, the cruelties attending the exiling of criminals to Siberia and deporting many suspects without even a form of trial. But when Russia is called semi-civilized, or half-barbarous, and is scarcely allowed to rank among the Christian nations of Europe—we merely remark that she has no opium war laid to her charge, she never blew mutinous sepoys from the mouths of shotted guns. She has never taken possession of any Turkish territory under pretext of reforming the internal administration of the Sublime Porte. If now, by shrewd diplomacy, the Czar rules at Constantinople, while the Sultan reigns but is in reality only his vassal, there is a decided checkmate on the political chessboard of European politics since the last move at Berlin.
If it be true then the Bosphorus is free to Russia, and the Czar is at liberty to march Russian troops at any time into Armenia. Indeed the rumor was that the excessive massacres ceased immediately when the Czar said “enough.”
England was brought into this humiliating situation by her own hesitation to do the right when all Europe except Russia was a unit with her in insisting that theSultan must be brought to terms even if they should be obliged to force the Dardanelles.
Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van.Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van.
Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van.
It is remembered that Mr. Terrell openly expressed the opinion that if European pressure for reforms repulsive to the Turk, which were to admit to the army a subject race should be successful, a general massacre was sure to result unless concerted and armed coöperation among the Powers prevented it. There was no such coöperation, and accordingly on the very day that these reforms were announced, Mr. Terrell demanded immediate military protection for all missionaries, saying that if a single hair on the head of one of our missionaries was injured the Sultan must answer for it: and the protection was granted.
On December 19, 1895, the President transmitted to Congress a communication from Secretary Olney on the Armenian outrages, in response to the resolution of the Senate. Secretary Olney stated that the number of citizens of the United States resident in the Turkish Empire is not accurately known, but there are one hundred and seventy-two American missionaries and dependents scattered over Asia Minor. There are also a number of American citizens engaged in business in the Turkish dominions, and others originally Turkish subjects, but now naturalized citizens of the United States.
The bulk of this American element is to be found remote from our few Consular establishments. He bore testimony to the energy and promptness displayed by our Minister, Mr. Terrell, in taking measures for their protection which had received the moral support of naval vessels of the United States. He added that whilethe physical safety of the United States citizens seemed to be assured, their property had been destroyed at Harpoot and Marash, in the former case to the extent of $100,000.
The Turkish Government had been notified that it would “be held responsible for the immediate and full satisfaction of all injuries on that score.” The loss of American property at Marash had not been ascertained, but a like demand for adequate indemnity would be made as soon as the facts were known.
Of the incidents contained in the correspondence in which the rights and power of the United States to demand protection for its citizens whether missionaries from this country or naturalized Armenians returning to their native country, one is given that it may be seen that the demands of our Government for justice will always be met when backed by a warship.
THE CASE OF DR. CHRISTIE.“On the night of the 4th of August last the premises of Dr. Christie, principal of St. Paul’s Institute, at Tarsus, who was spending the summer months at the neighboring village of Namroun, were invaded by an armed mob, obviously collected in pursuance of a preconcerted plan, and an outrageous attack made on a defenceless native servant of Dr. Christie and some students of the institute who were then at Namroun. The authors of this brutal attack were abundantly identified, and through the prompt intervention of the United States Consul at Beirut and the Consular agent at Mersine—the nearest port—a number of arrests were made. Notwithstanding the peremptory demands ofthe United States Minister for simple justice the assailants, when taken before the local Judge of Tarsus, were released.“So grave did this miscarriage of justice appear that an early occasion was taken to send the ‘Marblehead’ to Mersine to investigate the incident and lend all proper moral aid to Consular representatives of the United States in pressing for due redress. Their efforts to this end were most cordially seconded by the Mutessarif (Prefect) of Mersine and on October 28 last the accused, to the number of eight, were brought to trial at Tarsus, and convicted upon the evidence, subsequently confessing their guilt.“Having established his rights, and in view of the dismissal of the Tarsus Judge who had conducted the preliminary inquest, and a promise to degrade the incompetent Mudir of Namroun, Dr. Christie interceded with the Court for clemency to the individual culprits, upon whom light sentences of imprisonment were passed. The signal rebuke administered in high places where responsibility really existed and was abused, coupled with the establishment of the important principle that American domicile in Turkey may not be violated with impunity, renders the conclusion of this incident satisfactory.”The correspondence closed with the statement by Secretary Olney that a telegram just received from Minister Terrell, under date of the 16th, expressed the gravest apprehensions concerning the ultimate fate of American citizens in the disturbed region unless the appalling massacres can be stopped by the united efforts of the Christian Powers. He saw no hope, however, of a European conceit to that end. He saidthat if the missionaries wished to leave Turkey he could procure their transportation to Christian ports; if the men wished to remain he could get escorts for all to the seacoast, whereupon the men could return; but he added that the women and children should quit Turkey.
THE CASE OF DR. CHRISTIE.
“On the night of the 4th of August last the premises of Dr. Christie, principal of St. Paul’s Institute, at Tarsus, who was spending the summer months at the neighboring village of Namroun, were invaded by an armed mob, obviously collected in pursuance of a preconcerted plan, and an outrageous attack made on a defenceless native servant of Dr. Christie and some students of the institute who were then at Namroun. The authors of this brutal attack were abundantly identified, and through the prompt intervention of the United States Consul at Beirut and the Consular agent at Mersine—the nearest port—a number of arrests were made. Notwithstanding the peremptory demands ofthe United States Minister for simple justice the assailants, when taken before the local Judge of Tarsus, were released.“So grave did this miscarriage of justice appear that an early occasion was taken to send the ‘Marblehead’ to Mersine to investigate the incident and lend all proper moral aid to Consular representatives of the United States in pressing for due redress. Their efforts to this end were most cordially seconded by the Mutessarif (Prefect) of Mersine and on October 28 last the accused, to the number of eight, were brought to trial at Tarsus, and convicted upon the evidence, subsequently confessing their guilt.“Having established his rights, and in view of the dismissal of the Tarsus Judge who had conducted the preliminary inquest, and a promise to degrade the incompetent Mudir of Namroun, Dr. Christie interceded with the Court for clemency to the individual culprits, upon whom light sentences of imprisonment were passed. The signal rebuke administered in high places where responsibility really existed and was abused, coupled with the establishment of the important principle that American domicile in Turkey may not be violated with impunity, renders the conclusion of this incident satisfactory.”The correspondence closed with the statement by Secretary Olney that a telegram just received from Minister Terrell, under date of the 16th, expressed the gravest apprehensions concerning the ultimate fate of American citizens in the disturbed region unless the appalling massacres can be stopped by the united efforts of the Christian Powers. He saw no hope, however, of a European conceit to that end. He saidthat if the missionaries wished to leave Turkey he could procure their transportation to Christian ports; if the men wished to remain he could get escorts for all to the seacoast, whereupon the men could return; but he added that the women and children should quit Turkey.
“On the night of the 4th of August last the premises of Dr. Christie, principal of St. Paul’s Institute, at Tarsus, who was spending the summer months at the neighboring village of Namroun, were invaded by an armed mob, obviously collected in pursuance of a preconcerted plan, and an outrageous attack made on a defenceless native servant of Dr. Christie and some students of the institute who were then at Namroun. The authors of this brutal attack were abundantly identified, and through the prompt intervention of the United States Consul at Beirut and the Consular agent at Mersine—the nearest port—a number of arrests were made. Notwithstanding the peremptory demands ofthe United States Minister for simple justice the assailants, when taken before the local Judge of Tarsus, were released.
“So grave did this miscarriage of justice appear that an early occasion was taken to send the ‘Marblehead’ to Mersine to investigate the incident and lend all proper moral aid to Consular representatives of the United States in pressing for due redress. Their efforts to this end were most cordially seconded by the Mutessarif (Prefect) of Mersine and on October 28 last the accused, to the number of eight, were brought to trial at Tarsus, and convicted upon the evidence, subsequently confessing their guilt.
“Having established his rights, and in view of the dismissal of the Tarsus Judge who had conducted the preliminary inquest, and a promise to degrade the incompetent Mudir of Namroun, Dr. Christie interceded with the Court for clemency to the individual culprits, upon whom light sentences of imprisonment were passed. The signal rebuke administered in high places where responsibility really existed and was abused, coupled with the establishment of the important principle that American domicile in Turkey may not be violated with impunity, renders the conclusion of this incident satisfactory.”
The correspondence closed with the statement by Secretary Olney that a telegram just received from Minister Terrell, under date of the 16th, expressed the gravest apprehensions concerning the ultimate fate of American citizens in the disturbed region unless the appalling massacres can be stopped by the united efforts of the Christian Powers. He saw no hope, however, of a European conceit to that end. He saidthat if the missionaries wished to leave Turkey he could procure their transportation to Christian ports; if the men wished to remain he could get escorts for all to the seacoast, whereupon the men could return; but he added that the women and children should quit Turkey.
HEROISM OF MISSIONARIES.The missionaries of the American Board throughout Anatolia declined to follow the advice of minister Terrell and seek a place of safety, feeling it to be their duty to care for the property of the Boards,to preserve the schools from being scattered and destroyed, and by their presence restrain the impulses of fanatical Moslems and make safer the conditions of native Christians. “If we fall martyrs to our desire to prevent horrible massacres so be it. God has plenty of workers to take our places.”Nobly did they stand in their places protecting lives and property as far as possible.At Oorfa there were but two lady teachers Miss Shattuck and Miss Mellinger. They were four days’ journey from any other American missionaries. But when the massacre began they threw open the mission premises and through all that reign of horror they preserved two hundred and forty-six women and children from assault and death.More than three thousand men, women and children, who had fled to the Armenian church suffered most horrible cruelties before the church was set on fire: most of them were burned alive. Some sixty or a hundred escaped by secret stairs. This large stone church, now purified, is used as a hospital for some eight hundredArmenians and these two women have sole care of them. What heroism!But more than that the Sublime Porte had learned the temper of our government and knew that damages would have to be paid for all mission property destroyed, hence the Governor of the city sent a double guard of soldiers to protect the premises from fire or assault. The mob was never so desperate as not to realize that they must obey orders. This fact makes the responsibility of the Powers the more fearful as the pressure of an ultimatum at Constantinople backed by a war fleet would have been instantly felt to the extremity of the remotest vilayet.At Harpoot the bullets fell thick around the missionaries, but they were divinely protected, and saved the lives of many of their scholars; at Marash, the lady missionaries stood bravely in front of their students in the college, ready to die, if the call came; but they were unharmed. “I thought our time had come,” wrote one worthy missionary, afterward, and he added, “and if we were to lay down our lives there, we felt that we would not have chosen it otherwise.” But they were preserved for still further duty in the Lord’s vineyard, and it is largely due to their humane efforts to-day that any relief work is being done in Armenia at all.Not one of the American missionaries deserted his post, not even one of the women missionaries. Never has there been a time in the history of Turkey when a brave and faithful missionary counted for so much, and never has the power of the United States counted for as much.The presence of these Christian men and women hasbeen a comfort and protection to thousands of those afflicted, frightened and smitten people. Many a martyr has been strengthened to bear the awful agonies of torture by their devotion in the midst of most terrible scenes. Alone has some noble Americanwomandragged from the hands of a mob a young girl screaming for life. Mr. Wingate and Miss Burrage were alone in the city of Cæsarea on that fearful 30th of November and nobly did they defend the persecuted, saving many lives. Mr. Wingate took a policeman, went to a Turkish house and demanded a bride and a daughter, who had been carried off and got them both. The people in all that region are ready to kiss his feet.But time would fail to tell you of the noble deeds wrought by brave, devoted women at Sivas, Hadjin, Adana, Oorfa and among the villages of Mesopotamia. Only the recording angels at the last day can fully recite their deeds of heroism. At the great crisis in their life’s work, nobly did they fulfill their highest, holiest duty.
HEROISM OF MISSIONARIES.
The missionaries of the American Board throughout Anatolia declined to follow the advice of minister Terrell and seek a place of safety, feeling it to be their duty to care for the property of the Boards,to preserve the schools from being scattered and destroyed, and by their presence restrain the impulses of fanatical Moslems and make safer the conditions of native Christians. “If we fall martyrs to our desire to prevent horrible massacres so be it. God has plenty of workers to take our places.”Nobly did they stand in their places protecting lives and property as far as possible.At Oorfa there were but two lady teachers Miss Shattuck and Miss Mellinger. They were four days’ journey from any other American missionaries. But when the massacre began they threw open the mission premises and through all that reign of horror they preserved two hundred and forty-six women and children from assault and death.More than three thousand men, women and children, who had fled to the Armenian church suffered most horrible cruelties before the church was set on fire: most of them were burned alive. Some sixty or a hundred escaped by secret stairs. This large stone church, now purified, is used as a hospital for some eight hundredArmenians and these two women have sole care of them. What heroism!But more than that the Sublime Porte had learned the temper of our government and knew that damages would have to be paid for all mission property destroyed, hence the Governor of the city sent a double guard of soldiers to protect the premises from fire or assault. The mob was never so desperate as not to realize that they must obey orders. This fact makes the responsibility of the Powers the more fearful as the pressure of an ultimatum at Constantinople backed by a war fleet would have been instantly felt to the extremity of the remotest vilayet.At Harpoot the bullets fell thick around the missionaries, but they were divinely protected, and saved the lives of many of their scholars; at Marash, the lady missionaries stood bravely in front of their students in the college, ready to die, if the call came; but they were unharmed. “I thought our time had come,” wrote one worthy missionary, afterward, and he added, “and if we were to lay down our lives there, we felt that we would not have chosen it otherwise.” But they were preserved for still further duty in the Lord’s vineyard, and it is largely due to their humane efforts to-day that any relief work is being done in Armenia at all.Not one of the American missionaries deserted his post, not even one of the women missionaries. Never has there been a time in the history of Turkey when a brave and faithful missionary counted for so much, and never has the power of the United States counted for as much.The presence of these Christian men and women hasbeen a comfort and protection to thousands of those afflicted, frightened and smitten people. Many a martyr has been strengthened to bear the awful agonies of torture by their devotion in the midst of most terrible scenes. Alone has some noble Americanwomandragged from the hands of a mob a young girl screaming for life. Mr. Wingate and Miss Burrage were alone in the city of Cæsarea on that fearful 30th of November and nobly did they defend the persecuted, saving many lives. Mr. Wingate took a policeman, went to a Turkish house and demanded a bride and a daughter, who had been carried off and got them both. The people in all that region are ready to kiss his feet.But time would fail to tell you of the noble deeds wrought by brave, devoted women at Sivas, Hadjin, Adana, Oorfa and among the villages of Mesopotamia. Only the recording angels at the last day can fully recite their deeds of heroism. At the great crisis in their life’s work, nobly did they fulfill their highest, holiest duty.
The missionaries of the American Board throughout Anatolia declined to follow the advice of minister Terrell and seek a place of safety, feeling it to be their duty to care for the property of the Boards,to preserve the schools from being scattered and destroyed, and by their presence restrain the impulses of fanatical Moslems and make safer the conditions of native Christians. “If we fall martyrs to our desire to prevent horrible massacres so be it. God has plenty of workers to take our places.”
Nobly did they stand in their places protecting lives and property as far as possible.
At Oorfa there were but two lady teachers Miss Shattuck and Miss Mellinger. They were four days’ journey from any other American missionaries. But when the massacre began they threw open the mission premises and through all that reign of horror they preserved two hundred and forty-six women and children from assault and death.
More than three thousand men, women and children, who had fled to the Armenian church suffered most horrible cruelties before the church was set on fire: most of them were burned alive. Some sixty or a hundred escaped by secret stairs. This large stone church, now purified, is used as a hospital for some eight hundredArmenians and these two women have sole care of them. What heroism!
But more than that the Sublime Porte had learned the temper of our government and knew that damages would have to be paid for all mission property destroyed, hence the Governor of the city sent a double guard of soldiers to protect the premises from fire or assault. The mob was never so desperate as not to realize that they must obey orders. This fact makes the responsibility of the Powers the more fearful as the pressure of an ultimatum at Constantinople backed by a war fleet would have been instantly felt to the extremity of the remotest vilayet.
At Harpoot the bullets fell thick around the missionaries, but they were divinely protected, and saved the lives of many of their scholars; at Marash, the lady missionaries stood bravely in front of their students in the college, ready to die, if the call came; but they were unharmed. “I thought our time had come,” wrote one worthy missionary, afterward, and he added, “and if we were to lay down our lives there, we felt that we would not have chosen it otherwise.” But they were preserved for still further duty in the Lord’s vineyard, and it is largely due to their humane efforts to-day that any relief work is being done in Armenia at all.
Not one of the American missionaries deserted his post, not even one of the women missionaries. Never has there been a time in the history of Turkey when a brave and faithful missionary counted for so much, and never has the power of the United States counted for as much.
The presence of these Christian men and women hasbeen a comfort and protection to thousands of those afflicted, frightened and smitten people. Many a martyr has been strengthened to bear the awful agonies of torture by their devotion in the midst of most terrible scenes. Alone has some noble Americanwomandragged from the hands of a mob a young girl screaming for life. Mr. Wingate and Miss Burrage were alone in the city of Cæsarea on that fearful 30th of November and nobly did they defend the persecuted, saving many lives. Mr. Wingate took a policeman, went to a Turkish house and demanded a bride and a daughter, who had been carried off and got them both. The people in all that region are ready to kiss his feet.
But time would fail to tell you of the noble deeds wrought by brave, devoted women at Sivas, Hadjin, Adana, Oorfa and among the villages of Mesopotamia. Only the recording angels at the last day can fully recite their deeds of heroism. At the great crisis in their life’s work, nobly did they fulfill their highest, holiest duty.
DUTY OF THE POWERS.Action of the United States Senate—a protest against European apathy in not compelling Turkey to observe the Berlin Treaty:On January 22, 1896, Mr. Cullom, from the Senate committee on foreign relations, reported a resolution in the Senate relative to the Armenian troubles. It recited the provision of the treaty of Berlin as to religious freedom and resolved that it is the imperative duty of the United States to express the hope that the European powers will bring about the carrying out ofthe treaty, and requested the President to transmit this resolution to the Powers.
DUTY OF THE POWERS.
Action of the United States Senate—a protest against European apathy in not compelling Turkey to observe the Berlin Treaty:On January 22, 1896, Mr. Cullom, from the Senate committee on foreign relations, reported a resolution in the Senate relative to the Armenian troubles. It recited the provision of the treaty of Berlin as to religious freedom and resolved that it is the imperative duty of the United States to express the hope that the European powers will bring about the carrying out ofthe treaty, and requested the President to transmit this resolution to the Powers.
Action of the United States Senate—a protest against European apathy in not compelling Turkey to observe the Berlin Treaty:
On January 22, 1896, Mr. Cullom, from the Senate committee on foreign relations, reported a resolution in the Senate relative to the Armenian troubles. It recited the provision of the treaty of Berlin as to religious freedom and resolved that it is the imperative duty of the United States to express the hope that the European powers will bring about the carrying out ofthe treaty, and requested the President to transmit this resolution to the Powers.
CULLOM’S ARMENIAN RESOLUTION.Mr. Cullom (Rep., Ill.) reported from the Senate committee on foreign relations the following Armenian resolution:“Whereas, The supplementary treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, between the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia contains the following provisions:“‘LXI.—The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out without further delay the ameliorations 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, and will superintend their application.’“‘LXII.—The Sublime Porte having expressed the wish to maintain the principle of religious liberty, to give it the widest scope, the contracting parties take note of this spontaneous declaration. In no part of the Ottoman Empire shall difference of religion be alleged against an individual as a ground for exclusion or incapacity as regards the discharge of civil and political rights, admission to the police service, functions and honors, and the exercise of the different professions and industries. All persons shall be admitted without distinction of religion to give evidence before the tribunals. Liberty and outward exercise of all forms of worship are assured to all, and no hindrance shall be offered either to hierarchial organization of the various communions or to their relations with theirspiritual chiefs. The right of official protection by the diplomatic and consular agents of the powers in Turkey is recognized both as regards the above mentioned persons and their religious, charitable, and other establishments in the holy places;’ and,“Whereas, The extent and object of the above cited provisions of said treaty are to place the Christian subjects of the Porte under the protection of the other signatories thereto, and to secure to such Christian subjects full liberty of religious worship and belief, the equal benefit of the laws, and all the privileges and immunities belonging to any subject of the Turkish empire; and,“Whereas, By said treaty the Christian powers parties thereto, having established under the consent of Turkey their right to accomplish and secure the above recited objects; and,“Whereas, The American people, in common with all Christian people everywhere, have beheld with horror the recent appalling outrages and massacres of which the Christian population of Turkey have been made the victims,“Resolved, by the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, That it is an imperative duty in the interests of humanity to express the earnest hope that the European concert brought about by the treaty referred to may speedily be given its just effects in such decisive measures as shall stay the hand of fanaticism and lawless violence and as shall secure to the unoffending Christians of the Turkish Empire all the rights belonging to them, both as men and as Christians and as beneficiaries of the explicit provisions of the treaty above recited.“Resolved, That the President be requested to communicate these resolutions to the governments of Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia.“Resolved, further, That the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, will support the President in the most vigorous action he may take for the protection and security of American citizens in Turkey, and to obtain redress for injuries committed on the persons or property of such citizens.”Mr. Cullom said the resolution was reported by the unanimous vote of the committee, and he desired immediate action.Mr. Gray (Dem., Del.) said he did not anticipate any objection to the resolution, but it was of such importance that there should be time for consideration of the terms of the resolution.Mr. Cullom acceded to this suggestion, giving notice that he would ask for action to-morrow.On the 24th, the resolutions were brought up and Senator Cullom took the floor and spoke of the serious conditions prevailing in Turkey. He said that he was appalled by the carnival of blood prevailing. A massacre of innocence, unparalleled for ages, had been perpetrated. The evidence of the bloody enormities was given by all classes and nationalities until it was beyond the slightest doubt. A Turkish army had bayonetted, robbed, murdered and flayed alive the people of Armenia. There was no war, but a pitiless, merciless tornado of ruin, bloodshed and death. The demon of fanaticism had been let loose. There was a responsibility somewhere. It did not rest with the slavish ruler of Turkey, the Sultan. Back of this were the disputes of the countries of the European alliance,seeking their territorial advantages. These countries were responsible. The Sultan was but a puppet in their hands. It was a matter of regret and embarrassment, continued Mr. Cullom, that the policy of the United States was such as to prevent the sending of a fleet to Turkish waters to put a stop to the bloody rule prevailing. But Europe had assumed the obligation of protection to Armenia. The people of the United States were intensely interested in seeing the obligation executed and the purpose of these resolutions was to plead with the greatest earnestness for the protection of Armenia. It was amazing to people of the United States to witness this appalling slaughter and at the same time to see the indifference of the Christian powers. There was a double obligation upon England and yet nothing had been done to stay the hand of the Sultan, except by fruitless diplomatic correspondence. No event of the centuries called so loudly to the civilized world as this slaughter in Turkey, the greatest, the Senator believed, in the history of the world.Then Senator Frye, of Maine, arose and addressing the chair began an address that electrified an audience which constantly grew until the galleries were crowded.In the midst of his speech with intensely dramatic earnestness and thrilling effect Senator Frye cried aloud: “I would gladly have this Congress send a memorial to Russia, saying, ‘Take Armenia under your protection, and the United States will stand by you with all its power and resources.’” The words are strong but the manner and emphasis of the orator cannot be described. Every Senator upon the floor gave expression of approval. Many of them clappedtheir hands. The people in the galleries broke forth in prolonged applause, which the voice of the Vice President found difficulty in checking.The scene was one of the most dramatic ever witnessed in the Senate. Again and again Senator Frye gave expression to aggressive views of a similar character, and from beginning to close of his address he received the closest attention and frequent applause. He declared that Great Britain is no friend of this country, nor of any country. Great Britain should have taken part in the suppression of the slaughters in Armenia, but she has not done so. The other countries of Europe are equally derelict.Mr. Frye declared the United States had never given its assent to the agreement of the European powers closing the Dardanelles, and proceeded with much vigor and earnestness to say that if necessary in order to protect American citizens he would order the American ships to sail up the Dardanelles, regardless of the European alliance, and when in front of Constantinople demand the protection of our people within the Sultan’s dominions. The resolutions were adopted with great applause without a dissenting vote.The action of our government has been energetic and effective in preserving the lives of the American missionaries in Anatolia. It has been conclusively shown that the Sultan has a considerate regard to an emphatic demand when backed by a battleship. It is a serious question whether the time has not come for the United States to rise to the higher question of privilege, and demand in the name of common humanity that the massacres shall cease and the Christian populations be protected according to the provisions of theBerlin Treaty, and the former promises of the Sublime Porte, “that no one shall be compelled to change his religion.”The latest reports from Constantinople asserted that there have been many thousands of forced conversions to Islam and that scores of Armenians who had accepted Islam but did not live up to all its requirements with sufficient zeal to please the Turks have been put to death since the wholesale massacres have ceased.How much longer can human nature stand the strain? What greater—greater outrages can be conceived of to rouse the Christian conscience, than have filled our ears for months? It was published in London as very important news that Sir Philip Currie was the first Ambassador invited this year to take “iftar” at the Palace. The audience lasted half an hour and was very cordial. “It is understood that the Sultan renewed his assurances regarding the execution of reforms.” Thereupon the English Government washes its hands in Pilate’s basin and rids itself of all responsibility.If we haven’t any treaty rights in this matter in God’s name let us assert the higher law of human rights—the right of every man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let us declare through Congress our judgment to the Porte that the hour has come for armed interference in the cause of outraged humanity.Mr. Chauncey M. Depew having been invited to deliver an address in Detroit, Mich., in the interest of Armenia, not being able to attend, wrote a letter to Gen. Alger, the chairman of the meeting, from which we quote as follows:“The air is full just now of wars and rumors of wars. The fighting blood of all the peoples of all civilized countries seems to be warmed to the battle point. But, while there is a great and dangerous excitement over a boundary line in Venezuela and a filibustering expedition in South Africa, the peoples of Europe and of the United States remain unmoved and undisturbed by the burnings, sackings, slaughter and every form of savage murder and lust perpetrated upon the Christians of Armenia simply because of their adherence to the faith of Christendom. I have seen congregations weep at the presentation of the tortures and massacres of Christian martyrs under Nero and Diocletian two thousand years ago. Where are the tears for Christian men tortured and killed, Christian women outraged and slain, Christian children tossed upon the bayonets of a savage soldiery yesterday, last week and last month, with the frightful assurance that they will continue to be slaughtered and outraged and tortured and tossed upon bayonets to-morrow, the day after and next month and for months to come?“Much as I believe in peace and its blessings, much as I detest war and its horrors, much as I feel that great provocations and the most imminent dangers to the liberty or the existence of the territories or the safety of the citizens of the country will justify an appeal to the arbitrament of arms, nevertheless I do feel that by a concert of action of Christian nations, of which the United States should be one, such a presentation should be made to the Sultan and his advisers as would stop these horrors and save our Christian brethren.”The case of Rev. Mr. Knapp, of Bitlis, who is to besent to Constantinople for trial on the charge of sedition, will afford a splendid occasion for a naval display. Let the question be opened up whether these treaty obligations of the Porte mean anything outside the reach of a warship. How can we maintain our traditions as the friend of the oppressed and downtrodden of earth if we let the brutal fanatical Sultan riot still in plunder, lust and blood?Did we care for the poor manacled negro undergoing the horrors of the Middle Passage? Did we have any interest in healing “the open sore of the world?” Did we once have spirit enough to demand of the Bey of Algiers the release of all Christian slaves, the abandonment of the piracy he had practiced for years, and compel him to forego the tribute exacted from all nations?And have we no voice, no heart, no sympathy, no power to demand that the Sultan shall stop his awful carnage of blood and prove before the bar of all Christendom by what right he any longer shall reign?We can do this because the Eastern Question does not exist for us. Higher questions of humanity demand the first consideration. We can interfere in defence of the lives and property of Christians in Turkey without violating the Monroe Doctrine and would merit the gratitude of Europe and the world, if the final decision should be that the Sultan had forfeited by the slaughter of one hundred thousand men, women and children with the fiendish accompaniments of outrage, violation, torture, all right to be treated as anything else than an enemy of humanity, and a wild beast to be caged and gazed upon with execration and horror.Are not the lives and happiness of a half millionArmenians left homeless and penniless and who still tremble with fear and terror at the sight of their relentless foes of more consequence than the boundary line of Venezuela? And yet for the location of an imaginary line the President’s message came perilously near being a threat of war.Had the President written as strong a message as that to the Sultan in November or December, 1895, and sent it with an escort of three battleships under the Stars and Stripes (stars for heroes, stripes for tyrants) demanding that the massacres cease at once or Yildiz Palace would be bombarded, the telegraph wires might have melted under the hot haste with which every Governor had been ordered to call off the hounds of hell from their battening on human blood. (I beg pardon of the hounds, hyenas, tigers and all other wild beasts for using their names in simile or metaphor to describe the swiftness, eagerness or ferocity of Kurd or Turk. It is only the poverty of language that makes such use allowable.)But there is another thing we can do and England has shown us how to do it, scores of times, if not hundreds of times, in her own history. The American Board has suffered the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the destruction of missionary property; American citizens have suffered great money losses and their work has been broken up in many quarters; many churches in all parts of Anatolia, built wholly or in part with contributions from America, have been laid in ruins; they have gone down in ashes and pillage under the trampling hordes of Islam; the cost of relief has been enormous and the extra cost to all the missionaries has been very great, to say nothing of all theindignities to which they have been subjected (and in British estimation outrage upon the dignity of an Englishman is placed at very high figures.) Now let these damages be tabulated at full value and the bill presented to the Sublime Porte payable on demand and let us land a few marines at Stamboul and open out a few port holes upon the Palace and wake Mr. Sultan to the fact that it is quite as serious an affair to pluck the feathers of the American eagle as it is to twist the tail of the British lion.As Mr. Talmage has said in his own inimitable style: “When the English lion and the Russian bear put their paws on that Turkey, the American eagle ought to put in its bill.”Seriously this demand ought to be made with such energy, decision and despatch with such a demand for adequate protection and guarantee of inviolability of domicile both as to churches, colleges, schools and private residences of missionaries with a demand for necessary papers for all the consuls we may choose to send into Anatolia, that the Sultan would have very little time for the next few weeks to talk to his three hundred and sixty-five wives, or lay out any new plans for reforming the Armenians out of existence.Another thing is possible, and possible only to America, viz: The calling of an International Conference—say on the Island of Cyprus, which England holds as a pledge that she will see that necessary reforms shall be executed—to discuss the further existence of the power of the Porte.After the battle of Waterloo the Powers of Europe dealt with Napoleon as an enemy of the human race, of the peace and prosperity of every realm and notliking to take him off suddenly, they took him off to the island of St. Helena, where English ships and soldiers guarded him from all danger till the angel of death, black or white, called him before a higher tribunal.There would be some grim justice in the retribution if the Sultan should be exiled to the island of Cyprus where he could be supported without cost to Europe according to Article III. of the Annex to the Cyprus Convention. It is understood “that England will pay to the Porte whatever is the present excess of revenue over expenditure in the island.”One gunboat could guard the island, and Abdul-Hamid II., after whom there should be no III., could dwell in peaceful security, unless through his seared Islamic conscience some dreams of blood should come, or shrieks of outraged womanhood be heard above the waves of the resounding sea.It has been said that if the contents of the Blue Book on Armenia were known Lord Salisbury would be mobbed in the streets of London. TheChristian Herald, of New York, has also stated that a number of official documents has come into its possession which form such an indictment against the Turk as has never yet been framed in the Saxon tongue. “It may never be necessary to drag this shameful exhibit to the light, nor will it ever be done save as a last resort in the interest of justice and mercy.”As nothing which has yet been told has touched the springs of power in Europe or America, save to start a few rills of generosity for pity’s sake and a few tears which a dainty lace handkerchief could wipe away, it would seem as if justice to the Turk and mercy to the Armenians demanded that these official documents,whether in England or America, should be given to the light, if perchance at last the nations of Christendom might be roused to action before the country shall be utterly laid waste and the only service left us shall be to lay a cross upon the grave of Bleeding Armenia.Armenia has stood the only Christian race and nation in Asia, for more than a thousand years, despite the oft repeated threat, Islam or Death. At any hour, in any age its glorious roll of martyrs would have been filled up and its blood would have ceased to flow, if it had been willing to deny the Christ and swear allegiance to the false Prophet.The History of this Martyr Nation that has been written in tears and blood as thus rehearsed to you will, I trust, not have been told in vain. May the voice of an outraged humanity be heard above the din of all conflicting political alliances demanding mercy and justice for the perishing.I believe our indignation would burst into fiercest flame if these awful atrocities could but be realized; and to noble, free and Christian America might be the honor of leading in a glorious crusade for the deliverance of crushed, desolated and bleeding Armenia from the accursed rule of Islam.THE END.
CULLOM’S ARMENIAN RESOLUTION.
Mr. Cullom (Rep., Ill.) reported from the Senate committee on foreign relations the following Armenian resolution:“Whereas, The supplementary treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, between the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia contains the following provisions:“‘LXI.—The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out without further delay the ameliorations 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, and will superintend their application.’“‘LXII.—The Sublime Porte having expressed the wish to maintain the principle of religious liberty, to give it the widest scope, the contracting parties take note of this spontaneous declaration. In no part of the Ottoman Empire shall difference of religion be alleged against an individual as a ground for exclusion or incapacity as regards the discharge of civil and political rights, admission to the police service, functions and honors, and the exercise of the different professions and industries. All persons shall be admitted without distinction of religion to give evidence before the tribunals. Liberty and outward exercise of all forms of worship are assured to all, and no hindrance shall be offered either to hierarchial organization of the various communions or to their relations with theirspiritual chiefs. The right of official protection by the diplomatic and consular agents of the powers in Turkey is recognized both as regards the above mentioned persons and their religious, charitable, and other establishments in the holy places;’ and,“Whereas, The extent and object of the above cited provisions of said treaty are to place the Christian subjects of the Porte under the protection of the other signatories thereto, and to secure to such Christian subjects full liberty of religious worship and belief, the equal benefit of the laws, and all the privileges and immunities belonging to any subject of the Turkish empire; and,“Whereas, By said treaty the Christian powers parties thereto, having established under the consent of Turkey their right to accomplish and secure the above recited objects; and,“Whereas, The American people, in common with all Christian people everywhere, have beheld with horror the recent appalling outrages and massacres of which the Christian population of Turkey have been made the victims,“Resolved, by the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, That it is an imperative duty in the interests of humanity to express the earnest hope that the European concert brought about by the treaty referred to may speedily be given its just effects in such decisive measures as shall stay the hand of fanaticism and lawless violence and as shall secure to the unoffending Christians of the Turkish Empire all the rights belonging to them, both as men and as Christians and as beneficiaries of the explicit provisions of the treaty above recited.“Resolved, That the President be requested to communicate these resolutions to the governments of Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia.“Resolved, further, That the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, will support the President in the most vigorous action he may take for the protection and security of American citizens in Turkey, and to obtain redress for injuries committed on the persons or property of such citizens.”Mr. Cullom said the resolution was reported by the unanimous vote of the committee, and he desired immediate action.Mr. Gray (Dem., Del.) said he did not anticipate any objection to the resolution, but it was of such importance that there should be time for consideration of the terms of the resolution.Mr. Cullom acceded to this suggestion, giving notice that he would ask for action to-morrow.On the 24th, the resolutions were brought up and Senator Cullom took the floor and spoke of the serious conditions prevailing in Turkey. He said that he was appalled by the carnival of blood prevailing. A massacre of innocence, unparalleled for ages, had been perpetrated. The evidence of the bloody enormities was given by all classes and nationalities until it was beyond the slightest doubt. A Turkish army had bayonetted, robbed, murdered and flayed alive the people of Armenia. There was no war, but a pitiless, merciless tornado of ruin, bloodshed and death. The demon of fanaticism had been let loose. There was a responsibility somewhere. It did not rest with the slavish ruler of Turkey, the Sultan. Back of this were the disputes of the countries of the European alliance,seeking their territorial advantages. These countries were responsible. The Sultan was but a puppet in their hands. It was a matter of regret and embarrassment, continued Mr. Cullom, that the policy of the United States was such as to prevent the sending of a fleet to Turkish waters to put a stop to the bloody rule prevailing. But Europe had assumed the obligation of protection to Armenia. The people of the United States were intensely interested in seeing the obligation executed and the purpose of these resolutions was to plead with the greatest earnestness for the protection of Armenia. It was amazing to people of the United States to witness this appalling slaughter and at the same time to see the indifference of the Christian powers. There was a double obligation upon England and yet nothing had been done to stay the hand of the Sultan, except by fruitless diplomatic correspondence. No event of the centuries called so loudly to the civilized world as this slaughter in Turkey, the greatest, the Senator believed, in the history of the world.Then Senator Frye, of Maine, arose and addressing the chair began an address that electrified an audience which constantly grew until the galleries were crowded.In the midst of his speech with intensely dramatic earnestness and thrilling effect Senator Frye cried aloud: “I would gladly have this Congress send a memorial to Russia, saying, ‘Take Armenia under your protection, and the United States will stand by you with all its power and resources.’” The words are strong but the manner and emphasis of the orator cannot be described. Every Senator upon the floor gave expression of approval. Many of them clappedtheir hands. The people in the galleries broke forth in prolonged applause, which the voice of the Vice President found difficulty in checking.The scene was one of the most dramatic ever witnessed in the Senate. Again and again Senator Frye gave expression to aggressive views of a similar character, and from beginning to close of his address he received the closest attention and frequent applause. He declared that Great Britain is no friend of this country, nor of any country. Great Britain should have taken part in the suppression of the slaughters in Armenia, but she has not done so. The other countries of Europe are equally derelict.Mr. Frye declared the United States had never given its assent to the agreement of the European powers closing the Dardanelles, and proceeded with much vigor and earnestness to say that if necessary in order to protect American citizens he would order the American ships to sail up the Dardanelles, regardless of the European alliance, and when in front of Constantinople demand the protection of our people within the Sultan’s dominions. The resolutions were adopted with great applause without a dissenting vote.The action of our government has been energetic and effective in preserving the lives of the American missionaries in Anatolia. It has been conclusively shown that the Sultan has a considerate regard to an emphatic demand when backed by a battleship. It is a serious question whether the time has not come for the United States to rise to the higher question of privilege, and demand in the name of common humanity that the massacres shall cease and the Christian populations be protected according to the provisions of theBerlin Treaty, and the former promises of the Sublime Porte, “that no one shall be compelled to change his religion.”The latest reports from Constantinople asserted that there have been many thousands of forced conversions to Islam and that scores of Armenians who had accepted Islam but did not live up to all its requirements with sufficient zeal to please the Turks have been put to death since the wholesale massacres have ceased.How much longer can human nature stand the strain? What greater—greater outrages can be conceived of to rouse the Christian conscience, than have filled our ears for months? It was published in London as very important news that Sir Philip Currie was the first Ambassador invited this year to take “iftar” at the Palace. The audience lasted half an hour and was very cordial. “It is understood that the Sultan renewed his assurances regarding the execution of reforms.” Thereupon the English Government washes its hands in Pilate’s basin and rids itself of all responsibility.If we haven’t any treaty rights in this matter in God’s name let us assert the higher law of human rights—the right of every man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let us declare through Congress our judgment to the Porte that the hour has come for armed interference in the cause of outraged humanity.Mr. Chauncey M. Depew having been invited to deliver an address in Detroit, Mich., in the interest of Armenia, not being able to attend, wrote a letter to Gen. Alger, the chairman of the meeting, from which we quote as follows:“The air is full just now of wars and rumors of wars. The fighting blood of all the peoples of all civilized countries seems to be warmed to the battle point. But, while there is a great and dangerous excitement over a boundary line in Venezuela and a filibustering expedition in South Africa, the peoples of Europe and of the United States remain unmoved and undisturbed by the burnings, sackings, slaughter and every form of savage murder and lust perpetrated upon the Christians of Armenia simply because of their adherence to the faith of Christendom. I have seen congregations weep at the presentation of the tortures and massacres of Christian martyrs under Nero and Diocletian two thousand years ago. Where are the tears for Christian men tortured and killed, Christian women outraged and slain, Christian children tossed upon the bayonets of a savage soldiery yesterday, last week and last month, with the frightful assurance that they will continue to be slaughtered and outraged and tortured and tossed upon bayonets to-morrow, the day after and next month and for months to come?“Much as I believe in peace and its blessings, much as I detest war and its horrors, much as I feel that great provocations and the most imminent dangers to the liberty or the existence of the territories or the safety of the citizens of the country will justify an appeal to the arbitrament of arms, nevertheless I do feel that by a concert of action of Christian nations, of which the United States should be one, such a presentation should be made to the Sultan and his advisers as would stop these horrors and save our Christian brethren.”The case of Rev. Mr. Knapp, of Bitlis, who is to besent to Constantinople for trial on the charge of sedition, will afford a splendid occasion for a naval display. Let the question be opened up whether these treaty obligations of the Porte mean anything outside the reach of a warship. How can we maintain our traditions as the friend of the oppressed and downtrodden of earth if we let the brutal fanatical Sultan riot still in plunder, lust and blood?Did we care for the poor manacled negro undergoing the horrors of the Middle Passage? Did we have any interest in healing “the open sore of the world?” Did we once have spirit enough to demand of the Bey of Algiers the release of all Christian slaves, the abandonment of the piracy he had practiced for years, and compel him to forego the tribute exacted from all nations?And have we no voice, no heart, no sympathy, no power to demand that the Sultan shall stop his awful carnage of blood and prove before the bar of all Christendom by what right he any longer shall reign?We can do this because the Eastern Question does not exist for us. Higher questions of humanity demand the first consideration. We can interfere in defence of the lives and property of Christians in Turkey without violating the Monroe Doctrine and would merit the gratitude of Europe and the world, if the final decision should be that the Sultan had forfeited by the slaughter of one hundred thousand men, women and children with the fiendish accompaniments of outrage, violation, torture, all right to be treated as anything else than an enemy of humanity, and a wild beast to be caged and gazed upon with execration and horror.Are not the lives and happiness of a half millionArmenians left homeless and penniless and who still tremble with fear and terror at the sight of their relentless foes of more consequence than the boundary line of Venezuela? And yet for the location of an imaginary line the President’s message came perilously near being a threat of war.Had the President written as strong a message as that to the Sultan in November or December, 1895, and sent it with an escort of three battleships under the Stars and Stripes (stars for heroes, stripes for tyrants) demanding that the massacres cease at once or Yildiz Palace would be bombarded, the telegraph wires might have melted under the hot haste with which every Governor had been ordered to call off the hounds of hell from their battening on human blood. (I beg pardon of the hounds, hyenas, tigers and all other wild beasts for using their names in simile or metaphor to describe the swiftness, eagerness or ferocity of Kurd or Turk. It is only the poverty of language that makes such use allowable.)But there is another thing we can do and England has shown us how to do it, scores of times, if not hundreds of times, in her own history. The American Board has suffered the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the destruction of missionary property; American citizens have suffered great money losses and their work has been broken up in many quarters; many churches in all parts of Anatolia, built wholly or in part with contributions from America, have been laid in ruins; they have gone down in ashes and pillage under the trampling hordes of Islam; the cost of relief has been enormous and the extra cost to all the missionaries has been very great, to say nothing of all theindignities to which they have been subjected (and in British estimation outrage upon the dignity of an Englishman is placed at very high figures.) Now let these damages be tabulated at full value and the bill presented to the Sublime Porte payable on demand and let us land a few marines at Stamboul and open out a few port holes upon the Palace and wake Mr. Sultan to the fact that it is quite as serious an affair to pluck the feathers of the American eagle as it is to twist the tail of the British lion.As Mr. Talmage has said in his own inimitable style: “When the English lion and the Russian bear put their paws on that Turkey, the American eagle ought to put in its bill.”Seriously this demand ought to be made with such energy, decision and despatch with such a demand for adequate protection and guarantee of inviolability of domicile both as to churches, colleges, schools and private residences of missionaries with a demand for necessary papers for all the consuls we may choose to send into Anatolia, that the Sultan would have very little time for the next few weeks to talk to his three hundred and sixty-five wives, or lay out any new plans for reforming the Armenians out of existence.Another thing is possible, and possible only to America, viz: The calling of an International Conference—say on the Island of Cyprus, which England holds as a pledge that she will see that necessary reforms shall be executed—to discuss the further existence of the power of the Porte.After the battle of Waterloo the Powers of Europe dealt with Napoleon as an enemy of the human race, of the peace and prosperity of every realm and notliking to take him off suddenly, they took him off to the island of St. Helena, where English ships and soldiers guarded him from all danger till the angel of death, black or white, called him before a higher tribunal.There would be some grim justice in the retribution if the Sultan should be exiled to the island of Cyprus where he could be supported without cost to Europe according to Article III. of the Annex to the Cyprus Convention. It is understood “that England will pay to the Porte whatever is the present excess of revenue over expenditure in the island.”One gunboat could guard the island, and Abdul-Hamid II., after whom there should be no III., could dwell in peaceful security, unless through his seared Islamic conscience some dreams of blood should come, or shrieks of outraged womanhood be heard above the waves of the resounding sea.It has been said that if the contents of the Blue Book on Armenia were known Lord Salisbury would be mobbed in the streets of London. TheChristian Herald, of New York, has also stated that a number of official documents has come into its possession which form such an indictment against the Turk as has never yet been framed in the Saxon tongue. “It may never be necessary to drag this shameful exhibit to the light, nor will it ever be done save as a last resort in the interest of justice and mercy.”As nothing which has yet been told has touched the springs of power in Europe or America, save to start a few rills of generosity for pity’s sake and a few tears which a dainty lace handkerchief could wipe away, it would seem as if justice to the Turk and mercy to the Armenians demanded that these official documents,whether in England or America, should be given to the light, if perchance at last the nations of Christendom might be roused to action before the country shall be utterly laid waste and the only service left us shall be to lay a cross upon the grave of Bleeding Armenia.Armenia has stood the only Christian race and nation in Asia, for more than a thousand years, despite the oft repeated threat, Islam or Death. At any hour, in any age its glorious roll of martyrs would have been filled up and its blood would have ceased to flow, if it had been willing to deny the Christ and swear allegiance to the false Prophet.The History of this Martyr Nation that has been written in tears and blood as thus rehearsed to you will, I trust, not have been told in vain. May the voice of an outraged humanity be heard above the din of all conflicting political alliances demanding mercy and justice for the perishing.I believe our indignation would burst into fiercest flame if these awful atrocities could but be realized; and to noble, free and Christian America might be the honor of leading in a glorious crusade for the deliverance of crushed, desolated and bleeding Armenia from the accursed rule of Islam.THE END.
Mr. Cullom (Rep., Ill.) reported from the Senate committee on foreign relations the following Armenian resolution:
“Whereas, The supplementary treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, between the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia contains the following provisions:
“‘LXI.—The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out without further delay the ameliorations 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, and will superintend their application.’
“‘LXII.—The Sublime Porte having expressed the wish to maintain the principle of religious liberty, to give it the widest scope, the contracting parties take note of this spontaneous declaration. In no part of the Ottoman Empire shall difference of religion be alleged against an individual as a ground for exclusion or incapacity as regards the discharge of civil and political rights, admission to the police service, functions and honors, and the exercise of the different professions and industries. All persons shall be admitted without distinction of religion to give evidence before the tribunals. Liberty and outward exercise of all forms of worship are assured to all, and no hindrance shall be offered either to hierarchial organization of the various communions or to their relations with theirspiritual chiefs. The right of official protection by the diplomatic and consular agents of the powers in Turkey is recognized both as regards the above mentioned persons and their religious, charitable, and other establishments in the holy places;’ and,
“Whereas, The extent and object of the above cited provisions of said treaty are to place the Christian subjects of the Porte under the protection of the other signatories thereto, and to secure to such Christian subjects full liberty of religious worship and belief, the equal benefit of the laws, and all the privileges and immunities belonging to any subject of the Turkish empire; and,
“Whereas, By said treaty the Christian powers parties thereto, having established under the consent of Turkey their right to accomplish and secure the above recited objects; and,
“Whereas, The American people, in common with all Christian people everywhere, have beheld with horror the recent appalling outrages and massacres of which the Christian population of Turkey have been made the victims,
“Resolved, by the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, That it is an imperative duty in the interests of humanity to express the earnest hope that the European concert brought about by the treaty referred to may speedily be given its just effects in such decisive measures as shall stay the hand of fanaticism and lawless violence and as shall secure to the unoffending Christians of the Turkish Empire all the rights belonging to them, both as men and as Christians and as beneficiaries of the explicit provisions of the treaty above recited.
“Resolved, That the President be requested to communicate these resolutions to the governments of Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia.
“Resolved, further, That the Senate of the United States, the House of Representatives concurring, will support the President in the most vigorous action he may take for the protection and security of American citizens in Turkey, and to obtain redress for injuries committed on the persons or property of such citizens.”
Mr. Cullom said the resolution was reported by the unanimous vote of the committee, and he desired immediate action.
Mr. Gray (Dem., Del.) said he did not anticipate any objection to the resolution, but it was of such importance that there should be time for consideration of the terms of the resolution.
Mr. Cullom acceded to this suggestion, giving notice that he would ask for action to-morrow.
On the 24th, the resolutions were brought up and Senator Cullom took the floor and spoke of the serious conditions prevailing in Turkey. He said that he was appalled by the carnival of blood prevailing. A massacre of innocence, unparalleled for ages, had been perpetrated. The evidence of the bloody enormities was given by all classes and nationalities until it was beyond the slightest doubt. A Turkish army had bayonetted, robbed, murdered and flayed alive the people of Armenia. There was no war, but a pitiless, merciless tornado of ruin, bloodshed and death. The demon of fanaticism had been let loose. There was a responsibility somewhere. It did not rest with the slavish ruler of Turkey, the Sultan. Back of this were the disputes of the countries of the European alliance,seeking their territorial advantages. These countries were responsible. The Sultan was but a puppet in their hands. It was a matter of regret and embarrassment, continued Mr. Cullom, that the policy of the United States was such as to prevent the sending of a fleet to Turkish waters to put a stop to the bloody rule prevailing. But Europe had assumed the obligation of protection to Armenia. The people of the United States were intensely interested in seeing the obligation executed and the purpose of these resolutions was to plead with the greatest earnestness for the protection of Armenia. It was amazing to people of the United States to witness this appalling slaughter and at the same time to see the indifference of the Christian powers. There was a double obligation upon England and yet nothing had been done to stay the hand of the Sultan, except by fruitless diplomatic correspondence. No event of the centuries called so loudly to the civilized world as this slaughter in Turkey, the greatest, the Senator believed, in the history of the world.
Then Senator Frye, of Maine, arose and addressing the chair began an address that electrified an audience which constantly grew until the galleries were crowded.
In the midst of his speech with intensely dramatic earnestness and thrilling effect Senator Frye cried aloud: “I would gladly have this Congress send a memorial to Russia, saying, ‘Take Armenia under your protection, and the United States will stand by you with all its power and resources.’” The words are strong but the manner and emphasis of the orator cannot be described. Every Senator upon the floor gave expression of approval. Many of them clappedtheir hands. The people in the galleries broke forth in prolonged applause, which the voice of the Vice President found difficulty in checking.
The scene was one of the most dramatic ever witnessed in the Senate. Again and again Senator Frye gave expression to aggressive views of a similar character, and from beginning to close of his address he received the closest attention and frequent applause. He declared that Great Britain is no friend of this country, nor of any country. Great Britain should have taken part in the suppression of the slaughters in Armenia, but she has not done so. The other countries of Europe are equally derelict.
Mr. Frye declared the United States had never given its assent to the agreement of the European powers closing the Dardanelles, and proceeded with much vigor and earnestness to say that if necessary in order to protect American citizens he would order the American ships to sail up the Dardanelles, regardless of the European alliance, and when in front of Constantinople demand the protection of our people within the Sultan’s dominions. The resolutions were adopted with great applause without a dissenting vote.
The action of our government has been energetic and effective in preserving the lives of the American missionaries in Anatolia. It has been conclusively shown that the Sultan has a considerate regard to an emphatic demand when backed by a battleship. It is a serious question whether the time has not come for the United States to rise to the higher question of privilege, and demand in the name of common humanity that the massacres shall cease and the Christian populations be protected according to the provisions of theBerlin Treaty, and the former promises of the Sublime Porte, “that no one shall be compelled to change his religion.”
The latest reports from Constantinople asserted that there have been many thousands of forced conversions to Islam and that scores of Armenians who had accepted Islam but did not live up to all its requirements with sufficient zeal to please the Turks have been put to death since the wholesale massacres have ceased.
How much longer can human nature stand the strain? What greater—greater outrages can be conceived of to rouse the Christian conscience, than have filled our ears for months? It was published in London as very important news that Sir Philip Currie was the first Ambassador invited this year to take “iftar” at the Palace. The audience lasted half an hour and was very cordial. “It is understood that the Sultan renewed his assurances regarding the execution of reforms.” Thereupon the English Government washes its hands in Pilate’s basin and rids itself of all responsibility.
If we haven’t any treaty rights in this matter in God’s name let us assert the higher law of human rights—the right of every man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let us declare through Congress our judgment to the Porte that the hour has come for armed interference in the cause of outraged humanity.
Mr. Chauncey M. Depew having been invited to deliver an address in Detroit, Mich., in the interest of Armenia, not being able to attend, wrote a letter to Gen. Alger, the chairman of the meeting, from which we quote as follows:
“The air is full just now of wars and rumors of wars. The fighting blood of all the peoples of all civilized countries seems to be warmed to the battle point. But, while there is a great and dangerous excitement over a boundary line in Venezuela and a filibustering expedition in South Africa, the peoples of Europe and of the United States remain unmoved and undisturbed by the burnings, sackings, slaughter and every form of savage murder and lust perpetrated upon the Christians of Armenia simply because of their adherence to the faith of Christendom. I have seen congregations weep at the presentation of the tortures and massacres of Christian martyrs under Nero and Diocletian two thousand years ago. Where are the tears for Christian men tortured and killed, Christian women outraged and slain, Christian children tossed upon the bayonets of a savage soldiery yesterday, last week and last month, with the frightful assurance that they will continue to be slaughtered and outraged and tortured and tossed upon bayonets to-morrow, the day after and next month and for months to come?
“Much as I believe in peace and its blessings, much as I detest war and its horrors, much as I feel that great provocations and the most imminent dangers to the liberty or the existence of the territories or the safety of the citizens of the country will justify an appeal to the arbitrament of arms, nevertheless I do feel that by a concert of action of Christian nations, of which the United States should be one, such a presentation should be made to the Sultan and his advisers as would stop these horrors and save our Christian brethren.”
The case of Rev. Mr. Knapp, of Bitlis, who is to besent to Constantinople for trial on the charge of sedition, will afford a splendid occasion for a naval display. Let the question be opened up whether these treaty obligations of the Porte mean anything outside the reach of a warship. How can we maintain our traditions as the friend of the oppressed and downtrodden of earth if we let the brutal fanatical Sultan riot still in plunder, lust and blood?
Did we care for the poor manacled negro undergoing the horrors of the Middle Passage? Did we have any interest in healing “the open sore of the world?” Did we once have spirit enough to demand of the Bey of Algiers the release of all Christian slaves, the abandonment of the piracy he had practiced for years, and compel him to forego the tribute exacted from all nations?
And have we no voice, no heart, no sympathy, no power to demand that the Sultan shall stop his awful carnage of blood and prove before the bar of all Christendom by what right he any longer shall reign?
We can do this because the Eastern Question does not exist for us. Higher questions of humanity demand the first consideration. We can interfere in defence of the lives and property of Christians in Turkey without violating the Monroe Doctrine and would merit the gratitude of Europe and the world, if the final decision should be that the Sultan had forfeited by the slaughter of one hundred thousand men, women and children with the fiendish accompaniments of outrage, violation, torture, all right to be treated as anything else than an enemy of humanity, and a wild beast to be caged and gazed upon with execration and horror.
Are not the lives and happiness of a half millionArmenians left homeless and penniless and who still tremble with fear and terror at the sight of their relentless foes of more consequence than the boundary line of Venezuela? And yet for the location of an imaginary line the President’s message came perilously near being a threat of war.
Had the President written as strong a message as that to the Sultan in November or December, 1895, and sent it with an escort of three battleships under the Stars and Stripes (stars for heroes, stripes for tyrants) demanding that the massacres cease at once or Yildiz Palace would be bombarded, the telegraph wires might have melted under the hot haste with which every Governor had been ordered to call off the hounds of hell from their battening on human blood. (I beg pardon of the hounds, hyenas, tigers and all other wild beasts for using their names in simile or metaphor to describe the swiftness, eagerness or ferocity of Kurd or Turk. It is only the poverty of language that makes such use allowable.)
But there is another thing we can do and England has shown us how to do it, scores of times, if not hundreds of times, in her own history. The American Board has suffered the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the destruction of missionary property; American citizens have suffered great money losses and their work has been broken up in many quarters; many churches in all parts of Anatolia, built wholly or in part with contributions from America, have been laid in ruins; they have gone down in ashes and pillage under the trampling hordes of Islam; the cost of relief has been enormous and the extra cost to all the missionaries has been very great, to say nothing of all theindignities to which they have been subjected (and in British estimation outrage upon the dignity of an Englishman is placed at very high figures.) Now let these damages be tabulated at full value and the bill presented to the Sublime Porte payable on demand and let us land a few marines at Stamboul and open out a few port holes upon the Palace and wake Mr. Sultan to the fact that it is quite as serious an affair to pluck the feathers of the American eagle as it is to twist the tail of the British lion.
As Mr. Talmage has said in his own inimitable style: “When the English lion and the Russian bear put their paws on that Turkey, the American eagle ought to put in its bill.”
Seriously this demand ought to be made with such energy, decision and despatch with such a demand for adequate protection and guarantee of inviolability of domicile both as to churches, colleges, schools and private residences of missionaries with a demand for necessary papers for all the consuls we may choose to send into Anatolia, that the Sultan would have very little time for the next few weeks to talk to his three hundred and sixty-five wives, or lay out any new plans for reforming the Armenians out of existence.
Another thing is possible, and possible only to America, viz: The calling of an International Conference—say on the Island of Cyprus, which England holds as a pledge that she will see that necessary reforms shall be executed—to discuss the further existence of the power of the Porte.
After the battle of Waterloo the Powers of Europe dealt with Napoleon as an enemy of the human race, of the peace and prosperity of every realm and notliking to take him off suddenly, they took him off to the island of St. Helena, where English ships and soldiers guarded him from all danger till the angel of death, black or white, called him before a higher tribunal.
There would be some grim justice in the retribution if the Sultan should be exiled to the island of Cyprus where he could be supported without cost to Europe according to Article III. of the Annex to the Cyprus Convention. It is understood “that England will pay to the Porte whatever is the present excess of revenue over expenditure in the island.”
One gunboat could guard the island, and Abdul-Hamid II., after whom there should be no III., could dwell in peaceful security, unless through his seared Islamic conscience some dreams of blood should come, or shrieks of outraged womanhood be heard above the waves of the resounding sea.
It has been said that if the contents of the Blue Book on Armenia were known Lord Salisbury would be mobbed in the streets of London. TheChristian Herald, of New York, has also stated that a number of official documents has come into its possession which form such an indictment against the Turk as has never yet been framed in the Saxon tongue. “It may never be necessary to drag this shameful exhibit to the light, nor will it ever be done save as a last resort in the interest of justice and mercy.”
As nothing which has yet been told has touched the springs of power in Europe or America, save to start a few rills of generosity for pity’s sake and a few tears which a dainty lace handkerchief could wipe away, it would seem as if justice to the Turk and mercy to the Armenians demanded that these official documents,whether in England or America, should be given to the light, if perchance at last the nations of Christendom might be roused to action before the country shall be utterly laid waste and the only service left us shall be to lay a cross upon the grave of Bleeding Armenia.
Armenia has stood the only Christian race and nation in Asia, for more than a thousand years, despite the oft repeated threat, Islam or Death. At any hour, in any age its glorious roll of martyrs would have been filled up and its blood would have ceased to flow, if it had been willing to deny the Christ and swear allegiance to the false Prophet.
The History of this Martyr Nation that has been written in tears and blood as thus rehearsed to you will, I trust, not have been told in vain. May the voice of an outraged humanity be heard above the din of all conflicting political alliances demanding mercy and justice for the perishing.
I believe our indignation would burst into fiercest flame if these awful atrocities could but be realized; and to noble, free and Christian America might be the honor of leading in a glorious crusade for the deliverance of crushed, desolated and bleeding Armenia from the accursed rule of Islam.
THE END.