THE DEATH-WARRANT OF ARMENIA.
PERHAPS the greatest, decidedly the worst, result of President Cleveland's sensational Message will be its effect on the fate of the Armenians. It is for them almost a death-warrant. It will furnish a full excuse for all who are desirous of silently deserting that unhappy people. A nation, it will be said, cannot do more than it can, and it is impossible for Great Britain, with such a menace from the West hanging over her, to break loose from the concert of Europe, or to risk the outbreak of a European war in which, owing to American hostility, she• might be powerless to interfere, or might even live to. find a widespread coalition threatening her scattered dominion on many points at once. The English section of opinion represented by the Pall Mall Gazette • will certainly argue thus, and a great majority of those who are careless what becomes of any people, if only they may trade with profit and live on the profit in podded luxury. Those statesmen, too, and they are many, who, while pitying the Armenians, shrink from heavy responsibilities, will be all on the same side ; and so will those who, esteeming themselves philanthropists, still look upon every war as an impediment to the realisation of a quasi - Socialistic ideal. There is another man, too, who is certain to take this view. The dreadful little being at Constantinople, who has decided to end the Armenian question within his dominion by extir- pating the Armenians, will see in the Message evidence that he is safe alike from England and from America. He knows that on this subject the enemy to be dreaded is Great Britain, and he has a vivid fear also of America, because she can act by sea, and is unencumbered by Euro- pean jealousies. He has yielded three times to Mr. Terrell's energetic, not to say audacious, remonstrances on behalf of Americans, and at this moment his officers are guarding jealously the houses of American missionaries. If they are hurt, thinks his Majesty, shells may fall ; and he has a horror of shells. If America and England quarrel, however, both restraints will be gone, and he will be able to carry out the second part of his policy to the bitter end. The first part has already been successful. He has cut down the tall poppies ; has slain or banished or "arrested" the whole upper class of Armenians outside Constantinople, paying the irregular cavalry and the roughs with their plundered property ; and he has now commenced the second. In all Armenian districts and in the villages scattered over Anatolia where Armenians exist, the same agents, the cavalry and the roughs, are now offering the wretched Armenians the alter- natives of conversion or immediate death. Hundreds have rejected the alternative, but the mass of the people, cowed by the massacres, hopeless of aid from Europe, and in terror of the bayonets and sabres in sight, agree to be circumcised, recite the profession of faith, and rise from their knees members of the dominant caste. No Mussulman will touch them again, and they are free once more to do anything except to relapse back to Christianity. That the Mahommedans, like the old Inquisitors, will not bear in any country, regarding apostasy as a wilful blasphemy committed against the light. Mahommedanism, too, has a stronger grip than we Westerns think, the landholders of Bosnia, the Albanians, and the Armenian Kurds, who were Christians, and the peasants of the slopes of the Mysore plateau, who were Hindoos, being among the most bigoted of all Mahemmedans. Take these instances from the correspondence of the Daily News :- " In Van, in Bitlis, in Kharput, Diarbekir, Erzeroum, Sivas, Trebizond, Adana, and Aleppo (that is to say, in the eight most important provinces of Turkey in Asia), there are countless vil- lages, districts, quarters, whose entire remnant population has embraced Islam, in order to escape certain death. Last week, for instance, from Terchan (in the Baiburt district of the Erzeronm vilayet), where 1,225 Armenians were killed in the villages, 322 survivors were induced by threats to accept Islam, and were publicly circumcised, among them being the acting Bishop. In the Kharput vilayet, where 53 villages were burned, their churches demolished, and 49 clergymen killed, the dead are to this day lying in the roads, there being none to bury them. Many of the surviving clergy have shaved their beards and become Moslems. In the village of Hussenik, close to Kharput, all the survivors of the massacre have accepted Islam. In the city of Kbarput itself, a number of the Armenian notables have become Moslems, while the largest Christian quarter of the town has adopted Islam en =tan in order to avoid slaughter. That slaughter was inevitable in the event of their refusal they had ample and terrible proof. For instance, a young Protestant pastor who had been educated in the American college fled during the massacre from the village of Hula Kent where was his cure, to take refuge in Kharput. With his young wife he managed to reach his mother's house in the city in safety. Next day—the massacre being, be it noted, at an end—a troop of soldiers forced the door, and, hauling him and his wife out of the house, called on them to accept Islam. They refused, and at once, first his wife and then Mr. Atlasian himself, were ruthlessly murdered."
The broad statement as to forcible conversions is con- firmed from other sources, and will, we doubt not, be found recorded in more general terms in the Consular reports. With England and America paralysed, the good ' work will go on more energetically still, and within a year the Sultan, triumphant over " united " Europe, will be able to record with exultation that there is now not only no disorder in Armenia, but no disaffection, all having accepted heartily the authority of the rightful Khalif. There is no hope of armed resistance, not even of such resistance as the Saxons offered to Charlemagne; and when there is no armed resistance, history tells only one tale. Religious persecution always fails unless the penalty of recusancy is death ; but then it usually succeeds.
Are we prepared, in fear of being attacked in Canada by Mr. Cleveland, to suffer this to go on ? We say dis- tinctly that the danger from America, be it great or small, ought to impel the British Government to more rapid and decisive action in the Near East, to a further and deter- mined effort to make terms with Russia, and, failing that, to a withdrawal from the European " concert," and an attempt to obtain by force a full and honest protection for all Armenians. If Russia agrees to act, the protection could be obtained at once, for there is no force which could resist a Russian advance into Armenia, the province would be held as a material guarantee that the persecution should cease, and it would cease at once, Mussulmans, even when most excited, admitting the right of submission to force majeure. We are unable to believe that Russia would reject such an opportunity of posing as the protector of the Eastern Christians; or to see why, under circumstances so desperate, we should hesitate to allow her to increase her territorial dominion. It would not add to her strength ; and if it did, it would be better to run the risks involved in that addition than to suffer a whole nation of clients to be extinguished for no other reason than that in reliance on our pledges they have ventured under intolerable tyranny to shriek aloud.
If this, which is at once the direct and the peaceful route, is really closed, if, that is, the men who govern Russia from cynical reasons of policy refuse our offer, we would have the British Government formally retreat from the European concert, and with such allies as it could find act decisively and at once against the Sultan, repeating the policy which in the case of Thessaly proved successful. That is, we would blockade Salonica, Smyrna, and Jeddah at the same time, and prepare from India for a descent upon the Euphrates. We believe that such a movement made in the interests of humanity would conciliate American opinion more than any amount of despatches ; and if it did not, and if the Civil War arrived, we should be in no weaker position than at present, while we should have the relief of feeling that we had fully done our duty. It is as the fulfil- ment of a duty alone that we present this matter to our countrymen. We have nothing whatever to gain in Armenia or in the Turkish Empire, and we have much to lose in taxation, in expenditure of energy, and in the advance of the Power which, till it acquires Constanti- nople, will make a policy of embarrassing us in India. But there are great and heavy duties which fall to the lot of the nations that pretend to Empire ; and if we are to continue to hold so immense a portion of the earth's surface we must rigidly perform them, even though we are already fatigued with our responsibilities. That English- men do not greatly love the Armenians, who are much too submissive to oppression, who areas saturated withthe spirit of bargaining as Greeks or Jews, or London shopkeepers, and who cannot when they write keep from vague senti- mentality, is but another reason for marching straight along the path we are bound to follow, and keeping our contract of eighteen years, that the Armenian people shall not be oppressed beyond what they can bear. No Euro- pean outside Germany denies that this wide limit has been passed by the Sultan, and therefore, we repeat, our obligation of contract to interfere effectually has actually arisen. Action rests with Lord Salisbury, whom nobody is opposing ; but that he should act, with Russia if pos- sible, but if not, then alone, we feel no doubt whatever.
Previous page
