THE ARMENIAN HERALD CONTRIBUTORS' COLUMN FOR FEBRUARY NUMBER. Simon Menardos, Ph. D., L. L. D., is Mr. Miran Sevasly, who answers Dr. one of Greece's greatest savants, whose Menardos' article on Greece and Arme name is known in University centers of nia, has lectured and written extensively Europe. He is professor of philology at on Armenian questions in England and the Academy of Athens, and a university in the United States, and has contributed lecturer at Oxford University, England, to papers and magazines of both coun on Bysantine and Modern Greece. His tries on the Armenian and the Near inaugural lecture before that famous uni Eastern question. He has a profound versity, delivered in 1908, on the long and knowledge on Oriental affairs. instructive Odyssey of the Greek nation, is an illuminating document which at Mr. G. K. Gulbenkian, who writes to tests the universality of his vast erudi us from Wisconsin on the present peace tion. He is one of Armenia's best friends proposals, was born and brought up in and admirers. Thalas, Caesaria. He received his early education at Vard-Patrikian school in Mr. Toynbee continues in this number Thalas and later at Saint Krapet school his remarkable study on Turkey and we of Caesaria, where he received his na invite the reader's attention to the dis tional education. He was forced to come tinguished Englishman's strictures on to America in 1913 and has ever since the Panturanian movement in Turkey. that date devoted his spare hours to self- education and to the mastery of English Mr. Avedis Aharonian, whose delight language with the intention of attending ful impressions on St. Lazare we are the University of Chicago, where he in reproducing in this number, is one of the tends to study Political Economy. He most loved of contemporary authors, for has written in local papers from time to he has expressed the sorrow felt by the time, on Armenian questions. Armenian people, as no one else has. He is a Russian Armenian, born in 1866, in the county of Erivan. He studied and Mr. Hovhannes Toumanian, a contem taught at Etchmiatzin. The 1896 mass porary of Aharonian, one of the foremost acres and deportations gave him an op poets of Russian Armenia, was born in portunity to study the lives of the un 1869 in a village of Larga. With little fortunates and reproduce them in such schooling he has become, nevertheless, by vivid and heart-rending tones. Then he self-education, a perfect master of the went to Europe, received a broader edu poetic art. His delightful legends and cation and returned to the Caucasus and popular poems arc among the best in our continued his sorrowful novels and sto language. We hope, in the future to give ries. We shall take occasion later to our readers a fuller account of this bril present our readers with other examples liant poet of contemporary Armenian of his excellent literary art. literature. THE ARMENIAN HERALD VOLUME 1 FEBRUARY, 1918 NUMBER 3 THE ONLY SOLUTION OF THE ARMENIAN QUESTION Both President Wilson and Premier Lloyd George thought this an opportune moment to restate the peace terms of the Allies. On the 8th of January our President addressed Congress and specified in fourteen articles America's conditions for bringing the hostilities to a close. Article 12 refers to Turkey and includes Armenia. It runs as follows : "The Turkish portions of the present Otto man Empire should be assured a secured sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanent ly opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations un der international guarantees." Premier Lloyd George's statement, almost coeval with that made by President Wilson was somewhat more clear and categorical. He declared: "Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine are, in our judgment, entitled to recognition of their separate national conditions." Both these statements, however, need explanation and elucidation. They are not of a nature to satisfy the just claims and desiderata of the long-suffering Armenian people and the other nationalities concerned. They contain modes of expression and words replete with equivocation and uncertainty as to the fate of the nations whose future existence is in the balance. It seems like a rehearsal of the old political dogma of preserving the integrity of the so-called Ottoman Empire. But this is a credo which has gone to smash long ago. It has been tried again and again with no tangible results. While the President, in section 13, dilates upon the necessity,—and to this we entirely agree with him,—of erecting an independent Polish state, he does not appear to apply the same formula to that highly brilliant, progressive people, — to the Armenians,—who have shown themselves the best disseminators of Western and American civilization at an unheard-of sacrifice and through long sufferings for its very sake. We know and we recognize the lofty ideals and principles which animate our illustrious President in; THE ARMENIAN HERALD toward all oppressed and dependent nationalities. And we doubt not that when the psychological moment arrives for the final settlement of all pending questions at the coming congress as the result of this world war, he will recognize the just claims of the Armenians and through his accredited representatives will become their eloquent spokesman to secure for them not merely "security of life and autonomous develop ment," but also the creation of a free Armenian state extending- from the Caucasus and the Euxine to the Gulf of Alexandretta, to which terri tory they are entitled on historical and ethnological grounds and by reason of their past services to the cause of human progress and liberty. Under such conditions and institutions can they develop and prosper and become fit partners in democracy. There can be no durable peace in the Near East unless this doc trine were fully enforced. The creation of an Armenian state would be come the corner stone of a lasting settlement of a burning question which, through the vicissitudes of European diplomacy, has remained so far unsolved. It will be to the everlasting honor of this great Re public if, true to the traditions bequeathed by its glorious founders, its present statesmen should grapple with the Armenian problem, not by half measures, not by eliciting Turkish declarations of reform and of recognition of the principles of autonomy, which will remain a dead letter, but by courageously applying to that tottering Empire, the dis grace and shame of the universe, the healing process of anatomy. The process of anatomy has been applied in the past to other parte of the Turkish Empire with signal success. Greece, Servia, Roumania and Bulgaria owe their emancipation to its enforcement, and it cannot fail in the case of martyred Armenia. "Reforms" in Turkey are exotic plants which have never taken root. Bills of Rights, Charters, and Constitutions, issued by Sultans at the request of the civilized powers, are not worth the paper on which they are printed. There are volumes of them rotting in the archives of the Turkish Government since 1829. They each and all are promisory notes that have not been redeemed and were never intended to. The Armenians know this by experience. The treaties of San-Stefano and of Berlin of 1878, to say nothing of the Anglo-Turkish Convention of the same year, have remained to this day "paper reforms" and Turkish statesmen while affixing their signatures to these solemn international pacts, have undermined and set them systematically at nought and carried into effect the policy of extermin ating the very "subject" races entrusted to their care by the concert of Europe. Let us be clear and categorical, for we do not like mincing words when the destiny of peoples and the cause of civilizations and human THE ONLY SOLUTION OF THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 117 freedom are at stake. Turkish hegemony must be destroyed. The Caliphate at Constantinople is an anachronism and must disappear. Armenia, Arabia, Syria and Palestine, must be made free-sovereign states under the joint guarantee of America and the Entente Powers. This is the only solution of a long pending question. The interests of the Allies, the cause of truth and justice, and the political equilibrium in the Near East demand this. The great Anglo-Saxon orator, John Bright, we have been reminded of late, wrote to a friend in 1863, "I am not anxious to see the conspiracy of the States break down too rapidly I want no end of the war, and no compromise, till the Negro is made free beyond all chance of fail ure." This is our motto. To paraphrase the words of the illustrious tribune, "We want no end of the war, and no compromise with the as sassins of the Armenians, the Syrians, the Jews and the Greeks, until their military machine is destroyed, the rights of those small nations are vindicated and the world is really and effectively 'made safe for democ racy' beyond all chance of failure." GREECE AND ARMENIA BY SIMOS MENARDOS The periodicals, published in English and devoted to the Armenian cause, which I am reading attentively, leave on me an impression somewhat differ ent from that of some other foreign periodicals which I happen to peruse. I feel, nevertheless, that I am not altogether a stranger to this particular im pression; I am almost familiar with it. I can easily give an explanation for this.