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THE ARMENIAN HERALD

"The Interest of the Weakest is as Sa cred as the Interest of the Strongest." President Wilson. CONTRIBUTORS' COLUMN FOR NOVEMBER NUMBER

Mr. Chakmakjian's article, Justice to Armenian question. Let us hope that Armenia, written for this number, is an time has come for them to fulfill their expose of Armenia's claims to freedom pledge by granting Armenia full inde and independence. It is quite opportune pendence. It gives us much pleasure to at this phase of the world's politics, reproduce at her request her article, when the fate of the oppressed national Turkey Must Die, which was pub ities are to be finally determined and lished in The Japan Gazette, Sept 26, solved in their favor. Mr. Chakmakjian 1918. as a student of Armenian history is qualified to speak with authority. Mr. Maynard Williams' article, Baku— Pan-Turanian Hub, restates in strong Mbs. Bertha S. Papazian's first chap terms the splendid resistance that the ter of her remarkable and eloquent study Armenians put up in the Caucasus of The Tragedy Armenia appears in of against the Tartars and the Turks in this number. The other chapters will the struggles at Baku. We are pub follow. They form a copyrighted book, lishing this article with the kind per and are published here by permission mission of the American Asiatic As of the Pilgrim Press. The book con sociation and the Doubleday, Page 4 based on stitutes a striking appeal, in Company. disputable arguments and facts, of the justice of the Armenian claim to inde pendence. It should be in the hands of Tigrane Yergate's epilogue of Can all well wishers of Armenia, as the Turkey Live? appears in our present surest key to the solution of the Arme number. His prophesy, made more than nian problem. twenty years ago, that the Turkish mili tarism under the guidance of Prussian Mrs. Diana Apcak holds a prominent officers will complete the destruction of place in the pantheon of living Arme the forces of the Near Eastern Christen nian writers. For years she has been dom opposed to Turkish barbarism, has an eloquent spokesman of martyred almost been fulfilled. The study deserves Armenia in the Far Eastern press, and not only greater recognition of the has contributed to the literature of the weight of the author's arguments but Armenian cause in never to be forgot also a more profound study of the con ten pages. Frank, outspoken, gifted siderations put forward by him in with a temperament, which does not per fathoming the causes of the Turkish de mit of subterfuges or circumlocutions, cay. she has put the case of Armenia on a high pedestal, and has won for it the M. Rene Pinon, whose illuminating work, applause of mankind. Her last studies on Near Eastern affairs we in The Crucifixion of Armenia on the tend to publish in The Armenian Herald, the Altar of Imperialism, is perhaps deals in this number with the Future of most serious indictment that has been Armenia, Persia, and Russia. It is a brought by any living writer against birds-eye view of the Persian situation the impotency of the great powers of drawn by the master hand of one of Europe for their failure to solve the France's most erudite authors. CONTRIBUTORS' COLUMN FOR NOVEMBER NUMBER

ARMENIAN FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE.

The old world is dead and a new world will emerge from the terrible conflagration which has been devastating the world for the last four years—a world in which democracy will be safe and the oppressed and dependent nationalities will be restored to their lost heritage- The case of Armenia is one of the problems that the Peace Congress to be convened at Versailles will have to settle in accordance with the principles laid down in President Wilson's Mt. Vernon address, and with the declared policy of the allied powers that it is their intention to es tablish governments and administrations deriving their authority from the free choice of the native populations. No question is properly set tled unless it be disposed of in a manner entirely satisfactory to the in terested parties. The Armenian question has been discussed for the last fifty years. It has been the subject of numbers of ambassadorial re ports. It was thrashed out at the Berlin Congress, but so far it has received no solution. Up to the entry of Turkey into the present war, European diplomacy had made no serious attempt to rescue Armenia from her sufferings and ills, or to challenge the excesses, persecutions and massacres of the Turkish executioners. The doctrine of the European equilibrium, and the so-called necessity of upholding the integrity of the Ottoman Em pire, have been invoked as the principal causes which have prevented the great powers of Europe from fulfilling their elementary duties to ward the Armenians in the past. The result has been, as we know, that Turkey was practically allowed carte blanche to carry on her tra ditional work of slaughter, devastation, and plunder, without let or hindrance. The capitulation, however, of Turkey, the disruption of Russia, and the new situation created by reason of the victorious ending of this war, impose obligations on the allied powers and the United States which they cannot shirk, or in any way avoid, if they wish to be true to their oft-proclaimed declarations regarding Armenia. The era of reforms has passed away. Turkey cannot be patched up by the introduction of reforms in what remains of the Turkish Empire. That remedy must 619 620 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

not be tried, for what is needed in the Turkish Empire is not reform but amputation. Arabia has already proclaimed her independence, and an Arabian state will be a reality shortly. Mesopotamia is to be liber ated completely from the Turkish yoke. Palestine will become a free Jewish state. Syria will receive an administration free from the Turk ish curse, and the districts Greek in population of Ionia are about to be brought into union with their mother country, Greece. The Turks should be relegated to the interior of Asia Minor, a country covering an area of about three hundred thousand square kilometers, and Armenia should receive the benefits of entire freedom and national independence. Armenia, like Poland, claims to be one and indivisible, and the future Armenian state should by right include Russian, Persian and Turkish Armenia, from the Caucasus to the Straits of Alexandretta. To this territory Armenia is entitled on historical and ethnological grounds, and it is indispensable that the Cilician provinces of Armenia bordering on the Gulfof Alexandrettashouldbe included in Armenian Irredenta, CUicia was an independent Armenian state until the end of the 14th century. Therein is situated Adana, where the massacres of 1909 took place, and there, in the fastnesses of the Taurus, the Armenians held their own against Turkish barbarism for centuries, and in the course of the 19th century fought heroically against immense Turkish forces. The Arme nians do not claim any territory which is not their own, nor can they accept any solution which does not vouchsafe to them an independence such as Greece, Servia and Roumania possesses. Massacres and deportations do not constitute rights for the Turkish executioners of the Armenian race. The number of Armenians has been reduced by reason of these abominations, but there are at least three millions of Armenians left for the territory to which the survivors of the Armenian holocaust are entitled. Greece at the time of her emanci pation, in 1829, hardly contained six hundred thousand people. Never theless, Europe recognized Greek independence, and the Battle of Navarino sealed the death of Turkish domination in Hellas, whose pop ulation now has more than quadrupled. It will be the same of Armenia if she be allowed to develop and breathe freely as a sovereign independ ent state. The thirteen states of America which revolted against Great Britain at the time of their liberation did not contain more than four million people, and they covered a territory far greater in extent tham would the future Armenian state. The argument that the Armenian population has been depleted is a very loose one. To accept the same and to make it weigh in the balanc* against Armenia's claim, would be to put a premium on crime and to legitimatize the deportations and the ruthless slaughter by the Turk» of the Armenians during these last thirty years, culminating m th* JUSTICE TO ARMENIA 621 massacres and deportations of 1915 and 1916. And let us record here that Armenia, by reason of her civilization in the East, her immeasur able sacrifices, especially her military assistance to the allied cause, in the Caucasus, in Palestine, and in France —to which expression is given in the correspondence exchanged between Lord Cecil and Lord Bryce published in our October issue—is entitled to complete restoration of her national independence. Through the ages her spiritual and patriotic leaders have kept alive and alight the flame of national consciousness and self-government, despite successive dominations and persecutions, culminating in the policy of extermination enforced by the Old and Young Turkish governments. Her political and military struggles dur ing these last thirty years against Turkish barbarism are ample cre dentials for her to present to the future Peace Congress. The found ing of the diminutive republic of Ararat is a small beginning for national government for the whole of Armenia, from the Caucasus, through Cilicia, to the Mediterranean ; but we take occasion to raise our voice and protest against schemes which are being advocated by certain elements in this country which have for their object to preserve Turkey as a unit , and to defeat the imperishable rights of the Armenians to freedom and independence. Such schemes are, we submit, with due respect to those who propound them, a disgrace against American civilization and a violation of the rights of nations, detrimental to the cause of the Allies and to the United States, and unworthy of the noble traditions be queathed to us by the founders and continuators of this great republic

JUSTICE TO ARMENIA

By H. H. CHAKMAKJIAN

The allied governments have, during this great war, on more than one occasion solemnly pledged themselves to do justice to Armenia. Before the war, to this unhappy land, the perpetual victim of the principle of a balance of powers, justice was many times promised by the great powers, but every time the promise was not only not carried out but it also brought a new tragedy. The war, the outcome of the evolution of de mocracy, with the victory of a just cause, is opening a new epoch in the history of mankind. With the complete downfall of autocracy and feudalism every hindrance to the execution of justice will be eliminated. 624 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

No loyal citizen of any allied nation can approve of such reasoning. Such arguments might well come from German propagandists, in order to discredit the war aims of the allied nations, and they should not be tolerated. Fortunately, official and authoritative statements upon the just claims of Armenia are clear; freedom will come to Armenians after the vic torious conclusion of this war, fought for the cause of humanity. In dependence will be granted to Armenia, and her historical boundaries will be modernized with justice to her and to her neighbors, and as a security for the peace of the world. The geographical limits of ancient Armenia were subject to frequent variations, but in spite of that fact certain lines have kept definite na tional features. The modern boundaries of Armenia were recognized by Europe when the six great powers formulated the Memorandum of May, 1895, and forced Abdul Hamid to accept the plans of Armenian reforms in the prescribed territories, —plans which ended in the massacre of three hundred thousand Armenians. Almost the same boundaries were outlined when in 1913, after the Balkan War, Russia, Germany, and Turkey agreed upon a plan for a semi-autonomous Armenia. The only addition to those boundaries will be the northern part of Armenia which was under the Russian government, but which free Russia, true to the principles of the revolution, will gladly offer the Armenian districts to the regenerated nation. The Kur River was, from times immemorial, the limit of Northern Armenia, and today it would serve as a natural boundary from the Cas pian Sea to a point on the Tiflis-Bakou railroad, from which point the line should turn toward the west and continue as far as just north of Ardahan. In ancient times the Kur line would run as far as just south of Tiflis and from there, continuing almost in a straight line toward the west, would extend to Batoum. But the Armenians desire peace and friendship between themselves and their historic neighbors, the Georgians, who have a strong claim upon that Black Sea port which is essential to their prosperity. On account of this neighborly considera tion the boundary line should turn from Ardahan toward the southwest and reach the Black Sea somewhere between Batoum and Trebizond. The exact point might be decided by the Armenians and the Georgians, assisted by an international committee. Trebizond is bound to be the important seaport of Northern Armenia. The sea coast should continue as far west as the mouth of the Alis River (Kezel Irmak), which name was given by the Armenians on their way from the West toward the East, more than seven centuries before Christ. The same river should be the western boundary as far as the turning point, west of Caesarea ; from there the line should take a straight southerly course to Selevkea | JUSTICE TO ARMENIA 625 on the Mediterranean Sea. It was in this latter city that the Armenians welcomed Frederick Barbarossa, the great crusader, who later lost his life while crossing the river Calucadnus, not far from the town. From Alexandretta (Iskenderoun) the southern boundary should follow an easterly line as far as Persia, somewhere between Revantouz and Ourmia. South of this line, north and east of Mousoul, would be a suit able country for the Kurds. The eastern boundary of Armenia should include Persian Armenia, the country of Azerbaijan as far as the Cas pian Sea. The Armenians have a just claim to their country within its historical limits, and the granting of it will be a righteous compensation for the injuries and atrocities which they have suffered during long cen turies for the cause of civilization. Europe has a long standing debt to pay Armenia, in support of which history is an eloquent witness. Now victorious democracy has a splendid opportunity to pay the debt and add thereby to its own glory. Every inch of the country within these boundaries has its history, tradition, its epic, and poetry. Most of them are sad, and yet they are the sacred, the beloved inheritance of the old days over which Armenian mothers have shed tears, and, with sweet inspiration, have sung lulla bies to their little ones. Every river or brooklet, every lake or pond has a deep significance in the mind of every Armenian; every mountain or hill has a mystic eloquence, a personality and attachment; every town or village has a story of deeds and sacrifices to tell. After long centuries of struggle and suffering Armenians are still hopeful of regaining their native land, and, cherishing that hope, they have never thought of part ing with the land they love. If they are forced to leave it temporarily, they will return to it at the earliest opportunity. Four times, during this war, the Russian army played a trick of retreat with awful conse quences to the Armenians, and each time many of the remaining refu gees, following the army, returned to their devastated homes. When the Armenians enjoy the blessings of freedom within these boundaries they will prosper and will advance the cause of civilization. They not only will progress and preserve peace in the Near East, but they will also be a strong factor in making "the world safe for democracy." \ THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA: A BRIEF STUDY AND INTERPRETATON.

BY BERTHA S. PAPAZIAN

PAGAN DAYS.

Although these are the days of action rather than of reflection; al though the hurried massing of millions of men and of billions of dol lars, the building of immense docks and factories and railroads and hos pitals and camps, of fleet upon fleet for sea and sky, the marshaling of labor, the organizing of huge civilian populations, the endless minutiae of war, are taxing all the energies of mankind to the uttermost, there is, at the same time, an intensified thinking going on, often sub-con scious, but more incisive and compelling than any we have experienced in many a long year. The ethical and intellectual laws about which we had been feebly and abstractedly debating have suddenly become as im periously real, as tangibly evident, as any demonstration in mathematics or physics. We know that the war we are witnessing, in spite of its overwhelming material manifestations, is nothing other than an im mense moral upheaval: that it is the innermost become outermost; the word made flesh. And we are forced to recognize the irresistible power of Spiritual Law. It is less difficult now than formerly to present the claims of far-away Armenia. As sharers in the same peril we are more ready to listen and consider. We dare not, as before, flee with the cry upon our lips, —"This is too sad to talk about." We are eager to hear all. "The greatest tragedy in all human history" draws more and more near to us. Es pecially when we realize, as more and more we are coming to do, that this age-long agony from even the contemplation of which the selfish world has shrunk, typifies in little the present tremendous conflict be tween Darkness and Light, and that it is the substratum and occasion, in a very real though indirect and negative way, of the world conflict. To the tragedy of tragedies, only the Master Craftsman could have designed such a climax as this. A small and distant people, pitifully

626 THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 627

praying in the name of Liberty and Christianity for redemption from the foe of both, appealing in the midst of massacre and devastation to its treaty rights,—What diplomat would believe that the neglect to heed could entail such stupendous consequences ? What sovereign could fore see that as a result of mere callous disregard of moral and treaty obliga tions, a new sanction would be given to international treachery, a new impetus to the caims of tyranny; that the Kaiser would seize the op portunity to make common cause with the Sultan; that bargains would be struck to neutralize the peril of international interference, rail road concessions balancing against murdered human beings, and banking concessions, against outraged womanhood, pillage, and arson; ithat pan-Islamic, pan-Turanian scheme would emerge into prospect, flat tered by the encouragement of a European government which was in time to reject all Christian and democratic philosophy and to unite its creed of ruthlessness and brute force to that of the Turk, the ancient arch-enemy of all that we hold dear? But the record is before us, and it is only in the light of the world conflagration that we can learn its full import. All poetic justice seems blind when compared with the judgment which this light reveals. One reads in profound sorrow mingled with admiration for the heroic vic tims of this international bad faith, of these unscrupulous imperial de signs, and with shame and reprobation in differing degree for the other protagonists. And, as the climax approaches, and stern retributive Justice enters and the fateful lightnings of her terrible swift sword en- flame the whole world, even then the soul can but approve the awful sentence and exclaim : "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!" One despairs of being able to summon the idea in all the force of its beauty and terror. One longs for images but none come except those, complex and majestic, which are created only through long contempla tion of this magnificent and dolorous history. One is the more em barrassed in the task because since those dread years of '95, '96, and '09, when hundreds of thousands of defenceless Armenian men, women, and children, were slaughtered in cold blood and with a complete im punity by the Turkish overlords, —while responsible Europe looked passively on, and even humane but un-committed America seemed un able to interfere —the world has accepted Armenia as a static symbol of suffering. It has seen in her merely a figure with hands outstretched in useless supplication, and, except for the coin which it has given her for bread, it has passed on without other thought or reaction. To envisage the tragedy as involving in its course the flow of the blood of all nations, is, therefore, not only to give it its true political and 628 THE ARMENIAN HERALD moral bearing, but to reveal something of its own inherent Titanic grandeur. When the Editor of The World's Work, prefacing Ambassa dor Morgenthau's series of articles on Two Years of War in Turkey, says: "Americans who wish to know why their sons are being trans formed into soldiers can look to this narrative of events in the mina- retted city on the Bosphorus," he indicates the power and sweep of the forces that have been there at work. With "Berlin to Bagdad" in mind as the slogan of the projected pan-Germania, the failure of the Powers to fulfill their treaty obligations to Armenia in the years '95 and '96, wha the call most emphatically came for the decent solution of the Near Eastern Question, becomes clearly an evasion of duty the most fate-laden in all history. And the aspirations and unaided struggles of Armenia assume, accordingly, a majesty and a significance absolutely unsurpassed. But, unfortunately, both for us of America, and for the West in gen eral, as well as for the Armenians themselves, the spiritual glories of this great national drama have been all but hidden from foreigners, except for the few, who, either because of direct contact with this peo ple or some other incentive, have been led especially to that rich field of research which has to do with their extraordinary history. For in modern universal history they do not appear, their political identity hav ing become lost in that of their ultimate conqueror. And as the Turk himself, until about the middle of the last century, was virtually ostra cized from European civilization, the Armenians passed into an oblivioi only the more complete. When, therefore, toward the end of the nine teenth century, they appeared before the world as the victims of cruel ties and injustices indescribable and unredressed, it is not to be won dered at, perhaps, that their name should come to be regarded chiefly as one of most shocking hopelessness and dread. But this indicated a generally thoughtless habit of mind. A pro longed national ordeal implies a great national soul, and ought in itself to have suggested the splendidly heroic calibre of the people and of their antecedent history. Not only as the victims of colossal wrongs, but as s force singularly noble and dynamic ought we to know this race, which today after a history, one of the very most ancient, and in spite of oppressions and persecutions which would either have tamed or anni hilated one of less resolute fibre, is still, wherever possible, lavishing its remaining strength on behalf of an emancipated world ! We cannot find in history a parallel to this story. We turn to art for terms of comparison and find none except in the tragic Greek concept of Prometheus chained to the rocks and torn by vultures for having THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA brought light to the world. Even the artistic imagination has never compassed so extended a panorama of undying aspiration and obstinate disaster. How inadequate is Polyeucte, Corneille's suggestive embodi ment of the purely religious side of the struggle! And yet it is to lit erary tragedy —to that of classic Greece —that the mind must hark back if it would find anywhere, though on an immeasurably slighter scale, a story told with an equally perfect symmetry, an equal concen tration of interest, a terror and pity equally progressive. For dramatic time, the tragedy is set amid the rolling centuries. For place, we have a stage unsurpassed in its grandeur and historic associa tion. And for chief protagonists, an Aryan people, independent, inquir ing, and original of spirit, adventurous, practical, and liberty-loving, whom fate leads beyond the frontiers of Europe, and their brothers in blood, to where the mighty headland of Asia is washed by the Black and Caspian seas. Over twenty-five hundred years ago the actors entered the stage, little dreaming that they were treading soil destined to become "the most coveted highway of the world." Before them as they marched eastward from Thrace, Thessaly, Phrygia, stood the great pinnacle of Ararat, yet to become a "memorial shaft" to millions of their martyred descendants. Snow-capped, towering seventeen thousand feet into the sky it stood, companioned by its sister peaks. In the general region were other moun tains, among them the snow-crowned Varag. Encircled by some of these, upon the shoulders of the tableland, was the intensely blue salt lake of Van; and breaking from the mountain and hill sides were beau tiful fountains and streams, and great rivers, two of which, the Tigris (ancient Hiddekel) , and the Euphrates, Jewish history tells us, bordered the Garden of Eden. But the legend of Adam and Eve, and of the Creator who walked in the Garden; the ark of Noah upon the peak of Ararat; the sojourn of Noah and his companions for some time upon the crest of Subhan Dagh, —a strictly Armenian legend, — these were to play their part in kindling patriotic imagination only at a later day. The first step was to maintain tribal integrity against the encroachments of surrounding despots. And, — characteristically, the first episode in the national drama, it comes_to us in a burst of idealized patriotic glory, —is the victory of the freedom- loving Haik, the founder of the first Armenian dynasty, over the Assy rian tyrant, Bel. A succession of many centuries followed marked by the vicissitudes which are the usual lot of a border state, and during which indigenous tribes evidently became fused with the race of Haik, their great Aryan 630 THE ARMENIAN HERALD conqueror and chief. More and more extended grew the kingdom wi der a long line of kings of this Haikean dynasty until toward the be ginning of the second dynasty, the Arshagoonian, under Tigranes the Great, it included Media, Assyria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia. To conflicts with Assyria, Babylonia, Media, Parthia, and Persia had been added con flicts with Macedonia and Rome. Again and again we see these mightj forces victorious, but only partially so. For the Armenians, though frequently overpowered, were never overcome. By statecraft, and by their remarkable power of assimilating their enemies no less than by force of arms, they continued to maintain their race and its traditions against all odds. Some innate and irresistible moral stamina enabled them to draw to their cause even the Persian satraps, Parthian princes, and Roman and Seleucian governors who at times ruled over them. Un der such suzerainty, they often gathered strength to rise against the old or against some new oppressor, who, bent upon the conquest of Europe or of Asia, swept the country from east to west, or from west to east. But war with Rome, instigated, during a pediod of unprecedented strength and glory, by the Parthian King, Mithradates, the father-in- law of Tigranes; wars between Parthia and Rome and between Rome and Persia were to reduce still further the Armenian dominion to the intolerable position of a strictly buffer state. It became a perpetual battle ground, now tributary to Rome, now to Parthia, but even when thus tributary, Armenian leaders of royal and ancient clans or houses, the Ardzrounians, the Pagratians, the Seunians and others, struggling independently both against their would-be masters and against outlying states, succeeded not only maintaining the standard of Armenian inde pendence, but even in establishing new principalities. And, as the poli tical power waned, the national character became more and more clearly defined and the longing for a truly national life more intense.

In the kaleidoscopic pageant of these turbulent centuries, the stage is peopled with mighty historic figures. Confronting Haik, Aram, Ardas- hes, Ara, Tigranes and the other Armenian kings, are Bel, Tiglath- Pileser, Sardanapalus, Semiramis, Cyrus, Darius, Alexander the Great Mithridates, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Mark Antony. Abroad, we see the Armenian king and his followers at the siege of Troy, on the side of Priam, or at Nineveh, at its fall ; or, in less fortunate days, against a background of torches and garlands, we see him kneeling —a vassal king—to receive the crown from Nero in the area before the palace at Rome ; or we see him captive, fettered with golden chains, a token of his own triumph which Mark Antony sent to Cleopatra. THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 6*1

In the politico-social life of this extended period, we catch glimpses of other dramatic figures, as prisoner of war, "a noble Hebrew prince Sempad by name," who affiliated himself with his conquerors, and be came the founder of one of the royal households; the sons of Sennacherib who, after having assassinated their imperial father, "es caped into the land of Armenia," were received by the court and mar ried Armenian princesses; and Hannibal, who fleeing from the ven geance of Rome, took refuge first with Antiochus of Seleucia, and then with Ardashes of Armenia for whom he drew the plan of the city of Ardashat. Fortified castles of oriental splendor, citadels, towered walls, laden caravans and river argosies, market places, caravansaries, temples to the gods —to those of Persia and Greece and other foreign countries as well as to those of Armenia, making up the shifting background of the scenes. For both through the foreign conquests imposed upon her, and through her own commercial genius, the nation is in contact with and is at school to the world. The costumes of the characters are vivid; especially do we hear of this during the reign of Tigranes, when the dress of the period is described as "beautiful enough to transform even the most ugly." This, of course, refers to that of the favored classes, who also, men as well as women, wore heavy gold chains and necklaces and "rings of gold in their ears." The king wears, now, a wreath of pearls, or a crown set with immense rubies, placed upon his head by one of his own Pagratian nobles, who alone enjoyed this privilege, or again, the crown and purple of Rome, as in the days of Antoninus Pius, who sent these tokens of royalty to the Armenian king by special embassy. Even the pages of the royal households wear "rich vestments." There is much use of fur. The costumes of the military officers and soldiery add to the color of the picture. In the days of Herodotus "their arms are like those of the Phrygians." They wear helmets of laced leather and carry spears and shields. Later we see them in iron armor, charging magnifi cently upon the horses for which their country was famous, and which enabled the Armenian soldiery to become "the best cavalry in the world." In the temple schools, religious and ritualistic lore is taught, and on the tablets in the temple libraries are the archives of priest and king for the enlightenment of patriot and scholar. A multitude of cults claim each its votaries. As the people come under the sway now of Macedonia, now of Rome, now of Persia, each tries to impose upon them her own particular culture. The reflective and cosmopolitan mind of the race is turned upon the thought of each, even while the basic allegiance to 632 THE ARMENIAN HERALD national tradition is being fostered popularly by the bards—especially those of Coghtn, a locality famous alike for its minstrels and its vineyards —who go from castle to castle and from festival to festival singing the cosmic myth of the old Armenian sun-god, Vahakn, or the more human romances of love and battle which marked the lives of the ancient kings. From the lips of these singers the people learn of the frightful dragons slain by the early heroes, —the dragon being merely a symbol for mighty enemy nations. They hear, too, of the generous largess of their own kings in songs which recount glowingly that it "rained gold when Ardashes became King," and that the "pearls fell in showers when Queen Satenik became a bride." Banquets, too, in honor of the gods, great festival days which bring the people to the groves of sacred poplars by the leaves of which the priests divine; or to the banks of the rivers where white horses and cattle are offered to the waves; to the fetes champetres on Navasard, the New Year, when libations are poured to Aramazd ; or to the temples where flocks of doves are loosed and roses strewn in honor of the god dess Anahit,—all these festivals and ceremonials serve to unite the people, to develop the national consciousness, to engender what Tchoban- ian calls "the love of the race for itself." But the racial soul, though preserved and differentiated through cen turies of struggle and at the cost of immense suffering, is none the less, by the first century of our era, seemingly in solution. Natural inclina tion as well as force of circumstances are drawing the people uncon sciously but irresistibly toward the culture of the Romans, and of the Greeks, their one-time congeners of Thrace and Thessaly. But Persia, their formidable eastern neighbor, has also a noble culture and an in flexible will to conquer, and it would seem unavoidable, and therefore the part of wisdom to yield much to her. A higher destiny, however, awaited the Armenians. Neither to the Romans nor to the Persians were they to surrender their spiritual ident ity. The vision of a new order was to take possession of their souls — an order differing religiously, socially, and politically from any that had preceded it. It was a moment fraught with worlds of how much sig nificance and peril, when, at the dawn of the Christian era, politically in vassalage to Pagan powers, the race turned its eyes toward Judea.

(To Be Continued) "TURKEY MUST DIE

By DIANA AGABE6 APCAR

If this present frightful war is being fought, as the optimists proclaim and would have us hope and believe, to usher into our world an era of political and international justice which will bestow on all enslaved peo ples national freedom, and uphold their right to self-determination and to choose the government under which they shall live ; if nations and peoples are no more to be bartered as cattle, and the boundaries of ter ritories must be fixed according to ethnographic lines ; if, as a new cru sade preaches, it has become necessary to this end that the Austrian Empire should be dismembered, so as to allow the peoples dominated by Austrian autocracy to develop their own national and political existence ; then how much more has it become necessary that the Ottoman Empire should be dismembered?? This is a question that should be asked with two interrogative points instead of one. If the name "Austria" is a Crime as we are now being informed, in the interests of international justice, then who can deny that the name "Turkey" is the Crime of Crimes ? For great as have been the crimes of the Austrian Government against the enslaved peoples oppressed under Austrian domination they pale before the crimes of the Turkish gov ernment against the enslaved peoples oppressed under Turkish domina tion. Let us now consider, basing our consideration on facts what the Ottoman Empire means and what it has meant through the centuries.

NO REAL TURKEY The countries that now constitute what remains of the Ottoman Em pire are not Turkish and there are no Turkish portions ol the Ottoman Empire. This is a fact which cannot be too forcibly and too clearly em phasized. The fatherland of the Turks is Turkestan in Central Asia. From their original home the Turks encroached on the soil of other na tions, and spread their conquests from Asia Minor to Europe, from south-west Asia to northern Africa. In the march of their conquests, the Turks ravaged, desolated and destroyed. In possession of their con quests they have never constructed or built, but they have only con

633 634 t THE ARMENIAN HERALD

tinued to ravage, desolate and destroy. By force they took possession of the wealth and culture of ancient civilization which they neither pre served nor embellished, but only squandered and desecrated, and buried under ruins. Proximity with civilization has never been able to trans form the savages in their nature. Like devouring locusts they swept over lands of plenty and laid them bare; like locusts even when in pos session they have continued to devour until what were rich and fertile countries have been turned into barren wastes. Turkish government through the centuries has been characterized by two predominating qualities, —murder and pillage. These two qualities, as history proves, have run riot in the Turkish blood, or else how explain that long continuous record of Crimes against humanity which have been embodied in Turkish rule in times of war and in times of peace; how explain the starvation, the desolation, the ruin, the disease rampant at present through the length and breadth of the Ottoman Empire, in territory over which no armies have tramped and no battles have been fought, but where the destruction and desolation, the starvation, ruin, filth, disease, the misery and anguish have been brought about sheerly by the Government that dominates the land ?

CONTRAST WORK OF BRITISH ARMIES.

The British Armies have advanced as far as Bagdad, entered Jeru salem, and captured Nazareth, but they have neither plundered nor mur dered, they have neither desolated nor destroyed; on the contrary, ter ror and horror reigned previous to their occupation, and peace and order have come with their entry. Battles have been fought only in three provinces of the high plateau of Armenia, but all the six provinces of this high plateau and the Cilician Plain have been turned into a charnel house and a shambles, and this hellish work has not been done by Armenians. Asia Minor is desolate; famine, ruin, disease and misery are over all that fair land; but no armies have marched across that country and no battles have been fought there. The waters of the Euphrates have run red with blood, but not blood from any battle field but with the blood of an un armed population murdered by the Government that dominated over them. Through Russian treachery, the long separated brothers (sons of the same father) Turk and Tartar, have met and united, and millions of Tartars have now joined the Turkish ranks. Blood is thicker than water, and wolves run in packs. TURKEY MUST DIE

RELIGION OF THE SWORD.

The wild savage nature of these sons of the same father has been permeated with the aggressive religion of Mohammed, as interpreted by the Turks, the religion of the sword, the religion that enjoins to smite and spare not the "Giaur" and the "Khaffir," the complimentary means by which Turks designate Christians. A grand empire of Islam beginning from the fatherland of their Prophet to their own fatherland Turkestan has been a long thought-out plan of successive Turkish governments. The unfortunate Armenians stood in the path of this grand scheme, so the Turkish government be gan making a bridge of dead Armenians across Armenia, and powerful Christian governments with their fleets and their armies looked on with equanimity. If ten thousand Moslems had been slaughtered by any Christian Government the whole Moslems world would have been con vulsed, but when Christians were slaughtered by the hundred thousand by the Turkish government, powerful Christian governments decreed that the horror should be forgotten.

BULWARK OP ARMENIA.

Armenia stood as a bulwark for Christianity against Moslem aggres sion through the centuries. She would have continued so to stand to the present day if powerful Christendom had not decreed that the Otto man Empire must continue to exist no matter what the crimes of the Ottoman government. The Turks conquered the fair countries of ancient civilization not only through the might of scimitar and yataghan, but also through the weaknesses, the dissensions, and jealousies of the Christian nations who owned these lands. These weaknesses, jealousies, and dissensions were no other than the aftermath of the Roman con- Quests. Weakened in their defence by the attacks of Roman Imperial ism, demoralized by the slavery that Rome had enforced, these coun tries were unable to withstand the invasions of the savage hordes of eentral Asia, and were compelled to bear on their soil the first onslaught of the wolves of Turkestan. In the same way as the Turks built their Empire by aid of the con flicts, the dissensions, and jealousies of the Christians, even so have they maintained their Empire through the same agencies. The rivalry of one Christian Power against another has from time to time given a new lease of life to the Ottoman Empire and protracted its existence, until the very existence of the Ottoman Empire became the underlying cause of the great cataclysm that has now overtaken the world. The whole war can be focussed to one Motive, the German Motive for monopolising the Ottoman Empire. 636 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

NATIONS MUST LEARN BY KAPERIENCE.

Nations must learn by experience. If the lesson that experience teaches is not learned, then disaster must overtake the folly or obstinacy that will not learn. If the Ottoman Empire is permitted to exist when a truce is called between the warring nations, European jealousies and rivalries will again be whirling round and round the fire that has created many a blaze in the east, and if allowed to exist will surely create an other blaze in the future. Also with the new developments created in the wake of the present war, the menace of a militant Islam will grow

into such formidable proportions as to imperil in the future the peace of the world. It is necessary for the nations to study the map of Asia before they study the map of Europe. There are moral laws that govern our world as well as material laws, and since moral laws govern, peace can never be obtained by maintain ing a Criminal State that not only by its acts has forfeited the right to live, but is also a robber and usurper of the countries of other nations on whom it has inflicted its bloody rule. For a hundred years the Otto man Empire has lived through the support and assistance given by one section of Christendom as opposed against another. If it continues to exist after the war it will only be maintained through the same forces.

MADE SAFE FOR CHRISTIANITY

If "the world must be made safe for democracy," then also "the Chris tian countries that have forcibly been made to constitute the Ottoman Empire must be made safe for Christianity." The name "Turkey" is a

spurious invention ; it is not any lawful or legitimate name, but a mis nomer that has imposed itself like a poisonous miasma over the coun tries of other peoples through the centuries of Turkish usurpation, and the peace of the world and the rights of humanity require that "Turkey" must die. BAKU—THE PAN-TURANIAN HUB

By MAYNARD OWEN WILLIAMS

The arrival of British armed forces at Baku marks a vital step toward Allied victory. It may not mean the smashing of the Kaiser's armies. But taken in conjunction with Allied successes on the Western front and definite Allied movements from Vladivostok and Archangel, it gives promise not only of the interruption of the German drive for control of the East but of the re-establishment of a real Eastern front. For it has thrown an Allied wall at least temporarily across the proposed Teu ton highway from Central Europe to Central Asia at its most vital cross-road. I was doing relief work in Van, the historic capital of Armenia, last February. There, having been cut entirely off from news for twj> months, we daily expected to see the English from Mosul come over the mountain passes to the south. But with the fall of Erzerum, late in February, it seemed as though Allied ascendency in the Trans-Caucasus, Persia and Turkey had been definitely lost for an indeterminate period. From March 31 to April 2, I witnessed the first battle for possession of Baku, a fight started by the Tartars but finished by their opponents, the Russians and Armenians, and in the latter's favor. This victory prom ised to be only temporary and conditions seemed so hopeless for the Al lied cause that nearly fifty American and English relief workers and others left Baku for Vladivostok and Archangel. The successful German drive on the Western front in France last March was the cue upon which the Tartars several thousand miles away, started a new Eastern offensive of their own in the first battle of Baku. The Germans had quickly taken advantage of the opportunist psycho logy of the peoples of the Caucasus to spread the news of their victories and within ten days the population of Baku and its environs had begun to reconcile itself to the advent of victorious future German and Turk control. But now the Western front victories of the Allies for similar reasons are giving tremendous significance to the British landing and control at the Pan-Turanian center on the Caspian. But even with Brit ish assistance, it is no easy matter to hold Baku. Situated on a narrow peninsula, backed by desert sands, it is dependent upon railways and shipping for the food for its varied population of a quarter of a million,

637 638 THE ARMENIAN HERALD and British success there depends not only on defense but on supply. Permanent success is intimately associated with the attitude of the Tar tars. The German offensive gave them one outlook; Allied success in France gives a totally different angle on their own affairs. Baku is the world's greatest oil town. It has given Russia second place to the United States in oil production. Nine million tons of crude oil were produced annually in normal times. A million tons a year were pumped through the 540 mile pipe line to Batum on the Black Sea, whence it was shipped to Odessa and Constantinople, Greece and Egypt. The Cau casus is mile for mile the richest land on earth, and the gem of the Cau casus is still Baku, although the production of oil in that center is les sening, while the Grozny and Maikop fields in the North Caucasus are becoming more productive. But it is not for its oil that Germany most wants Baku. She must gain and hold Baku to solidify her position if the Pan-Turanian plan of domination of the heart of Asia by means of Moslem union, which she has fostered for so many years, is to be a suc cess and England's position in India threatened. Germany for ten years before the war had steadily labored both to cultivate the friendship of the many races of the Caucasus and to foster in them a sense of grievance against Russia and England and among themselves. In the extreme complexity of their relations this was not difficult. Germany had educated in her universities handsome sons of the rugged and princely Christian Georgians, smarting under the wrongs imposed by Russia. She found a fertile field among the Young Persians, jealously resenting the aggressions of Russia and England. Even the savage Kurds were provided with modern guns soon after Turkey en tered the war to turn upon the progressive Armenians. In this the Rus sians joined early in the war, one Russian general in 1916 issuing 25,000 rifles to the Kurds with the sole idea of smashing the possibility of an autonomous Armenia. The Tartars, descendants of Tamerlane's hordes, with branches of their race stretching northward to Kazan, the Mohammedan centre of European Russia, and eastward to the Pamirs, touch most of the racial elements in the Caucasus at many points. Turks and Tartar were brought closer together than ever before in the dream of a Moslem state, at the time of the great conference of the Near Eastern races under German-Turk auspices at Constantinople, between the beginning of the war and the time of Turkey's entrance. This conference the Armenians refused to attend. The Georgians played for time. The crash of the Russian revolution threw the Caucasus into al most hopeless turmoil. Red Russia turned back home over roads the BAKU— THE PAN-TURANIAN HUB 639 old regime had constructed to make possible their great defeat of the Turks in the first period of the war, at the fortress of Erzerum, the city of Bitlis, and Dilman in Persia. Against the Turk there was left by the middle of 1917 only a handful of Armenian soldiery taking over the great line held by the Russians. At first, following the fall of the Russian au tocracy, there was a tendency of the divergent races in their joy to come together. The Armenians and Georgians joined in alliance. The Tar tars, outnumbered and lacking guns, made no definite alliance but prom ised not to rebel. In the Trans-Caucasian Republic, born in November, 1917, the Tartars were allowed four representatives, the Armenians three, the Georgians three and the Russians two, roughly apportioned to their populations. This entente of Georgian, Tartar and Armenian was only one ele ment in the strategic necessities of the Allies if the Caucasus was to be won to the Allied cause. North of the Caucasian mountains were the Kuban Cossacks and their brothers of the Terek and the Don. Across the Volga were the Orenberg Cossacks. North in the Ukraine, so read ily responsive to German influence, were other elements which loved not posed, the Cossack Congress definitely putting forward a scheme for a federated state in which each group would be autonomous but pledged to aid the others in withstanding oppression was first pro posed, the Cossack Congress definitely putting forward a scheme for a Federated Republic. But Germany was active. What happened in the Ukraine is well known. Simultaneously the Cossacks were attacked and have been in large measure brought under German influence. But the Caucasus was hard to reach. The Tartar country was aimed at and proclamations were distributed, urging the Tartars to unite with their brothers the Turks. Late in February of this year, German peace ful penetration showed some signs of success. Throughout Asia Minor, her agents were at work ; in the Erivan region this poster appeared : "Awake, Turkish brothers! Protect your rights, for -union with the Turks means life! Unite, Oh Children of the Turks! Unite, Oh Children of the Turks!" Written by the Party for Union With the Turks. "Brothers of the noble Turkish nation, for hundreds of years our blood has flowed like water. Our motherland is ruined and we are under the heel of thousands of oppressors who have almost destroyed us. We have forgotten our nation. We do not know to whom to apply for help. For we have been under the feet of others. Countrymen ! We consider that hereafter we are free. Let us open our eyes to our conscience ! Let us not listen to the voice of plotters. We must not lose this way of free 640 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

dom. For our freedom lies in union with the Turks. It is necessary for us to unite and for us all to gather under the Turkish flag. "Forward, brothers! Collecting under the flag of union, we wiD stretch out our hands to our brothers the Turks. Long life to the gen erous Turkish nation! Saying this, we will never again put our necks under the yoke, slavery and chains of foreigners !"

This was a peculiarly inopportune time for addressing the Tartars on the matter of oppression, since the retreat of the Russians had left them to an unusual degree their own masters. But internal racial relations were always food for dissension and they rose against their Armenian and Georgian associates. First, they wrecked the railway line to Tabriz and Tiflis and destroyed the railway stations at Gamerlo* and Ulukhanlu, on the Erivan plain. Then they tore down the Indo- Bombay-Eastern Telegraph line, thus robbing the American Consul and the British Military Mission at Tiflis of any means of communicatioa with their governments. This clumsily planned uprising of the Tar tars was locally unsuccessful. The Armenians had large numbers of armed soldiery in the Erivan region, waiting to move to Van and Erze- rum and these men soon defeated the Tartars throughout the Erivan and Alexandropol districts. As I crossed the plain from Igdir to Erivan on March eighth, the Tar tar villages were in flames, Tartar refugees were fleeing unmolested to the south and Tartar possessions were being seized and destroyed by the victorious Armenians. Locally, the Armenians were successful. It was only at Nahichevan and Djulfa on the Persian frontier and at Elizavet- pol, between Tiflis and Baku, that the Tartars gained the upper hand. Nevertheless this Tartar uprising carried an indirect success. For when the Tartars threatened the homes of the Armenians, panic seized the Russian Armenian soldiers away at the Erzerum front, making pos sible -the Turkish success before that great fortress. The Armenia* National Army, organized in October, 1917, which was supposed to be supported by the Allies, lost its temporary prestige in precipitate flight The Tartars, who had held back their stroke against unknown strength, immediately saw that they could now act bodily in the face of proven weakness. To strengthen their new resolution, there came on March 30, the news of Allied defeat in France. It was under these circumstances that the Baku Tartars decided to fight for the possession of the rich city which curves out into the Caspian between the oil fields of Balakhani and Bibi Eybat. The battle was scheduled for Sunday, March 31, at six o'clock in the evening. At half past six, as a friend and I were crossing the wide BAKU— THE PAN-TURANIAN HUB 641 promenade along the water front, firing began on all sides. It was as though the entire populace had awaited a signal before firing a volley. A soldier ten feet away fired at nothing and beyond us a woman shrieked. My friend and I, by tacit and swift agreement, joined the crowd in its one desire to leave the spot. From the British Club we watched the whole progress of the battle during the night, but the next day I went back to the city to watch the Bolshevik gunboat bombard the ancient Tartar tower, which present-day Tartars were using as an observation post. The Bolshevik went the Tartars one better on the score of using modern military methods, and on Tuesday several of the thirty Russian hydroaeroplanes stationed at Baku were scouting from the air. From first to last, the Tartars had no chance. Two shiploads of retreating Russians arrived from Enzeli on the morning of the battle and promptly aided the Bolsheviki and Armenians in their fight. Machine guns and mountain guns commanded all the principal squares and their clatter and boom filled three days. The Tartar portions of the city were soon in flames and as if to add a moving picture aspect to the scene, a wharf laden with oil burned throughout one night, casting into red relief tne hundreds of ships and boats that held the water front. When the Tar tars tried to use the narrow apertures in the ancient walls, Bolshevik machine guns wove a lace-work tracery of hot lead across the loop-hole line. In spite of this temporary success against the Tartars, representing a success against the influences working for Germany's advantage, north Persia was becoming pro-German to an alarming degree and with the entire hinterland of Baku filled with Tartars, the future was not bright. It has been the Armenians who have been most constant in their loyalty to the Allies. Eight months ago, sitting in the ruined city of Van after watching a hundred and thirty Armenian militiamen go forth to take up positions which had been vacated by thousands of Russians, I wrote: "Here they are,—the remnant of Armenian manhood, stretched across a front that reaches from Erzingan to the Persian boundary, ready to carry on what may prove a losing fight, and must, unless help comes soon."

After the Turks took Erzerum last February, they swept on against the national armies of the Armenians and Georgians through to Tabriz in northwestern Persia, threatening the south Caspian ports, and wiping out all Armenians they met. They boasted that they would keep on un til they met the Russian army, then non-existent. The fight by the Armenians and Georgians, lacking Allied support, became more hopeless. The Georgians bravely declared their independence last May ; but hardly 642 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

a month later, thirty-two Georgian and Armenian delegates in Constan tinople were utterly unable to do anything but accede to the Turkish demands that they withdraw their troops. It is evident that the Georgians are now completely dominated. But regarding the Arme nians, there are two reports. One is that they are holding out by force of arms in Erivan and Shusha, with 25,000 troops in Erivan and 10,000 in the mountain village of Shusha; the other is that the Turks have promised them an independent kingdom in the Erivan district. If the latter is the case, the Armenians have simply given in to the inevitable in the absence of such Allied aid as was promised, but they will not com promise any longer than is necessary. They are still pro-Ally and en emies to the Turk. No one need doubt their loyalty. They will join any Allied force that comes to them. In the face of this discouraging and dangerous situation, Allied suc cess in France and the brilliantly executed British stroke at Baku have suddenly made possible a decided turn-about in hopes and possibilities. Every day is in our favor now, if followed up. The sentimental influence of these two events will reach far throughout the Caucasus and the Near East. With Allied victory near at hand, the Georgians will eagerly turn to aid those with whom their sympathies lie. The Lesghians of Daghestan are pro-Ally and their bravery may be counted on. The - Kuban and Don Cossack warriors to the north of the Caucasian moun tains will rally to the forces that promise them release from German domination. A Federated Republic which will include Trans-Caucasia, the Caucasus, and the Orenburg and Samara regions may become a reality. Persia is rapidly changing from the pro-German to the pro-Ally side of the ledger. Turkestan is watching which way to jump and a hungering Afghanistan and Central Asia are open to Allied-American methods of truthful propaganda. The most definite next step by the Allies, and a vital key to further extension of Allied influence into Rus sia from the south, lies with the Bolshevik elements on the lower Volga in Astrakhan, Saratov and Tsaritzuin, to open the way from Baku to Kazan. The Armenians fought with the Bolsheviks against the Tar tars in Baku. The British also worked with the Bolsheviks in Baku. If possible of realization here, why not also in the north? Immediately before all these peoples is the fact that the British have opened a line of communication from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian The large Caspian fleet now appears to be in friendly hands, ensuring communication not only from Baku to Persia but to Turkestan with its railway connections to Samara and Sibera and to Astrakhan and the Volga. The possession of the Caspian fleet is of vital importance, for on BAKU— THE PAN-TURANIAN HUB 643

it, in case the Turks and Germans close the railway lines from Baku to Batum and Petrovsk, must depend the provisioning of Baku.

And why is success in winning the support of these many races now better assured than formerly? In spite of energy and resourcefulness that have far surpassed our own, German plans in Russia and the Cau

casus are going wrong. It is because German greed is understood by Turk and Tartar alike, by Ukrainian landlord and Esthonian peasant. Once the ball begins to roll in the right direction, movement will be fast. Four years of German success were hypnotizing these peoples as well as others. The exploited races are now blinking in the light of Allied gains and are awaking to the danger that threatens them. A distinguished American relief party under the leadership of Dr. Harry Pratt Judson

is well on its way to Teheran to look after northern Persia. Through the Czecho-Slovaks with Allied backing, an open line from Vladivostok to the Volga may soon be a reality. The extreme Bolsheviki of Russia's two largest and most needy cities are meeting increasing obstacles, while sane Soviet forces in other parts are turning toward Allied friend ship. This troubled region of the Caucasus and Asia Minor, the key to possible extension of German-Turk influence into Asia, may be reached by troops and supplies before winter sets in through the agency of all three Allied expeditions —from Archangel by way of the Volga, from Siberia by way of Turkestan over the Samara-Krasnovodsk railway, and

from the Persian Gulf. Winter need not delay the plans, for winter is the best time in Asia Minor for a well-equipped force to oppose Turkish operations. Despite the terrific suffering from starvation now at hand

in Russia, the future for this region of former Russian possessions which is so important in the chain of possible German-Turk extension of power, gives greater promise.

On February 5, in Van, we heard the report that the English had taken Constantinople by means of an aeroplane attack, in which gas bombs wiped out every vestige of life on the Gallipoli Peninsula. We did not believe it. But in Igdir, the two Englishmen had to submit to kissing, praying, feasting and picture-taking on the part of the Rus

sians and Armenians. In Van, we pretended to believe it and for weeks that German-inspired fabrication, designed to demoralize the Arme nians, held in leash the Kurdish irregulars whom hunger and cold were urging to attack the pitifully small Armenian army. On February 24,

Governor Hambartsoumiantz had a most friendly and restraining inter view with the chief of the powerful Zilan Kurds, in which that silly tale undoubtedly figured. To one who has not passed through scores of vil lages along the Russian, Persian and Turkish frontiers and been asked 6*4 THH ARMENIAN HERALD

when the British were really coming, the psychological effect that the landing of the British at Baku will have throughout all of northern Asia Minor cannot be understood. Baku must now rank with Gallipoli and Kut el Amara as names to conjure with. The taking of Jerusalem inspired the Christian world, but the land ing of the British at Baku is tremendously more important. It means the presence of a universally trusted force at one of the most strategic points in the Near East. Gallipoli and Kut raised the morale of the Turk who straightway reposed new confidence in his sword arm and m Allah. But among a score of watching races in the Near East, the landing of the British at Baku will be regarded as a welcome omen of Allied victory. To the meanest Yezidi village, high up on the slopes of Ararat, will go the word that the confidence which has long been reposed in British prestige has been vindicated. Thoughts as well as actions impel the East. Opportunism there is what idealism is with us. And the presence of British troops in the Pan-Turanian center will be food for much thought among the Islamic peoples of Asia for months to come. It will take a strong force to hold Baku and the long line of communi cation to the Persian Gulf . Have the British the forces available? Can they follow up the advantage won? It will count with large results if (hey can. CAN TURKEY LIVE?

By TIGRANE YERGATE

m THE REFORMS

There is, however, a history of Turkish reforms. It was in 1839 that Reshid Pasha read out to an admiring public, within the precincts of the palace of Gulhane ("the mansion of roses") , a celebrated Hatt or decree which savors somewhat of the "declaration of the rights of man" of the French Revolution. What were the wonders in Turkey which have oc casioned an event so opposed to the delineated character of the Turks? In 1839, when a sickly prince of 16 succeeded Sultan Mahmoud on the throne, Mehmet Ali had just wrested Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Cilicia

from the Turkish Empire ; Ibrahim Pasha had extended his conquests to the very gates of Constantinople; four sacred cities, Mecca, Medina, Damascus and Jerusalem, and the whole of Islam were disputing the sovereignty of the dynasty of Osman. As a matter of fact, the Khalifate was no more. Turkey had only one army left to her, and that was anni hilated by Ibrahim Pasha at Nezib on the day of the accession of Sultan Med j id to the throne; the only fleet which Turkey possessed and which was still able to cause anxiety to Egypt surrendered to the enemy in front of Alexandria with its commander. Meanwhile the Russians pressed the Porte to allow them to enter Turkish territory under pre text of rescuing Turkey from the armies of Egypt. The Sultan and his ministers crouched before the ambassadors whom a few years before they might have been eager to put in chains. The Turks witnessed the appalling spectacle of their Emperor and Khalif degraded to the extent of imploring the "Infidels" to save him from the hands of Mussulmans. No blow more terrible could have been inflicted on their pride. But, how ever strong the blow, it would never have inspired them with the idea of proclaiming the Rayahs their equals. The granting of reforms was a forced coquetry of the vizirs Rechid, Fuad, and Ali towards Palmerston and Napoleon III. England not only desired the reforms but she also insisted on making them a reality. Palmerston had an object in this: the so-called Reforms were handled

MS 646 THE ARMENIAN HERALD by him with much skill for the purpose of opposing "Civilized Turkey" to Muscovite barbarity. As the "intellectuals" of Europe organized the crusade for the oppressed Greeks, so Palmerston thought of making the Anglican churches imitate a similar move in support of the Turks and against Russia. Ten years after the horrible massacres of Greece the clergy in England began to talk about "the virtuous and good old moslem," whilst they were concurrently running down the gross supersti tions of Greek orthodoxy and vehemently vituperating against the wor shippers of the Virgin —the Mariolaters, as they were styled, a word in vented by them to meet the circumstances of the case. These were the principal elements of the anti-Russian crusade which preceded the Crimean war and induced the people of England to sanction the military campaign. This religious outbreak, the hypocrisy of which was de nounced by Gladstone, convinced the two nations on both sides of the channel. The shortsightedness of Louis Philippe and the humanitarian- ism of Napoleon III were easily taken in by it. France joined England to crush Mehmet Ali (the ally of France in Egypt) who was barring the high road to India against the English, and to humiliate the Russians at Sevastopol, whose policy of aggrandizement on the Bosphorus jeopar dized more directly British interests. The occupation of Cyprus and the valley of the Nile were the outcome of this maneuvre conducted in cold blood and with an audacity worthy of admiration. The Turkish reforms lasted as long as a hybird, an impossible alliance, could last. Had the mat ter rested with the Turks they would simply have recorded the reforms in fine gilt, red or green letters, on imperial parchment, and nothing more. But the English wanted facts, realities; they made them. Dur ing the whole first part of the period of reforms, Turkey had two sover eigns: Abdul Mejid, a consumptive prince who dragged his effeminate existence in the kiosks and gardens of the Bosphorus in the associations of beauties and musicians, and Lord Canning, or Kutchuk-padichah (the little emperor) as he was nicknamed. Canning surrounded himself with dervishes. He was the first European who saw in them, not fanatics but factors of civilization. He drove in an open carriage flanked with dancing dervishes, he visited their convents, he learned by heart some of their philosophical sentences, he studied Turkish and won the heart of those Pashas who were most refractory to his ideas by repeating a language much in use in the Barrack-room and in which those magnates relished. He repeated to all the Moslems that there is no religion on earth superior to Islam. When an Englishman, who is always a man of action, makes up his mind to play also the part of the actor no one can surpass him in diplomacy. Palmerston, Canning, and Beaconsfield, the CAN TURKEY LIVE? 647

three founders of turcophilism, belong to this theatrical school of Eng lish parliamentarians, marked the Turkish reforms, therefore, as a Brit ish undertaking. This is so true that the Turkish partisans were nick named in Turkey Inguiliz (Englishmen), and to this day we hear of Inguiliz Mehmet Bey, Inguiliz Ali Pasha, etc. What did the reforms which gave illusions of liberty to our ancestors during one whole generation consist of? The Christians were authorized not to wear the debasing garb which distinguished them from the Turks ; they were allowed to build houses like those of Moslems ; an almost abso lute liberty of the press promoted translations in Turkish, Greek, and Armenian of French works, books of fiction and poetry which depicted the joys and pleasures of life. Secular schools were founded and made many believe in the triumph of the spirit of criticism. The theatres were crammed with people, even Turkish women had access to them. While anarchy continued to reign supreme in the provinces Constanti nople, after Cairo, was fast becoming an elegant fair or show (like the Paris of Napoleon III) which all the civilized capitals were eager to imi tate. But behind those changes of the surface, has Turkish character undergone any modification? Has the Turkish soul—fanaticized by Ko ranic teaching —been converted to a new idea? If we consult the writers of the time, and especially Kernel Bey, the apostle of liberal ideas, we trace in their books an incoherent mixture of slamic images and of French formulas. The conquest of Spain, the Khalif Omar, Kerbelah, Mecca, and phrases from Rousseau come into frequent contact in their verse and prose to lead up to the conception of a pan-islamism in the bosom of which the Moslem individual finds his personal liberty better safeguarded. In the eyes of the Turks then, no tangible progress had been made in the moral world: the idea of fatherland remained jumbled in their brain with that of religion. Here lies a significant phenomenon : aroused by this same breath of liberty conveyed to the East by Eng land and France, the Christian Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians were now animated by one ardent desire, namely the desire to enjoy an au tonomous, independent, or a more national life of their own. Thus, the contact continued in a way to widen on both sides the breach and es trangement created by the Koran.

REVOLUTION OF MIDHAT PASHA

Midhat Pasha persuaded himself that he would be able, by the intro duction of a constitutional form of government, to bring about a fusion of the Christians and Moslems of Turkey and remove the gulf separat ing these heterogeneous elements. If I well remember, it was in 1875 648 THE ARMENIAN HERALD that he made an attempt to organize Christian regiments. Hassan Riza, the War Minister, reviewed the first Slav contingent and admonished the officers for giving the word of command in Turkish. He turned his face to the men and in a stentorian voice called out the word, "Atten tion"' ! in the vernacular of the soldiers. The following year a battalion of volunteers was formed, recruited from Christians and Moslems. On their banner figured an interwoven crescent and cross. These fresh janissaries were conducted to the Sheikul-islam and to the Patriarchs who gave them their blessing. But against whom were they to fight? Against the Servians. And while the two irreconcilable emblems were being inscribed on a red piece of cloth, the plains of Bulgaria were strewn with corpses as the result of massacres, the appalling nature of which was only equalled by those of Armenia. Midhat's life contains a trait which tells more than a volume devoted to his biography. When he was governor of the Danubian provinces he had by his side a profes sor who was teaching him French and history of France simultaneously. "I want to become the Colbert of Turkey," he was in the habit of say ing at that time to his staff, and to prove his sincerity he started to build roads, plant trees, erect schools, factories, and cafe-chantants. From Bulgaria he was transferred to Bagdad which he likewise embel lished. By this time master and pupil had finished reading the history of the reign of Louis XIV and were sifting the records of the French Revolution. The impetuous spirit of Midhat was struck by the image of the head of a king exposed for sight to a liberated people. It was on the banks of the Tigris that he prepared his coup d'etat. He left Bag dad with the soul of a rebel and put all his ideas into execution. The Ottoman House of Representatives lasted too short a period to enable one to pronounce judgment on the quality of its laborers. The debates therein were manifestly dull,—with the sole exception of those of one sitting. When the Turkish deputies in that sitting raised the question of the predominance of the Turkish language and of its introduction into all the Christian schools of the empire, the leader of the Greek party vehemently opposed the motion by demonstrating that that language did not contain any element of civilization, any notions of science, art, or ethics capable of assimilation. The discussion grew hotter and hotter until the Greek leader left the house, followed by all the members of his party. The defeat of 1878 had, moreover, amply demonstrated the inefficacy of the formula that liberty would arrest the Turkish decay. The sequence of the trial at reform was to bring about the formidable reaction of the reign of Abdul-Hamid. To attempt under a Mohamme dan theocratic government to place the Christians and Moslems on a level of political equality was a sheer folly ; this explains why they are now separated by an ocean of blood. CAN TURKEY LIVE? 649

THE YOUNG TURKS

The discontented officials who make up today the party of the Young Turks adopt the doctrines of Kemal Bey, whose disciples they are. Like him, they are dominated by the religious idea—Pan-islamism, declama tions after the French code; these are subject-matters of the articles in their organs. They clamor for a parliament and for a Khalifate con jointly. Mourad Bey is a living specimen of the existing antimony be tween the advantages which the Young Turkish party appears to be offering to the Rayas under the label of constitution, and its real senti ments towards the same Rayas. Mourad Bey did not scruple to publish at Rustchuk an anonymous pamphlet in which he advocated the mas sacre of Armenians as a means of fortifying Islam; these massacres he turned into stepping-stones for the furtherance of a self-seeking object. He visited London and Paris and posed as a great patriot, solicited the co-operation of the Armenian committees and of Ahmed Riza against the Sultan, endeavored to persuade the Khedive to set up an Arabian Khalifate. He finally allowed himself to be bribed by the Sultan. He went back to Constantinople and reported to his imperial master all he had heard and seen. Many other functionaries have preceded and fol lowed Mourad Bey in the cycle of his wanderings (in sleeping cars across the continent) which almost invariably have ended in the ac ceptance of places with great emoluments. The Young Turkish party would have established no claim for existence were it not illustrated and sustained by the character of Ahmed Riza, the editor of the Meshveret. Ahmed Riza belongs to an old Turkish family. His father, Inguiliz Ali-Bey, was Ambassador at Vienna, Minister of public education, and then was exiled to Koniah owing to his liberal ideas. His mother, an Austrian, brought up all her children by reading to them Schiller. In Paris, where he studied, Ahmed Riza spent his time mostly in the com pany of the followers of Pierre Lafitte's school of thought and doc trines. He copied from the head of the positivists all his abstract for mula. He is, above all, fond of words like "order," "progress," "sys- temization," and the like, which he rehearses on every occasion as if these words possessed the virtues of a universal panacea. He is con vinced that the constitution will heal Turkey of all her ills. Ahmed Riza is not a revolutionary of the calibre of Midhat Pasha. He is not even a statesman. He is a bookworm to the core and this renders him in capable of being a leader of men. Hence his words have never been followed by acts. Nay, he firmly believes that the wisdom of diplomacy and that of Abdul-Hamid will be convinced in the long run of the value of his program, the realization of which he expects from their good will and pleasure ! 650 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Ahmed Riza is a grave character, sad of countenance, with hair pre maturely gray, with a distinguished deportment, and has the frame of mind of a German professor who has a hobby for a given subject, and not that of a leader. Abdul-Hamid, however, fears him. On several occasions he dispatched to Paris about ten of his courtiers who made him the most alluring offers to tempt him to return to Constantinople. The last of these "ambassadors" was Sourrouri Bey, the brother-in-law of Ahmed Riza.

THE OLD TURKS

We have noticed how the partisans of reform, —be they of the primi tive group of Kemal or the Young Turkish party of today, — in spite oi their French oratory, persist in the irreducible antipathy which ani mates the Mussulmans of Turkey against the Christians. The Old Turks do not care to hear in the least about Constitution and Equality. But this intolerance in matters political does not exclude from them senti ments of humanity which manifested themselves especially during the massacres in Armenia. Scutari, situated on the Asiatic shores of the Bosphorus, is notoriously known to contain the most ancient Turkish population that clings most to the traditions of the race. Scutari and Kadi-Keuy were the only suburbs of the capital where no massacres took place. The old Turkish families residing there formally refused to allow butcheries to be perpetrated under their eyes. At Kadi-Keuy, Mar shal Fuad Pasha remained in his saddle for forty-eight hours—as long as the slaughter lasted—and kept a sharp watch in this quarter of the Armenians whom he protected against the attacks of gangs of assassins who were emerging from other parts of the city. At Broussa, the gov ernor —Munir Pasha —had to choose between the orders of the Palace of Yildiz and the dictates of his conscience. He decided to save his prov ince from massacre and pillage. He was dismissed from office for dis obeying orders. Another obscure Mollah of Eyoub concealed about twenty Armenians in his own house. And does not the latter act cast into the shade and make its author, Mourad Bey, appear base, when he begged and entreated Mr. Gladstone for a word of sympathy for the Turkish liberals. "In truth," ironically replied the grand old man, '1 have seen so few of them, I wish their number were greater." These acts of self-denial and of protection on the part of the Old Turks denote the survival in the soul of the race of an ancient ideal whose custodians continue to be the dancing Dervishes and the Bek- tashis. It is indisputable that the fall of the Khalifate will conduce to an era of renaiscence for these two bodies and that they will then, as CAN TURKEY LIVE? 661 in the past, resume their task of bringing together in friendly concert Moslems and Christians. In the meantime, overcome by the influence of corrupt surroundings, forced to submit to the official credo that wis dom and history have their source in Islam, they have lost all power of initiative, as also the sense of the ancient pantheistic and Grecian philosophies which constitute the basis of their doctrines. They no more propagate the ideas; they preserve themselves like relics of the past. To sum up : Old Turks or Young are no more able to save Turkey from ruin. The Kurds, the Lazes, the Albanians, the Arabs of Syria, are today the masters of the empire. They rule the army, they ravage the provinces, they command at Yildiz. It has rightly been pointed out that among the Raghibs, the Nazims, the Hassans, the Izzets, and the Abdul-Huda, who form the Sultan's privy Council, there is not a real Turk. Against these omnipotent barbarians the scanty disciples of the Mesnevi and the still thinner ranks of the reformers, cannot offer any serious resistance. If Moslem Turkey allows herself at present to be governed with such docility by a Sultan-Assassin, it is by reason of the phenomenon which we have sub-headed "The Retreat of the Hordes." Her social structure is of an essentially criminal mould.

CONCLUSION

What is then the solution of the Turkish problem? The solution is not to come ; it has been in travail for the last hundred years ; it is the dismemberment of Turkey under the diverse principles of nationality, autonomy and annexation. Some are astounded that this operation should have lasted so long, and infer from this circumstance that Turkey possesses elements of vitality. To measure the life of a state with that of an individual is puerile indeed. Let us consider what provinces have been lost during the sole reign of Abdul-Hamid : Bulgaria, Herzegovinia, Bosnia, Eastern Roumelia, Thessaly, Erivan, Kars, Batoum, Cyprus, Egypt, Tunis, Crete. ... It would be difficult to trace in the records of history a more swift mutilation of empire. The gradual dismember ment,—this is the unique and at the same time the healthy solution of the problem. The best process by which to reform the Turk is to place him under a foreign yoke. No sooner does the Mussulman regime cease to govern the Turk than he becomes a disciplined soldier, a peaceful citi zen, a good agricultural laborer. This we have witnessed in Bosnia, Bulgaria, and in the Russian provinces. The evil of Turkey lies in Islamic rule. We do not mean to deal here with the philosophy of that religion but with its political principles which condemn the Christian to perpetual abasement, and with its ethics which foster and maintain manners of life opposed to the working of a modern state. The law of 652 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

the Koran, born of conditions akin to desert life, is an excellent law for nomads, negroes, Africans, and similar peoples, but constitutes a mon strous absurdity at Constantinople. In an empire inhabited by so manj races and creeds, what was needed were supple principles to bring these peoples together, and not a religion like Islam, which has created divi

sions and the most violent hatreds. Not only has this religion upset the minds, it has also dried up the soil. Throughout Asia Minor and Thrace are witnessed the social and physical conditions prevailing in Arabia, namely : tribes that plunder, "flocks" —the Christians—that are set apart to be fleeced, and fertile lands abandoned and left unulled through want of security and protection. The existence of the Khalifate in Europe is an iniquitous anachroniia destined to disappear. But the calculations of the European powers re quire that the horrors which the Moslem regime inflict on the Chris tians should be continued. Before entering a house it is well to set it on fire in order that the help rendered should be the pretext for aggres sion. During the Armenian massacres the Sultan received every en couragement from two foreign offices. The reason for this is that the principle of nationality, if rigidly enforced in the East, would diminish in a singular manner the domain of European covetousness. The small States created out of the ruins of Turkey have had the misfortune of taking their liberties seriously to heart. They did not wish to play the game of the Powers, who aim at making them their vassals under the guise of ensuring their independence. This opposition of theirs is termed their "ingratitude." The word was invented by the English and applied by them to Greece; the Russians hurled it against the Bulgarians and by anticipation against the Armenians. "We do not want in Asia Minor another ungrateful Bulgaria." The blockade of Crete and the Greco- Turkish war have revealed this feeling of impatience of the Powers dis turbed in their plans of partition. The Turks, having their brain solely dominated by the pan-islamic hallucination and their physical aptitudes absorbed by militarism, one cannot be mistaken as to the nature of their final convulsions. It is against those whom Moslem aberration pre vents from making them their allies ; against the Servians, the Greeks, the Armenians, that the Turks, led by Prussian officers, will direct their guns, their Mauser rifles, and the heat of their fanaticism. Interrupted by a period of quiet, full of anxious expectation, the era* —unhappily ir remediable—of violence and massacres is destined to be prolonged ia Turkey until the far distant day, when some chivalrous ruler of empire, animated with the spirit of uplifting the enslaved races, of avenging the slaughtered Christians, and of restoring to Christ the Empire of the East, shall triumph, under the millenarian dome of St. Sophia, in the hieratic attitude of St. George overcoming the dragon. THE END FUTURE OF ARMENIA. PERSIA, AND RUSSIA

BY RENE PINON

Persia is one of the links of the gigantic chain of high plateaus which form the backbone of the Eurasian continent. It rises like a strong colossal chateau between the sandy plains of Turkestan and the watery plains of the Caspian Sea on the north, between the Persian Gulf and the lowlands of the Tigris and the Euphrates on the south and west, and is connected with a very thick stalk to the enormous Tibetan and Himalayan elevations on the east. The rivers which rise from this side of the Persian plateau run into the Indus. This Persian plateau runs toward the northwest and narrows between the Caspian Sea and the high mountains which actually separate Turkey from Persia. This "strangulation" which commands the city of Tabriz is known as Azer baijan. There Persia joins again the Anatolian plateaus and the Cau casian regions. The Iranian plateau is surrounded from all sides by high mountain chains which cross Alp-like peaks and separate from the rest of the world the central grand basin —the Persian desert—which is twice as large as France. Across these mountains wonderful are the mountain-passes and the nearly accessible gorges; their historic importance has always been great. These are the passes which (near Khanikin and Kermanshah on the east) join Hamadan, the Ecbatana of Herodotus. From there the great Persian kings came down to conquer the Persian plateaus. Through that locality the branching of the Bagdad railway (to the con struction of which the feeble Nicholas had to consent in the Potsdam interview of 1910) had to force itself. To the northwest are the Azer baijan routes the great importance of which we have already explained: that which extends from Resht to Baku above the Caspian Sea and that which, through Tabriz, Urmia and Bayezid, reaches Trebizond or Ba- toum. A Russian railway coming from Batoum reaches Trebizond and Urmia. On the northeast the tracks of the muleteers lead from the Iranian plateau into the Turanian plains via Meshed. To the east, open the mountain passes which descend toward India by way of Afghanistan or Beluchistan. There again we discover the traces of Alexander the Great and the Grand Mogul Baber, the conquerer of India. Poor tracks lead toward the south and open a series of mountain-chains in the direc

663 654 THE ARMENIAN HERALD tion of the torrid ports of the Persian Gulf—Bender-Bushir and Bender-

Abbas. To go by land from Europe and the interior of Asia to India one must necessarily go over the Persian plateau. This is the great road of migration, the great route of the conquerors, "the Highway of the na tions." Therein lies its historic and political importance. That is why the English and the Russians, and today the Germans, value so highly the right to control these routes. Through them must pass the rail ways going to India. In the present war, which was undertaken by the Germans to secure universal domination, Persia holds an important place.

The immense Iranian plateaus, which occupy more than two and one- half millions of square kilometers, contain only fifteen millions of in habitants of whom two-thirds are nomads. The most ancient inhabi tants of the Persian plateau are Iranians who belong to the great civilized Indo-European race. The Illustrious Kings, the Achemenidi and the Sassanids, established their dominion over Mesopotamia. In stalled upon their high plateaus, as in a gigantic fortress, the Iranians- sedentary and agricultural people, builders of cities and magnificent palaces— could see at their feet the Turanians or the Turco-Mongolian! roaming with their flocks in the northern steppes which watered the Amon-Daria and Syr-Daria. These nomads live in tents of skin, ob tained from their flocks. They ride their small horses and constitute rude warriors who know how to attack by surprise ; how to pillage, to sack, to kill, and to retire before the arrival of the slow Persian infantry battalions. Iran against Turan—this is the everlasting history of these countries. The Nomad in the summer time quits his scorching plains and leads his flock to graze on the fresh grass of the high valleys and the perfumed meadows of the mountains. When the surveillance is re laxed he climbs the plateau, installs himself there and gradually be comes the master of it. This is the history of the Turkish tribes. Else where, in the plains of the north, there are fertile oases where he maka a good living as a cultivator, as a peaceful country gentleman. The Iranians voluntarily descend the plateau and live there in colonies. The Turanians, or the Turks, call them by the contemptuous name of Sarte? The Western side contains the same admixture. The Arabian tribe* that lived under canvas in the plains of Mesopotamia and Chalto. sought a summer resort in the mountains of Iran ; and so long as Inn has had great kings, they have undertaken the conquest of the rids cities of the plain —Babylon and Ctesiphon —which have become Persian capitals. But whenever the government has become weak and the gen darme without any vigilance, the Turanians and the Bedouins of thi west have overrun the plateaus with their mounted troops and flocks and have exercised their devastating domination. They have ravaged FUTURE OF ARMENIA, PERSIA AND RUSSIA 655

everything; they have destroyed the cities and killed the vegetation. "One can distinguish the provinces which have remained in the hands of the Iranians by the survival of trees and the provinces where the Turk and the Bedouin live by the barren lands where their flocks graze." 1 The task of the central power in Persia has always been to check the incursions of the nomads ; to bring into discipline those that dwell upon the plateaus; to regulate their relations with one another; to make them sedentary and to enlist them in the service of the Kingdom of the King of Kings. Persia is neither a state, nor a nation ; it is an aggrega tion of nomadic tribes and sedentry populations, spread over immense spaces and separated from one another by deserts and high mountains. Persia, therefore, needs a very strong central power to serve as a con necting link among these divers elements; to impose peace and order upon them; to force them to maintain and develop irrigation canals, which are an indispensable condition for the prosperity of the country, and which make for prompt and good justice. In the diverse epochs of history this has been the task of the great dynasties of Persia—the Achemenids, the Sassanids, and the Seferis of the eighteenth century. When the connecting links of the central power have been relaxed, favor itism and anarchy have set in. This is the present state of Persia. It is well to note that in Persia even the civil wars, which have the appearance of party wars, are in reality chapters of the everlasting war of the Iranians against Turanians. The present dynasty of the Khajar princes belongs to the Turkish race and speaks the Turkish language. The factions that brought about the revolution of 1906 and which form the Constitutional party, are chiefly composed of Iranians, Iranized Turanians, and Armenians, city-dwellers, traders, religious men, and lawyers, each and all of whom speak the Persian language and who constitute an elite with a European culture or whose education has been acquired in the Persian Mussulman universities. Against these the Russians supported the dynasty and absolutism; and the English, after the 1907 agreement, ceased to support them. In 1907, England and Russia, under the influence of King Edward, decided to set aside their differences and join in a general agreement. The delicate point to solve was Persia. Under the color of partitioning Persia into two zones of influence—one a Russian zone in the north and the other a British zone in the southeast, —England in reality abandoned the preponderance of influence to her rival. The Russian influence was in Teheran, and it took the tutelage of the government of the shah and upheld it in its reactionary policies. The liberal elements and the con-

'Victor Berard, in his excellent book entitled The Revolutions of Persia, page 87. 656 THE ARMENIAN HERALD stitutionalists were stricken and dispersed. England made the best of a bad job. Her profound sympathies were always for an independent, a strong, and a liberal Persia, but her superior interests in other points of the globe obliged her to make concessions to Russia and, in order to prevent the Cossacks from eating up Persia, reserved for herself the part which touches the Persian Gulf and India. The agreement of 1907 had another injurious result: France (who had been Persia's friend for a century, and who had, more than any other power, contributed to her political education, whose language was spoken by all the cultivated Persians) was effacing herself before her Russian ally and her English friend. To tell the truth some of our agents exaggerated this renuncia tion. It was to the interests of the Russians and the English themselves for France to keep her influence in Teheran which appeared to the Persians like a guarantee of the independence of their country. The place, left vacant by France, was taken up by Germany. By their clever ness and craftiness and through their lack of ordinary scruples, the German agents spread over the country to develop their commerce. They represented Wilhelm II as the protector of the Mohammedans and of their independence; and the Potsdam agreement of 1910 did not pre vent the Berlin government from recognizing the rights of Russia over northern Persia, provided that Russia accepted just one branch of the Bagdad railway which had reached as far as Khanikin. Thus the Ger mans were eager to sneer at the Persian integrity and independence, provided they were to put their finger in the pie. They pretended to cut out a domain for themselves as a central zone (that was foreseen by the agreement of 1907) to serve as a buffer state between the Rus sian and English spheres of influence. At the same time the Turks, at the instigation of the Germans, were laying claims to Azerbaijan and occupying a large part of it with their troops. England and France complained of this, but a war was neces sary to dislodge the Ottoman troops, the result of which might have been a general conflagration. Sir Edward Grey, therefore, only went so far as to tell the Teheran government that if it showed itself in capable of maintaining law and order in the zone of British influence, he would be obliged to make a military occupation in that part of Persia. This note of Oct. 17, 1910, was interpreted as a prelude to the partition of Persia. Moreover, it had the significance of a pressing appeal to the Persian government to organize and pacify the country. The present war has come to emphasize the world-importance of the Iranian plateau,—"the highway of the nations." Even before the com mencement of the hostilities the Germans embarked in Persia on an in tense propaganda. The Young Turks, on their part, were doing all they could to enlist the "Young Persians," —the liberal and revolutionary FUTURE OF ARMENIA, PERSIA AND RUSSIA 657 parties favorable to the Central Empires. The Russian troops overran the western section of Persia to help the English who were advancing toward Bagdad. Impatient of the heavy yoke that the Russian troops were putting upon their country, the liberal Persians and patriots did not see the dangerous trap into which the Turks were seeking to draw them. To them the most pressing danger seemed to be the nearest, the Russian danger; and in order to save themselves they lent themselves to the Turco-German intrigues. Today under guise of Pan-Islamism the Turks are carrying out the Pan-Turanian policies. They realize also that Pan-Turanism can become a reality only at the expense of Persia. In the long protracted wars between these two races the exist ence and future development of Persia were jeopardized. Now that the Russian peril does not exist, the Persians find themselves in the pres ence of a danger more formidable for their future, to say the least,—the danger of Pan-Turanism supported and doubly strengthened by Pan- Germanism. Both the Armenians and the Iranians are the victims of this peril. Once more the Shiite Islam is subject to the odious and de structive yoke of the Sunnite Islam through the Turks, the historic en emies of the Persians. And now begins to appear the true intentions of the British policies. Great Britain has never desired the partition or the enfeeblement of Persia. Her mind was, and still is, occupied with the thought of pre venting Persia from falling into the hands of her adversaries. These adversaries yesterday were the Russians, today they are the Germans. Since the Russian peril has disappeared, the convention of 1907 has no longer a reason for existence. That is what Lord Curzon has lately ex plained in diplomatic language before the House of Lords. Following is the text of his declaration:

"To my mind, it does not seem that the organization of the South Persia Rifles has been well understood nor their services, rendered un der the command of Sir Percy Sykes, have been well appreciated. For several years, there has existed in southern Persia a force of police or gendarmerie, whose principal duties consisted of maintaining order and guarding the principal commercial routes. "Several times since the opening of the hostilities this gendarmerie has been commanded by Swedish officers. When they left the command in 1915, it was dissolved and disorder began anew. Then the Persian government recognized the necessity of creating a new corps that would take the place of the old gendarmerie. As it was impossible to form the new organization itself, the Persian government officially accepted the offer made by the British government to place at its disposal a certain number of English officers. A large number of men belonging to the 858 THE ARMENIAN HERALD old gendarmerie were re-engaged, the rules were re-enforced, and the headquarters were established at Shiraz. After the formation of the South Persia Rifles, safety returned and commerce was re-established But this force remained, as at the beginning (and I hope it will remain so always), a Persian force. The constantly renewed efforts of the Ger- manophile elements, whose proceedings are known to us today, hare represented this force as forming a part of the British or Indian armj, having for its mission the military occupation of the country. It is needless to say that it is no such thing. It is Persian in character, in composition, in fidelity, and Persia herself would be the first to suffer by its disappearance. "The British minister in Teheran has always held this point of view touching the Persian government and, in spite of all the interested rep resentation to represent him in a false light, the men of the government in Persia have recognized his honesty. The proof of the sincerity of the British intentions is found in the friendly discussion which we volun tarily desired to have with the Persian Cabinet on the subject of with drawing the South Persia Rifles at the end of the war. We want Persia to remain neutral during the war and keep her independence after the war. It need not be difficult to discover the solution of the question that would answer the triple criterion, namely: to give satisfaction to the national Persian sentiments ; to assure the safety of the routes ; and to protect the interests of legitimate commerce. If such a force did not exist, the authority of the Persian government itself would be in dan ger. The sole object of the British government is to make this organi zation an efficacious aid to the military resources of the land. This im portant question, in agreement with the eminent British Minister in Teheran, Sir Charles Marling, has been the object of the most serious and sympathetic considerations on the part of His Majesty's govern ment. "The Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 had not been directed against the integrity and independence of Persia. Its object was to put an end to the ancient rivalry between those two great powers. Has this agree ment been for good or evil ? What does it matter so long as it has gives results which were expected of it? The Persian government has been informed by us that we consider the agreement of 1907 suspended and, as soon as the conditions to which I have referred are realized, we shall be disposed to examine the question upon a wholly new basis."

The English and the French interests, the interests of the Allies as a whole including the United States of America, are that henceforth Persia shall exist strong and liberal; but a Persia that shall be Persian, —an Iranian, and not a Turanian Persia. To arrive at the organization of FUTURE OF ARMENIA, PERSIA AND RUSSIA 659 auch a Persia the Allies are ready to give all their assistance to the Persian government. In the eighteenth century the great dynasty of the Sefevis was able to fight against the Turks, thanks to the help of the English instructors. Today, Persia left to herself, would fatally fall under the Turco-German yoke. Already at the instigation of the Turks, the Jangalis are in revolt in the region of Resht, the Shah- Sevens in the region of Ardebil, and the Bolsheviks, who are playing into the hands of the Germans, are preaching revolt and war against the English. Persia provisionally needs an English military support to drive out the strangers and to suppress these revolts. She will realize that before her complete liberation she cannot help going through a period of transition which shall perhaps last as long as this war. During that period she cannot do without the military support of the Allies who, in return, must understand that they owe Persia a solemn declaration by which they collectively guarantee her independence, with the sole condition that this shall be a real independence and not serve to hide a Turco-German design. We hope that the Foreign Office shall feel so disposed as to associate itself with such a declaration and that it shall obtain from the India Office its adhesion. England can also give the Persians a grand mark of her friendly dispositions by conferring upon them a sort of right of sovereignty over the grand Shiite sanc tuaries —like Kerbelah, Nejef, etc.—situated south of Bagdad. She could even create conditions under which the Christian people of Trans- Caucasus—Georgians and Armenians —could form an independent fed eration, if the Tartars of Baku (of whom a great number are Shiites) would form an antonomous state directly allied with Persia. Thus, Persia would regain in the Caucasian regions the political and economic influence which her Kings have had for a long time. As to France, she needs to resume her traditional disinterested friendship with this country. She does not and cannot have any terri torial interest and cannot be suspected of any dangerous ambitions. The presence of the French shall be a guarantee to such Persians who, since the convention of 1907, were entertaining doubts and fears because of Great Britain and her government of India. It devolves upon us to con tinue in France our role of educators and reformers, to found there schools and a university and to send Persia technical counsellors for her finances and her administration, and officers for her military schools. Persia, Georgia, and Armenia shall form (if the Allies adopt the line of generous and skillful conduct that we are trying to outline) a solid barrier against Turkey's ambitions of conquest. Iran, the civilizer and constructor, shall have arrested once more the destructive wave of Turan. Translated from the French by Haig Adadoueian. THE ARMENIAN QUESTION AND PUBLIC OPINION

Turkey's surrender to the Allies, after Bulgaria's capitulation, is hailed by the American press with joy and gratification. The death knell of the Ottoman Empire is everywhere recorded as one of the direct consequences of the ending of this world war. Everybody conversant with the Near Eastern affairs adopts the sound mew echoed in our pages on many occasions that Turkey needs amputation. The Khali- fate is to be removed from Constantinople together with the Turkish Sultanate. The Hellespont is to be neutralized. Armenia, Palestine, Arabia, and Greece li- ridenta are to be restored to their lost heritage. The Franco-British statement, pub lished in our Review column, lays down this doctrine in unmistakable terms, /at Evening Post of New York, one of the best informed dailies on this question, deals with this subject in the following leading article, dated November 8, 1918:

The Franco-British statement of yesterday resolves finally all the doubts and fears of the oppressed races throughout the Turkish Empire. "The aim of France and Great Britain ... is the complete and final lib eration of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks and the establish ment of governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the native populations." This declara tion will bring joy to Arabs, Armenians, unredeemed Greeks, Lebanese, and Jews. These peoples never doubted that the Entente would give them liberation from tyranny and misrule; but they were not entirely certain that they would also be given the right to establish their own governments, to realize their nationality in autonomous administrations, running with racial boundaries. Their uncertainty has now been splen didly resolved. If this declaration means anything, it means that the hateful Ottoman Empire, even as an administrative entity, will be shat tered to bits, and out of its fragments will be built an independent Armenia, Lebanon, Palestine, Arabia, and Greece Irridenta, all nearer to the heart's desire of millions. France and Great Britain have in their last declaration taken a real step toward permanent world peace by thus establishing justice in the Near East.

TURKS' PROPHECY FULFILLED

Dr. Housepian of New York publishes a symbolical article in the Sunday edition of the New York Times which demonstrates that the Turkish Empire's fall was pre dicted by the Turkish themselves in the palmiest days of their strength. The letter follows:

To the Editor of The New York Times :

That the Turkish Empire would fall was predicted by the Turks them selves, not in its later tottering days, but in the palmiest days of its

660 THE ARMENIAN QUESTION AND PUBLIC OPINION 661 itrength. There was a Turkish saying: "Evveli Sham, Akhuri Sham." This was handed down as a prophecy from generation to generation, and is well known and repeated even by the least educated Turk in the smallest of hamlets in Turkey. Sham is the Turkish name for Damascus and literally translated the above means : Damascus the first and Damas cus the last. To make it more comprehensible we would say in English, "Damascus is the beginning of the end." When about 500 years ago a barbarous, fierce roving tribe of Seljukian Tartars invaded Asia Minor, the territories of the Byzantine Empire, weakened by internal dissensions, fell as easy prey to them. Ultimately even Constantinople fell. Not less significant, however, for them was the fall and capture of Damascus, or Sham, as they call it. This was a nourishing city at the gates of their holy places, the capture of which was highly prized by them. The sway of the Turk was spread by murder and bloodshed. Blood thirsty and cruel as they were, the wise ones among them saw plainly that an empire founded on murder and pillage could not last forever. They concluded, therefore, that some day their rule would come to an end, but when and how should this happen? That was a matter of prophecy. These wise ones scented danger from north, they scented it from west, but the south, being protected by a Mohammedan country, they considered perfectly safe. No one at that time could imagine a General Allenby proceeding over such a bare and desolate distance. Nat urally then they considered Damascus their last stronghold, and when Damascus fell it would signify the end of everything. This is the rea son why they stuck to the "Evveli Sham Akhuri Sham," and handed it down to prosperity as a prophecy. The Turk tried to make his downfall rather picturesque. The prophecy runs as follows : "When the end comes Damascus will be captured by the infidels. An Inman with a green turban, robed in a green robe, will ascend the top of a green minaret with his last Salavat ; he will call the faithful to gather around him and they will all together start on a journey to ward the place where they came from. Let us hope that this ancient prophecy of the Turk will be fulfilled. Let us hope that General Allenby will be the prophet to fulfill it, and that no more prophets have to come after him to do it all over again. Let us hope that the crafty Turk and his wily agents in Switzerland will fail at least now to create a false sympathy for the Turk, whose only fool mark after 500 years of rule of one of the best and most fertile regions of the world had been murder, rapine, and pillage. Let us hope that the Turk and his agents will be frustrated in their efforts to hood wink the statesmen. Let us hope that in the future these states 662 THE ARMENIAN HERALD men will have no occasion to regret, as Lord Salisbury did, befriending the Turk. They will only "put their money on the wrong horse" again. Let us hope that the noted bag and baggage of Gladstone will apply not only to the clearing of the Turk from Europe, but from the body politic of the world. M. M. HOUSEPIAN, M. D. New York, Oct. 28, 1918.

THE PASSING OF TURKEY

Many organs of public opinion have devoted lengthy articles to the situation cmtod by the collapse of the "sick man's" realm. The New York Sun (Nov. 1, 1918) con tains the following leading article on this subject. We publish it in full and invite the attention of our readers to the paragraphs devoted to the Armenians who* ability for self-government is recognized.

Turkey's complete surrender has come as less of a surprise to the world than that of Bulgaria and Austria. In fact, since Bulgaria retired to the international mourner's bench, wagers with regard to the date when the Ottoman Empire would join her in repentance scarcely found any takers. It mattered not, truth to tell, whether Talaat and Enver capitulated or waited for Allenby and D'Esperey to close in on them ; or, at any rate, it mattered only to the subject races whose immediate fate still depended upon the brutal caprices of age-long oppressors. The final armistice assures Armenians, Jews, Ottoman Greeks, Arabs, and Syrians against the last terrible excesses of a foiled and doomed oligarchy. For the first time in more than four centuries they are able to breathe and walk erect like free men once more. Now the question remaining, both for them and for the rest of the world, concerns the accomplishment of a settlement in the Near East which shall do justice, as complete as that may be humanly possible, to all the persecuted peoples that have been struggling these many centuries for realization of their inextinguishable ambition toward religious and national freedom. There are six distinct races, besides numerous smaller tribal aggre gations, inhabiting that vast territory, cemented together in an admin istrative horror by the blood of martyrs, known as Turkey. How best shall these races be given an opportunity to work out their distiny ? They have high intellectual capacities. Whoever has known the Ottoman Greek living along the western Asia Minor litoral knows that he is fullj the equal of his brother in Athens. And then, according to Eastern proverb, it is admitted on all hands that the Armenian surpasses even the Ottoman Greek in native ability. The Syrians stand equally high in the human scale; and Arab civilization, until obliterated by the Turkish invasion, illuminated the Middle Ages. As for the Jews, in con THE ARMENIAN QUESTION AND PUBLIC OPINION 663

nection with the Palestine state, any question of their capabilities would arouse very general ridicule. Meanwhile, fairly sufficient machinery for the commencement of political life among most of these peoples already exists. The Armenians possess a religious solidarity and a church hier archy which can be utilized as a basis of government. The Armenian committees which fought so well in the Caucasus can be used as an ad ditional cog in the new machine. The Syrians, at least of the Mountain, have always had an independent existence, and since 1860 an independent Christian Governor with a legislature. The Arab state is being built up wisely by the British on the native Shereefate. The Greeks of the litoral could be in some way attached to Greece. All these races must be started on their road to political indepen dence at the peace table itself. Americans have considered the Levant as a vast field for the exercise of philanthropy. Now that the Turk is to be confined to his little principality of Anatolia, we and our allies are at last in a position to do more for these Levantine races than merely save them from starvation ; we can help them to save themselves by putting them in a position to control their own destinies. There will be difficulty in establishing the boundaries of the new nations. The Turks made an inextricable tangle of things in Asia. But the general outlines are clear. Armenia should include the Russian and Turkish Armenias, with an out let at Trebizond and on the Mediterranean, in Cilicia, the ancient home of Armenia. Without Cilicia Armenia will be like a man without a pair of lungs—will be asphyxiated. It may be that America, whose disinter ested altruism has won Armenia's faith, will be asked to superintend the the foundation of the new state. The Syrian "Mountain" must run once more with its ancient boundaries and include Beyrut. Palestine is al ready outlined by ancient history, and the Zionist organization has been officially recognized as an instrument to be operative in the speedy de velopment of the Holy Land. Arabia's terms have not as yet been fixed, but the Moslem Holy Land, containing Mecca and Medina, and possibly Damascus, will form part of the Arabian heritage. After all, the important point does not concern any question of boun daries nor any question as to which great Allied nation shall play the part of sponsor for this or that new Levantine nation. France, for in stance, will doubtless be the mother of the new Syrian commonwealth whose people she has aready once saved from massacre in years gone by. But the great and crying necessity of the situation is that these races shall be given the assurance, at the peace table, that they will have the separate and independent political life they have been fighting for, time out of mind. It is not enough that races be fed and clothed and possess prosperity. If that were the case, Armenian, Jew, Syrian, and Ottoman Greek could have submitted to the Turk long ago. For the right to sur 664 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

vive as nations they have suffered and been martyred down the centuries, and it is for this right to be free, independent, and self-governed nation alities that they now appeal to the court of civilization. And they will not appeal in vain.

THE OWL AND THE SPIDER'S WEB

Under this heading The Christian Science Monitor (Oct. 22, 1918) gives us a binf'« eye view of the ravages perpetrated by the Ottoman conquerors during the last foar centuries and a half. It might be used as an epitaph after the final expulsion of the Osmanlis from the city of the Constantines.

The word or rather the name Othman, or as the Turks spell it Osman, means "bone-breaker," and it is, appropriately enough, from Othman I, that the Ottoman Turks, or the Osmanlis as they call themselves, date their national existence. The name is surely appropriate to the race; for if there is a race, in Europe today, which has held its possessions by the simple process of bone-breaking, it is surely the Ottoman. From the Cilician Gates to the Pillars of Hercules, from the banks of the Euphrates to the windings of the Nile, from the bazaars of Bagdad to those of Con stantinople, or from the snow crowns of the Taurus to the passes of the Balkans, century after century, the conquering troops of the sultans marched. Wherever they found a garden they left a desert; wherever learning flourished they ordained ignorance ; the dreams of progerss they stamped out with the superstition of fatalism. They had one gospel, which contained a trinity of blood, lust, and greed, and that trinity they worshiped through the centuries in the same insane fashion with which the native of Dark Africa bowed himself before Mumbo-Jumbo, or the Hindu fanatic hung himself on hooks, by the shrine of Siva, on the banks of the Ganges. Yet the conquests of the house of Othman originated in a dream, in a dream dreamed, in the last decades of the Thirteenth Century, in the home of the sheik Edebali, in the little village of Eskischeer. It was here, one night, that Othman dreamed that the full moon rose from the bosom of Edebali and set upon his own ; and that as it set, there grew out of the sunset an enormous tree under which stood the four great mountains of the Caucasus, the Atlas, the Taurus, and the Haemus. Then, from the roots of the tree there poured out four rivers, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Danube, and the Nile, along which sailed the tall ships, whilst their banks were heavy with harvest, and in all the valleys there shot up great towns and cities. The tree was full of nightingales and of parrots of every hue, which flitted amongst the leaves all scimitar shape, which suddenly bent, before a mighty wind, in the direction of Constantinople. In the morning Othman explained the dream to his THE ARMENIAN QUESTION AND PUBLIC OPINION 665 host, and told him how all this was to come through a union between himself and Edebali's daughter Malkhatoon. So eloquent was he that the sheik, who had hitherto opposed the marriage, consented to it, and from that moment the face of every prince of the house of Othman was set toward Constantinople. A century and a half, however, was to pass before the dream was realized ; a century and a half during which the Ottoman Empire spread, from one little Asian city, to Nice and Nicomedia, to the Black Sea and to the Balkans, though the tide of conquest never crossed the Bosphorus. It was in the reign of Muhammed II that the dream at last came true. On the night of the 28th of May, 1453, the last of the Caesars attended service in the church of St. Sofia, and then went out into the breach to drive back the Sultan or perish in the effort. At sunrise on the 29th of May the Turkish trumpets blared and the drums beat. Muhammed's soldiers rushed into the breach. The struggle continued furiously hour after hour. But at length, when Constantine had sunk under the pile of slaughter, between the demolished towers at the gate of St. Romanus, the tide of Ottoman conquest poured into the city, and the work of slaughter began. At midday Muhammed rode through the breach him self. He dismounted at the door of St. Sofia, and ascending to the high altar called the muezzins who accompanied him, to summon the true be lievers to prayer. Thus St. Sofia passed from a Christian church to be come a Muhammedan mosque. That night the Sultan banqueted in the city ; and as he drank the head of the last Caesars was placed by his or ders between the fore feet of the bronze horse of the statue of Justinian, in the Augustan Square. The heads of other captives were brought to the table itself, and placed in a row under his eyes. When all was over, he passed out into the desolate halls of the palace, repeating, as he went, a couplet from the poet Firdousi : — "The spider's web is the royal curtain in the palace of Caesar; The owl is the sentinel on the watch tower of Afrasiab." In that story the history of the Ottoman Turk is summed up. Wher ever the Crescent has been hoisted the palsy of ignorance and idleness has descended on the people, who have become hewers of wood and drawers of water for a race to whom the arts or commerce are contempt ible, and whose only object in life is to gratify their sensual passions at the point of the sword. What Enver Pasha and Talaat Pasha have done to the Armenians, during the present war, is only what the Turkish pashas have been doing, from one end of the Ottoman Empire to the other, for the last four centuries and a half. The Armenian murder is only a bucket in an ocean of blood, the hangman's rope of Djemal only a THE ARMENIAN HERALD yard of a rope that could be stretched round the world. The Ottoman found Mesopotamia a garden, he has made of it a fly-infested desert ; he found, on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, the wharves, the warehouses, and the markets of a world commerce: in the one city of Alexandria, there were 4,000 palaces, 4,000 baths, 400 theatres, and 12,000 shops for the sale of vegetables alone, he made of it a city of the dead.

REVIEW OF THE MONTH

THE ZIONISTS' ACTIVITIES

We have had occasion to refer to the Zionists of America (in the Au gust number of the Armenian Herald) , and they have since taken a step which demonstrates their zeal for their cause and their eagerness to embark on the establishment of a Hebrew state in Palestine at the earliest possible moment. Hardly has the accursed Turkish rule been removed from the Holy Land by General Allenby's victorious army (in which the Armenian volunteers played such a conspicuous part) when the Zionist Organization laid the foundation of a Hebrew univer sity, as its first step toward the creation of a Jewish National Home land in Palestine. Everything is possible the moment Turks are elim inated from the stage. The laying of the foundation stones for this Hebrew university (to be erected on Mount Olives) took place on July 24. Many notables of Allied powers were present. We are glad to note that among those present was an Armenian representative whose presence there proved the eagerness of the Armenians to praise and encourage any step which is taken for advancement and learning. The principal speech was made by Dr. Chain Weitzman (head of the Jewish Administrative Commis sion), who announced the liberal view that "the Hebrew university, though intended primarily for Jews, will, of course, give an affection ate welcome to the members of every race and every creed !" Space prevents us from quoting this remarkable speech in full but we cannot refrain from quoting one or two significant passages before we close. He said : "Here, out of the miseries and the desolation of war, is being created the first germ of a new life. Hitherto we have been content to speak of reconstruction and restoration —that ravished Belgium, devasted REVIEW OF THE MONTH 667 France and Russia must and will be restored. In this Hebrew univer sity, however, we have gone beyond restoration and reconstruction. We are creating, during the period of the war, something which is to serve as a symbol of a better future. It is fitting that Great Britain and her great allies, in the midst of tribulation and sorrow, should stand sponsor to this university. Great Britain has understood that it is just because these are times of stress, just because we tend to become lost in the events of the day, that there is a need to transcend these details by this bold appeal to the world's imagination. Here what seemed but a dream a few years ago is now becoming a reality." Again:

"The university, as its name implies, is to teach everything the mind of man embraces. No teaching can be fruitful nowadays unless it is strengthened by a spirit of inquiry and research and a modern uni versity has not only to produce highly trained professional men, but to give ample opportunity to those capable of and ready to devote them selves to scientific research, to do so unhindered and undisturbed. Our university will thus become the home of those hundreds of talented young Jews in whom the thirst for learning and critical inquiry have been engrained by heredity throughout the ages and who in the great multitude of cases are at present compelled to satisfy this, their burn ing need, amid un-Jewish and very often unfriendly surroundings."

An organization which has taken such a signal step toward the crea tion of a national life deserves the congratulatory letters which Mr. Bal four and President Wilson have sent them. Mr. Balfour said in re sponse to the Jews, Armenians, and Syrians of Manchester: "I desire to assure you of my full sympathy with the national aims and aspira tions to which you give expression. I feel that it is of good augury that the Jews, Syrians, and Armenians should identify themselves with the common aspirations of their nationals in Turkey." President Wilson voices the belief that "all Americans will be deeply moved by the re port that even in this time of stress the Weitzman Commission has been able to lay the foundation of the Hebrew university at Jerusalem, with the promise that bears of spiritual rebirth." The Armenians of America wish to join their good wishes to those of the rest of American people for this great step which the Zionists Organ ization has taken toward the organization of a national life.

DECLARATION OF MID-EUROPEAN RACES.

A convention of great importance took place last month in the his toric Independence Hall of Philadelphia where all the subject races of THE ARMENIAN HERALD

mid-Europe and the Near East met to discuss the national aspirations of their respective races. The convention was under the presidency of Dr. Masaryk (the leader of the Czecho-Slovaks) who explained the pur pose of the conference to be "to determine on what basis the new states will be established. This question implies," he continued to say, "first a discussion of national principles. One of the great national principles accepted is self-determination. Then one must be conscious of its aims. The means of the plebiscite was discussed as a means of self-determioa- tion. But there is danger in the plebiscite. Force may be used to in fluence the people and only a free plebiscite can be accepted. The pro tection of minorities, that too has been discussed. We all agree that the minorities must be protected and this question involves another one, viz : How far can the union bring about a closer union of these nations. The economic basis of each union would prepare for a closer relationship in the federated states. The educational system must be such that it will promote close friendship, in a word, the League of Nations contem plated by President Wilson will be prepared by an amity of all these nations whose liberation will be best guaranteed by permanent Euro pean peace." After lengthy deliberations the representatives assembled drew up and signed the following document of which copies were sent to President Wilson and to each of the signatory nations. "In convention assembled, at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pa- United States of America, on Oct. 26, 1918, we, representing together more than 50,000,000 people constituting a chain of nations lying be tween the Baltic, the Adriatic and the Back Seas, comprising Czecho slovaks, Poles, Jugo-Slavs, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Rumanians and Italian Irredentists wholly or part subject to alien dominion, deeply appreciating the aid and assistance given our peoples by the govern ment and people of America and of the Entente Allies, on behalf of ourselves and our brethren at home, do hereby solemnly declare that we place our all—peoples and resources—at the disposal of our allies for use against our common enemy. And in order that the whole world may know what we deem are the essential and fundamental doctrines which shall be embodied in the constitutions hereafter adopted by the people of our respective independent nations, as well as the purposes which shall govern our common and united action, we accept and sub scribe to the following as basic principles for all free peoples : "1. That all governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed. "2. That it is the inalienable right of every people to organize then- own government on such principles and in such form as they believe will REVIEW OF THE MONTH 669 best promote their welfare, safety and happiness. "3. That the free and natural development of the ideals of any state should be allowed to pursue their normal and unhindered course unless such course harms or threatens the common interest of all. "4. That there should be no secret diplomacy, and all proposed treaties and agreements between nations should be made public, prior to their adoption and ratification. "5. That we believe our peoples, having kindred ideals and purposes, should co-ordinate their effort to insure the liberties of their individual nations for the furtherance of their common welfare, provided such a union contributes to the peace and welfare of the world. "6. That there should be formed a League of the Nations of the world in a common and binding agreement for genuine and practical co-operation to secure justice and therefore peace among nations. "In the course of our history, we have been subject to, and victims of, aggressive and selfish nations and autocratic dynasties, and held in sub jection by force of arms. We have suffered destruction of our cities, violation of our homes and lands, and we have maintained our ideals, only by stealth, in spite of the tyranny of our oppressors. "We have been deprived of proper representation and fair trial; we have been denied the right of free speech, and the right freely to assem ble and petition for the redress of our grievances ; we have been denied free and friendly intercourse with our sister states, and our men have been impressed in war against their brothers and friends of kindred races. "The signers of this declaration, and representatives of other inde pendent peoples who may subscribe their names hereunto, do hereby pledge, on behalf of their respective nations, that they will unitedly strive to the end that these wrongs shall be righted, that the sufferings of the world war shall not have been in vain ; and that the principles here set forth shall be incorporated in the organic laws of whatever govern ments our respective peoples may hereafter establish."

This remarkable document (which we hope will soon be realized) was signed by the following distinguished personages : Dr. Masaryk, for the Czecho-Sloyaks ; T. M. Hellinski, for the Poles ; Dr. Hinco Hincovich, for the Jugo-Slavs ; Nicholas Seginsky for the Ukrainians ; Gregory Zsatko- vitch, for the Uhro-Ruthenes ; Thomas Narousevitsch, for the Lithu anians ; Capt. Vasile Stocia, for the Rumanians ; Charles Tomazullo, for the Italians of the Irredenta; Christos Vasilkalki, for the Unredeemed Greeks ; Christo Dako, for the Albanians ; Ittamar Ben Avi, for the Jewg of Palestine, and Dr. Pasdermadjian, for the Armenians. 670 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Under this Mid-European Union a meeting was held at Carnegie Hall, New York, on Friday, Nov. 8, where Dr. G. Pastermadjian, the Armenian delegate, made the following declaration : "On behalf of Martyred Armenia, I take occasion to state emphatically that Armenia has acquired the undisputed right to complete independ ence by reason of her culture, civilization, her unprecedented sacrifices - and her military services on the side of the Allies from the beginning of the war until today, whether in the Caucasus, in Palestine or in France. "During the last fifty years Armenia has been sacrificed on the altar of European imperialism and all the oppressed nationalities of the Near East look to the United States for the vindication of their national rights. "There are unhappily in Europe, and even in this country, certain ele ments that still cling to the exploded credo of maintaining the Turkish Empire as a unit. Armenia appeals to American democracy to prevent the realization of such a disgraceful scheme, in order that she may take her fitting place in the family of free and independent nations."

TURKEY ACCEPTS ALLIES' ARMISTICE

The Allied nations announced on October 25 the armistice terms which Turkey was compelled to accept after the crushing defeat at the hands of General Allenby. The fourth, eleventh and twenty-fourth terms of the armistice referred to the Armenian situation and were as follows:

"4. All allied prisoners of war and Armenian interned persons and prisoners are to be collected in Constantinople and handed over uncon ditionally to the allies. . . 11. A part of Trans-Caucasia already has been ordered to be evacuated by Turkish troops. The remainder to be evacuated if required by the allies after they have studied the situa tion. . . 24. In case of disorder in the six Armenian vilayets the allies reserve to themselves the right to occupy any part of them."

The disappointment of the Armenians on reading the last two clauses of the armistice was as great as their enthusiasm on hearing the news of the Turkish surrender. A chill tremor ran through every Armenian throughout the world. After all the fiendish cruelties which the Turks inflicted on the Armenian people who heroically subjected to danger their very existence in order to stand by the allied cause, was it possible, they asked themselves, that the Allies allowed those very Turks to remain within the borders of Turkish and Russian Armenia? As an expression of this sentiment The Armenian National Union of REVIEW OF THE MONTH 671 America, through its president, Miran Sevasly, sent the following tele gram to the foreign secretaries of the Entente Allied Powers : "On occasion of capitulation of Turkey, Armenian National Union of America, on behalf of Armenians of United States and Canada, con veys to you its hearty congratulations on the brilliant victory of Allied armies against the common foe. Martyred Armenia after noble sacri fices and active participation in the field of honor by the side of the lib eral nations of the world in the Caucasus, in Palestine and France, is hourly expecting her final liberation and the recognition of her imperish able rights to independence. "The Armenian National Union, while recognizing the efficacy of some of the armistice conditions, submits, however, that the reserva tion contained in clause 24 does not sufficiently meet exigencies of the case. The recrudescense of Turkish cruelties and massacres during the last 50 years in Armenia dictates in its humble opinion the urgent neces sity of introducing safeguards during the armistice period of a nature to protect the Armenian population in the six Provinces and Cilicia by entrusting their occupation under the Allied command to the Armenian troops in the Transcaucasus and Palestine. 'The presence of Turkish troops in any part of Armenia is at once a menace and obstacle to the return of Armenian refugees to their homes. We moreover submit that the Allied Powers having declared the provi sion of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk regarding Russian Armenia, which forms an inseparable part of Armenia, as null and void, we venture to state that the presence of Turkish troops in those regions has no raison d'etre. "In the name of a martyred people the Armenian National Union re news, in fine, its earnest expectation that the actual authors and perpe trators of the Armenian holocaust will not be allowed to escape their condign punishment."

On November 8, the following declaration of aims by France and England appeared in the papers with regard to the peoples oppressed by the Turks :

"The aim of France and Great Britain in carrying on in the Near East the war let loose by Germany's ambitions is the complete and final libera tion of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks and the establish ment of governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and the free choice of the native population. "In view of following out this intention, France and Great Britain are agreed to encourage and help the establishment of native govern ments and administrations in Syria and Mesopotamia actually liberated

•72 THE ARMENIAN HERALD by the allies and in the territories they are now striving to liberate, and to recognize them as soon as effectively established. [Far from seeking to force upon the populations of these countries any particular institu tion, France and Great Britain have no other concern than to insure by < their support and their active assistance the normal working of the J governments and institutions which the populations shall have freely adopted, so as to secure just impartiality for all, and also to facilitate the economic development of the country in arousing and encouraging local initiatives by the diffusion of instruction, and to put an end to dis cords which have too long been taken advantage of by Turkish rule. "Such is the role that the two allied governments claim for themiefres in the liberated territories."

This declaration has somewhat mitigated the disappointment of the Armenians caused by the unfavorable terms of the armistice qnoted above, but still it does not contain anything definite concerning the Armenians. We are anxiously waiting with bated breath to hear from the allied powers an unqualified statement which will recognize the com plete separation of the Armenians from the Turks and Armenia'* ta- J perishable rights for independence. At. I

THE ARMENIAN HERALD

DECEMBER A. D., 1917

Raison D'Etre I enia and Her People E. B. Lanin 4 e Armenian Coat of Arms Haig Adadourian 8 lo-Armenian Relations From the XII to XIV Centuries Miran Sevasly 11 e Asiatic Policy of Germany Moushegh Seropian 17 Armenian Poetry Aram Torossian 24 irchag Tchobanian Kate Buss 10 .ullaby For Mother Armenia Archag Tchobanian 43 'he Armenian Question and Public Opinion Delenda est Carthago 46 The Only Acceptable Conditions of Peace . . . .Gustave Hcrve l«» menian Documents The Deportation of the Armenians and the World War 51 lew of the Month 54

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ARMENIAN LEGENDS ARMENIAN POEMS AND POEMS

Rendered into English Verse by Illustrated and Compiled by Miss Alice Stone BlackwelL Pro Zabelle G. Boyajian ceeds for Armenian Relief. J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., London, England, Publishers. Price $1.50, with foreign postage Price $8.00 $1.58. For sale by Robert Cham Apply to; P. Dutton and bers, Ford Building, Boston, Mass. E Co.. 681 Fifth Avenue, New York.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS ON ARMENIA AND ARMENIAN QUESTION

♦The Treatment of Armenians, in the Ottoman empire, 19] ments presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Vis London.

♦The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks, by Arnold J. Toynl Preface by Viscount Bryce, London.

♦Armenian Poems, rendered into English verse, by Alice Stone well. Boston, 1917. For sale by Robert Chambers, Room Building, Boston.

Armenia: Travels and Studies, by Henry F. B. Lynch, Lor mans, Green Co., 1901.

"Twenty Years of the Armenian Question," by James Bryc "Transcaucasia and Ararat", pages 446-525, 1896.

Travels and Politics in Armenia, with an introduction by Viscount and a contribution on Armenian history and culture by by Noel Edward Buxton and Harold Jocelvn Buxton. Lot Elder & Co. 1914.

Armenia Mythology, compiled by Zabel S. Boyajian, Lone Dent & Sons, 1916.

Armenian Legends and Poems, illustrated and compiled by Boyajian. J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., London. England, ers. Apply to E. P. Dutton and Co.

L'Armenie, et La Question Armenienne par Mikael Yai andlan. av preface de Victor Berard, Laval Imprimerie Moderne. G. Kav et Cie, 57 place de la Prefecture.

L'Armenie; son Histoire sa Litterature, son Role en L'Orient, av Introduction par Anatole France, by Archag Tchobanian. Socicte du Mercure de Finance, 1897.

Poemes Armeniens, Anciens et Modernes. Precedes d'une ' Gabriel Mourey sur la Poesie et I'Art Armeniens, by Archag banian, Paris, Socicte d' Editions Litteraires et Artistiqne

Chants Populaires Armeniens, Preface de Paul Adam, by banian. Paris. Societe d' Editions Litteraires et Artistique*.

* Books starred can be obtained by addressing "The Armenian He 401-403 Old South Building, Boston. THE ARMENIAN HERALD

JANUARY A. D. 1918

59 e Pro-Armenian Campaign and our Aim G. P. Gooch 63 o Are the Armenians? A. J. Toynbee 71 urkey : A Past and A Future, I William Watson 79 England to America, a Sonnet G- M. Missirian 80 e National Churches of the East Mrs. Marie Sevasly 86 , iedros Adamian Shore, a Poem Bedros Adamian 89 | The Waves on the 91 Armenian Question and Public Opinion 'he Armenian Documents 95 Armenia, Turkey and Germany 105 keview of the Month 110 From Our Friends and Sympathizers

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THE t^RMENIAN HERALD

FEBRUARY A* D* 1918 ^|&||l§

The Only Solution of the Armenian Question 115 Greece and Armenia Simos Menardos 118 Turkey: A Past and A Futf ?, II A. J. Toynbee 122 \ Views on the Present P— i . '•oposals G. K. Gulbenkian 13* \ Armenia and Greece —A iiejoinder Miran Sevasly 188 n The Armenian Academy at Venice A. Aharonian 141 l Before A Painting By Ayvasovsky, A Poem H. Toumaniaa 149 The Armenian Question and Public Opinion Ottomanism vs. Americanism William Howard Taft 1M Russian Desertion of Armenia 161 Armenian Documents The Massacres of Cilicia and the Young Turks 153 Review of the Month 155 From Our Friends and Sympathizers 1*8

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THE

A. D. 1918

A. Message From England James Bryce 171 Armenia and Turkey. A speech Edward C. Little 172 turkey: A Past and A Future, III A. J. Toynbee 190 In Memoriam of Armenian Patriots and Educators Tcheraz and Tchobanian 217 Praise to the Martyrs, A poem M. M. 222 Armenian Documents r \e Greatest Horror in History Henry Morgenthau 223

of the Month 229

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THE ARMENIAN HERALD

APRIL A. D. 1918

The New Phase of the Armenian Question 235 ir Armenia and Turkey. A Speech Edward C. Little 239 ^Armenia, the Armenians and Treaties G. Rolin-Jacquemyns 249 Rolin-Jacquem yns and Armenia Miran Sevasly 270 " An Eye for an Eye." A Story B. Peshmalyan 275 New Spring. A Poem H. Hovhannessian 286 || If The Armenian Question and Public Opinion Armenia's New Peril 288 An Infamous Bargain 289 Two More Martyr Nations 290 Review of the Month 293

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THE ENIAN HERALD

w A.D. 1918 km

The Unspeakable Turk 355 Armenia, the Armenians and Treaties, III., IV. G. Rolin-Jacquemyns 359 The Soul of Armenia H. B. Boghosian 382 The Late Sultan Abdul-Hamid Vahan Tekeian 384 Death Knell Avedis Aharonian 387 Redemption of Von Bistt, A story B. Peshmalyan 390 The Armenian Question and Public Opinion Our Friends the Turks 402 The Bloody Alliance—Turk and Teuton 403 Review of the Month 404 From Our Friends and Sympathizers 407

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THE ARMENIAN HERALD

AUGUST E&Wnm A.D. 1918

Turkish Machiavelism 467 The Duty of Neutrals to Armenia Rene Pinon 470 Armenia, the Armenians and Treaties G. Rolin-Jacquemyns 476 "A Handful of Earth" Bertha Sullivan Papazian 499 Homage to Thee Avedis Aharonian 503 Armenian Documents From Turkish Toils Esther Mugerditchian 506 Review of the Month Armenians and Zionists 516 An Apostle of Liberty,— Lucy Stone

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THE ARMENIAN HERALD

SEPTEMBER SfSNI A.D. 1918

England, France and Armenia 523 The Situation in the Caucasus Garabed H. Papazian 526 The Fate of the Ottoman Empire Rene Pinon 530 Tigrane Yergate on Turkey Miran Sevasly 534 Can Turkey live? . . I Tigrane Yergate 536 The Armenian Tragedy Joseph d'Arbaud 541 Shoushanik Kourghinian Aram Torossian 543 RtteCifib }»— Sh»"sha"ik *"««"— 545 Review of the Press Will Turkey Break With Germany? 54* The Turco-German Rift "48 Are There Hopes for Turkey? 550 Turkish Marionettes 551 The Future of Turkey 55iS Armenian Documents From Turkish Toils Esther Mugerditchian 555

Review of the Month _ . The Pro-Armenian Campaign Two Birds With One Stone Alice Stone Blackwell 5b5t« Armenians Not the Victims of Ecclesiasticism 565

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:ober A.D. 1918

itish Policy on Armenia 571 rmenia's Loyalty to the Allies Archag Tchobanian 573 in Turkey Live? II Tigrane Yergate 577 rmertia, a poem Katherine Lee Bates 585 !he Armenian Question and Public Opinion 586 No Softness Toward the Turks 587 Armenia and the Kaiser 588 lenian Documents 592 The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks Arnold Toynbee 593 eview of the Month Dr. Stuermer's Indictment of Turkey 608 From Our Friends and Sympathizers 616

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THE ARMENIAN HERALD

iMBER A.D. 1918

iian Freedom and Independence 619 lustice to Armenia H. H. Chakmakjian 621 The Tragedy of Armenia Bertha S. Papazian 626 Turkey Must Die Diana Agabed Apcar 633 Baku— The Pan-Turanian Hub Maynard Owen Williams 637 Turkey Live? Tigrane Yergate 645 iture of Armenia, Persia and Russia Rene Pinon 653 le Armenian Question and Public Opinion Turks' Prophecy Fulfilled M. M. Housepian 660 le Passing of Turkey 662 The Owl and the Spider's Web 664 tview of the Month The Zionists' Activities 666 Declaration of Mid-European Races 667 Turkey Accepts Allies' Armistice fi70

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HE ARMENIAN HERAL A POLITICAL AND LITERARY MAGAZINE

'One of our main object* will be to disseminate knowledge and infor mation so little known on the history, literature, civilization of the Arme- ians." Published by the Armenian National Union of Amet Yearly Subscription: $1.00. Canada and Foreign Subscriptions $1 le Copies 10 Cents. Address all communications to "The Armenis aid," 401-403 Old South Building, Boston.

THE NEW ARMENIA ARMENIA

A Literary and Political Eco Delle Rivendicazioni Periodical Armere Rivista mensile illustrat Yearly Subscription, 24 issues, Abboramenti Annui: in advance. Canadian and Per 1'Italia L. 2.50— Estevo Frs. subscription Ad- $2.50. Direzione Ed Amministrazione : Editor of The New Arme- Corso Reg. Margherita, 73. 949 Broadway, New York. Torino, Italy.

ARARAT THE FRIENDS OF A searchlight on Armenia. : Yearly Subscription, Six Shill Organ of the Society ings. of Address : "Friends of Armenia." Editor "Ararat" Published Quarterly The Armenian United Associa tion of London, 47a, Redcliffe Office: 47 Victoria Street, We Square, London, S.W., England. ster, S.W.L, London, Engl;

ARMENIAN POEMS LA VOIX DE L' ARMENIE

Rendered into English Verse by liss Alice Stone Blackwell. Pro- eeds for Armenian Relief. Revue Bi-Mensuelle Price $1.50, with foreign postage Redaction et Administration •1.58. For sale by N. E. Com mi t- for Armenian and Syrian Re- 30 Rue Jacob, Paris VIme. I Joy St., Boston.

f ,

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS ON ARMENIA AND ARMENIAN QUESTION

♦The Treatment of Armenians, in the Ottoman empire, 1915-16. Docu ments presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce, London.

♦The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks, by Arnold J. Toynbee, with a Preface by Viscount Bryce, London.

♦Armenian Poems, rendered into English verse, by Alice Stone Black well. Boston, 1917. For sale by N. E. Committee for Armenia anc Syrian Relief, 3 Joy St., Boston. Armenia: Travels and Studies, by Henry F. B. Lynch, London, Long mans Green Co., 1901. 'Twenty Years of the Armenian Question," by James Bryce, in hii "Transcaucasia and Ararat," pages 446-525, 1896.

Travels and Politics in Armenia, with an introduction by Viscount Bryce and a contribution on Armenian history and culture by Aram Raffie by Noel Edward Buxton and Harold Jocelyn Buxton, London, Smith Elder & Co. 1914. Armenian Mythology, compiled by Zabel S. Boyajian, London, G. M. Den & Sons, 1916.

Armenian Legends and Poems, illustrated and compiled by Zabelle C Boyajian. J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., London. England, Publishers Apply to E. P. Dutton and Co.

L'Armenie, et La Question Armenienne par Mikael Varandian, avec un preface de Victor Berard, Laval Imprimerie Moderne. G. Kavanagt et Cie, 57 place de la Prefecture.

L'Armenie; son Histoire sa Litterature, son Role en L'Orient, avec un Introduction par Anatole France, by Archag Tchobanian, Paris Societe du Mercure de France, 1897.

Poemes Armeniens, Anciens et Modernes. Precedes d'une Etude d Gabriel Mourey sur la Poesie et 1'Art Armeniens, by Archag Tch< banian, Paris, Societe d'Editions Litteraires et Artistiques, 1903.

Chants Populaires Armeniens, Preface de Paul Adam, by Archag Tch< banian, Paris, Societe d' Editions Litteraires at Artistiques, 1903. *La Voix de 1'Armenie, Revue Bi-Mensuelle. Redaction et Administn tion 30 Rue Jacob, Paris Vlme.

♦The Witch of Golgotha, by B. Peshmalyan, Boston, Sherman, Frenc and Company, 1913. A romance from the times of the introductio of Christianity in the Near East. * Books starred can be obtained by addressing "The Armenian Herald," 401-44 Old South Building Boston.