The Armenian Herald / Armenian National Union of America

THE ARMENIAN HERALD CONTRIBUTORS' COLUMN FOR MARCH NUMBER.

Lord James Bryce, whose message we bee's views had been adopted at the publish in the present number, needs no Crimean War, probably this world con introduction to the American public. The flict would have been avoided and the name of the author of the American Eastern Question settled once and for all. Commonwealth is a household word throughout the United States and es Mr. Minas Cheraz and Mr. Archag pecially in University circles. Lord Tchobanian whose names appear in our Bryce has been in the forefront of the pages are widely known both in this Armenian cause for the last forty years. country and Europe. The first, as a mem He visited Armenia as far back as 1874 ber of the Armenian delegation to Berlin and is one of the few men who have in 1878 and as an eminent orator and reached the top of Mt. Ararat. His work writer, who addressed parliament of re on Transcaucasia and Ararat is a stan ligions in Chicago, has his distinctive dard work on Armenia and the Arme place in the pantheon of Armenian nian people. Lord Bryce has recognized thinkers, patriots, and authors of emi the true qualities of the Armenians and nence. Mr. Tchobanian needs no intro has greatly admired not only their past duction in these pages as Miss Kate history, literature and their accomplish Buss's sketch of him in our December is ment in their various walks of life but sue is a comprehensive portrait of one of also their parliamentary virtues dis Armenia's foremost men of letters and played by the speakers in Armenian na poets. tional and other assemblies. Ever since 1875 he has been the guide, and the Ex-Ambassador Henry Morgenthau friend of Armenians everywhere. "was at his post in Constantinople when the Greek war broke out. So he had an unusual opportunity of viewing the op Lieutenant Colonel Little, a represen eration of the grandiose scheme by tative to the United States Congress which Germany planned to dominate the from Kansas, was born in Ohio and edu world. Just as the first German mili cated at the University of Kansas. His tary onslaught was against Paris, so her activities have been many prior to his first great political intrigue centered on entrance to the congress. Among others the Bosphorus. In the accompanying he has practiced law, served as minister article Mr. Morgenthau tells, for the resident to Egypt under President Har first time, his story of the Armenian rison, and commanded a regiment in the horror— the greatest single massacre in Philippines. He was acquainted with the history of the world—which Germany the Eastern affairs through travels while could, but would not, prevent. It is of abroad of which he speaks in his speech. peculiar interest that Mr. Morgenthau, a We print the speech with deep appre Jew born in Germany, was, as American ciation to Colonel Little for holding the Ambassador, the chief protector of the attention of Congress for so long a time Christians in Turkey. Mr. Morgenthau concerning the Armenians. holds that the destruction of the military power of Germany, and the expulsion of Mr. A. J. Toynbee's last and conclud the Turks from Europe are essential to ing part of the remarkable study on the the progress of civilization." We have Turkey, A Past and A Future, which nothing more to add, in these introduc we are giving in this issue, should ab tory remarks, to this concise note by the sorb the attention of all well wishers of editors of the Red Cross Magazine from the Armenians and of the other civilized which we are printing Mr. Morgenthau's elements in the Near East. If Mr. Toyn article. THE ARMENIAN HERALD VOLUME 1 MARCH, 1918 NUMBER 4

A MESSAGE FROM LORD BRYCE.

Message : "The most urgent needs of the Armenian people are two : Firstly, cordial cooperation between all the sections of the Armenian population in Trans-Caucasia. Every difference of opinion ought to be sunk in the common effort to repel the threatened attacks of the Turks, and to avoid any trouble from the side of the Tartars of the East. The Armenians and the Georgians are happily working together at present, having a common interest in maintaining themselves against the Turks, and in maintaining a stable government, which shall avoid the chaos and anarchy which, according to the accounts we receive, prevail over large parts of European Russia. The other urgent need is to provide food for the refugees who have fled from Turkish massacres into Trans-Caucasia, and for those Arme nians who have returned into what was Turkish territory south of the Russian frontier. Both these classes of people are threatened with star vation. Food, I am told, can be had from adjoining neighbouring dis tricts, especially Persia, if the money is forthcoming to procure it. We, in Britain, are doing all we can to send out funds to support those who are threatened with famine, and we have no doubt that Armenians in the United States are doing their best. Our common thanks are due to the splendid liberality with which the people of the United States have contributed to the cause of the Armenian relief during the past two years, when the need for help for the refugees from Turkish cruelty has been so urgent. I know that our American friends have shown the warmest sympathy not only with the sufferings, but also with the aspir ations of the Armenians for permanent deliverance from the yoke of the Turkish oppressor, and we earnestly trust the day of that deliverance is now at hand." ARMENIA AND TURKEY.

BY EDWARD C. LITTLE

Mb. Chairman, a quarter of a century has gone by since I lived in the Valley of the Nile, sailed through the Grecian Isles, sojourned among the hills of Palestine, and swam across the River Jordan. Then the Suez Canal was the key to world dominion. Cairo was the capital of world diplomacy and the storm center of world politics. From there Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Turkey were maneuvering for position in the universal conflict now being waged. Most of the stars of statecraft, war, and prelacy, which illuminated the horizon of the Levant then, have been lost in the dark shadows of eternal night. The great world conflagration for which they so long watched with bated breath has finally come without their presence. If among the dying embers of the past I can breathe and kindle a little flame that may reflect some useful light upon the relations of the Turk, the Armenian and the Orient to this mighty cataclysm in which we are all involved, I shall feel that my service in this House has not been wholly in vain. About the time I was appointed Khedive Tewfik died and his son, the Prince Abbas Hilmi, a boy of twenty-one or two, came from a school in Vienna to mount the throne established by his ancestor Mohamet Ali, the greatest ruler outside Europe and America who has lived for 200 years. Supposing he inherited a kingdom that had existed for a century the boy, short, stout, stubborn, and dignified, promptly clashed with Cromer, the English power behind the throne, and named as his Prime Minister Fahkry Pasha, a tall handsome Circassian (by virtue of a mother and grandmothers for several generations from Cir- cassia). Cromer suggested a very pliant Egyptian friend of the Eng lish for the place, and the British Foreign Minister Roseberry cabled that he "would not be responsible" for what happened if their candi date was not selected. France and Russia declined to back the boy's plans and war was avoided. The young fellow was determined to be some measure of a king and threatened to commit suicide before he would accede to the English demands. Cromer "declined to accept the responsibility" of the revolutions and disturbances that might have followed among the Mohammedans, and they compromised on Riaz Pasha. A little, slender old man, a devout Moslem, an ardent Egyptian, ARMENIA AND TURKEY 173 a sturdy patriot, he satisfied the Egyptians ; an honest official, a sound business man, a capable executive, he satisfied Cromer. Eager, boyish in carriage, nervously counting the beads of his rosary, cautious, pru dent, determined in his methods, his character stood like a rock con cealed beneath the foam of his manners, which misled all who did not know him intimately. With some pride I remember he always said when the young man from Kansas came in, "Here comes our friend." Boutrous Pasha, the minister of finance, was a Coptic Christian, a descendant of the ancient Egyptians, a member of the church founded by Saint Mark in the sixtieth year of our Lord. Coldly logical in every thought and utter ance, I heard him tell Hardinge, Cromer's substitute (afterward gov ernor of Uganda and now, I believe, minister to Spain), that the Eng lish should desist from the pretense of allowing the Egyptians to rule and rule it themselves or get out. Carrying that to its legitimate con clusion when he became prime minister in after years, a fanatical Mohammedan and Egyptian patriot slipped a knife into him and killed him, just to demonstrate to the world that it takes a major premise and a minor premise and a premise of human nature to make a real syllogism, and ended the career of a very able man. The foreign minis ter, Tigrane Pasha, was an Armenian Christian, a cultured and accom plished diplomat whose resources and equipment compared favorably with those of any man in public life in Washington, and through him I first began to learn about the Armenian race from which he sprang. Yacoub Pasha Artin, the minister of education, was also an Armenian, a cultured, thoughtful student. Ortega, a humorous Spaniard, was dean of the diplomatic corps. Austria-Hungary designated a courtly baron, and France a marquis to uphold their dignities. Russia transferred a diplomat, Koyander, from a tempestuous service among the Balkan States to protect her interests. Germany was represented by Count von Leyden, soon as Ambassador to Japan, where he served when I came home through that empire from the Spanish-Filipino war in 1889 with the Twentieth Kansas Volunteers, to help plan her policies on the Pacific. An almost typical John Bull, the famous Sir Evelyn Baring, Baron Cromer, finally Earl of Cromer, was diplomatic agent and consul general of Great Britian to Egypt with the rank of minister resident, his title and rank the same as that of the representatives from the United States and all other countries. A sturdy man of sound common sense, his minor duties were the same as theirs, but his major task was that of Eng land's great proconsul since Warren Hastings, to lay the heavy hand of Great Britain on the shoulder of Egypt whenever in his capable judg ment the necessity seemed to arise. 174 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

The greatest Turk of those days and these was Mouktar Pasha Ghazi, a soldier, a scholar, and a gentleman, the hero of Kars, who fell into disfavor with the Sultan because of progressive views and was sent into courtly exile as high commissioner to Egypt, over which Tur key nominally had a very nominal suzerainty, and, as he said, he was there "a standing protest against English domination on the Nile." In after years, when Bulgaria had almost taken Constantinople, he was summoned from retirement by the general voice of his countrymen and the Sultain and made Grand Vizier of the Sublime Porte. Through more than 80 years of active life, in war and peace he has had the loyal administration of his own people and the unbounded respect of Russians, Armenians, British, and all who have had the pleasure of knowing a man who is now a member of the Turkish Senate at the age of Cannon and Sherwood in this House. From the Sudan, a prisoner of State, came Zobier Pasha, the greatest slave king and the mightiest ruler Central Africa ever knew, to live in a palace with a hundred servants and chafe at the restraint. Born at Smyrna, of the Armenian race, Nubar Pasha, the greatest statesman the Turkish Empire has known for a hundred years, had begun his career, in the early forties, as secre tary to Mohamet Ali and to his successor and stepson, that military genius and "great barbarian" (as Nubar named him), Ibrahim Pasha, and had risen to be prime minister many times of the Mohammedan land of Egypt, the trusted advisor of all its rulers, and then was living in wealthy retirement, an interesting figure at the dinners and receptions of that proud capital. Afterwards the necessities of the times again made him the prime minister. A younger man, Sirdar, commander of the Egyptian Army, as yet only a major in the British Army, my neigh bor and friend, with whom I often debated the respective merits of our countries, was training the Egyptian Army for the conquest of the Sudan, which conquest was to give him a seat in the House of Lords; was to make him the chief reliance of the British Empire in its hour of greatest peril; and was to make for him a name that shall forever echo to the trump of fame, Knight, Pasha, Baron, Viscount, Earl, Knight of th Garter, and Field Marshal, Kitchener of Khartoum! President Harrison first appointed as Cromer's colleague, Eugene Schuyler, before charge d'affaires to Russia, minister to Greece, and the author of our standard work on diplomacy. When he died, President Harrison selected his college roommate at Maimi years before, Hon. John A. Anderson, long a distinguished and powerful Representative in this House from Kansas, who died in Liverpool on his way home, among strangers, alone, except for Androus Melik, his second kavass, an honest, faithful, and loyal servant of this great Republic for many years and until now. Short as was his service, that great Kansan left ARMENIA AND TURKEY 175

his useful impress on the Egyptian foreign office. An oriental custom had long survived in Egypt of presenting to each minister as he ap peared a handsomely caparisoned horse and expensive sword. For a number of years they had omitted the steed from the program. Mr. Anderson introduced the Kansas train of thought in the valley of the Nile when he said to the pasha who presented this weapon:

We appreciate your courtesy, but the United States does not need this sword. Return it to the Khedive of Egypt with my compliments and tell him to use it to protect his own country.

The Egyptian foreign minister told me that they had long desired to discontinue the idle ceremony, but hesitated at doing so on any given individual, and Mr. Anderson's republican simplicity made it possible for them to terminate the custom without offense, as they then did. As this was the most important diplomatic office with which Kansas had ever been favored, our Senator Perkins suggested to the President that till the end of the unexpired term the post ought to be filled from Kansas. The appointment was tendered to a young lawyer but a very few years out of the State University, who was not an applicant for the responsibility, perhaps on the theory that President Harrisan desired somebody who would live through the term. Suddenly transferred from the prairies, where he had been raised on the frontier, he found himself diplomatic representative of the gratest country on earth to the Court of the Pharaohs, the land of Joseph, and the people of the Ara bian Knights. The map of the Orient unfolded to his eyes, Rameses and Cromer, Saladin and Bonaparte, Moses and Mahomet Ali, and half earth's history made one mighty cavalcade as the Occident and the Orient came together. The wealth and the culture of Europe and America gathered for a course of study or a season's holiday on the piazzas of Shepherds the Continental, the New, on the decks of the Nile dahbeahs and Cook's steamers. America sent kings and queens, princes and princesses of her own to mingle with those from the principalities, kingdoms, and empires of our European ancestors. They came and went to and from Japan, China, India, Palestine, Athens, Constantinople, and Rome. There was Leiter, America's greatest merchant, who began sweeping

out and kindling the fires in his own store ; and Searles, who inherited the Hopkins share of the estate of the big four—Stanfard, Crocker, Huntington, Hopkins. There was Mary Custis Lee, daughter of Robert E. Lee, granddaughter of Light Horse Harry Lee, and great-great- granddaughter of Martha Washington. There was Mary Leiter, a Chicago schoolgirl, soon to sit in regal splendor on the throne of the 176 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Great Mogul as Empress of India, a worthy successor of the one to whom was huilt the Taj Mahal. There came Nicholas Murray Butler, now president of Columbia; Crosby Noyes, dean of America's newspa per men; Stanford White, who built the Madison Square Garden and died in it; Richard Harding Davis, as high a type as America ever furnished to the world, of a manly and gallant young gentleman, bril liant, talented, and famous. In the halcyon days of youth we climbed the Great Pyramid of Cheops together and on its lofty summit jostled the ghosts of Bonaparte's Forty Centuries as they listened to the echo of his guns and watched the charge of the Mamelukes. They philoso phized when the Khedival Court made its trip to the Sultan and the Golden Horn. They stood with interest and awe before the mighty relics of the past, and observed in wonder and amazement the splen dors of the Arabian Knights take the boards every time the sun went down as the English drum beat from the citadel on the Mokattam Hills and the weird call of the meuzzin rose from the minaret of the Mosque of Mohamet Ali far up yonder above the great city of Cairo, while Watson, Ewing, McClanahan, and a noble company of American missionaries brought the message which they now carry as far up the Nile as the Sobat River and which some day all brave men pray may still forever the roar of battle. He would, indeed, be a dumb, inanimate, and trifling student of human affairs who would not receive lasting im pressions and draw lofty inspirations from such glowing and kindling pages. Under this bill you should send ministers to Greece, Albania, Monte negro, Servia Bulgaria, and Roumania each, instead of trying to have one man represent you to several warring nationalities. The Egyptian office has more serious responsibilities than two-thirds of those you maintain abroad, and your bill should be drawn accordingly. Why should Bulgaria and Servia be considered as one (diplomatically) here? Your State Department must not figure in terms of 1876.

TURKS AND BULGARS.

The Turkish Empire having lost Arabia and Egypt since the pres ent war began now contains 540,000 square miles, 10,000 of which only are in Europe. At the close of the war with Bulgaria in 1913 a treaty was made by which most of this was ceded to Bulgaria, including Adria- nople. There Austrian interference rendered it impossible for the Serv ians and Greeks to acquire any portion of Albania, and made it an inde pendent country. That induced the Servians and Greeks to change somewhat their attitude toward the division of Macedonia and precipi tated the fight between Bulgaria on the one side and Servia, Greece, and ARMENIA AND TURKEY 177

Roumania on the other. The Turk advantaged himself of that oppor tunity, broke the treaty, retook Adrianople and much territory given to the Bulgars. The result was that Bulgaria at the close of that war, after having done much of the fighting, really got less out of it than Roumania, Montenegro, Servia, or Greece. When the Sultan and Enver Pasha, then Enver Bey, retook Adrianople the Emperor of Germany wired his congratulations. You can understand, then, the kindly feeling that the Bulgarians naturally have toward Germany. Their greatest interest is in Macedonia, where there is a divided opinion as to how much of that section the Greeks, the Serbians, or the Bulgarians should rule. An educated Bulgarian said to me, "We pro pose to have our people in Macedonia or lose all." Bulgaria had no friendly regard for our enemies. She would have preferred, probably, not to help them. She had good cause to hate them all. She simply went in there to get what she thought was her share of Macedonia. Forty years ago there was no Bulgaria. There is finer opportunity right now to organize an Armenian nation than there was 40 years ago to develop Bulgaria into a State. In 1863 Mr. Robert, of New York City, founded, at Constantinople, the Robert College, conducted by American missionary teachers. That has been the school where all of the great Bulgarians were educated. That nation rose to life by the aid and inspiration given it in the school at Constantinople by American mis sionary teachers. Bulgaria is a product of American teaching. Their feeling is probably kindlier toward us than toward any others. I think Congress showed good sense in not declaring war, for the present at least, upon Bulgaria. It is entirely possible that if Turkey were beaten it might very easily come about that a treaty could be made with Bulgaria by which she would drop out of this fight. In fact, that would be almost inevitable. There will have to be some sensible settle ment there between her and Serbia and Greece, and perhaps the United States can have the confidence of all of them enough to help them some what, an attitude which Russia once maintained. There is a general feeling that Bulgaria may insist upon her rights under the treaty of 1913 and recover Adrianople, as she should. The Turk has been in Eu rope long enough anyway, has lost most of his European dominion, and there is a general feeling that the tail ought to go with the hide. There are only 10,000 square miles there, and it is too much trouble to make two bites of a cherry. Half of the people in European Turkey are Mo hammedans and the other half Christians. If Bulgaria got most of that land, and Constantinople were made a free city for the benefit of all the world, it would be a very happy conclusion of the Mohammedan invasion of Europe. 178 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

The remainder of Turkey is where I now point on this map, through Asia Minor, Anatolia, Armenia, Syria, Palestine, and Meso potamia. There, in a teritory of 530,000 square miles, live 18,000,000 of people, three-fifths of whom are Moslems and about two-fifths Chris tians, with three or four hundred thousand Jews. Start from Egypt (pointing) , and down here at Bagdad, run up through Mesopotamia, Pal estine, Armenia, and Kurdistan, and over here to Anatolia and Asia Minor. This country to which I now point, Anatolia, is largely inhabited by Turks. If the Turkish Empire is driven out of Europe, they would control Anatolia. Those are their people. The judicial and administrative situation in the Turkish Empire has always been a very singular one, that one unfamiliar with the conditions finds difficulty in grasping. The real law is the Koran, and under its strictest interpretation Christians are merely outlaws, outside the law without any particular rights. This accounts in part for the carelessness in past years with regard to the lives of Greeks, Bulgarians, Servians, and Armenians. No other foreign nation would submit to such an atti tude from any government, and they avoid it under capitularies which descended to the Sultan from the Byzantine Empire of some 500 years ago. The diplomatic or consular representative of America, of France, or Germany is the sole administrative and judicial authority over the people of his country in Turkey or Egypt. By his order they an considerable, or has been till now, when the Turks claim to have abro- arrested, and by his determination they are tried. There are many for eigners in that Empire and the power exercised in this manner is very gated the capitularies as Japan did 19 years ago, the very day I hap pened to reach her shores. Forty-two years ago the Egyptian prime minister, Nubar Pasha, the Armenian statesman, secured from all the great powers a treaty which organized an international tribunal known as the Mixed Courts, which tries all civil cases between Egyptians and foreigners and between foreigners. This left to the foreign represent* tives the adjudication of all criminal matters, and Nubar did much to modernize Egypt. Following the capitulary plan, the Sultan has been accustomed to designate heads of the various respective churches known as the Pa triarch, selected nominally at least by the various churches, who, afte* a fashion, took care of the affairs of their people, the Armenian Pa triarch at Constantinople being the political head of his people. In 1878, when Beaconsfield and Bismarck held the great Berlin conference that was supposed to settle the destiny of Europe forever, Mugurditch Khri- mian, long the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, with three others, appeared to represent the Armenian people at this congress of Berlin.

I ARMENIA AND TURKEY 179

They secured an agreement in that great treaty that the Armenians should hereafter have justice from the Turkish Government, an agree ment guaranteed by all the great powers of Europe. This was never car ried out by the Turks, was never sustained by the guarantors, and the continued persistence of the Armenians in demanding its enforcement had much to do with the terrible massacres to which they have been sub jected since. They actually stood up for their rights under the law, jusL as an American would, something no Turk could endure from a Chris tian, and especially from an Armenian. Though the Turks are a great military people, they have never in herited or acquired any capacity for civil government. They regard the Christians in their dominion as the followers of a military camp, subject to the discipline of its rules. The Province of Anatolia, just across from Constantinople, is the seat of their first settlement, the place, where they first established their kingdom, and the home of most of the Turks. When they retire from their armed invasion of Europe at the close of this war, as they should, there will be left to them their own ter ritory of Anatolia, inhabited by their own people, with its capital at Konia. Into that country their ancestors galloped, sword in hand, 600 years ago, and about it cluster all their traditions. There they would have an opportunity, unhampered by all the peculiar conditions of their larger dominion, for the natural development and growth of their race, which is the only way the Turkish question will ever be settled and the only way it should be settled.

SERBIANS AND CROATIANS.

The Serbians and Croatians are practically the same people, except that the Croats are Roman Catholics and the Serbians have their own church, much like the Greek Catholic Church. The Croatians just in land from Trieste have an excellent university of their own, and are entitled to grave consideration in any effort to do justice to the na tionalities of the Balkans and neighboring territory. Montenegro is in habited by men of the Serbian race, tongue, and religion, hardy Chris tian mountaineers, the only Christians south of Vienna who never were conquered by the invading Turks. Now their country is engulfed by the Austrian wave. Is there a Christian in America whose heart does not go out to them. The gallant little kingdom of Serbia actually had Austria whipped till the German hosts came down like Cedron in flood and overwhelmed them. Chased out of their homes the splendid army withdrew, and are fighting their way back still a vigorous and powerful factor in the great 180 THE ARMENIAN HERALD war. The wreck and ruin of their land has left them undaunted. When justice triumphs they will be established with sufficient seaports on the Adriatic. There will never be quiet in the Balkans till Serbians, Croa- tians, Montenegrins, and Bosnians are self-governing people, we hope one great nation, of the same blood and tongue between Hungary and the Adriatic. They are entitled to all the sympathy we feel and all the jus tice we demand for Belgium. If France and England had thrown into Serbia with reasonable dili gence the troops sent to Salonica, if Italy had flung across the Adriatic and through Albania and Montenegro the armies she hurled at the al most impregnable hills between her and Trieste, the allies would now hold Belgrade and probably be camped before Vienna. The conflict along the border of Belgium and France is simply a siege of France and Ger many. In 1917 Nivelle, the greatest strategist the allies have developed, was stopped on the road to victory, and since then they have merely fought each other to a standstill, with no apparent possibility of a de cision. Through Serbia lay the path to the conquest of Austria and a final victory over Germany. If that line had been held, Bulgaria would never have entered the war, and the greatest mistake made was in al lowing Serbia to be vanquished. But there is yet an opening in the east. THE OPPORTUNITY.

If the great British navy can not make a successful attack on the oped, was stopped on the way to a possible breaking through the Ger man trenches, by the panicky exaggeration of his losses, there seems lit tle probability of an early break in the line, unless Great Britain lands half a million men on the coast of Belgium, or the Germans attack Swit zerland and compel America to throw a million men in there. Since Nivelle, apparently the chief military genius the allies devel- German coast, that would seem to demonstrate that the mines, torpe does, and submarines have junked the battleships and they are of no utility but to observe each other. If this is the fact, there is no prob ability of a break anywhere on the western front or coast soon. But if Turkey is beaten, Bulgaria would quit, we should be in touch with Roumania, and the Allies could defeat Austria. The British hold Bagdad and Jerusalem. The Russians fought their way into Asiatic Tur key, 160 miles, to Erzingan and beyond. They took Trebizond on the Black Sea and Van to the south. They today still hold all this, an Ar menian country. Among them are 35,000 Armenian soldiers fighting for their homes. While the Russian army there is disintegrating, the Ar menians at Tiflis are organizing another army corps of their own, and ARMENIA AND TURKEY 181

expecting to put 150,000 Armenians into the field to fight the Turks for Armenia. They will have the aid of the Christian Georgians, the peo ple of the frosty Caucasus, whose capital is Tiflis. But they will need financial assistance from some great power. Japan is a nation with small resources, too prudent to take great risks without the change for great gains, but brave enough to venture much for a greater destiny for Nippon. The Rev. R. E. McLean, of Kan sas City, Kans., a scholar, a Scotchman and a gentleman, who was for eight years a missionary in central China, speaks and reads Chinese, and is their friend, has expressed the opinion that Japan should be brought into this fight for the world's benefit, by some benefit to Japan. If she is given within reasonable limitations a free hand, we will soon see them facing the German advance toward Asia. With the Armenians and Georgians from Tiflis, and the British from Bagdad and Jerusalem mov ing with one aim, Turkey will crumble, Bulgaria make peace, Serbia rise from her ashes, and victory be within our grasp.

THE LAND OF ARMENIA.

When Noah stood on Ararat, the great plateau of Armenia lay all about him. To the northeast he could see the fertile and beautiful valley of Araxcs running 150 miles to the salt waters of the Caspian Sea. To the southwest were the fountainheads of the Tigris and the Euphra tes and the hills and valleys and the plateaus extending to the waters of the Mediterranean in the vicinity of Tyre and Sidon. To the northwest was the Black Sea, and later the famous city of Trebizond, while Persia lay to the southeast. When our Aryan ancestors left the roof of the world and entered Europe north of the Caspian, our Armenian cousins, for such they are, marched to the south of that sea and after a bit estab lished themselves around Mount Ararat, where they have lived more than 3,000 years, and it is not quite 311 since John Smith landed at Jamestown. At the present time Armenia is bounded on the west by Ana tolia, the birthplace of the Turkish Empire, and we hope its final resting place. To the south lies Persia, Kurdistan, Mesapotamia, and Syria. The Turks have scattered many Kurds through the Armenian country and driven many Armenians into the surrounding divisions for centuries. Much of ancient Armenia is now a part of Russia, including Mount Ara rat, Kars, Erivan, their share of the Araxes Valley, and Echtmiadzin, the center of the Armenian nation. Between them and the Caucasus lived the Christian Georgians, their friends, allies, and neighbors now as often before, whose land runs far up into the Caucasus about their great 182 THE ARMENIAN HERALD capital of Tiflis. A small portion of Armenia is now northwestern Persia. What will become of Persian and Russian Armenia in the ap proaching break-up, which seems inevitable, no man can prophecy. Tri umphant Turks will want back Kars and Russian Armenia. Then woe to the conquered ! In another generation the Armenian race will be as extinct as the dodo and the first Christian nation will disappear from off the earth. At Baku is the great oil district surrounded by 500,000 Tar tars, friends of the Turks. Every man with a reasoning mind realizes Germany will strike straight for it through the port of Batoum. Shall we allow the Bolsheviki to abandon this great natural reservoir of oil and our Armenian cousins to Hun and Turk?

Armenia in Russia extends well up toward Tiflis, where there are 100,000 Armenians, six Armenian papers, and an Armenian college in the Georgian city. There are 2,000,000 living in Russia, 1,500,000 now, perhaps, live down here in Turkey, and 100,000 have a corner up here in Persia. They controlled at various times, in all about 500,000 square miles of territory, extending from the Caspian and Caucasus and Black Sea clear down here to the Mediterranean at the elbow where it turns south toward Egypt. The land is table-land and they grow there every thing that will grow in the United States in the North or the South, be cause of the differences of climate. As we, they produce both wheat and cotton. They find copper, iron, gold, silver and many minerals there. Here are all natural resources essential to a stable and important Chris tian nation. All our fruits are found there.

Their hope is that when their country is made a protectorate and given a decent representative government, so that a man can make a home and know that he can find his wife, child, and house ; that he can work away from home without being decapitated ; that railroads will be built from these harbors of Mersina, Alexandretta, up the Valley of the Euphrates to Erzerum, connecting with the Russian railroad to Tiflis, to Baku, an oil field City of 500,000, to the Caspian to Batum on the Black Sea and to European Russia. When that comes you will see a Californian development of an unsurveyed new country. A land of magnificent mountains, great lakes, mighty rivers, what wonder that its people have been loyal to its soil, its history, and its re ligion through thousands of years, in spite of suffering, cruelty, oppres sion unmatched by the downfall of Poland or the woes of Ireland that so long in song and story have held the sympathetic eye of a Chris tian civilization. Let Khorene Nar Bey de Lusignan, their poet, edu cated among the scholars of their Venetian convent, descendant of their lost kings, speak for them a moment in the halls of the American Congress : ARMENIA AND TURKEY

If a scepter of diamond, a glittering crown, Were mine, at thy feet I would lay them both down, Queen of queens, Armenia!

If a mantle of purple were given to me, A mantle for kings, I would wrap it round thee, Armenia, my mother !

If the fire of my youth and its sinews of steel Could return, I would offer its rapture and zeal All to thee, Armenia!

Had a lifetime of ages been granted to me, I had given it gladly and freely to thee, 0 my life, Armenia!

Were I offered the love of a maid lily fair, I would choose thee alone for my joy and my care, My one love, Armenia!

Were I given a crown of rich pearls, I should prize Far more than their beauty, one tear from thine eyes, O weeping Armenia!

If freedom unbounded were proffered to me, I would choose still to share thy sublime slavery, O my mother, Armenia!

Were I offered proud Europe, to take or refuse, Thee alone, with thy griefs on thy head, would I choose, My country, Armenia!

Might I choose from the world where my dwelling should be, I would say, Still thy ruins are Eden to me, My beloved Armenia!

Were I given a seraph's celestial lyre, I would sing with my soul, to its chords of pure fire, Thy dear name, Armenia ! 184 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE.

The 2,000,000 Russian Armenians are an efficient and contented fac tor in the life of Tifiis and the Caucasus, with fine farms, towns, schools, and cities, taking part in all its activities. Within the territory of Tur kish Armenia, three years ago, over a million and a half Armenians lived. There is some little difference of opinion as to how many of them have been slain since then. I think it is a fair statement to make that at least 500,000 Armenians have been killed since 1915 in this coun try, to which I now point, by the Turks and Kurds. Their effort is to exterminate the Armenian race that they may possess their lands and stock and destroy the Christian Church there. We talk much about the tribulations to which Belgium has been subjected. I think I can safely state to the House that Armenia has suffered a thousand times as much as Belgium has endured. The Sultan has keen killing off small nations much longer than the Kaiser. For hundreds of years this has gone on to a greater or less extent. To deflower the maids, to rape the matrons, to slay the young men, to butcher the old, to assemble them together in the Armenian churches and steal everything they have; to burn their furniture, to drive away such as are left from their homes is a most everyday occurrence in Armenia. Hundreds of thousands have so suf fered since 1914. I would hesitate about making such a statement on the floor of this House if I were not absolutely satisfied of the correct ness of my statement. The Turks themselves, as you know, of course, came from up in Mon golia. They have learned nothing since they have been there that makes them capable of conducting a government. They came in as soldiers and conquerors and never have been anything else. With them the collection of taxes is an adventure and they can not govern anybody except by cutting them in two. That is the Turkish idea of adminis tration. (Laughter.) There is a German, named Lepsius, who has written a book, and I am going to quote from him on the theory that he is not an interested witness. I am very sure he has not misrepresented the matter. He says :

The manner in which men qualify for the Turkish prison in Armenia can be easily deduced from what has already been said. The possession of money, cattle, corn, land, a wife or daughter, or enemies is enough. We are shocked to read of the cruelty of brutal Kurds who ride to a village, attack the houses, drive off the sheep, seize all the portable property, dishonor the women, and return leisurely home, conscious of having done a good day's work. We call it a disgrace to civilization, ARMENIA AND TURKEY 186

and perhaps the qualification is correct. But bad as it sounds, it is a mercy compared with the Turkish methods, which rely upon the machinery of the law and the horrors of the prison. A man whom pov erty, nay, hunger, prevents from paying imaginary arrears of taxes, who declines to give up his cow, or his buffalo as backsheesh to the zaptiehs, who beseeches them to spare the honor of his wife or his daughter, is thrown into one of these dungeons, which he never leaves until he has been branded with the indelible stigma of the place.

I regret to say that much of the evidence upon this question is so scandalous, so degrading, so frightful that it is not of a character that ought to be spread upon the record in this assembly or stated here. Lepsius, the German, is a doctor of philosophy from the University of Berlin, and the book was translated by a Fellow of Oxford University, so I think this has been stated very mildly. I ask you to read the books on the Armenian massacres of 1893-95 and of the early years of this century. Fifty-four villages in Bulgaria forty-odd years ago were ruined and everybody in them was destroyed; the massacres in Chios and the other Grecian isles some 90 years ago were awful, but hardly a circum stance to what has been done in Armenia. In 1915 thousands upon thou sands of men were slain and thousands upon thousands of women were dishonored. Slaughter often began by the sound of a bugle, and ended each day by the same signal. Hundreds of thousands of Armenian men, women, and children, driven from their good homes, were hur ried on foot, without provisions, for unknown destinations, in the hope of extermination. Many women sprang into the Euphrates to escape dishonor ; 3,000 died in the burned church at Orfa in the massacre of a few years ago. Circumstances have been such in the last few years that hell would not have been a right good vestibule for Armenia. In hell they do not dishonor women. I do not think it is to the benefit of civilization to exterminate Armenians. I do not believe it is to the safety of that empire that the only race which has any capacity for ad ministration and business should be completely wiped out or driven out. They can not build up business communities in that fashion. They can not develop a country by such methods. The rape of Belgium, the mur der of Serbia, the collapse of Russia have appalled a world that would stand aghast if it knew the horrors of Christian life in Armenia. Ven geance is mine, saith the Lord. The Armenians are a brilliant race. They have a proverb in the Orient that it takes two Jews to cheat a Greek, that it takes two Greeks to cheat an Armenian, so you can see that they must have some intelli gence, as the proverb is well founded. The people themselves who live 186 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

throughout this country of Armenia, which also extends up here right over to Russia and the Caucasus, are largely ah agricultural people — farmers and stock people when they are allowed to farm—industrious, law-abiding, with schools and churches of their own maintained with out any foreign aid. While at home they are largely engaged in farm ing, when they emigrate to foreign lands they advantage themselves of every opportunity. For centuries they have been the chiefest financial advisers of the Sultan. Their rank as merchant princes and bankers is of the highest. A much greater portion of the business of the Turk ish Empire is in their hands than that of the Turks or any others. Their application, their business judgment, their facility for the development of business enterprises constitute an absolute assurance that if the Christian world will take off their backs the Turks and Kurds, who out number them, or will loan them arms and equipment to meet on the level their enemies who are now assailed by the English from Bagdad and Jerusalem, they not only will achieve their independence of Turkish rule but will develop that admirable country till it is surpassed by none on the face of the earth in tranquility and prosperity.

ARMENIAN SOLDIERS

Since this war began down there the Armenians, I am reliably in formed, have had about 150,000 soldiers in the Russian Army fighting upon our side. They did not go home like the Bolsheviki. They sup plied in Armenia itself 35,000 of those people fighting in the Russian Army, some as volunteers, and although many of the Russian soldiers have retired, the Armenians in the army and the volunteers are still fighting the Turks. The Russians and the Armenians since this war began have penetrated over this border line to which I now point to beyond the great city of Trebizond, which they hold, 160 miles out here, 160 miles from the Russian line into Armenia, into Turkey, and they have taken the city of Van and this country here. The British hold farther to the south an immense territory as far as Bagdad and as far as Jerusalem, and the Turks are making no attempt to drive the Armenians and the Russians out. The situation is in status quo there. But ere long the Germans will insist on action. The Russians will leave the front and the Armenians will be compelled to fall back before su perior numbers to Erzerum and the Russian border, where they will doubtless make their stand. If all the Armenian soldiers who are in the Russian Army could be transferred to Armenia they would soon be at the gates of Constanti nople. So you see this is a military consideration which is worthy of some thought. The military experts of Germany overran undefended ARMENIA AND TURKEY 187

Belgium without a pause, with their great military preparations, but at the Battle of the Marne, the first and only time they have been forced to fight on a level field in a battle of importance without trenches on either side, Joffre made a stand they could not drive, Foch broke through their center where the experts failed, and the French drove the Ger mans half a hundred miles before they stopped running, but when dug in, to have something to stand behind, the siege goes on and on. The allies have lost in Italy, in Serbia, below Constantinople, and finally in Russia after the Russians overran all the borders of Germany and Austria and penetrated 160 miles into Turkey. Our only advancing victories have been at Jerusalem and Bagdad. The Armenians, since the Russian deterioration, have organized an army corps at Tiflis of 50,000 under Nazarbekoff, an experienced Armenian general of the Rus sian Army. With the help of their Christian neighbors, the Georgians, they expect to increase those forces until they have 150,000 armed men on the Turkish border. Beyond the Caucusus, those people are left alone to fight it out with the Turk and his half-demoralized army. If they can put such an army in the field and maintain it, they will soon be at the throat of Constantinople, and, gentlemen of the House, along that journey lies the road to victory. The Armenians have always been admirable soldiers. A Russian officer jostled Lazareff, an Armenian shoemaker, in the streets of Baku, and said, "Get out of the way, you dirty Armenian." Lazareff responded, "I will show you whether I am a dirty Armenian," enlisted at once in the Russian Army, fought his way to a general's baton, and furnished half the military genius that won in 1878 for Russia against the Turks under the walls of Kars and Ezeroum. Loris Melikoff was born an Armenian in Armenia in the last century and entered the Russian Army. Russia has produced no man in a hundred years that surpassed him as a soldier or a statesman. He com manded the army in which Lazareff served when the Turks were beaten in 1878, and his talents as a soldier made of him a lieutenant general, the conqueror of my friend Mouktar. He was as great in civil as in military life. Governor general of six Provinces, he established the trial by jury. As minister of the interior of Russia he began the ad vocacy of the taxation of inheritances and legislation for factory work ers, which culminated in their formulation into laws. He was a great progressive statesman and a friend of the poor and oppressed, and fi nally he became, 37 years ago, the next man to the Czar and practically dictator of the Empire. I have already told you of Nubar, who began his political career in the early forties as secretary to Mohamet Ali, the greatest ruler, out side of Europe and America, that has lived in three centuries. Born if 188 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Smyrna, an emigrant into Egypt, an Armenian among Arabs, a Chris tian among Mohammedans, by the splendor of his talents he rose to be a power under the great Ibrrhim Pasha, the chief adviser to nearly every Khedive and many times prime minister of Egypt and its greatest authority in effect. As they have been generals, statesmen, ministers, and chieftans under the Turkish Empire, so they were under the Greek Empire before it. A thousand years ago and more, Armenians were sitting on the throne of the empire of the eastern world at Constanti nople and ruling with success and distinction.

KHRIMIAN.

They have been as distinguished in art and literature as in war and statecraft. A quarter of a century ago this fall I called at the Ras-el-Tin Palace, whose steps are washed by the waters of the Mediterranean, to say farewell to the young monarch whose uncle is now Sultan of Egypt, and to whose government I had been accredited by my own. As I en tered the palace came forth a tall, long-bearded, powerful, and stately priest and his retinue. We sailed the next morning on the Austrian- Lloyd steamer for Trieste. This was Mugurditch Khrimian, Catholicos of the Armenian Church, en route with retinue of Armenian priests, Armenian notables, Armenian editors from Tiflis, for the monastery of Echtmiadzin at the foot of Mount Ararat where he passed his declin ing years as the head of the Armenian nation. There St. Gregory the Illuminator had established this religious center 16 centuries ago when he converted all the Armenians to Christianity and they become the first Christian nation in the world and entered upon the long course of martyrdom that has continued until now, and will continue, unless the greatest Christian Republic on earth comes to their rescue. Khrimian, by his support of his people's rights, had offended the old Sultan Abdul

Hamid, who sent for him and said, "Father have you ever made a pil grimage to Jerusalem?" He answered "Yes, your majesty, in my younger days." "Ah", said the courteous Sultan, "I thought you would like to go again in your old age." And he lived for years in agreeable

exile at the Holy City. The Armenian people, which is a democratic people, ruled their own church, and in 1892 they selected Khrimian, the most distinguished man of their race, the grandest man born in Turkey in many generations, and placed him at the head of their church and

nation, with the confirmation of the Czar, and when I sailed with him he was en route for his future abode.

He was born in Armenia, and was the son of a trader. Like Lincoln, to whom he has been compared, he sprang from the lowliest place to

the highest with the loving admiration of a people, by his own personal 188 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

KHRIMIAN.

nation, with the confirmation of the Czar, and when I sailed with him he was en route for his future abode.

He was born in Armenia, and was the son of a trader. Like Lincoln, to whom he has been compared, he sprang from the lowliest place to

the highest with the loving admiration of a people, by his own personal ARMENIA AND TURKEY 189

effort and sacrifice. He brought the first printing press into Armenia in 1865, became a teacher, author, poet, leader and statesman. By uni versal acclaim he was the Great Armenian. He came out of the night to lead his people on the march toward their share of a Christian civ ilization. In the treaty of Berlin, he secured an agreement that the Ar menians should be guaranteed their rights by the great nations of Europe, and Turkey agreed to it. All the trouble that has arisen since has been from the fact that Armenia expected the civilized nations of the world to compel Turkey to live up to its treaty obligations and treat Armenia somewhat decently, so that when a man had accumulated prop erty he could keep it and when he had a wife he could retain her. He sought for his beloved country, for his ancient race, for his Christian people, the most oppressed and downtrodden in all the annals of time, the law and order, the security and safety, the education and the free dom which America enjoys. He really believed that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is an Armenian's right. His lofty soul and his mighty heart rose to the stature of the Hebrew prophet in his memorial to the Armenian hero dead on the field of battle where with prophetic foresight he said: Oh, not for me will be a grave With cross-marked stone to view. I die upon the field of death ; 'My name will perish too.

My tomb, which my own hands have dug, Will be a trench profound ; The graves of thousands of the dead With mine will make a mound. ;

At Gabriel's trump, our mound shall stir, And as in fresher guise Eagles their plumage strong renew, We to new life shall rise.

Wise men predict a golden age When peace o'er earth shall breathe, When kings shall all be reconciled, And swear the sword to sheathe.

A dream ! I do not credit it. Christ's words come back to me, That nation shall 'gainst nation rise, Earth be a bloody sea. 190 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

O Jesus, Saviour bringing peace ! Our world you came and saw.

Men are insane ; they have not yet Mastered your gospel's law.

Christ comes a judge, and all earth's thrones Before God's bar are set. The judgment of the field of blood Just God will not forget.

A speech by Hon. Edward C. Little of Kansas, in the House of Representatives, Thursday, February 7, 1918. Reprinted from the Congressional Record of March 4, 1918. To be concluded in the April number.

TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE.

5 BY A. J. TOYNBEE.

Ill

FUTURE

With these suggestions, Anatolia and Turkish Nationalism may be dismissed from our survey. Shorn of their pretensions in Armenia and the countries south of Taurus, the Turks may experiment in the art of go? ernment without the tragedies which their present domination has brougis upon mankind. The other lands and peoples of Western Asia, when they have ceased to be "Turkey," will be restored once more to the civilized world What forces will shape their growth? Not, even indirectly, the discrowned Turk, for if he were not banned by his crimes he would still be doomed b* his incapacity. The relative qualities of the different Near Eastern races are not in doubt. A German teacher in the German Technical School at Aleppo, who resigned his appointment as a protest against the Armenian atrocities ■

191 5, thus records his personal judgment in an open letter to the Reichstag :'

*Ein Wort an die Berufenen Vertreter des Deutschen Volkes: Eindriicke. eines deutschen Oberlehrers aus der Tiirkei, von Dr. Martin Niepage, Oberlehrer an der deutschen Realschule zu Aleppo, z.Zt. Wernigerode." (Printed in the second pamph let issued by the Swiss Committee for Armenian Relief at Basel ; English translation, "The Horrors of Aleppo." London, 1917: Hodder and Stoughton.) TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE 191

"The Young Turk is afraid of the Christian nationalities —Ar menians, Syrians and Greeks —on account of their cultural and ec onomic superiority, and he sees in their religion a hindrance to Turki- fying them by peaceful means. They must therefore be exterminated or converted to Islam by force. The Turks do not suspect that in so doing they are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting them selves. Yet who is to help Turkey forward if not the Greeks, Ar menians, and Syrians, who constitute more than a quarter of the population of the Empire? The Turks, the least gifted of the races living in Turkey, are themselves only a minority of the population, and are still far behind the Arabs in culture. Where is there any Turk ish trade, Turkish handicraft, Turkish industry, Turkish art, Turkish science? They have even borrowed their law and religion from the conquered Arabs, and their language, so far as it has been given literary form. "We teachers, who have been teaching Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Turks, and Jews in German schools in Turkey for years, can only pass judgment that of all our pupils the pure Turks are the most unwilling and the least talented. When for once in a way a Turk does achieve something, one can be sure in nine cases out of ten that one is dealing with a Circassian, an Albanian, or a Turk with Bulgarian blood in his veins. From my personal experience I can only prophesy that the Turks proper will never achieve anything in trade, industry, or science. "We are told now in the German Press about the Turks' hunger for education, and of how they are thronging eagerly to learn German. There is even a report of language courses for adults which have been started in Turkey. They have certainly been started, but with what result? One reads of the language course at a technical school which began with twelve Turkish teachers as pupils. Our informant forgets to add, however, that after four lessons only six pupils presented them selves; after five, five; after six, four; and after seven, only three, so that after eight lessons the course broke down, through the indolence of the pupils, before it had properly commenced. If the pupils had been Armen ians they would have persevered till the end of the school year, learnt industriously, and finished with a respectable mastery of the German language."

From a German teacher who has worked in Turkey for three years this erdict is crushing, and Tekin Alp himself virtually admits the charge. "It is rue," he writes, "that the Turkish character is usually lacking in the qualities lost essential to trade or economic undertakings, but these may be acquired by reasonable and methodical training and organization." The only "organ 192 THE ARMENIAN HERALD ization" that seems to occur to him is the Boycott, which has been popular with the Turks since the Revolution of 1908.

"The unaccommodating attitude of the Greek Government was suf ficient excuse," he remarks, in reference to the Boycott of 1912. "The real motive, however, was the longing of the Turkish nation for inde pendence in their own country. The Boycott, which was at first directed solely against the Greeks, was then extended to the Armenians and other non-Mohammedan circles, and was carried out with undiminished energy. This movement, which lasted in all its rigor for several months, caused the ruin of hundreds of small Greek and Armenian tradesmen. . . . The systematic and rigorous Boycott is now at an end, but the spirit it cre ated in the people still persists. ... It can now be asserted that the move ment for restoring the economic life of Turkey is on the right road."

The real effects of the Boycott of 1912 are described by the German au thority whose memorial has several times been cited in this article. He tells us how, under the patronage of the Young Turkish Government, associations were formed which intimidated the Moslem peasants into buying from them, when they came to market, instead of from the Christians with whom they had formerly dealt.

"The peasants came to their old dealers," the memorial continues, "lamented their fate, and asked their advice as to how they could save themselves from the hands of their fellow-countrymen. They were de lighted when at last the Boycott came to an end and they could once more buy from Greeks and Armenians, where they were well served and got good value for their money."

If the Turkish Nationalists had confined themselves to economic weap ons, the Turks' economic ineptitude would have prevented them from doing serious harm ; but by abusing the political and military powers of the Otto man State to perpetrate the recent atrocities they have struck a mortal blow at the prosperity of Western Asia.

"In the whole of Asia Minor, with perhaps one or two exceptions," the same German authority states, "there is not a single pure Turkish firm engaged in foreign trade. . . . The extermination of the Armen cent, ian population means not only the loss of from 10 to 25 per of the total population of Anatolia,* but, what is most serious, the elimination of

•The writer Includes Armenia under this term. TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE 193

those elements in the population which are the most highly developed economically and have the greatest capacity for civilization. . . ."

And this is the universal judgment of those in a position to know.

"The result of the deportations," the American Consul at Aleppo de clares in an official report.t "is that, as 90 per cent, of the commerce of the interior is in the hands of the Armenians, the country is facing ruin. The great bulk of business being done on credit, hundreds of prominent business men other than Armenians are facing bankruptcy. There will not be left in the places evacuated a single tanner, moulder, blacksmith, tailor, carpenter, clay-worker, weaver, shoemaker, jeweler, pharmacist, doctor, lawyer, or any of the professional people or tradesmen, with very few exceptions, and the country will be left in a practically helpless state."

The German memorialist presses the indictment:

"You cannot become a merchant by murdering one. You cannot master a handicraft if you smash its tools. A sparsely-populated country does not become more productive if it destroys its most industrious pop ulation. You do not advance the progress of civilization if you drive into the desert, as the scapegoat for decades and centuries of wasted oppor tunities, the element in your population which shows the greatest economic ability, the greatest progressiveness in education, and the greatest energy in :very respect, and which was fitted by nature to build the bridge between East and West. You only corrupt your own sense of right if you tread the rights of others under foot. The popularity of an unpopular war may tem porarily be promoted among the Turkish masses by the destruction and spoliation of the non-Mohammedan elements —the Armenians most of all, but also, in part, the Syrians, Greeks, Maronites, and Jews—but thoughtful Mohammedans, when they realize the whole damage which the Empire has sustained, will lament the economic ruin of Turkey most bitterly, and will come to the conclusion that the Turkish Government has lost infinitely more than it can ever win"—it is a German writing—"by victories at the front."

"We may call it political necessity or what not," declared an Amer ican traveling in Anatolia during the deportations of 1915, "but in essence it is a nominally ruling class, jealous of a more progressive race, striving by methods of primitive savagery to maintain leading place/'*

,Dated 3rd Aug., 1915: See Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), p. 548. •Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), p. 413. 194 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

What forces will be released in Western Asia when the Turk has met his fate? Who will repair the ruin he leaves behind? The Germans? They have been penetrating Turkey economically for the last thirty years. They have organised regular steamship services between German and Turkish ports, multiplied the volume of Turco-German trade, and extended their capital investments, particularly in the Ottoman Debt and the construction of railways. In 1881, when the Debt was first placed under international administration, Germany held only 4.7 per cent, of it, and was the sixth in importance of Turkey's creditors; by 1912 she held 20 per cent., and was second only to France.* Her railway enterprises, more ambitious than those of any other foreign Power, have brought valuable con

cessions in their train —harbour works at Haidar Pasha and Alexandretta, ir rigation works in the Konia oasis and the Adana plain, and the prospect, when the Bagdad Railway reaches the Tigris, of tapping the naphtha deposits of Kerkuk.t Dr. Rohrbach, the German specialist on the Near East, forecasts the profits of the Bagdad Railway from the results of Russian railway-build ing in Central Asia. He prophesies the cultivation of cotton, in the regions

opened up by the line, on a scale which will cover an appreciable part of the demands of German industry, and will open a corresponding market for Ger man wares among the new cotton-growing population. t "Yet the decisive fac tor in the Bagdad Railway," he counsels his German readers, "is not to be found in these economic considerations but in another sphere."

Dr. Wiedenfeld drives this home.

"Germany's relation to Turkey," his monograph begins, "belies the doc trine that all modern understandings and differences between nations have an economic origin. We are certainly interested in the economic advancement of

Turkey . . . but in setting ourselves to make Turkey strong we have been influenced far more by our political interests as a State among States (das politische, das staatlich-machtliche Interesse). Even our economic ac tivity has primarily served this aim, and has in fact orginated to a large extent in the purely politico-military problems (atts den unmittelbaren Machtauf go- ben) which confronted the Turkish Government. Exclusively economic con

siderations play a very subordinate part in Turco-German relations. . . Our common political aims, and Germany's interest in keeping open the land to route to the Indian Ocean, will make it more than ever imperative for us strengthen Turkey economically with all our might, and to put her in a posi

•',Die deutsch-tiirkeschen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen," by Dr. Kurt Wiedenfelc Professor of the Political Sciences at the University of Halle. (Duncker and Hoe blot, 1915). t"Die Bagdadbahn," by Dr. Paul Rohrbach (Berlin, 1911), pp. 43, 44. $"Die Bagdadbahn," pp. 49, 50. TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE 195 tion to build up, on independent economic foundations, a body politic strong enough to withstand all external assaults. The means will still be economic; the goal will be of a political order."*

And Dr. Rohrbach formulates the political goal with startling precision. After twelve pages of disquisition on recent international diplomacy he brings his thesis to this point : the Bagdad Railway links up with the railways of Syria, and

"The importance of the Syrian railway system lies in this, that, if the need arose, it would be the direct instrument for the exercise of pres sure upon England . . . supposing that German-Austro-Turkish co-operation became necessary in the direction of Egypt."

Written as it was in 191 1, this is a remarkable anticipation of Turkish strategic railway-building since the outbreak of war; but it is infinitely re mote in purpose from the economic regeneration of Western Asia, and even when the German publicists reckon in economic values they generally betray their political design.

"The special point for Germany," Dr. Wiedenfeld lays down, in dis cussing the agricultural possibilities of the Ottoman territories, "is that to a large extent crops can be grown here which supplement our own economic resources in important respects. . . In peace time, of course, no one would think of transporting goods of such bulk as agricultural products any way but by sea; but the War has impressed on us with brutal clearness the value for us of being able on occasions of extreme necessity to import cotton from Turkey by land."

Thus Germany's economic activity in Turkey has been not for prosperity but for power, not for peace but for war. In developing Turkey, Germany is simply developing the "Central Europe" scheme of military combine self-con tained economically and challenging the world in arms.* Germany is con cerned with Turkey, not for her splendid past and future, but for her miser is is able present; for Turkey —as she is, and only as she — a vital chequer on the chess-board where Germany has been playing her game of world pow er, or "des staatlich-machtlichen Interessens," as Dr. Wiedenfeld would say.

*The author rubs in his point in his concluding section: "All economic measures we may take in Turkey are only a means to an end, not an end in thesselves" (p. 77). •Wiedenfeld's monograph is a sonderahdruck from the two volumes of studies on the "Wirtschaftliche Anniihemng zwischen dem deutschen Reich 11. seinen Ver- bundeten," edited by Heinrich Herkner and published by the Verein /fir Rozialpolitik, which preaches Naumann's creed. 196 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Therefore Germany does not eye the lands and peoples under Ottoman domin ion with a view to their common advantage and her own. She selects a "piece" among them which she can keep under her thumb and so control the square. Abd-ul-Hamid was her first pawn, and when the Young Turk Party swept him off the board she adopted them and their colour ;* for by hook or by crook, through this agency or that, Turkey had to be commanded or Ger many's play was spoilt. Germany's control over Turkey depends upon the maintenance of a cor rupt minority in power —too weak and corrupt to remain in it without Ger it, many's guarantee, and corrupt enough, when secured in to put it at Ger many's disposal. A free hand at home in return for servitude in diplomacy

— is is and war the deal called "Hegemony," and as old as Ancient Greece. By her hegemony over the Ottoman Government Germany threatens the British

and Russian Empires from all the Ottoman frontiers ; and with the free hand

that is their price the Young Turks inflict on all lands and peoples within those frontiers whatever evils conduce to the maintenance of their pretensions. As Rohrbach and Wiedenfeld point out, this political understanding un derlies all Germany's economic efforts in Western Asia, and we can see how

it has warped them from their proper ends. The track of the Bagdad Rail way, for example, has not been selected in the economic interests of the lands

and peoples which it ostensibly serves. Dr. Rohrbach himself admits that

"The Anatolian section of the Pagdad Railway cannot be described

as properly paying its way. It is otherwise with the" (French) "line from Smyrna to Afiun Kara Hissar, which links the Anatolian Railway

with the older railway system in the West. . . . The parts of Asia Minor which were thickly populated and prosperous in antiquity lie most

ly westward of this first section of the Bagdad Railway, round the river- valleys and" (French and English) "railways leading down to the Aegean."

"There are other once-flourishing parts of the peninsula," he continues, "which the Bagdad Railway does not touch at all"—the Vilayet of Sivas and the other Armenian provinces. The original German plan was to carry the Railway through Armenia from Angora to Kharput. but Russia not unnatur

ally vetoed the construction, so near her Caucasian frontiers, of a line which, by the nature of the Turcc-German understanding, must primarily serve strat egic ends,* and the track was therefore deflected to the southeast. This took

it through the most barren parts of Central Anatolia, and in the next sectioc involved the slow and costly work of tunnelling the Taurus and Amams mountains.

* Just as, by a more gradual process, the Magyar Oligarchy, rather than the Haps burg Dynasty, has become the Instrument of German control over Austria-Hungary. •Die Bagdadbahn," pp. 29„ 33. TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE 197

"If merely economic and not political advantages were taken into account," Dr. Rohrbach concedes, "the question might perhaps be raised whether it would not be better to leave the Anatolian section alone al together and begin the Bagdad Railway from Seleucia" (on the Syrian coast). "The future export trade in grain, wool, and cotton will in any case do all it can to lengthen the cheap sea-passage and shorten corre spondingly the section on which it must pay railway freights. The fact that the route connecting Bagdad with the Mediterranean coast in the neighborhood of Antioch is the oldest, greatest, and still most promising trade route of Western Asia is independent of all railway projects."

It is worth remembering that a railway, following this route from the Syrian coast to the Persian Gulf, has more than once been projected by the British Government. As early as the thirties of last century Colonel Chesney was sent out to examine the ground, and in 1867 the proposal was considered by a committee of the House of Commons. For the economic development of Western Asia it is clearly a better plan, but then Dr. Rohrbach bases the "ne cessity for the East Anatolian section of the Bagdad Railway" on wholly dif ferent grounds."

"The necessity," he declares, "consists in Turkey's military interests, which obviously would be very poorly served" (by German railway en terprise) "if troops could not be transported by train without a break from Bagdad and Mosul to the extremity of Anatolia, and vice versa."

The Bagdad Railway is thus acknowledged to be an instrument of strat egy for the Germans and for the Turks of domination —for "vice versa" means that the Turkish troops can be transported at a moment's notice through the tunnels from Anatolia to enforce the Ottoman pretension over the Arab lands. Militarily, these tunnels are the most valuable section of the line; ec onomically, they are the most costly and unremunerative. And the second

(and longer) tunnel could still have been dispensed with, if, south of Taurus, the track had been led along the Syrian coast. "Economic interests and con siderations of expense," Wiedenfeld concedes,* "argued strongly for the latter course, but—fortunately, as we must admit today—the military point of view prevailed." Thus the Turco-German understanding prevented the Bagdad Railway first from beginning at a port on the Mediterranean coast, and then from touching the coast at all.t "The spine of Turkey," as German

writers are fond of calling it, distorts the natural articulation of Western Asia.

•Page 23. Except by a branch line from Ad ana to Alexandretta, Rohrbach (pp. 27, 36,

f 37) laments the economic drawbacks of this strategic necessity. MS THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Nemesis has overtaken the Germans in the Armenian deportations —a "political end" of Turkish Nationalism which swept away the "economic means" towards Germany's subtler policy. A month or two before the out break of war Dr. Rohrbacb stated, in a public lecture, that

"Germany has an important interest in effecting and maintaining contact with the Armenian nation. We have set before ourselves the necessary and legitimate aim of spreading and enrooting German influ ence in Turkey, not only by military missions and the construction of railways, but also by the establishment of intellectual relations, by the work of German Kultur—in a word, by moral conquests ; and we are de termined, by pacific means, to reach an amicable understanding with the Turks and the other nations in the Turkish Empire. Our ulterior object in this is to strengthen the Turkish Empire internally with the aid of Ger man science, education, and training, and for this work the Armenians are indispensable." f

A few months later Germany, as part price of Turkey's intervention in the War, had to leave the Young Turks a "free hand" to exterminate the nation which was the indispensable instrument of her Turkish policy. On the 9th August, 1915, the German Ambassador at Constantinople handed in a formal protest against the deportations, in which his Government "declined al! responsibility for the consequences which might result." On the nth Janu ary, 191 6, in the German Reichstag, the Chief of the Political Department of the Foreign Office replied to a question from Dr. Liebknecht that "an ex change of views about the reaction of these measures upon the population was taking place," and that "further information could «not be given." And while Germany was maintaining this "correct attitude" before the world, she was assisting in Turkey at the destruction of her own work. Even the atrocities of 1909 had damaged the economic prospects of the Adana district from which Dr. Rohrbach* hoped so much, for

"The first thing the Turkish peasants did was to destroy all the steam-ploughs and nearly all the threshing machines (there were over a hundred of them) which the Armenian villagers had imported for the cultivation of the Cilician plain. "f f

By the atrocities of 191 5 the economic life of Western Asia was com pletely ruined, and the fruits of German enterprise were swept away in the flood.

•"Bagdadbahn," p. 60. fTbe German memorialist. TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE

"I have before me," writes our German memorialist, "a list of the customers of a single Constantinople firm of importers which places its orders principally in Germany and Austria. The accounts which this firm has outstanding amount to date to £13,922 (Turkish), owing from 378 customers in 42 towns of the interior. In consequence of the Ar menian deportations these debts are no longer recoverable. The 378 customers, with all their employees, goods, and assets, have vanished from the face of the earth. Any of the owners that are still alive are now beggars on the borders of the Arabian desert." At Urfa, after the atrocities of 1896, philanthropists of all nations had founded orphanages and started native industries. Attached to the German orphanage there was a carpet factory, with dying vats and a spinnery, which Dr. Rohrbach,* after personal investigation, describes as "an institution to be welcomed as unreservedly from the national as from the humanitarian point of view."

"The factory," he remarks, "not only provides work and bread for 400 persons, but has transplanted one of the most profitable and prom ising industries of the East into the sphere traversed by the German Railway, where German interests are predominant."

He prophesies that the whole carpet industry of Western Asia, "from which English and other foreign firms in Smyrna now draw such enormous profits," will soon be concentrated round Urfa in German hands. From Ar — menia's evil, apparently, springs Germany's good but in 191 1 Dr. Rohrbach did not foresee the catastrophe of 1915.

"For the rise of the carpet industry," our German memorialist writes, "Turkey has to thank capitalists and exporters who are almost all Armenians, Greeks, Jews, or Europeans. Like the cotton cultiva tion introduced by Germany into Cilicia, this carpet industry, in the eastern provinces, has been deprived of the hands essential to it by the Armenian deportations."

Eye-witnesses at Urfa describe how the Armenian community there was — massacred in 191 5 the third time in twenty years, and this time to extinc tion—and it points the irony of the situation that the Turkish guns were served by German artillerymen.*

"I have nothing to say," writes Dr. Niepage, the German teacher from Aleppo, "about the opinion of the German officers in Turkey. I •"Bagdadbahn," pp. 39, 40. •Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), p. 530. Major Count Wolf von Wolfskahl, who served as adjutant to Fakhri Pasha In the Turkish "punitive expedition" against Urfa, is mentioned as particularly guilty by a trustworthy neutral resident in Syria. 200 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

often noticed among them an ominous silence or a convulsive effort to change the subject, when any German of warm feelings and independent judgment talked in their presence of the fearful sufferings of the Arme nians."

This moral bankruptcy is more fatal to the future of Germany in Western Asia than all the material havoc which the Armenian deportations have caused. For Dr. Niepage is convinced that the blood of the Armenians will be on Ger many's head :

" 'The teaching of the Germans,' is the simple Turk's explanation, . . . and more sensitive Mohammedans, Turks and Arabs alike, can

not believe that their own Government has ordered these horrors. They lay all excesses at the German's door, for the Germans, during the War, are regarded as Turkey's schoolmasters in everything. The mollahs de clare in the mosques that the German officers, and not the sublime Porte, have ordered the maltreatment and extermination of the Armenians, . . . Others say: 'Perhaps the German Government has its hands tied by certain agreements defining its powers, or perhaps it is not an op portune moment for intervention.' "Our presence had no ameliorating effect, and what we could do our selves was negligible. . . . The abusive epithet 'Giaur* is heard onct more by German ears. . . . "We think it our duty to draw attention to the fact that our educa tional work in Turkey forfeits its moral basis and the natives' esteem, H the German Government is not in a position to prevent the brutalities in flicted here upon the wives and children of murdered Armenians. . . . "The writer considers it out of the question that the German Govern ment, if it seriously desired to stem the tide of destruction in this eleventh hour, would find it impossible to bring the Turkish Government to reasor

"If we persist in treating the massacres of Christians as an internal affair of Turkey, which is only important to us because it ensures us tht Turk's friendship, then we must change the orientation of our GOrman Kulturpolitik. We must stop sending German teachers to Turkey, and wc teachers must give up telling our pupils in Turkey about German poets and philosophers, German culture and German ideals, to say nothing of German Christianity. "Three years ago I was sent by the Foreign Office as higher-grade teacher to the German Technical School at Aleppo. The Prussian Provin cial School Board at Magdeburg specially enjoined upon me, when I went out, to show myself worthy of the confidence reposed in me in the grant TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE 201

of furlough to take up this post. I should not be fulfilling my duty as a German official and an accredited representative of German culture, if I consented to keep silence in face of the atrocities of which I was a witness, or to look on passively while the pupils entrusted to my charge were driven out into the desert to die of starvation. "The things of which everybody here has been a witness for months past remain as a stain on Germany's shield in the minds of Oriental na tions."

What will be left to Germany in Western Asia after the war? She may keep her trade, though Wiedenfeld confesses that "the exchange of commo dities between Germany and Turkey has never attained any really consider able dimensions," and that "the German export trade commands no really staple article whatever of the kind exported by England, Austria, and Russia" —unless we count as such munitions and other materials of war.* Except for the last item, this German trade will probably remain and grow; but the German hegemony, based on railway enterprise and reinsured by "moral con quests," will scarcely survive the Ottoman dominion. Happily there are other representatives of culture, other indigenous na tionalities, other possibilities of economic development, which will remain in Western Asia when the Turk and German have gone, and which may be equal to repairing the ruin they will leave behind. For nearly a century now the American Evangelical Missions have been doing work there which is the greatest conceivable contrast to the German Kul- turpolitik of the last thirty years. A missionary, sent out to relieve the first pioneers, was given the following instructions by the American Board :

"The object of our missions to the Oriental Churches is, first, to re vive the knowledge and spirit of the Gospel among them, and, secondly,

by this means to operate upon the Mohammedans. . . . The Oriental

Churches need assistance from their brethren abroad. Our object is not to subvert them: you are not sent among those Churches to proselytise.

Let the Armenian remain an Armenian if he will, the Greek a Greek, the Nestorian a Nestorian, the Oriental an Oriental. . . . Your great

business is with the fundamental doctrines and duties of the Gospel."*

In this spirit the American missionaries have worked. They have had no warships behind them, no diplomatic support, no political ambitions, no eco nomic concessions. As Evangelicals their first step was to translate the Bible into all the living languages and current scripts of the Nearer East. For the

*On which Wiedenfeld lays stress, pp. 19, 22. •Leavening the Levant," by Rev. J. Greene, D.D. (Boston, 1916: The Pilgrim , Rress ) p. 99. THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Bulgars and Armenians this was the beginning of their modern literature, but the jealousy of the Orthodox and Gregorian clergy was naturally aroused. Native Protestant Churches formed themselves—not by the missionaries' ini tiative but on their oWn. They were trained by the missionaries to self-gov ernment, and as they spread from centre to centre they grouped themselves in unions, with annual meetings to settle their common affairs. The mission aries also encouraged them to be self-supporting, and in 1908 the contributions of the Native Churches to the general expenses of the missions were twice as large as those of the American Board.* The Ottoman Government recognised its Protestant subjects as a religious corporation (Millet) in 1853, and in spite of this the jealousy of the national Churches was overcome. For the work of the Americans was not confined to the new Protestant community. The translation of the Bible led them also into educational work; they laid the foundations of secondary education in Western Asia, and their schools and colleges—still the only institutions of their kind—are attended by Gregorians as well as Protestants, Moslems as well as Christians, Moslem girls as well is boys. As they opened up remoter districts they added medicine to their activ ities, and their hospitals, like their schools, have been the first in the field. And all this has been built up so unassumingly that its magnitude is hardly realized by the Americans themselves. In the three Turkey Missions, which cover An atolia and Armenia—the whole of Turkey except the Arab lands—there were, on the eve of the War, 209 American missionaries with 1,299 native helpers, 163 Protestant churches with 15,348 members, 450 schools with 25,922 pupils ; Con stantinople College and 6 other colleges or high schools for girls; Robert Col lege on the Bosphorous and 9 other colleges for men or boys ; and 1 r hospitals

The War, when it came, seemed to sweep away everything. The Protest ant Armenians, in spite of a nominal exemption, were deported and massacred like their Gregorian fellow-countrymen ; the boys and girls were carried away from the American colleges, the nurses and patients from the hospitals; the empty buildings were "requisitioned" by the Ottoman authorities ; the mission aries themselves, in their devoted efforts to save a remnant from destruction, suffered as many casualties from typhus and physical exhaustion as any pro portionate body of workers on the European battlefields. The Turkish Nation alists congratulated themselves that the American work in Western Asia was destroyed. In praising a lecture by a member of the German Reichstag, who had declared himself "opposed to all missionary activities in the Turkish Em pire," a Constantinople newspaper* wrote :

•Excluding, of course, the hospital and educational endowments, and the salarie* of the missionaries themselves. •Hilal, 4th April, 1916, quoted in Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), pp. 654-6. TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE 203

"The suppression of the schools founded and directed by ecclesiastical missions or by individuals belonging to enemy nations is as important a measure as the abolition of the Capitulations. Thanks to their schools, foreigners Were able to exercise great moral influence over the young men of the country, and they were virtually in charge of its spiritual and intel lectual guidance. By closing them the Government has put an end to a situation as humiliating as it was dangerous."

But the missionaries' spirit was something they could not destroy.

"When they deported the Armenians," wrote a missionary, "and left us without work and without friends, we decided to come home and get our vacation and be ready to go wherever we could after the War."*

After the War the Turks in Anatolia may still be infatuated enough to banish their best friends, but in Armenia, when the Turk is gone, the Americans will find more than their former field ; for, in one form or another, Armenia is certain to rise again. The Turks have not succeeded in exterminating the Ar menian nation. Half of it lives in Russia, and its colonies are scattered over the world from California to Singapore. Even within the Ottoman frontiers the extermination is not complete, and the Arabian deserts will yield up their living as well as the memory of their dead. The relations of Armenia with the Russian democracy should not be more difficult to settle than those of Finland and Poland; her frontiers cannot be forecast, but they must include the Six Vilayets—so often promised reforms by the Concert of Europe and so often abandoned to the revenges of the Ottoman Government —as well as the Cilician highlands and some outlet to the sea. One thing is certain, that, whatever land is restored to them, the Armenians will turn its resources to good account, for, while their town-dwellers are the merchants and artisans of Western Asia, 80 per cent, of them are tillers of the soil. What the Americans have done for Armenia has been done for Syria by the French.* There are half a million Maronite Catholics in Syria, and since the seventeenth century France has been the protectress of Catholicism in the Near East. In 1864, when there was trouble in Syria and the Maronites were being molested by the Ottoman Government, France landed an army corps and secured autonomy for the Lebanon under a Christian governor. But French influence is not limited to the Lebanon province. All over Syria there are French clerical, secular, and Judaic schools. Beirut and Damascus, Christian and Moslem — for there is more religious tolerance in Syria than in most Near

•Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916), p. 309. •Though the work of the American Presbyterian Mission at Beirut must not be forgotten. 204 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Eastern countries —are equally under the spell of French civilization; and France is the chief economic power in the land, for French enterprise has built the Syrian railways. The sufferings of Syria during the War have been de scribed ; the Young Turks have confiscated the railways and deprived the Leb anon of its autonomy ; even Rohrbach deprecates the fact that "only a few of the higher officials in Syria are chosen from among the natives of the country, while almost all, from the Kaimakam upwards, are sent out from Constanti nople," and he attributes to this policy "the feeling against the Turks, which is most acute in Damascus." This is Rohrbach's periphrasis for Arab National ism, which will be master in its own house when the Turk has been removed. The future status and boundaries of Syria can no more be forecast than those of Armenia at the present stage of the War ; yet here, too, certain tendencies are clear. In some form or other Arab Syria will retain her connection with France, and her growing population will no longer be driven by misgovernment to emigration.

Syrians and Armenians have been emigrating for the last quarter of a century, and during the same period the Jews, whose birthright in Western Asia is as ancient as theirs, have been returning to their native land—not be cause Ottoman dominion bore less hardly upon them than upon other gifted races, but because nothing could well be worse than the conditions they left be hind. For these Jewish immigrants came almost entirely from the Russian Pale, the hearth and hell of modern Jewry. The movement really began after the assassination of Alexander II. in 1881, which threw back reform in Russia for thirty-six years. The Jews were the scapegoats of the reaction. New laws deprived them of their last civil rights, pogroms of life itself ; they cam( to Palestine as refugees, and between 1881 and 1914 their numbers were in creased from 25,000 to 120,000 souls.

The most remarkable result of this movement has been the foundation of flourishing agricultural colonies. Their struggle for existence has been hard; the pioneers were students or trades-folk of the Ghetto, unused to outdoor life and ignorant of Near Eastern conditions; Baron Edmund de Rothschild financed them from 1884 to 1899 at a loss; then they were taken over by the "Palestine Colonization Association," which discovered the secrets of success in self-government and scientific methods.

Each colony is now governed by an elective council of inhabitants, witi committees for education, police, and the arbitration of disputes, and they havt organized co-operative unions which make them independent of middlemen it the disposal of their produce. Their production has rapidly risen in quantin and value, through the industry and intelligence of the average Jewish settler assisted latterly by an Agricultural Experiment Station at Atlit, near Haifa TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE 205 which improves the varieties of indigenous crops and acclimatizes others.* There is a "Palestine Land Development Company" which buys land in big estates and resells it in small lots to individual settlers, and an "Anglo-Pales tine Bank" which makes advances to the new settlers when they take up their holdings. As a result of this enlightened policy the number of colonies has risen to about forty, with 15,000 inhabitants in all and 110,000 acres of land, and these figures do not do full justice to the importance of the colonizing move ment. The 15,000 Jewish agriculturists are only per cent, of the Jewish population in Palestine, and 2 per cent, of the total population of the country; but they are the most active, intelligent element, and the only element which is rapidly increasing. Again, the land they own is only 2 per cent, of the total area of Palestine ; but it is between 8 and 14 per cent, of the area under culti vation, and there are vast uncultivated tracts which the Jews can and will re claim, as their numbers grow;—both by further colonization and by natural in crease, for the first generation of colonists have already proved their ability to multiply in the Promised Land. Under this new Jewish husbandry Palestine has begun to recover its ancient prosperity. The Jews have sunk artesian wells, built dams for water storage, fought down malaria by drainage and eucalyptus planting, and laid out many miles of roads. In 1890 an acre of irrigable land at Petach Tikweh, the earliest colony, was worth £3 12s., in 1914, £36, and the annual trade of Jaffa rose from £760,000 to £2,080,000 between 1904 and 1912. "The impetus to agriculture is benefiting the whole economic life of the country," wrote the German Vice-Consul at Jaffa in his report for

191 2, and there is no fear that, as immigration increases, the Arab element will be crowded to the wall. There are still only two Jewish colonies beyond Jor dan, where the Hauran—under the Roman Empire a cornland with a dozen cities —has been opened up by the railway and is waiting again for the plough. But will immigration continue now that the Jew of the Pale has been turned at a stroke into the free citizen of a democratic country ? Probably it will ac tually increase, for the Pale has been ravaged as well as liberated during the war, and the Jews of Germany have based an ingenious policy on this prospect, which is expounded thus by Dr. Davis-Trietsch of Berlin :*

"According to the most recent statistics about 12,900,000 out of the 14,300,000 Jews in the world speak German or Yiddish (jiidisch-deittsch) as their mother-tongue. . . . But its language, cultural orientation, and business relations the Jewish element from Eastern Europe" (the Pale) "is an asset to German influence. ... In a certain sense the Jews are a Near Eastern element in Germany and a German element in Turkey."

•See Zionism and the Jewish Future" (London, 1916: John Murray), pp. 138-170; for the agricultural machinery on the Jewish National Fund's Model Farm at Ben- Shamen, see the Report of the German Vice-Consul at Jaffa for the year 1912. •"Die Jiiden der Turkei" (Leipzig, 1915: Veit u. Comp.). Pamphlet No. 8 of the Deutsches 7orderasienscomitee?s series. "Lander u Viilker der Turkei." THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Germany may not relish her kinship with these lost Teutonic tribes, but Dr. Davis-Trietsch makes a satirical exposure of such scruples.

"It used to be a stock argument against the Jews that 'all nations' re garded them with equal hostility, but the War has brought upon the Ger mans such a superabundance of almost universal execration that the ques tion which is the most despised of all nations —if one goes, not by justice and equity, but by the violence and extensiveness of the prejudice — might well now be altered to the Germans' disadvantage. "In this unenviable competition for the prize of hate, Turkey, too, has a word to say, for the 'unspeakable Turk' is a rhetorical commonplace of English politics."

Having thus isolated the Jews from humanity and pilloried them with the German and the Turk, the writer expounds their function in the Turco-German system :

"Hitherto Germany has bothered herself very little about the Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe. People in Germany hardly realized that, through the annual exodus of about 100,000 German-speaking Jews to the United States and England, the empire of the English language and the economic system that goes with it is being enlarged, while a German asset is being proportionately depreciated. . . . "The War found the Jewry of Eastern Europe in process of being uprooted, and has enormously accelerated the catastrophe. Galicia and the western provinces of Russia, which between them contain many more than half the Jewts in the world, has suffered more from the War than any other region. Jewish homes have been broken up by hundreds of thousands, and there is no doubt whatever that, as a result of the War, there will be an emigration of East European Jews on an un precedented scale. . . . "The disposal of the East European Jews will be a problem for Ger many .... It will no longer do simply to close the German frontiers to them, and in view of the difficulties which would result from a wholesale migration of Eastern Jews into Germany itself, Germans will only be too glad to find a way out in the emigration of these Jews to Turkey— a solu tion extraordinarily favorable to the interests of all three parties con cerned. . . ."

And from this he passes to a wider vision :

"The German-speaking Jews abroad are a kind of German-speaking province which is weU worth cultivation. Nine-tenths of the Jewish world TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE

speak German, and a good part of the remainder live in the Islamic world, which is Germany's friend, so that there are grounds for talking of a Ger man protectorate over the whole of Jewry."

By this exploitation of aversions, Dr. Trietsch expects to deposit the Jews of the Pale over Western Asia as "culture-manure" for a German harvest; and if the Jewish migration to Palestine had remained nothing more than a stream of refugees, he might possibly have succeeded in his purpose. But in the last twenty years this Jewish movement has become a positive thing —no longer a flight from the Pale but a remembrance of Zion —and Zionism has al ready challenged and defeated the policy which Dr. Trietsch represents. "The object of Zionism," it was announced in the Basle Programme, drawn up by the first Zionist Congress in 1897, "is to establish for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine." For the Zionists Jewry is a nation, and to become like other nations it needs its Motherland. In the Jewish colonies in Palestine they see not merely a successful social' enterprise but the visible symbol of a body politic. The foundation of a national university in Jerusalem is as ultimate a goal for them as the economic dvelopment of the land, and their greatest achievement has been the revival of Hebrew as the living language of the Palestinian Jews. It was this that brought them into conflict with the Germanizing tendency. In 1907 a secondary school was successfully started at Jaffa, by the initiative of Jewish teachers in Palestine, with Hebrew as the language of instruction ; but in 1914, when a Jewish Polytechnic was founded at Haifa, the German- Jewish Hilfsverein, which had taken a leading part, re fused to follow this precedent, and insisted on certain subjects being taught in German, not only in the Polytechnic, but in the Hilfsverein' s other schools. The result was a secession of pupils and teachers. Purely Hebrew schools were opened; the Zionist organization gave official! support; and the Germanizing party was compelled to accept a compromise which was in effect a victory for the Hebrew language. Dr. Trietsch himself accepts ths settlement, but does not abandon his idea:

"It was certainly impossible to expect the Spanish and Arabic- speaking Jews* to submit in their own Jewish country to the hegemony of the German language . . . Only Hebrew could become the common ver nacular language of the scattered fragments of Jewry drifting back to Palestine from all the countries of the world. But ... in addition to Hebrew, to which they are more and more inclined, the Jews must have a world-language (Weltsprache), and this can only be German."

♦The Spanish-speaking Jews in Turkey are descended from refugees to whom the Ottoman Government gave Bhelter in the sixteenth century; the Arabic-speaking Jews hare been introduced into Palestine from the Yemen, by the Zionists, since 1908. 208 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Anyone acquainted with the language-ordinances of Central Europe will feel that this suggestion veils a threat. What has been happening in Palestine during the War? Dr. Trietsch informs us that the Ottoman Government has been proceeding with the "naturalization" of the Palestinian Jews, and that the "local execution of this measure has not been effected without disturbances which are beyond the province of this pamphlet." One significant consequence was the appearance in Egypt of Palestinian refugees, who raised a Zion mule corps there and fought through the Gallipoli campaign. What is the outlook for Palestine after the War? If the Ottoman pretension survives, the menace from Turkish Nationalism* and German resentmentf is grave. But if the Turk and German go, doubt whatever that, as a result of the War, there will be an emigration of East there are Zionists who would like to see Palestine a British Protectorate, with the prospect of growing into a British Dominion. Certainly, if the Jewish colonies are to make progress, they must be relieved of keeping their own police, building their own roads, and the other burdens that faH on them under Ottoman government, and this can only be secured by a better public administration. As for the British side of the question, we may consult Dr. Trietsch.

"There are possibilities," he urges, "in a German protectorate over the Jews as well as over Islam. Smaller national units than the 14 1-3 mil lion Jews have been able to do Germany vital injury or .service, and, while the Jews have no national state, their dispersion over the whole world, their high standard of culture, and their peculiar abilities lend them a weight that is worth more in the balance than many larger national masses which occupy a compact area of their own."

Other Powers than Germany may take these possibilities to heart. Here, then, are peoples risen from the past to do what the Turks cannot and the Germans will not in Western Asia. There is much to be done—reform of justice, to obtain legal release from the Capitulations; reform in the assess ment and collection of the agricultural tithes, which have been de nounced for a century by every student of Ottoman administration :

♦Dr. Trietsch admits that Jewish colonization in Palestine was retarded because "the leading French and British Jews remained under the impression of the Ar menian massacres" (of 1895-7) "as presented by the anti-Turkish, French and British Press. ... In reality, the butcheries of Armenians in Constantinople were a convinc ing procf that the Jews in the Ottoman Empire were safe, for . . . not a hair on a Jewish head was touched." One wonders how he will exorcise the "impression" of 1915. ■{•Asearly as 1912 the German Vice-Consul at Jaffa betrayed his annoyance at the progress which Zionism was making. He admits indeed that "the falling off In trade last year would have been greater still than it was, if the economic penetration of Palestine were not reinforced by an idealistic factor in the shape of Zionism;" but he is piqued at the "Jewish national vanity" which makes it advisable for German firms to display their advertisements in Palestine in the Hebrew language and character. TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE 209 agrarian reform, to save peasant proprietorship, which in Syria, at any rate, is seriously in danger; genuine development of economic resources ; unsectarian and non-nationalistic advancement of education. But the Jews, Syrians, and Armenians are equal to their task, and, with the aid of the foreign nations on whom they can count, they will certainly accomplish it. The future of Pales tine, Syria, and Armenia is thus assured ; but there are other countries —once as fertile; prosperous, and populous as they—which have lost not only their wealth but their inhabitants under the Ottoman domination. These countries have not the life left in them to reclaim themselves, and must look abroad for reconstruction. If you cross the Euphrates by the bridge that carries the Bagdad Railway, you enter a vast landscape of steppes as virgin to the eye as any prairie across the Mississippi. Only the tells (mounds) with which it is studded witness to the density of its ancient population —for Northern Mesopotamia was once so populous and full of riches that Rome and the rulers of Iram fought seven centuries for its possession, till the Arabs conquered it from both. The railway has now reached Nisibin, the Roman frontier fortress hero ically defended and ceded in bitterness of heart, and runs past Dara, which the Persians never took. Westward lies Urfa —named Edessa by Alexander's * men after their Macedonian city of running waters ; later the seat of a Christian Syriac culture whose missionaries were heard in China and Travan- core; stifl famous, under Arab dominion, for its Veronica and 300 churches; and restored for a moment to Christendom as the capital of a Crusader prin cipality, till the Mongols trampled it into oblivion and the Osmanlis made it a name for butchery. From Urfa to Nisibin, there can be fields again. The climate has not changed, and wherever the Bedawi pitches his tents and scratches the ground there is proof of the old fertility. Only anarchy has banished cultivation ; for, since the Ottoman pretension was established over the land, it has been the battleground of brigand tribes —Kurds from the hills and Arabs from the desert, skirmishing or herding their flocks, making or breaking alliance, but al ways robbing any tiller of the land of the fruits of his labour.

"If once," Dr. Rohrbach prophesies, "the peasant population were sure of its life and property, it would joyfully expand, push out into the desert, and bring new land under the plough ; in a few years the villages would spring up, not by dozens, but by hundreds."

At present cultivation is confined to the Armenian foot-hills—an uncertain arc of green from Aleppo to Mosul. But the railway strikes boldly into the deserted middle of the land, giving the arc a chord, and when Turco-German

'Edessa from Thracian = Slavonic voda. 210 THE ARMENIAN HERALD strategic interests no longer debar it from being linked up, through Aleppo, with a Syrian port, it will be the really valuable section of the Bagdad system. The railway is the only capital enterprise that Northern Mesopotamia requires, for there is rain sufficient for the crops without artificial irrigation. Reservoirs of population are the need. The Kurds who come for winter pasture may be induced to stay—already they have been settling down in the western districts, and have gained a reputation for industry ; the Bedawin, more fickle husband men, may settle southward along the Euphrates, and in time there will be a surplus of peasantry from Armenia and Syria. These will add field to field, but unless some stronger stream of immigration is led into the land, it will take many generations to recover its ancient prosperity ; for in the ninth century A. D. Northern Mesopotamia paid Harum-al-Rashid as great a revenue as Egypt, and its cotton commanded the market of the world.*

Southern Mesopotamia —the Irak of the Arabs and Babylonia of the Greeks — lies desolate like the North, but is a contrast to it in every other re spect. Its aspect is towards the Persian Gulf, and Rohrbach grudgingly ad- mitst that down the Tigris to Basra, and not upstream to Alexandretta, is the natural channel for its trade. It gets nothing from the Mediterranean, neither trade nor rain, and every drop of water for cultivation must be led out of the rivers ; but the rivers in their natural state are worse than the drought. Their discharge is extremely variable —about eight times as great in April as in October ; they are always silting up their beds and scooping out others ; and when there are no men to interfere they leave the country a desert and make the other half a swamp. Yet the soil, when justly watered, is one of the richest in the world ; for Irak is an immense alluvial delta, more than five hundred miles from end to end, which the Tigris and Euphrates have deposited in what was originally the head of the Persian Gulf. The Arabs call it the Sazvad or Black Land, and it is a striking change from the bare ledges of Arabia and Iran which enclose its flanks, and from the Northern steppe-land which it suddenly replaces—at Samarra, if you are descending the Tigris, and on the Euphrates at Hit. The steppe cannot compare with the Sawad in fertility, but the Sawad does not so readily yield up its wealth. To become something better than a wilderness of dust and slime it needs engineering on the grand scale and a mighty population —immense forces working for immense returns. In a strangely different environment it anticipated our modern rhythm of life by four thousand years, and then went back to desolation five centuries before Industrialism (which may repeople it) began. The Sawad was first reclaimed by men who had already a mastery of metals, a system of writing, and a mature religion —less civilized men would

*M uslin is named after Mosul, and cotton Itself (In Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Turkish) bomhyx or bambuk, after Bambyke (MumbiJ). f'Bagdadbahn." p. 38. TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE 211 never have attempted the task. These Sumerians, in the fourth millennium B. C, lived on tells heaped up above flood-level, each tell a city-state with its separate government and gods, for centralization was the one thing needful to the country which the Sumerians did not achieve. The centralizers were Semites from the Arabian plateau. Sargon of Akkad and Naram Sin ruled the whole Sawad as early as 2500 B. C. ; Hammurabi, in 1900, already ruled 11 from Babylon ; and the capital has never shifted more than sixty miles since then. Babylon on the Euphrates and Bagdad on the Tigris are the alternative points from which the Sawad can be controlled. Just above them the first ir rigation canals branch off from the rivers, and between them the rivers approach within thirty-five miles of each other. It is the point of vantage for govern ment and engineering. Here far-sighted engineers and stronghanded rulers turned the waters of Babylon into waters of life, and the Sawad became a great heart of civiliza tion, breathing in man-power —Sumerians and Amorites and Kassites and Aramaeans and Chaldeans and Persians and Greeks and Arabs—and breathing out the works of man—grain and wool and Babylonish garments, inventions still used in our machine-shops, and emotions still felt in our religion.

"The land," writes Herodotus,* who saw it in its prime, "has a little rain, and this nourishes the corn at the root ; but the crops are ma tured and brought to harvest by water from the river—not, as in Egypt, by the river flooding over the fields, but by human labor and shadufs.* For Babylon, like Egypt, is one network of canals, the largest of which is navigable. It is far the best corn-land of all the countries I know. There is no attempt at arboriculture —figs or vines or olives—but it is such superb corn-land that the average yield is two-hundredfold, and three-hundred fold in the best years. The wheat and barley there are a good four inches broad in the blade, and millet and sesame grow as big as trees —but I will not state the dimensions I have ascertained, because I know that, for anyone who has not visited Babylonia and witnessed these facts about the crops for himself, they would be altogether beyond belief."

Harnessed in the irrigation channels, the Tigris and Euphrates had be come as mighty forces of production as the Nile and the Ganges, the Yangtse and the Hoang-Ho.

"This," Herodotus adds.t "is the best demonstration I can give of the wealth of the Babylonians : All the lands ruled by the King of Persia

•Book 1., ch. 193. •Cp. Sir William Willcocks. "The Irrigation of Mesopotamia," p. 5 (London, 1911: Spon). fBook I., ch. 192. 212 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

are assessed, in addition to their taxes in money, for the maintenance of the King's household and army in kind. Under this assessment the King is maintained for four months out of the twelve by Babylonia, and for the remaining eight by the rest of Asia together, so that in wealth the Assyrian province is equivalent to a third of all Asia."

The "Asia" over which the Achaemenids ruled included Russian Central Asia and Egypt as well as modern Turkey and Persia, and Egypt, under the same assessment, merely maintained the local Persian garrison.* Its money contribution was inferior too — 700 talents as compared with Assyria's 1,0001 and though these figures may not be conclusive, because the Persian "prov ince of Assyria" probably extended over the northern steppes as well as the Sawad, it is certain that under the Arab Caliphate, when Irak and Egypt were provinces of one empire for the second time in history, Irak by itself paid 135 million dirhems (francs) annually into Harun-al-Rashid's treasury and Egypt no more than 65 million, so that a thousand years ago the productiveness of the Sawad was more than double that of the Nile.

Another measure of the land's capacity is the greatness of its cities. — Herodotus gives statisticst of Babylon in the fifth century B. C. walls 300 feet high, 75 feet broad, and 58 miles in circuit ; three- and four-storied houses laid out in blocks; broad straight streets intersecting one another at regular intervals, at right angles or parallel to the Euphrates. Any one who read; Herodotus' description of Babylon or Ibn Serapion's of Bagdad, and con siders that these vast urban masses were merely centres of collection and dis tribution for the open country, can infer the density of population and intensity of cultivation over the face of the Sawad. When the Caliph Omar conquered Irak from the Persians in the middle of the seventh century A. D., and took an inventory of what he had acquired, he found that there were 5,000,000 hectares' of land under cultivation, and that the poll-tax was paid by 550,000 house holders, which implies a total population, in town and country, of more that 5,000,000 souls, where a bare million and a half maintains itself today in city alleys and nomads' tents.

And in Omar's time the Sawad was no longer at its best, for, a few years before the Arab conquest, abnormally high floods had burst the dykes; from below Hilla to above Basra the Euphrates broadened into a swamp, and the Tigris deserted its former (and present) bed for the Shatt-el-Hai, leaving the Amara district a desert. The Persian Government, locked in a suicidal struggle with Rome, was powerless to make good the damage, and the shock

♦Herodotus Book III., ch. 91. fBook I., chs., 178-183. •A hectare is approximately equal to two and a half acres. TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE 21S

)f the Arab invasion made it irreparable, f Under the Abbasid Caliphs of Bagdad the rest of the country preserved its prosperity, but in the thirteenth century Hulaku the Mongol finished the work of the floods, and under Ottoman lominion the Sawad has not recovered. Can it still be reclaimed? Surveys have been taken by Sir William vVillcocks, as adviser to the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works, and his final conclusions and proposals are embodied in a report drawn up at Bag dad in 191 i.J

"The Tigris-Euphrates delta," he writes, "may be classed as an arid region of some 5,000,000 hectares. . . . All this land is capable of easy cent, leveling and reclamation. The presence of 15 per lime in the soil renders reclamation very easy compared with similar work in the dense clays of Egypt. One is never far away from the giant banks of old ca nals and the ruins of ancient towns."

But he does not expect to make all these 5,000,000 hectares productive simultaneously, as they are said to have been when Omar took his inventory. "It is water, not land, which measures production," and he reckons that the average combined discharge of the rivers would irrigate 3,000,000 hectares in winter, and in summer 400,000 of rice or 1,250,000 of other crops. This is the eventual maximum; for immediate reclamation he takes 1410,000 hectares in hand. His project is practically to restore, with technical improvements, the ancient system of canals and drains, using the Euphrates waters to irrigate ev erything west of the Tigris (down to Kut) and the Shatt-el-Hai, and the water of the Tigris and its tributaries for districts east of that line. Adding 33 per cent for contingencies to his estimate for cost of materials and rates of labour, and doubling the total to cover interest on loans and subsequent development, he arrives at £29,105,020 (Turkish)* as the cost, from first to last, of irriga tion and agricultural works together; and he estimates that the 1410,000 hec tares reclaimed by this outlay will produce crops to the value of £9,070,000 (Turkish) a year. In other words, the annual return on the gross expenditure will be more than 31 per cent., and under the present tithe system £7,256,000 (Turkish) of this will remain with the owners of the soil, while £1,814,000 will pass to the Government. This will give the country itself a net return of 24.9 per cent, on the combined gross cost of irrigation and agricultural works, while the Government, after paying away £443,000 (Turkish) out of its tithes for maintenance charges, will still receive a clear 9 per cent, per

t'The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate," by Guy le Strange (Cambridge, 1905: at the University Press), pp. 25-9. f'The Irrigation of Mesopotamia," by Sir William Willcocks, K.C.M.G., F.R.G.S. (London, 1911: Spon). The report is dated Bagdad, March 26th, 1911. *£1.00 Turkish = approximately £0.90 sterling. 214 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

annum on the gross cost of irrigation, to which its share in the outlay will b« confined. Unquestionably, therefore, the enterprise is exceedingly profitable to all parties concerned. Looking further ahead, Sir William proposes to supersede the navigation of the Tigris* by railways, and so set free the whole discharge of the two rivers for irrigation. He contemplates handling annually 375,000 tons of cereals and 1,250,000 cwt. of cotton, and estimates the future by the effects of the Chenab Canal in Northern India—

"a canal traversing lands similar to those of Mesopotamia in their climate and in the condition in which they found themselves before the canal works were carried out. ... In such a land, so like a great part of Mesopotamia, canals have introduced in a few years nearly a million of

inhabitants, and the resurrection of the country has been so rapid that its

very success was jeopardised by a railway not being able to be made quickly enough to transport the enormous produce." is "A million of inhabitants" — that is the crux of the problem. Labour as

necessary as water for the raising of crops ; Sir William's barrages and canals a without hands to turn them to account would be dead loss instead of a profit to is able investment ; but from what reservoir of population this man-power

be introduced ? The German economists are baffled by the difficulty. it, "It is useless," as Rohrbach puts "to sink from 150 to 600 million

marks in restoring the canal system, and then let the land lie idle, with all its new dams and channels, for lack of cultivators. Yet Turkey can never raise enough settlers for Irak by internal colonization."*

She cannot raise them, even for the minor enterprises at Konia and Adana,t

and evidently the Sawad must draw its future cultivators from somewhere be yond the bounds of Western Asia. From Germany, many Germans have sug

gested ; but German experts curtly dismiss the idea. The first point Rohrbach

makes in his book on the Bagdad Railway is that German colonization in Ana

tolia is impossible for political reasons. "No worse service," he declares, "can be done to the German cause in the East than the propagation of this idea," and the rise of Turkish Nationalism has proved him right.}: There remain

the Arab lands ;

*In his immediate project he intends to keep the Tigris navigable, and alloti £48,350 (Turkish) for its improvement. •Cp. Wiedenreld, pp. 62-4. f'Die Bagdadbahn," pp. 67, 61. JCp. Wiedenfeld, p. 64. TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE 215

"But even," he continues, "if the Turks thought of foreign coloniza tion in Syria and Mesopotamia, to hold the Arabs in check" (the political factor again), "that would be little help to us Germans, for only very limited portions of those countries have a climate in which Germans can work on the land or perform any kind of heavy manual labor."

And Germany herself is hard up for men.

"For all prospective developments in Turkey," writes Dr. Trietsch, "not merely scientific knowledge, capital, and organization are wanted, but men, and Germany has no resources in men worth speaking of for opening up the Islamic world."

It is one of his arguments for bringing in the Jews, but the colonization of Palestine will leave no Jews over for Irak. Rohrbach* disposes of the Mou- hadjirs—they are a drop in the bucket, and are no more adapted to the climate than the Germans themselves. "There is really nothing for it," he bursts out in despair, "but the introduction of Mohammedans from other countries where the climatic conditions of Irak prevail." That narrows the field to India and Egypt, and drives Turco-German pol icy upon the horns of a dilemma :

"The colonists must either remain subjects of a foreign Power, a solution which could not be considered for an instant by any Turkish Gov " ernment, or else they must become Turkish subjects — a condition which, to Indians and Egyptians, as well as Germans, would be pro hibitive. No one who has known good government would exchange it for Ottoman government without the Capitulations as a guarantee. The Ottoman Government has its own characteristic view. In a memo randum on railways and reclamation, published by the Ministry of Public Works in 1909, a resume is given of the Willcocks scheme.

"In due time," the memorandum proceeds, "a comprehensive scheme for the whole of Mesopotamia must be carried out, but, apart from the question of expense, it is clear that the public works involved will not be justified until Turkey is in a position to colonize these extensive dis tricts, and this question cannot be considered till we have succeeded in get ting rid of the Capitulations."

This is the Ottoman pretension. Egypt, rid of the Osmanli and India, where he never ruled, have kept their ancient wealth of harvests and population,

•"Bagdadbatan." p. 83; cp. Trietsch, p. 11. 216 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

and have man-power to spare for the reclamation of the Sawdd. All the means are at hand for bringing the land to life—the water, the engineer, the capital, the labour; only the Ottoman pretension stands in the way, and con demns the Sawad to lie dead and unharvested so long as it endures.

"The last voyage I made before coming to this country," wrote Sir

William Willcocks at Bagdad in 191 1, "was up the Nile, from Khartum to the great equatorial lakes. In this most desperate and forbidden region I was filled with pride to think that I belonged to a race whose sons, even in this inhospitable waste of waters, were struggling in the face of a thousand discouragements to introduce new forest trees and new agricultural pro ducts and ameliorate in some degree the conditions of life of the naked and miserable inhabitants. How should I have felt if, in traversing the deserts and swamps which today represent what was the richest and most famous tract of the world, I had thought that I was a scion of a race in whose hands God had placed, for hundreds of years, the destinies of this great country, and that my countrymen could give no better ac count of their stewardship than the exhibition of two mighty rivers flowing between deserts to waste themselves in the sea for nine months in the year, and desolating everything in their way for the remaining three? No effort that Turkey can make" —she was then still mistress of the Sawad —"can be too great to roll away the reproach of these parched and weary lands, whose cry ascends to heaven."

Turkey, which claims the present in Western Asia, is nothing but an overthrow of the past and an obstruction of the future. EN MEMORIAM OF ARMENIAN PATRIOTS AND EDUCATORS

We reproduce here a letter, by Mr. Minas Teheraz, that speaks for itself and It. Archag Tchobanian's beautiful oration, with slight omissions, delivered at a leeting held in Paris under the auspices of the Armenian Intellectual Union. We are translated this oration, not by way of bringing out the distinctive traits of It. Tchobanian's oratory, but for the purpose of conveying to our American eaders an idea of the vastness of the loss borne by the Armenian nation and, we lay add, by all lovers of liberty, in the disappearance of that galaxy of writers, ublicists, professors, and patriots, to which expressions are given in this oration.

)ear Mr. Tchobanian : Owing to my sickness I shall be unable to take part in the memorial ser- ice on Nov. 10. But I, too, though the least of the Armenian writers, wish o voice my deep feeling for the heart-rending loss of my martyred brethren, n all lands the "intellectuals"—the men of letters—are the torch-bearers of ivilization, the leaders of the people. The same truth applies to us; the Ar- aenian men of letters have always been the pioneers of Armenian culture. No natter what branches of knowledge they cultivate, the national note sounds mdly and clearly in their works. They deserve our warmest love and loudest raise. When the pages of their writings are sealed with the blood shed under tie executioner's axe, they become objects of our homage, as saints, at whose hrines we ought to offer incense. Some day, when we have the complete history of those victims we shall ecorate with their names the golden book of Armenian literature. In the Armenian pantheon they will sit as demigods with the halo of genius around heir brows and the wreath of martyrdom in their hands. As the church of Vrmenia, the citadel of the Armenian nationality, has, for the last fifteen enturies, been celebrating the memory of our blessed Translators, likewise the lemory of our martyred writers will be glorified from century to century, as sng as an Armenian heart throbs in an Armenian breast. And we believe hat there will come a day when free Armenia, of which they have Ireamed and sung, will finally become an accomplished fact and the new gen- rations, gathered around their luminous graves, will hold not meetings of nourning, but celebrations of joy and victory at the foot of Mount Ararat, the jerpetual memorial shaft of the Armenian nation. Wishing you and our other literary sons light, life, and prosperity, I emain, Devotedly yours, MINAS TCHERAZ. 218 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Dear Compatriots:

This evening, the anniversary of the distinctively Armenian feast of the Discovery of the Cross, we are gathered together to honor the memory of the men of letters who were crucified for the Armenian name. Of course, we extend our homage to all our fellow-Armenians, from the distinguished per sonage amongst them down to the humblest unknown individual, who for our cause and for the Cause of Right and liberty, were sacrificed by the hundred thousand during this war. And this evening the vast host of our martyrs as a whole, are in our hearts and minds. ,But there was an obligation, which rested heavily upon the "Union Intellectuelle Armenienne de Paris" to honor, with a special service, the memory of our intellectual martyrs.. Is it not a fact, that the tyrant, who assayed to destroy the future of our nation, poured out his fury first upon them? Just as the storm first shakes the limbs and upper branches of the forest trees before it penetrates into their lowest twigs, into the frail bushes growing out of the ground and into the feeble weeds, so the enemy wanted first to crush the prominent men among the people, think ing that that would make easier for them to execute their long laid-out pro gram of general extermination. Before the wholesale slaughters and the stu pendous crimes of transportation, the enemy stretched forth his claws toward the leaders of the people, toward the worthy successors of those who cultivated and cherished the soul of our nation, toward the successors of the great authors and workers who, from century to century, preserved our nation and moved it forward. The first prisoners among the exiles and those who ascended the gallows, were the cultured people, the public speakers, the heads of the politi cal parties and the ecclesiastics, among whom were the highest representatives of the modern Armenian intellectual life. They were the noblest heroes of the Armenian talent and the Armenian heart. In our universal mourning, they have a right to hold their peculiar and lofty place. Let the tyrant, in order to justify his crime, charge them with plots threatening the safety of the land. Their real fault was that they were genuine and highly honored Armenians, that they were fire-places to keep alive the fire of the spiritual power of the nation and that they had been named pillars of the future regen eration of the nation. They suffered for all of us. Their lives and deeds have already won for them the nation's gratitude, their tortures and deaths have entitled them to the everlastng reverence of the Armenian nation. At this moment I am unable to mention them all by name. Of some only we know the tragic end. Of others our information is not decisively substan tiated, or is contradictory. Of others still we have no information from the day when they were removed from their cities and sent to distant unknown parts. What we know definitely from foreign and positive national testi monies, represents, alas ! a loss of most precious forces. We know that—I will mention only a few of the most distinguished IN MEMORIAM 21& names— we have lost Krikor Zohrab, that powerful and fascinating literary light, one of the master-minds of our modern literature, a most vigorous and lively personality, a fruitful national worker who has rendered greater and more important service for our cause than any man we know of, a great trib une whose grace at times turned the mockery known as the Ottoman parliament into a European council-chamber. They murdered him in the ill-starred val ley known as Sheitan-Deressi while he was being sent from Urfa to Diarbekir. We have lost Tulgatenzi, a prolific teacher and wonderful man of letters from Harpoot, in whose delicious prose, sweet as the honey of the Armenian mountains, the deep native spirit of the Armenian race found its genuine and most lovely expression. He was with the caravan of the helpless exiles when they murdered him at a short distance from the city. We have lost Father Garabed Der-Sahagian, one of the best of youthful forces at the Mekhitarist Monastery in Venice, the author of the masterful historical and literary studies in Armenian and French, and an inspired patriot-poet, the author of the im mortal poem entitled Eternal Ararat and of other numerous lofty pages. He fell in the devilish massacre of Trebizond. We have lost lovely, youthful, lit erary forces in the deaths of Cheugurian and Sevag and others. We have lost the most beautiful and the loftiest personalities of the Ar menian Patriotic movement, an agreeable worker like Mourad, whose whole life was a model of patriotic self-devotion, who was hanged in Cesarea; a worker like Vartkes, noble, virile, representing the best characteristics of the race, treacherously murdered like Zohrab ; a pure young soul like Chavou- shian, fearless, lovable and sacrificing everything for the nation, hanged. Nu merous others have suffered martyrdom upon the gallows, under the execu tioner's axe and other implements of torture. We have lost expert, patriotic, prolific preachers of the Gospel. Kalemkiarian, prelate of Sivas, cut to pieces; Chulghadian, prelate of Diarbekir, burned alive; Torigian, prelate of Shabin-Karihissar, hanged; Khorenian, prelate of Harpoot, cut to pieces; Nalbandian, prelate of Charsanjak, and Hazarabedian, prelate of Baiboort, both hanged. Gregorians, Catholics, Protestants, bishops, vartabeds, pastors alike, have been subjected to terrible tortures and unspeakable injuries. We have lost able educators, devoted professors, trainers of generations of men. We are especially familiar with the awful martyrdom, known to us through the American missionaries, of instructors in the schools at Harpoot. One of them was Prof. Soghigian, whose hairs, beard and moustache were plucked, who was left hungry for several days, hanged by the hands for a day and a night, subjected to the most ferocious knifing, and finally exposed on the road in a semi-nude condition, along with the exiles, on the way to Diarbekir. He was put to death in the general carnage. We have lost women teachers who were subjected to the vilest form of degradation, then beheaded or interned in the harems of these fiends, the most terrible of martyrdoms. Some of them 220 THE ARMENIAN HERALD became insane, and others found relief in suicide. After the capture of Erzingan, according to the story of an eye witness, an Armenian woman teacher, educated in an Armenian academy, was for months shut up in a harem until one day she was seen fleeing from the house of her captor insane, stark naked, her hair cut off, and while running and shrieking through the streets, a rabble of despicable barbarians called her "Deli giaour, deli giaour" (Insane infidel, insane infidel). At last, under a shower of stones, her tor mented, helpless and spotless soul breathed its last.

These are positive, substantiated facts. There are still others of whom we have no definite knowledge whatsoever. What became of Yervaxt Odian, our greatest humorist, whose classic and faultless talent was the equal of his European masters? Where is Hrand, who described in such heart-rending tones the tragic story of the Armenian pilgrim in a strange city, expelled from his native heath, and whose writings are so replete with fra grance of the Armenian soul. Where is Agnouni, the enthusiastic and elo quent patriotic worker? Where are Shahrigian, Khazhag, the distin guished sociologists and orators? Where is Dr. Daghavarian, the hard worker and the tireless man of letters? Where are Vramian and Ishkhan, the publicists and disseminators of progressive ideas, who were one day called to the Government house in Van and never returned? Where is

Ardashes Haroutunian, our choice man of letters and tender-hearted poet? Where is Sarkis Minassian, our beloved, skillful companion and noble publicist ? Where are Larentz, the critic and worker ; Yervant Surmakesh- Khanlian, his colleague? Where is Parsegh Shakbaz, the young fiery worker, and popular tribune? Where are finally three of the greatest mas ters of our modern literature —Roupen Zartarian, Adom Yarjanian and Daniel Varoudjan, the three lamented poets of Armenian threnody and Armenian crisis, the three splendid flowers of Armenian genius. Zartarian, whose glorious work scintillated and glittered in the Armenian firmament like a sunlit rose-bush, fresh and odoriferous when the beauty of the world wa< fading, vigorous, lively and red-blooded when sorrow was all embracing; Yarjanian, whose poetry reflects the virile and mighty genius of a modern Naregatzi, and beams like a forest where pain-racked wind roars and knights fight against the power of darkness, and heroically speed down the plains with songs on their lips; Varoudjan, that rich and prolific poet, from whose lips thundered the voice of an Armenian Hugo. These three have been pro claimed martyrs in the Caucasus, and memorial services have been held in their honor. We, however, still hope that they have not been lost. It is extremely difficult for us to be reconciled to the thought that our literature will forever be deprived of those remarkable geniuses, whose like a race rarely produces and then only after long vicissitudes. ... In this memorial gathering in honor of that luminous group, it is impossible for me, IN MEMORIAM 221 however deeply I desire, to worthily enumerate in detail the merits and tal ents belonging to every one of them. In closing I will say that the men whom we mourn, belonging to various political parties, different classes, and different religious denominations, differ ent in training and surroundings, Armenian at heart and in feeling, faced tor ture, exile and death like brothers hand in hand, against the inimical force bent on crushing and annihilating the Armenian race. They faced torture and death like heroes. They did not even attempt to escape, in order not to endan ger the safety of the people, in order not to give pretext to the tyrant's fury. The idea not even occurred to them to escape death or hardships of exile by means of recantation and apostasy. From a reliable source it has been communicated to me —a scene which shall become historic —that in the beginning of the persecution, Talaat Pasha called Vartkes to his presence and, feigning friendship, said: "This is a critical time, either we Turks or you Arnienians must succuml?. Become a Turk, and I will save you." "If that is the case you better become an Arme nian," answered Vartkes, giving his words a humorous turn. It was an im mortal retort, foretelling an unshakable faith in the future of the Armenian nation. All our great martyrs exhibited such bravery and faith. Our gracious and peace-loving ecclesiastics and our honored teachers, who were burned alive and hanged, whose feet were shod with horse shoes amidst vilifications and forced to march through the streets, bore their insults and tortures with silent bravery. Father Garabed Der-Sahagian of the Mekhitarists crowned himself with the halo of a martyr when, instead of consenting to carry away the innocent children under his care or undergo massacre or exile, he posted himself on the threshold of his school and cried, "You will have to trample upon my dead body before you can touch those lambs." Mooshegh, Dr. Benne, Achukbashian, Paramaz, Chavooshian, and many others, ascended the gallows, astonishing their executioners by their coolness. They tied the rope around their necks with their own hands and proclaimed to the crowd gathered around the gallows that Liberty and Justice were immortal. All of them had been anointed from above with the holy chrism of peace and had come to that understanding, that on their way to Golgotha, they were representing a very noble, a very costly and a very sacred thing, namely, the Armenian cause. All of them, to their very last breath, had the unshaken confidence in the final triumph of that cause. All the tears of our eyes and all the anguish of our hearts are inadequate to mourn the irreparable losses which we have sustained in the death of all the lofty and splendid Armenian souls. All the expressions of our respect, our deepest and most heartfelt words of love and obeisance are incapable of fully expressing our feelings of gratitude toward those heroes. The only way in which we the survivors can really express our grief and respect for THE ARMENIAN HERALD their memory is to follow their examples sacrificing to the fullest extent every thing we can for the Armenian cause, dedicating all our strength and efforts to that cause, remaining united around the idea of the national regeneration and, despite the darkest days- that may come before the decisive end of this great universal drama, keeping our faith firm on the victory of that cause —t victory which shall be the real reward of their otherwise unrepayable sacri fice and which shall also be the best vengeance for all they have suffered, en dured and sacrificed on the altar of Armenian civilization and freedom.

ARCHAG TCHOBANIAN. Translated from Armenian by H. A.

PRAISE TO THE MARTYRS

BY M. M.

Say not they die, those martyr souls

Whose life is winged with purpose fine ;

Who leave us, pointing to the goals ; Who learn to conquer and resign.

Such cannot die ; they vanquish time, And fill the world with growing light, Marking the human life sublime With memories of their sacred might.

They cannot die whose lives are part Of that great life which is to be, Whose hearts beat with the world's great heart, And throb with its high destiny.

Then mourn not those who dying gave A gift of greater light to man; Death stands abashed before the brave, They own a life he may not ban. ARMENIAN DOCUMENTS.

IV.

Mr. Henry Morgenthau, whose contribution on the Turkish horrors in Armenia in 1915, we reproduce below, needs no introduction to our numerous readers. His splendid services to the cause of down-trodden humanity while he was United States Ambassador in Constantinople have been recognized by friends and neutrals and the welcome extended to him on his return to this country from "Darkest" Turkey was more than a public compliment paid to him: it was the apotheosis of his eminent diplomatic career fulfilled under the most trying circumstances and tragic events.

THE GREATEST HORROR IN HISTORY

BY HENRY MORGENTHAU.

Few nations have suffered as much as Armenia. So terrible and con tinuous have been the atrocities to which it has fallen victim that the very name of Armenia has, to most of us, become synonymous with mar tyrdom. Its sufferings during the present catastrophe have been greater than any known in the history of the world. None of the fearful horrors perpetrated in the various zones of the war can compare with the tragic lot of the Armenians. It is my purpose to outline in this article the na ture of the Armenian Question and to briefly state the reasons for which the present Turkish Government sought to annihilate these peace-loving, industrious, harmless and intelligent people, and the methods resorted to by the authorities for extermination. Though deprived of their political independence, the Armenians have never been assimilated by their conquerors, the Turks. They have ten aciously clung to their racial traditions, religion, language and ideals. Their early history—embracing periods contemporaneous with the an cient Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Parthians, is still a source of pride to them, and their religion-Christianity —is and has been the great moral force sustaining and inspiring them against the attacks of the many hordes that have emerged from central Asia and passed through their territory on their way to Europe. The successful revolution of the Young Turks in 1908, which re sulted in the deposition of Sultan Abdul Hamid, was hailed by all the world as the dawn of a new era for Turkey. Everyone was delighted at the substitution of a modern, progressive government in place of the much detested, tyrannous rule of Abdul Hamid. The greatest rejoic ings were amongst the Armenians. They promptly offered their as sistance to the new Party, which promised equal rights to all citizens under a constitutional government. I have not the space here to elab orate on the fact that the performance of the Government was a terrible 224 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

disappointment after everyone's expectations had been so great. Tht Massacres at Adana in 1909, and the rapid development of the domi

neering and chauvinistic attitude of the Young Turks soon dispelled al1 the illusions of the Armenians and convinced them that the old rela tions of conquering and conquered races would continue. The lonj hoped for equality and liberty failed to materialize. The treatment er the Armenians became so intolerable in 1913 that they appealed to th* European Governments for relief. After months of negotiation an arrangement was consummated whereby the Sublime Porte permittee

of two European Inspectors who were to have supervisory powers in the six Armenian vilayets. Messrs. Hoff and Westeneng, the former

a Swede and the latter a Hollander, were appointed. They came to Constantinople for instructions and had not yet been fully installed when the European War broke out and the Turkish Government, promptly revoked their authority and asked them to leave the country. The months of August, September and October, 1914, while Turkey was still neutral, proved to be a time which marked great turning points in the history of Turkey. The Turks promptly mobilized, abro

gated the capitulatory rights of the foreign subjects, abolished all foreign post-offices, increased their customs duties, and in every other way took advantage of the fact that the Great Powers were at war with each other. Their success in preventing the Allies from piercing the Dardanelles made them feel like conquerors and awakened in then*

the hope that they would again become a world power. The conditions of the war gave to the Turkish Government its longed- for opportunity to lay hold of the Armenians. At the very beginning

they sent for some of the Armenian leaders and notified them that if any Armenians should render the slightest assistance to the Russian* when they invaded Turkey, they would not stop to investigate bt punish the entire race for it. During the spring of 1914 they evolved their plan to destroy the Armenian race. They criticized their ances tors for neglecting to destroy or convert the Christian races to Moham medanism at the time when they first subjugated them. Now, as fou' of the Great Powers were at war with them and the two others wer? their allies, they thought the time opportune to make good the oversight of their ancestors in the 15th century. They concluded that, once they had carried out their plan, the Great Powers would find them selves before an accomplished fact and that their crime would be con doned, as was done in the case of the massacres of 1895-96, when the Great Powers did not even reprimand the Sultan. They had drafted the able-bodied Armenians into the army without, however, giving them arms; they used them simply to build roads or do similar menial work. Then, under pretext of searching the houses ARMENIAN DOCUMENTS 225 for arms, they pillaged the belongings of the villagers. They requis itioned for the use of their army all that they could get front the Ar menians, without paying for it. They asked them to make exorbitant contributions for the benefit of the National Defense Committee. The final and worst measure used against the Armenians was the wholesale deportation of the entire population from their homes and their exile to the desert, with all the accompanying horrors on the way. No means were provided for their transportation or nourishment. The victims, which included educated men and women of standing, had to walk on foot, exposed to the attacks of bands of criminals especially organized for that purpose. Homes were literally uprooted; families were separated ; men killed, women and girls violated daily on the way or taken to harems. Children were thrown into the rivers or sold to strangers by their mothers to save them from starvation. The facts contained in the reports received at the Embassy from absolutely trust- ivorthy eyewitnesses surpass the most beastly and diabolical cruelties ever before perpetrated or imagined in the history of the world. The Turkish authorities had stopped all communication between the prov inces and the capital in the naive belief that they could consummate this crime of ages before the outside world could hear of it. But the information filtered through the Consuls, missionaries, foreign travel lers and even Turks. We soon learned that orders had been issued to the governors of the provinces to send into exile the entire Armenian population in their jurisdiction, irrespective of age and sex. The local officers, with a few exceptions, carried out literally those instructions. All the able-bodied men had either been drafted into the army or dis armed. The remaining people, old men, women and children, were sub jected to the most cruel and outrageous treatment. I took occasion, in order that the facts might be accurately recorded, to have careful records kept of the statements which were made to me by eyewitnesses of the massacres. These statements included the re ports of refugees of all sorts, of Christian missionaries, and of other witnesses. Taken together they form an account of certain phases of the great massacre which cannot be questioned and which condemns the brutal assassinators of this race before all the world. Much of the material which I collected has already been published in the excellent volume of documentary material collected by Viscount Bryce. I have space here to quote from only one document. Strange to say, this report was made to me by a German missionary. The statement was made to me personally and put in writing at the Embassy.

We often did not know where to hide ourselves. From all sides, neigh bors were able to shoot into our windows ; during the nights, it was still 226 THE ARMENIAN HERALD worse. The sick nurse and myself lay on the floor in order to avoid the shots. The walls of the orphanage were broken through by cannon shots. I was obliged to leave the orphans all alone. There came an order from the Government that we were to hand over to them all our people in the house, big or small. All my requests and petitions were in vain; they assured us on their word of honor that they would be provided with comforts and sent to Ourfa. I then went to appeal to the Mutessarif. He stood, as First Commander, by the side of a cannon. He would not even listen to me ; he had become a perfect monster. When I pleaded with him to at least spare the children, he replied : "You can not expect the Armenian children to remain alone with the Moham medans; they must leave with their nation." We were allowed only to retain three girls as servants. It was that very afternoon that I received the first terrible reports, but I did not fully believe them. A few millers and bakers, whose services were needed by the Government, had remained and they received the news first. The men had all been tied togther and shot outside of the town. The women and children were taken to the neighboring villages, placed in houses by the hundred, and either burned alive or thrown into the river. (Our buildings being in the main quarter of the town we could receive the news quite promptly.) Furthermore, one could see women and children pass by with blood streaming down, weeping. . . . Who can describe such pictures? Add to all this the sight of burning houses and the smell of many burning corpses.

Within a week everything was nearly over. The officers boasted now of their bravery, that they had succeeded in exterminating the whole Armenian race. Three weeks later when we left Mush, the vollages were still burning. Nothing that belonged to the Armenians, either in the city or the villages, was allowed to remain.

In Mush alone there were 25,000 Armenians ; besides, Mush had 300 villages with a large Armenian population. We left for Mezreh. The soldiers who accompanied us showed us with pride where and how and how many women and children they had killed. We were very pleased to see upon our arrival at Harput that the or phanages were full. This was, however, all that could be said. Mamuret- ul-Aziz has become the cemetery of all the Armenians; all the Arme nians from the various vilayets were sent there, and those who had not died on the way, came there simply to find their graves. Another terrible thing in Mamuret-ul-Aziz was the tortures to which the people had been subjected for two months ; and they had generally treated so harshly the families of the better class. Feet, hands, chests ARMENIAN DOCUMENTS 227 were nailed to a piece of wood ; nails of fingers and toes were torn out ; beards and eyebrows pulled out; feet were hammered with nails, as they do with horses; others were hung with their feet up and heads down over closets. . . .Oh! How one would wish that all these facts were not true. In order that people outside might not hear the screams of agony of the poor victims, men stood around the prison wherein these atrocities were committed, with drums and whistles. On July 1st, the first 2,000 were dispatched from Harput. They were soldiers, and it was rumored that they would build roads. People be came frightened. Whereupon the Vali called the German missionary Mr. and begged him to quiet the people; he was so very sorry that they all had such fears, etc., etc. They had hardly been away for a day, when they were all killed in a mountain pass. They were bound together and when the Kurds and soldiers started to shoot at them, some managed to escape in the dark. The next day another 2,000 were sent in the direction of Diarbekir. Among those deported were several of our orphans (boys) who had been working for the Government all the year round. Even the wives of the Kurds came with their knives and murdered the Armenians. Some of the latter succeeded in fleeing. When the Government heard that some Armenians managed to escape, they left those who were to be deported, without food for two days, in order that they would be too weak to be able to flee. All the high Catholic Armenians, together with their Archbishop, were murdered. Up to now there still remained a number of tradesmen whom the

Government needed and therefore had not deported ; now these too were ordered to leave and were murdered.

As this massacre of the Armenians, judged both by the numbers in volved and the methods used, was the greatest single horror ever per petrated in the history of humanity, the questions will often be asked, how many Armenians were actually murdered or died of starvation or exposure? How many were driven into a miserable exile? Follow ing the important collection of documents made by Viscount Bryce is a careful summary of the facts. The total Armenian population in the Turkish Empire in 1912 is here placed at between 1,600,000 and 2,- 000,000. Of these 182,000 escaped into the Russian Caucasus and 4,200 into Egypt. One hundred and fifty thousand still remain in Constanti nople. To this figure must be added the relatively small number of sur vivors who escaped death and are now living in hiding or are scattered in distant provinces. We must conclude that a million Armenians were harried out of their homes in the peaceful villages and populous towns of Asia Minor. The murdered number from 600,000 to 800,000. 228 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

The remainder, in pitiful want of the barest necessities of life, hold out their hands to the Christian fellowship of America. We now come to a matter of crucial interest. In how far was the Ger man Government responsible for the murder and deportation of the Armenians? Let me say most emphatically, the German Government could have prevented it. My strenuous and repeated efforts to enlist the interest of the German Ambassador, the late Baron Wangenheim. in behalf of the Armenians, were fruitless. In my numerous interviews with him, I tried to impress him with the thought that the world would consider Germany morally responsible for the crimes of her ally. I urged that even from an economic point of view it was not to Germany's advantage that the Turks should destroy the constructive elements of the country, as that would mean the economic ruin of the Turkish Em pire. Then, in the event that Germany should become the ruler of Turkey, she would find it an empty shell ! When I found that my argu ments were of little avail, I suggested to my Government the desira bility of bringing pressure on the Foreign Office in Berlin to the end that instructions be sent to the German Ambassador in Constantinople to insist upon a cessation of the atrocities. This resulted merely in a note from the German Embassy to the Sublime Porte protesting against the horrors perpetrated by the Turks. The purpose of this note was merely to absolve the German Government from all responsibility. It had no practical effect whatsoever. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that the Germans could at the very beginning have stopped these horrors. The work of the American Red Cross in Turkey has been most efficient. It has been limited only by the funds available. While I was still in Turkey our national organization besides supplying us funds in carrying on the work, sent us a large amount of medical supplies and wearing apparel of all kinds. As there are now few wounded soldiers to take care of, the Red Cross organization in Turkey is free to devote its main efforts to helping the civilians in distress including Armenian refugees. The American Red Cross has to date appropriated $1,800,- 000 for relief work in Armenia and Syria. No definite solution may as yet be ventured as to the Armenian problem. One thing ought to be certain : The Armenians should be freed from the yoke of the Turkish rule. I wonder if four hundred millions of Christians, in full control of all the governments of Europe and America, are going to again con done these offenses by the Turkish Government! Will they, like Ger many, take the bloody hand of the Turk, forgive him and decorate him, as Kaiser Wilhelm has done with the highest orders? Will the outrage ous terrorizing —the cruel torturing —the driving of women into the REVIEW OF THE MONTH 229 harems—the debauchery of innocent girls—the sale of many of them at eighty cents each—the murdering of hundreds of thousands and the deportation to and starvation in the deserts of other hundreds of thou sands —the destruction of hundreds of villages and cities —will the wil ful execution of this whole devilish scheme to annihilate the Armenian, Greek and Syrian Christians of Turkey—will all this go unpunished? Will the Turks be permitted, aye, even encouraged by our cowardice in not striking back, to continue to treat all Christians in their power as "unbelieving dogs"? Or will definite steps be promptly taken to res cue permanently the remnants of these fine, old, civilized, Christian peo ples from the fangs of the Turk?

Reprinted from the Red Cross Magazine, March, 1918.

REVIEW OF THE MONTH.

We feel constrained to review this month the interesting and valu able articles which Mr. William T. Ellis has been writing in the in terest of Armenian cause. Mr. Ellis, a member of the National Commit tee of American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, went to Ar menia, Caucasus, Persia, and Syria as a correspondent of Philadelphia Public Ledger, to obtain direct information of the tragic events which have' been taking place in that quarter of the globe. His articles, how ever, are not merely first hand information of horrors that have been per petrated on the Christian nations of the East, they are somewhat a study of the forces which have sustained the spirit of the people and have pre vented the collapse of the whole race. Indeed the stubborn refusal of the Armenians to succumb or lose hope under the present intolerable cir cumstances is the most wonderful phenomena to any foreigner who comes in contact with the life of Armenia itself. The tenacity with which the Armenian attaches himself to his native soil is amazing. Many of the cities, which were sacked and spoiled not many months ago, are al ready populated with thousands of souls busy rebuilding the place with an enthusiasm as if peace had been already signed and freedom won. But this characteristic of the Armenians is nothing new to us. They have displayed the same indomitable spirit of resisting annihilation at every crisis which has threatened its life from the fifth century down to the present time. The pages of the history of Persian invasion of 451 A. D. by Eghishe read like the tragic and terrible struggle of today. 230 THE ARMENIAN HERALD i Mr. Ellis's description of the tragic events of the historic city of Van and the suffering and struggle for existence of the refugees at the foot of the historic mountain of Ararat is most graphic. He speaks of count less pathetic cases of women going mad at the sight of their husbands being murdered before their very eyes and of their children being carried away. Mr. Ellis says, "The mind grows numb and the heart sick from a constant recital of such tales of horror as it is difficult to believe that the twentieth century could hold." We agree with him and shall not dwell on this subject much longer. We are glad, however, and grateful to Mr. Ellis for relating this sad tale again to convince many incredulous Americans of the genuineness of the truth related in the pages of this Review under the heading of "Armenian Documents." Mr. Ellis truly says, "One must come to the Orient to learn the part that lust and loot play in every strife in which a Moslem is concerned." We also take plea sure in noting that Mr. Ellis received plenty of assurances concerning the sincere gratitude that the Armenians feel toward the Americans for their great, unselfish, humanitarian relief work. He says : "Could I write the hundreds of tributes to America that have been given to me by high and low for transmission I would need columns of space, and the stories would all be attuned to the note of America's uniqueness as the brother nation, the friend of the needy everywhere. It is not an extravagance to declare that since the ark rested on Ararat, there has been no nation in this oft-conquered region whose dominance over the hearts of the people has been as great as that of America is today. Armenian relief has been practical Christianity and real patriotism." There is not a single dis senting voice as to the verity of the above statement. Let us turn now to Mr. Ellis's article entitled "Armenian Church, Af ter Ages Made Democratic By the War," or "Armenian Church Being Democratized." The same article under the former title was published in Pennsylvania Public Ledger and under the latter title in Boston Evening Transcript. It contains great deal of information about the seat of the catholicos, Etchmiadzin, in Caucasus, and the catholicos him self,—all very interesting to our American readers. He speaks of many changes that are being taken place in the church. He says, "Con trol of church property is to pass out of the hands of the bishops into those of the local congregation. The general conferences of the church are to have both lay and clerical representation. Hitherto the liturgy has been in the ancient language, not understood by the common people. Now it is to be, with the possible exception of a few brief portions, in the colloquial tongue. Women and men are to be seated promiscuously in the services and the special galleries for women are to be abolished, choirs of both sexes are to be permitted and musical instruments allowed in the churches. Hithero the higher offices of the clergy have been REVIEW OF THE MONTH 231 filled by celibates, but now bishops are to be permitted to marry, and even the catholics may marry. Widowed priests are to be permitted to remarry, which has hitherto been against the law of the church, as in the Russian Church." Mr. Ellis gives the reader the impression that war is the main cause of all these changes. Undoubtedly the war is hastening changes in every line of human activity throughout the world, but these changes that are taking place in the Armenian church are principally due to the inherent, progressive and democratic nature of the Armenian people. Let us cite a few historical facts to illustrate this point. From the early dawn of civilization Armenians, although surrounded by the culture of the Assyrians and Persians, turned their eyes toward the culture of the West, toward the Greek and Roman civ ilization. An unprogressive people would have been satisfied with the culture surrounding it but Armenians spurned what they had near at hand and undertook untold difficulties to reach and assimilate the great teachings of Aristotle and other Greek and Roman Savants. Coming down to the Christian era, when the teachings of Christ were just taking hold of Europe and Christ's disciples were still being persecuted, Armenians as a nation embraced Christianity ten years before Constan- tine the Great set the example for European nations by making Rome a Christian Nation. Again in the great religious debates which followed, Armenians refused to follow the dictates of the Greek and the Roman churches in setting up the infallibility of a Pope, but made their Catholicos the direct choice of the people and in that way avoided the terrible wars of the Reformation which swept Europe through so many years. Coming down to more recent times we might cite one more example of this progressive tendency of the Armenian people. One of the last official acts of our great Catho licos, Mekertitch Khrimian, popularly known as Hairik (Little Father) was to grant women of the Caucasus the right to vote in educational affairs. These facts are enough perhaps to show that the democratiz ing move which Mr. Ellis sketches as taking place in the Armenian Church is just what we have been expecting and anticipating long ago. And therefore we would hardly say (not that we resent the idea) that "Even the most casual observation shows that the leaven which is mak ing over the Armenian Church and people is an American import." Of course this democratizing tendency has made greater strides since the rapid advance of science and learning of the nineteenth century, when through easier transportation facilities Armenians came in closer contact with European culture. Mr. Ellis tells of the part mission aries have played in diffusing education among the Armenians. We are obliged, however, to dissent with him when he says, "The intellectual awakening of Armenia is of undeniably American origin." With 232 THE ARMENIAN HERALD all due respect and deep appreciation of all that America has done for us in helping us to obtain Education through its missionaries, we would like to state that intellectual awakening of Armenia is of ancient origin and before the missionaries were really established in Armenia. The modern intellectual revival of Armenians really began with the estab lishment of Armenian Academy of Venice by Abbot Mekhitar. (See February number of the Armenian Herald). That was in 1717. Com' ing down to somewhat more recent date but still long before the mission ary movement, we might say that Armenian modern intellectual awak ening began with Abovian's Wounds of Armenia, the first novel in modern Armenian language. That book was published in 1858. Then followed a group of intellectual men, Nelbandian, Patkanian, Artzrouni, Raffi, and many others, most of them trained in Europe, who dedicated their lives to the same noble task. This movement was in Russian- Armenia. At the same time a similar activity sprung up in Constan tinople and throughout Turkish-Armenia. Mekertitch Khrimian, whom we mentioned above, before his ascendancy to the chair of Catholicos, took to Van the first printing press and, perched on Mount Varak, spread enlightenment throughout Armenia by his own inspiring words and those of his enthusiastic disciples who went all over Armenia and carried the torch of learning. These were the main causes of the in tellectual awakening of the Armenians, —all of them prior to the educa tional movement of the missionaries. We do not wish, however, to belittle the educational help which mis sionaries have given the Armenians through their altruistic efforts for good many years. We are grateful to Mr. Ellis for writing so extensive ly on Armenian life and activities, for the enlightenment of Americas readers. He has seconded our efforts very appreciably in this human itarian move and we cannot close, without expressing our deep appre ciation to Mr. Ellis for giving utterance to his true conviction in the fol lowing words, "The cause of Christianity as well as humanity is almost inextricably bound up with the holding of the Caucasus front and the triumph of the Allied Cause."