THE ARMENIAN HERALD

"The Interest of the Weakest is as Sa cred as the Interest of the Strongest."

3»a*»a> President Wilson. *e«e CONTRIBUTORS' COLUMN FOR FEBRUARY, MARCH AND APRIL NUMBER

Prof. George E. Woodberry, the distin Dr. G. Pasdermadjian's thrilling story guished poet, critic, and man of letters, of Armenia's role in the war just ended who is known and honored throughout is concluded in this number. May we be the literary world, gives us such great permitted to draw the attention of the pleasure by allowing his name to appear reader particularly to the conclusion of in our pages. He has given great aid his story in which he stops for one mo to our cause by his exalted sonnets on ment and reflects on the question as to Armenia which we are presenting to our what might have been the fate of Eu readers with his kind permission. We rope if Armenia had sided with the are grateful to Prof. Woodberry for Germano-Turks instead of the Allies. these beautiful sonnets which will con Let us hope that the importance of the tinue to cast their halo around the name Armenia's participation on the side of of Armenia long after the present-day the Allies "without any bargaining or oratory has ceased to shed its light. dickering" shall not be overlooked when the final reckoning is made of the Arme nian claims. Messrs. James W. Gerard, Charles Evans Hughes, Michel Tsmatos, Wil liam Jennings Bryan, Miran Sevasly, Mrs. Bertha S. Papazian's The Trag whose speeches in the great banquet of edy of Armenia is concluded in this num the American Committee for the Inde ber. She tellingly relates how we have pendence of Armenia at New York we suffered long and wantonly under the are printing in this number, need no in old system of the balance of powers troduction to our readers. We have re which was guided by unscrupulous and viewed the proceedings of that meeting selfish principles. Let us hope that the in this number under our Review of the League of Nations about to be carried Month column, and we have nothing out will make such bad morals of the more to add here except to say that past impossible and make Europe ful we feel full of hope and courage for the fill very soon its unredeemed pledges to triumph of our cause when such distin the Armenian people. guished names are advocating our just cause in such vigorous and active man Eghia Temirjipashian ner. was one of the most powerful personalities in the lit erary circle of Turkish Armenia during Colonial Angell is an officer in the the last half of the 19th century. His Norwegian Army. He served during the sensitive soul was unable to bear injus present war as lieutenant in the Foreign tice of any kind and his inability to Legion of the French Army. He had account for wrongs of this world brought previously served in the Balkan War, him to his tragic end. The Prayer of a and has written a book on the Servian Desperate Mother is truly symbolic of Army. His account of the Armenian what might fall to the Armenians as a soldiers is about those who served under whole if the Allies fail to do them full him as volunteers in the corps known as justice in the peace terms soon to be con the Foreign Legion of the French Army. cluded. THE ARMENIAN HERALD

VOLUME 2. FEB., MARCH, APRIL, 1919. NOS. 3, 4, 5

ARMENIA'S SUPREME APPEAL TO CIVILIZATION

I We publish in this, our last issue of the Armenian Herald, the me morial of the Armenian National Delegation, presented to the Pan's Peace Conference, on the subject of Armenia's claims. It is signed by His Excellency, Boghos Nubar, President of the Armenian National Delegation and by Mr. A. Aharonian, President of the Delegation from the Armenian Republic to the Peace Conf It is a document re erence^J plete with facts and arguments arrayed in a masterly manner and which constitute the unbreakable rock upon which rests the claim of Armenia's recognition by the United States and the allied powers to freedom and national independence over territories which historically, ethnologically, and geographically are essentially Armenian. Every American to whom the blessed faculty of sincere and healthy reason is available should peruse carefully this historic paper from one end to the other. We are persuaded that the whole development of its unerring exposition of the Armenian "Bill of Rights" will carry con viction. As the authors of the document conclude: "The Armenian question is not solely a local and a national one; it concerns the peace of Europe, and upon its solution depend the pacification, the progress and the prosperity of the Near East." A glance at the map of the Near East will enable the readers to grasp this easily. Armenia is destined to play in the Near East the part that Switzerland is playing in the heart of Europe. But the recognition of Armenia's imperishable rights does not rest alone on considerations of the "Equilibrium" of the Near East. .Armenia's tragedy, epic history, unprecedented vicissitudes (culmin ating in the horrors the very recital of which makes one's hair stand on end), culture and civilization, appeal to all the liberal nations whose

123 124 THE ARMENIAN HERALD representatives are now engaged at the conference table in the remak ing of the map of Europe and Asia., As the memorialists cogently put it, "the war of peoples, followed by the peace of peoples, must needs give Armenia her complete independence." (The way in which the Armenian question will be settled, will become the criterion by which will be judged the oft-proclaimed declarations of the "democratic nations" of the world, that this war has been waged for liberating and safeguarding the independence of small and oppressed nationalities. If Armenia does not get that which she is fully entitled to receive as the result of the deliberations of the Versailles Peace Congress, then the war has been waged in vain, and the obsolete and rotten diplomacy of the past (on the altar of which Armenia has been so often crucified) will again hold the field. We know that our illus trious President is now carrying a herculean struggle to bury in ever lasting oblivion the methods of an antiquated diplomacy^ That diplomacy was the direct cause of Armenia, and other conquered races of the Near East, being subjected to such fiendish ordeals and tribula tions, under the heel of the unspeakable Turk. It did more. It brought about long and protracted wars in 1828, 1856, 1876 and, above all, in 1914, the present world conflagration. If the heritage of the sick-man had been disposed of after the heroic stand by Greece (1821- 1828) in all probability Germany would not have dared to plunge man kind into the orgies of blood and carnage which we have witnessed during the last four years. But the powers resorted to half measures by which to cure the Turkish gangrene. This is remarkably well brought to the fore in the first part of the memorial under review. The result was that the abominable Turk set the rival powers against one another and, meanwhile, systematically plundered, raped and massacred the historic nations of the Near East,—the Armenians, the Greeks, and others, —to the great delight of their executioners, and to the confusion of their would-be friends and "protectors." By adopting this policy of laissez-faire, the great "Powers" were simply acting like the man who is "penny wise and pound foolish." They were spreading germs of war and conflicts to their own detriment and destruction. After Navarino Turkey should have disappeared from the Comity of Nations. She should never have been admitted into the family of civilized communities or states. She should have been treated as the ARMENIA'S SUPREME APPEAL TO CIVILIZATION 125

police in Paris would have treated the "apaches." Apaches the Turks were, still are and will be for years to come. Instead of being spurned Turkey was pampered, flattered, patted on the back, like a spoiled child. The panacea was there and the statesmen of Europe did not use it. The remedy was simply anatomy! As an eastern states man once said, restore the ancient, civilized, progressive peoples under the yoke of the Turk to their freedom and independence and you would thereby have saved mankind from a curse, and redeemed the East by the recognition of statehood to Armenia, Greece, Palestine, Arabia,

Syria, and the Balkan nations. |But the "wise" men of Europe thought otherwise. They ought to have realized by this time the fallacy of their past mistakes. But have they ? We still hear of "secret treaties"; of a balance of powers in the Near

East ; of maintaining the Turk in Constantinople ; of preserving Turkey as a unit; of depriving Armenia of an exit to the Gulf of Armenia or

Alexandretta ; of partitioning her among "spheres of influence"; of frustrating Greece's just claims to Western Asia Minor, etc., etcj The list is too long to renumerate. In the meantime the Turks are carrying on their policy of extermination while the great powers of the world look on as passive observers from the "City of Light" and are unable to take the bull by the horns, dispose of these "apaches," and do justice to Armenia and Greece, whose populations are at present victimized by government a a of cut-throats and marauders. ^It is sheer scandal that the delegates representing Turkey of the atrocities, massacres and deportations, should be entitled to sit in the historic palace of Versailles, in the company of President Wilson, Premiers Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando, while representatives of martyred and heroic Armenia should be waiting in the corridors outside. O tempora, O mores!^ Let us hope we are laboring under a false illusion. Let us hope things are better than they seem. Otherwise we would feel bound to adopt the findings of that Eminent Armenian essayist, Tigrane Yergate, when he uttered, some twenty years ago, these memorable words: "The calculations of the European Powers require that the horrors inflicted by the Turkish regime on the Christian races should be con tinued. Before entering a house it is well to see it ablaze so that the help rendered, in order to extinguish the conflagration, should afford 126 THE ARMENIAN HERALD a pretext for aggression. During the Armenian massacres the Sultan received every encouragement from two foreign offices. The reason for this is that the principle of nationality, if rigidly enforced in the Near East, would diminish in a singular manner the domain of Euro pean coveteousness. The small states created out of the ruins of Turkey have had the misfortune of taking their liberties seriously to heart. They did not wish to play the game of the powers, who aim at making them their vassals under guise of ensuring their independence. . ." We are anxiously awaiting the outcome of the deliberations of the Paris Conference to ascertain if Tigrane Yergate's diagnosis of the past diplomacy and tendencies of the great powers (at whose side Armenia shed her most precious blood) represent their present mentality and ways of thinking. Meanwhile we pray our readers to ponder seriously over the Armenian memorandum, published in these pages, the very embodiment of Armenia's claims and supreme appeal to civilization. THE ARMENIAN QUESTION BEFORE THE PEACE CONFERENCE

IN the name of the entire Armenian nation, whose elected delegates from Armenia itself and from all parts of the world are at the present moment assembled in Conference at Paris, the Armenian National Delegation, begs to submit to the Peace Conference the present memorandum which sums up the aspirations and claims of the Armenian nation. After passing through centuries of oppression and sufferings, our nation at the threshold of the 20th century reached the climax in the universal conflagration, torn and covered with blood, but aspiring with a faith more alive than ever towards its liberation and the realisation of its national ideal, thanks to the Victory of the Allied and Associated Powers, who have inscribed upon their banners the principles of Right, Justice, and the right of Peoples to dispose of their own fate. Taking their stand upon these great principles, the Armenian National Delegation, interpreting the unanimous voice of the whole nation, a part of which has already constituted itself into an Independent Republic in the Caucasus, has already proclaimed the independence of Integral Armenia and notified the Allied Governments thereof by a note of November 30, 1918. Armenia has won its right to independence by its voluntary and spontaneous participation in the war on the three fronts of the Caucasus, Syria and France, and by the myriads of victims in men, women and children through her fidelity to the cause of the Entente looked upon by her from the outset as her own. As a result of these enormous losses on all battlefields, through massacres, and along the paths of deporta tions she has paid a heavier tribute to Death than any other belligerent nation. Victory has delivered Armenia from the yoke of her oppressors, and her misfortunes would in themselves suffice to justify her right to Independence; but, as will be proved hereafter, she has other equally and highly legitimate titles of a historical, ethnical, political and moral nature. * * *

127 THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 129

Armenian Nation, intervened and addressed the Porte with the object of obtaining the execution of the reforms stipulated in Article 61 of the Berlin Treaty. The Ambassadors in Constantinople were instructed to study a project and to draw up same in definite form. Long and laborious were the negotiations to overcome the resistance of the Porte. Finally, however, she was brought to accept a text, but one which was belittled and dis figured by the intervention of Germany, who had never ceased to lend her support to Turkish diplomacy. This agreement, signed on Feb. 8, 1914, the Young Turks hastened to tear up, as soon as Germany provoked the War. But this did not prevent the Turks from proposing to the Armenians an ignominious compact. They proposed to them that they should make common cause with the Tartars in an insurrection against the Russians and, in exchange, the Porte was to have granted Autonomy to the Armenians. Germany stepped forward as the sponsor of her ally. Need it be said that the Armenians replied with an indignant refusal? The revenge of the Young Turks, coldly premeditated and foreannounced, was terrible. We will relate neither the massacres, nor the deportations which have been massacres in disguise. The story of them supported by over whelming evidence is to be found in the Blue Book presented to Parlia ment by Lord Bryce; in the books by Morgenthau, L. Einstein, and even in pamphlets written by Germans, such as the report of Dr. Niepage, that of Dr. Lepsius, which has just been published in Paris, Mr. Harry Stunner's book, etc. It is important to recall that we have had many proofs that the work of the extermination of a whole Nation was methodically organized by the Turkish Government whose orders were transmitted by circulars and telegrams to the various Officials in all the Armenian Provinces. Several of these documents have been found since and published. Nothing was left to chance by the Government, neither assassina tions, nor pillages, nor tortures, nor rapes, nor compulsory conversions to Mohammedanism, nor death by starvation. After such deeds the case is settled; the Allies have already, by the solemn declarations of their Statesmen, undertaken to definitely liberate Armenia from a tyranny unparalleled in History. The War of Peoples, THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 129

Armenian Nation, intervened and addressed the Porte with the object of obtaining the execution of the reforms stipulated in Article 61 of the Berlin Treaty. The Ambassadors in Constantinople were instructed to study a project and to draw up same in definite form. Long and laborious were the negotiations to overcome the resistance of the Porte. Finally, however, she was brought to accept a text, but one which was belittled and dis figured by the intervention of Germany, who had never ceased to lend her support to Turkish diplomacy. This agreement, signed on Feb. 8, 1914, the Young Turks hastened to tear up, as soon as Germany provoked the War. But this did not prevent the Turks from proposing to the Armenians an ignominious compact. They proposed to them that they should make common cause with the Tartars in an insurrection against the Russians and, in exchange, the Porte was to have granted Autonomy to the Armenians. Germany stepped forward as the sponsor of her ally. Need it be said that the Armenians replied with an indignant refusal? The revenge of the Young Turks, coldly premeditated and foreannounced, was terrible. We will relate neither the massacres, nor the deportations which have been massacres in disguise. The story of them supported by over whelming evidence is to be found in the Blue Book presented to Parlia ment by Lord Bryce; in the books by Morgenthau, L. Einstein, and even in pamphlets written by Germans, such as the report of Dr. Niepage, that of Dr. Lepsius, which has just been published in Paris, Mr. Harry Stunner's book, etc. It is important to recall that we have had many proofs that the work of the extermination of a whole Nation was methodically organized by the Turkish Government whose orders were transmitted by circulars and telegrams to the various Officials in all the Armenian Provinces. Several of these documents have been found since and published. Nothing was left to chance by the Government, neither assassina tions, nor pillages, nor tortures, nor rapes, nor compulsory conversions to Mohammedanism, nor death by starvation. After such deeds the case is settled; the Allies have already, by the solemn declarations of their Statesmen, undertaken to definitely liberate Armenia from a tyranny unparalleled in History. The War of Peoples, 130 THE ARMENIAN HERALD followed by the Peace of Peoples, must needs give Armenia her com plete Independence. This Independence the Armenians have shed torrents of blood in order to win, not only the blood of their martyrs massacred and deported or put to death after awful tortures, but indeed the blood shed on various battlefields by their volunteers and soldiers who struggled and fought side by side with the Allies for the liberation of their country. Arme nians were to be found fighting spontaneously, voluntarily on all fronts. In France, in the "Legion Etrangere," they covered themselves with glory by their bravery. Scarcely a tenth part of their number came through alive. In Syria and Palestine, in the Legion d'Orient, they hurried to the call of the Armenian Delegation. This Legion d'Orient, in which they were by much the dominating element, formed in itself alone more than half the French contingent. They took no inconsid erable part in the decisive Victory of General Allenby who paid hom- mage to their valor. Moreover, the Armenians were to be found in the Caucasus, where (not to mention the 150,000 Armenian soldiers who served in the Russian armies on all fronts) thousands of volunteers led by Andranik and an army of 50,000 soldiers uninterruptedly fought since the first days of the war under the supreme command of General Nazarbekian. It was these troops who after the collapse of Russia and the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, deceived and abandoned by the Georgians, and betrayed by the Tartars, who had joined the Turks, defended the front singlehanded and for seven months retarded the Turkish advance. In this manner they rendered a signal service to the British Army in Mesopotamia, as Lord Robert Cecil himself declared in an official letter addressed to Lord Bryce and in a reply to a question in the House of Commons. They also prevented, by their resistance to the Turks up to the signing of the Armistice, the sending of enemy troops to other fronts.

The Armenians have therefore been true belligerents ; their losses due to the war, which exceed a million (out of a nation of 4V2 million souls) are proportionately much heavier than those of any of the other belligerents. THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 1S1

INTEGRAL ARMENIA

The Armenians, who for centuries had suffered Turkish domination, were spread over all parts of that Empire. A great number too, fleeing from their tyrants, had emigrated to foreign countries, to Russia, to America. It is certain that the majority of those emigrants will return to their fatherland once this latter be liberated. In consequence, the statistics which should have weight are those of before the war, or rather those of before the Hamidian massacres of 1894-96, which not only occasioned 300,000 deaths, but caused also a considerable part of the population to emigrate. It is inadmissible that such crimes should benefit their authors, nor that they should attain the project of their abominable designs, —to assure the majority and supremacy of Mussul mans. The VOICE OF ALL ARMENIANS LIVING AND DEAD MUST BE HEARD. If Armenians have no absolute majority over the totality of all races in the Armenian Vilayets, yet they are in a majority by com parison with each of them. Before the war, and in spite of the emigra tions at the end of the last century, the number of Armenians, in the six Vilayets called Armenian, in the Vilayet of Trebizond, and in Cilicia, was superior to that of the Turks and the Kurds taken separately and even equal to that of Turks and Kurds together. There were 1,403,000 Armenians, against 943,000 Turks and 482,000 Kurds. On the other hand, the Armenian population was not the only one to have suffered. The Balkan Wars had already caused heavy losses to the armies of the Sultan, nearly exclusively recruited in Asia. The present War completed the exhaustion of the very sources of recruiting ; and even the Turkish civilian population heavily suffered not only in the regions invaded by the Russians, but also throughout their Empire where they were decimated by epidemics which for want of care for the sick and lack of medicaments made terrible ravages among all the mus- sulman elements. However, number is not the sole factor which should serve to deter mine the granting of our territory and the fixing of its frontiers. One must take into account not only the dead, but also the degree of civiliza tion and the fact that the Armenians are the sole element capable of actually constituting a State fit for civilization and progress. The Mus sulman and other non-Armenian populations who will find themselves 132 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

within the Armenian State will enjoy liberties guaranteed by prin ciples admitted by the Peace Conference. The Kurds are divided into sedentary and nomadic elements. The greater part of the mountaineers who have the reputation of thieves and plunderers, have always in the hands of the Turkish government been the instruments of massacres. Their political evolution has never gone beyond that of tribal government. An important portion of the sedentary Kurds is established in the region generally called Kurdistan, in those parts south of the Vilayets of Diarbekir and Van (Hekkiari). Those regions may be detached from the Armenia State. The rest of the Kurds will live in Armenia under the protection of her laws. It is however to be noted that among the Kurds there exist a good number who are of Armenian origin, and that, once the Turkish baneful influence eliminated, it will be easy to establish a community of interest between the two races, Armenians and Kurds, the Armenians having it in addition within their power the gift of giving the Kurds the benefits of civilization, in the mutual interest of both parties. As to the nomads, special laws will regulate the change of pasture lands in order to guarantee the safety of the country and prevent plunder.

In accordance with the principles enunciated above, the regions which

should form the Armenian State are the following :

1* The 7 Vilayets of Van, Bitlis, Diarbekir, Kharpout, Sivas, Erzeroum and Trebizond (in conformity with the Reform Act of February 1914), excluding the regions situated beyond the South of the Tigris and to the West of the line between Ordou-Sivas. 2* The four Cilician Sandjaks, i. e. Marash, Khozan (Sis), Djebel- Bereket and Adana with Alexandretta. 3° All the territory of the Armenian Republic of the Caucasus, in cluding: the whole province of Erivan, the southerly portion of the former Government of Tiflis, the southwesterly part of the Government of Elisabethopol ; the provinces of Kars, with the exception of the region to the north of Ardahan. When Abdul-Hamid had the administrative boundaries of the Vilayets traced, he managed to introduce arbitrarily into each of them non THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 138

Armenian regions in such a way as to assure a majority to the Mussul mans. With the same end in view he set up colonies of Circassians and other Mussulmans, immigrated from Russia or from the Balkans, in the midst of regions inhabited by Armenians. A general revision of fron tiers will therefore be needed. We request that special Mixed Commis sions be charged with this work of rectification and given a mandate to fix all the boundaries of the Armenian State, taking due account of geographical, ethnical, historical, economic and strategical conditions. The number of Greeks in the vilayet of Trebizond, which was the seat of the ancient Kingdom of Pontus, is superior to that of the Armenians ; but the port of Trebizond is the only important outlet from Upper Armenia to the Black Sea. Greece has no designs upon this vilayet which is too far distant from the principal centres which she claims in virtue of the Rights of Peoples, and it is in perfect agreement with the Greek Government, who has looked at this question in a broad spirit of equity which it gives us pleasure to do justice, that we request the juncture of a part of the Province of Trebizond to the Armenian State. Its Greek population may be certain that respect for their religion and language will be assured by the Armenian Administration under a rule of brotherhood and equal justice. We desire particularly to declare moreover that on their side the Armenians of such regions as will be returned to Greece will accept in the same spirit of confidence and loyalty the conditions which will be granted to them under the Greek Government. As to Cilicia or Armenia Minor, need it be said that it is essentially Armenian, having always formed part of Armenia. It was the seat of the last Kingdom of Armenia during nearly four centuries, until the day when, defeated by the Arabs, its last King Leon V was carried away cap tive into Egypt, then liberated, coming at last to Paris to end his life. He was buried at the Basilica of Saint-Denis where his tomb is still to be seen. The region of Zeitoun, whereof the inhabitants of warlike and proud race are so attached to their national rights, has always and under all forms of governments enjoyed a semi-independence. Let it be also remembered that at all times and to this day the Catholicos of Sis, religious supreme head of Cilicia, has had his seat at Sis, capital of Cilicia. 134 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

The population of Cilicia is Armenian and Turkish. The Arab element figures in it only in a very small proportion. Before the war, there were only 20,000 Syrians in Cilicia, whereas the number of the Armenians was as much as 200,000 or over, in spite of the enormous emigration of 1909 caused by the massacres of Adana. Further on there will be found, in the historical part, other proofs of our incontestable right over Cilicia. We cannot conceive in virtue of what principle does the Syrian Committee extend the frontier on the north as far as the Taurus moun tains, thus claiming Cilicia as part of Syria, as shown on the map (an nexed hereto) and published under the care of the Syrian Committee and presented to the Congress of Marseilles. No Atlas, either of the Modern World or of the Ancient, includes Cilicia in Syria, of which the northern boundaries are the Amanus near Alexandretta and NOT the Taurus Mountains. We will not insist upon the fact that the term Syria has never been a political expression, and that there has not been a Kingdom of Syria. The Kingdom of the Seleucides founded by Seleucus, one of Alexander's generals, was Greek and had no Syrian national character. The Armenian people, deprived of Cilicia, separated from the natural ports of Mersina and Youmourtalik (Ayas), would be condemned to languish in the mountains, without intercourse with the Mediterranean world, without the power to breathe, and, to use an expression oft used, Armenia would thus be deprived of her lungs. Her life and future are on the Mediterranean. The views of the Syrian Committee cannot moreover be reconciled with the agreement between the French Government and the Armenian National Delegation, when in 1916 the latter was notified of the clause relating to Armenia in the Convention which the Great Allied Powers had just concluded with regard to Turkey-in-Asia. Acceding at that moment with gratitude to the desire of the Allies, who promised the liberation of Cilicia and the three western vilayets from the Turkish yoke, the Delegation hastened to furnish Armenian volunteers to con tribute to the deliverance of their Fatherland. More than 5,000 Arme nians, enlisted in the "Legion d'Orient" in which the Syrians did not count more than 300 or 400 fighting men, took part in the decisive Vic tory of Palestine, to which Victory Syria owes her liberation. THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 135

We only recall these facts in order to enable the Peace Conference to come to a decision with a thorough knowledge of the matter and ac cording to the principle of nationalities, a bed-rock for all their delibera tions. If there exists, as it is apparent, some divergence of the boundary lines between Armenians and Syrians, we must none the less say that our sentiments of friendship and solidarity towards the Syrians, cemented by centuries of equal sufferings, could not suffer from those differences, and that none more than we can wish the constitution of a free and strong Syria as neighbor to the Armenian State. We request that Armenia, with boundaries as aforesaid, be placed under the collective guarantee of the Allied and Associated Powers or under that of the League of Nations, who will guarantee the integrity and inviolability of her territory. They will in addition delegate one of the Powers to give to the new State during the first few years an assist ance in the organization of the Country and its economic and financial conditions. This assistance should in no way take the form of a pro tectorate, not even a provisional one, and should be exercised so as to promote the interests of the Armenian Nation, and in such a way that the Sovereignity of the State be not impaired.

ARMENIAN CLAIMS

The program of our National claims may be summarized as follows :

1" The recognition of an Independent Armenian State, formed by the union of the seven vilayets and of Cilicia with the territories of the Armenian Republic of the Caucasus.

That boundary-fixing Missions, composed of Delegates from the guarantor Powers, and assisted by Armenian Commissioners, should be charged with the fixing on the spot of the definite boundaries of Armenia ; such Misisons to have full powers to settle without appeal all difficulties which may arise with bordering countries, at the time when the outlines, as traced on he map, are fixed on the ground itself.

2" That the Armenian State, thus constituted, be placed under the collective guarantee of the Allied Powers and the United States or under that of the League of Nations of which she requests that she may form a part. 3' That Special Mandate be given by the Peace Conference to one of the Powers to lend the necessary assistance to Armenia during a period 1S6 THE ARMENIAN HERALD of transition. The Armenian Conference, gathered at the present mo ment in Paris, and representing the whole Armenian Nation, should be consulted about the choice of the Mandatory Power. The mandate to be of a maximum duration of twenty years. 4" That an indemnity be fixed by the Peace Conference for making good the damages of all kinds suffered by the Armenian Nation through massacres, deportations, spoliations, and devastations of the Country.

5" That the assisting Power have particularly as her mandate:

a) To oblige the Turkish, Tartar, and other authorities who still occupy these territories to evacuate them. b) To carry out the general disarmament of the population. c) To expel and to punish those who have patricipated in the massacres, done violence to the population, taken part in plunders or benefited from the spoils of the victims. d) To drive out of the country the elements of disturbance and disorder; and to expel the namadic tribes. e) To send away the mouhadjirs, Mussulman colonists, implanted unedr the Hamidian rule and that of the Young Turks. /) Lastly to have all necessary steps taken everywhere, in Armenia and outlying districts, for the return to theiT former Christian Faith of all women, young girls, children and others converted by force to Islamism or kept captive in Harems. Armenia wil lbe ready to hear her share of the Ottoman Public Debt, consoli dated before the War. Turkey should likewise undertake to pay the equivalent value of all requisitions made by her, and to restore with fair indemnity to the Armenians having rights thereto real properties situated in her own territory, as well as all churches, schools, monasteries with their dependencies, lands and goods, which were taken away from the Armenian community in any form whatever. As to any national or private landed estates of Armenians which are liable to escheat in Turkey, the religious Armenian Authorities in Constantinople should have right to dispose of them, to sell them, and to devote the proceeds to the needs of their flocks. Every person, of Armenian origin, domiciled in a foreign country or naturalized, will enjoy during a term of five years the option, either in his own name or in that of his children they being minors, of the new Nationality and of becoming an Armenian citizen, by informing beforehand and in writing the competent authori ties of the two countries concerned.

The Armenians rely entirely upon the spirit of justice of the Peace Conference and feel confident that she will sanction this program of their national claims. The Powers, who are by now acquainted with the Armenians, whose national sentiments, vitality and warlike virtues have been powerfully revealed in the course of the present war, may repose confidence in us. Moreover, the Powers should also note the energy, love for work, and many aptitudes in all human activities of a race always eager for higher culture and progress and which is in addi tion remarkably prolific. The Powers may rest assured that with such elements as these, Armenia, under a rule of peace, justice and liberty and thanks to the patronage of the League of Nations and the help of the Mandatory THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 137

Power, will rapidly become a flourishing and prosperous State, and will be one of the most powerful factors of peace and civilization in the East. The Armenian question is not solely a local and national one; it con cerns the Peace of Europe, and upon its solution depends the pacification, the progress and the prosperity of the Near East.

A. Ahakonian, Boghos Nubar, President President »/ the Delegation from the Armenian of the Armenian National Delegation. Republic to the Peace Conference.

Paris, February 12, 1919.

COMPLEMENTARY NOTES

CILICIA

The Syrian Committees have for sometime past circulated pamphlets and maps, by which they endeavor to attach Cilicia to Syria; whereas by her history, her geography, her population and her economic rela tions Cilicia forms a part of the high Armenian plateau and is very sharply separated from Anatolia and still more so from Syria. The mountains of Kurdistan and the Amanus mountains, which are the furthest prolongations of the high Armenian plateau and reach as far as the Mediterranean by the cape of Ras-el-Kanzir, are, according to all geographers, ancient and modern, the natural barriers which sep arate not only Cilicia but the whole of Anatolia from the Syrian plain. In the same way the Anti-Taurus range and the Boulghar mountains limit to the west the high Armenian plateau and stretch to Mersina on the Mediterranean; they thus separate the four Cilician Sandjaks from Asia Minor. Even by her hydrographic system Cilicia is alto gether distinct from her two neighbors and links herself to the high Armenian plateau, for the three principal rivers, the Tarsus, the Sihoun and the Djihoun, have their sources in the Armenian mountains and flow out into the gulf of Alexandretta. The gulf itself, embraced by the two arms of the plateau, is her natural outlet to the sea. The history of Cilicia is the same as that of all the high Armenian plateau. Situated at the foot of this latter, she is the one and only 138 THE ARMENIAN HERALD point of passage which all the dominating powers of Asia have contended for. It was at the time of Hittites that. Cilicia was for the first time independent. During centuries she was a powerful Kingdom, against which the Rameses and Toutmes of Egypt strove in vain, up to the day when she finally succumbed under the King of Nineveh. Once only, towards the middle of the 11th century, did this country enjoy her independence, thanks to the Armenian princes and people who, under the pressure of the Seldjucks, kept going westwards. This Armenian Kingdom lasted until the end of the 14th century, its frontier ebbing and flowing in the course of the endless struggles which they had to keep up against the Byzantine Empire and the Mussulman sul tans. During these struggles it always kept the closest touch with the Crusaders and Latin Kingdoms founded by the latter at Antioch, Ourfa, Cyprus and elsewhere, being ever attached to the peoples of the West by its religion, its commerce, its Court, and above all by the family con nections of the royal house. It was finally overwhelmed by the Turko- mussulman invasions. Today a new phase of the history of Cilicia begins, having this ad vantage that the people who are about to found there a new fatherland upon its ancient ruins are not new-comers, but the very same people who inhabited it for centuries, and who struggled and suffered there; and who now claim their right to possess the soil of their forefathers, a claim not dating from today but from the very day when the land was conquered and subdued. Let it be also noted that Cilicia, the high Armenian plateau included, has never been integrally under Turkish dominion. To the middle of the 19th century, Armenian groups remained masters of their mountainous regions, perpetually fighting the Ottoman rule. The history of the region of Zeitoun during the last 50 years has thus been but a long series of insurrections against the yoke of the oppressor. They struggled in 1860 against 12,000 soldiers of Khourshid Pasha; in 1862 against the regular and irregular army of 35,000 soldiers of Aziz Pasha; in 1896 against the army, 40,000 men strong, of Edhem Pasha. And in spite of all, up to the outbreak of the Great War, Zeitoun was never completely subjugated; it has always been the incarnation of the living protestation of Armenia against the Turkish yoke, exactly as THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 139

were the brave people of Sassoun in the other part of the same Taurus mountains. Let us not forget that in Cilicia, as in all Armenia, the massacres organized periodically by the Turkish government had for their sole aim to stifle in blood this protection of the Armenians, and to extermin ate their whole nation, which, conscious of its right and its worth, aspired tenaciously towards independence. In Cilicia, there is yet another guardian of our immemorial rights, the Catholicos of Cilicia, who, during centuries of bloody troubles had,

and still has, his seat in the ruined royal palace of Sis ; and who awaits the arrival of the Armenian Government in order to hand it all that ruined place, together with the survivors of the martyred population, whose number formerly reached half a million. The proportion of the divers elements of the population of the four Cilician Sandjaks was before the war the same as that of the high Armenian Plateau. The principal population of the country is formed of three elements. Armenians, whose number exceeded 200,000; Turks, to the number of 78,000 and the Turkomans and nomadic Kurds to the number of about 60,000. The other elements of the population are of secondary importance, there being 15,000 Arabs and about 20,000 Syrians out of a total of half a million. This population of Armenia (Armenians, Turks, Kurds), is completely different from that of Asia Minor, of which the principal elements are

Turks and Greeks ; and from that of northern Syria where the predom inating elements are Arab, Turk and Kurd. The Arabs and the Christian Syrians of the North of the Kurdish mountains and of the Amanus range form together scarcely 7% of the population, either in the four Sandjaks or in the immediately bor dering cazas, whereas at even one or two kilometres to the south of those mountains, the Arab elements form more than half. This amounts to saying that the Amanus and Kurdish mountains form the natural barrier before which Syria ends and where Armenia begins. Apart from the above historical, geographical, and statistical bonds, other conditions, which proceed from them, link the four Cilician Sandjaks firmly to the other parts of Armenia. These are, firstly, senti mental considerations. The seat of our last Kings, its soil strewn with 140 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

the ruins of our convents and fortresses, as an eagle's nest of our in dependence and resistance, Cilicia has ever remained, to our own day, the object of the veneration and affection of all Armenians. Nothing can put asunder such bonds; peoples at times may submit to such disruptions, but never do they resign themselves to them. Moreover, in addition to sentiment, there exists the inexorable eco nomic necessity to attach the coast zone of the Mediterranean at any cost to the Armenian hinterland. A vast high inland plateau has need of an outlet on the sea for its industrial and commercial development. To separate Armenia from this gulf, is to cut her economic arteries, to strangle her productive power. There is also a moral factor, none the less important. Armenians are industrious, active, productive, but they are embedded in the fatalistic torpor wihch surrounds them. They are an Aryan and Christian people, but they are submerged in a Turko-mussulman sea. They are western in spirit and character, but they live in a constant contact with Turk and Tartar, that is to say with that part of the East which is the most behind the times. That is perhaps the most tragic side of the Armenian people; and one can understand that Armenia aspires with all the force of her soul to be intimately connected with the western world, and to have immediate and rapid contact with the West. Hence her invincible attraction towards the blue of the Mediterranean, which alone can deliver her from her Asiatic imprisonment. To close this out let to her is to push her back into the Turko-mussulman world with its customs to which she will no longer submit and against which she is constrained to struggle until this door on the Mediterranean be opened to her. We must but add that Armenians do not claim the whole of the Vilayet of Adana in Cilicia. The region of Itchil to the west of Mersina where the Armenian element is scarce may be detached from it.

POPULATION OF ARMENIA

Up to the middle of the 19th century, the Armenian population formed an absolute majority in Turkish Armenia. During the last fifty years, under both Hamidian and Young-Turk rule, there have THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 141 disappeared hundreds of villages of which we have descriptions in our literature of 40 or 50 years ago. The Turkish governments have, in their place, installed Kurds and Tcherkess immigrated from the Balkans and the Caucasus. On the other hand, insecurity of life, absence of any administration of justice, tyranny and persecutions have obliged a very large number of Armenians to emigrate to Russia, to the Balkan States or to America. But in spite of all the efforts and manoeuvres of the Turks, the main part of the Armenian people has remained attached to its ancestral soil with an obstinate tenacity ; it has always formed, and that right up to the commencement of this war, the most important element of the popu lation in Armenia, not only by its intellectual superiority and economic activity, but also by its relative majority over all the other elements of the population. What, before the massacres, was the number of the population of Armenia and what were the proportions of the divers elements in re spect of other races? Turkish data in such a question are never to be relied upon. In the first place there have not been either regular census or any exact statistics in Turkey ; the Turkish government has always intentionally falsified all figures, with the object of showing that the Armenians are but an insignificant minority. Let us give a few instances of those falsifications. The Turkish Government states as 80,000 the number of the Arme nians in the Vilayet of Van. Now, it is established irrefutably that the number of the Armenians of that Vilayet, who at the time of recent events took refuge in Russia, is over 220,000. At the other end of Armenia, in the whole of the Sandjak of Marash, the Turkish Government counts about 4,200 Armenians. Now, in the town of Marash alone, there were, as Elisee Reclus testifies, more than 20,000 Armenians, i. e. half the population of the town. In Zeitoun, which lies in this same Sandjak of Marash, with its eight villages, there were according to the figures arrived on the spot in 1880, 27,460 Arme nians and 8,344 Mussulmans. The Turkish Government gives for the nine vilayets of Van ,Bitlis, Diarbekir, Kharpout, Erzeroum, Trebizond, Sivas, Adana, and Aleppo 848,000 Armenians in all. Now, the American Committee for Armenian 142 THE ARMENIAN HERALD and Syrian Relief in their fifth report published in 1916, bear witness that the number of the Armenians massacred in Armenia is between 600,000 and 850,000, and that the number of those deported to Zor,

Aleppo and Damascus is 486,000 ; the number deported to the interior of Anatolia 300,000; that of the refugees in the Caucasus 200,000. If we add to these figures the very large number of the victims of cholera among the refugees in the Caucasus, that of the converts to Islam, of the women and children who remained in their homes, we find that the figure given by the Turks is even less than one half of the reality. The habitual system of the Turks in drawing up statistics is the fol lowing: —firstly, without modifying unduly the total of the population, to diminish as far as possible the number of Christians and to add the difference to that of the Mussulmans. Secondly, to avoid stating figures by nationalities, but to class them in a lump according to religion ; thus, they denominate separately the Armenians as Orthodox Christians, Protestants and Catholics, whereas they lump together the Mussulmans in a total figure which includes Turks, Tartars, Turkomans, different races of Kurds, Tcherkess, Zazas, Arabs, Persians, Gypsies, nomads and all, albeit they are very different in race, in history, in economic life, in degree of culture, in short in their political ideas. It is on such false foundations that all ethnographical maps have been based. They have very often led the European public opinion into error.

* * *

The ethnologic questions of the Turkish Empire cannot be looked at and studied by the same methods as those of European countries. When trying to apply the principle of nationalities in Turkey-in-Asia by the creation of national political units, it would be absolutely illogical to take as basis the ethnographical aspect of different regions.

In Turkey there are none but political questions ; and the ethnic prob lem of any part of this Empire at a given moment is but the effect of a political situation. Now, one cannot take an effect as basis when one wishes to suppress a cause. Up to the conclusion of the Berlin Treaty, Armenia, howbeit oppressed during five centuires, presented a compact Armenian population forming an absolute majority. Since the conclu sion of the Berlin Treaty, which was to guarantee security of life and THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 143 property to the Armenians, the ethnographical aspect of Armenia has been radically transformed by violence and massacres. In comparing the statistics drawn up by the Armenian Patriarchate in 1882 and 1912, it is found that whereas the number of Armenians in Turkey in 1882 was estimated at 2,600,000, of which 1,680,000 were in the Armenian vilayets, those figures fell in 1912 to 2,100,000 and 1,018,000 respectively. We thus find a decrease in the total number of Armenians in Turkey of 500,000 souls. In reality, this decrease in the six vilayets was 662,000 which means that outside Armenia the number of Armenians in Turkey had increased by 162,000. This is an undisputable proof of the fact that the ethnographical question in Turkey is but an effect of the acute- ness of the political question. The fact that in thirty years (1882-1912), the number of the Armenians of the six vilayets instead of increasing has diminished by 662,000, whereas that of the Armenians in other parts of Turkey has increased by only 162,000 souls, is only due to a less ferocious oppression inflicted upon the Armenians of the other parts of Turkey than in the six vilayets. To revert to the total decrease in the number of the Armenians, must it therefore be said that this de crease was only 500,000 ? Evidently not. The number by which a race, prolific like that of the Armenians, will increase by a natural birth-rate, in a period of 30 years, may be put at 500,000. It follows then, that the number of Armenians wiped out by the Turks during this period of 30 years was in reality 1,000,000, estimating at 100,000 the number of persons who emigrated through violence. During this War, more than 1,000,000 Armenians have perished. Hence, since the Treaty of Berlin by which the Powers took a solemn engagement to guarantee security to the Armenians, more than 2,000,000 of them have been put to death by the Turks. The same Powers could not surely now deny the truly Armenian Character of Armenia, and take instead a false basis of ethnography founded on violence. But the ethnologic situation in Turkey has not been arbitrary only in the last 40 years. It has ever been so from the very foundation of the Turkish Empire. Its ethnographic aspect, since its foundation, has al ways been the reflection of its eternal policy of suppressing subdued races. When the Turks conquered their empire, Asia Minor proper con tained nothing but a compact Greek population ; now-a-days it is a com pact Turkish population that it contains, with Greek groups on the 144 THE ARMENIAN HERALD coasts. What is accountable for this transformation? History shows that when barbarous tribes have invaded a civilized country, they have been assimilated by the subjected population, whenever the latter had a superior civilization, as was the case of the Francs in Gaul, of the Lombards in Italy, of the Bulgars in Bulgaria. Turkey alone makes an exception to this historical law ; and this exception has solely been estab lished by a policy of systematic massacres, followed by Turkish forced immigrations among the properties of the victims. Turkey has in fact always made use, as of a second army, of this colonization scheme, in order to consolidate its military conquests by ethnographic ones ; it has added yet other expedients, such as the creation of a body of Janissaries, of Kurdish Hamidians, etc. All the above considerations demonstrate that the application of the principle of nationalities in Turkey cannot be based on an ethnographic aspect, which is the very result of the violation of that same principle. The war for that matter has taken in hand the solution of the problem. The ethnographic aspect of the Turkish Empire is today radically dif ferent from what it was four years ago; the populations have been transformed into a mass of nomads. By what ethnographic data ought one therefore to apply the principle of nationalities ? Evidently there is only one basis which can be taken into serious consideration: historical right in all its elements. And as the Balkan peoples recovered their independence, though at the eve of their libera tion they were confronted with the same ethnographic difficulties as in the case of the Armenian people, Armenia, too, should recover her inde pendence, by the realization of the principle : "Armenia for the Armeni ans," hallowed by six centuries of martyrdom. The ethnic question in Armenia is no more serious than that of Bulgaria in the seventies. That is what clearly emerges from a comparison of the two statistics, the one with regard to Bulgaria in 1876, according to the report of Mr. Aubaret, Consul at Roustchouk, to his government, reproduced in the Bulletin of the Geographical Society (Aug. 1876), and the other with regard to Armenia, according to the census arrived at by the Armenian Patriarchate in 1912. Is it necessary to recall that Greece, at the time of the declaration of her independence, contained but 300,000 to 400,000 Greeks? • » * THE ARMENIAN QUESTION

But apart from the recognition of those fundamental facts, a careful examination of the arbitrary ethnographic situation created by the Turks in Armenia makes it evident that the essential element therein today, in spite of massacres of centuries, is still the Armenian people. If we consult the statistics drawn up by the Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople, as well as other Armenian documents, we find ample evidence that at the eve of the War the number of the Armenian popu lation in all Turkey was a little over two millions, of whom, 1,403,000 inhabited Armenia. According to the official Russian statistics, at the outbreak of the war, the number of Armenians inhabiting all the southern part of the Caucasus reached 1,804,600, of whom 1,296,000 were in Armenia prop erly so called. If we add to those figures the number of the Armenians established in other countries abroad, that is 823,000, we obtain the grand total of the Armenians before the war, which is 4,470,000. Of that number about 2,700,000 lived in the fatherland, and more than 1,000,000 in its immediate neighborhood. The number of Turks who dwelt in Armenia was 1,005,000; that of Tartars 537,000; that of Kurds and nomadic Turkomans 555,000. All the Mussulmans together formed 2,308,000. Hence: 1' Taken separately, out of the whole population in Armenia, Arme nians represented a relative majority. 2' In Turkish Armenia alone, they were but slightly less numerous than all the Mussulman elements together.

3* They were decidedly superior to the general total of the whole of the Mussulman population, when taking the Armenian territories of Turkey and the Caucasus together. 4* The number of all of the Christian peoples formed 55% of the general population; that of Mussulmans 40%; and divers other re ligions 5%. * * *

The number of the victims among Armenians caused by this war is frightful; the losses of all the other nations rarely exceed 10%; ours represent the quarter of the total number of the Armenians, or nearly half «f the Armenians inhabitating Armenia. 146 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

"There is no longer any Armenian question ! We have already settled it!" said the Turkish minister with cynical pride. "Armenia independent! Yes, that would be very well; but unfortu nately there are no Armenians left !" repeat our adversaries, not with out hypocrisy. To accept that argument would be to renounce all human justice, insult the millions who sacrificed themselves for the Victory of Right; it would be to sanction the crimes of assassins, and to aid in the foul Turkish project of exterminating a whole nation. Moreover, it is happily not true that the Armenians have been ex terminated, though the number of their victims does amount to a million, though a part of the survivors who fled or were deported suc cumbed to famine and epidemics, and though those who remain are somewhat exhausted by struggles and infinite sufferings. It is a happy fact that a part of the nation survives, and it has but one single hope, one single will, to rekindle the extinguished hearts, to rebuild the houses destroyed, and to set to work again, but this time for itself, and in its Mother Country, liberated and independent. Of the three millions and a half which we today represent, one and a

half millions are at the present moment on their native soil ; tomorrow this number may easily reach two millions and a half. In the Caucasus, in Russia, in Constantinople, in Europe, in Egypt, in America, in the Balkans, in fact everywhere, the hour of return to the fatherland is awaited by Armenians with impatience, and all, quivering with hope, are preparing themselves for it. • • *

As to the Mussulmans, their numbers, too, have decreased in Armenia, in a much bigger proportion than is generally supposed. In the first place, the vilayets which were the scene of the invasion of the Russian armies and of their occupation, such as Erzeroum, Trebi- zond, Van, Bitlis, are today for the most part absolute deserts, the mus- sulman population of which has been killed, has fled, or has succumbed to epidemics. At the end of the year 1917, in the vilayets of Van, Bitlis, and Erzeroum, there were in all 46,000 Turks and about 50,000 Kurds. In the second place, in those parts of our territories which constituted the immediate rear of the fighting front, such as the vilayets of Sivas, Kharpout, and Diarbekir, the Mussulman element, as German officers THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 147

testify, suffered enormous losses in consequence of the evacuation, famine, and epidemics of cholera and typhus. For instance, the town of Diarbekir, which, at the commencement of the war, had a population of 55,000, and wherefrom, in the autumn of 1915, 22,000 Armenians were deported and immediately replaced by 30,000 Mussulman immi grants from the region of Bitlis, had in the month of May, 1917, only 6,000 inhabitants in all. Thirdly, the greater part of the Mussulmans who have remained there, once our independence sanctioned, would no longer remain in our coun

try ; they would withdraw into bordering countries, in order to live under a Turkish government, as has always been the case when Christian nations have been liberated from Turkish domination. Fourthly and finally, by an agreement between the Armenian and Turkish governments, it will be possible to make regular exchanges of population. This question may even be submitted to the League of Nations and the measure realized under fair conditions, be cause a great advantage would accrue to all, to Armenia, to the Turks, and to universal Peace. To sum up, within the boundaries of Armenia, scarcely half of the Mussulman population existing before the war is now left, that is to say, less than a million, probably composed as follows: Half a million of Turks, Tcherkess, and similar elements; 300,000 Tartars and 200,000 Kurds. We may thus sketch the following table, which will give an estimate at a glance of what the next population of Armenia will be in the first years of her existence: —

Armenians 2,500,000 Greeks, Nestorians, Russians, Christians 3,000,000 Georgians, Europeans .... 500,000 Turks, Circassians, Arabs, Persians 500,000 Tartars 300,000 Mussulmans 1,000,000

Kurds 200,000) Kisilbashis, Yezedis, Zazas, Fellahs 300,000 ) Other religions . . . 300,000 4,300,000 148 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

We have already said in the foregoing pages that the importance of a nation is to be measured not only by its number, but also, and above all, by its economic aptitudes and its degree of culture. The most ancient historians have drawn attention to the worth of the Armenians, who, by their spirit of initiative, their hardihood and their far-reaching enterprise, have endeavored from the most ancient times to develop commerce and industries in the whole hinterland of Asia, and precisely thereby have, together with the Phoenicians and Greeks, been the pioneers of civilization in the East. Armenians continued to play that part during the middle ages as well as in modern times. We cannot do better than quote the evidence of a German observer, Paul Rohrbach, the apostle of pangermanism, who cannot be suspected of partiality in favor of any but the Turks. "In the Turkey of today, almost completely reduced to its Asiatic pos sessions, Armenians stand for much more than what their number would give one to suppose. They are without a doubt, both from intellectual and material points of view, the most active element among all the

oriental peoples ; it may even be said that they constitute, in this centre, the only people who have innate national qualities. Armenians are endowed with an energy and a tenacity in complete tradition with all we are wont to regard as the Oriental character." To give an idea of the economic activity of the Armenian element in Armenian Turkey, we will set forth some commercial and industrial statistics of the vilayet of Sivas, which is, one may say, the least Arme nian of the 6 vilayets. It will be seen however that all its commercial and industrial activity is nearly exclusively in the hands of Armenians. Commerce: Out of 166 wholesale merchants (importers), 141 are Armenians, against 13 Turks and 12 Greeks. Out of 150 merchants (exporters), 127 are Armenians, and 23 Turks. Out of 37 Bankers or

capitalists, 32 are Armenians and only five are Turks ; out of 9,800 shop keepers and artisans, 6,800 are Armenians, 2,555 are Turks, and 150 are various nationalities. Industry: Out of 153 factories, 130 belong to Armenians; the tech nical stall of all the factories is composed exclusively of Armenians. Th» number of the workmen is about 17,700 out of whom some 14,000 are are Armenians. THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 11$

It will be enough to mention that before the war the two millions of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire had in their hands the greater part of the country's trade, as against more than 20,000,000 inhabitants. But let it not be forgotten that trade has never been the principal oc cupation of the Armenian people. The greater majority of the nation, 85% to 90%, has in all times devoted itself to agriculture and to the smaller crafts, whether in Turkey, in the Caucasus or in Persia. Arme nians are before all agriculturists and artisans. "In the vilayet of Van," says Rohrbach, "they have in their hands 98% of the commerce, and 80% of the agriculture. The gold and silver smiths, the engravers, the furniture manufacturers, the tailors, the shoemakers, the architects, the carpenters, the masons, and the black smiths are all Armenians. In the liberal professions, doctors, lawyers and chemists are likewise Armenians." The same applies to other regions. "The activity of the Armenian element is apparent also in the field of public instruction and scholastic organization. Armenian schools are numerous and better than those of any other nationality in Turkey ; and what should be particularly appreciated is the fact that they have been erected solely by voluntary contributions, not only from the richer Armenians, but also from all persons of the middle classes and from the poorer people of the common class. As early as 1903, Turkey counted 818 Armenian schools with more than 82,000 scholars. Those schools are under the control of the Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople. To that number must be added the schools of Armenian Catholics and Protestants, as well as private schools. In Turkish Armenia alone, that is to say the six vilayets and Cilicia, there are, out of the above total number of schools, 585 Armenian ones, with 52,000 students of both sexes ; on the other hand, in the same regions, there are but 150 Turkish schools with about 17,000 students. "In consequence of this state of affairs, and of their mental activity generally, and above all of their assiduity at their work, the number of Armenian employees in the Turkish administration is relatively high. So numerous indeed are these employees and so great the sum of the work they accomplish that without them the machine of the state would come to a standstill." 150 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

We find analogous opinions in the writings of nearly all European and American travelers who have stayed any length of time in Turkey and in Armenia before the war. The proportion of Armenian schools and pupils as well as that of teachers is still more striking in the Russian part of Armenia. The number of Armenian students in Russian, European and American uni versities exceeds 15,000. Armenians have distinguished themselves as well in Turkey as in Russia and Persia by their administrative, diplomatic, and military qualities. They have furnished the Russian army with numerous gen erals, Turkey and Hungary with great administrators, and Turkey, Persia and other countries with a great number of diplomats. Armenians have distinguished themselves, especially during the last 50 years, in all branches of intellectual activity, literature, science, art, etc. It is indeed time that the Armenians had occasion to place their apti tudes at the service of their own country.

The Armenian people is essentially democratic ; at all times they have conducted all their institutions by means of elective bodies. Even their ecclesiastic hierarchy makes no exception to this, and the Supreme Head of the Church is himself elected by the whole nation. Our Country has always been the point of division between two worlds, two civilizations, eastern and western. It is precisely for this reason that the great clashes between East and West have taken place on and around its mountains; and it is also for this reason that the great powers of the East and West have always attached great impor- ance to the domination of those regions. They have snatched them from one another in innumerable wars, they

have for ever been trampling upon them and ruining them ; and it has always been the original Armenian people which has built them and rebuilt, constructed and reconstructed them, and which has never acquiesced that any one great power should establish themselves there permanently. The whole history of Armenia has been one incessant, obstinate, and unequal struggle to defend her individuality, her culture and her religion against powerful races and enemies who have attacked her on all sides. She has also suffered for centuries for adhering to her religion in fight THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 151 against Mussulman invaders. She has, in addition, though momentarily, stemmed all the invasions of the hordes of central Asia who have poured towards Europe and who finally crushed the Byzantine empire. For centuries Armenia has by turns succeeded in standing firm and founding kingdoms; later she fell beneath the yoke of the invaders, raising herself again anew and reconquering her independence, now in one part of her patrimony now in another, according to the pressure of circumstances. But whether under the rule of national kings or under the yoke of the foreigner, the aboriginal landlord of these mountains, the worker, the producer, has always been the Armenian, who has be dewed his native soil with his blood and with the sweat of his brow, and whose persevering tenacity in spite of all obstacles has founded a civilization peculiar to himself, which is the resultant of a mixture of two civilizations, western and eastern. All the high Armenian plateau, from Adana and Sis as far as Van and Erivan, is bestrewn with ruins of towns, fortresses, churches, convents, bridges and monuments which bear witness to his incessant civilizing work. A literature of great historical, philosophical and poetical value from the 4th century onwards, a rich and flexible lan guage, and a Christian Church of a national character are the noble heritage which this indefatigable intellectual work has left us. The misfortune of the Armenian people is that, in consequence of Turkish tyranny during the last quarter of a century, the civilized peoples of the West see in them nothing but a persecuted Christian people who arouse but pity and have need of their help. It is not pity but respect which such a nation fond of its work and of liberty deserves, a nation which has so much endured and so much resisted. Un fortunately the history of Armenia is too little known in the West, where people are unaware of the part which the Armenians have played both in their own history and in that of the peoples who have subjugated them. Even still less known are their literary and artistic works, which however reflect the best aspects of our mind, and which the Armenians can proudly place side by side with those of other civilized countries. The people which for 30 centuries, from long before the time when Xenophon spoke of them, have lived until our days on those high pla teaux is the Armenian people; the people which played the part which 162 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

history and geography assigned to them; which have, in their annals,

recorded what they have done ; which have set their right to their terri

tories ; which after each devastation have built and rebuilt and rebuilt ; which have thought and produced; that people is in every case the Armenian people. All the other elements have either been altogether secondary in point of view of numbers and importance, or else half- savage, races, which have neither art, nor literature, nor history, and which in the course of their existence have contributed nothing to civilization. As to the Turkish conquerors, who have fed on our blood, on our brain, on the sweat of our brow, without themselves producing anything, they are but the continuation of those hordes which, since the times of the Assyrians, have conquered and plundered our country, and which have subsequently disappeared from the scene of history, leaving the high Armenian plateau to its original owners, the Armenian people.

THE ARMENIAN REPUBLIC OF THE CAUCASUS

The Northern regions of our Country which, speaking generally, consti tute the country watered by the river Araxes, and which in the course of the 19th century the Russian government had torn bit by bit from the Persians and the Turks, represent likewise an essential and indivisible part of the high Armenian plateau; Ararat, Koukark, Ardzakh, and Siounik, known since antiquity, are the four principal provinces of Armenia. It is there that are to be found our capitals and the greater part of our celebrated cities, such as Ardashad, Vagharshabad, Yervan- taguerd, Dvin, Nakhitchevan, Kars and Ani. It is there that in the middle ages our kingdom of Bagratides was founded, with its capital Ani, which with ruins still standing is the best criterion of the high degree to which the industry, the civilization and art of the Armenians had attained. The principality of Lory lasted up to the beginning of the 15th century. At Kara-Bagh, the ancient Arme nian independence lived on until the coming of Russia ; it was the meliks (princes) of Ehamsa who mainly instigated the entry of the Russians into the Caucasus, hoping that with the help of the Christian Russians the Armenians would be delivered from the Mussulman yoke and rely ing upon the words of the Czars who promised the restoration of an THE ARMENIAN QUESTION 153

independent Armenian government in the occupied territories. Up to the present day it is still at Etchmiadzin that is to be found the seat of the Spiritual Head of all Armenians, His Holiness the Catholicos, founded in the 3rd century, upon the conversion of Armenia to Christianity. By its number and the situation which it has created for itself, the most important element of the population of those provinces is still the Armenian. Since one of the aims of the War and of the Peace is the right of op pressed peoples to dispose of themselves, and that the principle has been accepted by the different Russian governments who have succeeded one another, and that by the breakdown of Turkey the liberation of the greater part of Armenia has been won, it is no longer possible to hand over an important part of Armenia to Russia for the simple reason that those provinces happen to have been under Russian rule for some de

cades ; and the more so as, at the end of 1917, the whole Caucasus was practically and in reality separated from Russia in order to form a Caucasian Republic. This latter was shortly afterwards divided into three parts, on a basis of nationalities. In May, 1918, the Armenian National Assembly proclaimed, in the name of two millions of Armenians, the constitution of Russian Armenia as an Independent Republic, having Erivan for its capital. A regular government was or ganized, as also an army, which strove to arrest, by every means, the progress of the Turkish army towards Kars, after the defection of the Russian armies which, while dispersing, left the Armenians all alone face to face with their enemies of centuries. By this act alone the Rus sian Government has lost all sovereignty over our country. Consequently it would be a negation of justice to separate the ancient territories of Turkish Armenia from those of Russian Armenia under any pretext or for any cause whatsoever; it would, so to speak, be to pull to pieces a living body ; and it would also create a new and perma nent cause for fresh persecutions, fresh oppressions and fresh bloodshed. A great number of the Armenians of the Caucasus were, they them selves or their fathers, subjects of the Sultan up to the massacres of 1894-96; they took refuge at that period in Russian territory. Again, the Armenians of the Caucasus, not having suffered by the recent mas sacres to the same extent as their brethren of Turkey, will be able to 154 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

furnish Armenia with the elements which at the outset may be lacking for the creation of the administration and giving the Country economic scope. To separate them from their brethren of Turkey would be to condemn these latter to vegetate, and to render still more onerous the charge of the Power who would have the temporary mission of aiding Armenia in its reconstitution. How, moreover, could the Powers oppose an already accomplished fact which is in perfect conformity with the principles whereon the Treaty of Peace will be concluded ? The Armenians of Russia, during the whole of the latter half of the last century, sacrificed the best of their physical and moral forces to the cause of Armenia in Turkey, because they well understood that the road leading to their deliverance ran through Turkey. Whole generations lived in the dream of liberating Turkish Armenia; the Armenian youth of Russia shed its blood for the realization of this ideal, and have there fore been persecuted incessantly by the Russian Government. And it is just for that same reason that the Armenians of Russia, immediately upon the declaration of the War, enrolled themselves with enthusiasm under the flags of Russia, France and England; and, joining the Arme nians of Turkey, formed a body of volunteers, thus proving that an artificial frontier, imposed by foreign governments, was powerless to separate an indivisible whole, bound together by blood, intellect, lan guage, and, in the present and the future, by so many common interests. In the name of justice, in the name of our rights of centuries, in the name of the irresistible aspirations of the two Armenian communities of Russia and Turkey, in the name of the inevitable historical necessity which sooner or later must triumph, we claim the absolute and final union of the two fragments of the same nation. A MEMORANDUM'

PRESENTED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE DELEGATION OF THE ARMENIAN REPUBLIC TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE.

Mr. President:

The Republic of Armenia (in the Caucasus) , born during the storm of the War, and its Parliament, have entrusted to me, as head of the Dele gation to the Peace Conference, and to my two colleagues, Dr. Ohachan- ian and Mr. Papadjanian, the duty of submitting to you the following facts: Since the very first days of the War, the Armenians throughout the world entered the field resolutely on the side of the Powers of the Entente. They fought on the Western front as well as on the Eastern front. They contributed to the Russian Army from 150,000 to 200,000 men. Thousands of Armenians volunteered in the Caucasus, where they did their full duty, and they also fought in Palestine and Syria. The world knows today that in consequence of our sympathy for the cause of the Allies,— a sympathy which manifested itself so eloquently by our active and effective military participation in the War on all the fronts, —the Government of the Young Turks, as a measure of ruthless vengeance, ravaged the Turkish Armenia through massacres unex ampled in history, by mass deportations of the Armenian population, driving them to the deserts of Mesopotamia and Syria, where they met

'On February 26, 1919, the President of the Armenian National Delegation and the President of the Delegation of the Armenian Republic appeared before the Peace Conference and presented to that Body in the name of the Armenian Nation a joint memorandum which is published in this number. Mr. Aharonian, President of the Delegation of the Armenian Republic, handed also to the President of the Peace Conference this memorandum, which summarizes the series of events in Northern Armenia culminating in the establishment of the Republic of Armenia.

155 156 THE ARMENIAN HERALD a death equally horrible. One million Armenians have thus been de stroyed. The suffering of Armenia is sufficiently well known to the world. But that which is very little known is the part that the Caucasian Armenia has taken in the world War. It is very little known that following the break-down of the Russian army in the Caucasus which, having been infected with the demoralizing virus of Bolshevism, wholly abandoned the front, the Caucasian Armenians, with exemplary heroism and abnegation, without any help whatsoever from any source, with their own forces, fought the common enemy. The infamous treaty of Brest-Litovsk immediately followed this shameful desertion by the Russians of the Armenian front. This treaty not only left to the Turks the provinces of Turkish Armenia, which had been conquered by the Russian armies with the most effective aid of the Armenians, but it even turned over to the Turks the purely Armenian provinces of the Caucasus (Kars and Kaghisman) as well as Batoum and Ardahan. From this moment on the Armenian National Council, chosen by the Great National Congress in September, 1917, and presided over by me, rejected the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and took upon itself the task of carrying on a war started by the Russians, who now had abandoned the entire front. Unfortunately, the Armenian soldiers, who were in the ranks of the Russian armies on the Austro-German fronts could not hasten to the aid of their mother country. The vascillation of the Keren- sky Government, which did not have the vision to grasp the vital im portance of the Caucasian front, and later the general chaos which set in throughout Russia in consequence of Bolshevism, made the return of these Armenian soldiers to the Caucasus impossible. Therefore, the Armenian National Council found itself in the neces sity of raising a purely Armenian army for the defence of the mother country and the cause of the Allies. As the President of the Armenian National Council, I received at the time from His Excellency, Boghos Nubar Pasha, President of the Arme nian National Delegation, through the agency of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of France, a dispatch in cipher by which His Excellency counselled the Armenians to hold firm, to reorganize the defence of the front and to oppose the advance of the Turks. In the 158 THE ARMENIAN HERALD less difficulties created by the marked antagonism which was shown towards us and the Allies by the divers populations of the Caucasus, our neighbors, who did their best to prevent us from raising an army which was to fight on the side of the Powers of the Entente. The Tartars and Kurds openly ranged themselves on the side of Turkey, and in order to serve the cause of their ally better, they mobilized in our rear, and did all that lay within their power to hinder our efforts for the national defence. The Georgians, to whom we had been bound in the past by common faith and by common suffering, and upon whom we had the right to count deserted us at this most tragic moment, refused to march with us and left us alone to meet the enemy. Far away from our great Western Allies and not having received the aid that had been promised us, alone, isolated, and surrounded on all sides by hostile neighbors, we, nevertheless, hurled ourselves into the supreme combat, with the purpose, if not of vanquishing the enemy, at least of hindering his advance into the interior of the Caucasus; and this we did, believing implicitly as ever in the ultimate triumph of the righteous cause to which we had dedicated all that we were and all that we had from the very beginning. General Nazarbekian, whose military talents had been very highly appreciated during his service in the Russian Army, was named Com mander-in-Chief of the Armenian forces, and the famous Chief, Andranik, was placed at the head of a division composed of Armenian volunteers from Turkey. It was this young army which went onward bravely against the Turks to defend the front abandoned by the Rus sians, which extended from Erzindjian to the Persian frontier, —over 250 miles long. The unequal struggle against the Turkish Army which was greatly superior in numbers, lasted seven months, until June, 1918. Beginning with Van and Erzindjian, the most desperate and bloody battles took place between these two ancient enemies. Erzeroum, Sarikamisch, the fortress of Kars, Alexandropol, Sarderbad, Karakilissa became the scenes of terrible encounters, in the course of which the Turks suffered very heavy losses. It was the heroic resistance of the Armenians which not only prevented the Turks from advancing into the interior of the

Caucasus immediately after the abandonment of the front by tfc!e Rus THE ARMENIAN QUESTIOK 159

sians, but it also made it impossible for the Turks, during these seven months, to concentrate their forces against the British in Mesopotamia, and which, drawing against itself divisions from the Turkish Army in Syria, also contributed greatly to the victory of General Allenby on that front. In the meantime with the arrival of the German troops in the Cau casus, Georgia proclaimed her independence under the military protec tion of Germany. Tataristan, with the aid and support of the Turkish Army, also proclaimed her independence and assumed the title of Ader- baidjian. The Caucasian unity being thus brought to an end, the Arme nian National Council likewise proclaimed the independence of Armenia on May 28, 1918, which is now known as the Republic of Armenia. The government of the Republic has been normally performing its duties for about a year. Law and order prevail within its borders and it has found itself forced on several occasions to repulse successfully Georgian and Tartar aggressions without. The Republic has an area of 60,000 square kilometers, a population of 2,000,000 and a well dis ciplined army of 40,000 which is absolutely free from the taint of Bol shevism. It is this Republic (the Government and Parliament of which sit in its capital at Erivan) which has delegated us as its representatives to the Peace Conference, and has charged us to submit to it the following: 1. Russia, in abandoning the Armenians to their lot, in spite of their prayers, in bequeathing to them a war which it was manifestly beyond their power to carry on; in handing over to Turkey by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, without even consulting them, the Armenian provinces of the Caucasus, Kars, Ardahan and Kaghisman, thereby caus ing incalculable injury to the hundreds of thousands of Arrpp^ Vis by these very acts and of her own free will, broken forever all tier, exist ing between Russia and Armenia. 2. The Republic of Armenia, accordingly, believes itself justified in demanding the immediate recognition of its independence which has been merited and won upon the field of battle, and which the success of its arms has obliged even its enemies to recognize. 3. Taking into consideration this War, which Armenia has waged all alone for the defence of the cause of the Allies and the superhuman sacrifices which all the Armenians have made, I have now the honor ARMENIA

BY G. E. WOODBERRY

0 fair Lord Christ, when yet thy face was young In heaven, and thy witnesses were few, Humble thy Kingdom here, nor yet grace drew Emperors to the breast where Lazarus clung, — When round a dying world thy arms were flung, — Armenia first unto thy mercies flew, To the pure gospel through all ages true, And Him, whose sorrows on the world's cross hung.

She, who beheld the glorious covenant, When o'er the Flood, at the Creative Word, Bright above Ararat sprang the bow in heaven, — What to her agony will thy pity grant ? For unto her through faith in thee, 0 Lord, The thorny crown of Christendom is given.

Bring, all ye nations, myrrh and frankincense, As when, with gold and many an orient gem, About the cradled child of Bethlehem Like heaven the holy stable glittered, whence

Issued salvation ! Pour the providence Of earthly kingdoms at the feet of them Who would a world-wide flood of sorrow stem

And, Christ-like, feed the multitude immense !

Nor think Armenia only bears the Cross Through deserts wild and up her mountain-chain; But every nation climbs its Calvary,

And hath its consecration ; earthly loss Thousands on thousands find is heavenly gain: So the world-soul renews humanity.

161 THE CAUSE OF ARMENIA IS NOT TO BE DENIED

BY JAMES W. GERARD

We expect two things to come from this Peace Conference which is now sitting in Paris. The end of all wars and a heaping measure of free dom for all subject nationalities. The cause of Armenia is not to be denied. For centuries, chained under Turkish barbarism, they have kept alive the flame of Christianity. And that is why the greatest force in America is standing behind their cause. The Christian churches of this country, —the Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, —for Cardinal Gib bons is a loved member of our committee, and all denominations of Pro testant churches have been insistent in the cables that they have been sending to the Peace Conference. I was lunching on a Sunday not long ago somewhere where a French officer was present at the lunch, and I told him that I had to leave as I had to speak in a church in Newark. He asked if he could not go with me. And as we drove first about Newark,—because we were a little early, —he expressed surprise at the number of churches that he saw; and after he had been in the church and saw the meeting, saw the en thusiasm, saw how it was conducted, he said to me, "I now understand why I see so many churches in America." And I said to him, if you do not see the churches of America you do not see the heart of America. And that heart of America is now pledged to the cause, to further which we meet tonight. And it is not alone for that that Armenia deserves freedom in this war. They have had no small share. Armenians— Russian subjects —fought on the Caucasian front. Armenians fought with General Allenby in Palestine; and General Allenby says that they contributed in no small degree to the success of his operations. Wit nesses from the other side, Ihsau Pasha of the Turkish Army, and Gen eral Liman von Sanders, the German Commander, who was sent to Turkey, both bear witness to the fact that it was the fighting power of the Armenians that contributed to break the power of Turkish rule.

162 THE HOUR OF LIBERATION HAS COME 163

Such constancy in faith, such bravery in war, should not go unrewarded, and that is why we in America are demanding as a guarantee of good faith from the Peace Conference in Paris, the freedom of Armenia, of a great Armenia, stretching from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

THE HOUR OF LIBERATION HAS COME

BY CHARLES EVANS HUGHES

Why did we enter the War? We had endured insult and assault, our essential rights were invaded and still the country was loath to fight. It was the brutality of the Germans which shocked our people into a realization that the Allies were fighting a foe of unspeakable cruelty. The atrocities committed in Belgium, the systematic evisceration of that unfortunate country, made war against such an enemy a holy crusade and the renewed attacks upon our commerce found our people with an implacable determination to end this frightful conspiracy against civili zation. The idea that democracy itself was at stake —that we were to make the world safe for democracy —was a later concept. It interpreted the fundamental significance of the contest. But the immediate pur pose was to stop the Hun, to check the wild beast which militarism and the philosophy of might had let loose upon the world. We can never speak of this resolution and of the achievements which followed without paying our tribute to the brave leader of opinion, who never faltered in his demand that America should perform her duty, —the champion cf Belgium, of Armenia and of all the oppressed, —Theodore Roosevelt. •— The atrocities in Belgium especially aroused us, for we knew its people, we were intimately associated with their social and industrial life, we followed breathlessly their splendid efforts to resist the invading hordes, —the heroic stand which saved the cause of liberty. But the atrocities in Belgium, terrible as they were, were but slight as compared with the incredible cruelties and massacres that took place in unfortunate Armenia. It was natural that the despicable Hun should 164 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

join forces with the unspeakable Turk. The ferocity of the Turk, with out limit, was given play in Armenia. We had read of the persecutions and massacres of former years, but they were slight indeed as com pared with the cruelties and wholesale murders of these last days. The recital has been too shocking to print. We have always been the friends of the Armenians, admiring their industry, their intellectual alertness, their keenness, their sobriety, their

aptitude for education and affairs ; and we have revolted at the thought of such a people being under the yoke of the Turk. It was not simply that there was a difference in religion, although that fact had its sig nificance. Deep sympathy with Armenia has not been confined to those of the Christian faith, and let it always be remembered that no one has done more to quicken our appreciation of the wrongs of Armenia, or wrought more persistently for the protection of the Armenians them- ^ selves, than Henry Morgenthau, our former Ambassador to Constanti nople.

Now, we rejoice that the hour of liberation has come. The vain am bition of brute force has overreached itself and has resulted in the emancipation of the down-trodden and oppressed of centuries. There is to be a settlement of this long account and the credit balance is to be found in the opportunity for a free and independent life. There is no doubt of the capacity of the Armenians for freedom. They are as capable of self-government as any people. They have shown a racial solidarity and capacity to survive incredible misfortunes; they have rare intelligence, and no people prize more highly the advantage of education. Even in the midst of suffering, they have proved their capacity. Despite their persecution, their ability has made them es sential even to Turkish administration and they have furnished the brains of the Ottoman Empire. All they need is a fair opportunity, that decent opportunity which only civil and religious liberty can provide. We propose tonight to throw such influence as we have into the scale for Armenian independence. It would be unthinkable that Armenia should be left longer under Turkish control, and if it is not under Turkish control, then Armenia should be autonomous. We see no insur mountable obstacles to the attainment of this happy result. We be lieve that under Armenian control those sections of country which con THE HOUR OF LIBERATION HAS COME 165 stitute Armenia can be well governed with proper regard for the just rights of all within their borders. In saying this with all my heart, I do not wish to be understood as favoring any proposal that the United States should undertake a pro tectorate of Armenia. I do not believe that such a course would be wise. It is not necessary. It is no more necessary that America should assume a virtual protectorate of Armenia than the Great Britain or France should assume a protectorate of Cuba. Invention has facilitated communication, but this makes easier the sending of intelligence than the sending of armies. We desire to see just settlements, but we have abundant occupation in this hemisphere, and we should reserve complete freedom to determine to what extent in the future duty may call upon us to participate in difficulties which may arise in Europe or in the East. If a clear duty shall summon us, I believe that America can be depended upon to respond. But we should not be led into the creation of an obligation for which there is no just basis, or assume responsibilities which we may not hereafter be in clined fully to discharge. We do, however, desire that our just influence, exerted in any proper way, shall be thrown on the side of the independence of Armenia. We are peculiarly sensitive to her appeal and we desire for her the prosper ous future to which the industry and genius of her people entitle her. We are sure that she will have this future if she be given a reasonable opportunity, and with that purpose in view we desire that there be a state of independence with as little external influence as is compatible with her proper security from oppression and unjust exploitation. GREECE AND ARMENIA

BY MICHEL TSMATOS

I am very happy to be here and do really very much appreciate the honor that has been bestowed upon me in giving me an opportunity to say a few words on the occasion that presents itself, at a moment so important and so critical in the life of a whole population, a whole nationality—I mean the Armenian Nationality. If there is an act of justice that is to be done by the representatives of the civilized world assembled today at the Peace Conference, it is the restoration of Armenia. We Greeks are particularly qualified to understand the feelings, to appreciate the struggles of the Armenian people. Both Armenians and Greeks have been deprived of their independence by the same invader, both of us have had to suffer much under a very hard yoke, the hardest possible tyranny, that of the Unspeakable Turk. Both of us have fought and gained our liberty —we have fought for the same ideas, for liberty and equality, to free brethren who were a short time before under the Turkish rule. That is why we understand the Armenians. I have no message to read, but I will transmit the message of the Greek Government and the Greek population, a message that is written in my heart and in the heart of every Greek. Greece and Greeks have the warmest sympathy for the struggles and aspirations of Armenia to constitute itself again an independent state, and Greece and all the Greeks will back her effort, not only at the Peace Conference, but any and everywhere. Armenia will constitute an independent state, and when she will enter her new life she will find in Greece a friend upon whom she will always be able to rely fully.

166 ARMENIA, THE TORCH-BEARER OF AMERICAN IDEALS

BY WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

I am honored to be officially connected with an organization which has for its object the encouraging of Armenian independence and pleased to participate in this dinner given to advance the purpose of the organi zation. If any people have earned the right to be free and independent, mas ters of their own destiny and sovereigns in control of their own gov ernment, it is the Armenians. For more than two thousand years they have maintained their existence amidst difficulties and under hardships that would have crushed a weaker people into the dust. They have not only preserved their race integrity and ideals but they have been "a voice crying in the wilderness"—but their day is here even though the dawn of that day has been reddened by the blood which they have so freely shed. The high character of the Armenians in the United States compels us to respect the country from which they came. Of all the nations of the earth none should be so ready as the United States to extend recognition and speak the word of welcome because ours is the greatest and most successful of Republics. Its national exist ence extends over 142 years and its population has grown from three to more than one hundred millions, while its wealth has expanded until it is today, the richest nation in the world, with a future as boundless as its present is bright and its past glorious. For 130 years it has administered its government in accordance with a written Constitution and the adoption, during that time, of 18 amend ments show its ability to mould its organized law to suit its advancing needs. These amendments also prove the steady march of its people toward more and more popular government and that approximation toward justice which is the object of popular government. Our nation has taught the world how to secure progress without blood shed —it has made revolution unnecessary by making evolution easy.

167 168 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

We have, through agitation and constitutional revisions, secured re forms which were formerly only at the cost of blood and treasure. When the Supreme Court annulled a statutory income tax the people under took to change their constitution so as to specifically authorize an income tax and they succeeded, though it required 18 years of patient effort. When they became convinced that alcohol was a habit forming drug and injurious to those who use it, as well as to those dependent upon the users, they arose in their might and, by constitutional amendment, proceeded to banish this arch enemy from the land. When, after 103 years of experience, they became convinced that the election of United States senators was a limitation upon the people's power to choose their representatives and the cause of increasing corruption they amended their constitution so as to make the election of the United States senators as democratic as the election of the members of the House of Representatives. They are about to adopt another amendment extending the franchise to women in the belief that the joining of woman's conscience with man's judgment will hasten triumph of every righteous cause, and they will, before many years, I am convinced, add a 20th amendment reserving to the people the power to veto, through a referendum, the acts of their legislatures and, through the initiative, secure such desirable legislations as they are not able to secure through their representatives. Our nation has proved that the setting of a good example is the best service that one individual or nation can render another. The Ger man philosopher, Nietzsche, preached the gospel of force and set up the superman as an object of worship. "The will to power" he placed above all other attributes. He died in an insane asylum and the monarch who sought to put Nietzsche's philosophy into practice became an exile from his own land, seeking refuge under an alien flag. Our nation, relying on example rather than on force, is giving the world ideals, vindicating the wisdom of Carlyle, who in the closing chapters of his French Revolution, declared that "thought is stronger than artillery; it parks and at last moulds the world like soft clay," and, wisely adding, "back of thought is love." Our theory of government —"an indissoluble Union of indestructible ARMENIA, THE TORCH-BEARER OF AMERICAN IDEALS 1M

states"—is the greatest invention in government that the world has known in the thousand years. It is a theory under which a Republic can expand definitely in area and population without loss of efficiency. Under our theory of government the nation, confining itself to na tional and international affairs, is able to deal with all problems that concern it while the local committees, attending to their immediate affairs, not only govern themselves more wisely than they could be governed from the National Capital, but, governing themselves, relieve the national government of a burden which would ere this have become insupportable. We long ago established the fact that a Republic could mobilize its resources in time of peace and, by placing before its citi zens more of hope, of opportunity and of aspirations than have ever been placed before any other citizens, could stimulate them to the largest endeavor. Within the last two years we have shown that a Republic can also mobilize its resources in time of war. It would have been a disgrace to us and a blow to our form of government if, when our Republic was brought face to face with an autocratic government, the result had been such as to justify any historian in saying that the oppressed subjects of an ambitious Kaiser were more loyal to their government than were the free citizens of this Republic to officials whom they themselves had chosen and to a government which had given them more blessings than any other citizens have ever enjoyed. Our nation is in position to be the world's teacher in Democracy be cause it has, itself, lived up to its teachings. It does not ask whether people are capable of self-government ; it declares that they are. Nearly 100 years ago, Henry Clay gave voice to this nation's conception when

he said (I quote form memory without attempting to be literal) : "It would be a reflection upon the goodness of the Almighty to say that he made any people incapable of self-government and left them to be the victims of Kings and Emperors." The believer in popular government cannot take any other position. People differ in wisdom, as they differ in self-restraint, but no line can be drawn between peoples separating those capable of self-government from those incapable. Whenever that line is attempted it finds its inspiration in the fact that the so-called inferior nations —on the theory that the government forcibly thrown over the inferior one, as a net is 17t THE ARMENIAN HERALD thrown over a bird—are administered for the benefit of those held in subjection. This nation does not stand for that idea and has already proven its sincerity by the promise of independence to the Philippines who have as a result of the Spanish War come temporarily under our control. Our example has inspired hope throughout the world, because our people fought for liberty others have fought for it also; because our people adopted a constitution others have adopted constitutions likewise. And the influence spreads. Our nation has become the mother Republic. I might compare its influence in the Western Hemisphere to the banyan tree— our influence has reached out until it has touched nation after nation ; and these nations, rooted in the soil, have become supports of the mother tree. Our influence has extended across the Pacific, and China has adopted a constitution like ours. Our example has called Republics into existence through Europe, why not a Republic in the land where the ark rested, —the land thftt gave us the olive branch as the symbol of peace. It is appropriate that the Armenians, some 100,000 in numbers, who have come to this country should be our ambassadors to carry not only our greeting but our ideals to their brethren in Armenia. Let them relate to the martyrs of Armenia the thrilling story of our nation's life and progress ; let them tell how we build securely upon the solid founda tion of a peoples' consent ; how completely we trust the intelligence, the integrity and the patriotism of our citizens ; how every step has been a step forward toward more popular methods of government. Letaihem proclaim the value of free speech and of a free press, built upon the theory of JefFerson that "error is harmless when reason is left free to combat it." Tell them that freedom of speech is as necessary to those in authority as to the citizens because, without it, the peoples' servants cannot know the peoples' will. And do not forget to proclaim the value of religious tolerance. The right of each individual to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, without let or hindrance from his own government, is one of the basic principles of our Republic. The blood of millions of Armenian martyrs cries out against the im position of religious tests in the government to be organized in Armenia, and this sentimental protest finds support in actual experience in all the ARMENIA, THE TORCH-BEARER OP AMERICAN IDEALS 171 lands where religious freedom is enjoyed. Let those among us of Armenian blood impart to their kindred in Asia, the lessons that they have learned here, transplanting there the flower and the fruit of our political system, while they warn against the noxious weeds and the tares that the enemy would sow in the wheat. And may I intrust to the friends of Armenia an idea that has been growing in my mind for several years and which seems to me to be especially applicable to the present situation. The doctrine of self-de termination is founded on the highest conception of justice but its application is often rendered difficult by a mixture of populations. The administration of the government by dominant element over large minorities of different racial characteristics is almost as difficult as it is for one nation to deal justly with another subject nation. No matter what boundaries are fixed to the Republic of Armenia, the territory set apart for the new nation will, necessarily, be occupied by representatives of many races, and as the Armenians are scattered over a very wide area it is not possible for all of them to be included in any geographical divisions. It is to remedy this difficulty that I venture to make a sug gestion. It is this! That the government of the Armenian Republic agree to purchase, at its present value, all the property, real and per sonal, belonging to anyone or another race who does not desire to live under the new government. In the case of Armenia, this will have several advantages. In the first place, it will permit those to leave without financial sacrifice, who, being unfriendly to the new govern ment, would be discordant elements if they remained, and the property thus purchased could be sold to Armenians in other parts of Europe who would be drawn back to their home land by the promise of freedom and progress. Such a plan would not involve any net loss to the government because it is inconceivable that property should fall in price under the new conditions and any advance in price would make the transaction profitable to the government. It is entirely probable that most of the representatives of other races would prefer to remain, partly because of business advantages, partly because of intermarriage, but largely be cause they could find nowhere else so bright an outlook for the future. If they remained, criticism would be silenced; having the provilege of leaving without lost to themselves they could not complain that the 171 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

change in government did them any injustice. I believe that the adop tion of such a policy by the government of the Armenian Republic would not only be of very great value to it and to its people but that it would give to the world a just principle of universal application and make easier the adjustment of territorial disputes in every part of the world. Permit me, in conclusion, to join with the friends assembled here ii wishing long life and great prosperity to the Republic of Armenia.

A NEW STAR IS SWIMMING INTO ITS KEN

BY MIRAN SEVASLY

On behalf of the Armenian National Delegation which is presided over by His Excellency, Boghos Nubar, and the people of Armenia, I beg to convey my hearty thanks, deep appreciation and gratitude to you all for attending this historic gathering and to the founders of the American Committee for the Independence of Armenia for espousing the just and imperishable rights of the Armenian nation for freedom and national independence. More magnificent powers of mind were seldom placed at the service of a righteous cause. Armenia thinks of them as Knight Errants with their swords ever bright and flashing, and bringing into this area, as it were the old cleansing breath of chivalry. America, as President Wilson said, did not go to Europe merely to win the war, but to win a cause, and in that struggle it is continuing and winning its goal. The American cause at the Peace Table foreshadowed in President Wilson's epoch-making address, echo eloquently the spirit of the founders of this great Republic whose doctrines and principles are based not on false and spurious ambitions, but on the immortal principles of the Declaration of Independence. This immense temple, to paraphrase Lafayette's immortal words, consecrated to Liberty, was intended to offer a lesson to the oppressors and an asylum to the rights of mankind. To the nations of the Near East and to Armenia, American independ ence may be likened to the star of the Ancient Greeks, known as Castor A NEW STAR IS SWIMMING INTO ITS KEN ITi

and Pollux. You know the legend. When a ship was in a storm, when fear caught the minds of her crew and disasters and perils almost over whelmed them, at this psychological moment of despair, the star ap peared in the heavens, gradually but surely the clouds vanished, the winds abated, calm set in, safety replaced danger, and under the Aegeus of this heavenly body the terrified and despairing crew reached a haven of safety. Armenia is in a way placing herself under the beneficent in fluence of this heavenly body. The League of Nations or the Mandatory Principle will become the Monroe Doctrine of the world to protect the small nations, and, just as America's horizon expanded in the war and discovered Czhecho-Slavs and Jugo-Slavs, so it is expanding and a new itar is swimming into its ken. It is the much eclipsed star of Armenia. 1 am not going to state her case at any length, but I like to emphasize here that Armenia has more than fulfilled her task towards the cause of the Allies and that of civilization and liberty. Her long and epoch making history has been a long struggle for Democracy, for culture and liberal ism against barbarism. In the present war, she did not fail to strike at the very cost of her existence as a nation, in the Caucasus, in Palestine and in France. A million of Armenians have been exterminated because the race as a whole has refused to take sides with the Turko-German combination. The Armenian race by its national religions and philosophic turn of mind is the equal of the fine sensitive natures of the peoples of Europe and America. Armenia is America in Asia in the bud; let civilization take care of it. It is a bud out of which will develop fresh elements of aesthetic, moral and spiritual progress, in Near East, but it is only by the recognition of Armenia's claims to liberation and independence over her historical territory, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean that this can be secured. After a long period of unspeakable tortures and ordeals *nd struggles, Armenia should have vouchsafed to her an era of re demption and happiness in her restored liberty and independence, under the auspices of the League of Nations and with the assistance of the liberal nations of the world. Fraternally co-operating with the Greeks and other historic peoples, which have suffered under the same yoke, she will continue in the future to be an element of peace and industrial progress, and the propagator of Helenic, Latin and American •pirit and civilization in the Near East. ARMENIAN SOLDIERS

BY COLONEL ANGELL

Hebe they go, the soldiers of the Foreign Legion. This is indeed a •trange corps of troops. There you see the white and the black, th« Pagan and the Christian, Europeans, Asiatics, Africans, Americans and Australians from all classes of society, the sons of the rich and of th« poor side by side ; but all of us belong to the same family and are united under the tri-colors of France, the symbol of Right and Justice. Under this banner we are all brothers. The Armenian soldier is generally grand, sturdy and solidly built, with a serious look on his face. His black eyes attract your attention. "Are you an Armenian?" I asked one. "Yes, my lieutenant." I shook his hand and said to him: "You are not only my comrade in the Legion, you are also my brother. I am in this Legion also for the cause of your people, and want to march against the Germans." And the soldier saluted and expressed his thanks in a few words. The first sergeant I encountered was an Armenian. He had a military medal and two palm leaves on his Croix de guerre. The second Armeni an I met was a seriously wounded soldier. The third was returning to the front, his left arm was decorated with three stripes of ribbons which meant that he had been wounded three times. My captain in the Legion had taken part in this war for four years, as well as some of my lieutenant comrades.

I asked them : "What kind of soldiers are the Armenians." They re plied unanimously: "Excellent soldiers."

The captain added : "They have only one fault, they unnecessarily ex pose themselves to danger too often. This explains the large number of their casualties." Only fifty men remain out of the five hundred who entered the Legion

174 ARMENIAN SOLDIERS ITS

at the beginning of the war, and probably, you will not find one of them who has not been wounded. One of the lieutenants told me: "They are kind, refined and reliable, but in battle they are like demons. I have seen them jumping over para pets and running against barb wires and machine guns. They are very daring." "That is not strange," added another officer. "When we bear in mind the fate that befell their people, what value can life have for them? Nothing remains for them but desperation and perhaps the hope of ven geance." I seem to hear the protests of these sad and serious men who formed the last group of the Armenian soldiers. "We have never abandoned our hope and faith, and we have never despaired. Herein lies our strength. The deepest of sorrows, that haa been the lot of any people to bear has not shaken our faith; we have

never abandoned our faith in God, in the final victory of Justice ; we have never despaired of seeing the day when Armenia will again be free and our culture will once more develop without hinderance." We are not the ones who would desert their cause.

I listened to one who had escaped the horrors of massacre. He said : "As long as one Armenian mother lives to sing Armenian songs to her child, just so long will our people live and always hope." The dawn is breaking. The Armenians see the ignominous flight of their executioners, —the Turks and the Boches. A few days ago I asked one of the brave Legionaires, a Norwegian, to give me his impressions of the Armenian soldiers. As a private and as a corporal he has had occasions to mingle with them and see them in the ranks. He said: "They are brave men. I remember instances where they marched ahead, and arrived at their objectives, while many others hesitated." "If there is any particular thing you have seen yourself, tell me about it." "I remember especially the day when we were at Auberive. That was last year. We had occupied a trench of the enemy and we were to march ahead. We were all very tired. 'Grenadiers, advance,' was the order that came to us. I asked for volunteers. No one came forward. They all knew what awaited them, because the enemy was preparing a counter 171 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

attack. Again, it was an Armenian from the ranks who first responded to the call. His example inspired courage in the others. I remember the man well. I can still see the seriousness and the sadness on his face and no smile to brighten it. We advanced. The Armenian fell. His picture is still before my eyes. Life had not much value for him." I have always regarded the Armenian Legionaires with sympathy and admiration. Centuries of humiliation and oppression, centuries of tor ture and ignoble treatment have been unable to deface their national character. The treason of the Turks and the great Christian powers, the systematic destruction ordered by a "Christian power," Germany, have not been able to abridge their courage. One day a new recruit was brought to us. He apparently did not care for drill, as his comrades did. "What is your nationality?" I asked him. "I am an Armenian."

I looked at him for a minute without saying anything, and then said : "You are the first Armenian soldier with whom I have not shaken hands ; you are the first one whom I have not called brother for the love of your martyred people. I think you better move around more quickly and be better drilled so that you may be able to join your brothers at the front." He looked at me with such a sad expression that I regretted to hare spoken, as I did. He was from the Caucasus. He had lost his family. His sister, brother had all been tortured to death. I was sorry for what I said. He later went to the front and there he learned the drills as well as his comrades. His Caucasian origin reminds me of a story (told by one of my com patriots) which reveals more clearly the bravery of the Armenians. A Norwegian military physician had returned from the Russian front in the Caucasus. He had brought with him a horrible souvenir. It had almost the appearance of a billiard cue. "The Turks used this to impale an Armenian physician-major." This stake was highly planed, polished and greased with vaseline. The tor tured unfortunate remains alive for a long time. Thus the torture be comes accentuated. The physician-major told me how the Russians had once recaptured from the Turks a sanitary train. All the wounded had ARMENIA AND HER CLAIMS m

been tortured and impaled. The physician of the corps was an Arme nian who had been impaled on the stake which the Norwegian held in bis hands. "We swore that we would never show any mercy to the Turks," he said, and added: "The soldiers always marching ahead, those who were the most auda cious, even those who opened their way to Erzeroum through the snow and tempests of the winter, were the Armenian volunteers. Thousands of them fought in the Russian army. Their courage was increased by the knowledge that the Turks would torture them to death, in such a dia bolical manner as the poor Armenian Major." A brave nation never loses hope.

(Translated from the French by Aaron H. Sachaklian)

ARMENIA AND HER CLAIMS

Memorandum on Armenia and her claims to freedom and national independence presented to the Democratic Mid-Europe Union by Dr. G. Pasdermadjian, special •nvoy of his holiness, the Catholicos of all Armenians, and by Mr. Miran Sevasly, chairman of the Armenian National Union of America and the representative in the United States of the Armenian National Delegation.

PART III

WHAT ARE THE CLAIMS OF THE ARMENIANS

Having regard to the historic past of the Armenians, and to the fact that evea at present they constitute the most civilized and progressive and producing element in the environment in which they live they expect their final deliverance as the result of the present war. As already stated, half of the Armenian population were living within the limits of Russian Transcaucasia, while the other half, numbering about 2,100,000, were in Turkey. Faithful to its past methods, the Turkish Government, taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the present war, attempted to solve the Armenian question by ex terminating that part of the Armenian population which was in a ma jority within the frontiers of its historic fatherland. It is estimated that the number of Armenians, slaughtered in 1915 178 THE ARMENIAN HERALD by the agents of the Turkish Government, amounted to 600,000 to 1,000,000. Let us suppose for a moment that not a single Armenian out of the 2,100,000 has escaped the hands of the Turkish executioner. We claim that, no matter how much the number of Armenians may be re duced today, their homelands of 1914 should belong to the survivors. According to laws of all civilized people, including the Sheri law, no murderer can inherit the property of the victim of his crime. That inheritance or estate must pass, not to the murderer, but to the next of kin of the victim. We leave to the future to determine the exact number of Armenian victims as the result of the massacres and so called deportations of 1915. We are not, however, far from the truth in asserting that at least one million Armenians have been saved out of the 2,100,000 Armenians who inhabited Turkish Armenia in 1914. This million of survivors includes the 300,000 Armenians who have sought refuge in the Transcaucasus, as also about 200,000 Armenians who have migrated to America, Egypt and Europe. To this million must be added the two millions of Arme nians of the Transcaucasus. These three millions of Armenians are those who can lay claim to the heritage of which the present Turkish Government has attempted to deprive them by methods known to all. The Armenian people venture to hope that this appalling crime is going to be the last act in the sanguinary history of the Ottoman Em pire, which has for the last five centuries exposed to ruin, desolation and massacre the cradles of civilization and religion. It is impossible to conceive that the present civilized world will permit a race with such a criminal record and government to continue unrestrained and unpun ished to exterminate peoples superior to it in culture and usefulness, such as the Armenians, the Greeks, the Arabs and the Jews.

The complete liquidation of the Ottoman Empire should be involved ; and it will be incumbent on the areopagus of nations to handle the same at the coming peace congress, together with the solution of the Armenian question. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire should have been brought about a century ago, soon after the Greek war of independence, and mankind would thereby have been spared much innocent blood. We are convinced that the participation of the United States in the present war will be instrumental in bringing about a solution of the Near Eastern ARMENIA AND HER CLAIMS 17* and Armenian questions, not by the methods of an antiquated Europeam diplomacy, but in a spirit of fair play, satisfying the just claims of the Tarious long suffering people of the Near East. Before dealing with the Armenian question, let us be permitted to submit the produs-procedendi, which, in our opinion, must be followed in order to ensure a radical and equitable solution of the entire Near Eastern problem. The Allies have on many occasions proclaimed the right of nations to ■elf-determination. On the basis of this fundamental principle, th« peoples and races inhabiting the Ottoman Empire are entitled to receive, from that morally and materially bankrupt state, their share of a ter ritory proportionate to the numbers which each of them had prior to 1914, and not according to the respective number of their present de pleted populations, for the simple reason that human conscience cannot in any way sanction the murders and forced deportations premeditated and carried into effect by the Turkish Government for the purpose of "reducing" the number of the non-Turkish population of the Empire. It follows that if 500,000 Armenians have survived out of a populatiom of 2,100,000, the former are fully entitled to such territory as should be allotted to the 2,100,000 Armenians who were in existence in 1914. Otherwise we would be putting a premium on crime. Let us now consider which are, in their respective numbers, the popu lations composing the Turkish Empire, and in what way or manner ca» •atisf action be given to its different elements on historical and ethnologi cal grounds. After the Balkan War, the Turkish Government held sway over a territory covering an area of about 1,800,000 square kilometers (695,000 square miles) in round figures. This area does not include the desert* of Mesopotamia and Arabia, but only the inhabited territories which constitute the Ottoman Empire Vilayets (Provinces). In this immense territory of 1,800,000 square kilometers, which covers an area about three and a half times the size of France, was a population of between eighteen and twenty millions. Armenia, alone, ia the past, as history tells us, had a prosperous population of 26,000,000, whereas Mesopotamia (now with hardly 806,000 inhabitants) had in the distant past 28,000,000 souls. These 18,000,000 of inhabitants were 18* THE ARMENIAN HERALD made up approximately as follows: Arabs (including Syrians) 5,900,000 Armenians 2,100,000 Greeks 1,800,000 Other Christian races 1,200,000 Kurds 700,000 Kizilbashes 500,000 Jews 400,000

Total non-Turkish races 12,600,000 Turks 5,400,000

Total 18,000,000

These 5,400,000 Turks comprise Circassian and Mohammedan tribes who have migrated from the Caucasus into Asia Minor, and whose number is about 300,000, as also some other minor races, whose origin is not Turkish and whose religion is not Mohammedan, but whose vernacular is Turkish like the Tahtadji tribes in the Cilician regions. The inference to be drawn from these figures is that the Turks, who are the dominant race in the Empire, constitute one-third of the entire population, a minority who prey on a majority. There was a time when the Turkish race, or rather the military caste that goes under this name, did not represent even the one-twentieth, —nay the one-hundredth, —of the entire population of the Empire. This was five centuries prior to when the limits of the Empire extended from the Persian Gulf to Algeria and from the outskirts of Vienna to Egypt in the South. In this phase of Turkish history the "subject" races were compara tively much less exposed to exploitation by having to "feed" their mas ters than they are now when it is computed that every two non-Turks— subjects of the Empire —have to feed and maintain one parasite Turk. This is one of the secrets of the decay of the Ottoman Empire. Let us now consider how the national claims of Armenia should be adjusted and the national aspirations realized. Armenian territory in Turkey includes the six Armenian vilayets and the province of Cilicia, in accordance with the solemn declaration contained in diplomatic docu ments of the six great powers of Europe.

The areas covered by these administrative divisions are as follows : ARMENIA AND HER CLAIMS Ml

Vilayet of Erzeroum 49,700 sq. kil " " " Bitlis 27,100 " " " " Van 39,300 " " " Harpoot 32,900 " " " Diarbekir 37,500 " " " " Siva3 62,100 " " " Adana 39,900 " " District of Marash 20,000 " Total 308,500 " The Turkish Government so far back as 1878, anticipating the "Arme nian danger," arbitrarily modified the limits of the Armenian provinces, with a view to swelling the numbers of Moslems and making it appear that the Turks are in a majority. Thus the frontiers of Sivas and Diarbekir and Adana were enlarged so as to include regions not inhabited by Armenians. If we are to sever from the above three vilayets those portions which have been artificially added to the original provincial delimitations, we obtain a total approximate area of 220,000 square kilometers (136,700 square miles), wherein the Armenian element was in the majority in the year of 1914. The following is the return of the populations inhabiting Armenia, presented by the Armenian Patriarchate in 1912 to Ambassadors of the Great Powers at Constantinople when the question of Armenian Ref orm§ was again on the tapis in 1912 : Armenians 1,425,000 Assyrians 123,000 Kizilbashes 220,000 Yezidis 37,000 Mohammedan Kurds 424,000 Turks 871,000

3,100,000 The Armenians represented 46%, the Turks 28%, the Kurds 13.7%, of the population of the said provinces, while the remaining percentage of 12.3% was made up of non-Turkish or non-Mohammedan elements. It was with a view to modifying this proportion of numbers that the na THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Ottoman Government for the last forty years has had recourse to period ical massacres culminating in the tragic events of 1915. By disposing of the Armenians, Turkish statesmen considered they were geeting rid of the Armenian question once for all. To sum up,—the Armenians are fully entitled, according to their numbers, on historical, geographical and ethnological grounds, to a ter ritory covering an area of 280,000 square kilometers (174,000 square miles), extending from the Gulf of Alexandretta (known as Sea of Armenia in medieval times) to the Russo-Persian frontier. We shall deal separately with the natural boundaries of the territory in question. We now propose to deal with the Turkish race. Excluding Syria, Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Armenia, and Arabia, the remaining vilayets of Turkey and Central and Western Asia Minor are the following: European Turkey 26,100 sq. kil. District of Ismidt 8,100 " Bigha 6,600 Vilayet of Brussa 65,800 " Smyrna 55,300 " Konia 102,100 " " Angorah 70,900 " Kastamouni 50,700 " " Trebizond 32,400

Total 418,000 " " Add to these numbers 50,000 square kilometers for the non-Armeniam regions comprised in the vilayets of Sivas and Adana and we get a total of 468,000 square kilometers of territory left for the future Turkish state ; but whereas out of the above territory a slice of land on the Black Sea should be made part of future Armenia in order that she may have an outlet to the sea, and after disposing of the Greek claims in Ionia, there still remain about 400,000 square kilometers (248,560 square miles) in Anatolia for the future Turkish state, which will contain what remains of the Turkish element, aggregating to something like four mil lion people. This solution of the Eastern Question would not be, we admit, palatable to the present rulers of Turkey, but the plain Turkish ARMENIA AND HER CLAIMS 1U people would welcome it. It ensures their future interests in an ap preciable manner and is preferable to the uncertainty of their present condition. It has other advantages. A Turkish state without "subject" races may be an incentive to the Turks to radically modify their modes of living, to cease becoming parasites, and thus earn their daily bread with the sweat of their brows. They may thereby gradually enter the family of civilized nations. But it is opportune to recall that by reason of the destruction of Rus sia and Russian Imperialism, and having regard to the newly accepted doctrine of self-determination for nations, it is but fair and just that a united and indivisible Armenia, including Russian, Persian and Turkish Armenia, should be constituted as one independent state. In part of this memorandum we mentioned that there are 1,856,000 Armenians in the Transcaucasus bordering Turkish Armenia. It would be natural to unite the fractions torn asunder of the Armenian nation so as to con stitute a Magna Armenia made up of Russia, Persian and Turkish Armenia. The Transcaucasian provinces, where the Armenians are in a majority, are the following: 1. Province of Erivan 27,777 sq. kil. 750,000 population " " " " 2. Kars 18,749 130,000 population 3. Mountainous dis " " trict of Elizavetpol 22,000 450,000 population " " Total 68,526 1,330,000 population Interspersed among this Armenian population there are 545,000 Moham medans, Tartars and Turks, while there are about 526,000 Armenians scattered in the Georgian and the Tartar provinces of Transcaucasia. This proximity offers great facilities to these different elements to set tle on the respective territories to be allotted to them by the Peace Congress as a result of this world war. To summarize, the future Armenian state may therefore include: Turkish Armenia 220,000 sq. kil. " " Russian .' 68,526 " " Persian 15,000 " "

Total 303,526 " " 184 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

In our opinion, the aforementioned should be the boundaries and extent of the future Armenian state. The state thus created should be able to develop economically in a normal fashion and without hindrance, and it will moreover be in a position to fulfill its political and civilizing mis sion and become the cornerstone of a lasting peace in the Near East, with a population of three million Armenians and with about one mil lion to one million and a half non-Armenian elements.

PART IV

WHAT INTEREST HAVE THE ALLIES IN CREATING AN INDEPENDENT ARMENIA?

We venture to state that an Armenia created under these conditions whose freedom and independence shall be guaranteed by all the Powers and by a league of nations, will in the Near East play the part that Switzerland does in Europe. By reason of her geographical position, Armenia is more important than Switzerland, which stands between four European powers, two of which belong to the Latin and the other two to the Teutonic races. The Armenian plateau, which covers an ex tensive area between the Black and Mediterranan Seas, by the very na ture of its exceptional position will not only stand between Georgia, Turkey, Syria, the Tartar regions of the Caucasus, Persia, Mesopotamia and Kurdistan, namely, seven different states, but being so situated that it has almost become the converging point of Europe, Asia and Africa, is destined also to become the land where all races may intermingle and diverge. This is a vital consideration which requires that a land so situated should be neutralized so that no government or people should in any way be able to utilize it for purposes of conquest, as has hap pened so often in the past. This in itself is a vital reason for the crea tion of an Armenia, destined to insure the equilibrium in the Near East. The immediate services such a state can render will be to obstruct the drang nach Ostem policy of Germany by neutralizing the Berlin-Bagdad line that runs through Armenia. Another salutary consequence of the creation of such a state would be to arrest the Young Turkey's Pan- Islamic and Pan-Touranian aggressive movement and to build up a bar rier against it. Although the Pan-Touranian movement is in its infancy ARMENIA AND HER CLAIMS 18*

at present, we cannot disregard its future potentialities, and measures ought to be taken to arrest its baneful effects; otherswiee, it may be come as dangerous an element for the future of mankind as Pan-Ger manism is at present, having, morever, in view the circumstance that the center of this Pan-Touranian movement would be in Berlin and not Constantinople and exploited by Germany for the purpose of furthering her designs of domination and aggrandizement. Besides these two ag gressive movements, there may be danger in the future that Imperial Russia, after traversing this present phase of dissolution, may emerge triumphant, and in such a circumstance, a neutralized Armenia would be the only barrier to be opposed to a possible aggressive Russia. The above political circumstances do not stand alone. There is an other higher justification which renders imperative the restoration of Armenia to freedom, and this is in the supreme interests of civilization. We all know that the enlightened countries of the West have inherited their culture from those ancient peoples of the Near East. Under the scimitar of the Turks, it has been buried for centuries and was threat ened with eternal decay. It is high time to restore to the East that share of light and progress of which it became the cradle and the prin cipal source. To accomplish this, the democratic nations of the earth have a duty to perform towards the Armenian people, by bringing about their emancipation and insuring their existence against final extinction, in order that a people susceptible of the highest culture may be able to fulfill its glorious civilizing mission in the Near East. All the European savants are of the unanimous opinion, and in this the German professors concur, that the Armenian represents the only element in the Near East that can play the part of the intermediary between the Eastern and Western world. The Turk, the Arab, the Georgian, the Kurd or the Persian, who are his neighbors, do not possess the aptitudes to disseminate European and American civilization as does the Armenian. Ethnologists are all agreed in stating that the Arme nians being a branch of the Indo-European race, settled on the Armenian plateau twenty-seven centuries ago, whDe they embraced Christianity as far back as the fourth century and ever since have kept aloft the ideas of Christian thought and civilization against the onslaught of semi- savage Asiatic and Mohammedan races. The experience they have ac 186 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

quired of a life replete with vicissitudes and tribulations in their con tact with the Eastern nations has developed in them extraordinary qual ities such as no other people possess. If the times are ripe in order that the different parts of humanity should be brought more closely in touch with each other so that they may come to an understanding and to create more decent relations among them, it is the Armenian who is destined to become the connecting link between Christianity and Asia.

CONCLUSION

After unprecedented vicissitudes and tribulations, the Armenians claim a fitting place in the Concert of free and independent nations. Armenia, like Poland, claims to be one and indivisible, and the future Armenian state should by right include Russian, Persian and Turkish Armenia — from the Caucasus to the Straits of Alexandretta. To this territory Armenia is entitled on historical and ethnological grounds, and it is in dispensable that the Cilician provinces of Armenia bordering on the Gulf of Alexandretta should be included in Armenia Irredenta. Cilicia was an independent state at the end of the fourteenth century. Therein is situated Adana, where the massacres of 1909 took place, and there, in the fastnesses of the Taurus, the Armenians held their own against Turkish barbarism for centuries, and in the course of the nineteenth century fought heroically against overwhelming Turkish armies. The Armenians do not claim any territory which is not their own, nor is it fair that they should accept any solution which does not vouch safe to them an independence such as Greece, Servia and Roumania possess. Massacres and deportations do not constitute rights for the Turkish executioners of the Armenian race. The number of Armenians has been reduced by reason of these atrocities, but there are at least three million survivors of the Armenian holocaust who are entitled to the territory claimed. Greece at the time of her emancipation, in 1829, hardly contained half a million people. Notwithstanding, Europe recog nized Greek independence after the Battle of Nef arino, which sealed the death of Turkish domination in Hellas, whose population has now more than quadrupled. It will be the same of Armenia if she be allowed to de velop and breathe freely as a sovereign independent state. The thirteen ARMENIA AND HER CLAIMS 187 states of America that revolted against Great Britain at the time of their liberation did not contain more than four million people, and they covered a territory far greater in extent than would the future Arme nian state. The argument that the Armenian population has been depleted is a very loose one. To accept the same and to make it weigh in the balance against Armenian claims would be to put a premium on crime and to legitimatize the massacres and deportations carried out by the Turks during these last thirty years, culminating in the events of 1915 and 1916, to which reference is made in the first part of this memo randum. And let us record here, that Armenia, by reason of her civilization in the East, her immeasurable sacrifices, especially her military assistance to the allied cause, in the Caucasus, in Palestine, and in France, to which expression is given in the correspondence exchanged between Lord Cecil and Lord Bryce, referred to in this memorandum, is entitled to complete restoration of her national independence. Through the ages her spiritual and patriotic leaders have kept alive and alight the flame of national consciousness and self-government, despite successive dominations and persecutions. Her political and military struggles against Turkish bar barism during the last thirty years are admirable credentials for her to present to the future peace congress. The founding of the diminutive Republic of Ararat is a small begin ning for national government for the whole of Armenia, from the Cau casus, through Cilicia, to the Mediterranean. Any scheme which may be advocated by certain elements in this country having for their object to preserve Turkey as a unit are of a nature to defeat the imperishable rights of the Armenians to freedom and independence. Such schemes are, moreover, detrimental to the cause of the Allies and to the United States, and unworthy of the noble traditions bequeathed by the founders and continuers of this great republic. To sum up, Armenia is Europe and America in Asia in the bud. Let Western civilization take care of it. It is a bud out of which will develop fresh elements of aesthetic, moral and spiritual progress. The Arme nian race, by its strong national, religious and philosophical turn of mind, is the equal of all the fine, sensitive natures among the peoples of Europe and America. Her cause therefore appeals strongly to every 188 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

state and people, all of whom should agree to grant to Armenia that which she wants and demands at the close of this great war; namely, complete freedom and national independence.

(Continued from January number and concluded in this number)

WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE armenia's role in the present war

by g. pasdermadjian

Role Played By the Armenians in The Caucasus After the Russian Collapse.

This was the state of affairs when there came the crash of the Rus sian revolution. The heart of every Armenian was greatly relieved, thinking that the greater part of their torments would come to an end. And in truth, during the first few months of the revolution, the tem porary government of Kerensky made definite arrangements to rectify the unjust treatment of the Armenians by the government of the Czar. But events progressed in a precipitate manner. The demoralization of the Russian troops on all the fronts assumed greater proportions as the days went by. Foreseeing the danger which threatened the Caucasus, the Armenian National Organization of the Caucasus, as early as April, 1917, sent to Petrograd on a special mission Dr. Zavrieff, already men tioned, and the writer of these lines, in order to have them obtain per mission to transfer to the Caucasus some 150,000 Armenian officers and men (scattered throughout the Russian army), by whose assistance the Armenians might be able to protect their own native land against the Turkish advance. Mr. Kerensky, who was well acquainted with the abnormal conditions reigning in the Caucasus, agreed to grant the re quest of the Armenian delegates, but, on the other hand, for fear of receiving similar requests from the other races in case he granted an order favorable to the Armenians, he decided to fulfill our request un WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 189

officially, that is, without a general ordinance, to send the Armenian soldiers to the Caucasus gradually, in small groups, in order not to at tract the attention of the other races. And he carried out this plan. But unfortunately, scarcely 35,000 Armenian soldiers had been able to reach the Caucasus by November, 1917, when Kerensky himself fell at the hands of the Bolsheviks, and there was created a chaotic condition the result of which was the final demobilization of the Russian army. During December, 1917, and January, 1918, the Russian army of 250,000 men on the Caucasian front, without any orders, abandoned its positions and moved into the interior of Russia, leaving entirely unpro tected a front about 970 kilometers (600 miles) in length, extending from the Black Sea to Persia. As soon as the Russian army disbanded, the 3,000,000 Tartar inhabitants of the Caucasus armed themselves and rose en masse. Toward the end of January last, the Tartars had cut the Baku-Tiflis railroad line as well as the Erivan-Joulfa line, and now began to raid and plunder the Armenian cities and villages, while behind, on the frontier, the regular Turkish army had commenced to advance in the first days of February. Against all these Turks and Tartars the Armenians had one army corps made up of some 35,000 regular troops under the command of General Nazarbekoff, and nearly 20,000 Armenian volunteers under the command of their experienced leaders. Armenia's only hope of assistance was their neighbors, the Georgians, who were as much interested in the protection of the Caucasus as the Armenians were, because the Turkish demands of the Brest-Litovsk treaty included definite portions of Georgia, as well as of Armenia ; for example, the port of Batoum. And in fact, during the months of January and February they seemed quite inclined to help the Armenians, but when the Turks captured Batoum on April 15 and came as far as Usurgeti, the morale of the Georgians was completely broken, and they immediately sent a delegation to Berlin and put Georgia under German protection. From this time on the 2,000,000 Armenian inhabitants of the Caucasus re mained entirely alone to face, on the one hand, the Turkish regular army of 100,000 men, and on the other hand, the armed forces of hundreds of thousands of Tartars. From the end of February the small number of Armenian forces commenced to retreat step by step before the superior Turkish forces, from Erzingan, Baiburt, Khenous, Mamakhatoun, Erze- roum, and Bayazid, and concentrated their forces on the former Rus 190 THE ARMENIAN HERALD sian-Turkish frontier. Here commenced serious battles which arrested for quite a long time the advance of the Turkish troops. It took them until April 22 to arrive before the forts of Kars, where the first serious resistance of the Armenians took place. The fierce Turkish at tack which continued for four days was easily repulsed by the Ar menians, owing to the guns on the ramparts of Kars. During these events a temporary government of the Caucasus existed in Tiflis, composed of representatives of three Caucasian races—Georg ian, Armenian, and Tartar. This Caucasian government was formed im mediately after the coup d'etat of the Bolsheviks, and conducted Cau casian affairs as an independent body. It refused to recognize the au thority of the Bolshevik government, or the terms of the Brest- Litovsk treaty signed by its accredited delegates. The president of the government was Chekhenkeli, a Georgian. Immediately after the cap ture of Batoum the Caucasian government opened peace negotiations with Turkish delegates in Batoum itself. The Turks, by their usual crafty tricks, persuaded the Georgian delegates that they would return Batoum to the Georgians if Kars surrendered without resistance. Feel ing assured of this Turkish promise, the Georgian president of the Caucasian government, Chekhenkeli, on the night of April 25, without consultation with the other members of the government, telegraphed the commander of Kars that an armistice had been signed with the Turks on condition of surrendering Kars, and therefore to give up the forts immediately and retreat as far as Arpa-Chai. On the following day the commander of the Armenian soldiers who were defending Kars delivered the fortress into the hands of the Turks and retreated to Alexandropol. Then it became known that Chekhenkeli had sent the fate ful telegram on his own responsibility, but it was already too late. This event occasioned very strained relations between the Armenians and Georgians. Not long after, on the 26th of May, the Georgians, assured of German protection, declared in Tiflis the independence of Georgia. Thus the temporary Caucasian government dissolved. After the separation of the Georgians the Armenian National Council of the Caucasus declared Armenian independence, under the name of the Republic of Ararat, with Erivan as its capital. While the negotia tions were going on in Batoum —always between the delegates of the WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 191

Turks and the three Caucasian races comprising the Caucasian tem porary government, —the Turkish armies, after the occupation of Kars,

became more aggressive and commenced to advance toward Alexandro- pol and Karakilissa. Concentrating their forces around Karakilissa and Erivan, early in June, the Armenians in two fierce battles drove the Turks back almost to their frontier. In the battle of Karakilissa, which lasted four days, the Turks left 6,000 dead before the Armenian posts, and escaped to Alexandropol. When the Turks felt that their position in the face of the Armenian resistance was becoming more and more hopeless and that it would cost them dear to continue the fight, they immediately began to make concessions. Up to that time the Turks had not yet recognized the right of Russian Armenia to inde pendence, their objection being that they only recognized in the Cau casus Georgian and Tartar countries. But when they heard the news of the last military victory of the Armenians, on June 14, in Batoum, the Turkish delegates, together with the representatives of the Re public of Ararat, signed the first terms of armistice, leaving the final peace signature to the congress of Constantinople, where the final negotiations were to take place. The delegates of the three nations of the Caucasus reached Constanti nople on June 19. They were 32 in number. Among them were also the representatives of the Republic of Ararat, Mr. A. Khatissoff, the minis ter of foreign affairs, and Mr. A. Aharonian, the president of the Armenian National Council. In that congress, which convened in presence of the delegates of the German and Austrian governments, the Turks signed peace treaties with each of the newly-formed Caucasian Republics. It is needless to say that those treaties had as much value as that which the Roumanian government was forced to sign a few months before by the central powers. And, as was expected, the Turks and the Germans rewarded the Georgians and the Tartars at the expense of the Armenians. They gave the greater part of the Armenian territories to the other two nations, and the remainder was claimed by Turkey, with the exception of 32,000 square kilometers (about 12,350 square miles), with 700,000 Armenian inhabitants, which were left to the Republic of Ararat. According to these terms only one-third of the Armenians of the Caucasus are included within the Republic of Ararat, while the remaining 1,400,000 Armenians are left in territories 192 THE ARMENIAN HERALD allotted to the Tartars or the Georgians. That portion of the Armenians which inhabits the mountainous re gions of Karabagh (which was assigned to the Tartars), up to this very day, October, 1918, resists the Turco-Tartar hordes and refuses at any price to be subjected to the unjust terms of the treaty of Constan tinople, while beyond, the Armenians at Van, when their military forces realized that their retreat was cut off early last May, after being shel tered for two whole months in Van, moved toward Persia, there joined the Christian Assyrians in the neighborhood of Urmia, repulsed for a long time the Turkish and Kurdish attacks, and only early in September succeeded in shattering the Turkish lines and thereby reached the city of Hamadan in Persia, where they entrusted to the care of the British forces the protection of about 40,000 Armenian and Assyrian refugees. In order to complete this picture of the heroic resistance of the Caucasian Armenians, let me say a few words more about the struggle at Baku. As already mentioned, early in May, 1917, through the efforts of the Armenian National Organization of the Caucasus, the Armenian soldiers and officers scattered throughout Russia were gradually brought to gether and mobilized on the Caucasian front. With that purpose in view an Armenian Military Committee was formed in Petrograd with General Bagradouni as president. Bagradouni was one of the most brilliant young generals of the Russian army. He had received his military train ing at the highest military academy of Petrograd, and, during Keren- sky's administration, was appointed Chief of the Staff of the military forces at Petrograd. When the Bolsheviks assumed power they ordered him to take an oath of loyalty to the new government. General Bagra douni refused to do so, and for that reason he was imprisoned, with many other high military officials. After remaining in prison two months, through repeated appeals by the Armenian National bodies, he was freed by the Bolsheviks on condition that he should immediately leave Petrograd. After his release from prison, General Bagradouni, accom panied by the well known Armenian social worker, Mr. Rostom, with 200 Armenian officers, left for the Caucasus to assume the duties of commander-in-chief of the newly-formed Armenian army. This group of Armenian officers reached Baku early in March, where it was forced to wait, for the simple reason that the Baku-Tiflis railroad line was already cut by the Tartars. During that same month of March WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 193 from many parts of Russia a large number of Armenians gathered at Baku and waited to go to Erivan and Tiflis in response to the call issued by the Armenian National Council. Toward the end of March nearly 110,000 Armenian soldiers had come together at Baku. By the 30th of March the news of German victories was spread throughout the Caucasus by the Turco-German agents. On the same day in Baku and other places appeared the following leaflets :

"Awake, Turkish brothers ! "Protect your rights; union with the Turks means life. "Unite, O Children of the Turks! "Brothers of the noble Turkish nation, for hundreds of years our blood has flowed like water, our motherland has been ruined, and we have been under the heel of thousands of oppressors who have almost crushed us. We have forgotten our nation. We do not know to whom to appeal for help. "Countrymen, we consider ourselves free hereafter. Let us look into our conscience ! Let us not listen to the voice of plotters. We must not lose the way to freedom ; our freedom lies in union with the Turks. It is necessary for us to unite and put ourselves under the protection of the Turkish flag. "Forward, brothers ! Let us gather ourselves under the flag of union and stretch out our hands to our Turkish brothers. Long life to the gen erous Turkish nation ! By these words we shall never again bear a for eign yoke, the chains of servitude."

And on the following day (March 31) from all sides of the Caucasus the armed hordes of Tartars attacked the Armenians. The leaders of the Tartars at Baku were convinced that they would easily disarm the Armenian soldiers, because they were somewhat shut up in Baku, but they were sadly mistaken in their calculations. After a bloody battle which lasted a whole week the Armenians remained masters of the city and its oil wells. They suffered a loss of nearly 2,500 killed, while the Tartars lost more than 10,000. The commander of the military forces of the Armenians was the same General Bagradouni, who, although he lost both of his legs during the fight, continued his duties until Sep tember 14, when the Armenians and the small number of Englishmen who came to their assistance were forced to abandon Baku to the supe rior forces of the Turco-Tartars, and retreat toward the city of Enzeli in the northern Caucasus. 194 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

During these heroic struggles, which lasted five and a half months, the small Armenian garrison of Baku, together with a few thousand Russians, defended Baku and its oil wells against tens of thousands of Tartars, the Caucasian mountaineers, and more than one division of regular Turkish troops which had come to the assistance of the latter by way of Batoum. Time after time the Turkish troops made fierce at tacks to capture the city, but each time they were repulsed with heavy losses by the gallant Armenian garrison. The Armenians had built their hopes on British assistance, since nothing was expected from the demoralized Russian army. But, unfortunately, the British were un able to reach Baku with large forces from their Bagdad army. Never theless, on August 5, they landed at Baku 2,800 men to help the Arme nians. The arrival of this small British contingent caused great enthusiasm among the tired and exhausted defenders of the city. But meanwhile the Turks had received new forces from Batoum and re newed their attacks. After a series of bloody battles the armed Armenian and British forces were forced to leave Baku on September 14 and retreat toward Persia, taking with them nearly 10,000 refugees from the inhabitants of the city. As to the condition of those who were left behind, this much is certain ; that on the day the city was occupied by the Turco-Tartars, nearly 20,000 Armenians were put to the sword, the greater portion of them being women and children. According to the news received from Persia, after that first terrible massacre, other massacres likewise have taken place. The number of the losses is not known; but it may safely be surmised without any exaggeration that out of the entire 80,000 Armenian inhabitants of Baku, all those who were unable to leave the city in time were slaughtered by the revengeful Turks and Tartars. Thus ended the resistance of five months and a half by the Armenians at Baku against the Turco-Germans. The remnants of the retreating Armenian garrison of Baku, at the time of writing, are located in the Persian city of Enzeli, where, under the command of their heroic leader, General Bagradouni, they are re cuperating before hastening to the aid of the Armenians in the eastern Caucasus, who, as already mentioned, up to this very day are resisting the forces of the Turco-Tartars in the mountains of Karabagh. WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE

Armenia's Co-operation With the Allies on Other Fronts.

The Armenians, besides battling on the Caucasian front, where they have been fighting in their own native land, have co-operated unre servedly with the Allies on far distant fronts, as for example on the French front. At the beginning of the war the young Armenian students living in France—about 900 in number —volunteered to serve in the French army for the defence of civilization and freedom. Today, scarcely 50 of them are alive; the majority of the 850 others gave their lives in 1916 in the immortal defence of Verdun. This small epi sode in this universal drama will not be forgotten by either France or the Free Armenia of the future. Glory to the memory of those immortal heroes! Beyond, on another front of the war, by an extraordi nary coincidence of fate, in the deadly blow which fell on the head of the criminal Ottoman Empire in the Holy Land, the sons of the sorrowful people whom it had ruthlessly slaughtered had their just share of active participation. And indeed, in General Allenby's victorious army, which saved Palestine and Syria from Turkish tyranny in September, 1918, by General Allenby's own testimony, the eight battalions of the Arme nian volunteers (who took part in those battles under the French flag) were conspicuous for their bravery. In response to a congratulatory telegram from the chairman of the Armenian National Union of Egypt for the victories on the Palestine front, General Allenby said: "I thank you warmly for your congratulations, and am proud of the fact that your Armenian compatriots in the Oriental Legion took an active part in the fighting and shared in our victory."

Conclusion.

If we wish to condense all we have said in a few pages, we shall have the following picture: In 1914 both Turkey and Russia appealed to the Armenians by vari ous promises of a future autonomous Armenia to secure their assistance in their respective military operations. Through their long and bitter experience the Armenians knew very well that the imperialistic govern ments of both Turkey and of Russia were opposed to their national as pirations and therefore those promises had no value whatever. But, 196 THE ARMENIAN HERALD realizing the universal significance of the present war, and considering the fact that justice was on the side of the Entente, the Armenians, in spite of their distrust of the Russian government, from the very begin ning, unreservedly bound themselves to the allied cause. This decision of the Armenians cost them the sacrifice of more than 1,000,000 men in Turkish Armenia, and complete devastation of their native land even in the first year of the war. In spite of this terrible blow, the Armenians did not lose their vigor, and, even though the autocratic Russian government, up to the time of the Revolution, created all sorts of obstacles to impede their activities, they still continued their assistance to the allied cause. In bringing about the failure of the three Turkish offensives in 1914 and 1915 the Arme nians gave the allied cause important armed assistance, on both sides of the Turco-Russian frontier. After the Russian Revolution, when, the Russian military forces fled from the Caucasian front and left it unprotected from January, 1918, to the middle of the following September, the Armenians were the only people who resisted and delayed the Turco-German advance toward Baku. Moreover, the Armenians accomplished all this with their own forces, all alone, surrounded on all sides by hostile elements, without any means of communication with their great Allies of the West. As an evidence of this we may mention the fact that during the last eight months and a half the Armenians have received from the Allies only 6,500,000 rubles ($3,250,000) of financial assistance, and the 2,800 British soldiers who were too few and arrived too late to save Baku. Let us now look at the other side of the picture. Had the Armenians assumed an entirely opposite attitude from what

they actually did ; in other words, had they bound their fate in 1914 to the Turco-German cause, just as the Bulgarians did in 1915, what would

have been the trend of events in the Near East ? Here is a question to which, it is quite possible, our great Allies have had no time to give any consideration. But that very question was put before the Armenians in 1914, and with no light heart did they answer it by their decision to join the Allies. Each and every one of them had a clear presentiment of the terrible responsibility they assumed. Those millions of corpses of Armenian women and children which spotted the plains in the summer of 1915, rose like phantoms before our very eyes in the August of 1914 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE ur

when we decided to resist the wild Turkish revengefulness and its frightful outcome. Now, in October, 1918, when we are so close to the hour of the final victory, and feel quite safe and certain that the heavy and gloomy days of the summer of 1914 will never return, I shall permit myself to picture in a few words, before I finish, that which would have taken place if the Armenians had sided with the Germano- Turks in the Near East from the beginning of the war. First of all, those frightful Armenian massacres would not have taken place. On the contrary, the Turks and the Germans would have tried to win the sympathy of the Armenians in every possible way until the end of the war. On the other hand, so long as the Georgians and Tartars of the Caucasian peoples were only too eager to co-operate with the Germano- Turks, as the events of 1918 fully demonstrate, had the Armenians like wise joined them in 1914, by cutting the railroads, the backbone of the Caucasian Russian army, all the Caucasian country would have slipped out of the hands of the Russians in a few weeks, and the Turco-Ger- mans would have reached Baku in the autumn of the same year. The Armenians, Georgians, and Tartars of the Caucasus, united, would have been able to form with the greatest ease an army of 700,000 men, by which they would have been able to defend the Caucasian mountain- ridge against the Russians. Meanwhile, the entire Turkish army would have been available to advance immediately toward the interior of Asia and join the 18,000,000 Moslems of Asiatic Russia. We may safely say, neither Persia nor Afghanistan could have remained neutral on seeing such successful achievements by the Turks. In the course of such events Russia would have been compelled to remove the greater portion of her forces to the East and would not have been able to protect her Western frontiers as successfully as she did. Therefore, quite probably, the Russian collapse would have taken place in the summer of 1915, when the Germans occupied Russian Poland. On the other hand, Great Britain would have been obliged to appropriate the greater portion of her newly-formed land forces for the protection of India, and would have been unable to rush as great a force to the defence of heroic France as she actually did. Quite likely, under these conditions, neither Italy nor Roumania would have aban 198 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

doned her neutrality, and thus the war might have ended in 1915 or 1916 with the victory of the central Powers, at least on land. It was as clear as day to the Armenians that a Germano-Turkish vic tory could never satisfy their national aspirations. The most that those nations would have done for us would have been to grant nominal rights to the Armenia of their own choice. But it was very plain to us also that we should not have suffered such frightful human losses had we not sided with the Allies. We consciously chose this last alternative,

namely : we tied our fate to the allied victory ; we exposed our very exist ence to danger in order to realize the complete fulfillment of our na tional ambition, that is, to see the re-establishment of the United His toric Independent Armenia. With our modest means, we have fulfilled our duty in full measure in this great struggle in order to save civilization from an impending doom. Now it is for our great Allies to act. The day is not very far distant when, gathered around the great tribunal of justice, the representatives of all the nations of the globe—guilty or just;—are to receive their punishment or reward from the hands of the four distinguished champions of democracy, President Wilson, Premiers Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, and Orlando. If the representatives present themselves in the order of seniority, the first in the rank will be the representative of the Armenian people—the aged Mother Armenia. Behold! Into the Peace Congress Hall there enters an old woman, bathed in blood, clothed in rags, her face covered with wrinkles 3,000 years old, and completely exhausted. With her thought ful eyes the venerable Mother Armenia will survey the countenances of all those present, and thus will she address the great figures of the world:

"Century after century my sons took part in all the strifes waged to safeguard justice and the freedom of suffering humanity. Three thou sand years ago my sons struggled for seven hundred years against the despotism of Babylon and Nineveh, which eventually collapsed under the load of their own crimes. Fifteen centuries ago the Armenians resisted for five hundred years the persecutions of the mighty Persian Empire to preserve their Christian faith. Since the eighth century my sons have been the vanguard of Christian civilization in the East against Moslem invasions threatening for a while the very existence of all Europe. If you doubt my statements, ask the sacred mountain of 200 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

to exact the heavy blood tribute of France, of the British Empire, of Italy, and even of America, and to threaten the very existence of these free and powerful states. At the time the Western governments were thoroughly aware of their solemnly undertaken treaty obligations with regard to the Arme nians, but to the worldly-wise materialists who were then shaping the fortunes of our world it seemed "safer" to ignore than to fulfil them. One wonders if even the present cataclysm has convinced statesmen of this type that there are certain crimes against humanity which man kind may not tolerate and that the violation of this moral law carries • with it its own inevitable doom. For the massacres of the Armenians did more than cry out for the decent type of statesmanship which today we recognize as imperative. They precipitated a stupendous crisis with regard to the much coveted estate of the Sick Man. The vain cry of Christian to Christian had revealed to the Sultan all too apparently the sole basis of European in terest in the Near East. From henceforth he at least had nothing to fear from pseudo-Christian intervention. Hereafter, it was to be simply a pitched battle for the control of what Napoleon called the "Empire of the World," the region "which dominates the three continents upon which live ninety per cent of all mankind." And the Sultan was in a position to choose his partners. The increasingly conflicting ambitions, the moral cowardice and the venality of the Powers and his own cor responding arrogance made it only too evident that the old semi-re spectable pre-massacre status could never be restored, and that the diplomacy shaped by the Great Crime might be hereafter as con scienceless as he and his chosen partners willed. As a matter of fact it was at this very time that Germany, cap italizing every element of the situation, even the blood of the victims, openly declared herself the friend and protector of the Sultan and of the whole Islamic world, and began to lay the sure foundation of her Drang nach Osten scheme—her push toward world conquest. Immu nity from European intervention, no matter what his crimes, and event ually a great pan-Islamic empire were the alluring enticements which she offered to the Monster of Constantinople in return for the con cession to build the longed-for Bagdad Railroad, so well named the THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA

"spine of the present war." And with such designs in prospect, the blood, not only of hundreds of thousands, but of millions of innocent human beings might well be permitted to cry in vain. We are familiar with the ghastly farce enacted by the Kaiser at Jerusalem, Damascus, and Constantinople. We see this successor to Frederick Barbarossa —that Crusader who sent the Crown to one of the princes of Lesser Armenia—paying equal homage to the tombs of Jesus, the world's Great Democrat and lover of his kind, whose "king dom was not of this world," and to that of Saladin, the mighty Mo hammedan conqueror and chief. We hear his specious words as he places a wreath upon the tomb of the "august Saracen whose sword had driven the Crusaders from Jerusalem forever." "I seize cheerfully upon this opportunity to express my gratitude to his Imperial Majesty, the Sultan Abdul Hamid, in whose sincere love for me I glory. I assure you that the German Emperor will be the loving friend of the great Sultan Abdul Hamid, as well as of the 300,000,000 Mohammedans who, dwelling dispersed throughout the East, reverence him as their Caliph." To cement this royal friendship, we see gifts exchanged between the two monarchs. On the one hand, all the costly Oriental carpets and other sumptuous furniture of the Palace in which the newly-made "Hadji" had been entertained; and on the other, a portrait of the Ger man royal family, and a costly fountain donated to the Constantinople streets, still wet with the blood of 10,000 Armenian martyrs. To such base uses had a portion of Christendom become openly converted ! But this was not all. In further evidence of the infectiousness of the rampant evil of this period, it is significant to note that it was at this time that Russia, weary of having all her "legitimate" imperial de signs forever thwarted, decided to emulate the West, and to throw off all pretence at protecting the Eastern Christians. Almost immedi ately she began to adopt something like the Turkish attitude with re gard to the Armenians of the hitherto happy region of the Caucasus with a view to their ultimate annihilation. "Armenia without the Armenians," the murderous 1895 slogan of Lobanoff, the Russian min ister of Foreign Affairs, indicates the trend of the new pan-Slavic policy. Russia for the Russians, Turkey for the Turks, the world for Germany! THE ARMENIAN HERALD

And thus the barbaric doctrine of Ruthlessness, fostered, we must admit, by the dishonorable compromises and moral inertia of the rest of the world, revived and spread. And for the Armenians all hope was lost except what they themselves might create and wrest from a situation which in itself was without hope. "Stranded in the East, this fragment of Europe," this sublimely picturesque defender of Chris tianity, this singular advocate of Democracy and Law, became at the dawn of the twentieth century, prey to a legion of enemies, more in sidious and menacing than ever she had known in the whole tragic course of her tumultuous history. Never, not even in the days of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, had she faced a situation so dire. Vir tually, in the interests of the great Imperialisms, the race had been de voted to Death in the open market of the world. Of course, the Armenians themselves were unaware of the protentous drama which was being enacted behind the scenes. They could see clearly enough that their hopes of an European intervention had been chimerical, but they could not relinquish thought of an ultimate deliv erance. At any rate, the present necessity was to help themselves, and in all their history there is nothing finer or more touching than the way in which this smitten and abandoned people, rallying from its wounds and wrongs, somehow or another recovered its morale and gradually resumed its old constructive place in the general life of Tur key and of the world. The massacres had cost the Armenians about a quarter of a million souls, and they had been followed by a new migration, necessarily limited, however, because of the Sultan's determination not to let his prey escape. Besides, there was an immense loss in wealth. Their homes had been destroyed and they had been robbed of their property. Some of the oldest business houses of Constantinople and elsewhere had been obliged to go out of business because of the impoverishment of their Armenian creditors. There was a vast stream of orphans and de fenceless old people to be cared for, homes and schools and orphanages to be built, and hospitals for the sick and wounded. But this was am undertaking in which warm-hearted foreigners, and especially Ameri cans, shared. And presently out of the wreckage came clear evidence that the aspiring spirit of the people had been by no means extin guished. THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 203

And there was need for courage and determination. For the Govern ment had become more repressive than ever; more extortionate in its taxes, more severe in its penalties, more scandalously indifferent even to such justice as was the standard of the Turkish courts-of-law. The censorship, already excessive, became ridiculous in its watchfulness The Kurds and Circassians were still allowed to plunder the defenceless towns and villages at will. The prisons and dungeons were filled with Armenian victims. Spies were everywhere. To some races the alternative of submission might have suggested itself, but to the awakened Armenian spirit there appeared only the sacred necessity for further effort. Especially among the generous and enlightened youth trained in the universities of Europe and America, the feeling arose that did the people of Europe really know the charac ter of the sufferings, and the nature and history of the afflicted race, they would not permit their governments to remain indifferent to the pledges of elementary reform which had been made. An energetic diplomatic propaganda was therefore begun by them in London, Paris, Tiflis, Leipzig, Geneva, Alexandria, Boston, New York, and elsewhere, with the object of "converting" Europe, and of win ning the active support of America. Again, as before, the object aimed at was not separation from Turkey, but reform. Journals were pub lished in English, French, and Armenian, and books and articles were written and speeches made in which the nature of the issue was elabo rated upon. The Armenian leaders of the patriotic societies made over tures, too, to the Young Turks, and offered to unite with them in de manding the restoration of the constitution which Odian had drawn up and which Abdul Hamid had proclaimed and then revoked. And, in sure token of the undying spiritual vitality of the race, there sprang into pas sionate being a new literature, a new poetry, inspired chiefly by love of freedom and country, and more rich and powerful, more sustainedly and consciously artistic, perhaps, than any that had gone before. Aharonian, Siamanto, Varoudjan, Toumanian, Tchobanian, and others — the world will some day pay us tribute to their magnificent song. The scope of this brief sketch does not permit individual tribute t« the men of genius and faith who, at a period of history fundamentally hostile to the rights of small peoples, dared unreservedly to devote all 204 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

their gifts and resources to the furtherance of this holy but desperate cause. But Europe—now aligned, because of German aggression in the Near East, into two definite and mutually hostile camps, each contend ing for the control of Turkish territory —was in no position to interest herself in the internal reforms of that country. Therefore, in spite of toil and sacrifice and the co-operation of noble individuals in England, France, America, and other countries, no definite progress was made. The appeal on behalf of Armenia became but a voice in the wilderness. Not in all countries, however, were the efforts of the Armenian patriots equally abortive. By the opening years of the twentieth cen tury, the struggle for national preservation in Russian Armenian had

become acute, pursuant to the policy entered/ ujpon b^ Lobanoff at the time of the massacres. During these years the Government of the Czar attempted to bring the people into complete vassalage to a general scheme of Russification. The plan was to destroy the national identity by depriving them of their language and of their Church, and to this end the schools were closed and the property and revenues of the ancient Mother Church at Etchmiadzin were confiscated. A singular method of terrorization was instituted by Christian Rus sia—one which smacks of the policy which had been entered upon so shortly before by the government of the Kaiser. The religious fanatic ism of the Moslem Tartars of the Caucasian region was secretly in flamed by the local Russian officials, and they were incited to war upon their Christian neighbors, with whom they had hitherto lived in peace. As a result, the whole region was soon in the grip of a fanatical out burst. But the Armenians were well co-ordinated, and they possessed arms. Consequently they were able to defend themselves, and even to overcome the Tartar attacks. The dignified but determined passive resistance of the aged Catholicos Khrimian, too, had its effect. So the persecution fell into abeyance. A little later, we see the untiring spirit of the Armenians again at work in the cause of human freedom, this time in Persia. All who have followed the story of Persia's ill-starred but glorious attempt to take her place among the constitutionally governed nations, are doubtless familiar with the part played by the Armenian prince, Malcolm Khan, for some years Persian minister in London, who is said "to have sowed THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA

the first seeds of constitutional government in Persia"; and with the name of the other Armenian leader, Ephrem Davidian, who later distin guished himself in the same cause. But few, I believe, are aware of the heroic career which preceded Davidian's short-lived victory for Persia, and, consequently, for his countrymen who had come under her domination. His brilliant but tragic story, so symbolic of the fortunes which have forever dogged the footsteps of his unfortunate nation, has been so admirably summarized by that remarkable woman of the same race, Mrs. Diana Agabeg Apcar, that it seems most fitting to let the tale be told in her own thrilling words. "In 1908," she writes, "Shah Muhammad Ali Mirza was deposed and constitutional government established in Persia. The cordiality be tween the Armenians and the Persians was great at that period, and the leader and generalissimo of the whole successful movement was Ephrem Davidian, known in Persia as Ephrem Khan. He escaped from Saghalien prison in 1891. Fighting with a score of companions against a whole Turkish regiment in Turkish Armenia, these young men when hard pressed crossed the frontier into Russian Armenia and were there immediately seized by the Russian authorities and consigned to a prison in Saghalien. Escaping, Ephrem became the leader of the nationalistic movement in Persia in 1908, and, as is well known, not only defeated the ex-Shah's forces, but kept the peace of Teheran. Ephrem was idolized by the Persian Constitutionalists and when assassinated by the agents of the Russian government, was buried with royal honors by the Persian people."

There seems to be little need of dwelling upon the so-called revolution which at this time occurred in Turkey, and which led to the dethrone ment of Abdul Hamid and the proclamation of a constitution. The word "revolution" in this connection is at best a misnomer. It was an affair in which the people had absolutely no part. It was simply the seizure of power by a military clique trained in Germany or by Germans, and although it gave to the Armenians a brief period of illusory hope, it does not deserve to be distinguished from the rule which preceded it, except in so far as it has proved to be more scientifically cruel and destructive. The frightful massacre at Adana in which twenty thousand persons 206 THE ARMENIAN HEKALD were slain within a few days, the very year following the proclamation , shows only too emphatically, as some one has said, that the "Young" Turks were very like the "Old." And so it came about that in a Turkey possessed of a representative parliament, the Armenians, in order to obtain security for "life, honor, and property," were once more obliged to have formal recourse to the Powers which had signed the Treaty of Berlin. The explanation of this anomalous situation is not difficult to seek. There had been developing among the Young Turks and their followers a political credo, less ambitious, possibly, than the ancient pan-Islamic tide, but not less arrogant and ruthless ; Turkey for the Turks was but a part of the pan-Turanian scheme which had come into being as a result of German stimulus and example. "In Parliament," says Vis count Bryce, "the program took such form as a bill to make the Turk ish language the universal and compulsory medium of secondary educa tion" —a death blow to Armenian progress and nationality since "the vast majority of the secondary schools of the Empire were, of course, American, Armenian or Greek." But regardless of the fact that the Turkish language was barren of a literature which would in any way meet the needs of the times, the Young Turks insisted upon this form of Ottomanization, and upon others equally impossible and reactionary. "And the Armenian deputies" —to quote Viscount Bryce again —"found themselves opposing it in concert with the liberal party, which included the Arab block and stood for the toleration of national individualities." In addition, the Armenians had positive demands to make, such as a mixed Gendarmarie —open to Turks and Armenians but closed to Kurds, who continued to practice their old habit of brigandage —and for an actual and not merely nominal, equality between Christians and Mos lems before the law. But the Young Turks had become deaf to all reason. Intoxicated by the "superior race" idea, an altogether unfounded belief in their own abilities, based in part upon centuries of delusive racial privilege, had taken possession of them. And as affairs proceeded, and the actual administration of the Empire called more and more imperatively for men of practical sense and ability, it maddened them to discover that the race whom they had always despised and outlawed was really the THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 207

more capable of performing the work of the state, as well as of con ducting the other affairs of life. The foundation for the jealousy which took possession of them is evi dent from the analyses made by many European authorities, among them no less a personage than Dr. Paul Rohrbach, who, as an exponent of the Drang nach Ostein, program, spent four years in Turkey for the purpose of surveying the situation from every point of view. During this time he came to feel a very high and cordial admiration for the Armenians as a race, and it is evidently with a view of bringing them to the attention of the Home Government as a valuable asset in the up building of the future German Eastern Empire, that he dilates upon their abilities and virtues. According to Dr. Rohrbach (writing shortly before the outbreak of this war) the Armenians played a part in the intellectual and economic life of Turkey "entirely out of proportion to their number" ; the Arme nian schools supported by the voluntary offerings of the people, and ex clusive of all missionary establishments, exceeded the Turkish schools four to one, and were much better; the trades and the liberal profes sions were in Armenian hands, and, in general, the economic life of the Empire depended upon them, and this "not because of a singular lack of business scruple, or loss of gain, but through their innate capacity for labor!" Dr. Rohrbach further states that their ability to read and write Turkish, in addition to their "general psychic energy and assiduity for labor," accounted for the relatively high number of Armenian employees in the service of the Turkish administration, without whom, he declares, "the machinery of the State would absolutely stop." And he adds that according to the testimony of the Constantinople press, the ministries of the two Armenians, Noradounghian and Haladjian —Internal Affairs and Public Works —were the only ones which had accomplished any thing. But all this was beside the purpose, so far as the "Home Govern ment" was concerned. Probably the plan to subdue or to wreck the Armenian people had been already provisionally formulated by Con stantinople and Berlin; and the two Inspectors-General commissioned in 1913 by Germany and Russia to investigate the Armenian grievances 306 THE ARMENIAN HERALD on behalf of the Signatory Powers were doubtless merely a blind, at least so far as the former was concerned. If the East was to be con verted into a new type of despotism and the way made safe for a new tyranny, it was certainly not the Armenians who would play the lead ing and compliant part. At the suitable moment, all factors hostile to such a purpose must be eliminated, even though it meant the annihila tion of an entire race. The shadow of the ultimate catastrophe was therefore already black upon the land when Germany gave the signal for the universal con flagration.

n. IN THE WORLD WAR

The extreme precariousness of their position must have been sensed by the Armenians at the moment of the outbreak of the war. Through the expostulations of their representatives in the Turkish parliament and elsewhere, their grievances against the Young Turk government and their distrust of this rule had become matters of official and popu lar knowledge. A war would give their enemy the opportunity to wreak vengeance upon them. The military entente between the Young Turks and Germany was already well known and Turkish participation on the German side was more than a probability. Turkish societies, called "patriotic," had recently sent threatening letters to the Armenian Patriarch, to the editors of the Armenian newspapers, to Boghos Nubar Pasha, President of the Armenian Delegation, and to others who were helping to bring the Armenian situation before the attention of Europe. The following is one of many similar documents, signed by numbers of Turks, which these societies had sent to the Armenian press of Con stantinople : "We advise you not to speak any more of Armenian reforms. If you do the matter will become serious and we will massacre you, old and young. We will eviscerate you in the open streets, and you will find the former massacres desirable in comparison to those which we shall execute." At the same time, bands of Turkish "nationalists" had gone nightly THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 209

through the streets of the Armenian quarter, marking in red and black insulting words and threats of death upon the doors of the Armenian houses, churches, and schools. Furthermore, just at this period the two Inspectors-General commissioned by the Powers to examine into the Armenian situation had already arrived! But, aside from the actual peril of their position, there were moral reasons why the possibility of war between Turkey and the Entente should be painful and repugnant to the Armenians. By virtue of sim ilarity of character and ideals they had always been drawn to the people of France and England, and to the people of Russia they were united not only by a certain understanding and sympathy, but, in the Caucasus, by the tie of blood. To fight Russia would be to help in the slaughter of their own brothers. Hitherto, in all the Turco-European wars except the Balkan War of 1912, in which as citizens of constitutionally gov erned Turkey they had been obliged to participate, they had been spared the necessity of taking the field on the side of their deadly enemy because of their proscription as Christians from the Turkish military service. But now, if the constitution were lived up to, they would, in the even$ of war, be obliged to take up arms in defence of the despotic Young Turks and the Central Powers, and on behalf of prin ciples which they had always abhorred. What had they been consist ently throughout their history but a lance never in rest, a pilgrim al ways on the road, a martyr forever at the stake in the cause of political and religious democracy ? A sardonic reminder of their known allegiance to these things appeared in the Constantinople comic paper, "Karagoz" in the early days of the war. It depicted two Turks in earnest discussion. "Where do you get your* war news?" asked one. "I do not need war news," replied the other. "I can follow the faces of the Arme nians I meet. When they are happy I know the Allies are winning, and when they are depressed I know that the Germans have had a victory." Just as there is no equivalent for the word "compromise" in all their rich language, so there had been no room for it in the course of their hazardous national existence. It was too late for them to adopt a rene gade policy. At best the officials and the men of military age could but perform their duties grimly and without show of enthusiasm, hop ing against hope that they might thereby purchase immunity for the 210 THE ARMENIAN HERALD civilian population from the Djihad, or the massacre, which a general disturbance in Turkey was likely to portend, and of which there were already threatening rumors. As Turkish sympathy for the Central Powers grew more and more apparent, it became the one aim of the Armenian leaders to dissuade the Government from joining forces with these nations. As members of the Turkish parliament and as Ottoman citizens they tried to make it clear that such a course would be fatal to the life of the Empire. In this opinion some of the Turks of the Conservative party are said to have concurred. But when the Young Turks showed no inclination to heed the advice, some of the deputies of the interior provinces and other Armenian leaders decided to meet in conference at Van and Erzeroum for the pur pose of determining what course, in the event of war, would best iafe- guard the Armenian population. It is vitally important for us to realize that the question of winning the Armenians to the side of the Central Powers had already been upper most in the minds of the Young Turks; and that at a time whem so much hinged upon the attitude which this or that people would take, when other nationalities were bargaining back and forth for terms with both of the great contestants, the Armenians of Turkey, too, had at least an ostensible chance to barter their honor for their lives. There is every reason to believe that their ultimate destruction had been determined upon from the outset. (See "Documents presented to Vis count Grey" by Viscount Bryce—English Blue Book.) But the Young Turks, intriguers as well as murderers, preferred, if possible, first to utilize their prey for their own disgraceful ends. The story of this at tempt and its failure of accomplishment reflects the sheer heroism of the Armenian people and is one of the noblest episodes in the annals of the war. The scene occurred simultaneously in the cities already referred to, Van and Erzeroum,—Van, originally founded by Semiramis as a sum mer city, later the capital of a long line of Armenian kings ; a city over looking the great salt lake of Van, five thousand feet above sea level ; a beautiful city made more beautiful by the industry of her inhabitants; a city of orchards, vineyards, and gardens ; and Erzeroum, situated at an even higher altitude and, like Van, in the center of that part of ancient THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 211

Armenia to the soil of which the race had clung with the greatest tenacity. It was to these classic Armenian strongholds that the Enver- Talaat government sent their representatives for the purpose of induc ing the Armenian leaders, assembled there in convention, to incite their brethren across the Russian frontier to take up arms on the side of Turkey. The story comes to us through many channels, but I quote it as given

in Document 21 in the English Blue Book already referred to :

According to the project of the Young Turks, the Armenians were to pledge themselves to form legions of volunteers and to send them to the Caucasus with the Turkish propagandists, to prepare the way there for the insurrection. The Young Turk representatives had already brought their propa gandists with them to Erzeroum—27 individuals of Persian, Turkish, Lesghian and Circassian nationality. The Turks tried to persuade the Armenians that a Caucasian insurrection was inevitable; that very shortly the Tartars, Georgians and mountaineers would revolt, and that the Armenians would consequently be obliged to follow them. They even sketched the future map of the Caucasus. The Turks offered to the Georgians the provinces of Koutais, and of Tiflis, the Batoum district and a part of the province of Trebizond ; to the Tartars, Shousha, the mountain country as far as Vladivkavkas, Bakou, and a part of the province of Elizavetpol; to the Armenians they of fered Kars, the province of Erivan, a part of Elizavetpol, a fragment of the province of Erzeroum, Van and Bitlis. According to the Young Turk scheme, all these groups were to become autonomous under a Turkish protectorate. The Erzeroum Congress refused these proposals, and advised the Young Turks not to hurl themselves into the European conflagration. The Young Turks were irritated by this advice. "This is treason!" cried Boukhar-ed-Din-Shakir, one of the delegates from Constantinople: "You take sides with Russia in a moment as critical as this; you refuse to defend the Government; you forget that you are enjoying its hospitality!" But the Armenians held to their decision. Once more before the outbreak of war between Russia and Turkey, the Young Turks tried to obtain the Armenians' support. This tim* they opened their pourparlers with more moderate proposals, and ne gotiated with the Armenian representatives of each Vilayet. At Van, the pourparlers were conducted by the provincial governor Tahsin Bey, THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 21*

Russia equipped but grudgingly the Armenian volunteers and instead of sending them as a compact unit, arranged to have them scattered over the front. The Armenians saw that Russia was not really with them. The High Command not only did all in its power to make the situation difficult for the soldiers ; it behaved in a very unkind and unscrupulous way to the Armenian civilian population. Still the Armenians tried to keep their spirits. The volunteers were popular with the Russian rank and file and, eager to have part in a war waged against their most cruel foe, they overlooked the unsatisfactory stand of the Russian government. While these events were progressing in Russia, the Young Turks, in furiated by the refusal of the Armenians of Turkey to acquiesce in their nefarious and much counted-upon Caucasian scheme, were putting the loyalty of these their fellow citizens to the severest tests by "requisition ing" their property in a wholly wanton and ominous way, and by send ing battalions formed exclusively of Armenians to the most exposed fronts, there to be mown down by French and British shells. Naturally these outrages filled the Armenians with intense indignation, but in general they restrained themselves, and carefully refrained from any act of even seeming disloyalty, in order to give no pretext for further reprisals. But there was no avoiding the end that had been prepared for them. It has been too long an obsession of the Turkish mind. And now that it was clear both to the Turks and to their German accomplices that the Armenians would never consent to become the tools of Turco-German design, there was every reason, to their mind, why it should be imme diately accomplished. For the first time in years they felt themselves wholly free of the restraint which the attitude of Europe had hitherto to some extent imposed upon them more than that, they enjoyed the full protection of a Power whose philosophy coincided exactly with their own and whom they believed to be invincible. The war hung like a cur tain of fire between them and the outside world. In the chaos of the moment they could work out their intentions wholly unchecked and with out fear of punishment. But unlike the days of Abdul Hamid, some of the Armenians were now armed, and unless they could be rendered defenceless the struggle 214 THE ARMENIAN HERALD would take on the character not of massacre but of civil war, an event uality by all means to be avoided. As a preliminary step, therefore, they decided to murder the Arme nian soldiery throughout the country simultaneously and en masse, after forming them into "labor battalions"; and at the same time to decoy and murder the prominent Armenian leaders. Then they would fall on the civilian population, and as Talaat Bey expressed it, "put an end to the Armenian question for the next fifty years." It was a piece of per fectly regular Turco-Prussian strategy.

In less than a year the deed has been accomplished. The Armenians of Turkey to the number of about a million, old and young, rich and poor, and of both sexes, had been collectively drowned, burned, bay- onetted, starved, bastinadoed, or otherwise tortured to death, or else deported on foot, penniless, and without food, to the burning Arabian deserts. How shall we name the dastardly crime which robbed them of life and homeland? How shall we describe that catastrophe, the detailed accounts of which, as Mr. A. P. Hacobian, of London, in his book "Arme nia and the War," so fitly says, "unfolds to the horrified gaze of man kind of a vast column of human smoke and anguish rising to the heavens as the incense of the most fearful yet most glorious mass-martyrdom the world has even seen" ? To attempt to do so—is it not almost an irrev erence to the august dead? We of the powerful West, who might long ago have averted all this agony and appalling waste of precious human resource, had we been honorable enough to fulfill even the most elemen tary obligations of our great religion—what is there for us to say by way of sympathetic tribute in the presence of this sublime agony, this break ing of a nation's body, this rending of a nation's soul? It is for us to remember that they went to their death, man, woman, and child, not only as martyrs to the sacred ideal for which their fathers had made immemorial sacrifices ; not only as victims of hideous despot ism and base political intrigue; but also virtually as noble prisoners of war in the interest of our cause which, in spite of threatening pressure, they had resolutely refused to betray. A poignantly magnanimous climax to a singularly unbefriended national career! Yet, although until "the future dares forget the Past, their fate and fame shall be an echo THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA and a light unto eternity," how would the great heart of mankind wish that in the midst of the flames which were destroying our temporizing and materialistic civilization, these, the wholly innocent, might somehow have been spared ! But, no, amid the smoke and glare of the universal conflagration, the tragedy plunges forward, and a scene from which we shrink forces it self upon our eyes. Those cordons of men and boys bound together and hurled from precipices or thrown into the sea, or bayonetted, still warm and sometimes still breathing, into great trench graves which they themselves had dug, or felled by an axe, each in his turn, as they wait, herded in lonely valley, or in prison yard, or rained upon by the fire of great guns as they stand awaiting "orders," or listening to the reading of some spurious proclamation; those women "praying in the flames," or lying in their own and their children's blood upon the hearthstones or by the roadside ; the unending procession of the deported who, unrooted from their ancestral home, dragged from the beautiful springtime of the Armenian highlands, are driven forth to the scorching deserts, there to die of hunger, heat and drought; the mothers dying in childbirth upon the road, or begging the casual passer-by to take from them their adored and lovely babies and being refused even that tragic boon ; those mothers who, unable to carry their children, or to endure the sight of their suffering, await with both eagerness and dread the sight of lake or river into which they may cast them as a final act of mercy; those children crying for their murdered parents, for their lost brothers and •isters, as they too march forward to their own deaths; the maidens weeping for their lost lovers or struggling with the demons who drag them off to slavery ; all while Turkish and German officers look brutally on, and give orders to the convicts —recruited from the prisons for this murderous purpose —who herd the procession ever forward beneath the blows of their heavy goads: these are but the blurred outlines of that immense hecatomb to the gods of Lust and Blood which dominated the land.

But the dead will not permit us to remain with them. There are other heroes who command our homage. In the midst of the universal car nage, the civilian population of certain towns and villages, raised to a pitch of superhuman courage by the knowledge of what threatened both 216 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

them and their nation, waged a defensive warfare which, considering all the circumstances, may justly be regarded as absolutely unmatched. In most cases, after these stubborn resistances had failed for want of ammunition, the inhabitants were burned in their churches, or in wooden concentration camps erected for the purpose, put to the sword or tor tured to death; but in the districts bordering the Russian frontier they sometimes managed to escape by throwing in their lot with the Russo- Armenian volunteers and the regular Russian army, retreating or ad vancing with these as Fortune dictated. These defences, although part of the chain which united those of Bel gium, France, Italy, and Serbia, were conducted under circumstances which recall Thermopylae, and the famous sieges of antiquity. They are destined to live forever in the immortal Hero-Book of our battle- scarred world. In the midst of a struggle carried on by means of sub marines, gas bombs, air ships and tanks, these pictures of primitive war fare flash out upon us veritably as from the Classic Age. Although the records of the towns and villages of each vilayet shine with deeds of individual and community valor, in certain spots, like Van, Sassoun, and Djibal-Moussa, Armenian heroism was illustrated in more commanding if not in more intesified form. The wonderful story of Djibal-Moussa, a town of Cilician Armenia overlooking the Mediterranean, is bound to become a classic, both be cause of its gallant and picturesque quality, and because of the thrilling rescue of the beleagured mountaineers by the God-sent French flagship, Ste. Jeanne d'Arc! The resistance of Sassoun, too, although fatal in its ending, will for ever enhearten the souls of valiant men. Let me quote the story as it comes to us in Document 22 of the English Blue Book:

While the "Butcher" battalions of Djevdet Bey and the regulars of Kiazim Bey were engaged in Bitlis and Moush, some cavalry were sent to Sassoun early in July to encourage the Kurds who had been defeated by the Armenians at the beginning of June. The Turkish cavalry in vaded the lower valley of Sassoun and captured a few villages after stout fighting. In the meantime the reorganized Kurdish tribes at tempted to close on Sassoun from the South, West, and North. During the last fortnight of July almost incessant fighting went on, sometimes even during the night. On the whole, the Armenians held their own on THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 217

all fronts and expelled the Kurds from their advanced positions. How ever, the people of Sassoun had other anxieties to worry about. The population had doubled since their brothers who had escaped from the

plains had sought refuge in their mountains ; the millet crop of the last season had been a failure; all honey, fruit, and other local produce had been consumed, and the people had been feeding on unsalted roast mutton (they had not even any salt to make the mutton more sustaining) ; finally, the ammunition was in no way sufficient for the requirements of heavy fighting. But the worse had yet to come. Kiazim Bey, after re ducing the town and the plain of Moush, rushed his army to Sassoun for a new effort to overwhelm these brave mountaineers. Fighting was renewed on all fronts throughout the Sassoun district. Big guns made carnage among the Armenian ranks. Roupen tells me that Gorioun, Dikran, and twenty others of their best fighters were killed by a single shell, which burst in their midst. Encouraged by the presence of guns, the cavalry and Kurds pushed on with relentless energy. The Armenians were compelled to abandon the outlying lines of their defence and were retreating day by day into the heights of Antok, the central block of the mountains, some 10,000 feet high. The non-com batant women and children and their large flocks of cattle greatly hamp ered the free movements of the defenders, whose number had already been reduced from 3,000 to about half that figure. Terrible confusion prevailed during the Turkish attacks as well as the Armenian counter attacks. Many of the Armenians smashed their rifles after firing the last cartridge and grasped their revolvers and daggers. The Turkish regulars and Kurds, amounting now to something like 30,000 altogether, pushed higher and higher up the heights and surrounded the main Armenian position at close quarters. Then followed one of those des perate and heroic struggles for life which have always been the pride of mountaineers. Men, women, and children fought with knives, scythes, stones, and anything else they could handle. They rolled blocks of stone down the steep slopes, killing many of the enemy. In a frightful hand- to-hand combat, women were seen thrusting their knives into the throats of Turks and thus accounting for many of them. On the 5th of August, the last day of fighting, the bloodstained rocks of Antok were captured by the Turks. The Armenian warriors of Sassoun, except those who had worked round to the rear of the Turks to attack them on their flanks, had died in battle."

There is a wealth of material concerning Van, which the Armenians held for four weeks against a German-led Turkish army. To defend 218 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

themselves, the civilians were obliged to manufacture their own powder, to construct their own mortars, and even to make their own guns. We learn that they succeeded in making from two to four thousand cart ridges a day, that "the blacksmiths made spears to be used if necessary

when the ammunition was all gone" ; that they dug trenches and under ground passages through which they blew up Turkish barracks and

entrenchments ; and that in the very midst of the most furious bombard ments, the Normal School band played Armenian national airs and the

Marseillaise to enhearten the fighters ! "All the people of Van, without exception," says an eye-witness, "worked with one soul. Those who had arms and were able to fight rushed to take their stand and stop the Turks from entering the Arme nian quarters, and those who were able to work took spade and shovel to go to strengthen the fighting men's positions by constructing trenches and walls. The little boys worked as scouts, the women and girls un dertook the care of the sick and of the children and did all the cooking and sewing for the fighters. "To save their lives and honor all the Armenians of Van had placed their services at the disposal of the Military Council, who awarded crosses and medals to encourage those who were worthy of them. I was present when a little girl received one of these medals. During the retaking of a position in Angous Tzor she bravely went ahead, spied out the ground and brought back news that the Turks had laid no traps for the advancing Armenian soldiers." The actual fighting force of Van numbered only 1500 men, but by their skill and strategy, no less than by their valor, and with the de voted backing of the other inhabitants, they forced the enemy finally to evacuate their positions. "At midnight, on the 17th of May, 1915," says the same eye-witness, "the town criers went through the town crying "Victory.' . . The whole city was in an uproar; some went to look at the entrenchments ; others to look at the burned Turkish quar ters; and others to visit the fortress, captured that night, and over which a banner waved, bearing the symbol of the Cross. "Shortly after, news came that the Russian army with the Armenian

Volunteers was in sight. The joy of the people was boundless ; tears of gladness and of emotion for what they had suffered during the past THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 219

month rolled down their cheeks as they made them welcome." They fired salvos from the captured Turkish guns and "laid the keys of the captured city and Castle at the feet of the Russian General."

But to the eternal infamy of the Czar's government, the heroic resist ance of the Van and other Armenians of the region, as well as the valiant efforts of the Russo-Armenian volunteers, was partially undone by the mysterious conduct of the Russian army. The prospect of an eventual occupation by Russia of the Armenian plateau, as arranged by a secret treaty between her and the other Powers of the Entente—later pub lished by the Bolsheviki—was evidently dictating a policy hostile to them. An unaccountable retreat was almost immediately ordered, which exposed the now defenceless population either to all the ravages of a forced march over the frontier or to the mercy of the oncoming Turks. The obvious design was to accomplish the depopulation of the country, and thus to prepare the way for the Russian colonization, which even now was beginning to take form in the bands of Russian Cossack peas ants who were actually pre-empting Armenian lands." This shameless and terrible policy was crushing to the spirits of the Armenians of Russia, as well as to the already agonized hearts of those still on Turkish soil. But surrender was impossible, and they persisted in their desperate struggle against the Turco-German program. The fall of the Czar's government, which in the natural order of things would have been to them a blessing, only aggravated and intensified their im mediate peril. They had been deprived of the bulk of their own fighting men at the beginning of the war, it will be remembered, by transfer to the Western front, and when the Russian regular were withdrawn, they were thrown entirely upon their own meager resources. The only re course was to organize what resistance they could, in conjunction with the Georgians. So early as May, 1917, anticipating this general demoralization of the Russian army, the Armenians had sent representatives to Petrograd to urge upon the Kerensky government the speedy return of the Arme nian regulars for the defence of the Caucasian front. But the govern ment could do little for them. The delegates therefore formed in Petro grad a committee of Armenian military men for the purpose of finding ways and means of effecting this end. With all their efforts, however, 220 THE ARMENIAN HERALD they succeeded, in six months, in transferring only 35,000 men. These were joined with volunteers and formed into army corps. To add to the terrors of the situation, the Tartars rose in open league with the Turks and were burning bridges, cutting railroad communica tions, and attacking the Armenians from all sides. This was an enormous handicap, but the Armenians none the less succeeded in fighting their way through and holding the front against the advancing Turkish army. Then came the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, by the stipulations of which part of Russian Armenia was ceded to the Turks ! This the Armenians had the daring utterly to repudiate, and for a time, with the co-operation of the Georgians, they continued to resist the Turkish assault. Then the Georgians capitulated, and the Armenians went on with the struggle single-handed, conducting themselves so valiantly that as late as July 14, 1918, Mr. Balfour was able to say in the British Parliament: "We follow with the deepest sympathy and admiration the brave resistance which the Armenians are offering to the Turkish army." And although the Armenians of the Erivan district were, in the language of Lord Robert Cecil of the British Foreign Office, "at length compelled by main force to suspend hostilities" and come to terms with the foe, other Armenians of the Caucasus, under the leadership of Generals Andranik, Nazarbekof, Pakradooni, and Rostome, are continuing the fight to the present hour. And of the Armenians of Erivan, Lord Robert says: "Great Britain and her allies understand the cruel necessity which forced them to take that step, and look forward to the time, perhaps not far distant, when the allied victories may reverse their undeserved misfortunes"; and he acknowledges their services at length, saying, among other things, "that they had thrown themselves into the breach which the Russian breakdown left open in Asia by taking over the Caucasian front, and for five months delaying the Turks' advance, —and that they thus rendered important service to the British army in Mesopotamia." While these sublime actors were playing this immensely significant part, unsustained by the help or fellowship of their European comrades at arms, and scarcely knowing what the Fates, even in the event of victory, would have in store for them, but resting ever on their abiding: faith in Ultimate Justice, other Armenians, of the Dispersion, were fight THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 221 ing with the Allied forces in the Foreign Legion of France, with the English in Palestine and Mesopotamia, and in the United States army. And the civilian Armenians, men and women, were doing all in their power, as doctors, nurses, engineers, Red Cross, and Liberty Loan workers, to help on the general cause of human freedom. The welcome and encouragement which these received from the Allied governments brought new life to their lacerated but undying hope of an emancipated Armenia— a hope which became assurance when America, taking the sword, announced for all mankind the new international Apocalypse : "But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts —for de mocracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free."

VI

IN THE WORLD COURT

When Tamerlane arrived before Sivas," we are told, "the pearl of Armenia, thousands of children met him with garlands of roses. He had both the children and the roses crushed under the hoofs of his horses." And on the neighboring plain—called to this day "The Black Field,"—he erected one of his huge pyramids of skulls. This was in the fourteenth century. In 1915, the descendants of Tamerlane, in union with the Govern ment of Germany, were responsible for crimes throughout the length and breadth of the Turkish Empire, before the magnitude, the cruel finesse, the "cold commanded lust" of which even the horrors of their ancient prototype pale. Of this the testimony of Signor Gorrini, Italian Consul-General at Trebizond, published in the journal "II Messaggero" of Rome, August 25, 1915, and republished in the English Blue Book, concerning the fate of the Armenians of Trebizond alone would serve

as ample proof : 222 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

"It was a real extermination and slaughter of the innocents", he says, "an unheard-of thing, a black page stained with the flagrant vio lation of the most sacred rights of humanity, of Christianity, of na tionality. The Armenian Catholics, too, who in the past had always been respected and excepted from the massacres and persecutions, were this time treated worse than any —again by the orders of the Central Government. There were about 14,000 Armenians at Trebizond— Gregorians, Catholics, and Protestants. They had never caused disorders or given occasion for collective measures of police. When I left Trebi zond, not a hundred of them remained. "From the 24th of June, the date of the publication of the infamous decree, until the 23rd of July, the date of my own departure from Trebizond, I no longer slept or ate; I was given over to nerves and nausea, so terrible was the torment of having to look on at the whole sale execution of these defenceless, innocent creatures. "The passing of the gangs of Armenian exiles beneath the windows and before the door of the Consulate; their prayers for help, when neither I nor any other could do anything to answer them; the city in a state of siege, guarded at every point by 15,000 troops in complete war equipment, by thousands of police agents, by bands of volunteers and by the members of the 'Committee of Union and Progress' ; the lamen tations, the tears, the abandonments, the imprecations, the many sui cides, the instantaneous deaths from sheer terror, the sudden unhing ing of men's reason, the conflagration, the shooting of victims in the city, the ruthless searches through the houses and in the countryside ; the hundreds of corpses found every day along the exile road ; the young women converted by force to Islam or exiled like the rest; the children torn away from their families or from the Christian schools, and handed over by force to Moslem families, or else placed by hundreds on board ship in nothing but their shirts, and then capsized and drowned in the Black Sea and the River Deyirmen Dere —these are my last ineffaceable memories of Trebizond, memories which still, at a month's distance, tor ment my soul and almost drive me frantic. When one has had to look on for a whole month at such horrors, at such protracted tortures, with absolutely no power of acting as one longed to act, the question nat urally and spontaneously suggests itself, whether all the cannibals and all the wild beasts in the world have not left their hiding places and retreats, left the virgin forests of Africa, Asia, America, and Oceanica, to make their rendezvous at Stamboul. I should prefer to close our interview at this point, with the solemn asseveration that this black page in Turkey's history calls for the most uncompromising reproach and for the vengeance of all Christendom. If they knew all the things THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 223 that I know, all that I have had to see with my eyes and hear with my ears, all Christian powers that are still neutral would be impelled to rise up against Turkey and cry anathema against her inhuman Government and her ferocious 'Committee of Union and Progress,' and they would extend the responsibility to Turkey's Allies, who tolerate or even shield with their strong arm these execrable crimes, which have not their equal in history, either modern or ancient. Shame, horror and dis grace !"

For almost six centuries Armenia has been compelled to sacrifice her children and her roses—her flesh and blood, her culture, and the fruits of her toil—to an insatiable Moloch of savagery and greed, and to the later years of this ordeal by blood and fire the great outside world has re mained, we must repeat, a passive spectator. One of these mass-sacri fices was exacted, as we know, so short a time before the war as the year 1909, when 20,000 persons were massacred at Adana and in its environs. But not a movement was made to arrest the holocaust. Other gods, in addition to those of Turkey, required then their blood oblations. Now, however, the vengeance which follows violated moral law has finally overtaken all the world and, in the vision born of agony and re morse, the world will now make to Armenia what amends it can. And what are these amends? In a word, they are the restoration to the Armenian people of their ancient fatherland where, in the free exercise of their genius and devotion, they may have the opportunity of building a state which shall be worthy of the sacrifices they have im- memorially made for the sake of religion, nationality, progress and free dom. We cannot give them back their dead. But we can and must make this belated act of reparation. It is America's and the Allies' sacred promise that justice shall at length be done to the small nationali ties. And to what people does the world owe more than to this, which veritably has been sacrificed for the sins of the world? The solution commends itself even on other grounds than the all- sufficing one of justice. If not to the Armenians, to whom should we grant their ancient patrimony? What other race installed in this re gion, on the borderland of East and West, would serve world needs so well as they, —they who have been repeatedly called the "natural inter mediaries between Orient and Occident"; they whose administrative ability has already been so amply demonstrated in the number of states 224 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

men they have given to the world, and whose industrial and commercial abilities, whose sobriety and perseverance, are matters of common knowledge. Even in modern days, have they not filled high administra tive posts in the service of the British Empire, of Russia, Turkey, and Persia ? It is acknowledged that England's success in governing Egypt is largely traceable to the genius of Nubar Pasha who, both because of his personal gifts and his Armenian origin, was able sympathetically to interpret the needs of both East and West, and to whom, upon his death, the Mohammedans and Christians of Egypt united to erect a monu ment. As ministers of public instruction, as prime ministers, as ambas sadors and as all kinds of lesser officials, they have figured successfully in the political life of all these countries. And as for the question of national defence, what race is better able to defend order than this which has proved itself the bravest of the brave and which, under Rus sia, has never been without its distinguished warriors, from the days of the general, Prince Pagratian, who was "the opponent of Napoleon in 1812," down to those of General Samsonoff who died on the Poland front in the present war "trying to relieve the strain on Paris," and General Andranik and his colleagues, last in the defence of the Cau casian front. The fact that the Turks, by resorting to the device of keeping them unarmed throughout the centuries, were able to murder them at will is merely a proof of Turkish cowardice. Whenever they were known to possess arms they were generally avoided by both Turks and Kurds. In the Caucasus, Russia has depended very largely upon them in the maintenance of order. It was they who constituted, to a great extent, the gendarmerie. Moreover, if not in a free Armenia, where then shall we place this race ? It is not to be thought for a moment that we shall expect them to live again under some Turkish hegemony. To expect them to submit to the authority of the would-be annihilators of their nation would be to do a fundamental violence to the moral nature of all mankind. It would signify a return to that hideous pre-war morality, in which fair was so often foul and foul was so often fair. Even before the conclusion of hostilities the world has fully made up its mind upon this point. The merits and claims both of the Armenians and of the Turks it has already clearly defined. The verdict of Mr. William T. Stead that the Turk is THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 225

but "a barbarian encamped upon the ashes of the civilizations which he destroyed," is only one echo from the chorus of classic and contem porary British and Latin opinion, while Heinrich von Treitschke's view may suggest even to defeated Germany the undesirability of further alliance with, or support of, this monstrous and anachronistic rule. "A near future," he writes, "will, it is to be hoped, blot out the scandal that such heathendom should ever have established itself on European soil. What has this Turkish Empire done in three entire centuries ? It has done nothing but destroy." For an American judgment with regard to Turkey's past and future, we may turn to the words of Mr. Henry Morgenthau, recent American ambassador to Constantinople, who was witness to the evil power of the Turks as it displayed itself in the terrible year of 1915. "After 450 years of misrule," Mr. Morgenthau says, "the Turks at last are going to be deprived of their domination over the Christian, Jewish, and Arabian population of Turkey. There must be no maudlin sentiment or emotional sympathy about their treatment. They stand convicted of wholesale murder in the first degree, of committing the most atrocious crimes and beastly tortures of the ages ; of maintaining an unjust and incompetent government. "They have demonstrated their absolute inability to govern either themselves or the nations that they have conquered. "They have never assimilated the peoples whose territory they have overrun. "They have lived all these years as parasites, maintaining their power by brute strength. "They have really given nothing to these countries, no architecture, no literature, no art, no progress of any kind. "They have sapped the life-blood and the energy of the occupants of these lands. "They have deprived the people of security of life and property, thereby taking away all incentives to any unused energy or to the keep ing in line with the progress of the time. "In fact they have cowed the people into a condition of rebellious though subdued submission. They have ruled by might and fear and not by right and love. . . They have deprived themselves of the best THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 227 not be amiss to quote a statement made by Mr. Samuel S. McClure in his Obstacles to Peace; "However difficult the various questions involved in the peace settlement," he writes,— "and no one can exaggerate the almost insoluble questions —the real problem of the war is Asiatic Tur key. The settlement of this question may involve a continuous series of devastating wars at longer or shorter intervals for generations." This was written in 1916, when the world situation wore a different aspect from that of today. The Russian Revolution had not then oc curred and America had not entered the war, and there was no reason to suppose that the partition of Turkey, along traditional lines, among the victorious European powers would not follow the cessation of hos tilities. But even today in a world made new by these events, Mr. Mc- Clure's statement still stands in the opinion of all who are giving thought to the issues of that decisive battle of the World War which we are in the habit of naming the Peace Congress. The Turkish Empire still presents possibilities for rivalry and discord which are not common to the other countries the destinies of which are now a matter of world debate. Mr. McClure's words are more than a statement of generally recognized truth. They are a solemn warning. They suggest the imperative neces sity for a determined pre-Peace Congress educational propaganda which shall eliminate the possibility of any such settlement as might lead to future disaster. We are all fully aware of the extent to which Turkey, both because of her criminal character and her central geographical position, has al ready figured not only in this but in numbers of other wars which have embroiled Europe. Should she again be the occasion or the means of precipitating another general war, it would probably mean the destruc tion of Western civilization, for, as the great historian Ferrera has re cently said, we could not survive another such catastrope. To attempt to solve this outstanding problem upon the old lines of expediency and compromise would be to point the sword at the very heart of Europe and America.

The drama which I have attempted swiftly to trace in the foregoing sketch is destined therefore to have a tremendous epilogue, since upon the solution of this central problem may be said to depend the fate not only of our chief protagonists but of the entire world. Hence this people 228 THE ARMENIAN HERALD become once more the moral arbiters, as it were, of a universal des tiny; the token by which shall be registered the triumph either of De mocracy or Autocracy, our victory or our defeat. In the imperial and economic point of view of the baser elements of Europe as well as in that of the Turkish despotism, the region so recently contested for will still be an object of extreme covetousness. And by evidence already at hand we may anticipate the battle which these fac tors will wage on their own behalf. Claims will be put for ward both in the interests of the present ruling race and of the foreign imperialists and exploiters; and in case it seems another solution from that which should be applied to other disintegrat ing empires —Russia or Austria for example; and Turkey-in-Europe, as requiring settlement by a code different from that demanded by condi tions in Turkey-in-Asia. We are concerned only with the solution based upon the grounds of absolute justice which alone, we hope, the peoples of the world will tolerate. And for guidance we can do no better than to turn to Gladstone, that prophet of the Near Eastern question whose noble and inspired warnings Europe ignored, to humanity's inestimable cost. Mr. Gladstone is discussing this same issue as it presented itself following the Treaty of Berlin : "My meaning, Sir," he says, "was that, for one, I utterly repelled the doctrine that the power of Turkey is to be dragged to the ground for the purpose of handing over the Dominion that Turkey now exercises to some other great State, be that State either Russia or Austria or even Eng land. In my opinion such a view is utterly false, and even ruinous, and has been the source of the main difficulties in which the Government have been involved, and in which they have involved the country. I hold that those provinces of the Turkish Empire, which have been so cruelly and unjustly ruled, ought to be regarded as existing, not for the sake of any other Power whatever but for the sake of the populations by whom they are inhabited. The object of our desire ought to be the de velopment of those populations on their own soil, as its proper masters, and as the persons with a view to whose welfare its destination ought to be determined." This point of view is, of course, none other than the one to which both the Allies and America have solemnly committed themselves. It is THE TRAGEDY OF ARMENIA 229 simply another lamp, a glorious one from the Past, to show the way. If this majestic estate called the Turkish Empire is to be rescued per manently from the despoiler and the conquest seeker, it will be because a settlement has been found adapted to the just and legitimate interests of all the native populations, Armenian, Syrian, Greek, Arab, Jews, and even Turk. What form this general and complicated settlement may take is not here a matter under speculation. But the solution called for by the Armenian claims is fortunately not so indefinite or so involved as to prohibit prophecy. While it may be true that, as Mr. Arnold Toynbee has said, the frontiers of the future Armenian state "cannot be forecast, they must include the Six Vilayets— so often promised reforms by the Concert of Europe and so often abandoned to the revenges of the Otto man Government —as well as the Cilician highlands and some outlet to the sea." To these provinces will naturally be added the Armenian ter ritory acquired by Russia. The question as to whether there are still enough survivors to popu late such a state can most fortunately, in spite of the repeated attempts at national annihilation, be answered in the affirmative. It will not be necessary for us to lean wholly upon the noble suggestion offered by M. Paul Doumer, late President of the French Senate, who recently said that should lack of numbers be urged by the enemy as an obstacle to an independent Armenian state "the dead must be counted with the living." The paucity of numbers is not so dire as to endanger in any way the Armenian hope. When Greece finally achieved her liberation from the Turkish yoke her numbers had been reduced to about 500,000, and Serbia and Bulgaria were equally decimated when they achieved theirs ; and yet these states have stood and their populations have multiplied. Armenia, with the Russian provinces, with Persia, and with the Dispersion to draw upon, together with the refugees in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Palestine, and the Armenians of Constantinople and Smyrna, who have in general been spared, is numerically in a stronger position than were any of the Balkan states. To defraud the Armenians of their in dependence because of the losses they have sustained, or for any other reason, would be not only to commit a monstrous outrage, but actually to accomplish the very end designed by their arch enemies,— to drain the brimming cup of their long sacrifice in company with these 230 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

criminals. This the world will never consent to do, and it is with a high hope of a just and complete deliverance that Armenia will present her self at the World Court.

It will not be the first time that this Figure has presented itself before an International Congress. But whereas in the past she came as an un known supplicator, as an alien champion of a long forgotten cause — still in her quaint Crusader's dress —to throw herself, alas, in vain,

upon the chivalry of the Great Powers, her sisters in religion and race ; one marvels to record, that tomorrow she will come, her unsurrendered cross still upon her breast, as def ender-at-arms of the victorious cause of World Democracy, —its last defender at the farthest outpost of the field of war in that long embattled region : a mysterious figure still, like one risen from the dead; a nation without a state, without navy, and even without army in the ordinary sense, a nation whose banner is scarcely known to any but her own children; and yet the nation which, in pro portion to numbers and resources, has paid the highest impost of life and treasure in the whole gigantic conflict. But for all the heroism of her gallant, her exalted sons and daughters she will wear no sword. In her right hand there will be a higher symbol of her might—the palm of her long martyrdom. Will the nations assembled there understand the full significance of this sublime Figure as she makes her plea for justice? Will they de fend her from the Powers of Chaos and Darkness which have sought to destroy her in their rapacious desire to possess themselves of her in heritance? Will they uphold the spiritual verities of which she is the symbol, and in the perfect triumph of which alone lies the peace and safety of the world? Armenia will seek no crown or sceptre, nor will there be in her eyes the fire of revenge or lust for conquest. As throughout her history, so will she still aspire for freedom, for culture, for progress and for peace, —for all that man holds good. The nations of the world, assembled in that great Council, will surely at last understand the grandeur, the pity and the meaning of her sacrifice, and by setting the seal of their approval upon her aspirations for democracy and light, they will indeed pay grateful tribute to the memory of her martyrs and bear testimony to their faith in the ideals for which those martyrs died. (Continued from January number and concluded in this number) THE PRAYER OF A DESPERATE MOTHER

BY EGHIA TEMIRJIPASHIAN

With shuddering heart the mother lightly touched her son's burning eyes with her thumb and fore finger, eyes which were fast closing upon the bosom of mortal obscurity. Extending her hand toward the first object within reach, —a phial, —she hurled it to the ground and raised her arms heavenward above the spilt water and crumbling fragments in mute appeal, as if to say: "This prayer is a new one. Such a prayer has never before ascended the throne of Omnipotence!" This was the first stanza of the mother's prayer. The arms of the bereaved mother were outstretched toward the pic ture of the Mother of God hanging above the pillow of her son. Instantly she tore the picture to tatters, pitiably crying: "Mother of Jesus whose heart remains unmoved toward my son's wailing, and his mother's sup plication, descend to the foot of the coffin of my prematurely dead son !" This was the second stanza of the mother's prayer. Behold, she drew from beneath her son's pillow his adored crucifix, exclaiming: "A pair of sticks of unequal lengths sublimely shaped into a crucifix, embracing the universal silence. Wood of Ages powerless to even save a child's life, again take your original shape !" Distracted with grief she shattered the cross, impiously dropping it to the floor, and lifting her hands heavenward, her eyes fixed upon the lifeless form of her son, she cried tearfully : "Here am I, an animated cross !" This was the third stanza of the mother's prayer. "Lamp, are you still burning, when the sun of my beloved child's life is eclipsed ; lamp which I filled with fair oil, my fairest, grayish-yellow oils, with my pathetic prayers ? The fame of my son's life has expired, and you still absorb oil." She then shattered beneath her feet the lamp which had ever burned before the picture of the Mother of God. This was the fourth stanza of the prayer of the desperate mother. And with this personal disposition, which is behind every imagina tion, a new creature had been composed. She flung her hands heaven

2S1 232 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

ward with a gesture as if to eclipse the sun. It was midnight. "You shall never arise again!" This imperative decree was the last stanza of the prayer of the mother, as well as the end of her life. In the morning the mother and her son were placed together in the same coffin.

Translated from the Armenian by Missak Turpanjian

REVIEW OF THE MONTH

GREEKS AND ARMENIANS

We appreciate the following letter from Dr. Ion expressing once more the friendly relations between the Greeks and the Armenians. We feel sure the bond of friendship will be stronger when Armenia, as an independent state, joins Greece to defend common interests and serve civilization in Asia Minor.

To the Editor of the Armenian Herald: The memrandum submitted by Mr. Venizelos, the Premier of Greece, to the Peace Congress at Paris, is a document of paramount importance, not only by reason of its lucidity and the cogency of the arguments with which the claims of Hellenism are championed but also on account of its recommendations as to the rights of Armenia. A statesman of the calibre of Mr. Venizelos could not have failed to see the justness of the aspirations of the martyred Armenian race and the practicability of the realization of the age-long dreams, of the Armenian people. Greeks and Armenians withstood for centuries not only the misgov- ernment of the Turk, but they had also to submit to a most degrading and humiliating serfdom which is the unhappy lot of the Christian "Raya" in the Ottoman Empire. At last the atrocities which were perpetrated by the Turks against the Armenian populations for a long series of years, to which the Greek people also (though in a less degree) have been subjected, have linked the two nations together in a closer friendship and co-operation for the realization of their national aspirations, and for a real alliance between the future Armenian State and Greece. The creation of a New Hellas REVIEW OF THE MONTH an

on the Western Coast of Asia Minor, through the incorporation with Greece of that territory, together with a sufficient hinterland, and the creation of a strong Armenian State in Eastern Asia Minor will conduce to the tranquility of Anatolia and check any predatory tendencies on the part of the Turks or the Turkish Government, which may possibly be al lowed to continue its existence in Central Asia Minor. From my friendly associations with many Armenians and the close study which I was able to make during my long stay in Constantinople, I am convinced that Armenia will not only bring tranquility and order out of chaos and anarchy, but will also become the beacon of civiliza tion in the middle East, contributing thereby to the attainment of the general happiness and prosperity of humanity. Armenia and her people may be assured that they will find in Hellas and its people the warmest supporters of the re-creation, unification and preservation of "Haiastan." Yours very truly, (Signed) Theodore P. Ion. New York, Feb. 3, 1919.

THE ARMENIAN BUREAU OF LONDON

Wb are glad to present the following report »f the Armenian Bureau «f London for the benefit of our readers.

The Armenian Bureau was instituted on February 25th, 1918, having ita Headquarters at 153 Regent St., London, W. L

Connections The first task of the Bureau was to establish connections with all im portant Armenian bodies and to focus in itself general public opinion. Therefore it has been in communication with His Excellency Boghos Nubar Pasha and his delegation, the Armenian National Union of America, National Centres, in Egypt and at Geneva, the Armenian Information Bureau at La Hague, the editors of all well-known Arme nian journals and other public men. It has also tried to get in touch with Armenian centres in Russia; but owing to the difficulties of com munication, it has not yet succeeded. The Bureau is also in touch with the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, by whose 2S4 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

request it sends a fortnightly report on Armenian affairs, gathered from Armenian newspapers and other sources, as well as with the Ministry of Information. We have sent to many English public men—circulars drawing their attention to Armenian affairs. Nearly all the news cir culated through these channels appeared from time to time in Conti nental papers, as well as in journals published in Egypt and America. Several of the French and other Continental papers have written special articles on news supplied by us. The Bureau is almost daily visited by people of note, and journalists seeking information. Connections thus formed have led to an exten sive correspondence. The Bureau is in constant communication with other Bureaux and Associations having objects similar to its own, suck as those of the Czecks, Jugo-Slavs, Poles, Zionists, Greeks and others.

" [ Press Almost from the first day of opening, we have circulated Armenia* news to the press. Notwithstanding the difficulty of getting anything inserted in the public journals that is not directly connected with the war (space being curtailed by the scarcity of paper) we have succeeded in getting all the circulars we have sent published in one newspaper or another. News from us has appeared in all the London daily papers (morning and evening), the Sunday papers, and most of the provincial papers. We have also made arrangements with Reuter's Agency for telegraphing all our news to America, the Continent and the Colonies. All the news communicated either directly by ourselves or througk Reuter has been inserted solely on account of its value, as we have of fered no payment. One of the principles of our Bureau is to circulate only the most accurate intelligence. In the first stages of our activities our communications were received with reserve by some of the English papers. But what made some of the Editors cautious, at first, with regard to our news was that some English people seemed surprised that Armenians could fight in their own defence. The only way to dissipate this idea was to state the facts, and for that reason we sent to the papers some particulars of Armenia! activities, which were extensively published under such striking titles as "Armenia's Resolve"; "Fight to Death in Defence of Their Country" {Westminster Gazette), (about one column); "Armenian Renaissance" REVIEW OF THE MONTH US

(Morning Post) ; "Armenians Fight to Death" (Globe) ; "Armenian Patriots. Determination to Defend National Existence in the Caucasus"

(Daily News) ; "Hindering the Turks. Armenian School-boys pledge themselves to the Battlefield" (Star) ; "Armenian Resistance to Turks in the Caucasus; If we are to perish, let us perish with honor" (Lan cashire Post). "The Armenians resisting the Turkish advance" (Northampton Echo, also Aberdeen Journal) ; "Heroic Armenians de termine to fight the Turks" (Western Press), etc. Many other provincial papers used similar titles. All the titles given above belong to only one report sent by us, which appeared also in con tinental papers. Since then reports sent by us have called forth even more striking headlines and many more comments and leading articles favorable to our cause. These reports seem to have caught the pubilc eye and brought it home to the English people that the Armenians in the Caucasus are not only defending themselves but have helped the cause of the Allies by having checked and delayed the eastward advance of the Turks. This correction of the public judgment is an important factor in favor of our cause. We have arranged for the publication of special articles periodically in the English papers. Armenian papers published abroad have translated and inserted our news with comments appreciative of the work that the Bureau is doing.

Publications

This Bureau, so far, has published pamphlets: "The Tragedy of Armenia," by the late American Ambassador at Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau, (An official and authentic account of the recent treatment of Armenians by the Turks.) 2. "The Armenian Question," in the Ameri can House of Representatives, a speech by Lieut.-Col. Little of Kansas, (the longest speech delivered in parliament in favor of our cause since the time of Gladstone). 3. "The Tragedy of the Caucasus," by Mikael Varandian. Memorandum presented to the 18th annual Conference of the British Labor Party. 4. "The Armenians," by Emily J. Robinson. 5. "Armenia's Charter," an appreciation of the services of Armenians to the Allied Cause, by Lloyd George, Clemenceau, A. J. Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, Viscount Bryce and General Allenby. 6. "Constantinople, the Solar Plexus of the War," by an obscure Diplomatist. 7. "Impres sions of Armenia," by Lieut.-Col. the Hon. Walter Guinness, D. S. O., 2M THE ARMENIAN HERALD

M. P. 8. "The Armenian Trek," by C. L. McCluer Stevens. 9. "The Future of the Near East," by Col. Sir Mark Sykes, Bart., M. P. 10. "The Clean-Fighting Turk, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow." 11. "The Chil dren of the Illuminator," by the Rev. Father Nicolai Velimiorvic, D. D.

We have also published the following leaflets : 1. "Armenia's Charter," Letters exchanged between Lord Robert Cecil and Viscount Bryce), re printed from the Westminster Gazette. 2. "Armenians and Baku" (Let ters exchanged between Lord Robert Cecil and Viscount Bryce), re printed from the Daily Telegraph. 3. "Transcaucasia and the Caspian," reprinted from the Globe. 4. "Turkish Enormities," Appeal by the Armenian National Delegation. All these pamphlets are issued in a most attractive form and have proved a great success. Favorable notices of them have appeared is the papers. Other pamphlets are in preparation and will appear in due course. Conclusion

To sum up, the Bureau has established itself and has gained recogni tion; not only from the British, but also from the Continental press. After some little time has elapsed, it will be better able to estimate the results of the steps it has taken to extend its work still further. During the few months which have passed since the establishment of the Bureau more Armenian news has been inserted in the press through us than has ever been published since the commencement of the war. Hitherto all supply of news to the press has been carried on by individ ual effort. The Bureau is now established as an organized body, and ha» all conveniences and connections for promoting systematic propaganda in different directions. The evidence of this is that it has sent out, in addition to innumerable letters, thousands of copies of circulars to the press as well as to individuals interested in Armenia. The Bureau is now a centre, to which anyone can apply for informa tion relating to Armenia. A. Raffi, Secretary.

ARMENIA AND PRESIDENT WILSON

The following address was presented to President Wilson by the Armenian citizens of Manchester on the occasion of his visit to Man chester on December 30, 1918 : REVIEW OF THE MONTH 28f

"On this auspicious occasion of your visit to the Metropolis of Indus try in the North of England, we, Members of the Representative Arme nian Committee of Manchester, on behalf of the Armenian Colony en gaged in commerce and industry, beg to join our humble, but most hearty welcome to that of the other citizens of this city. "Our hearts are filled with joy, and stirred with high hopes by your presence which is fraught with such significance for the reign of Jus tice and Freedom throughout the world, and for the realization of those high ideals which you have expressed and impressed upon the world as the sole means of upholding civilization. "The Armenian Nation has already a deep sense of her indebtedness to America for the missions, educational and charitable Institutions, they have so generously maintained in Turkey, and for the inestimable good they have done in raising the standards of education, life and ideals. "To your beneficient influence our race of ancient civilization so •ruelly oppressed and so savagely persecuted, and yet so full of vitality and potential power of growth, confidently looks for the boon of Free dom in which it may peacefully develop its gifts and serve in the Near East as an important factor of Western Culture and progressive life which it has steadfastly pursued under the most adverse circumstances. "May complete success attend your noble Mission."

The following telegram was forwarded to President Wilson by the Armenian National Union of America on February 25, 1919, the day after the President spoke in Boston. We have quoted elsewhere the words of the President with regard to the Armenians in that eloquent address :

President Woodeow Wilson: White House, Washington, D. C,

Armenian National Union of America joins in wishing you a hearty welcome and express its entire devotion and loyalty to the cause of the League of Nations so eloquently championed by you which is destined to prevent wars, and also safeguard the freedom and Independence of Armenia under your noble leadership. MlEAN SEVASLY, Chairman, Armenian National Union. M6 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

THE PRO- ARMENIAN CAMPAIGN

WHILE the pro-Armenian Campaign is vigorously pursued until recogni tion and the realization of Independent United Armenia is achieved it may safely be said that it reached its climax in this country with the great banquet held at the Hotel Plaza, New York City, on the evening of February 8, 1919, by the American Committee for the Independence of Armenia. We shall therefore, close the career of The Armenia* Herald with a review of that historic event. The chairman of the Committee, Honorable James W. Gerard, pre sided with a most distinguished group of prominent men, both Euro pean and America, gathered around him. After dinner exercises began with a historic pageant representing three thousand years of Armenia* History. The Star Spangled Banner (which might have preceded the pageant) was then sung by Mrs. Dikran Donchian, Miss Lucine Para- gian, and Mr. Philip Bennyan, three Armenian talents. [Here cables were read from the Foreign ministers of various European nations, some of which might be quoted. President Wilson cabled as follows : "Your cable from the American Committee for the Independence of Armenia has struck a responsive cord in my heart and I beg that you will assure the committee that I shall be as watchful as possible to do my utmost im Armenia's behalf."5 A wholly characteristic and magnanimous utter ance of our great President. The Roumanian legation expressed its "most heartfelt sympathies for the Armenian nation and concurs abso lutely in all efforts made to secure and insure its too well-merited inde pendence." Sonnino, the Italian minister, in dispatch \Senor said his that "in the general adjustment of international orders the problem of Armenia must necessarily find the solution demanded by justice and also by the superhuman sacrifices of her persecuted peoples.") Mr. Bal four cabled that "Great Britain deeply sympathizes with the purposes which your Committee are celebrating and trusts that the labors of the Conference may fully satisfy your wishes." His Excellency Boghos Nubar, the president of the Armenian National Delegation in Paris, has voiced eloquently the appreciation which every Armenian feels for all the friends of Armenia. He cabled that "the formation of your Com mittee is an unmistakable affirmation of our own faith in the justice of our cause. Today we have put our trust for the recognition of oar REYIEVT OF THE MONTH

rights in God, in your great President, in your assured support and in our own resolute will to live and to be grateful to the noble and glorious Republic across the Atlantic." Greece, who has expressed her sympathy for Armenia on so many other occasions, sent her assurance that "Armenia will constitute an independent state, and when she will enter her new life she will find Greece a friend upon whom she will always be able to rely fully." After a song, Armenia, sung by Madame Yvonne de Treville, Mr. Gerard (with a few introductory remarks to the effect that Armenia cannot be denied justice in the great task of reorganization of the world which the Peace Congress is attempting) introduced the first speaker of the evening, Honorable Charles Evans Hughes. He announced that the hour of liberation has come and that Armenia must be left alone to work out her own destiny, the very point of view which Mr. Moorfield Storey expressed in the Boston banquet to the satisfaction of the ma jority of Armenians. Mr. Hughes was followed by His Excellency Michel Tsmetos, charge d' Affairs of Greece, who once more expressed the warm relations of the Armenians and the Greeks. Honorable Miran Sevasly, as the representative of the Armenian National Delegation in the United States, then thanked the distinguished gathering for their generous efforts in behalf of Armenia and assured them that Armenia will continue to be the standard bearer of western civilization in Asia. And, finally, after a song, Haiastan, sung by Mrs. Dikran Donchian and Miss Lucine Paragian, Honorable William Jennings Bryan addressed the * gathering by one of his lucid speeches which thrilled the hearts of all. (The readers will find a synopsis of these speeches in this number of the Herald). The meeting came to a close with the singing of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Even this brief outline of the great banquet will make any words on our part unnecessary to convince the reader that the Armenian question has taken strong hold on the rank and file of the American public. To substantiate this statement we may be permitted to quote a part of the letter of Honorable G. M. Hitchcock, chairman of the Foreign Rela tions Committee in the United States Senate, to Mr. Vahan Cardashian, the director of the New York Press Bureau of the Armenian National Union of America. Mr. Hitchcock writes: "I am sure there exists in this country an overwhelming sentiment in favor of assisting the Armenian people to become independent and to be freed forever from the 240 THE ARMENIAN HERALD

Turkish menace. Whatever the representatives of the United States at the international congress, now being held, can do, I am confident will be done in this direction. When it is done, I have every hope that the Senate of the United States will accord to it full approval." We shall forget regard never the memorable words of jPresident Wilson with to Armenia in his noble speech of February 24, 1919, at Boston. "Have you thought of the sufferings of Armenia? You poured out your money to help succor the Armenians after they suffered; now set up your strength so that they shall never suffer again.'^J The generous hand shake of that great audience expressed the spirit of the people in un- mistable terms. We are certain that to this feeling of sympathy for the Armenians there would have been added the feeling of admiration if the President had mentioned the great military assistance which that same suffering Armenia gave for the cause of civilization. We hope our readers are paying due attention to Dr. Pasdermadjian's remarkable story (closing in this number) of Armenia's role in the present war, a story in which the martial spirit and military accomplishments of the Armenians are so tellingly related. Our case now is before the peace congress. A representative body of all the Armenians throughout the world is about to meet and discuss all the pending questions concerning Armenia. His Excellency Boghos Nubar, the President of the Armenia National Delegation in Paris, and Mr. Aharonian, the President of the Executive Council of the Republic of Ararat, have presented our claims to the accredited body of the Peace delegates and await the verdict. An Armenian Republic already exists and the duty of the peace Congress is to extend its boundaries to include the six Armenian vilayets and Cilicia, forming the United Historic Armenia. We have had occasion from time to time to speak of those forces which helped to create the public sentiment in support of Armenian Independence already set before the reader. Our efforts come to an end with this number, and we hope they have not been wholly ineffective f toward the realization of this great task. In taking leave of our readers we feel obliged to thank them for their sympathetic encouragement and kind indulgence. May we all live to see before long the United Historic I Independent Armenia, the realization of the dream of so many of its I noble sons.

a. t. 'jfl THE ARMENIAN HERALD

DECEMBER A.D. 1918

I Armenia and Her Claims Turkish Armenia and the Armenians in Turkey, Part 1 3

Armenia and America Edward Henry Clement 9

Free Armenia Albert Bushnell Hart 15

Why Armenia Should Be Free G. Pasdermadjian 20

The Tragedy of Armenia Bertha S. Papazian 29

Armenia, A poem Jean Aicard 47

Review of the Month Pro-Armenian Campaign 49

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1 THE ARMENIAN HERALD A POLITICAL AND LITERARY MAGAZINE

"One of our main objects will be to disseminate knowledge and infor mation so little known on the history, literature, civilization of the Arme nians." Published by the Armenian National Union of America. Subscription: Yearly $1.00. Canada and Foreign Subscriptions $1.50. Single Copies 10 Cents. Address all communications to "The Armenian Herald." 401-403 Old South Building, Boston.

THE NEW ARMENIA ARMENIA

Eco Delle Rivendicazioni A Literary and Political Arm ere Periodical Rivista mensile illustrate Yearly Subscription, 24 issues, Abboramenti Annui: $2.00, in advance. Canadian and Per l'ltalia L. 2-50— Estevo Fre. 5. foreign subscription $2.50. Ad Direzione Ed Amministrazione dress: Editor of The New Arme Corso Res. Margherita, 73. nian, 949 Broadway, New York. Torino, Italy.

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

ARMENIAN POEMS LA VOIX DE L' ARMENIE

Rendered into English Verse by Miss Alice Stone Blackwell. Pro ceeds for Armenian Relief. Revue Bi-Mensuelle $1.50, Price with foreign postage Redaction et Administration $1.58. For sale by N. E. Commit tee for Armenian and Syrian Re 30 Kuv Jacob, Paris VIme. lief. 3 Joy St., Boston.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS ON ARB AND ARMENIAN QUESTION

"'The Treatment of Armenians, in the Ottoman empire, 1915-16. Doci ments presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bry< London. ♦The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks, by Arnold J. Toynbee, Preface by Viscount Bryce, London. ♦Armenian Poems, rendered into English verse, by Alice Stone well. Boston, 1917. For sale by N. E. Committee for Arme Syrian Relief, 3 Joy St., Boston. Armenia: Travels and Studies, by Henry F. B. Lynch, London, Lont mans Green Co., 1901. 'Twenty Years of the Armenian Question," by James Bryce, "Transcaucasia and Ararat," pages 446-525, 1896. Bryc Travels and Politics in Armenia, with an introduction by Viscount ~ and a contribution on Armenian history and culture by Aram by Noel Edward Buxton and Harold Jocelyn Buxton, London, Elder & Co. 1914. Armenian Legends and Poems, illustrated and compiled by Zabelle Boyajian. J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., London. England, Publish* Apply to E. P. Dutton and Co. L'Armenie, et La Question Armenienne par Mikael Varandian, a\ preface de Victor Berard, Laval Imprimerie Moderne. G. Kava et Cie, 57 place de la Prefecture. L'Armenie; son Histoire sa Litterature, son Role en L'Orient, ave Introduction par Anatole France, by Archag Tchobanian, Societe du Mercure de France, 1897. Poemes Armeniens, Anciens et Modernes. Precedes d'une Etude de Gabriel Mourey sur la Poesie et l'Art Armeniens, by Archag Tcho banian, Paris, Society d'Editions Litteraires et Artistiques, 1903. *La Voix de PArmenie, Revue Bi-Mensuelle. Redaction et Admini tion 30 Rue Jacob, Paris Vlme. ♦The Witch of Golgotha, by B. Peshmalyan, Boston, Sherman, Fre and Company, 1913. A romance from the times of the introduc of Christianity in the Near East. The Tragedy of Armenia, a brief Study and Interpretation, byBertha Papazian, with an Introduction by Secretary James L. Barton, D." of the American Board. The Pilgrim Press, Boston, dollar. ♦Armenia: Its People, Sufferings, and Demands. Published by The British Armenia Committee, Queen Anne's Chambers, West ister, London.

• Books starred can be obtained by addressing "The Armenian Herald," Old South Building Boston. THE ARMENIAN HERALD

1919 JANUARY A.D.

Moorish! Storey 69 Armenia's Self-Government Vahan M. Knrkjian 60 The Kingdom of Cilicia G. P. and M. S. 72 Armenia and Her Claims G. Pasdermadjian 82 Why Armenia Should Be Free Bertha B. Papazian 93 The Tragedy of Armenia and Public Opinion The Armenia Question 104 Greece and Armenia 106 and France Armenia 108 The Armenian Massacres Review of the Month Papazian 116 "The Tragedy of Armenia," by Bertha S. Lord Bryce 118 'The Future of Armenia," an article by

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WWo ^ BnUh riding thi. «M No w^ppin*- k, pW in th. b.n«» <" •« " " ,tam. •»<> H wffl ""^ w„„„. IWrn.^.G,^