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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.

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