THE greatest care has been taken to make the foregoing pages absolutely true to fact. All that has been told of the massacres and their attendant circumstances has been taken either from thoroughly reliable published sources, or from the narratives of trustworthy eye-witnesses. In the story of the massacre of Urfa and the burning of the Cathedral the official report of Vice-Consul Fitzmaurice has been largely used, and only supplemented by the additional details furnished by those on the spot.
In one respect particularly the truth has been strictly adhered to. Every instance given of martyrdom, properly so-called, or of courage, faith, patience, or devotion, is entirely authentic. The stories of Stepanian, of Thomassian and his wife, of the Selferians, of Anna Hanum, of Gabriel, of Vahanian, etc., are all perfectly true, the names only have been altered.
This alteration of names was rendered necessary by the circumstances of the case. But every one at all acquainted with the subject will recognize the heroic lady I have ventured to call Miss Celandine. To the very remarkable character of the martyred Pastor Stepanian I have, I fear, done imperfect justice. The particulars of his death and of the fate of his children are given quite accurately, and the ideas attributed to him, and even the illustrations used, are really his own. The only slight departure from known fact has been the assumption that the quick and painless death—for which those who loved him thanked God—(to one such it brought the first tears she was able to shed) carne from the hand of a friendly Turk.
For one other departure from fact I have to apologize. I have ignored the existence in Biridjik, during the time embraced by the story, of a Protestant Church and pastor; and this although the sufferings of the pastor and his family in the massacre there would form, in themselves, a thrilling narrative. But I desired to show something of the Gregorian Church and the Armenian people, as they existed apart from any contact with foreigners. Throughout I have tried to give the impression, which is the true one, that Gregorians and Protestants have suffered and died, with equal heroism and equal willingness, for the name of Christ.
There is, nevertheless, one important sense in which facts have not been truly represented. It has been absolutely impossible to depict the worst features of these horrible crimes. To tell all we know would be simply to defeat the end for which we write—no one would read the pages. It has been necessary to cover tortures—the most ingenious, the most hideous, and the most excruciating—with a veil of general expressions, and outrages yet more terrible than any torture with a still denser veil of reticence. Of what has been endured by unnumbered multitudes of our helpless sisters, it is agony to speak; but is it not also sin and cowardice to keep silence?
An attempt has been made in the foregoing pages so to speak and so to keep silence, and especially so to subordinate the horror of cruelty to the glory of martyrdom, that the most sensitive and tender heart may not be too painfully wrung. There is indeed much excuse for the tenderhearted when they say, as they often do, "We will not read about this subject; we will not think of it. It is too horrible. Our lives are full already of tares and duties, perhaps even of Christian work. We cannot take up this burden in addition to the rest. It would sink us.”
That is intelligible and natural, sometimes even right. But it is not right that those who thus decline to examine the case should at the same time prejudge it, should dismiss with scorn, or incredulity, or carelessness, the testimony of those who, having gone down into that depth of horror, have come back burdened with an anguish which can only find relief in the effort to help the surviving sufferers. One of two things people surely ought to do—they ought to examine the evidence for themselves; or, declining this, and possibly with good reason, they ought to accept the conclusions of those who have.
In the earlier stages of the tragedy many were misled, and not inexcusably, by reports that carne from official sources in Turkey. Here is a specimen—a message sent by the Sultan to the Ambassador of England, in February, 1896, when the unprovoked slaughter of the unarmed and defenseless thousands of Urfa was still reeking to Heaven:—"That the Armenians have everywhere and always been the aggressors, that the Mussulmans have been attacked in their mosques during their prayers, that they have suffered nameless atrocities from the Armenians, for the latter had Martini guns, dynamite, and bombs, while, to defend themselves, the Mussulmans had only old, superseded fire-arms.”
Were Pascal amongst us now, he would scarcely devote to the confusion of the Jesuits his celebrated "Mentiris Impudentissime!”
Happily, the truth is known now. It may be briefly summed up in the words of Victor Bérard, an eminent Frenchman well acquainted with the East, who has devoted himself to the careful investigation of the whole question, and published the results in "La Politique du Sultan." “In the opinion and the language of all, Christians and Mussulmans, young' and old Turks,' Greeks and Bulgarians, natives and strangers, he (the Sultan) remains the promoter and arranger of all that has been done within the last two years.
Every one knows and every one says, ' He has wished it, he has ordained it. The Master has permitted us to kilt the Armenians.' This permission has cost the lives of more than Three Hundred Thousand human beings. For, besides the public butcheries, the fusillades en masse,' and the massacres with spear and sword, how many stabbings with knives, assassinations, and private murders! Besides those who were murdered, how many women, children, and old people perishing in the fields left uncultivated, in the villages infested with the odor of corpses, in that epidemic of plague and cholera which, since 1895, has desolated Turkish Armenia! Putting all exaggeration aside, we may make the following calculation. Since the 1st of July, 1894, more than 500 Armenian communities have been stricken or suppressed. Some, like those of Constantinople or Sassoun, have had more than 5,000 dead. The figure of 3,000, as at Malatia, Diarbekr, Arabkir, has often been reached. That of 1,000 is common, and the minimum of 300 has been everywhere exceeded. Van, with 10,000, seems to hold the first rank. Taking then an average of 500 dead, we remain much under the truth, and this average, for the 500 communities stricken, gives 250,000 corpses. How, in a time of unbroken peace, could a man conceive such an enterprise, and how, under the eyes of Europe, could he bring it to pass?”
It need only be added, that those on the spot consider the above figures indeed much under the truth.
A common way of dismissing the subject with a phrase is to say "The Armenians are as bad as the Turks." This may be understood in either of two senses: the first originators probably meaning it in one, while those who repeat it commonly take it in the other. It may mean, "The Turk at bottom is as good as the Armenian,—The Armenian at bottom is as bad as the Turk." Whether this be true or no, it does not affect the present question. If we see a man being murdered, we do not stay to inquire into his character and antecedents before coming to his aid. Were the Armenians the most degraded race in the world, and the Turks (originally) the noblest, that is no reason why humanity should allow the Turks to torture and outrage and slay the Armenians.
But, if the meaning is that the Armenians are as much to blame for these troubles, as much in fault with respect to them, as the Turks, it might be relevant, if it were true. True, however, it emphatically is not. Hear the testimony of Dr. Lepsius, who has made an exhaustive study of the whole question. "The Armenians are not to blame. It would certainly have been no wonder if the Armenian people, who for years, by a systematic policy of annihilation on the part of the Porte, had been given over defenseless to every kind of injustice at the hands of Turkish officials, to every sort of violence on the part of their Kourdish lords, to extortion by the commissioners of taxes, and to the utter illegality of the law courts, had risen up in a last desperate struggle against the iron yoke of tyranny. But as a matter of fact it was impossible to think of a national rising. To begin with, the Armenians, though large districts are thickly populated with them, are by no means everywhere in a majority in the provinces in question, and by the law which forbids Christians to carry arras, while allowing them to Mahometans, they are absolutely defenseless. In fact, no one in Armenia has ever thought of demanding anything like autonomy. All that was hoped for was that the Reforms should be carried out which eighteen years before had been guaranteed by the Christian Powers, and which seemed to promise to the Armenians an existence at least bearable. Through the entire district of the massacre we have not been able to discover, notwithstanding the fullness of our information, any movement (except that in Zeitoun) which could be considered to be of the nature of a revolt. The commissioners in their report were not even able to establish any act of provocation on the part of the Armenians; and when such were alleged by the Turkish authorities, the official report has proved it to be untrue. This is what occurred in Zeitoun. The Armenian mountaineers of the Anti-Taurus, being terrified by the news of the massacres in the neighboring provinces, fled in thousands for protection to Zeitoun, a natural fortress among the mountains. In the neighborhood of this town there are more than a hundred villages inhabited exclusively by Armenians, who also pressed into Zeitoun. Near the town there was a Turkish citadel, with a garrison of about 600 men. The Armenians received news that this garrison was about to be considerably reinforced, and that an attack was designed on the defenseless people in Zeitoun. The Armenians decided to forestall it; they armed themselves as well as they could, stormed the citadel, and forced the garrison to surrender before reinforcements arrived. They then fortified themselves in Zeitoun, and held it the whole winter against an army of 80,000 men, who, from time to time, were sent against them. The result of the struggle has justified the Armenians of Zeitoun, if indeed we are prepared to recognize the right of self-defense." For the European Consuls intervened, and obtained for the bravo Zeitounlis honorable terms of peace, and an amnesty. It ought to be added, however, that the promises made by the Turks were shamelessly violated, and 3,720 of the Zeitounlis put to the sword.
But are there not Armenian Revolutionary Committees, and Armenian Revolutionaries, who elaborate dark designs in secret, and throw bombs, and do other desperate things? "Certainly there were some Revolutionaries," Dr. Lepsius says again, "and in some foreign towns there are still Revolutionary Committees. Human nature must have changed if there are not, and one can only wonder that their number is so small and their action so unimportant. At any cate the Turkish Government is under obligation to them for existing, and is satisfied that they should not die out; for who would then supply the sparrows to be shot at with the cannon prepared? The editor of the Christliche Welt, Dr. Rade, has already shown up the nonsense that is put into European newspapers about Armenian "Revolutionary Committees," etc., and has passed a just judgment on the boundless credulity of our newspapers and their readers." (It must be remembered that Dr. Lepsius writes in German and for Germans.)
In fact, the Armenians and their friends would be glad to know what course of action they could possibly pursue which would commend them to the sympathies of Europe? If people are attacked, they must either submit, or resist, or run away. Run away the Armenians cannot, they are strictly forbidden to leave the country; and those who have succeeded in doing so have done it in spite of the Government. If they resist, they are rebels, revolutionaries, and the Sultan in kilting them is only "exercising his undoubted right of punishing his revolted subjects." If they submit, which is what, except in the case of the Zeitounlis, they have almost always done, they are cowards, unworthy on that account of our sympathies. Cowards! The sands of the Colisseum and the gardens of Nero in old Rome were strewn with the bones or the ashes of just such cowards, but that is not the name by which we call them now.
“Still," it is sometimes said, "the Armenians did not suffer as Christians, but as Armenians. Other Christians, subjects of the Porte, have not been molested." That, even if true, is but half the truth. Christians who were not Armenians were not killed; Armenians who were not Christians (that is to say, who renounced Christianity) were not killed. Therefore the Armenians suffered, not as Armenians alone, and not as Christians alone, but as Armenian Christians. And those Armenians who need not have suffered if they would have ceased to be Christians, suffered definitely as Christians.
But how did the Armenians concentrate upon themselves all this furious hatred? Why should they be massacred rather than Greeks or Syrians? There are several reasons. The Greeks enjoy the protection of a foreign Government, somewhat in the same way as do the Americans and the English. The Syrians, besides being less numerous, are much more under the observation and the patronage of foreigners. "The Armenians happen to be the most numerous of the Christian races in Turkey; therefore they bear the brunt of the Crusade. The Jacobites, the Chaldeans and the Nestorians have their proportionate share.”
But some say the Armenians have mute themselves particularly obnoxious to the Mussulmans as money lenders and usurers; that they have shown themselves rapacious and exacting, and greedy of dishonest gain. The same accusations were brought against the Jews in the Middle Ages, and against the Russian Jews in our own day. There is, perhaps, the same amount of truth in them. Put a clever, industrious, ambitious race under the heel of an indolent, unprogressive one, and the former is sure to seize eagerly, and not to use too scrupulously, the only power within its reach, the power of the purse. As for usury, was not 33 percent considered a fair demand in the Dark Ages, in view of the lender's standing an even chance of getting nothing at all, or of getting something very undesirable in the shape of the rack or the dungeon? Insecurity is the parent of usury.
But, granted that the Armenians in other parts of the Turkish Empire, even occasionally in Armenia itself, may have earned some popular hatred in this or in other ways, the vast majority of the victims have been,—not usurers, not wealthy merchants,—but industrious artisans, small shopkeepers, cultivators of the soil, with an admixture of the more educated classes, the most envenomed hatred being directed against those in any way connected with religion, whether as Gregorian priests or as Protestant pastors. Skilled craftsmen, who abounded amongst the Armenians, have been so nearly exterminated that some towns are left without a mason, a carpenter, or a shoemaker; in others the Turks have saved a few of these artificers alive, to supply them with the conveniences which they are unable or unwilling to make for themselves.
The Armenian character cannot be dismissed with a few hasty generalities. It is doubtful that any national character can be so dismissed; and the higher we rise in the scale of organic development, the more variety we find. "Ab uno disce omnes" is an indifferent rule even for the Fijian or the Samoan, but who would apply it to the Englishman or the Frenchman? The Armenian, heir of an old civilization, stands on a plane with the latter, not with the former. The worst Armenians—and naturally they are those oftenest found in foreign countries—show just the faults sure to be engendered in any race, and especially in an astute, intelligent, enterprising race, by centuries of oppression. These are, want of truthfulness and honesty, and greediness of gain. Against these, which may be called the national faults, there are great national virtues to set off—moral purity, sobriety, strong domestic affections, gratitude, fidelity to conviction, industry, and a very remarkable love of learning. The best Armenians—men like Pastor Stepanian—who have cast off the national faults and retain the national virtues, develop a very noble and singularly attractive character; and are besides, in the fullest sense of the word, gentlemen. "The wood is fine in grain, and takes the polish easily.”
This deeply suffering race is not faultless—what race ever was, or is, or will be?—but it is emphatically worth saving. And it is STILL in our power to save very many,—starving men,—desolate and hopeless women,—and helpless little children. Should any reader of the foregoing pages desire to bear a hand in ibis good work—and even those who have little to give may save, or help to save, one woman or one child—they may learn how to do it by communicating with the Association of "Friends of Armenia," 47, Victoria Street, Westminster.