Chapter X

, pp. 122 and 123.

IX

THE REFORMED CHURCH

It has seemed to the writer unnecessary in the preceding pages to say much about the unimportant ceremonies, forms and certain superstitious practices which have crept into the Armenian church. But it has been admitted that, owing to various causes and corrupt influences of both so called Christian and non-Christian nations about them, the Armenians were unable to preserve the noble apostolic Church in its simplicity and purity.

A brief reference already has been made to the emissaries and missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, who early, though unsuccessfully, endeavored to bring the Armenian Church under the influence and control of the popes of Rome. Yet it may not be considered a complete failure, especially after the establishment of the Mukhetarist convent and the activities of its monks, who edited many ancient Armenian works of those who were leaning toward the papal views. As the result about one hundred thousand Armenians cut loose from the Mother Church and formed the Catholic Armenian Church. This separation was completed by the appointment in 1830 of the Sultan of Turkey a patriarch over the Catholic Armenians. This missionary work has not advanced much since.

A few centuries ago news traveled a great deal slower than it does now. The great Reformation in Europe, which shook the foundations of some governments, and shaped the destiny of the nations in the west, was not expected to die out without some little stir in the east. An Armenian priest wrote a book in 1760, praising the great reformer, Martin Luther, and his work, and called the attention of the people to the need for reformation in their own church. It is a pity that his book was never printed. It was, however, more or less, circulated and did its good work. The publication and circulation of the Bible by the British and Russian Bible Societies succeeded the above incident in the beginning of the last century. These events paved the way for a greater movement.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was organized at Bradford, Mass., June 29, 1810. Mr. Parsons “on his first visit to Jerusalem in 1821 encountered some Armenian pilgrims, whose interesting conversation drew from him the suggestion of a mission to Armenia itself. ‘We shall rejoice,’ said they, ‘and all will rejoice when they arrive.’”

Several Armenian clergymen espoused the cause of reformation in 1826 at Beirut, Syria. Two of them, Bishop Dionysius and Krikor Vartabed, like Paul and Barnabas, traveled through Asia Minor preaching the Gospel to the people with great acceptance. “These brethren assured the missionaries that the minds of the Armenian people were wonderfully inclined towards the pure gospel, and that should preachers go among them doubtless thousands would be ready to receive the truth. They themselves wrote letters to their countrymen, which excited no little attention.”[83]

The publication and circulation of several thousand copies of the Scriptures and their being eagerly read by the leading men, the labors of these and other Armenian ecclesiastics, and especially the training school for priests at Constantinople, which was committed to the charge of Peshtimaljian, “a profound scholar, a theologian, and an humble student of the Bible--a sort of an Oriental Melancthon, even in his timidity”--were indubitable signs of a wonderful reformation.

Revs. W. Goodell and Bird were appointed by the board to join the Syrian Mission, which was established by Rev. Pliny Fisk and Rev. Levi Parsons, who had left America in 1819. On account of the Greek revolution then in progress, Christians everywhere, and especially in the seaports, were treated by the Turks with the greatest barbarity as they are now. Dr. Goodell wrote from Beirut, May 15, 1826:

“Human beings, whose guilt is no greater than that of their proud oppressors, are condemned without a trial, their flesh trembling for fear, their religion blasphemed, their Saviour insulted, their comforts despoiled, their lives threatened, and their bodies filled with pain, and deeply marked with the blows inflicted by Turkish barbarity.”

The condition of affairs compelled the American and English missionaries and their Armenian assistants to repair for protection under the British flag to the Island of Malta. Here Dr. Goodell and his co-workers completed the translation of the New Testament into the Armeno-Turkish in 1830.[84]

The following year Dr. Goodell was instructed by the Board to go to Constantinople and commence a distinct mission there among the Armenians. He was followed in due time by the Revs. Dwight, Schauffer, Riggs, Bliss, Hamlin, Van Lennep, Wood and others. Their work largely consisted in opening schools, translating, publishing and printing religious tracts and portions of the Scriptures, and holding religious services. In the absence of much reading material in those days, these tracts, pamphlets and portions of the Bible were eagerly sought and read by the people, and not without good results.

Indeed, a profound love for the reformation of the Armenian Church had taken possession of the minds of many leading men among the nation, who were trying to do all they could. But both their knowledge and their experience were limited; they needed a wise leader or leaders who could direct the movement in a way that would accomplish the desired end. Some of them, when they came in contact with the missionaries, thought Divine Providence had sent these men to take the lead of this noble movement. They implicitly confided in the wisdom and ability of the missionaries to do this.[85]

The wisdom, magnanimity, and the piety of those missionaries were unquestionable. They showed their wisdom in the fact that they “steadily pursued the policy of disseminating the truth without making attacks upon the Armenian Church.”

The silent influence of this reformation spread far and wide in the city of Constantinople and its suburbs. The Roman Church, through its Jesuit missionaries, had carried on the work of proselyting the Armenians for centuries, and she had thousands of adherents. As a Church she had had her experience with the Reformation in the West. She was alarmed and made the first attempt to stop its progress in the East. The patriarch of the Roman Catholic Armenians publicly denounced the missionaries and their books in 1836. His evil example was followed four years later by the Greek and Armenian patriarchs of Constantinople.

Thus the spirit of hatred and persecution was instilled by their respective representatives into the minds and hearts of different communities. But this movement being mostly among the Armenians, their patriarch took a more active part in issuing anathemas and sending them to the provinces, and he caused them to be read in all the churches.

The Armenian Church was sorely wounded by the Roman Church and its missionaries. The national church meant and still means to the Armenians a national unity, and a separation from the Church was considered a division in the nation. Ever since the Armenians lost their independence, they were known as a religious community in the Turkish empire and their patriarch as the representative of the whole people. The patriarch, as the head of the nation, and other leaders, therefore, thought the suppression of this evangelical work might be a prevention of such a division as had taken place in the case of the followers of the Roman missionaries in 1830. The patriarch and his advisers, who took violent measures of persecution against those who favored and labored for the reformation of the Church, unhappily were not aware of the fact that the intentions of the missionaries of the American Board, were very different from those of the missionaries of the Roman Church. The following is the statement written at the time by Rev. Dr. Goodell:

“We ourselves, at this place, have nothing to do with the Church, its dogma, ceremonies, and superstitions.... Nor do we make any attempt to establish a new Church, to raise a new party. We disclaim everything of the kind. We tell them frankly, you have sects enough among you already, and we have no design of setting up a new one, or of pulling down your churches, or drawing members from them in order to build ours over.”[86]

And we find this policy adhered to in the case of the brethren in Nicomedia. The bishop, priests, and the leading men of that city formed a council, and this council drew up a new confession of faith.

“Thus all who were suspected of Protestantism were asked to acknowledge by affixing thereunto their signatures. Those who would refuse to do so were to be anathematized and expelled from the Church. As soon as Rev. Dwight and Dr. Goodell were informed of the Council’s proceedings they advised the brethren not to separate themselves from the Armenian communion, saying that, if they did so, the work would not advance so rapidly.”[87]

In 1843 a young Armenian embraced Mohammedanism. But he became a prey to the remorse of his conscience for his apostacy. He, therefore, renounced Mohammedanism and reconfessed Christianity. He was seized upon and beheaded in the streets of Constantinople by the Turkish authorities, and his corpse was exposed to the public gaze for several days, as an insult to Christianity. This event aroused the indignation of the European ambassadors, who, through the English ambassador, Sir Stratford Canning, demanded and extorted from the Sultan the following written pledge: “The sublime Porte engages to take effectual measures to prevent henceforward the execution and putting to death of the Christian who is an apostate.”

The imprudent conduct of the patriarch, Bishop Matteos, by his anathemas and excommunicating those who were favorably disposed, and were endeavoring to reform the Church, exposed them to all manner of maltreatment. They “were stoned in the streets, unjustly imprisoned, ejected from their shops, invaded and plundered in their houses, bastinadoed and abandoned by their friends.” These persecutions were severe and extended into the provinces wherever there were those who loved the cause of reformation. The unwise course pursued by the patriarch to prevent separation by persecution indeed hastened the division in the church. Vartabed M. Muradian’s statement in regard to Bishop Matteos’ conduct is as follows:

“Patriarch Matteos had already begun religious controversies with the Protestant missionaries, these same controversies were travails of a new eruption. Those inclined to Protestantism were about to appear and the anathematizing course taken by Matteos very materially aided the purpose of the Protestant missionaries, because to persecute is to spread. And, behold, thus on the one hand the inconsiderateness of those inclined to Protestantism, and on the other hand the imprudent conduct of Patriarch Matteos, caused a number of our people to depart from the maternal bosom of the church and adhere to Protestantism, which forms a distinct body, choosing for itself a separate civil head.”[88]

The persecutions and the consequent sufferings of the people were severe, unnecessary, and unjustifiable. Yet whether there were sufficient reasons for a separate organizations it is difficult to say. The missionaries, however, yielding to the desire of those who wished to form a separate organization, gathered them together, forty in number, and constituted July 1st, 1846, the first Evangelical Armenian Church of Constantinople. On the following Sabbath Mr. Apisoghom Khachadurian was ordained by the missionaries and installed the pastor of this new church.

On the 20th of July, 1846, another church was organized at Nicomedia and during that summer two more churches were organized, one at Ada-Bazar and the other at Trebizond. These organizations were followed by others in different parts of the country.

The Protestant Armenians, thus organized into separate churches, formed a new community, yet were under the jurisdiction of the patriarch and up to 1847 not quite free from molestation and privation. “In the temporary absence of Sir Stratford Canning, Lord Cawley negotiated the matter with the government, and on the 15th of November, 1847, the grand vizier issued a paper declaring that the ‘Christian subjects of the Ottoman Government professing Protestantism would constitute a separate community, with all the rights and privileges permitted in their temporal or spiritual concern on the part of the patriarch, monks, or priests of other sects.’”. In November, 1850, a decree was issued proclaiming the professors of all religions equal in the eye of the law. The Protestants then were organized as a distinct civil community, having equal religious rights with the older Christian bodies.

Up to this time the work of reformation spread and progressed with wonderful rapidity, though through persecutions and privations. The readiness of those who knew the truth to spread it; the eagerness of the people to receive the truth; the unconsciously employed means of those who tried to stop this movement, by trying so to do thus spreading it, are well condensed in the following paragraphs:

“When the patriarch had hurried Bedros, the Vartabed, out of the city for his Protestant tendencies, and Vartabed had gone distributing books and preaching throughout the whole region of Aleppo and Aintab. When he had sent priest Vartanes a prisoner to the monastery of Marash, and then banished him to Cæsarea, Vartanes had first awakened the monks, and then preached the gospel all the way to Cæsarea.

“The missionaries wisely availed themselves of this rising interest in tours for preaching, conversing, and distributing religious treatises. Messrs. Powers, Johnson, Van Lennex, Smith, Peabody, Schneider, Goodell, Everett, and Benjamin, pushed forth to Tintab, Aleppo, Brousa, Harpoot, Sivas, Diarbekir, Cæsarea, and various other places through the empire.

“They soon found that they were in the midst of one of the most extraordinary religious movements of modern times, silent, and sometimes untraceable, but potent and pervasive. In every important town of the empire where there were Armenians, there were found to be as early as 1849, one or more lovers of evangelical truth. But it was no causeless movement. The quiet working of the ‘little leaven’ was traceable almost from its source by indubitable signs. It was a notable sight to see when, in 1838, the Vartabed and the leading men of Orta Keuy, on the Bosphorus, where the missionaries first gained access to the Armenians, went and removed the pictures from the village church. It was another landmark when, in 1842, the fervor of the converts not only filled the city with rumors of the new doctrines, but, after a season of special prayer, held in a neighboring valley, sent forth priest Vartanes on a missionary tour into the heart of Asia Minor. A still more significant fact was when, in that year and the next, the Armenian women were effectually reached and roused, till family worship began in many a household, and a female seminary at Pera became (in 1845) a necessity. The brethren had observed the constant increase of the inquiries, often from a distance, and they had found, even in 1843, such a demand for their books as the press at Smyrna was unable to supply. In many places and at Nicomedia, Adabar and Aintab, books and tracts began the work.

“The preaching services at Constantinople would be occasionally attended by individuals from four or five other towns. At Erzroom one Sabbath (February, 1846), there were attendants from six different places. The seminary for young men at Bebek (a suburb of Constantinople) drew visitors from great distances and from all quarters, as far as Alexandria, St. Petersburg, and the Euphrates. The native brethren also had been engaged in disseminating the truth, and the first awakenings at Killis, Kessab, and Eodosta, for example, were due to their labors.

“From this time forth the enterprise became too broad even to trace in this rapid way. If the whole movement shall ever be suitably recorded the history of this reformation will be second in interest to no other than has ever been written. There are scores and scores of villages, each of which would furnish material for a volume, and multitudes of cases that recall the fervor, faith, and fortitude of apostolic times.”[89]

Although a decree issued in November, 1850, proclaimed the Protestants equal in the eye of the law, and accorded to them protection from persecutions, yet the condition of the brethren was very miserable. Many of the younger brethren were disinherited by their parents, and thrown out of employment by their employers, for their espousal of the cause of reformation. The anathemas of the patriarch upon “the heretics” and those who would have any dealings with them, shut out the Protestants from the society of, and the business intercourses with, the people. Many, therefore, had to sell and sacrifice their properties for the necessities of life, and fell into abject poverty and had almost reached the verge of starvation.

Russia’s desire and demand to establish a protectorate over the Greek Christians in the Turkish empire, and the latter government’s refusal, led these two powers into, what is generally known in history, as the Crimean war. England and France were the allies of the Turk in that war, 1853. This Crimean war also greatly added to the misery of the Protestant community and threatened the existence of the little flock. But the ingenuity of the Rev. Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, the noble missionary, did ameliorate the condition of the Protestants. He established industries, especially the mill and bakery, where he found sufficient work for them to do; he also was able to build a few churches, in which these brethren might worship. These churches were greatly needed, and he had some balance left in hand after building them.[90]

Some good people thought that “the Crimean war was overruled for the furtherance of the Gospel by becoming the occasion, if not the actual means, for securing another concession from the Turkish government on the subject of religious liberty, a new Magna Charter for the Christian subjects of the Porte.” Some regarded this edict (the Hatti Humayaun) as a complete grant of freedom to all Christians or Mohammedans, to follow the dictates of their consciences without any molestation whatever. A few high-sounding sentences from it will show what great contentment it would have given to the subjects of the Porte if it had been meant to be fulfilled:

“Every distinction or designation tending to make any class whatever of the subjects of my empire inferior to another class on account of their religion, language, or race, shall be forever effaced from the administrative protocol.

“As all forms of religion are and shall be freely professed in my dominions, no subject of my empire shall be hindered in the exercise of the religion that he professes, nor shall be in any way annoyed on this account. NO ONE SHALL BE COMPELLED TO CHANGE HIS RELIGION.”

It is, however, nothing uncommon with the sultans and other officials of the Turkish government to promise a good deal, with the full determination not to fulfill the least.

“By the terms of the treaty of 1856 (signed at Paris), Turkey was bound in the face of the world to redress the inveterate evils and abuses of her government, and to extend to all her subjects the blessings of civil and religious freedom. There was accordingly promulgated the Hatt-y-Humayoun of 1856, in which the principles of reform embodied in the Tanzimat were renewed and extended, but the edict, like those which preceded it, remained in effect null and void. The grievances and wrongs endured since that time, especially by the Christian population, the perversion of justice, the gross administrative corruption, furnish a sufficient commentary of the futility of the attempted or promised reform of the Porte.”[91]

Had public opinion in Great Britain not been outraged by the Bulgarian massacre, the Conservative government of Lord Beaconsfield would have given armed support to the Turks even in 1877, in spite of “the perversion of justice, the gross administrative corruption” of the Turkish government, and “the grievances and wrongs endured since that time, especially by the Christian population” of the Porte.[92]

The number of the reformed churches in ten years increased to thirty, organized at different places in the empire. And it was only twenty-one years after the organization of the first Reformed Armenian Church, that the late Rev. Dr. H. J. Van Lennep reported, before the Evangelical Alliance at Amsterdam, Holland:

“There were now (1867) fifty-six churches, with two thousand adherents.” And he adds, “The use of such means [for reformation] soon produced a marked effect not so much upon the volatile Greek as upon the sober-minded Armenian, and evangelical doctrines were soon spreading among the latter with amazing power and rapidity. Providence raised from among the people men of eloquence, power, and influence, whose labors were wonderfully blessed; and great numbers soon rejoiced in the precious doctrine ‘Christ crucified.’ The young converts, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, went about lighting the torch of truth and salvation throughout the land.”

It is impossible, and incompatible with our present purpose, to give a fuller account of the grand work of reformation, which is bound to triumph and reconquer the countries once under the sway of the power of the gospel of our Lord.

Twenty-five years ago, there were one hundred and ten churches and eleven thousand and ninety-five members, seventy-four ordained ministers and one hundred and twenty-nine preachers, and eighty-five other helpers, and two hundred and three places for stated preaching, with thirty-one thousand six hundred and eighteen average attendants to services, twenty thousand six hundred Sabbath school scholars and a community of forty-five thousand Protestants, who had contributed $48,941 for all purposes during the year (1890-1891).

Within the last twenty-five years the missionary work has been steadily growing in spite of hindrances, persecutions, massacres and forced conversions to Mohammedanism by the Turks. The following brief table of statistics for 1914 may give an idea how the work was progressing before the terrible war of 1915:

The number of stations and out stations 370 The total number of missionaries 162 The total native workers 1204 Congregations 272 Organized churches 137 Communicants 13,891 Armenian Protestants 50,900 Sunday Schools 270 Sunday School Membership 29,686 Schools (total) Colleges, 8; Theological Schools, 3; Boarding, etc. 426 Total students 25,134 Hospitals and Dispensaries 19 Patients 39,503 Treatments 134,357 Native Contributions $192,127

FOOTNOTES:

[83] Bartlett, “Historical Sketch of the Missions of The American Board in Turkey,” p. 3.

[84] The Armeno-Turkish is not a distinct language; it is the Turkish written in Armenian characters.

[85] “The Orientals have an admirable kind of coolness and courage. Give them a leader in whom they have confidence, and they will follow him to the death.”--“Cyrus Hamlin.”

[86] Prime, “Forty Years in the Turkish Empire,” pp. 173-4.

[87] Nergararian, “The History of the Beginnings of Missionary Work in Nicomedia,” pp. 20-21.

[88] Muradian, “The History of the Holy Apostolic Church of Armenia,” pages 607-8. (This work is in the original Armenian.)

[89] Bartlett, “The Historical Sketch of Missions of A.B.C.F.M. in Turkey,” pp. 10-12 and 14.

[90] Hamlin, “Among the Turks,” page 258. “It had been no object of mine to have any balance in hand. It amounted, with what had already been expended for churches mentioned, to $25,000.”

[91] Milner, “The Turkish Empire,” pp. 223-4.

[92] Bryce, “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” pp. 519-20, the 4th edition.

X

CAUSES OF PROGRESS, AND HINDRANCES

The progress of this wonderful reformation may be ascribed to a few causes or agencies.

1. THE BIBLE: The Armenian Church not only encourages, but almost enforces the reading of the Scriptures among the people. They reverence the word of God. When the missionaries came into Armenia they found a common ground on the “Thus saith the Lord” to deal with the people and the clergymen. The absolute necessity of the Bible as the only standard was felt by the missionaries, as our forefathers felt it after the conversion of the nation to Christianity, and the ablest intellects have been engaged in its translation into the vernacular dialects. Rev. Dr. Goodell, nearly seventy-five years ago, wrote “Turn now to our labor among the Armenians, our whole work with them is emphatically a Bible work. The Bible is our only standard, and our final appeal. It is even more necessary for us than it was for the reformers in England, because we are foreigners. Without it we could say one thing and the priests and bishops could say another; but where would be the umpire? It would be nowhere, and all our efforts would be like ‘beating the air.’”[93]

The British and the American Bible Societies greatly aided the publication and circulation of the Scriptures through their agents in co-operation with the missionaries among the people and in many a family, town, and city the Bible itself has proved to be the mightiest means of the conversion of many. “The entrance of thy word giveth light.” “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.”

The writer’s father was engaged in business in Constantinople over fifty years ago, and when he returned home to Sivas, he brought with him a copy of the New Testament, which he had bought from a colporteur. This copy of the New Testament was read by him and his sons, and the simple reading of the word of God resulted in the conversion of the writer and several members of the family. His only sister was employed by the missionaries for over thirty years as a Bible-woman, until her deportation in 1915.

After his conversion and study a few years in the mission school at Marsovan, it was the privilege of the writer to spend some time in teaching in a small town. The Protestant people, whose children he taught, had no preacher and they urged him to preach for them. Not ability nor preparedness, but necessity, compelled him to engage in this double duty. One day he was asked by a man who belonged to the Armenian church, and whose brother (deceased then) was one of the first converts to Protestantism, whether he knew how the Protestant work began there. His reply was “No,” and what the man told him is something like the following:

The first Protestant brother who came to the town went to a coffee-house,[94] and took out his Bible and attempted to read it to the men there; but they refused to listen to him. He was so grieved that he burst into tears. This attracted the attention of an elderly man, well-known in the town as “Uncle Toros.” He came to him and asked what was the matter. He answered that he would like to read the Bible and speak to them about the wonderful love of God, but they objected to his so doing. Uncle Toros was much interested in the earnestness of the man and his plans, and, being very hospitable, on learning that he was a stranger in the town invited him to his own house. According to the custom of the country everybody that is able has a guest-chamber for guests. Uncle Toros also was a very influential man in the town and he had many friends and relatives, who with the neighbors used to come to his sitting-room and spend the early part of every night.

Thus our brother had a good audience every evening to whom he could read and expound the Bible. No one could insult or molest him--he was Uncle Toros’ guest. This was the beginning of the work at Zara, about thirty miles northeast of Sivas, and when the writer was there, nearly fifteen years later, he found about twenty families composing the Protestant community.

The “two-edged sword” of the Spirit, “the Word of God” on the one hand and “the young converts, full of faith and of the Holy Ghost” on the other hand, have been still going about “lighting the torch of truth and salvation throughout the land” and have thus wrought this marvelous reformation which until within a short time has been progressing rapidly. The Turkish government is trying a plan, which the Roman emperors tried in the early Christian centuries, namely to destroy the Christians and Christianity in the empire.

The following instance combines three phases in one, to wit: the mighty power of the word of God, heroism of those who believe in the power of that Word and the violation of all promises of religious freedom, the marked cruelty and perversion of justice of the Turkish officials.

Avedis (good news) Zotian was a boy of ten or twelve years of age when the writer was acquainted with him, over forty years ago. He was quiet, unassuming, skillful and industrious and was engaged in his father’s trade, copper-smithing. Through his cousin, who was a constant reader of the Bible and a friend of the writer, and still better a warm friend of the reformation, Avedis was brought under the influence of the Word of God. He finally, about 1885, avowed himself a Protestant and joined that community. He became very active, and, like the prophet Jeremiah, felt that “His word was in his heart as a burning fire.” He had a long distance to go to the services and would not be able to stop on his way and speak to others on the topic of religion. He, therefore, thought one Sunday in 1889 to have a verse on a piece of board and to carry it along so that the people could see and read it. The words from Matt. 4:17, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” were written in the Armenian, and Avedis had his friend Sahag, another Protestant Armenian, to write the same in the Turkish language. Avedis started to church with the above text. He was arrested on his way by the Turkish officers and thrown into prison. His friend Sahag also was arrested for his share of the crime and shared the corner of the prison with Avedis. The charge against these young men was that they were political agitators.

After several months’ imprisonment the unrighteous judge declared them guilty and sentenced them to be exiled for life. They, with tearful eyes, bade adieu to their friends, relatives, brothers, sisters, aged parents, and to their newly married wives, who in vain had tried to wipe away their overflowing tears. They were driven like cattle by the mounted officers to Smyrna, then sent to Africa. They were so cruelly ill-treated on their way that, not very long after their exile, Avedis was taken away by his Heavenly Father to rest from his labors. And what became of Sahag no one knows. The Turkish government’s early determination to root out the Christians and Christianity from the empire lacks no evidences. Only the selfish European powers, the guardians of the Christian subjects of the Porte, were unwilling to see them.

2. EDUCATION. Next in importance to the Bible and the activity of the natives in spreading it, the superiority of the educational institutions of the mission and the love for the truth in the native youth will claim our attention, as potent factors in the progress of this reformation.

Since the entrance of the Turks into Western Asia the ancient centers of learning have been lying in ruins; the photophobic malady of Mohammedanism and its fanatic devotees had extinguished the numerous lights which have been burning for centuries on the altars of learning. These wild beasts of mankind had broken in upon these countries, once so glorious and famous for their happy estate of civilization and culture, who had given religion and laws to the world, but now, through ignorance, superstition, and vice had become the most deplorable spectacle of extreme misery. The barbarous tyrants--the sultans of the Ottoman empire--who gloried in cruelty and aimed only at the height of greatness through sensuality, had reduced so great and goodly a part of the world to that lamentable distress and servitude under which it now faints and groans. “The true religion discountenanced and oppressed (insulted); no light of learning permitted, nor virtue cherished, violence and rapine exulting over all and leaving no security, save to an abject mind and unlooked-on poverty.”

The above description of an eye-witness was uttered two centuries before the coming of the missionaries, who have found it literally true when they came into the East. They also found in this unhappy empire “a noble race”--the Armenians--“the Anglo-Saxons of the East,” whose “standard of moral purity is also said to be immeasurably above that of the Turks around them, and they have a conscience which can be touched and roused.” Their higher standard of moral purity and superior intelligence are due to their religion--Christianity--and to their better education. For as far back as the middle of the seventeenth century, the Armenian press was in full activity in Constantinople.

It was no wonder that the Armenians had welcomed the missionaries and had they been left alone they would not have attempted to prevent the work of reformation at all.

“When the missionaries came to Turkey they were kindly received by the patriarch and clergymen, who showed great hospitality and favor to them, and encouraged them to build up schools, which they promised to support by sending their young men and priests to be educated. But afterwards the Jesuits, who are ever the uncompromising enemies of Protestantism, secretly stirred up the Armenian and Greek leaders against the missionaries and their work, whom they now began to regard with suspicion and envy. Even among the Armenian priests and college-men were those who, though they at first persecuted the Protestants, became not only their stanchest friends, but also earnest workers for the cause of Christ.”

The above quotation from a native writer is well supported by the following statement of an American writer, a returned missionary of the American Board:

“In 1834 these schools had two thousand scholars, and though supported by the people, yet, having been established by the advice and assistance of the mission, their influence was great in its favor, till the monks and priests began to preach violently against the mission and schools, ‘_and even against the patriarch for favoring them_.’ But it was too late to destroy their influence. The Armenians had become roused by the spreading light,” and “in 1835 the revival of learning and piety among the Armenians continued to advance hand in hand.”[95]

The Seminary at Bebek in 1840 commenced with three scholars. The following year the number of the students had increased to twenty-four, and many had been refused for want of funds. A few years later a female seminary was started at Pera, Constantinople, and this had a wonderful effect upon the community. Education of the female, neglected for centuries, began to revive in the East, even the adult women and matrons attempted to learn to read their Bibles and they generally succeeded well. “Fifty adult females have begun to learn to read during the year; more than fifty have already learned to read well, and many others are in the process of learning.” Wherever the missionaries went there they started schools, and these schools were not only the centers from which the light of truth radiated around, but they also became in many places nuclei for new churches.

The Bebek Seminary, in 1854, reported its number of students as fifty, and “its former pupils are employed as preachers, teachers, translators, and helpers in many places.” In the following year the demand for teachers and preachers from the seminary was so great that other schools were started--one at Tokat, and another at Aintab. The number of free schools had increased this year (1855) to thirty-eight, and the whole number of pupils nine hundred and sixty.

It was in the same year that the American Board sent the Rev. Dr. Anderson and Thompson to India and Turkey. In the previous year the Baptist Missionary Society also had sent its deputation to India. “The result of these delegations was that the character of the education of nearly all the missionary institutions of the highest grade was wholly changed. The English language was proscribed and the curriculum of studies reduced to a vernacular basis. Many schools were closed and some missionaries came home, and considerable friction was occasioned, but the new system was rigidly enforced.”[96]

Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, Dr. H. J. Van Lennep, and some other missionaries advocated the importance of a thorough education and the knowledge of the English language for the native ministry, believing that “no country was ever reformed but by its sons, and that for such a great work a better education IS necessary.” They, however, met not a little opposition from the Board and some of their associates in the mission.

“The American Board’s change of base on the matter of education” furnished an occasion--for some trouble in the field--for some Armenian young men who sought a better education abroad. But their aspiring and venturing into England and America for a thorough English education, subjected them to opposition, from some of the missionaries, and afterwards, when they attempted to secure employment in the mission-fields, they met discouragement and disappointment. Even as late as in 1880 Dr. Hamlin, advocating his position, wrote:

“Every young man who started with a good foundation of English, and of character, has done well. I recall at this moment five such cases: (1) Alexan Bezjian, now professor in Aintab College; (2) Alexander Djijisian, who spent one or two years in Edinburgh, now pastor at Ada Bazar. He is a noble and strong man in judgment and power of argument, in true insight, in theological training and as a preacher, the supervisor of many a missionary; (3) The late Broasa pastor, now head of the High School, who studied at Basle. No one will dare to impugn his character and ability; (4) Pastor Keropé, like the others, a Bebek Seminary student. He went to England and Mr. Farnsworth, instead of opposing him, had the grace to aid him. He made a good impression in England and obtained aid to build a church; Mr. Farnsworth pronounced it the best church that has been erected among the Protestants in Turkey; (5) Pastor Thomas, of Diarbekir. I do not know of a man who speaks the Armenian language who is his equal for a platform speech. He carries his audience with him. He is clear and logical. He lifts his audience to higher planes of principle, thought and feeling.”

The late Rev. Dr. Tracy, a former teacher of the writer and the ex-president of Anatolia College, Marsavan, wrote in 1904:

“During the prosecution of this [mission] work in the Turkish Empire, wise attention has been given all along to the education of the young, both in the common branches with reference to good and intelligent social and family Christian life; and in the more advanced, with reference to the Christian leadership so vitally important in the development of a community. That this principle, discerned by our own American forefathers, as a corner stone in our national structure, is just as applicable to and important in the building of Christian communities in mission lands as at home, has dawned at last upon the minds of all who seriously prosecute this foreign work. The position which Christian education has taken in missions is impregnably strong. Not only does such education improve, inform, enable young men and young women, but it finds out the able and gathers up the natural leaders; it not only educates, but makes educators. It is a means without which no Christian country, community, or enterprise has ever held permanent leadership, or ever can. The day of light is advancing in the East with the rise of the Christian colleges.

“Very great and far-reaching was the influence of that school established in early times by Cyrus Hamlin in the village of Bebek, on the Bosphorus. The first venture, though so small a craft compared with what has followed, made the wake for a whole fleet of mighty vessels coming after--Robert College at Constantinople, the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, the Central Turkey College at Aintab, Euphrates College at Harpoot, Anadolia College at Marsovan, the American College for Girls at Sculari, the Institute at Samakov in Bulgaria, St. Paul’s Institute at Tarsus, the International College at Smyrna, with leading schools for girls in the interior like those at Marash, Marsovan (Sivas Girls’ High School, and Sivas Teachers’ College, etc.), and elsewhere. Another most important class of institutions took its rise from the same fountain--the theological seminaries at Marash, Marsovan, Harpoot, without which the others would hardly have come into existence. They introduced the gospel widely and educational progress followed. Here we have a dozen or more institutions which are the leaders of thought and makers of character in the empire.”[97]

With one or two exceptions these colleges and high schools are, or were, crowded by the Armenian boys and girls: Sivas Teachers’ College--“This College has occupied a unique position in its training teachers for important positions in the mission and in the government schools. During the last year (1914) there were more pupils than at any time in the past. The exact figures are not obtainable, but the total enrollment for the previous year was over 500.”[2]

St. Paul’s College, Tarsus--“The enrollment was the largest recorded: in the College 118, academy 142; total, 260. Of these, thirty-five were Moslems, the greatest in the history of the school. Nearly two hundred were Armenians, but Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Syrians, were represented in the student body.”[98]

Before the spring of 1915 twenty-five thousand and one hundred and thirty-four pupils were attending and receiving Christian training from the kindergarten schools up to the highest colleges in the land.[99]

3. THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE; another cause of progress of the reformed and evangelical work was and is the necessity of a Christian literature. It has been stated that the Armenian literature is largely of religious and Christian character, but the most and best of it is in the ancient Armenian language. After the translation of the Bible into the modern Armenian a new literature in the same was necessitated. This necessity was gradually being met until the war broke out. “THE AVEDAPER--an Armenian paper, published in weekly and monthly editions. It was the most attractively printed Armenian paper in the empire. It is under efficient Armenian management. There was an encouraging increase in subscriptions until the war conditions interfered with the mails and returns fell off. It was finally decided to discontinue the paper for the present.”[100] Within the last fifty or sixty years a goodly number of useful books have been written and translated into the modern Armenian language; such as school books, commentaries, Sunday School lesson helps, dictionaries, religious treatises, hymn books--“whatever is most necessary for the healthy nourishment of awakening minds in the families, the schools, the communities is published, but with sad insufficiency.”

“The mission press is connected with Central Turkey College (at Aintab). Some of the students are given aid in the printing department and in the book bindery. Besides the regular job work the press prints a monthly religious paper in Armeno-Turkish (Armenian letter in Turkish language) called the New Life. No figures are at hand for the total output, but the usual number of pages printed exceeds 700,000.”[101] If this terrible war had not interfered with the missionary work, the annual output would have been between nine and ten million pages of print.

4. THE MEDICAL WORK. The last but not the least of the causes of the progress of the evangelical work in the East is the medical work or the hospitals. Before the coming of the missionaries into the East, and the medical missionaries following them, there were some native physicians, mostly Armenians, in the country. But their knowledge of the art of healing must naturally have been in a crude state. It is no wonder when we remember the fact, that though the East, especially Western Asia, has been the seat of ancient learning, yet it has been for over five hundred years under the rule of the tyrants, the sultans, who delighted more in injustice, cruelty, and sensuality than in learning. So the reflex light of the Sun of righteousness from the West brought also healings in His wings.

Some churches and missionary organizations have been slow to learn the meaning of Christ when He “sent them (His disciples) to preach the Kingdom of God and heal the sick.” (Luke ix: 2.)

“Regular medical departments, with hospitals, are of late growth. In view of the healing mercy and saving power exerted through them, it now seems strange that their development should have been so belated. When, however, it is remembered that in missions almost everything in the way of means and measures is experimental it is not so strange that among the forces born into life and action the ‘noblest offspring’ should ‘be the last.’”[102]

Before the war there were fifteen missionary stations in Asiatic Turkey. Nine of these stations had medical departments with hospitals connected with them; 39,503 patients have been treated in these hospitals and the total number of treatments during the year of 1914 reached 134,357. This is a tremendous power for good and a marvelous blessing for a country like Turkey, yet the rulers of that unhappy country have been destitute of any sense of justice or gratitude, as the following, a few sentences from Dr. Barton’s letter to the writer, show:

Congregational House, 14 Beacon St., Boston, Mass., July 20, 1916.

MY DEAR DR. GABRIELIAN:

You ask with reference to the situation in Turkey. We have but very little definite information. Our missionaries of Marsovan have just come out under compulsion by the Turkish Government and all of the mission property in Marsoval is in the hands of the Government; also the same is true of Sivas, except that Miss Graffam and Miss Fowle were allowed to remain, and in Talas they have taken possession of the public buildings, but the missionaries at last reports were there, hoping to be allowed to remain....

Very faithfully yours, JAMES L. BARTON.

One of the hindrances to the work of still greater progress of reformation was, and is, the poverty of the Protestant community. The condition of the Protestant Armenians was very much like that of a young man falling in love with a pure, virtuous, and noble yet poor girl. The rash youth, disregarding the opposition of his parents, married the woman he loved, and on account of this he has been disinherited. Those who espoused the cause of reformation were driven out, not only from their homes and employments, but also from the use of the churches and school-houses, and even were not allowed to bury their dead in the old cemeteries. It was not very difficult for the American Board to meet some of the needs of the Protestant community, while that community was small and its needs few. But by the increase of the community its needs also multiplied. However, knowing the people as we do, their poverty was not a great hindrance. For the generous poor man is richer than the rich miser.

“Many a poor Armenian in the Koodish mountains, many a tattered villager on the Harpoot plains, used to the suffering of robbery and inured to want, brings for the support and propagation of the gospel his poor pittance, more munificent, measured by the sacrificing devotion of it, than the gifts of princes sounding aloud as they fall into the treasury. In other parts of the country there are those so humble that the dwelling of the family would hardly be valued at $25, who yet bring $25 to help build the house of worship, where they and their poor neighbors may hear the sound of the gospel.”[103]

The most prolific source of all evil influences and hindrances against the progress of reformation in the East is the Mohammedan Government. Prof. Vambery’s words might have been heeded twenty-five or thirty years ago, and many hundred thousands of lives would have been saved:

“The conviction is inevitable that until the power of Islamism is broken the true reformation of this land is an impossibility. At whose door shall we lay the blame of cherishing such a viper? That the solution of the vexed question of the political _status_ of Turkey involves great difficulties cannot be denied. But those [the European powers] that are pleased to preserve the existing state of things, as a barrier for themselves against the encroachments of an already overgrown European power, ought to take into consideration the result of encouraging the continuance of a power at once _so poisonous and so suicidal_ as that of the waning crescent.”

FOOTNOTES:

[93] Primce, “Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell, D.D.,” p. 282.

[94] The coffee-houses in the East are much like the saloons in this country, except that no alcoholic liquors are sold. People go there to smoke and sip coffee in small cups and while the time away.

[95] Wilder, “Mission Schools of the A.B.C.F.M.,” p. 375.

[96] Hamlin, “Among the Turks,” p. 275.

[97] Tracy, “Historical Sketch of Missions in Asiatic Turkey,” pp. 20-21, (A.B.C.F.M.)

[98] The Annual Report of the American Board, pp. 100, 105, for year 1915.

[99] The Armenian common and high schools--beside the Mission institutions--were many, but Abdul Hamid had reduced them. Since his overthrow they were again flourishing before the war.

[100] The Annual Report of the American Board, pp. 103, 107 for year 1915.

[101] The Annual Report of the American Board, pp. 103-107 for the year 1918.

[102] Tracy, “Historical Sketch of the Missions in Asiatic Turkey,” p. 34.

[103] Tracy, “The Historical Sketch of the Missions in Asiatic Turkey,” page 16.

XI

THE ARMENIAN QUESTION

The previous brief history of this people, especially since the introduction of Christianity into Armenia, has furnished the reader with sufficient facts to show him that the real trouble of this nation began from the time of its conversion to Christianity, and has come down to the present time.

What the Armenians have been suffering now is just a little more intensified than what they have suffered in the past by the hands of the fire-worshiping Persians. Had they received Zoroastrianism, forced upon them in the fifth century, they might have changed the entire aspect of the history of Western Asia. Or, had they embraced Mohammedanism in the seventh century, when fanatic missionary soldiers of Mohammed fell upon them, sword in hand, and massacred thousands upon thousands in cold blood, because they refused to accept the sensual religion of a sensual and bloody man, again the history of Western Asia might have been differently written.

When their infant sons were torn away from their parental bosom by the Ottoman rulers, and reared in Islamism and inured to the profession of arms, whose skill, vigor, and courage shook the foundations of the then civilized world, then, we say, had the Armenians renounced their religion and professed the Mohammedan faith and entered the army, they would have brought “to bear on the problems of the battlefield all the subtlety of intellect developed by ages of mental activity,” unquestionably would they have saved the Turkish Empire from the inevitable dissolution into which she has plunged herself. This also would have undoubtedly given a different feature to the Ottoman history.

Why have the Armenians been so cruelly persecuted, oppressed, tortured and butchered? Why were their beautiful daughters abducted, their wives ravished, they themselves massacred by the Kurds, Circassians, and Turks? Not because they belong to a different nationality--though they do--but because they belong to a different religion--they are Christians. So I beg the reader to bear in mind that the real trouble or the Armenian question, at the bottom, is the old conflict, first between Christianity and Paganism, then between Christianity and Mohammedanism, and now with Pagan-Mohammedanism.

The Turkish government found a convenient excuse for persecuting Christian Armenians under the garb of suppressing a revolutionary movement. But this movement was of a very recent origin, and altogether “harmless as to any effective force.” The Turkish misrule in Armenia, and in all parts of the Ottoman empire, persecutions, confiscations of property, forcible conversions to Islam, imprisonments, exiles, and massacres, have begun since the entrance of the Turks into Western Asia; at times they have been intensified; they are now at their height.

“Tears of Armenia” was the title of a little book which contained the report of Vartabed Paul Nathanian, who was appointed in 1878 by Bishop Nerses, the patriarch, and the civic and ecclesiastical councils of Constantinople, to take charge of the diocese of Palu in Armenia. While there, this noble prelate, following the example of the Good Shepherd, traveled through the country, visited his flock, and reported the condition of the people. His report was published. With great propriety he begins the preface in the following manner: “Tears and misery, behold, these two painful words are chosen for the theme of this present work, of which with an aching heart will I speak, and still more painful it is, that the esteemed reader will hear undeniable truths.”

The facts recorded in this pamphlet are too painful to be translated into the English language. The crimes of the Kurds and the injustice and cruelty of the government’s officers perpetrated upon the Christian Armenians run from the simplest forms of robbery and cruelty to the vilest forms of abduction, assault, outrage, torture, and murder.

The report of this venerable Vartabed Nathanian was only the confirmation and verification of the oppressed condition of the Armenians in the interior, more or less known before. For, when, in the autumn of 1876, the European powers sent their representatives to meet at Constantinople to consider the cruelties of the Turkish government, the massacre of the Bulgarians and other disturbances in the empire, Bishop Nerses attempted then to draw attention to the condition of the Armenians. But his efforts were fruitless, as the conference itself was futile; a peaceful adjustment of the differences was not agreed upon. The Russo-Turkish war consequently broke out. Again Armenia had to furnish the battle-field for these two formidable combatant nations in Asia.

Russia was apparently fighting for the oppressed Christians. The Turks were called upon to combat with a Christian nation, which was fighting as the champion of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman government. The officials of the government well may say: what do we care for these wretched Christians who are a constant source of trouble to us? The ignorant Turkish soldiers and the _bashi-bazouks_,[104] Circassians and Kurds were incapable of knowing the difference between an Armenian and a Russian, between a Greek and a Bulgarian, it was enough that all of them went under the name “Christian.” It was their frequent utterance, “_Ghiaurlari kesmeli_, the infidels must be killed.” Even when the government had no war whatever there was no safety for the Christian; how much less could any tranquillity now be expected. The mountains especially were infested by those who deserted the army, and the highway robbers were at the fullest exercise of their predatory powers.

Who suffered the worst, served the most, and received nothing in Asiatic Turkey? The Armenians. The Turkish troops, by all means, would avoid on their way to the battle-field lodging at a Turkish, but always at an Armenian village, where even the most insignificant soldier was a despot. He must have everything he wished for nothing, and not depart in peace, but give some trouble to his Christian host. The writer, who was not very far from the battle-field, being on the main road leading to it, has seen these things with his own eyes. He may, therefore, say with perfect truthfulness, that these soldiers did not leave out from the category of their deeds anything evil, but the good only.

“Turkey bears a striking resemblance to the infernal regions, which good George Herbert said are paved with broken promises; her conduct in this war has been marked by the vilest crimes of which a nation can be guilty. She has not only committed the crime of arming and letting loose bands of undisciplined, fanatic robbers, whose passions, fed by the religious exhortations of their bigoted priest, and strengthened by the proclamation of the Sheikh-ul-Islam, have led, as _the Porte knew full well and firmly intended that they should lead, to the brutal massacre of the survivors of the Bulgarian rebellion and the cold blooded murders of the inoffensive Christians in Armenia_.”[105]

The fearful consequence of this war was the ignominious defeat of Turkey, and her readiness to come to terms with Russia whose armies were almost at the gates of Constantinople. So the representatives of these two combatant powers met at San Stefano, in March, 1878, and drew out the treaty which bears the name of the place. The 16th article of this Treaty was suggested and by the earnest solicitation of the patriarch and the leading Armenians of Constantinople, the Russian representative inserted the article for the express purpose of securing the protection of the Armenians. This article runs: “As the evacuation by the Russian troops of the territory which they occupy in Armenia, and which is to be restored to Turkey, might give rise to conflicts and complications detrimental to the maintenance of good relations between the two countries, the sublime Porte engages to carry into effect, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by Armenians, and to guarantee their security from Kurds and Circassians.”

It is the opinion of some of the best Englishmen, that had the conservative government of England let the Treaty of San Stefano stand, Russia would have forced the Turkish government to fulfill her promises of reform in Armenia. But England upset and made it of non-effect by her interference merely for selfish ends. She negotiated with Turkey through the Cyprus convention of June, 1878. The following is the first article of this Anglo-Turkish convention: “His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reforms, to be agreed upon later between the two powers, into the government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories [Armenia], and in order to enable England to make necessary provision for executing her engagement (keeping Russia out of Armenia), His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England.”

The Anglo-Turkish Convention of Cyprus was a dagger thrust by a friend into the heart of Armenia; it may have been done unwittingly, yet Armenia has been bleeding ever since.

In the following month, July, 1878, the Congress of the Great Powers met in Berlin, to adjust the differences and make a smaller map for Turkey both in Europe and Asia. The indefatigable Patriarch, Bishop Nerses, sent a special deputation[106] to Berlin to petition the Congress for a Christian governor over Armenia, like that of Lebanon since 1861, and the European Powers themselves constituting the guardians of the Christian Armenians. The Congress of Berlin saw at once the justice and moderation of the Armenian request, and as a result we have the sixty-first Article of the Treaty of Berlin. But with an inexplicable stupidity, and with a criminal credulity, this Congress left the whole matter in the hands of the Turkish government, as if that wicked power was ever ready and willing to do what is right and proper, and the European Powers were to take the simple attitude of “watching over their [reforms] application.”

The Sixty-first article runs:

“The sublime Porte engages to realize without delay those ameliorations and reforms which local needs require in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds. It undertakes to make known from time to time, the measures taken with this object to the powers who will watch over their application.”

It is not enough to say that the Turkish government has failed to introduce necessary reforms, to ameliorate the condition of the Christians, or protect them from the atrocities of the Kurds, Circassians, and the Turks, since the signing of the Treaty of Berlin, for it has done more. It has determined, one way or the other, gradually to decimate and finally to exterminate the entire Armenian population in the empire. The facts of the history of the last thirty-five years bear out this assertion.

It was only two years after the signing of the Treaty of Berlin and England’s contract with Turkey that “the disturbances among the Kurds assumed a more general character in September (1880), when new troubles were reported in the district south of New Bajazid in the Sanjak of Mush, and in other parts of the same region. Incendiary proclamations were addressed to the Armenians by the insurgent chiefs, and the governor-general of Van applied to Constantinople for reinforcements but was answered that none could be spared. On the 20th of September the Kurds had destroyed thirteen Armenian villages.”

The powers who fixed their signatures through their representatives to the treaty of Berlin, “through Mr. Goschen, presented a collective note, on September 7, 1880. It refuted the statement of Abedden Pasha, that the government had already begun the work of reform, and after criticising the projected reforms, declared that they had been inadequate to the object in view and that a much greater development of the principles of decentralization and religious equality, the organization of a better police force, more energetic protection against the Kurds, a more definite provision concerning the functions of Governor-General, could alone satisfy the rights and expectations created by the sixty-first article of the Treaty of Berlin.”[107]

“On October 3, without making the slightest references to censures which had been addressed to it, and even appearing completely to ignore the collective note, the Porte, assuming a haughty tone, merely notified the Powers of what it intended to do.”[108]

From this time on it appears that the Powers thought they had done enough. It is also reported that Prince Bismarck expressed the opinion that there would be “serious inconvenience” in raising the Armenian question and the British Ambassador at Constantinople, Mr. Goschen, in anticipation, wrote to Earl Granville: “If they (the Powers) refuse, or give only lukewarm support, the responsibility will not lie with Her Majesty’s Government.”

Thus the abandonment of the cause of justice by the Powers, thus leaving the Armenians at the pleasure of the Turks, paved the way for successive massacres by the latter under various pretenses.

The Circassians, Kurds, and Turks, have always been at liberty to go about well armed, but no Christian was allowed to carry arms of any kind, not even for self-defense. In case he was found with arms, he was arrested and cast into a dungeon of indescribable torture. If the Armenians would protect themselves against their enemies, they were seized upon by military force as insurgents. Yea, a groundless suspicion was enough for the officers, who entered, by force of arms, into the Armenian Church in Erzroum (1890), desecrated the sacred edifice, disturbed the religious services of the Christians, under the pretext of searching for arms. The indignation of the Christians at the violation of their rights cost the lives of several persons, including that of the Armenian bishop of Erzroum.

Notorious Mousa Bey, a Kurdish chief, after committing numerous robberies and cruelties, murdered an Armenian and abducted his daughter; at Bitlis, he tortured an Armenian to death with red-hot iron. At the head of his brigands he fell upon another Christian family and destroyed the entire family, and ravished the women in the village of Dabovank. Many complaints and a multitude of witnesses of his outrages could hardly effect his being brought to Constantinople to answer for those charges. After all these crimes, the Turkish court of Justice--rather of “Mockery,” as the distinguished statesman, the late Mr. Gladstone, called it--acquitted him.

In the summer of 1890 it looked as if the persecution had reached its climax. The _London Daily News_ sent special correspondents to Armenia, and their reports leave no doubt that for some reason or other the Turkish government have resolved to make the lives of the Armenians unbearable.

“There is a well-founded suspicion that the sultan is deluding himself with the idea that, by supplanting the Christian Armenians by Mohammedan Kurds, he can raise up a formidable barrier to the Russian conquest of the province. The immediate result of his asinine policy is to make the Armenians look to the czar as their only powerful friend, and the feeling of indignation in this country is so strong on the subject that it is probable Lord Salisbury would not dare to interfere should Russian troops enter Armenia.”

“Mampre Benglian, the Armenian bishop of Alashgerd, has arrived at Constantinople by way of Trebizond, under guard as a criminal. The charge against him is that he advised his flock to leave Armenia and seek refuge in Persia. The Bishop was arrested and subjected to the most outrageous indignities, insulted, spat at, and flogged, thrown into a dungeon and there confined for some time before being sent to Constantinople. Owing to the remonstrances by the British and Russian ambassadors, he has been given his freedom on parole. A letter from Alashgerd says: ‘We can neither depart nor stay, and no other course is left us but to perish where we are. The Kurds and Turks openly declare that they mean to kill as many Armenians as they can, and that they have full permission.’ The Kurds have set fire to the crops of the Armenians in many places in the vicinity of Bitlis. The situation in Armenia is daily becoming more deplorable. There has been a wholesale massacre of Christians at Moosh.”

The Turkish government has revised the sixty-first article of the Treaty of Berlin, and the other signatory Powers have silently consented to it. The following is the Turkish revision: “The sublime Porte engages to realize without delay such maltreatments, persecutions, oppressions, outrages, cruelties, and murders in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and guarantees the security of their enemies, the Kurds, Circassians and the Turks, and will acquit them in case of their being brought to justice, and will assist them in case the Armenians rise against them in self-defense, by force of arms, and will declare the Christians as rebels. It, moreover, undertakes to make known to the civilized and Christian powers from time to time, that Mohammedanism and barbarism go hand in hand.” This is just what Turkey has been doing with the silent consent of the European Powers. Of course, Turkey is the chief criminal in the case and the other Powers have been accessories of her crime. And England’s share of that crime is confessed by the best of England’s sons:

“The only effect of the Anglo-Turkish convention has been to increase the confidence of the sultan that he can do as he pleases in Armenia notwithstanding Article LXI of the Berlin Treaty.

“England, therefore, is responsible in three ways. She destroyed the Russian guarantee exacted by the Treaty of San Stefano. She framed the ‘watching’ clause of the Berlin Treaty, and then, to preclude all possibility of effective pressure upon the Turk, she concludes the Cyprus convention which established an illegal British protectorate over the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan.”[109]

“In the field of Eastern politics generally the conspicuous result has been the failure--the complete, humiliating, and irretrievable failure--of the traditional policy pursued by England of supporting the Turk against Russia. That policy, first attempted by Mr. Pitt, in 1791, against the vehement protests of Mr. Burke[110] but presently abandoned, was warmly espoused by Lord Palmerston. It prompted the Crimean war of 1853, and was embodied in the Treaty of Paris of 1856. It had the lifelong support of Lord Beaconsfield, who by refusing to join Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1876 in applying pressure to the sultan, brought on the war of 1877. Public opinion in Great Britain, outraged by the Bulgarian massacre, prevented him from giving the armed support of Great Britain to the Turks in that year. But he was able to revert to and enforce that policy in the negotiations of 1878, which substituted the Treaty of Berlin for the Treaty of San Stefano, and it dictated the provisions of the Anglo-Turkish convention.”[111]

The Armenian question is simply this: Whether the Armenians should enjoy the liberty of conscience and of action according to the laws of civilization and Christianity, or whether they should be annihilated by the inveterate enemies of civilization and Christianity, the Turkish rulers. The Armenians brought this question to the decision of the Berlin Congress. The Congress decided that the Armenians must enjoy freedom of conscience and action according to the _laws_ of civilization and Christianity. Turkey, by her representatives, agreed and consented to the decision and promised to have civilized laws, and give freedom to Christianity. But no sooner was the Congress dissolved and the representatives of the nations returned to their respective governments, than the Turkish government took up the work of annihilation of the Christian Armenians. The decision, without any

## action on the part of the Powers, encouraged the Turk to return to his

mire to wallow in.[112] The historian’s sad duty is to describe the beast and his bestial acts, so far as it is permissible, and to point out the sources wherefrom he derives his power.

This work of extermination has been carried on in different ways in certain parts of the country. While in the interior small groups of Armenians have been killed and done away with, in the cities imprisonments, tortures, exiles, assassinations and compulsive conversions to Ismal have been in vogue. The following letter dated June 26, 1891,[113] published in _L’Observateur_, from its Constantinople correspondent, will show some ways of doing away with the Armenians:

“I have already written you, that in consequence of the late disturbances at Constantinople most of the Armenian prisoners have been banished, in small groups, to various distant places, in order not to attract the attention of the public. Is it possible ever to pen the tortures that these unfortunates are suffering in Turkish prisons? The penal system in Turkey is still in its primitive state, and has undergone no improvement since the time of Sultan Mehmed II (1451-1481). Many prisoners have not been able to stand the tortures inflicted upon them, and the death of one of them, Vartan Calousdian (a young man twenty-six years of age), is a new proof of their atrocities.

“The parents of this young man, hearing of his death in prison, succeeded in securing, through the almighty ‘backshish,’ the remains of their beloved in order to inter him in their family grave. While the attendants of the Church at Galata were washing the body according to the custom of the Armenian Church, they could not withhold their tears, and they were awe-stricken at the sight of numerous wounds which marked the body. The poor young man had many of his ribs broken, the palms of his hands and the bottom of his feet were burned and his breast and back striped with long burns....

“Similar cases occur quite often in Asia Minor, but the local authorities conceal them with the utmost care, and make every effort to keep them from the people. The Armenians have not even the right to emigrate from this barbarous country. I telegraphed to you yesterday that the governor of Trebizond prohibited about one hundred Armenian emigrants from leaving the port on the Massangeric steamer ‘Niger.’”

Without the slightest fear of exaggeration the reader can stretch the compass of his imagination to picture to himself the pitiable condition of those prisoners and their families in Asia Minor and Armenia proper. There was neither press nor the influence of the foreign powers; neither facilities of rapid communication, nor the possible use of the telegraph system which is controlled by the government; nor did any safety exist in the post-office system; letters were often torn open with the pretense of suspicion, where “similar cases occur _quite often_, but the local authorities concealed them with utmost care.” These unfortunate prisoners were tortured and starved to death in those filthy and infectious jails; their wives were exposed to the assaults and outrages of the enemies of their religion, their daughters were abducted and proselyted by threats, their little ones were crying for bread, but there was none to provide for them. They and their homes and families were completely ruined. Like the lambs on the thousand hills of Armenia, the Christian inhabitants of Western Asia were turned over to the Mohammedan wolves by the European Powers.

The following poem, which is translated and recomposed from the original by Mr. Thomas G. Allen, Jr., appeared with an article by the same gentleman in the New York _Herald_, about twenty-five years ago. The object of the writer was to show how the inflammatory and revolutionary literature had provoked the Turks, who, almost driven out of Europe, were also threatened in Asia. The following is his closing words:

“And now the Turks are threatened in Asia itself. Is there no possible reconciliation between the conflicting elements? Is the unity of civilization to be had only by the sacrifice of whole populations, and those above all, which [the Turks] are distinguished by the highest moral qualities--Uprightness, truth, manliness, courage and tolerance?”

Tastes surely differ. Even the bloodthirsty and bestial Turks are distinguished by the highest moral qualities according to Mr. Allen. Here is the revolutionary poem:

ADDRESS TO THE ARMENIANS

Stand firm, O Armenians! Stand firm for the land That gave thee in childhood her cherishing hand; Stand firm for thy country, thy cradle, thy grave, The country that reeks with the blood of the brave.

’Tis here in their dungeons, ’mid torture and moan The blood of thy fathers so freely has flown; And this is the land where still thou hast saved, Great glories and names, on thy memory engraved.

’Tis here, for his home, and the pleasures it brought, Our ancestor, Haik, so courageously fought; And Vartan, that champion of sweet liberty, Broke asunder the chains of foul slavery.

O Freedom, thou blessing that nations have craved, How long has thy ensign and emblem here waved! How many Armenians, so noble and brave, For thee have gone down to a premature grave!

Though fortune has struck it with terrible blows, And left alone Armenia a prey to its foes, Though subdued, yet unconquered, our nation still lives, To break the slave bonds that a base tyrant gives.

Armenia still lives, and out to the world Her flag of distress she now has unfurled; In torture and pain she utters the cry, “With freedom to live; with slavery to die.”

Oh, why should our strife be rewarded with pain, And the blood of our bravest be poured out in vain! Oh, why should our country’s most sorrowful wail, Have stirred noble souls to a cause that must fail!

Oh, why should this effort of unceasing pace, These brave souls, be given without even a trace! For this can it be that our country fares worse, And even must bear with this terrible curse?

Nay, never! Thank God, the day’s soon at hand When victory shall marshal our patriot band! For this we have prayed--but alas! ever so, Our prayers are unanswered as years come and go.

But if ever thus the fates may decree, Then welcome we death that our souls may be free; Let kind Mother Earth to her bosom enfold The corpse of a nation, all bloodless and cold.

The nations, astonished, may view her dark grave, And see the ruined homes they neglected to save; And thousand of hearts with repentance may grieve For the lost Christian nation they failed to relieve.

FOOTNOTES:

[104] Literally, “Loose-headed,” in the sense of undisciplined volunteers.

[105] Norman, “Armenia and the Campaign of 1877,” p. 372.

[106] This deputation consisted of Bishops Mugurdich, Khrimian, Khorene NerBey, DeLusignan and Prof. Minas Tcheraz.

[107] Appelton, Annual Cyclopædia, 1880, p. 689.

[108] Greene, “The Armenian Crisis in Turkey,” p. 78.

[109] _The Westminster Gazette_, Dec. 12, 1894, reprinted in the _Armenia_, London, Jan. 1, 1895.

[110] The following is part of Burke’s address quoted by Bryce: “I have never before heard that the Turkish Empire has been considered any part of the balance of Powers in Europe. They despise and contemn all Christian princes as infidels, and only wish to subdue and exterminate them and their people. What have these worse than savages to do with the Powers of Europe but to spread war, destruction, and pestilence among them? The ministers and the policy which shall give these people any weight in Europe will deserve all the bans and curses of posterity.” Quoted from Bryce’s.

[111] Bryce, “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” p. 519, 4th ed.

[112] II Peter, 2:22.

[113] Reprinted in _The Ararat_, New York, July 30, 1891.

XII

THE GOSPEL AND THE KORAN

The condition of affairs in Turkey since the signing of the Treaty of Berlin has been growing from bad to worse. The persecutions, unjust imprisonments, constant tortures, exiles and executions of the Armenians have been pointing to such terrible massacres as have been taking place.

The real and underlying cause of this state of things must now be more emphatically pointed out than it has yet been. In order to do this, certain facts of history must be briefly rehearsed. No Mohammedan can be expected to be any better than Mohammed himself; that he was a sensual, cruel and bloodthirsty man, and a relentless enemy to Christianity, Christians and the Jews, is manifest from the facts of history, his life and his teaching. “Christianity finds its ideal man in the Christ of the Gospels; the Moslem finds his in the Prophet of the Koran and the traditions.”

Some of the teachings of Christ and His disciples, and Mohammed and his followers will be put side by side to show the incompatibility of the one with the other, on account of the Heavenliness of the former and the infernality of the latter.

THE NEW TESTAMENT

Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself. Matt. 22:39.

Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them even as Elias did? He rebuked them.... For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them. Luke 9:54-56.

There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. I Tim. 2:5.

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Mat. 5:44.

Jesus said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. Matt. 22.29-30.

We are the sons of God, we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him. I John 3:2.

THE KORAN

O true believers, wage war against such of infidels as are near you, and let them find severity in you. Al Koran, chap. 9.

Verily the worst cattle in the sight of God are those who are obstinate infidels, and will not believe. Al Koran, chap. 8.

When ye encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads until ye have made a great slaughter among them. Al Koran, chap. 47.

There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His apostle.[114] The Mohammedan Creed.

O prophet, wage war against the unbelievers, and be severe unto them, for their dwelling shalt be hell. Al Koran, chap. 9.

“The meanest moslem (the Mohammedan) will have in Paradise, 80,000 servants, seventy-two _houris_ or girls of Paradise.[2]

“Mohammed declared that when he looked down into hell, he found the greater part of the wretches confined there to be women.”[115]

Go ye, therefore and make disciples of all nations. Matt. 28:19.

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. Luke 23-34.

Fight thou against them until they pay tribute by right of subjection, and they be reduced low. Al Koran, chap. 9:29.

“The Lord destroy the Jews and Christians.”[116] Mohammed.

(The above is Mohammed’s last prayer before he died.--Author).

The Bible gives women a place of great importance and service both in the Old and New Testaments. The temple had its women’s court, the synagogues and early churches had their respective places for women. Their importance and helpfulness both in the church at home and abroad are of inestimable value. But Mohammed confined them, wholesale, to the infernal regions. Ali Bey (1807) (a great authority on Mohammedanism, and a devout Mohammedan himself, whom the late Dr. Jessup quotes in his work above referred to), says: “As the prophet has not assigned any place for women in his Paradise, the Mohammedans give them no places in the mosques and have exempted them from the obligation of frequenting the public prayer.”

There is one more point of the Koran that might be contrasted with the teaching of the Bible, namely, that Mohammed fostered the arrogance and pride of his followers, without substantiating his claim:

“Ye are the best nation that has been raised up unto mankind.” Al Koran, Chap. 3:106.

The Bible gives us some passages like the above, but they are infinitely different in depth, height and breadth. “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.” I Peter 2:9. Christian religion requires “_holiness_, without which no man shall see God.” Heb. 12:14. “Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.” Matt. 5:8. Christ requires of His followers an _inward_, as well as an outward, conformity to the Character of God. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,” is the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. Mohammedanism requires of its devotees the following five things: A confession of faith that there is but one God and that Mohammed is his prophet, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and a pilgrimage to Mecca. For salvation, repentance is the only means.

“Christianity recognizes the freedom of man, and magnifies the guilt and corruption of sin, but at the same time offers a way of reconciliation and redemption from sin, and its consequence through the atonement of a divine Saviour and regeneration by the Holy Spirit.

“Mohammedanism minimizes the freedom of man and the guilt of sin, makes little account of its corrupting influence in the soul, and offers no plan of redemption except that of repentance and good works.”[117]

Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who reigned from 1876-1909, was considered by many to be a conscientious Mohammedan. Claiming also--as all the sultans from the time of Selim I--to be the lawful successor of the prophet and Defender of the faith. He was, therefore, both the head of the Mohammedan religion and also the ruler over the Mohammedan states. In the mind of a faithful successor of Mohammed, the prophet is the only ideal and his conduct the only guide to follow. To revive Mohammedanism then means the suppression of all other religions as well as the building up of all the Moslem institutions. These he continued to do until the time of his deposition.

Mohammed and his immediate successors offered to the conquered the choice of one of three things--Islam, slavery, or death. Some of the conquered accepted Islam, and thus ended their trouble on earth; others were put to death by the conquerors, who saved their victims from the misery of the world; those who neither accepted Islam nor were put to death were made semi-slaves. Both the Arabs and later the Turks needed some source of revenue which they derived from the subject nations, and also needed a class of skilled artisans and laborers. The Greeks and Armenians were very important for the maintenance of the Turkish empire, especially in its early years, and up to the middle of the last century. These nations, whether Armenians, Greeks, Jews or Syrians, however, were considered no more than prisoners of war, and were always liable to have the offer of Islam or death presented to them at any time as the caprice of the ruler may choose.

Again, the hatred and arrogance instilled into the minds of the devotees of the religion of Mohammed by the prophet and his imitators, fill every devout Mohammed with the desire, not so much to see the conversion of the world to Mohammedanism, as to wish and pray that Allah may destroy the infidels--non-Moslems--and give all their possessions to the Mohammedans. Hence, the official prayer of the Mohammedans which was used throughout Turkey and daily repeated in the Cairo Azhar University by the ten thousand Mohammedan students from all lands. It is translated from the Arabic:

“I seek refuge with Allah from Satan, the _regiem_ (the accursed). In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful! O Lord of all Creatures! O Allah! Destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of religion! O Allah! Make their children orphans, defile their abodes, and cause their feet to slip; and give them, and their families, and their households, and their women, and their children and their relatives by marriage, and their brothers, and their friends, and their possessions, and their race, and their wealth, and their lands, as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures.”[118]

The writer has attempted in the preceding few pages to show, from the Koran and from such writers as the late Dr. Jesup of Beirut (Syria) and the late Dr. Washburn of Constantinople, who had been in contact with Mohammedanism and Mohammedans almost half of a century or more, whose authority and integrity cannot be questioned, what Mohammedanism is and what it teaches. No Mohammedan ruler, or a common believer in Mohammed’s religion, especially one who claims to be his successor, dare do otherwise than what the Koran and the example of the prophet teach him. Not one of the grants, permits, promises of reform, liberty of religion, protection of persons, honor and property of the Christian subjects in the empire, made by the sultans under pressing circumstances, or by pressure from without, were ever intended to be kept. Because they could not conscientiously fulfill those promises and remain faithful Mohammedans.

One more thing which deserves to be noted is the missionary fire kindled in the heart of every Mohammedan by the Koran and the Mohammedan divines; we refer to the propagation of Islam by the sword. The extension of the Mohammedan religion depends on the expansion of the Mohammedan reign. Hence the sword is the great Mohammedan Missionary.

“Under the head of the civil laws [of Mohammedanism] may be comprehended the injunction of warring against the infidel, which is repeated in several passages of the Koran, and declared to be of high merit in the sight of God; those who are slain fighting in defense of the faith being reckoned martyrs, and are promised immediate admission into paradise. Hence this duty is greatly magnified by the Mohammedan divines, who call the sword the key of heaven and hell.”[119]

Mohammed himself inaugurated this by his teaching and example as the following incident--one of many--shows: There was a Jewish colony settled within a short distance from the city of Medina. They have been happily and prosperously living there for a long time in all things like the Arabs except their religion. They adhered to their ancestral faith and refused to believe in Mohammed as the apostle of God. This was like a thorn in Mohammed’s flesh. He gathered a sufficient force and attacked them. The Jews thought their fortified town was a secure refuge for them wherein they sheltered themselves. Mohammed besieged the town and in a short time reduced it to submission by starvation. Then followed the terrible slaughter of all the men--about eight hundred. It took a whole day, beginning early till late at night, to chop off their heads and throw their bodies into a trench. And the booty, and some women and children, he divided among his faithful warriors, and the rest he sold to the Arabs. But for himself--for his sensual gratification--he selected the most beautiful Jewess, Rihanah by name, and he kept her.

In the following pages the reader will see more of the sequel of his infernal teaching and example in the lives and acts of his followers.

FOOTNOTES:

[114] “When Gibbon declared that Islamic motto ‘There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his apostle,’ asserts an eternal truth and an eternal lie, he truly expressed its duplex and inconsistent character.”--Jesup, “The Mohammedan Missionary Problem,” p. 15.

[115] Jesup, “The Mohammedan Missionary Problem,” (published by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, Phila.), p. 38.

[116] Schaff’s Religious Encyclopædia, Vol. II, p. 1542.

[117] Barrows, “The World’s Parliament of Religions,” Vol. I, p. 579, the paper on Mohammedanism by Washburn.

[118] Jesup, “The Mohammedan Missionary Problem,” p. 31. Presbyterian Board of Publication, Phila.

[119] Sale’s “Koran,” preliminary discourses, p. 110.

XIII

MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS

The history of Mohammedanism is a continuous warfare against Christianity, and the latter alone has firmly and heroically stood against Islam in Western Asia. But through what tortures, martyrdoms, and massacres did the followers of Christ pass from the beginning of Mohammed’s religion to the present time? The answer to this question would fill volumes.

Hitherto the Turks have shown relentless barbarity, unabated intolerance and unprovoked massacres of the Christians. A very conservative estimate will not allow less than two hundred thousand Christians massacred during the last century by the fanatic followers of the self-made prophet of Arabia.

In 1821-7, during the Greek revolution, thousands of Greeks were put to death who had no other crime than being of the same religion and nationality. “Sultan Mohammed was in the habit of replying to every success of the Greek insurgents by ordering massacres, violations and enslavement in regions without defense, where there were none but women, children and inoffensive merchants.... The Turkish admiral was beaten at Samos; for that reason thirty days were spent in Cyprus in cutting off heads.... The Sultan wished to take new reprisal to terrify the _rayas_ (Christian subjects) and cause the nations of Europe to reflect.” In the island of Chios, though the inhabitants were not in rebellion, but most docile and inoffensive, yet “above forty thousand of both sexes had either fallen victims to the sword, or were selected for sale in the bazaars.” Some fled to the more inaccessible parts of the island. They were assured of their safety by the Turks, guaranteed by the European consuls. But no sooner did they descend from the heights than the Turks put them to death. “The number of those, who became victims of this perfidious act, were estimated at seven thousand.”[120]

“The women and children escaped death, their beauty and youth saving them from massacre. They were, however, to be delivered over at once to the outrageous assaults or to be reserved for the shameful fate of the harem. They were led off in long troops; they were put on the market and sold in the bazaars of Smyrna, Constantinople and Brousa.”[121] Large numbers also suffered death or the worst form of slavery, by the hands of the “unspeakable Turks,” who were neither Greeks nor belonged to the same church, and their only crime also was that they, too, were Christians.

During the war between Russia and Turkey, the Kurds, finding the country in a disturbed condition, plundered many a village and massacred not a few Armenians. But the Turks seem to vie with the Kurds in cruelty. An Englishman, writing of the war between Russia and Turkey, says:

“The Turks with their usual ferocity, commenced a system of carnage at Akhalzik in 1829; every Christian inhabitant was slain.”

In 1843, in the southern mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan, ten thousand Nestorian and Armenian Christians were massacred by the faithful Moslems of Mohammed’s type, and as many women and children were taken captives and sold for slaves. The great explorer, A. H. Layard, three years after this fearful carnage, describes it in the following language:

“When the salughter of the people of Ashita (9000) became known in the valley of Liza, the inhabitants of the villages (1000) took refuge on a lofty platform of rock, where they hoped either to escape notice or to defend themselves against any number of assailants. Bedr Khan Bey (the officer of the sultan, who had charge of the massacre) surrounded the place and watched until hunger and thirst, in hot sultry weather, had done their work. After three days a regular capitulation was signed and sworn on the Koran; their arms were delivered up; the Kurds were admitted on the platform. Then did the slaughter begin. To save the trouble of killing them, they were pitched into the Zab (river) below. Out of about one thousand only one escaped from the massacre. The face of the rock below is still covered with scattered bones of the dead, bleached skulls, long locks of women’s hair, and torn portions of garments they had worn.”[122]

In regard to the massacre of the eleven thousand Christians in Syria in 1860, a very trustworthy writer states:

“The officials of the Porte at Constantinople formed a conspiracy for the blotting out of the Christian name in those parts, they appointed their own creatures to the governments of Damascus, Beirut, Sidon, and furnished them with soldiers, who were posted as garrison in the chief towns inhabited by Christians, under pretense of defending them against the Druses. When all was ready the savage Druses of Hauron were summoned, and they and their brethren of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon immediately set themselves to burning the villages and killing the people without any provocation. They put to death every male, even the infants at the breast, and enslaved as many of the women and girls as they chose. The Turkish garrison at first simply looked on; then they urged the Christians to take refuge in the castles on condition of delivering up whatever weapons they might possess. They swore by the Koran that no harm should be done them. But no sooner were they thus entrapped than the Druses were called in and every one of these helpless victims was shot down or his throat cut in cold blood. The streets of Deirel-Kamr, Hosbayan, and Zahlah flowed with human gore, in which men waded ankle deep. The worst scenes occurred in Damascus, the center of Moslem fanaticism. Here the pasha himself directed the operations, and after the butchery of the Christians and the plunder of their property, their quarter of the city was set on fire and burned down.”[123]

It was due to the same bloodthirstiness of the Turks, inculcated by the infernal teaching of the Koran, and the examples of the former Mohammedan rulers, that the horrible massacres of the Bulgarians took place in 1876. Hon. Eugene Schuyler, then American consul-General, in his preliminary report to the Hon. Horace Maynard, the American minister, at Constantinople, wrote:

“Philippopolis, August 10, 1876.

SIR: In reference to the atrocities and massacres committed by the Turks in Bulgaria, I have the honor to inform you that I have visited the towns of Adrianople, Philippopolis, and Tatar, Bazardjik, and villages in the surrounding districts. From what I have personally seen, and from the inquiries I have made, and the information I have received, I have ascertained the following facts:

“The insurgent villages made little or no resistance. In many instances they surrendered their arms upon the first demand. Nearly all the villages which were attacked by the _Bashi-bazouks_ (irregulars) were burned and pillaged, as were also all those which had been abandoned by the terrified inhabitants. The inhabitants of some villages were massacred after exhibitions of the most ferocious cruelty, and the violation not only of women and girls, but even of persons of the other sex. Those crimes were committed by the regular troops as well as by the bashi-bazouks. The number of villages which were burned in whole or in part in the districts of Philippopolis, Roptchus, and Tatar-Bazardjik is at least sixty-five.

“Particular attention was given by the troops to the churches and schools, which in some cases were destroyed with petroleum and gunpowder.

“It is difficult to estimate the number of Bulgarians who were killed during the few days that the disturbances lasted; but I am inclined to put fifteen thousand as the lowest for the districts I have named.

“... This village after a promise of safety without firing a shot surrendered to the bashi-bazouks, under command of Ahmed Aga, a chief of rural police. Despite his promise, the arms once surrendered, Ahmed Aga ordered the destruction of the village and the indiscriminate slaughter of the inhabitants, about a hundred young girls being reserved to satisfy the lust of the conqueror before they too should be killed. Not a house is now standing in this lovely valley. Of the eight thousand inhabitants not two thousand are known to survive.

“Ahmed Aga, who commanded the massacre, has since been decorated and promoted, to the rank of _yus bashi_ (centurion).

* * * * *

“I am, sir, yours very truly,

“EUGENE SCHUYLER.

“The Hon. Horace Maynard, etc.”[124]

It was in the following year, 1877, that Armenia witnessed new horrors. The correspondent of the London _Times_ wrote of the massacre of the Armenians at Bayazid:

“The scene that ensued [the massacre] was one of unparalleled horror. The town contained one hundred and sixty-five Christian families, and all the men, women and children were ruthlessly put to the sword. A Turkish officer, who visited the town a few days subsequently, states that there was not a single inhabitant left.... In every house he entered small groups of dead were lying shockingly mutilated, and in the most revolting, indecent positions. Captain McCalmont, who visited the place shortly after the Russian relief, states that it is entirely deserted and a mere heap of ruins; also that soldiers were employed for six days in burying the dead, the number of whom it was impossible to estimate.”[125]

“The American missionaries have been forced, for fear of their lives, to take refuge in a boat on the Lake (of Van).... Their Christian charges have been subjected to the grossest treatment--crops cut and carried away, cattle killed, villages burnt, men murdered, and worst of all, women and even children violated. Churches afford no refuge for these wretched mortals. Ten who fled for safety into the church at Utch-Kilissa were there foully murdered.... Hundreds of Christian villages in Armenia, having been gutted and fired by these miscreants, are completely abandoned, and their inhabitants have fled for refuge into the Russian camps. Hordes of fanatics, led by Moolahs (learned), have joined the Turkish army. Their fury is daily fed by the exhortations and addresses of the priests, who have denounced the war as a menace to the Ottoman (Mohammedan) religion, and they are led to commit every conceivable excess against the defenseless Christians, whom they accuse of furnishing information to the enemy. Facts prove the reverse, for as yet not a single Armenian spy has been discovered by the authorities, while several Kurds and Circassians, preferring money to-faith, have paid for their treachery with their lives; in short every spy hanged during this war has been a Mohammedan....

“Outrages on Mohammedans, being against the Koran, are visited with great severity; outrages against Christians, who are considered beyond the pale of the law, are left unnoticed. The massacre at Bayazid, the desecration of Russian graves, mutilation of corpses, violation of a flag of truce, and the recent cruelties towards the Christians at Van, all furnish excuses, and valid excuses, too, for a continuance of the war. We cannot hope that a great power like Russia will sit quietly down under the reverses her arms have sustained during the past month, and will permit the Christians, on whose behalf she has ostensibly made war, to be treated in Armenia as they were last year in Bulgaria. She must compel the Porte, by force of arms, to respect the rights of all her Christian subjects, and afford to them equal protection and privilege as to Mohammedans. At present this is far from being the case, Mussulman officials literally treating them worse than the dogs which act as scavengers in their streets. I mean this as no mere figure of speech, but as an actual fact, borne out not only by what I myself have witnessed, but also by reports of occurrences which have come under the notice of many of the American missionaries in Armenia, who daily receive complaints from their Christian congregations of the cruelties and acts of oppression they endure at the hands of the Kurds, whom the Ottoman government have now let loose in Anatolia.”[126]

I have quoted a long passage from Mr. Norman’s book to show the miserable condition of the Armenians who were treated worse than the street-dogs by the Mohammedans, the officers and the rest, and that these outrages were well known in England, yet in the following year, “England at the Berlin Congress, and _England alone_--for none of the other powers took any interest in the matter--destroyed the security which Russia had extorted from the Turkish government at San Stefano, and substituted for the sterling guarantee of Russia, the worthless paper money of Ottoman promises.”[127]

Mr. Norman himself wrote: “Naturally, since I have been here (in Armenia) I have had many, very many, opportunities of conversing with Turkish officers and men on the so-called Eastern question; and the consequence is that, arriving in the country a strong philo-Turk, deeply impressed with the necessity of preserving the ‘integrity of the Empire’ in order to uphold ‘British interests,’ I now fain would cry with Mr. Freeman, ‘Perish British interests, perish our dominion in India, rather than that we should strike a blow on behalf of the wrong against the right.’”[128] England, however, did strike a fatal “blow on behalf of the wrong against the right,” in the negotiations of 1878, when Lord Beaconsfield “substituted the Treaty of Berlin for the Treaty of San Stefano, and dictated the provisions of the Anglo-Turkish convention.”

Sultan Abdul Hamid not only henceforth had a new lease of life for his empire, but by the British illegal protectorate over his Asiatic provinces, he had also her protection against Russia. And while thus protected, he determined to settle his internal affairs, not by doing what he promised, to the European powers collectively and to England separately, to do, namely, to protect his Christian subjects against robberies, oppressions, outrages and murders, but by systematic and gradual extermination of the Armenians in order to rid himself of the Armenian question. Vambery’s description of the character of Sultan Abdul Hamid II may give us some idea how this crafty man would act: “I never met with a man the salient features of whose character were so contradictory, so uneven, and disproportionate, as with Sultan Abdul Hamid. Benevolence and wickedness, generosity and meanness, cowardice and valor, shrewdness and ignorance, moderation and excess, and many other qualities have alternately found expression in his acts and words.”[129] Sultan Abdul Hamid could do like his master of whom Paul wrote to the Corinthians, and said: “No marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.” (II Cor. 11:14). He was too shrewd to openly inaugurate the work of extermination of the Christians and the persecution of Christianity, but he did it, first underhandedly, until some Armenians, driven to desperation, resorted to self-defense. Of course in the case of a Christian’s self-defense his resentment of the outrages against the oppressor is considered an act of rebellion, and the acts of robbery, outrage, and murder perpetrated by the Mohammedan upon the defenseless Christians are considered meritorious virtues. St. Paul said, “No marvel”; Sultan Abdul Hamid is transformed into an angel of light, what else can we expect? There were, undoubtedly, many Armenians who did revolt against such perversions of truth. Who can always sit still and look like a statue while the wrong-doer is robbing, outraging and murdering his loved ones, and not revolt against such acts, and not give a blow against the wrong-doer, even if we know that he may be cut to pieces for his doing so? This was the kind of rebellion that some Armenians were accused of.

The Turkish government’s accusation of the Armenians with the device of a revolution was simply made up of the tissues of falsehood, and woven by the iniquity of the head of the government, to shroud the just and righteous cause of the Armenian question; to bury it in an ignominious grave of a rebellion that failed. But there was no rebellion, there could be no rebellion. It was, however, convenient for the British government and some other, equally guilty, governments of Europe, to justify their criminal indifference, or self interests, to pretend that it was and that the Armenians were not persecuted for their religion. The Mohammedan government would not say--for she had no regard for the truth--that she was torturing and slaughtering the Armenians because they were Christians. It is perfectly natural for a corrupt and depraved heart to falsify and declare to those, who ask the reason of her murdering the Christians, to say that she is suppressing a revolution. But for any so-called Christian nation and government, like that of England, accepting Hamid’s excuse and explanation, and declaring that to the world was plainly protecting and defending the criminal at the bar of justice and humanity.

The Turkish government knew, so did the European governments, that an Armenian revolution was an impossibility, and such an excuse was an absurdity. The Armenians, who hardly number two millions, scattered among the eighteen millions of the Mohammedans, the latter having a standing army of several hundred thousand soldiers at their command, would indeed have been fools, and the Turks equal fools to be afraid of such a rebellion, and, therefore, had taken such severe measures to suppress it. Such a thing was not only an absurdity but it was also the most wicked thing both on the part of the Turks and on the part of the friends of the Moslems, who pretended to believe it.

About 1892 Sultan Abdul Hamid called the Kurdish chiefs to Constantinople and supplied them with military titles, uniforms, and modern weapons of war, and sent them back to organize their tribes into “Hamidieh” cavalry regiments, which numbered about twenty-two thousand and five hundred men. The Sultan thus “obtained a power eager in time of peace _to crush the Armenian growth and spirit_.” The Armenians “besought the protection of the co-signatory powers to the Berlin guarantees against the ruthless oppression of the lawless and ruffianly Kurds, _and with the tacit consent, if not the approbation of the powers_, the Porte now appoints their worst enemies as their guardians.”

A few fragmentary instances may show what these--the government’s--licensed robbers and murderers have done. The following is part of a letter written by an American missionary in the summer of 1892 from Southern Armenia:

“We journeyed east of north over the hills, and dropped down into another valley, in the bosom of which nestled the Armenian village of Khundik, of about twenty houses. It was a charming spot, but the oppression of surrounding Kurdish begs (chiefs) was depleting the population. Their church has been reduced to a heap, and they were not allowed to restore it.”

Dr. ----, a medical missionary, writing of his tour under date of October 20, 1892, stated:

“It was somewhat risky going among the Arabkir villages. Robberies were of almost daily occurrence, and the villagers were in a state of constant alarm at night on account of the raids of the Kurds.... The village of Horesik is in a district of perhaps thirty Armenian villages; but it is one of the most oppressed districts in the empire. A long time ago some Turkish feudal chiefs came from abroad, and gradually gained possession of the whole district. They now claim to own all the land, and even the houses which the people occupy, and which the occupants built, and the gardens and vineyards which they planted.”

It was not the Kurds, and some Turkish feudal chiefs alone, but the officers of the government who carry the sword for the punishment of the evil-doer were also among the worst kind of tormentors and evil-doers themselves.

“October, 1892: At all the villages on the lake (Van) soldiers were stationed to keep boats from landing, on account of cholera.... Then the quartering of the soldiers in the villages. You can imagine what that means for the poor Armenians, you can sympathize with them in the idea that the cure is worse than the disease; that they would much rather take the risk of having the cholera than have the soldiers about. And it is not only the soldiers and underpaid gendarmes that oppress the villagers, extorting the best and making no return. An officer, the captain of one thousand, with seven horsemen, had just been at a village we visited. They and their horses were fed with the best and went off without paying anything.”

On the night of the 5th of January, 1893, in several important cities of Asia Minor placards were posted attacking the Turkish government. Who did this was a mystery. A prominent editor of a leading periodical in this country, who was well informed of the condition of affairs in Turkey, said, “the general belief of all classes is that the more fanatical _softas_ (students in the mosques) are the real offenders.” That may have been the case. But later events and instances positively show that the government’s emissaries had done it in order to furnish an excuse for the officers of the government to accuse the Armenians of sedition, and blindfold the European powers who were overanxious to abandon the cause of justice and humanity for any pretext.

Two of these placards were affixed to the gate of the mission premises at Marsovan, but were soon seen and pulled down by persons belonging to the college. Husrev Pasha was appointed to investigate the matter. This official himself had threatened in violent terms both the college and its teachers, “Charging the institution with being a source of sedition, and affirming that the placards were issued from the college.” Those very officials themselves had “declared that the place where the college stood should be as a plowed field.”

On the 29th of January, Professor Thoumanian and later Professor Kayayan, two Armenian teachers of the college, were arrested and imprisoned. There was no evidence of their having issued these placards. On the night of February 1st, the girls’ school was set on fire. The Turkish authorities who declared that they were going to burn the building, after so doing, began to charge the crime upon the college authorities “either for the purpose of exciting the Armenians to revolt, or to cover up the fact that arms and ammunition were concealed in the building. These most absurd charges were sent to Constantinople, and the corrupt officials, who have themselves been implicated in the burning were charged with the duty of investigating the affair. Meantime _numberless arrests_ were made, not only in Marsovan but in all parts of the province. United States Consul, Mr. Jewett, who was stationed at Sivas, went to Marsovan. But his dispatches to our minister at Constantinople, and the minister’s dispatches to him, were interfered with, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he secured any communication with his superior officer.”

The Turkish government could, and had created riots at will, and thus have an excuse to fall upon the defenseless Christians to torture and butcher them: London, February 14, 1893--“A despatch from Vienna says that one hundred and twenty-five Armenians were killed and three hundred and forty were wounded during the recent riot at Yosgat, Turkey.” Constantinople, July 14, 1893--“The British Embassy has received news that three hundred police and Bashi-Bazouks were sent out from Cæsarea in February to arrest so-called refugees in Everek. They looted every Armenian house in the town, and abused the women.”

Here is another despatch from Constantinople under date March 15, 1893:

“Moslem mobs have possession of Cæsarea. They have established a reign of terror over the Armenian churches, have robbed hundreds and have killed many. During services in three Armenian churches the other day the mob burst in the doors, stripping the women of their jewelry and beat and cut the men. After the Armenians fled the Moslems sacked the churches. They afterwards went through the streets attacking all the Armenians they met, bursting into private houses, and sacking shops. All places of business are closed and trade is utterly stagnant. Violence and theft are said to continue day and night. Furthermore, Christian caravans are being robbed and the merchants murdered. The prisons are crowded with Armenian prisoners. Most of the conspicuous Armenians of Cæsarea and Marsovan have been imprisoned.”

The following British Consular reports were despatched from London, April 10, 1893:

“Advices from Constantinople show that the British consuls at Smyrna, Trebizond, and other places in Anatolia, have sent in official reports of Turkish outrages on native Christians. These reports include the names of _eighteen hundred_ Armenians who are imprisoned on various charges in the several consular jurisdictions. Among other matters the serious charge is preferred that it is a common occurrence for the Turks to kidnap Christian girls and dispose of them to the owners of harems. If the relatives and friends of the girls attempt to regain them, they are met with the statement that the girls have embraced Mohammedanism, and this, as a rule, ends the matter so far as the Armenians are concerned; the Christians are ridiculed and subjected to gross outrages, and if they object to their treatment they find themselves arrested on trumped up charges, and are always found ‘guilty.’”

The Rev. Dr. F. E. Clark, the President of the U. S. C. E., while in Turkey on his tour around the world, wrote:

“I could not use the words society or organization, endeavor, union, etc., without the risk of getting my interpreter, my audience, and myself into an unspeakable Turkish dungeon. In one village a poor broken-hearted woman came to tell us that her husband, who was a Protestant preacher, had utterly disappeared. Three weary months of anxious, heart-sick watching had passed away, and she had had no message. What his alleged offense was she had no idea. Whether he is dead or alive, in prison or in exile, she could not tell; and perhaps the mystery of his disappearance will never be solved.” After giving several instances of this kind, Dr. Clark adds: “These are only isolated instances of hundreds that might be cited.”[130]

In the above pages a very few instances were given, which could be multiplied by the hundred, if the time and space would permit, but there is no need. For neither did the Turks nor their friends deny them. Moreover, some of the instances of cruelty and outrage are too painful to be put in print.

The attention of the reader may now be directed to the condition of the so-called “agitators,” who have been arrested and imprisoned in various cities. According to the British consular “reports included the names of eighteen hundred Armenians.” Some of these prisoners, after having been well fleeced, were likely set free while at their respective cities, others possibly left still in prisons, and a great number of them were probably done away with in various ways;[131] for we were informed by the following despatch that only fifty-six were tried at Angora: Constantinople, June 18, 1893--“The trial of Armenians accused of being concerned in rioting at Cæsarea and Marsovan last spring has just been concluded at Angora. Seventeen of the prisoners, including Professors Thoumanian and Kayayan, were condemned to death; six, including the Protestant pastor at Goemerek, were sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment; eighteen--one was a woman, thirty-three years old--were sentenced to imprisonment for terms ranging from seven to ten years, and fifteen were acquitted.” Three others tortured to death in prison.

Professors Thoumanian and Kayayan were pardoned by the sultan on the condition that “they should leave the Turkish territories and never return.”

The following despatch is reproduced to show what impression the Foreign office of Her Majesty’s government had received with regard to the trials of those unfortunate Armenians, and their execution:

London, August 2, 1893--“The question of Turkish outrages upon the Armenian Christians was brought up in the House of Commons to-day. Several members asked for information as to the charges made that the Turkish officials had tortured the prisoners who were some time ago arrested for complicity in the seditious rioting in Cæsarea and Marsovan in their efforts to get the accused to implicate themselves and others. In response to the questions Sir Edward Grey, Parliamentary Secretary of the Foreign office, said that what little information the Foreign Office had on the subject was _very painful_. Fifty-six persons had been (tried) arrested and of this number seventeen had been condemned to death, and many of the others sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Subsequently the Sultan of Turkey commuted the death sentence of all but five of the prisoners. These five men have been executed within the past two or three days. From the evidence that had been given at the trials, all of which had been carefully investigated by the British representative in Turkey, and a report thereon forwarded to the Foreign Office, it was clear that two of the men executed, and probably more, were innocent of the charges made against them. The British representative in Constantinople had used his influence to convince the Ottoman authorities that _the trials were unfair_, but his efforts to have the wrong righted were in vain.”

These political “agitators” and “seditious rioters,” terms applied to the Armenians by the Turkish government and its officials, only were mere inventions. As it has been said the oppression, cruel persecutions, and outrages drove the Armenians to desperation, and when they did anything in self-defense, or even if they attempted to consult what they should do against the assaults, they were set upon and treated still worse. The disturbance at Yozgat, for instance, was stated in the following manner: An Armenian spy in the employ of the Turkish government was murdered by an Armenian revolutionist from Russia. Instead of the murderer being found and arrested, all the men of the village where the murder had taken place were arrested and taken to Yozgat. The four police officers who remained in the village committed every outrage upon the defenseless women, who went in a body to Yozgat and marched through the market calling upon the Armenians of the city to avenge their wrongs. “Some one rang the bell of the church, and a large number of Armenians closed their shops and collected at the church for _consultation_. Military commander of the town heard this and hastened to the church, where he tried to calm the people and persuaded them to disperse, assuring them the guilty officer should be punished. He was meeting with some success when the troops sent by the governor arrived.” The troops had come there for business. A riot was created, and a “hundred and twenty-five Armenians were killed and three hundred and forty wounded,” as the result of this riot.

A commission was sent from Constantinople to investigate, and a reign of terror in the town was the result. Under cover of searching the houses of all the Armenians, they were plundered and outraged without mercy, and a great number thrown into prison, and tortured to force them to give evidence against one another.

I believe the Sultan, who had fashioned himself into an angel of light had chosen this method to feel his way and see whether the guardians of his Christian subjects could see through the tissue of his falsehood and call him to halt, or they would be willing for their own conveniences to accept his construction of suppressing a “sedition.”

The Representative Committee of the society of Friends in Great Britain addressed a memorial to the Earl of Kimberley, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. (See “Minutes” of 1894, held in London.)

“The Representative committee of the society of Friends in Great Britain have had their attention recently directed to the suffering and persecuted condition of the Armenian Christian subjects of the Porte, and have been at some pains to investigate the facts of the case. They are compelled to conclude that persecution of a cruel character has been and is being carried on by Turkish officials, which is a disgrace to any government, and to the age in which we live.

“They desire to point out that Article I, of the Cyprus convention of June, 1878, and Articles LXI and LXII of the Treaty of Berlin, July, 1878, give this country a position of responsibility and authority upon this subject which it ought not to ignore.

“The committee believes that, though these engagements were made nearly fourteen years ago, it is not alleged that their performance has been even entered upon. On the contrary, great numbers of the Christian Armenians have been from time to time arbitrarily arrested, and are now in prison on charges strongly suspected of being false, whilst many of the proceedings in the courts of law are clearly a mere travesty of justice.”

The following is the part of the answer to the above memorial:

“SIR: I am directed by the Earl of Kimberley to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 17th instant (April, 1894), and the memorial. In reply I am to state that the information in the possession of Her Majesty’s government does not confirm the widely-spread belief that the arrest and imprisonment of the Armenians in Asiatic Turkey are attributable to their religious faith.”

The great “assassin” well might have congratulated himself that whether Her Majesty’s government believed it or not, at least, declared to the world that the Armenians were not persecuted on account of their faith.

An American wrote from Bitlis in the summer of 1893:--

“The Armenians are still found in goodly numbers, aggregating nearly one-third of some eighteen thousand inhabitants in the city (Moosh), constituting more than half in the region, if we include the 155 villages of this large plain. But so lamentably have they been subdued by the _long oppression_ and _misrule_, that none of their old-time spirit remains.

“We might point to a village of more than 300 houses and 2,000 inhabitants, who live in constant terror from a little Kurdish village of desperadoes not one-tenth as large!”

It is no wonder that these poor and oppressed Armenians “live in constant terror.” The Turkish government, the author of all injustice and cruelty in Armenia, had decreed even the mere possession of arms a serious crime in the case of Christians, while the Kurds, the worst enemies of law and order were well equipped with all sorts of modern weapons, and were enlisted into His Majesty the Sultan’s army. They were, therefore, authorized to rob, steal, and kill the Armenians.

FOOTNOTES:

[120] Comstock, “Greek Revolution,” p. 222.

[121] Greene, “The Armenian Crisis in Turkey,” p. 98.

[122] Layard, “Nineveh,” Vol. I, pp. 165-6.

[123] Van Lennep, “The Bible Lands,” pp. 745-6.

[124] Greene, “The Armenian Crisis in Turkey,” pp. 101-2.

[125] Norman, “Armenia and the Campaign of 1877,” p. 273.

[126] Norman, “Armenia and the Campaign of 1877,” pp. 234-5.

[127] _The Westminster Gazette_, Dec. 12, 1894, reprinted in the _Armenia_, London, Jan., 1895.

[128] Norman, “Armenia and the Campaign of 1877,” pp. 158-9.

[129] _The 19th Century_, July, 1909.

[130] _The Independent_, June 15, 1893, New York.

[131] The following explains itself: The private advices from Constantinople give the Press information of a tragic discovery. The harbor of that city has no wharves. Vessels, after discharging their cargoes at the custom-house, anchor in the harbor and receive their cargoes. On September 30, 1893, a Russian merchantman anchored off Seraglio Point, and, having received her cargo, would raise her anchor to sail for home. The anchor seemed to be caught in something heavy. After long efforts it was raised. It brought up with it fifteen large haircloth sacks, such as are used by Turkish merchants in packing goods for shipment.

“At first the Russian captain thought he had disclosed a smuggling scheme. Upon investigation he discovered that the sacks were filled with human bodies, each sack containing from fifteen to twenty. Further investigation disclosed that they were the bodies of Armenian political prisoners.

“Foreign ambassadors to Turkey had recently complained that the prisons were overcrowded with Armenian prisoners, and the government decided to remove the cause of complaint. Accordingly about three hundred prisoners were taken on board of a Turkish man-of-war, ostensibly for transportation to Africa. In the night, however, the fellows were murdered, their bodies placed in sacks, which were tied one to the other, and thrown into the harbor. This is in keeping with the Grand Vizier’s declaration a short time ago, that he _would settle the Armenian question by annihilating the Armenians as a race_. A discovery similar to this was made in the harbor of Salonica a year ago.”

XIV

THE MASSACRE AT SASSOUN

Sassoun is the name of a district south of the Plain of Moosh. It is a mountainous country, containing about one hundred and fourteen villages and hamlets. The inhabitants, about seventy thousand persons, were mostly Armenians, under a resident Turkish governor, called Kaimakam.

The inhabitants of this region, like the rest of the people in Armenia, were agricultural and pastoral in their occupation, and they were also surrounded by their tormentors, the Kurds. It is not improbable that the inaccessibility of the district and the number and hardiness of the people, may have impressed the Turkish authorities with the desirability of reducing them into a complete docility. So when the “Hamidieh” cavalry regiments were formed a few years before they were entrusted with this work.

The Kurdish chiefs, in some districts in Armenia, were in the habit of demanding, and extorting from the people some kind of tribute. The raids of the Kurds and Circassians were not infrequent. The taxes of the government were ever increasing, and were always in demand. This vexatious condition of affairs was sufficient to drive any peaceful people to desperation.

In one instance, when the Kurds had raided an Armenian village, and carried away the cattle, the villagers armed themselves as best as they could and pursued the raiders, like Abraham,[132] to recover their herds. In the encounter several Kurds were killed. It is probable that some Armenians also were killed, but that is of no consequence. Those unfortunate Kurds who suffered for their crime were the members of the “Hamidieh” cavalry. Then false reports were sent to Constantinople that the Armenians were in arms, and had rebelled against the authority of the government and had killed some of the soldiers of the sultan.

The sultan, who had been planning ever since the signing of the Treaty of Berlin to exterminate the Armenians, seized upon this opportunity, which was of his own making, and at once sent orders to Mushir at Erzinghian to exterminate them, root and branch. “The order as read before the army, collected in haste from all the chief cities of Eastern Turkey, was: ‘Whoever spares man, woman, or child, is disloyal.’”

The massacre took place in the early part of September, 1894. The following letter, written at Bitlis, September 26, 1894, gives the first evidence:

“The troops have been massed in the region of the large plain (of Moosh) near us. Some sickness broke out among them which took off two or three victims every few days.... I suppose that one reason for placing quarantine was to hinder the information as to what all these troops were about in that region. There seems little doubt that there has been in that region back of Moosh what took place in 1876 in Bulgaria. The sickening details are beginning to come in.”

“Bitlis, October 9, 1894.

“All these things (following facts) were related here and there by soldiers who took part in the horrible carnage. Some of them, weeping, claim that the Kurds did more, and declare that they only obeyed the order of others. It is said one hundred fell to each of them to dispose of. No compassion was shown to age or sex, even by the regular soldiery, not even when the victims fell suppliant at their feet. Six to ten thousand persons met such a fate as even the darkest ages of darkened Africa hardly witnessed, for there women and tender babes might at least have had a chance of a life of slavery, while here womanhood and innocency were but a mockery before the cruel lust that ended its debauch by stabbing women to death with the bayonet, while tender babes were impaled with the same weapon on their dead mother’s breast, or perhaps seized by the hair to have their heads lopped off with the sword.

“In one place, three or four hundred women, after being forced to serve vile purposes by the merciless soldiery, were hacked to pieces by sword and bayonet in the valley below. In another place, some two hundred weeping and wailing women begged for compassion, falling at the commander’s feet, but the bloodthirsty wretch, after ordering their violation, directed his soldiers to dispatch them in a similar way. In another place, some sixty young brides and more attractive girls were crowded into a church, and after violation were slaughtered, and human gore was seen flowing from the church door.

“At another place still, a large company under the leadership of their priest, fell down before them begging for compassion, and averring that they had nothing to do with the culprits (?). But, all to no purpose. All were called to another place, and a proposal was made to several of the more attractive women to change their faith, in which case their lives were to be spared. They said: ‘Why should we deny Christ? We are no more than these’ (pointing to the mangled form of their husbands and brothers). ‘Kill us too’; and they did so. A great effort was made to save one beauty, but three or four quarreled over her, and she sank down like her sisters.

“But why prolong the sickening tale? There must be a God in heaven who will do right in all these matters, or some of us would lose faith. One or more consuls have been ordered that way to investigate the matter. If the Christians, instead of the Turks, reported these things in the city of Bitlis, and the region where I have been touring, the case would be different. But now we are compelled to believe it.

“It seems safe to say that forty villages were totally destroyed, and it is probable that sixteen thousand at least were killed. The lowest estimate is ten thousand, and many put it much higher. This is allowing for more fugitives than it seems possible can have escaped.”[133]

It is useless now, after twenty-three years, to add the testimony of the eye-witnesses and fugitives to show the barbarity of the soldiers and officers of the sultan, who had been inadvertently encouraged to go on in his career of assassination by the declaration of Her Majesty’s government that the imprisonments, tortures and massacres of the Armenians were not attributable to their religious faith.

It appears from the following statement made by reliable persons that the sultan himself not only ordered the massacre, but he prepared an occasion for that deviltry. “To what extent Armenian agitation has provoked the terrible massacre it is difficult to determine. For a year or more there seems to have been an Armenian from Constantinople staying in the region as an agitator. For a long time he skilfully evaded his pursuers, but was at last caught and taken to Bitlis. He demanded to be taken to Constantinople and to the sultan, and it is said, he is now living at the Capital, receiving a large salary from the government. Evidently he has turned state’s evidence.” This mean creature, who ever he was, was an emissary of the Turkish government. He and his mission were not known to the officers at Bitlis. So he demanded that he should be taken to Constantinople, and to the sultan. There he was rewarded for the mischief that he was hired to do: he had paved the way for a great massacre.

But by a most influential paper of Great Britain the crime at Sassoun was laid primarily at the door of England:

“The crime at Sassoun lies primarily at the door of England. It is one of the many disastrous results of that ‘peace with honor’ which the English government, represented by Lord Beaconsfield, claimed to have brought back from Berlin in 1878. Why was it that the Armenians at Sassoun were left as sheep before the butcher? Why was it that the sultan and his pashas felt themselves perfectly free to issue what order they pleased for the massacre of the poor Armenians? The answer is, unfortunately, only too simple. It is because England, at the Berlin Congress, and England alone--for none of the other powers took any interest in the matter--destroyed the security which Russia had extorted from the Turkish government at San Stefano, and substituted for the sterling guarantee of Russia the worthless paper money of Ottoman promises.”[134]

The Sultan publicly endorsed the massacre and decorated Zeki Pasha, the commander of the Fourth Army Corps, and sent four flags to the Kurdish cavalry regiments.

Well said a prominent American: “The sultan’s act is a sort of insolent challenge to Christendom.” Why should he not challenge Christendom? There were some so-called Christian rulers back of him. Though the civilized world was filled with righteous indignation at the cruelty and insolence of the successor of Mohammed, yet he was only true to the teaching and example of the prophet in thus violating all the laws of civilization and humanity.

It is the characteristic of the Armenian mothers to teach their children to cling to the religion of Christ, let come what may. And it is due to this fact that the Armenian nation, after having undergone fifteen centuries of persecution for their faith, still exists as a Christian people. “The permanence of the Armenian race has been ascribed to the virtue of their women and exceptional purity and stability of their family life.”

The Turkish government, as might have been expected, first tried to conceal the facts or even admit the occurrence of such a massacre. However, under some pressure from the British ambassador, she made the following report:

Constantinople, November 16, 1894--“The Porte has issued an account of the last Armenian troubles in Sassoun district. The responsibility is laid upon the Kurdish brigands, who murdered a Mussulman and committed many other excesses. The Turkish troops called to Sassoun are said to have restored order and protected all law-abiding persons.”

But when Sir Phillip Currie sent Mr. Hallward’s (British vice-consul at Van) report of the massacre to the Porte, the Turkish minister positively denied the facts, asserting that Mr. Hallward’s report was untrue. The Porte further “stated outright, that he (Mr. Hallward) had encouraged the Armenians to revolt.” Another report received from a Turkish official source was “that at Sassoun all the Armenians fell in open combat. The troops killed two thousand of them.”

The friends of Christianity and humanity, who sincerely sympathized with the martyred Christian Armenians, have learned that the Mohammedan rulers and the Turkish officials in the past centuries, and in the present, have given us enough instances of cruelty to convince the world that Mohammedanism and barbarism, if not identical, surely go hand in hand. Furthermore, the Turkish government and its officers have shown to the world that they were, and are, destitute of truthfulness. A well-informed recent writer says: “As rulers of subject races, the Turks have shown themselves incapable of anything except cruelty and corruption.” “Has Turkey one whit improved in the last five centuries? No. The Porte’s diplomatists have learned to tell falsehoods with more freedom, and more unblushingly; her cruelties and oppressions are practiced more vigorously but more secretly; and she is far more steeped (her higher classes) in vice and barbarism than she was five hundred years ago.”[135]

The sultan, with an air of frankness, though compelled by the demand of the British ambassador, and with a desire to postpone immediate action, so that the indignation of the Christian world might subside, appointed a commission to make an investigation of the massacre. He depended too much on the friendly relations of the United States with Turkey, through Minister Terrell. The sultan asked the President to appoint a representative of this country; but when President Cleveland appointed Mr. Jewett, consul at Sivas, to make an independent investigation and report to our government, the sultan refused his appointment. How could he allow such an honest man as Mr. Jewett to make an independent investigation? Mr. Jewett knew the corruption of the sultan’s officers; he had some experience in the Marsovan trouble; his despatches were detained and his letters were meddled with by His Majesty’s faithful servants, who, at the head of a Turkish mob, had burned the mission school.

The sultan’s commission was composed of the Turkish officers appointed by the Sultan and the consuls of France, England and Russia, who were in Asiatic Turkey. The commission was to decide who was to be examined, and whose testimony was to be taken. The European representatives were not privileged to make an independent investigation of the matter. Such being the case it was evident what might be expected from the Commission.

In such a country as Turkey, where justice is unknown, and for a Christian to protect his property, home, and life from plunder and violence is considered a “political offense” against the State, how could Christians dare to come forth and testify against the officers and the government, to whose cruelties and murderous propensities they were again to be left, when the European representatives departed? Even if they did dare, the testimony of the Christian is worthless against the faithful followers of Mohammed, who were the defendants in the case. Hopelessness of the condition of the Armenians was manifest.

Hardly will it be necessary to say that the universal impression was that the Sultan’s investigating commission was a farce, and perilous, yet it suited the sultan and his friends. St. Petersburg (Petrograd), December 30, 1894: “The _Moscow Gazette_ pillories the Sassoun investigating Commission as a farce. It asks why the Powers do not give the Porte so many days in which to decide whether it will fulfill the Treaty of Berlin, and if an unsatisfactory answer be given, co-operate to enforce the Treaty.”

This leading journal revealed the mind of the Russians. That England could have had the support of France. That, even, if Germany had sided with Turkey (which she most probably would), she would then have been half-prepared than twenty years later, at this terrible conflict. That the Powers would have had the universal moral support of the whole civilized world, especially at that time (preceding the Balkan wars), when the Balkan nations would have been in full sympathy with the entente, to drive the Turk out of Europe.

But England’s delay of action before the massacre, for she was aware of its coming, and her hesitation and distrust of Russia after the massacre, gave ample time to the crafty Abdul Hamid to create discord among the Powers, and he thus thwarted England’s belated attempts to redress the wrong that was committed.

The following quotation from “Our Responsibility for Turkey,” by the Duke of Argyle, confirms the above facts:

“That the Powers should have consented even to allow their representatives to spend time in such attempts as those [a commission to investigate the massacre and a scheme or reform for the Armenian provinces], after the experience of half a century of the hopeless bad faith and of the cunning procrastination of the Porte, is indeed astonishing. As usual, we seem to have been the leaders in this farce. Our Foreign Office boasted from time to time that we had got all the Powers to act ‘in line,’ which was, indeed, true. But what was the line doing? It was what is called in the language of military drill ‘practicing the Goose Step’--going through the form of taking steps, but not advancing one inch towards any practical result. The whole time occupied by Lord Rosebery’s Government, after they first heard of the impending dangers--which was at least eleven months from the beginning of August, 1894, to the middle of July, 1895--was wasted in this idle and grotesque procedure. And yet there really had been some encouraging symptoms of the disposition of Russia, if we had taken earnest and immediate advantage of them. And not less really had we very early noticed of what was coming from the Turks. So early as September 10, we knew that they were actually engaging a Kurdish chief of notoriously bad character to command three regiments of Kurdish irregular cavalry, as part of the forces destined for putting down what they were pleased to call the insurrection.”

Here we also add Lord Bryce’s words which are emphatically true:

“In the field of Eastern politics generally the conspicuous result has been the failure--the complete humiliating and irretrievable failure--of the traditional policy pursued by England of supporting the Turk against Russia.”[136]

An Armenian deputation called on the late Hon. W. E. Gladstone on the occasion of his birthday (December 29, 1894). He delivered an address on the Sassoun massacre. A few paragraphs of his speech may be here reproduced:

“The history of Turkey is a sad and painful one.... I have lived to see the empire of Turkey in Europe reduced to less than one-half of what it was when I was born, and why? Simply because of its misdeeds, and the great record written by the hand of Almighty God against this _injustice, lust, and most abominable cruelty_. If, happily (I speak, hoping against hope), the reports be disproved or mitigated, let us thank God. If, on the other hand, they be established, it will more than ever stand before the world that there is a lesson, however severe it may be, that can teach certain people the duty of prudence and the necessity of observing the laws of decency, humanity, and justice.... If the facts are established, it should be written in letters of iron upon the records of the world that a government which could be guilty of countenancing and covering up such atrocities is a disgrace to Mohamet, the prophet; a disgrace to civilization at large, and a disgrace to mankind.... I have counseled you to be still and keep your judgments in suspense; but as the evidence grows the case darkens and my hopes dwindle and decline; and as long as I have voice, it will be uttered on behalf of humanity and truth.”[137]

Mr. Gladstone’s address on the Bulgarian massacre of 1876 was reprinted in the _Christian Register_, Boston, Mass., Dec. 1, 1894. I quote the following passage from it:

“There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a cannibal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not arise and overboil at the recital of that which has been done; which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged; which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions that produced it; and which may again spring up, in another murderous harvest, from the soil soaked and reeked with blood, and in the air, tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. _That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that a door should be left open for their ever-so-barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the whole._”

The door in Bulgaria was closed, but a wide door was left open in Armenia, and England made herself a defender of the Turk that he may do as he pleases.[138]

According to the following despatch after six or more months of dilly-dallying, the European delegates to the Commission quitted their Turkish colleagues in disgust.

Constantinople, June 10, 1895.--“The Moosh Commission closed on Friday, so far as the work of the European delegates is concerned. They were compelled to tell the Turkish delegates that they could have nothing more to do with them. From the first the attitude of the Turkish delegates has been invariably and increasingly dishonest. According to the statements of those interested in the workings of the commission, the representatives of the sultan have not manifested honor, truth, or decency. They have made no efforts to determine the cause of the outrages in Armenia.

“The rupture between the Turkish and European commissioners was caused by the refusal of the Turks, on purely farcical grounds, to hear important witnesses upon matters pertaining to the questions at issue. It was evident that the Turks were afraid that the tissue of falsehoods that they have thrown around the situation in Armenia would be broken down....”

The following is the report of the European delegates of the Commission:

“We [Wilbert, Shipley, and Pyevalsky, the French, English and Russian consuls] have, in our report, given it as our conviction, arrived at from the evidence brought before us, that the Armenians were massacred without distinction of age or sex; and indeed, for a period of some three weeks, viz.: from the 12th of August to the 4th of September (1894 O. S.), it is not too much to say that the Armenians were absolutely hunted like wild beasts, being killed wherever they were met; and if the slaughter was not greater, it was, we believe, solely owing to the vastness of the mountain ranges of that district, which enabled the people to scatter, and so facilitated their escape. In fact, and speaking with a full sense of responsibility, we are compelled to say that the conviction has forced itself upon us that it was not so much the capture of the agitator Mourad, or the suppression of a pseudo-revolt, as the _extermination, pure and simple, of the Gheligrizan and Talori districts_.”[139]

Before closing this