Chapter LVI

.) Such is the ideal of the Moslem for the present life and the future.

This is not mere theory. To be fully convinced of this, a Christian must live among the Turks, see their homes, attend to their festivals, visit their schools, watch their prayers, and become acquainted with their priests and princes.

Did I say their "homes?" The Turk has no home in the European sense of the term, nor wife, nor schools, nor government. His prayers are gymnastics of lips and limbs. His charity is a mere show--as are his prayers, and often an act of cruelty. His school is a place where the spark of Tartaric intelligence is put out under the fuel of Koranic verses. His courts are stores where justice is sold by auction. His Government is an organized brigandage and his diplomacy, falsehood and shameless hypocrisy.

Outsiders may think that the Turks will make some progress. No, there is no hope. As long as the Turks are faithful to the teachings of their sacred law, the only form of their Government will be absolute monarchy, their only instrument the sword, and their ideal sensualism.

For the present life the Turks have for centuries secured an abundance of sensual gratification, thanks to the sword, the great instrument recommended to them by their religion. Reserving for their pious selves the sword, they have left all other instruments to the "unbelievers." They have devoted themselves to the higher vocations of the State as soldiers, priests, judges, governors, and ministers, and if those careers are not easily open to any one, another noble profession, that of brigandage, is embraced, and in all cases, they have had plenty of income, gardens, palaces and wives. They have left to the Armenians all the low, hard or undignified work--to till the soil, to build houses and roads, bridges and palaces, to make shoes, clothes, rugs and carpets and all the rest.

Thus the Turks led an existence full of pleasure, pride and luxury, and they degenerated; while agriculture, commerce and industry which they despised made the Armenians comparatively prosperous, and the Christian faith which the Turks hated, rendered the Armenian family great and healthy, and the Armenian community stronger, having greater solidarity. In brief, Armenia appeared to the Turk like a little Europe rising in the very bosom of the Ottoman Empire. Already in 1876 the Turkish newspapers of Constantinople were publishing editorials with regard to the alarming increase of the Armenians and the decrease of the Turks. The Sultan, Abdul-Hamid, who aimed, and still is aiming, to be a very great Padishah, devoted himself to the task of readjusting the balance in favor of the Turks. His Khalific intelligence had nothing to do with causes. He never troubled himself with the complicated question why the Turks were not increasing, why a rich Moslem with three wives had no children, while a simple Christian artisan with one wife had three or four or half a dozen. To Hamid's mind the problem was very simple. Are the Armenians getting rich? he will plunder them. Have they organized educational, religious or other benevolent associations? he will scatter them. Have they bishops, professors and other leaders of high education; and are they increasing in numbers? he will by exile and wholesale massacres get rid of them. If anywhere any of them should venture to resist plunderers or defend the honor of their wives and daughters or kill any of his imperial brigands in self-defense, he will regard and declare them to Europe as rebels and treat them and the rest of their nation as such. His satanic accounts were quite well made up. Some Armenians did, from sheer exasperation and desperation, resist their foul aggressors. Hamid was glad. He ordered the annihilation of Sassoun in 1894. Successful in that, he, in 1895, by the kind permission of Christian Europe and America, proceeded to destroy the Armenian nation and extirpate the Armenian Church by wholesale massacres and forced conversions to Islam.

The sword, even in the hands of the Turks, had never been used with such ferocity. The Turks surpassed themselves in these late massacres. They displayed to the world the bottom of their infernal foulness. Unable to use their sword against Europe, which has grown far too powerful for them, they used it to cut down the Armenian Europe in its bud. And the consciousness of their impotence against the Great Powers intensified their cruelty and hatred with regard to the defenseless and unarmed Armenians.

But all these frightful deeds of the Moslems do not surprise us. It is but natural that "a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit." There is perfect harmony between these happenings and the Mohammedan faith. The surprise, the shock we experience when we think that the "Christian" Emperors of Russia, of United Germany, of Austria-Hungary, and the "Christian" Empress of Great Britain and India, and the "Christian" Presidents of the United States and of France could prevent the massacres, and did not. They looked on. They are all, in various degrees, the accomplices of the criminal Turk. Is it to be supposed, logically, that while Hamid is acting in accordance with his religious belief and the example of the "Prophet," certain Christian princes have no sincere faith in Christ and his Gospel of love? May the exhibition of Islamic barbarity and blindness open the eyes of the "Christians" to see the heavenly holiness of Christ! May the curse of Islam which has fallen upon Armenia as a deadly pestilence arouse the torpid conscience of Christendom to a full appreciation of its sacred Book, its Christian homes, its free institutions and its religious liberty!

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