ARMENIA AS A WAR ISSUE—GREATEST SUFFERER FROM TURKO-PRUSSIAN "FRIGHTFULNESS"—EFFECT ON AMERICAN OPINION
The first official advance for peace made by Germany and her Allies, although couched in defiant and menacing terms, was nevertheless an unmistakable signal of distress, and has brought the world within measurable distance of that just and durable peace which the Allies have set out to achieve. The prospect of approaching peace has set on foot a general reiteration of the issues at stake, and consideration of the terms and problems of peace. Public attention in this country will naturally be occupied, in the first place, with the momentous issues and interests of the United Kingdom, the British Empire and her Allies raised by the war and to be settled and secured by the impending peace. It will therefore, I hope, not be considered amiss or premature for a member of one of those small and oppressed peoples engulfed in the vortex of the war who look to Great Britain and her Allies for deliverance, reparation and the security of their future liberty, to put before the British public his views, as well as facts and arguments that may be of some service in enabling it to form a just estimate of the claims and merits of one of the smaller problems which run the risk of not receiving a full hearing at the Peace Conference, in the presence of a multitude of larger and more important questions.
The item in the Allied peace terms stated in their reply to President Wilson's note, "the setting free of the populations subject to the bloody tyranny of the Turks," is the bearer to Armenians of a message of comfort and hope. It heralds the dawn of a new day that will mark the end of the long and hideous nightmare of Turkish tyranny.
If President Wilson, the American people, or other neutrals were in search of evidence that would prove to them conclusively which of the two groups of belligerents is sincere in its professions of regard for "the rights and privileges of weak peoples and small states"; if Belgium had not been violated and ravaged; if the Lusitania and so many hospital ships, liners and merchantmen had not been sunk without any care as to the fate of the wounded, the children and women, the non-combatant men and crews; if Zeppelins had not spread death and destruction among women and children in their homes in the night; if all these and so many other outrages had not been committed, and there had been, in the whole course of the war, no other act of the Quadruple Alliance in any degree contrary to the laws and usages of civilized warfare and dictates of humanity, the single word Armenia would provide that proof—a crushing, monumental proof—as to who is and who is not sincere in the professions of regard for right, justice and humanity. The spirit of desolated Armenia stands at the head of the phantom spirits of outraged humanity, which must rise and shatter to atoms every mask of benevolence, righteousness and injured innocence that the protagonists of "frightfulness" may assume for the deception of their own peoples and neutrals.
But in the United States at least there is no need for any fresh proof or explanation of the issue at this stage, and the martyrdom of Armenia has contributed largely to that state of American opinion. I have little doubt that President Wilson's Peace Note and speech to the Senate are the first steps towards America casting her whole weight into the scale, aiming at the realization of a just and lasting peace.
The intense interest evinced by the people and Government of the United States in the fate of Armenia and the Armenians is abundantly shown not only by the generous gifts of money for the relief of the survivors and the noble personal services by devoted missionaries and relief agents, some of whom lost their lives in their work of mercy; but also by diplomatic action on behalf of the Armenians in Constantinople (where Mr. Morgenthau, to his great honour, struggled valiantly to stay the hand of the ruthless oppressor), and by the prominence given to any and every scrap of news concerning the holocaust in Armenia. It is no exaggeration to say that, military operations apart, no incident of the war, not excepting the violation and martyrdom of Belgium, has been given more space and prominence in the American Press than anything connected with the martyrdom of Armenia and Syria and the relief of the refugees and exiles.
In his reply to the Armenian deputation who on December 14, 1916, presented to him an illuminated parchment from the Catholicos expressing His Holiness's gratitude and thanks to the American nation, President Wilson said, inter alia—
"We have tried to do what was possible to save your people from the ravages of war. My great regret is, that we have been able to accomplish so little. There have been many suffering peoples as the result of that terrible struggle, and the lot of none has touched the American heart more than the suffering of the Armenians."[2]
Nothing in the war has brought home to the people of the United States the moral issues of the war more strongly and vividly than the unprecedented barbarities committed by the Turks in their diabolical attempt to wipe out the Armenian race. No event of the war has been more damaging to the Central Powers in the eyes of the United States. Here they have seen the ruthless spirit of the twin enemies of humanity and liberty—the Turkish yatagan supported by the Prussian jack-boot—in its hideous nakedness, at work in the depths of Asia, unrestrained and unperceived, as they thought, by the light of civilization.
This gospel of the jack-boot and the yatagan will be best illustrated by putting side by side two quotations, one from the Tanine, the official organ of the Committee of Union and Progress in Constantinople, and the other from a statement made by Count Reventlow in October 1915. The Tanine "invited the Government to exterminate or forcibly convert to Islam all Armenian women in Turkey as the only means of saving the Ottoman Empire."[3] Count Reventlow, the high priest of the gospel of Brute Force and Militarism, writing in the Tageszeitung in defence and approval of Turkey's appalling crime, said that it was the Ottoman Government's obvious right and duty to take the strongest repressive measures against "the bloodthirsty Armenians"—the measures advocated by the Tanine, which were carried out by Count Reventlow's worthy allies on the Bosphorus with a completeness and ferocity that must have greatly pleased him.
The German Government and German apologists have made a great parade of the use of Indian and African troops in Europe by the Allies. By all reports, these troops have fought as clean a fight as any troops in the war. I think that in the judgment of future historians no incident of this war, whose history is so heavily shadowed on one side with outrages and violations of the laws of civilized warfare, will meet with so strong a condemnation as Germany's alliance with the Young Turks, the declaration of a "holy war" at her behest, and its dire consequences for the already sorely tried Christian subjects of the Turks. (It should be remembered that Germany and Austria are signatories to the Treaty of Berlin, Art. 61 of which was to have brought about "the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians," and to have "guaranteed their security against the Kurds and Circassians." This point cannot be too strongly emphasized.) She could have foreseen these consequences; and if she did not foresee them, she could have stopped them when they made themselves apparent. Turkey's entry into the war placed her Christian subjects in a position of great peril, as it has been her custom to wreak upon them her vengeance for defeats; while a state of war freed her from the moral restraint of Europe. It was hoped that German and Austrian influence would check this tendency. How cruelly events have shattered that hope! They have proved that it was too much to expect humanity and the ordinary feelings of chivalry and compassion for the honour and suffering of women and children from the State policies of these great Christian Governments and the majority of their agents in Turkey. I do not believe that this ungodly and inhuman policy has received general approbation either in Germany or Austria-Hungary. This is evident from the quotations from German missionary journals in the Blue-book on the "Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire."[4] It is also proved by the protests addressed to the Imperial Chancellor by several Catholic and Protestant organizations.
