When after the close of the last war between Russia and Turkey the leading statesmen of the European Powers assembled in congress at Berlin in the year 1878, they were approached by delegates from the Armenian people, one of whom was no less a personage than the present Katholikos, or High Priest of the nation, His Holiness Mekertich Khrimean. In answer to the enquiries of the Plenipotentiaries upon what portions of the Ottoman Empire the Armenians—of whom they had heard during their studies of the classics at school and college—still bestowed the glamour of an historical name, the delegates addressed themselves to the excellent map of the late Professor Kiepert and endeavoured to trace upon it the approximate limits of their country, embracing its area by a coloured line. Kiepert’s map, displaying on its face this interesting addition, is now slumbering in the archives of the Berlin Foreign Office, and I have been permitted, by the courtesy of the German Government, to hold it in my hands. So far as I remember, the area comprised within the coloured line corresponds approximately to that which is indicated in a document presented to Congress by the delegates, under the title of a project for an Organic Regulation to be applied to the new Armenian province which they desired to see established. The delegates asked that this province should be administered by Armenian officials; and when they were requested to state what proportion its Armenian inhabitants would bear to the Mussulmans, they furnished figures for the vilayets of Erzerum, Van and Bitlis (excluding Sert) which placed the numbers of the Mohammedans at 528,000 and the non-Mohammedans at 1,172,000.1 All the country between the Russian and Persian frontiers on the east, and a line drawn between Tireboli on the coast of the Black Sea and the confluence of the Kizil Chibuk Chai with the Euphrates on the west, was to be included in the new Government. The northern boundary was the coast line of the Black Sea; while that on the south extended from the Euphrates to the river of Bitlis, and so through the wild districts south of Lake Van back to the Persian frontier. At a congress of Oriental diplomatists both their demands and their statements would have been perfectly understood. One-half of the former might possibly be conceded, and the smallest fraction of the latter accepted. The collective wisdom of Europe assembled in the Prussian capital may perhaps have received a hint in this sense. The delimitation on the map of Kiepert was a far greater puzzle; how many members of Congress had even heard of the publication of the learned and laborious German Professor? But it was evident that there must be districts somewhere containing an Armenian population; so a clause was inserted in the Treaty to the effect that the Porte was pledged to carry out reforms in the provinces inhabited by Armenians.2

The Plenipotentiaries returned to their respective countries immensely pleased with themselves and with their work. Europe forgot all about the Armenians, nor have the Powers collectively displayed up to the present day the smallest interest in the Armenian Question. Only England has taken the matter in the least seriously; and the reaction which marred the results of the far-seeing policy of Lord Beaconsfield—and which was perhaps induced by the theatrical character of that eminent man—prevented us from striking while the iron was still hot. The important position which we had attained in the councils of the Ottoman Empire by the provisions of the Cyprus Convention was early and perhaps irrevocably lost. When Mr. Gladstone’s Government came to deal with the complexities of the Armenian Question, they could scarcely expect to enjoy the goodwill of the Turkish Government, which, out of office, they had done their utmost to disparage and humiliate.

An attempt was made by Mr. Goschen, Ambassador at Constantinople under the Gladstone rÉgime, to grapple with the inherent difficulties of the case. Immediately after the Berlin Treaty a number of able consular officers had been despatched by England over the whole of Asia Minor with instructions to report upon the general condition of the country, and upon the measures of reform, extending over the whole field of Turkish administration, which it would be necessary to recommend. Their reports are an interesting contribution to the literature of Blue-books; but in respect of the Armenian Question our Ambassador cannot have been enabled to extract from them the information which was necessary to provide him with that sure ground upon which to build that he was seeking to acquire. The Armenians themselves, for whom he was working, supplied him with misleading statistics, and seem never to have inspired him with any real confidence as to the soundness of their cause.3 As a consequence, no definite plan was placed before the Porte, and, what is more important, no definite policy seems ever to have been brought to the mind of our Ambassador or of his colleagues representing the signatory Powers. The teasing activity of England in Asia Minor, and the reports of misgovernment in every direction which she showered upon the Porte, seem not only to have alarmed Turkey but the European Powers as well; and it only required a word from Prince Bismarck to dismiss the whole question of Armenian reforms.4

What was the problem? The Berlin Treaty spoke of the provinces inhabited by the Armenians. But the Armenians have become scattered in considerable numbers over the whole extent of Asia Minor. This dispersal is the consequence of comparatively remote historical events. To require the Porte to introduce reforms in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to supervise the carrying out of the new measures, would amount to little less on the part of Europe than to take the whole of Turkey under tutelage. But there might be certain districts in which the Armenians were in a majority, and where they might be able to provide the necessary machinery of government, enjoying a certain measure of local autonomy while remaining subjects of the Sultan. Neither the Armenians themselves nor the British Consuls appear to have furnished satisfactory evidence towards such a solution. What is needed by statesmen who have to deal with Asiatic problems is an intimate knowledge of Asiatic geography. During all the long series of our investigations into the Armenian Question this side of the subject was almost ignored. The Armenian Project of which I have spoken embraced within the area of the proposed province outlying regions which present such dissimilar economical and political problems, that it would have been an act of political madness to endeavour to weld them together under the rule of a mere Governor-General. Our own Consuls, partly, no doubt, owing to the vague character of their instructions, fell into the same error. For instance, in estimating the population of the Armenian provinces, vast outlying districts were included, such as the sanjak of Hakkiari belonging to the vilayet of Van, where the Armenian inhabitants are few and far between, and where the character of the country and people is so wild and intractable that they could with difficulty be controlled from an Armenian centre. The problems that are presented to a Governor on the tableland of Armenia are quite sufficient to absorb his attention and exercise his resources without the addition to his jurisdiction of the mountains of Kurdistan, which, if Russia were mistress of the country, would be constituted into a military Government and subjected to military law.

It must be my endeavour, in proceeding to the statistical aspect of my subject, to avoid, as far as possible with the existing Governmental areas, this lamentable mistake. As in the case of the Russian provinces, I shall adhere as closely as may be feasible to the natural boundaries of the tableland of Armenia, such as they have been determined in the preceding chapter and delineated on the little map which accompanies the political chapter of my first volume. Just as it was necessary in some instances, when dealing with the Russian territory, to overstep the limits of the natural frontier, so I am now compelled by the statistical units at my disposal to diverge at certain points from that established line. Reference to the map of which I have spoken (Vol. I. p. 452) will enable my reader to compare the geographical with the statistical area. The latter is made up of the Governments or divisions of Governments indicated in the following table. Since this statement was compiled the numbers of the Armenians have been reduced by the massacres of 1895. In the vilayet of Erzerum between 2500 and 3000 people were butchered; in the town of Bitlis not less than 800, in that of Kharput 500, and as many as 2800 in Arabkir. Reliable figures are wanting for the losses in human life throughout the country districts of the vilayets of Van, Bitlis and Kharput. But they must have been considerable, and whole villages were wiped out. About 50,000 to 60,000 Armenians fled into Russia from the eastern vilayets. But many of these have already returned, and a few years of settled government would enable this prolific people to make good the deficiencies in their ranks. Later estimates, affected by such special circumstances, would be more misleading than those which I now present.

TABLE III.—Population of the Armenian Tableland in Turkey (about the year 1890)

The Moslem population may be divided into Turks and Kurds as follows:—

It may be interesting to add these figures to those which I have given for the Russian provinces. The population of the country as a whole for the statistical area delimited on the map will be represented by the following figures:—

In the case of the Turkish provinces I have found it a task of the greatest difficulty to arrive at a statistical estimate of the population upon which it might be possible to rely. The results resumed in Table III. are the outcome of a long and laborious investigation pursued in the country itself, in which I was sometimes aided, but more often bewildered, by the lists which I had in my possession, and which have either already been published, or were furnished to me by private friends. In the absence of a census conducted on scientific principles, any figures can only be approximately correct. Two possible sources of information exist which, in the first instance, it is natural to consult. The first are the official lists which are published in the almanacs of each Government, and which profess to give the numbers both of Mohammedans and of Christians inhabiting each caza or administrative sub-division. The second are the books of the diocesan authorities who, under the 14th and 96th Articles of the so-called Armenian constitution (of which I shall speak later on), are enjoined to maintain complete records of all births and deaths among Armenians in the diocese, and to provide copies to the Central Bureau of the Patriarchate in Constantinople. But the diocesan authorities are chary of recording information which conflicts with the number of Armenians who are placed for purposes of taxation upon the Government lists, and these lists themselves are founded upon a system of which it is the tendency to underrate the number of the population, Mohammedan and Christian alike. Owing to the seclusion of women in the East, no serious attempt is made to count the female population; while in the case of males the figures in the official statistics are derived from the military census, which is at best a very imperfect record, and which each man strives his utmost to evade. All Mohammedan males are liable to be enrolled in the army, while the Christians are obliged to pay an annual tax which exempts them from military service, and which is incident at birth. In the case of the sedentary population it is probable that the Christians evade this census to a greater extent than their Mohammedan neighbours; for the budget of a Christian family is immediately menaced by the birth of a male child. On the other hand, there are extensive districts on the southern portion of the tableland in which the Kurdish tribes inhabiting them are in a state approaching independence, and have never been counted at all. The official lists must for these reasons be used with much discrimination and care. In one Government they will be compiled with some measure of completeness; in another they will be defective as regards the Armenians; in yet another as regards the Kurds. In addition to this source of information there are the estimates which have been made in particular districts by private people engaged in business, and who know their own district well. The figures which emanate from the Armenian Patriarchate, and which have found their way into the Blue-books, have evidently been designed to subserve a political purpose, and may be dismissed under a sense of disappointment and disgust.

Two further points are suggested to me as calling for special remark. In the first place, I am satisfied that the total population of the Turkish provinces is in excess of the figure which I give. That figure only shows a percentage of population to the square mile of less than thirty10; in the Russian provinces, which can scarcely be called populous by comparison, although they probably contain less waste land, the percentage is over forty-nine. Secondly, while the greatest care has been taken to get the totals of the different peoples at least correct in the proportion which they bear to one another, it is probable in the cases of the Armenians and of the Kurds that even for this purpose the figures are a little too low. I have preferred to content myself with reproducing the statistical materials which, however imperfect, I consider the best, and only to mention in this connection the general impression which I have received.11

Among the inhabitants of the Turkish provinces who are classed as Mussulmans there exist considerable differences both of race and of religion; but for our present purpose it is most useful to distinguish them according as they are Turkish or Kurd. Under the former name I have counted the Mussulman population of the northern portion of the Government of Erzerum, or, to use more specific language, of the entire Government of Erzerum, with the exception of the sanjak of Bayazid and the cazas of Khinis, Kighi and Terjan. I have also included as Turkish one-half of the Mussulman inhabitants of the caza of Pasin. In the Governments of Van and of Bitlis the only portion of the population which I have thought it safe to number as Turkish are the Mussulmans in the towns of Van, Bitlis and Mush; as citizens in Governmental centres they are attached, if not by a common origin, at least by a common character and common sympathies to the interests of the ruling race. In the cases of the Government of Kharput and of the Governmental division of Palu, I have been unable to verify by personal acquaintance the estimates which I have adopted as the best; these estimates make the Turkish about as strong as the Kurdish element in the sanjak of Kharput, and a little less numerous in the caza of Palu. That part of the Mussulman population of the sanjak of Dersim who are counted as adherents of Government may most usefully be classed as Turkish and have been included in the roll of Turks. In the several Governments the remainder of the Mussulman inhabitants compose the total which has been given for the Kurds.

To express these results in general language, we may say that the seat of the Turkish population is the country on the north of Erzerum, while the Kurds inhabit the more southerly districts of the tableland, extending to the southern peripheral mountains. But what is the meaning of the name Turkish which has been used to distinguish the one from the other element? We must certainly guard ourselves from the danger of attributing to a convenient political designation an ethnological sense. We are justified in declaring that the Mussulman inhabitants of the northern districts of the Government of Erzerum are not of Kurdish origin; on the other hand, the ground is less tenable if we suppose that they belong to the Turkish race. How large an admixture of Turkish blood may flow within their veins, is a question which it is impossible to determine; it was rather the fertile country on the west of the Euphrates that presented the most attractive settling ground to the invading hordes of Turks. I am given to believe that a considerable number derive from the widely spread Georgian family; but that family has here mixed with other race elements, of which the Turkish is one. In what pertains to national solidarity, in the possession of common interests and common sentiments, these Mussulman inhabitants of the northern districts may justly be classed as Turks. But even this statement is subject to exception and cannot be universally applied. Just as in the northern zone of peripheral mountains there still exist whole districts of which the inhabitants have adopted the Mohammedan religion, but retain their essential affinity to the Greek race to which they belong, so within the statistical area of the tableland among the ranks of the Mussulmans may be found considerable aggregates of people who, although of Armenian origin, profess the dominant creed. In the northern province an important instance of this change in religion rather than in nationality is found in the district of Tortum between Erzerum and the town of Olti; the Mussulman inhabitants of that district are said to be the descendants of the ancient Armenian families who are known to have lived there within historical times.

While the Turkish inhabitants are engaged in agriculture and in those pursuits of urban life which attach to the service of Government or of individuals, or to the less ambitious among the requirements of industry and commerce, the Kurdish population, on the other hand, present a variety of social development which includes both the sedentary and the nomadic state, the organisation of the commune and that of the tribe. A people who were known to a remote antiquity and whose character is already sufficiently familiar in Europe, the Kurds who inhabit the tableland are not only distinguished from one another according to the plane of social life to which they have attained, but are divided by essential differences of language and of creed. From the neighbourhood of the town of Sivas in Asia Minor to beyond Malatia on the south, and between the two branches of the Euphrates to the vicinity of Mush, the Kurds, although classed in the official lists as Mussulmans, neither practise the orthodox religion nor speak the same dialect as their neighbours of presumably kindred race. Branded throughout the Nearer East under the opprobrious name of Kizilbash, they harbour a sullen hatred of the Turkish Government, whose attempts to convert them to orthodoxy they resent; while towards the Christians they are drawn by the impulse of a common antagonism to the existing order, and by the respect in which they hold the Christian religion, in the person of whose Founder they recognise an incarnation of God. Their religion, so far as we know it, bears the impress of the Aryan mind, which seeks for a human embodiment of the Deity; they invest with divine attributes Moses and Jesus, Mohammed and Ali. Their language, although a branch of the Kurdish, contains an admixture both of Persian and Armenian words, and is said to differ so greatly from the prevailing dialect of the Kurdish tongue that those who are familiar with the one are unable to understand the other. While they practise the rite of circumcision and have adopted certain of the observances of Islam, the contempt in which their religion is held by their Mussulman neighbours of the Sunni sect disposes them against the dominant creed, which they regard as a dangerous enemy of their own peculiar faith. In brief, they constitute a separate element in the Kurdish population of the tableland, and the numerical value of this element may be placed at about a third of the total figure which I have given for the Kurds in the Turkish provinces. Their geographical position between and about the two branches of the Euphrates invests them with some contemporary importance from a military point of view; and they hold the wild and mountainous country on the south of the headquarters of the Turkish Army Corps at the town of Erzinjan. In this district, which is known under the name of the Dersim, they have long resisted and continue to resist the imposition of the Turkish yoke. They are here in the tribal and pastoral state; but they have been obliged by the rigour of the climate to dwell in houses, and they cultivate small strips of land. In the country on the west and east of the Dersim the Kizilbashes are peaceful and industrious peasants, of whom most travellers have spoken with respect.

If we draw on the map an imaginary line from Mush through Erzerum towards the sea, the Mussulman population of the Turkish provinces are distributed in the following manner over the area of the tableland. On the north of Erzerum and on either side of this line the Turkish population extend from the Russian border on the east along the banks of the Western Euphrates to its junction with the eastern branch. The country south of Erzerum and on the west of the line is the seat of the Kizilbash Kurds; while on the east are situated the Kurds who profess the orthodox religion and speak the prevailing dialect of Kurdistan. The territorial extension of the Kurdish people varies according as the forces of order are strengthened or decline, but their original home and natural habitation are the mountains which contain the sources of the Tigris. From the Euphrates on the west to the Persian Gulf upon the south the zone of buttress ranges which support the tablelands of Armenia and Persia, and which we know at first under the name of Taurus and then under that of Zagros, is inhabited by tribes of Aryan origin—the Kurds and further south the Lurs—who are distinguished by considerable variations in dialect and in religion, but who present the common characteristic of an inveterate aversion to settled life and to the imposition of the yoke of law. Their manner of living is directly determined by their geographical position and pastoral pursuits. As spring develops into summer and the yellow drought creeps higher and higher up the slopes of the mountain-sides, they ascend from one to another step, from a lower to a higher chain, and arrive, perhaps at the approach of autumn, on the fringe of the tableland. When at length the season is verging upon winter the migration southwards begins. A continuous throng of sheep and goats and horses and weather-worn people of either sex and every age flows slowly down the blighted country, filing by tortuous tracks between the boulders or pausing about the noonday hour by the bed of a shaded stream. At the foot of the range, on the verge of the vast alluvial plains through which the Tigris winds, is placed their winter encampment; their tents are sufficient shelter against the climate of the low country, which even through the colder months is temperate and mild. These yearly migrations of the Kurdish tribes are not conducted without great suffering on the part of the settled population; their granaries are plundered by the shepherd army, and the land which they might have cultivated is occupied by the nomads during winter as pasture for their flocks. But this is a problem which belongs to the southern peripheral region and to the lowlands, rather than to the tableland. The Kurds of the tableland—with the possible exception of the Kizilbashes—are an alien element of the population. The great distance of their pastures from the plains of the Tigris makes it difficult for them, if not impossible, to pursue their instinctive migration; the rigorous winter obliges them to discard their tents and inhabit villages—in a word, to take the first step towards a more settled order, of which the further development is viewed by some of them with just alarm, as incompatible with their tribal organisation and independent life.

We may place at the kernel of the Armenian Question in Turkey the difficulties which arise from the presence of this Kurdish population upon the Armenian plateau. It is true that a considerable number among them have become industrious cultivators and subsist on the fruits of their own toil. According as the period which separates them from their former life is long or short, or the name of their more lawless kinsmen is despised or respected, these peasants will answer the traveller who inquires to what people they belong either by replying that they are Osmanli or by owning to their being Kurds. In the first case they rank themselves with the settled Turkish population; in the second they acknowledge the bond which attaches them to the free life of the tribe. But the weight of this agricultural element lies in the scale of peace; it is otherwise with those Kurds who retain to the full their tribal organisation and who pasture their flocks on the lofty highlands which extend to the plain of Erzerum. It is possible that from a remote period the nomads of Kurdistan proper may have advanced the limit of their summer journey beyond the plain of Mush, to return at the approach of winter to the neighbourhood of Diarbekr. How far their migration should be extended would be determined by the distance which separated them from their winter quarters on the lowlands, and by the degree of resistance which the settled peoples might be able to offer to their unwelcome approach. The fall of the feudal system in Turkey and the decline of the power of the Turkish beys may no doubt have contributed in a sensible manner to open breaches to the Kurds; but it appears that a powerful colony of this people were brought to their present seats in Armenia through a definite act of public policy on the part of the Turkish Power. After the defeat of the Persians in the plain of Chaldiran in 1514 it became necessary to arrive at a permanent settlement of the Kurdish provinces; and it formed part of the plan pursued by Edrisi, the distinguished Minister of Selim the First, and himself a Kurd of Bitlis, to remove a portion of this turbulent people from the country of their home and to settle them along the new frontier of Turkey in the districts bordering upon Persia and Georgia which had been acquired from the Shah. It is said that they were granted a perpetual immunity from taxation on the condition that they would act as a permanent militia upon the border which had been given them to guard.12 Neither the evidence of subsequent history nor the contemporary political situation upon the tableland can be taken to have established the wisdom of a policy which appears to have overrated the capacity of the Kurds whether for benefit or for harm. On the one hand, by adding to the area inhabited by them, the Turkish Government seems rather to have increased the difficulties which have always beset their efforts to hold this people in check; and, on the other, their experience of the value of this militia can scarcely be so pleasant a memory as their persistent continuance in a worn-out ideal might lead us to expect. During the two campaigns against Russia of 1829 and 1854 the Kurdish chiefs played off one Power against another, and are even said to have assisted the invading armies by affording a passage through their adopted country and by providing them with supplies. In the campaign of 1877 the Kurds were the most dangerous element in the Turkish army, and are described by an eye-witness of the several actions in Asia as a grotesque corps of irregular cavalry breaking into groups when resisted and altogether unfitted for the serious operations of war. Their atrocious cruelty towards the wounded and their mutilation of the dead was visited upon the heads of their afflicted protectors in a general execration of the Turkish name. Yet even the bitterness of this disappointment and the scarcely doubtful lesson of several minor wars, which within the course of the past century they have been obliged to conduct against the Kurds, seem not to have convinced the Turkish Government of the folly of endeavouring to humour a people who will never be of any assistance to Government until they shall have lost for ever the power of resistance and ranged themselves on the side of law. The reigning Sultan in his dealings with the Kurds has inclined to the old policy; he has sought at once to civilise them and to render them more efficient from a military point of view. In the wild and seldom-visited country between the plain of Alashkert and the lake of Van I was able to gain a practical acquaintance with the methods that are being pursued. In the village of Patnotz, the principal seat of the notorious tribe of Haideranli, a solid stone structure, which has been built by order of Government to serve the several purposes of a mosque, a school, and a residence for the chief, stands out from the usual cluster of mud hovels—a palace among ant-hills. In every larger Kurdish village I found a petty officer of the Turkish army bewailing the sad fate which had brought him to this exile, and his own impotence to control the slippery people and constrain them to attend his drills. A new name, that of Hamidiyeh, has been given to this irregular cavalry, and they have been liberally supplied with uniforms from the Turkish magazines. The headquarters of the corps are at Melazkert on the Eastern Euphrates or Murad Su, and over thirty regiments have already been registered over the area of the tableland. Each regiment has a nominal strength of about 600 men. But they have never yet manoeuvred together, and when in 1892 a detachment from each regiment paraded at Erzerum, I am informed that the whole number did not amount to 2000, and that the sorry spectacle was presented to the Turkish general of a motley company of aged men and half-grown youths, mounted on horses which wanted muscle and had perhaps never tasted corn. It is pleasant to acknowledge the good intentions of the Sultan in endeavouring to educate the Kurds and to organise them in a more efficient manner for the purposes of serious war; the ideal which has no doubt been present to the mind of his military advisers is the example of the Russian corps of Cossacks. But the mild measures at present in favour will never attain this result; it is not under such a policy that the Kurds will be subjected to the regular discipline of a camp. Either the young men must be taken from their native or adopted provinces and trained in the armies of the Empire at a distance from their homes, or the entire people must be made to bend to the yoke of an equal civil law, of which they at present evade the provisions and defy the ministers.

While the Turkish Government have little reason to be satisfied with the results of their experiments with the Kurds, the effects which derive from their presence on the tableland are disastrous in the extreme. Yet it is not the Mussulmans so much as the Armenians who are afflicted by this scourge. Let us pursue a little further our original analysis. Transplanted from their natural camping-grounds, and obliged through the long months of an arctic winter to provide themselves and their animals with shelter and with food, this pastoral people were quartered on the Armenian villages, but were required by Government to pay an annual tax in return for the accommodation which during winter they received.13 But an arrangement which was based on the just principle of ensuring to the Armenian a fair remuneration for the lodging which he furnished and the fodder which he supplied, was put into practice by the local authorities in a characteristic manner: the proceeds of the tax were committed to their own coffers. In 1842, after the promulgation of the celebrated charter of reforms which is known under the name of the Hatti-Sherif of Gulkhaneh, a beginning was made towards the abolition of the system; the Kurds in the neighbourhood of Mush were allotted certain villages which had been vacated by the Armenian emigrants, and the Armenians of the district were relieved of the heavy burden which they had previously been obliged to bear. At the present day the pastoral Kurds of the plateau have all their own villages, and the old system, except in isolated instances, may be said to have disappeared. Yet even now the Kurds justify their raids upon the Armenians on the ingenious plea of the ancient right of quarter which they consider they are entitled to enforce. Policy also dictates a procedure which their tender conscience has approved. The Armenians are at once the most immediate and the least redoubtable among their neighbours. The courageous Kurd equips himself for the foray with a rifle of modern Russian pattern and belts bristling with cartridges; his victims, by a cruel and cynical provision, have been deprived by Government of all arms. Should the Kurd be caught red-handed and arraigned before the civil authority, he will scornfully defy the civil jurisdiction and claim to be tried by his military superiors as a trooper in the Hamidiyeh Corps. When the civil branch has been successfully thwarted, the military authorities are cajoled, while the injured party is rewarded by the visitation of a fresh injury, which he endures without complaint. I can understand that in Kurdistan proper with the lowlands about the course of the Tigris the shepherd problem presents some difficulty; it must always be a task of some magnitude to control a people whose migrations extend over so wide an area and whose country conceals within its countless recesses such inaccessible retreats. On the tableland the case is quite elementary: the pastoral Kurd belongs to a village, and that village is situated in the neighbourhood of the pastures from which he is driven by the winter snows. It cannot be a matter of great difficulty to follow up the robbers to their homes. It is well within the capacity of the existing authorities to enforce against them the necessary measures of police. But the tribal chiefs are well aware of the consequences which would flow from such a change in Turkish policy towards them, and they exert all the means at their disposal to avert it. Upon the tableland they enjoy a parasitical prosperity. Once prevented from levying their supplies of grain and fodder upon the Armenians, and restricted to the legitimate operations of barter with the peasantry or reciprocal trade, their tribes would gradually melt away, and, while a large number would join the ranks of the agricultural population, a remnant only would remain to continue in Armenia the shepherd calling and the tribal life.

The Armenians are distributed in the following manner over the statistical area of the Turkish provinces. Compared with the number of the Mussulman inhabitants, they are in greater strength in the Government of Van than in any other Government. Taking that Government as a whole, but of course excluding the Hakkiari, they exceed by about one-third the total of the Mussulman population. In the town of Van the proportion of Armenians to Mussulmans is about as two to one. In the Government of Bitlis they are in a majority in the neighbourhood of Mush, and in the fertile district of Bulanik, north-west of the lake of Van. On the other hand, they are outnumbered by the Mussulmans in the populous sanjak of Kharput, and in the caza or Governmental sub-division of Palu. In the Government of Erzerum there is scarcely a district in which they are not less numerous than their Mussulman neighbours. Yet, when estimating the relative strength of the Armenian element, we deceive ourselves if we dwell with complacent insistence on the fact of its numerical inferiority. Several factors essential to such an analysis deserve and require attention. In the first place, the most fertile portion of the country is held by the Armenians. The beautiful region about Lake Van, the vast plains of Bulanik, of Mush, and of Kharput are the principal seats of the Armenian peasantry—a peasantry as sturdy as the Mussulman settlers and far more industrious and progressive than they. Another advantage possessed by the Armenians is their favourable geographical situation in relation to the Turks and the Kurds. The Armenian population compose a mass of varying compactness which extends across the tableland from east to west, and may be said in a general manner to divide as with a wedge the two branches of the Mussulman inhabitants. Or the Armenian may be compared to the middle bedfellow of three. Again, the solidarity of the Armenian element, both from a political and a social point of view, is a fact which must not be ignored. Nowhere in a more conspicuous manner than upon the tableland has the Gregorian Church resisted the advances of Rome. According to the statistics supplied by the Catholic patriarch to Mr. Goschen, the number of the Catholics within the limits of our statistical area cannot amount to 20,000 souls. Of these, the great majority inhabit the northern districts of the Government of Erzerum, while in the country of Van and Mush, which is essentially Armenian, there are scarcely any adherents of Rome. It is true that the Protestant community is growing; if we include the Mission of Mardin lying outside our area, they are over 16,000 strong. But the paramount object which is present to the Protestant missionaries is not to subvert the national Church or to attach it to their own denomination, but rather to raise the standard of the national religion and to improve the social condition of the people among whom they have come to live. Finally, we must not overlook the high place which the Armenians already occupy in the economical order of the country, and the fact that the Armenian population is capable of very rapid expansion under kinder circumstances. I have already had occasion to speak in praise of the Armenian peasantry; yet, while agriculture suffers from the disappearance of the Armenian from the soil, the place which he occupies in the less rudimentary grades of civilised life can never be supplied. The worn and crippled machine of industry functions through him alone. His advancement means the progress of the country; his removal is the cause of its decay. Yet the stream of emigration continues, and is gathering fresh volume every year. The general exodus of the Armenian population which ensued upon the retirement into Russian territory of General Paskevich in 1839 has been followed by a gradual process of depletion, which varies in intensity according as harvests are good or disastrous and the Kurds are encouraged or restrained. During my stay in the country the Armenian peasantry of considerable districts were exerting themselves to pay off their debts, and to obtain permission to leave. Many were flying to the Russian frontier to seek an asylum from the Kurds. A change in policy is alone needed to transform a country which is rapidly becoming a desert into a prosperous and progressive province. Behind the Armenian population of the tableland stand their kinsmen who inhabit the less distracted districts of Asia Minor. At the first approach of a better era many of these would seek with eagerness the ancient home of their race. Many of the emigrants into Russia would return to their old seats. The tide now setting to America, whence the Armenians, like the Irish, transmit large sums of money to their less prosperous relations at home, would slacken if it did not cease. A country which even in its wildest regions still retains the traditions of Armenian civilisation, and is adorned with the remains of Armenian architecture, would resume the old order in a spirit essentially new.

Have I wearied my reader with this long and almost exhaustive analysis, at which I can scarcely myself suppress a yawn? At least we may console ourselves with the virtuous reflection that we have been disentangling a difficult subject of which we shall all hear more as the years go by. Most of us—for we are all rulers, and our voices reach far—will some day be expected to pronounce our opinion upon it; I have therefore endeavoured to present the facts in an uncoloured narrative. But it may be asked: why has so little been heard of the Armenians still residing in their native seats? Are they not a handful among the numbers of their countrymen dispersed over the Ottoman Empire, and inhabiting the capital or the great towns of Asia Minor? Sasun, where the massacres commenced in 1894, is surely a district which lies outside the proper limits of Armenia; while Sivas and Trebizond, Diarbekr, Marash and Aintab—cities of which the names are engraved in red upon our memories—are situated at great distances from the Armenian centres. Such reasoning is in a great measure true; it is the Berlin difficulty.

In the absence of reliable statistics I shall refrain from any attempt to trace the distribution of the Armenians over the whole extent of the Ottoman Empire. The total number of Armenians in Turkey was given by the delegates to the Berlin Congress as amounting to 3,000,000 souls. This figure is certainly too high. An Armenian clerical writer, who appears not to err on the side of exaggeration, has placed the entire Gregorian population, that is the great bulk of his countrymen in Turkey, at 1,263,900 souls.14 It is reasonable to suppose that the Armenian subjects of the Sultan number upwards of one and a half millions, of whom some half million may be taken to inhabit the statistical area with which we have been dealing, after considerable additions have been made to supply the deficiencies in the lists. The remainder are spread over the Empire, forming fairly compact communities in the more populous towns. Previous to the massacres of 1895, the Armenians of Constantinople were estimated at 180,000 souls, of whom some 80,000 might be reckoned as immigrants for a certain period from such Armenian centres as Van and Arabkir, and the remainder were permanently established. Other considerable aggregates are forthcoming in Northern Syria and Cilicia, where, besides the towns, the mountainous district of Zeitun is inhabited by a vigorous and brave Armenian peasantry. The towns on the highlands of Asia Minor from the Euphrates to Brusa and Smyrna number large bodies of Armenians among their citizens. The same may be said of those on the lowlands from the Persian Gulf to Diarbekr. Trebizond contains a populous and flourishing settlement, as do most of the rising towns along the coast of the Black Sea. Indeed the Armenian is ubiquitous in the Nearer Asia, from the northern province of Persia to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Yet this people as a whole can scarcely amount to more than 3,000,000 souls, a round figure of which the principal components are as follows:—

Two sets of causes are responsible for the recent outbreaks of Armenian sentiment in regions where this people are an insignificant minority, separated from the natural and historical seats of their race. There is in the first place the political and social inequality between the Christians and the Mohammedans. Just as beside some stagnant pool among the recesses of the rocks the returning tide awakens the folded life of plant and shell, so our Western civilisation, recoiling upon Asia, arouses the hopes which have slept for centuries in the breasts of the Christians of the East. It is not that they are denied religious freedom, as some of their partisans are bold enough to assert. The tolerance of the reigning Sultan is active throughout his empire. The traveller marvels at the liberty, almost amounting to license, which is allowed to the votaries of the several creeds. Take the capital: there are the Greeks with their noisy carnivals, so repugnant to Mussulman austerity. Or the Moslem wayfarer is hustled from the street by some funeral procession with its bevy of priests, conducting an open coffin where the lineaments of the deceased are exposed to a curious and respectful crowd. What invisible force controls all this fermenting human material?... Nor will the favourable impression be diminished by the wider experience of a provincial tour. In the country the sound of Christian bells falls upon the landscape from some cloister nestling in the lap of the hills. In the towns the observance of Sunday effects a change in urban life which is almost as marked as in a Christian state. Trades are suspended, shops are closed, chimes ring from the churches.

What is denied to the Christians is political equality. They are tolerated and they are taxed; but they remain the unbelievers, the victims of a prejudice stronger than any law. In the case of the Armenians they are rigorously prohibited from possessing firearms, and they do not serve in the army. They are excluded from the highest administrative posts. Their share in the provincial government is almost as nothing. The edicts which have pronounced in favour of equality have been inoperative and are in abeyance. At the same time the voice of the West is heard louder and nearer; and the rebellious spirits appeal to the example of Eastern Europe, freed for ever from a Mussulman yoke.

But why did the movement fasten upon these scattered communities—hostages, as it would seem, to the Mussulman power? I think the reason is not very far to seek. Because of the severity with which the outbreaks in Armenia were quelled during 1890 and the preceding years. It was evident to the revolutionary party that the spirit of their countrymen had become cowed in the land where they are native. However real their wrongs—and I think I have testified to their reality—they had learnt by recent experience to endure them in silence without attempting to obtain redress. The movement, suppressed in its place of origin, broke out on new ground.

Sasun, a mountainous region belonging to the southern peripheral zone on the outer margin of the Armenian tableland, was the scene of the first events in the latest recrudescence of the old malady, smothered but not cured. The district extends from the southern slopes of the mountains overlooking the plain and town of Mush, situated upon their northern verge, to the neighbourhood of the town of Hazo. It formed a canton of the old Armenian province of Aghdznik, which is sometimes joined by Armenian writers with that of Korduk, the modern Kurdistan. The name of the canton, Sasun, is said to be derived from Sanasar, one of the two sons of the Assyrian monarch Sennacherib, who, after slaying their father, fled into Armenia.17 His descendants appear to have been known as the Sanasuns or Sasuns18; they were princes of Aghdznik, and occupied the very highest rank at the court of the Armenian Arsakid king.19 Their territories were no doubt occupied by an Armenian population; and the memories of that distant period still linger among the peasantry who are scattered over the wild but in places fertile land.20 But the vicinity of the region to the towns of the lowlands must have rendered wellnigh impossible the maintenance by its inhabitants of their Christian religion during the period of Mussulman expansion. We know from history that its Armenian ruler at the close of the ninth century had adopted a Mussulman name and outwardly professed the Mohammedan religion.21 At the present day some handfuls of Armenian Christians preserve with obstinacy the habits of their race and the practice of their religion among remote fastnesses. The bulk of the population have adopted Islam, are classed as Kurds, and can with difficulty be distinguished from the Kurdish people.

Strange indeed are the anomalies which are presented in these little-known districts of Turkish Kurdistan. On the southern fringe of Sasun live a tribe called the Baliki or Beleke, speaking a mixed language of Arabic, Kurdish and Armenian. Their religion cannot be classed either as Christian or Mohammedan, nor even as that professed by the Kizilbashes. When they make oath it is in the name of a church or monastery. But they possess neither churches nor mosques. Marriage is a rite which they ignore. Their women go about in perfect freedom and unveiled, wearing white trousers like the Yezidis or so-called devil-worshippers. Wives are bought or exchanged—a woman of forty for one of twenty, the owner of the latter being compensated by a few silver pieces. A girl may be purchased from them by a stranger, provided always that you take her away. These Baliki are probably a particular remnant of the old inhabitants, with whom the Armenians, dispersed among them as traders, would scarcely recognise any racial link.

Serfdom is an institution which is not unknown in the country, though its existence is softened over by the Turkish authorities, who shrink from dispensing a purely nominal sovereignty. The serfs, who are Armenians, are known as zer kurri, signifying bought with gold. In fact they are bought and sold in much the same manner as sheep and cattle by the Kurdish beys and aghas. The only difference is that they cannot be disposed of individually; they are transferred with the lands which they cultivate. The chief appropriates as much as he wishes from their yearly earnings, capital or goods; and in return he provides them with protection against other Kurdish tribes. Many stories are told to illustrate the nature of the relation. A serf was shot by the servant of a Kurdish agha who possessed lands in the neighbourhood. The owner of the serf did not trouble to avenge his death on the person of the murderer, still less upon that of the agha, his neighbour. He rode over to the agha’s lands, and put bullets through two of his serfs, the first that he happened to meet.... The serf of a chieftain residing a few hours’ distance from the town of Hazo had settled in Hazo, where he had become treasurer to the Turkish Government. One night his house was attacked by another Kurdish chief, his money carried off and he and his cousin murdered. In this case the owner was not so easily propitiated. He gathered his people together, bearded his fellow-brigand in his lair, killed him, burnt down his house, and put to death every living thing. Both these incidents occurred during the lifetime of people who are still living; the one is related by no less an authority than a British Consul, and the other by an individual in a responsible position, whose sympathies are on the side of the Turkish Government.

On the tableland of Armenia such relations between the Kurds and the Armenians are altogether unknown. Their existence in one form or another among the inaccessible retreats of Kurdistan provided material for the revolutionary propaganda of the agitator, Damadean, whose early doings in the Sasun region I have chronicled in my chapter on Bitlis, and who presents a striking and almost legendary figure even in the sober narrative of the Blue-books.22 This man and his successor Boyajean knew full well that there in Sasun they were breaking virgin ground. They were further encouraged by the fact that the Armenian peasantry of that region were in possession of arms and knew how to use them. The result of their efforts and of the ill-advised action of the local authorities was the Sasun massacre of 1894. It was followed by the massacres of 1895, which devastated the country districts and most of the great towns of the Armenian tableland, but of which the principal and new feature was the occurrence of such tragedies among the Armenian communities spread over the face of the Ottoman Empire.

I have not been able to learn that the condition of these scattered communities presents any special cause for disaffection; and I do not believe that the revolutionary movement, in which they all participated in some degree, was either spontaneous in its nature or indigenous in its growth. Few if any of them are engaged in a struggle for life and death with hordes of Kurds, let loose on territory which is not Kurdish and which is far from being suited to that race of lawless shepherds. Most of them are fairly prosperous citizens in the towns; and whatever grievances they may possess are shared in a greater or a lesser degree by all the Christian subjects of the Sultan. The Armenian cause, as a cause with a justifiable and reasonable aim, is not founded upon any such grievances. For all practical and constructive purposes it is simply a question of the proper government of the provinces of Armenia which are inhabited by Mussulmans as well as by Armenians, but which are raided and drained of their resources by tribal Kurds.

One other aspect of this part of the subject remains to be considered. The massacres of 1895 were certainly not the outcome of a spontaneous rising of the Mussulmans against the Christians. All or nearly all were organised from without. I well remember how, while taking coffee with an official high in the Turkish service in the neighbourhood of a great provincial centre, my host, pointing to the road which we overlooked from the open windows, said: “I can never look upon that road without remembering the occasion when I sat in this very room and saw strange people passing along it—immigrants, so they seemed, from the mountains in the north. Our massacre followed at no long interval.” The Mussulmans of the Armenian provinces are perfectly well aware that their own turn will closely follow upon the disappearance of the Armenians. They will not, indeed, be butchered by imported bands of ruffians; but they will be swallowed by the Kurds. Some of their villages have already been raided by this people, who are less to blame for such natural exercise of their appetites than those who have transplanted or enticed them from their native seats.... I must now pass without any preamble to the larger bearings of the Armenian Question: does it offer any scope for a practical and special solution which need not embrace the reform and rejuvenescence of the Ottoman Empire as a whole? And what are the interests of the progressive states of Europe, and of Great Britain in particular, in the settlement and disposal of the Question?

I. I must repeat with tedious persistency that what is most required is a knowledge and appreciation of the geographical conditions. These I have endeavoured in a lengthy analysis to elucidate. Collective Notes and schemes of reform are of very little value, if it be attempted to apply their provisions indifferently to regions presenting features so distinct and dissimilar as the tableland of Armenia and the mountains of Kurdistan. No solution of the Armenian Question in Turkey would be calculated to contain the elements of permanence which should not be concerned in the first instance with delimitation, and with redistribution of the existing Governmental areas.

The principles upon which such redistribution should proceed are the common-sense principles of grouping together districts which naturally belong together, and of rendering the Governments as far as possible homogeneous. I think it would be found that obedience to these principles would at the same time assist a practical solution of the Kurdish Question. They would point to the formation of three great Governments. One would be constituted by the mountainous districts between the tableland of Armenia and the Black Sea, and might be called the Black Sea Government. It would coincide to some extent with the existing area of the vilayet of Trebizond; but it might seem advisable to include within it regions at present belonging to the vilayet of Erzerum, such as Tortum and the districts on the side of Olti. The second Government would embrace the tableland itself, and its demarcation should be conducted as far as possible in consonance with the natural frontiers, such as they have been determined in the present work. The third Government would be the Government of Kurdistan. It would comprehend a considerable area, from Kirkuk and Sulimanieh on the south-east to Diarbekr and the confines of Kharput on the north-west. Mosul, Jezireh and Diarbekr would be the bases of the administration, these cities on the lowlands being situated in convenient positions to serve as centres from which to control the necessary winter migrations of the Kurdish tribes from their mountains to the agricultural regions bordering on the left or eastern bank of the Tigris. Strong military posts might be established within the mountainous area in the principal towns of Kurdistan.

Of these three Governments that of the tableland should be administered from a suitable centre, which centre would be neither Erzerum nor Van. Akhlat, Melazkert or Khinis would seem to be naturally designated to fulfil the requirements of the case. None of these towns are very far removed from the frontier line of the Kurdish mountains, on which side alone would the new Government be exposed to incursions of the lawless Kurdish element. All of them are favourably placed for intercommunication with the principal Armenian districts. Passage of the tribes from Kurdistan proper into the Governmental area should be rigorously interdicted. It could be prevented by no more formidable measures than the enrolment of a corps of gendarmerie. Such a corps would also suffice to police the districts on the tableland at present inhabited by tribal Kurds.

Reforms or changes of this nature are well within the capacity of the Government at Constantinople. They would not, I think, prejudice their general military administration; it might even be found that they would be in harmony with purely military interests. But the Turks should never forget that they are much more likely to succumb as an empire owing to defects in the civil rather than in the military arm. Europe, with all her want of squeamishness, cannot permanently tolerate civil misgovernment on so great a scale. One after another the friends or allies of the Ottoman Empire in Europe will be compelled to stand aside. Sooner or later the young German Empire will be forced by circumstances to adopt the same attitude as her elder sister of Great Britain. Meanwhile there is growing up with alarming rapidity a situation in the provinces immediately adjoining Russian territory which already invites and may soon require Russian intervention. Russian statesmen are only awaiting the favourable moment in the world movements of the time. Russian troops are already placed within striking distance of the fortress of Erzerum, immediately commanding the roads to the interior of Asia Minor and to the capital. It does not require a long memory to recall the pretexts—nay, the causes—upon which Russia justified her previous aggressions upon Turkish territory. Who shall assert that the present situation on the tableland of Armenia is less aggravated than that which prevailed in the European provinces when the Russian armies crossed the Pruth in 1877?

Administrative changes of the nature I have indicated are, of course, only feasible as a whole through spontaneous action on the part of the Government at Constantinople. Their professed friends but real enemies may try to play upon their suspicions; and will, no doubt, urge that they are being offered in a thinly veiled form the substance of an independent Armenia. But such a consummation, were it even possible in a remote future, need not alarm the well-known solicitude of Oriental rulers for the interests of posterity. If the millions of Mussulmans attached by religion and common interests to the rule of the Sultans were ever insufficient to keep within bounds Armenian ambitions, the presence of such a strong nation upon the high road of the Russian advance would surely be a blessing in disguise. It can scarcely be doubted that in that case the weight of Armenian sympathies would be on the side of the weak Ottoman Empire. But this talk about a revival of the Armenian kingdom is windy and frivolous in the extreme. The Armenians have neither leaders nor a class of leaders; and how long would it take to develop such a class? In the ninth century, when they broke loose from the expiring body of the caliphate, they had their princes and nobles of greater and lesser degree. These families have disappeared without leaving a trace. And is it certain or even probable that, if the old ideal could be again realised, the Armenians in the twentieth century would be prepared to revive a polity which would narrow their activities from the whole wide area of an empire to the confined stage of a petty state?

The example of Bulgaria, sometimes quoted with a shiver of fear in this connection, is not an example in point. There the Christians composed the bulk of the population; and they had no links, such as are present in the case of the Armenians, with the rest of the Ottoman Empire. But, even if the apprehensions of the most nervous could be justified by solid arguments, what is the alternative which they are able to suggest? If they settle the Kurdish Question they are in so far assisting the Armenians; while, if they allow it to settle itself, they are face to face with the ruin of these provinces, which Russia, in the interests of the security of her own frontier, will be constrained and will be invited by Europe to occupy.

But the regulation of Turkish Armenia is not a matter which alone concerns the rulers on the Bosphorus. Europe has always recognised her intimate interest in the affairs of Turkey, and she is specially pledged to secure good government for the Armenians. But her intervention, should it be necessary, would, I hope, be based on the broadest grounds, not in favour of the Armenians alone, but also of the Mussulmans. The constitution of a single new province on the tableland would not be tantamount to controlling the administration of Asiatic Turkey; it is a measure which can be reasonably demanded and readily executed. Moreover, if Europe were again to take up the question, she would be well advised not to recognise any limitations in respect of the qualifications of the new Governor-General. He would, of course, not be an Armenian, and he might very well be a Mussulman and a subject of the Sultan. Or a European might be appointed to the post. In a financial and administrative sense the province would be dissevered from the Central Government; and, in the present state of the country, a loan to the provincial treasury would be necessary to supply the funds for the organisation of the gendarmerie. The new Governor would rule over a somewhat heterogeneous Mussulman majority and a compact Armenian minority, very much their inferior in numbers. But his efforts would be assisted by the homogeneous nature of the provincial area; and his jurisdiction would embrace, not a tract of difficult mountain country, but some of the finest agricultural districts in the world.

The needs of the Armenians living in the capital and in the towns of Asiatic Turkey could be met by the revival of the so-called constitution granted to their nation by Sultan Abd-al-Aziz in 1863. I have thought it worth while to include a translation of this lengthy document, and it will be found in my first appendix. It has the nature of a regulating statute, like the Polojenye in Russia, rather than of what we should understand by a constitution. But, unlike the Polojenye, it is mainly addressed to the development among the Armenians of systematic management of the affairs of their communities. Those communities have always enjoyed the privilege of administering their own institutions, such as monasteries, churches, hospitals and schools. The statute of 1863 provides a complete and democratic machinery for the better organisation and control of such institutions. It wisely avoids, except in the last resort, any interference by Government in these purely internal affairs. I cannot conceive any better training for the Armenian people than that which they would receive by the application of their great intelligence to such practical and concrete ideals. The pitfall which they should avoid, were the statute ever revived, is the attempt to convert it into a political weapon.

II. Europe as a whole is concerned with the future of these Asiatic provinces on the score of her great and growing trade. The particular Powers are also interested on political grounds—to preserve the balance of power. The territory of Turkish Armenia is of first-rate importance whether from the one or the other point of view. As regards trade, it is not only the trade with Armenia that is at stake, but that with the whole of Northern Persia. The great highway of commerce between the ports on the Black Sea and the interior of Persia passes along the avenue of the Armenian plains. The possession of Erzerum by a protectionist Power would effectually stifle this important trade-route, and would cut off Persia from the Black Sea.

Not less far-reaching would be the results in a political sense of such an occupation. The strategical value of the country is difficult to overrate. Turkish Armenia is the sign-post of the Nearer Asia, commanding the roads west, south and east. These issue upon the one side at the Mediterranean seaboards, and, on the other, at the Persian Gulf. The contemporary littleness of the land has served in no small measure to blind our eyes to these facts.

Europe may elect to keep herself blind to such considerations, whether of a commercial or political nature. The question then arises, what are the interests of Great Britain, and upon what lines should her policy be shaped?

In the discussion of all such questions it is a principle of no small value to ascertain not the opinions of statesmen and diplomatists, but those of the proverbial man in the street. Of the former, few, indeed, are at the present day possessed even of an elementary knowledge of such-like Asiatic problems. Layard and Rawlinson have both been long removed from the stage of politics; and these eminent men and stately figures with their Western culture and Eastern sympathies have both already passed from our midst. We can none of us be specialists on each and every question; and it is with a feeling of deep respect that those among us who have, perhaps, acquired some small knowledge of a particular problem, should endeavour to select among their friends those possessed of the divine average, and use them as foolometers—the gauge of common sentiment.

Several different kinds of opinion will be registered. “It is very sad, those poor Armenians; but we are not knight-errants, and there are hard blows going about.”... “Why can’t we leave the Turks alone—they are in possession. Turkey belongs to the Turks and China to the Chinese.”... “So we are to hark back to the miserable policy of bolstering up the Turks! Let them go bag and baggage to the quickest possible perdition; and, if Russia will do the work and remove the nuisance, so much the better for us and the whole world.”... “We can’t expect to have a finger in everybody’s pie. We have already more than we can manage on our hands.” The one conclusion which you may draw from these conflicting utterances is that the balance of common sentiment is, perhaps, in favour of standing aside.

In England the actions of Governments are based on common sentiment. There is no Government in the sense of an enlightened administration, with a reasoned foreign policy and what the French would call a politique de longue vue et de longue haleine. Even our great Indian Empire is ruled on principles which, so far as they relate to external affairs, are little better than the proverbial methods of the ostrich. What Indian Foreign Secretary is even conversant with the affairs of Persia, his next-door neighbour, as one might say? The Indian Government are at the present day sensible of great constriction in their finances, and what are the methods which they pursue? In every direction they draw in their horns, saving a few pounds here and a few there, and pointing with pride to the forcible retirement of a pair or two of distinguished teachers in a great educational establishment. What vigilance and strict economy! But business, at least in the City, is not as a rule conducted by the clerks. There our suspicions are excited by such pettifogging manoeuvres, and we keep our eyes open in expectation of the inevitable failure, not less certain than in the case of inflation and extravagance.

At home widespread prosperity, a long start in the industrial race and the complexity of our world-wide transactions have grown like weeds and flowers around the margin of a salubrious well, screening the view and almost the sound of the life-giving waters. We forget the commercial basis of all our wealth and power; and few among us are sensible of a thrill if some vast province of the Chinese Empire be walled round against our trade. Yet foreign commerce is the most delicate of national activities, slow, shy, easily disturbed and swiftly killed. The essential peacefulness of its methods, and the fact that few of the homes it helps to support are even aware of the destination of the goods they contribute to produce—such characteristics are little calculated to compete with the clamour of other interests, such as gold-mines, colonies, pan-Germandom or pan-Saxondom, or any other of the popular cries of the day.

The spirit of adventure lying at the foundation of the British character has been enlisted into African enterprise. One cannot help admiring the undoubted ability with which the organisers of the movement towards South Africa have at once appealed to the imagination of the British people, and won over to their side by careful preparation both the elements in the body politic capable of exercising quiet pressure and the recognised mouthpieces of public opinion. The prettiest women, the most ancient titles have all their share in the movement; and a Press, which cannot be bought, has been successfully persuaded of the excellence of the cause which in full chorus they uphold and applaud. On the Continent similar methods have been pursued by our Boer adversaries; and the result has been a war in print and a war in feeling with our neighbours in Europe of far greater moment than the African battles we have won or lost. For such outbursts, produced by a clever imitation of South African methods, or, perhaps, by spontaneous appreciation on the part of the Boers of the new-born forces of advertisement on a huge scale, the organisers in England can scarcely be held responsible. They have done their work well, however we may judge its effect on character; and we cannot blame them if, absorbed in their own particular problem, they have at the same time thrown cold water on all questions concerning Asia. The prudence of our people, once committed to an important struggle, has also been a factor on their side.

But Africa, this Syracuse of modern Europe, will not always, let us hope, be at our doors. The moment our hands are free I trust they may be directed to the disentangling of some Asiatic knots. Now the interests of Great Britain, under which we may include those of British India, are, I think there can be no doubt, most intimately bound up with the Asiatic provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Starting from the base of the Persian Gulf we have built up by laborious methods, extending over a period of getting on for a century, a commercial system which reaches far into the interior of Mesopotamia and embraces the whole of Southern Persia. At the same time we have erected that northern trade-route of which I have spoken, giving access to our goods from the coast of the Black Sea to the markets of Northern Persia.

What a long and patient struggle in face of almost overwhelming difficulties has been successfully conducted and inch by inch pursued by these various enterprises! With them are associated the names of Brant in the north and of Chesney and Lynch in the south. The correspondence of Consul Brant with his distinguished chief, Stratford Canning, will, I trust, be some day given to the world.23 It displays on its face a union of ideas with the much rarer capacity of translating them into practice by unwearying attention to the minutest details, which, whether the quality may have been inspired by the ambassador or his able subordinate, reflects lustre upon both names. It serves to remind us that the Russian policy of building walls round their possessions is not a policy of recent date. We may regard with legitimate pride the readiness of our ancestors to take advantage of the throwing open of the Black Sea and of the facilities offered by the introduction of steam power; the old land-routes through Asia Minor were rapidly superseded, and a new commercial avenue between Trebizond and the interior of Persia was gradually opened up by a series of patient efforts which would have done credit to the Genoese.

In the south the expeditions of Chesney (1835–37)24 and of Lynch (1837 and following years) were directed to the survey of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris and of the countries through which they flow. The former took his vessels in pieces from the coast of Syria to the Euphrates, while those of the latter—the Nitocris, Assyria and Nimrod—were conveyed by sea to the estuary of the Shat-el-Arab. The labours of these pioneers were thrown away by the British Government, and the project of an overland route from the Mediterranean to India somewhat suffered from the undertaking of the Suez Canal (1860 and following years). It is certain to be revived. On the purely commercial side something was saved by individuals; and, starting from the knowledge acquired by the two eminent explorers, a trade with an annual value at the present day of about a million sterling has little by little been built up. It is carried by river steamers, which also convey the British mails, from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad. These steamers have to contend with a variety of disabilities imposed by the Turkish Government. Their voyages are confined to the Tigris; the Euphrates is kept closed, and they are not suffered to proceed a mile above Baghdad. But the magnificent country through which they pass is growing in wealth through the facilities they provide; and the force of circumstances will sooner or later open wide the doors.

Of even earlier date are our trade-routes from the Gulf seaboard to the tableland of Persia. Indeed it may be said without exaggeration that from Kirmanshah on the north to Beluchistan upon the south the zone of mountains which support that tableland are threaded by a number of arteries, diffusing over the vast body of the Iranian highlands the life-blood of reciprocal commerce. Such facts have not escaped the notice and solicitude of competent observers; but it seems to me that their logical bearing upon the problems of the Nearer Asia has not been examined with sufficient thoroughness. There can be little doubt that the acquisition by Russia of a port on the Persian Gulf would not be tolerated by any British Government.25 Apart from all considerations of a commercial nature, it would imply the necessity of maintaining a powerful fleet in the Gulf, with additional strain on the finances of India. But what if the northern Power were to occupy Turkish Armenia? Would it merely entail the loss of our northern trade-route? I should like to examine in a temperate spirit the possibilities of such a hypothesis, not fearing to look them in the face, but endeavouring to divest my remarks of any alarmist or sensational character.

My reader who may have mastered the facts of the geography will call to mind the intimate connection of the system of tablelands with one another from the borders of India to the Mediterranean. The capital of Persia and her greatest cities are situated upon the tableland; and I cannot conceive that the empire of the Shahs could long maintain its independence after Russia had become possessed of Turkish Armenia. Not less certain would be the fate of Asia Minor, west of the Euphrates; and, indeed, in the contingency which we are discussing, the German Empire might be well advised to bargain away the important railways which she has recently constructed in that country in return for substantial advantages elsewhere. As regards England, I cannot admit, after careful consideration, that the loss to her trade of Turkish Armenia and the presence of Russia on the tableland of Persia would necessarily endanger India. Such a consummation—regrettable as it must be, and avoidable as I believe it is—would deal a hard blow at her trade in the south. But one has to face that common sentiment of which I have spoken, and the corresponding lukewarmness of our rulers in the domain of Asiatic affairs.

It would be a very different thing if we were to suffer any encroachment on the part of Russia upon the zone of mountains supporting on the south the tablelands of Armenia and Persia, and drawn like a long succession of chevaux de frise around the lowlands of Mesopotamia. Her occupation of any part of that zone of mountains would necessarily entail sooner or later the occupation of the whole. The lowlands themselves, the field of our trade, and appointed by Nature as a granary for India with her teeming millions and uncertain harvests, would be at her mercy without striking a blow. Distance is a factor of little importance on the lowlands; they are flat as the sea, and traversed from one end to the other by two magnificent navigable rivers. A Power stationed at Diarbekr is already stationed on the Persian Gulf, with a country of immense potential wealth at her back. For these reasons it would be well that we should recognise as soon as possible that the bedrock of British policy in the Nearer Asia should be the preservation of the integrity of the lowlands with their frame of mountains from Syria to the borders of India.

The conclusion at which I arrive is that the possession by Russia of Turkish Armenia would be attended by consequences which have scarcely been appreciated at all by the majority of my countrymen. I would fain hope that, if this event be indeed inevitable, it may not take us by surprise. Our own path is clearly indicated by the finger of Nature; and the Russian Empire, established in Armenia, would be quite as accessible to attack from the lowlands as our Indian Empire to hostile approach on the side of Asiatic Russia. But in order to safeguard our interests and provide for future contingencies we must accustom ourselves to think a little ahead. It will not be sufficient to beat time, and endeavour to entice Germany into our own particular domain. As a natural commercial ally in her own field of Asia Minor, that Power may render assistance to the common cause. As a competitor in our sphere she would be very much more likely to make her own terms with the northern Empire. Finally—for after all it is as much a question of men as of measures—I should like to contribute my vote as a traveller—whatever it may be worth—in favour of a proposal recently made by a well-informed writer. And the only amendment which one might desire to the proposition he has well expressed is that it should be accompanied by a recognition of what our Foreign Office has already accomplished with the imperfect system which it at present dispenses:—“The machinery of the Foreign Office is not adjusted to perform the new and strange duties which belong to Oriental diplomacy. The ministers and secretaries who are competent officials in Vienna or Rome are lost among the tortuous political pathways of Bangkok, Teheran and Pekin. Never shall we hold our own in Asia until an Asiatic Department is formed, under the charge of an experienced minister of Cabinet rank, with an independent diplomatic staff, trained in the methods, and speaking fluently the languages of the East.”26