Читать книгу Betrayed Armenia - Apcar Diana Agabeg - Страница 4

My object in writing this little book is to lay the hard case of my unfortunate race before the men and women of the United States; since it is from the United States that the American Missionaries have gone forth, who have been the only helping influence from without for my suffering people in Asiatic Turkey. To the earnest and devoted men and women of the American Missions, we Armenians owe a debt of gratitude which we can never repay.

If in the contents of the pages of this little book I have exaggerated Facts by one whit or one iota, if I have deviated by one hair’s breadth from the Truth, I stand to be judged.

“God save us from another Adana, but the sword of Islam has not been dulled” was one of the clarion notes sounded at the Sixth International Convention of the Student Volunteer Movement, which was held at Rochester, New York. The man who sounded that clarion note knew Islam, and because knowing of my own knowledge that the sword of Islam has not been dulled, I tremble lest its sharp edge fall once more on the neck of my helpless race. If I knew and felt sure in mine own heart that the sword of Islam was dulled, I would be content to let bygones be bygones, and to hold my peace and be silent for ever.

Like the sudden explosion of a volcano in the physical world, comes the explosion of a Turkish Massacre of Armenians in the moral world. It comes just in that way; the subterranean fires are always there, but all of a sudden the sulphur flames of religious fanaticism burst, the lava floods of race hatred and lust of plunder, break forth and run in fiery streams; the unfortunate victims are pounced upon, swooped upon, pillaged, plundered, butchered, slaughtered, subjected to outrages so hideous, cruel, loathsome, and revolting, that no pen could depict their horrible realities and the details can never go into print. The human mind is staggered and asks itself the question if even the imaginations of fiends and devils could originate such horrors. Then this orgy of the human fiends is arrested. For the time being the appetite for blood, lust, and plunder is satisfied; for the time being, the eye is content with the scenes of havoc and desolation lying under the sun; the smell of corpses is in the air, the odor from the carcases of the “christian swine” reek in the nostrils of the Turk, he turns away, his jaws dripping with blood, and rests to couch for a future spring. We have seen that sort of an end to the tragedy of a tiger’s victim: the tiger has eaten his fill, he rests, to keep guard over the crunched bones and mangled bits of bloody flesh that bestrew the earth. So also now there is a residue left of those that have served as the meat and wine of this devil’s feast; the demons have gorged themselves over the banquet, and now there are left over the broken remains of the banquet, the miserable residue homeless and destitute.

Civilized nations have received a temporary moral shock, like a shock that spreads from the centre of an explosion; the electric vibration running far and wide from the scene of the centre of devastation. There are among these civilized nations generous and kind-hearted people who open their purse strings; they give money to purchase shelter, food and clothing for these homeless, naked and hungry beggars, made homeless, naked and hungry through no fault of their own. But oh! ye generous and kind hearted people! can any power under heaven assuage the heart anguish of this miserable residue? Can they be made by any means of human comfort to forget the black horrors or recover from the effects of the fires of the hideous affliction through which they have passed? What is there left for a woman who has seen with her own eyes the slaughter and heard with her own ears the dying cry of her murdered child? even her reason must give way under the stress of her anguish. All ye who are mothers, I appeal to you, for one moment to put yourselves in the place of thousands of such mothers, in whose hearts the same mother’s love burns as in yours, and then measure the depth of their agony.

Generous and kind hearted people who open your purse strings; would to God I entreat, ye would raise up your voices and demand that this hideous slaughter and oppression of a helpless christian race should cease. Would to God I entreat, ye would raise up your voices and demand that this people of an industrious, intelligent christian race, robust in mind and body, should be let to live. Would to God I entreat, that ye would raise up your voices and demand for them that security of life and property to which they are entitled just as equally as all other peoples.

Public Sentiment has done great things in the world’s history. Public Sentiment liberated Greece, The Lebanon, The Balkan States from Turkish Oppression. Slavery was abolished in the United States through Public Sentiment: but alas! does Public Sentiment sleep for this helpless Christian race. Are they not God’s creatures? have they not a right to live on God’s earth as other nations? Does Humanity, does Christianity allow that tender babes and children should be hideously and horribly mutilated and butchered before the eyes of their mothers, or that the ears of mothers should be rent with the cries of the dying agony of their murdered children? Does Humanity, does Christianity allow that helpless women should be forcibly subjected to the most hideous, the most loathsome, the most revolting, and the most cruel outrages? Does Humanity, does Christianity, allow all this?

Christian Governments have organized a Hague Conference of Peace and Civilization, but they have closed its doors to the cause of a bleeding christian race groaning under the yoke of the cruellest oppressors that the world has yet known. Christian men and women have held up their hands in horror at the Indian Juggernauth; but alas! the political wheels of Christian Governments have been a Greater Juggernauth for a helpless christian race. It is by Christian Governments that “we are made as the filth of the world, and as the offscouring of all things unto this day.” It is as if the answer to our groanings had been made by Christian Governments in just these words:

“We know that you have had frightful grievances, such as have been beyond the measure of human endurance. We know that since the Treaty of Berlin your history has been written in blood and tears, as the history of no other nation has been written before or now. We know that your women are subjected to the most revolting and hideous agonies, and your babes and children hounded to hideous deaths. We know that the sum total of your wrongs and sufferings is so great, that the cry of its anguish is piercing the very heavens, but really, our political and commercial jealousies prevent; and we each one of us being on the look out lest our separate political and commercial interests in the Empire of your oppressors be endangered, cannot regard you. It may be the deadliest scandal of Christendom that we Christian Powers should be all gathered together, one against another, in the Empire of your Oppressors, as eagles gather together round a carcase; but really there is no help for it; and if you must die hideously by a hellish extermination, why then you must die, and we have to condone your hellish extermination, for in any case, each one of us must secure his own political and commercial interests in this same Empire of your Oppressors.”

In “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” published by Mr. James Bryce in 1876, there occurs in the chapter entitled “Some Political Reflections” the following passage:

“The attention of the West was so much drawn towards Herzegovina and Bulgaria by the events of 1876 that the miseries of the Asiatic subjects of the Porte have been unreasonably forgotten or neglected. They are fully as wretched as the Slavs or Cretans have been; and in so far worse off, that in Europe there exists no large body of tribes making murder and robbery its regular and daily occupation as the Kurds, and latterly the Circassians also, have done in Armenia. If anyone will take the trouble to read the complaints of oppressions and cruelties presented to the Porte by the Armenian Patriarchate in 1872 (since reprinted in England) and some of the more recent statements printed by the Armenians in England on the same topic, he will see that the state of Turkish Asia presents as grave and pressing a problem as that of Bulgaria itself.”

In the 4th edition of the same book, published in 1896, the following note appears to the passage I have quoted:

“Shortly after this was written, the Blue Books presented to Parliament, containing reports from British Consuls in Asiatic Turkey, showed that things were really far worse there than they had been in Bulgaria or Herzegovina.”

What has followed since 1876 is too well known. For seeking redress from their frightful grievances the Armenians were hunted like wild beasts and killed like rats and flies during the Hamidian régime.

You will tell me, my christian friends, that with the rise of the reform party in Turkey, the era of massacres is at an end, and I will tell you that the conditions of 1876 and 1896 have not actually changed, though they may seemingly appear so to the uninformed and uninitiated. I will answer you that the hideous massacres of April last happened nine months after the reform party first rose in power, and nine months after the inauguration of the Constitution. I do not question the goodwill of the reform party, but the reform party does not comprise the whole Turkish nation, and until the Turk learns to become liberal, civilized and human, there may be no more Armenians left, unless some Christian Power such as the United States demands their protection and enforces it. No! my Christian friends, it can be well for other Christians in the Turkish Empire with their powerful Governments at their back; but alas! there is no security for a subject people alien in race and religion.

The massacres in April last raged from Adana to Alexandretta, and according to authenticated reports about fifty thousand men, women and children were hideously exterminated; more than this, the last massacres were especially characterized by the most hideous, the most loathsome, the most revolting and ferocious cruelties perpetrated on women and children. Now what other name can we find for the perpetrators of this diabolical orgy, except to call them fiends incarnate; and who is the bold man who can guarantee that these same fiends incarnate have become metamorphosed and changed all of a sudden; or that the handful of liberal Turks at Constantinople are capable of controlling and restraining them. We have not even heard that the leaders and participators of the last massacres have been punished as they deserved; and what is the reason they are left unpunished? because the Government is afraid to punish Mahommedans for killing Christians; because the liberal Turks dare not punish the “true believers” for killing “Kaffirs.”

The religion of Mahommed, the religion of the sword, has been infused into the Turk, and to understand the effect of the religion of Mahommed upon the Turk, it is necessary to regard it from four aspects, or from four points of analysis. First, the fundamental doctrine and law of the religion. Second, the character of the founder as an example to his followers. Third, the racial and ethnographic characteristics of the Turk. Fourth, the effect which this particular religion would be likely to have on this particular race. When we have viewed the Turk and his government from these four points of analysis, we have the explanation of all the woe and desolation which have lain over the countries under Turkish rule.

“When ye encounter the unbelievers strike off their heads until you have made a great slaughter of them” is a chapter of the Koran which the Turk has religiously and steadfastly made his creed.

In conclusion, I will ask my readers to compare one point of difference between the two races, the oppressor and the oppressed. Thousands upon thousands of Armenian women, thousands upon thousands of Armenian children, have been hounded to death, or savagely, ferociously, horribly and loathsomely maltreated by the Turk, and yet in all the agonizing years when Massacre has succeeded upon Massacre, has there been one known case or one single instance of a Turkish woman or child maltreated by Armenians?

The last massacres though especially organized from the Palace at Constantinople, were officially announced to originate from an affray between one Armenian and three Turks, in which the single handed one, on the one side, grappling with the three on the other, killed one of the three: given equal numbers and arms, the Armenian is always a match for the Turk, but alas for him that unequal numbers and want of arms have always made him the victim of his oppressor.

Ahmed Riza Bey in the first part (Ses Causes) of his book “La Crise de L’Orient” published in Paris in 1907 holds a brief for his nation which through its own fallacious arguments falls to the ground. I will quote one passage as an example.

“Jamais les populations chrétiennes ne se sont révoltées, spontanément, d’elles-mêmes. Les révoltes ont toujours été partielles et espacées, ce qui tend bien à prouver qu’elles sont provoquées non par certains injustices administratives que nous savons être constantes et les mêmes pour tous, mais par les sourdes menées de l’extérieur. Les agences consulaires, les écoles étrangères, les maisons des missionnaires, couvertes par les Capitulations, ont servi de foyer de propagande, de dépôts d’armes, et même de refuge pour les perturbateurs. Souvent les ambassadeurs sont intervenus pour faire gracier des rebelles pris et condamnés. On se rappelle avec quelle solennité les Arméniens qui s’étaient introduits dans la Banque Ottomane furent conduits sains et saufs à bord d’un bateau par le drogman de l’Ambassade russe – leur complice.

“Si ces prétendus patriotards sont tant soutenus et choyés dans le monde occidental, c’est parce qu’ils constituent un élément ou plutôt un instrument de destruction au service de certains Européens élevés dans les préjugés des Croissades et qui crient avec Chateaubriand: (‘L’espèce humaine ne peut que gagner à la destruction de l’Empire Ottoman’).”

The author of “La Crise de L’Orient” continues in this strain. Are we then to suppose that the British Consuls, men whose truthfulness has never been impeached, whose reports on the unsupportable sufferings of the subject christian races and the oppressions and hideous atrocities of the Turks, have filled volumes: and likewise the American Missionaries, men who have deservedly gained the honor and respect of the world, whose statements have corroborated the British Consular reports; have been according to Ahmed Riza Bey the mischief-makers in the Turkish Empire? since it is from them alone the world has gained the widest and most correct knowledge of the daily miseries and oppressions under which the subject Christian races have groaned. Are we also to suppose that men like Mr. James Bryce and Dr. Dillon have by mendacious writings upheld them, British Consul and American Missionary, liars, and mischief makers? Or rather are we not to suppose that if thinking men and women in the world have come to cry out with Chateaubriand “L’espèce humaine ne peut que gagner à la destruction de l’Empire Ottoman” it is because the Turks have earned the world’s condemnation through their own diabolical acts, and on account of the woe and desolation which Turkish rule has worked over the fairest provinces under the sun. If the Turk will turn from the evil of his ways unto good, the stigma of “the unspeakable Turk” which now attaches itself to him, will cease to be a veritable truth. The bringing about of the transformation rests with himself.

Further in answer to Ahmed Riza Bey’s account of the Armenian “prétendus patriotards” in connection with the Ottoman Bank; I cannot do better than quote from Mr. Bryce’s version of the story, and the massacre that followed: “In the following June serious trouble arose at Van, where some sort of insurrection is said to have been planned, though in the discrepancy of the accounts it is hard to arrive at the truth. Masses of Kurds came down threatening to massacre the Christians, and a conflict in which many innocent persons perished, was with difficulty brought to an end by the intervention of the British Consul. A little later the Armenian revolutionary party, emboldened by the rising in Crete, where the Christians, being well armed and outnumbering the Muslims, held their ground successfully, issued appeals to the Embassies and to the Turkish Government to introduce reforms, threatening disturbances if the policy of repression and massacre was persisted in. These threats were repeated in August, and ultimately, on August 26, a band of about twenty Armenians, belonging the revolutionary party, made a sudden attack on the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Constantinople, declaring they were prepared to hold it and blow it up should the Sultan refuse their demand. They captured the building by a coup de main, but were persuaded by the Russian dragoman to withdraw upon a promise of safety. Meanwhile the Government, who through their spies knew of the project, had organised and armed a large mob of Kurds and Lazes – many of whom had recently been brought to the city – together with the lowest Turkish class. Using the occasion, they launched this mob upon the peaceful Armenian population. The onslaught began in various parts of the city so soon after the attack on the Bank that it had obviously been prearranged, and the precaution had been taken to employ the Turkish ruffians in different quarters from those in which they dwelt; so that they might less easily be recognised. Carts had moreover been prepared in which to carry off the dead. For two days an indiscriminate slaughter went on, in which not only Armenian merchants and traders of the cultivated class, not only the industrious and peaceable Armenians of the humbler class, clerks, domestic servants, porters employed on the quays and in the warehouses, but also women and children were butchered in the streets and hunted down all through the suburbs. On the afternoon of the 27th the British Chargé d’Affaires (whose action throughout won general approval) told the Sultan he would land British sailors, and the Ambassadors telegraphed to the Sultan. Then the general massacre was stopped, though sporadic slaughter went on round the city during the next few days. The Ambassadors, who did not hesitate to declare that the massacre had been organised by the Government, estimated the number of killed at from 6000 to 7000; the official report made to the Sultan is said to have put it at 8750.1 During the whole time the army and the police had perfect control of the city – the police, and a certain number of the military officers and some high civil officials, joining in the slaughter. Of all the frightful scenes which Constantinople, a city of carnage, has seen since the great insurrection of A.D. 527 when 30,000 people perished in the hippodrome there has been none more horrible than this. For this was not the suppression of an insurrection in which contending factions fought. It was not the natural sequel to a capture by storm, as when the city was taken and sacked by the Crusaders in A.D. 1204, and by the Turks in A.D. 1453. It was slaughter in cold blood, when innocent men and women, going about their usual avocations in a time of apparent peace, were suddenly beaten to death with clubs, or hacked to pieces with knives, by ruffians who fell upon them in the streets before they could fly to any place of refuge.”2

I am also obliged to quote from an Article written by a Turkish Officer who signs himself A. J. and published in the “Siper-i-Saïka-i-Hurriet,” a Turkish daily, on July 6, 1909.

Every time that I hear the name Armenian I feel the bleeding of a moral wound within me. It was the year I was sent into exile (1896). On a Thursday, before we had left the Military School for our vacation, a rumor flew through the school, – “They are massacring the Armenians.” All my young patriotic companions turned pale from deep emotion. Every one tried to read in the sad faces of others the reason for this bad news. But each one avoided expressing his thought. After a time the details began to circulate to the effect that the Armenians had dared to destroy the Ottoman Bank and government buildings with bombs, and that this was the reason why they were massacred. At that time all of us trembled, because we also were enemies of that government, because we also wished to overthrow it, and although we were not convinced that the best service could be rendered by bombs, we were working quietly to spread our ideas. In our hearts a flame of enmity and indignation, no less terrible than bombs, was burning. The poor Armenians were being massacred ruthlessly, because out of their number five or ten persons, resenting their wrongs, had rebelled. But that which maddened these poor men, that drove them to rebellion and placed bombs in their hands was the stupidity of the people and the outrageous oppressions of the government. And now this inhuman government was killing with clubs a noble nation, under the pretext of putting down a rebellion produced by its own oppressions. Among the crimes committed by the former government the most unpardonable crime was the Armenian massacre. If there was a race up to that time among non-Moslem peoples which with sincere and deep feeling honored the Ottoman fatherland that race was the Armenian. It is the Armenians who wear most nearly the national dress, who speak and write Turkish best, and recognize the Ottoman country as their fatherland. Besides this it is the Armenians who engage in commerce and agriculture, and thus, by demonstrating its fruitfulness, increase the value of the Ottoman Empire. Because a few among them justly started an agitation, these our noble and industrious brethren were being massacred. What a terrible scene! When we left the school building we saw hundreds of the bodies of our Armenian compatriots being removed in manure carts; legs and arms were hanging down outside. This bloody scene will ever remain impressed on my mind.

“This shocking crime of Yildiz formed a deep lake of blood, and this lake, during the whole course of a cursed absolutism, up to the last moment, grew wider. Even during the past nine months of the Constitution, in spite of the brotherly feelings which had been shown, the awful events in Adana took place and the souls of all true Osmanlis melted into tears. Up to the present time the deep sorrow caused by this event has not disappeared, because this bloody wound in our social body cannot easily be cured. While we fill our stomachs with choice morsels, while we rest selfishly in our comfortable beds, these fatherless and brotherless orphans, widows hungry, naked, and barefoot wander hither and thither, and thousands of families are fleeing from the fatherland. We are convinced that the government is doing its work, but what has happened is so great a calamity that it can keep a government busy for years. However much sacrifice we may make, still it will be inadequate, because the happiness of the fatherland depends on healing such blood wounds as these as soon as possible. We are convinced that the government and all connected with it are persuaded of this as well as ourselves. We must now wipe out the traces of the misfortune brought by a cursed period. We must now comfort weeping hearts. We must understand and teach those who do not understand that patriotism and brotherhood do not differ from each other. The responsibility of the government for the Armenians is very great and very weighty. The whole Ottoman nation is under obligations to protect this suffering race, because the liberty we enjoy to-day is in large part due to the blood shed by the Armenians. We thought that these truths were so obvious that we preferred to keep silence, whereas to-day we understand that it is necessary from time to time to recall the greatness of our obligation. We must not forget that this unhappy people up to yesterday has endured only barbarism, and for twelve years has been constantly oppressed and ground to the earth, and has given thousands of victims. Hereafter we must work to assure them that the era of massacres has passed, and with all our strength of mind and soul we must quiet them. The obligation of the government to protect them is also very heavy, because our Armenian countrymen live among wandering tribes. We must all assist the government and point out its obligation. It must be declared in public and periodically that the one of the most important duties of the Ottoman nation is to protect, together with those of other races, the interests, the life, and property of the Armenians as well, since these are their sacred rights. Let investigations be made and let whatever is necessary be done in order to reach this aim.”

This article of the Turkish officer, who however does not dare disclose his identity; and the account given by an authority like Mr. James Bryce surely refute the facile explanation of Ahmed Riza Bey in alluding to the Massacres as “les Massacres occasionnés par les aventuriers Arméniens.” Indeed it holds out poor hope for the furtherance of liberty and justice in Turkey when the man who is the President of the Chamber of Deputies only as far back as 1907 tries to palliate the horrors of the Hamidian régime by misrepresentations.

The author of “La Crise de l’Orient” also cites the Japanese as an instance of the civilization and aptitude for progress of a non-Christian oriental race. In this case, Ahmed Riza Bey certainly needs to measure the distance between the mental, moral and humane qualities of the Japanese and the Turk, a distance as great as lies geographically between the North Pole and the South.