Armen Garo

“ Armenian massacres have been so unendurable that many people have had to try to escape from thinking about Armenia in order to keep their sanity in the midst of such wholesale horror. But oblivion is no remedy for the problem of Armenia and the world of the future will not be safe for democracy or for anything else unless Armenia and the problem which it represents is permanently solved in the Peace Conference. ”

“ At Shabin-Karahissar, nearly 5,000 Armenians, for twenty-seven days without interruption, in the same month of July, kept busy another division of Turkish troops with their artillery. There took place one of the most tragic and heroic episodes of the present war. When the ammunition of the Armenians was almost gone, on the last day of the struggle, nearly 3,000 Armenian women and girls drank poison and died in order not to fall alive into the hands of the savage Turks. If the supply of poison had not given out, all the women would have done likewise. ”

“ In the early days of August, 1914, when civilized nations took up arms against the German aggression, only three of the smaller nations of Europe and the Near East had the courage, from the very first days of the war, to stand by the Allies without any bargaining or dickering, and they still stand at their posts on the ramparts, in spite of the immense sacrifices they have already made. ”

“ More than a million defenceless Armenians were murdered at the hands of Turkish soldiers and Turkish mobs. The gang of robbers, headed by Talaat and Enver, resorted to this fiendish means to eliminate the Armenian question once for all, because the Armenians had had the courage to oppose their Pan-Turanian policies. ”

“ According to that agreement Russia was to take over the three vilayets of Turkish Armenia, Erzeroum, Bitlis, and Van, while southern Armenia and Cilicia were to be put under the guardianship of France. One must be an Armenian in order to feel the depth and intensity of the bitterness and disappointment which filled the hearts of all the wandering Armenians from the Caucasus to Mesopotamia. ”

“ In the interest of international justice and permanent peace in the future, the boundaries of the new Armenia ought to be extended as far as the Armenian race extends as an important element of the population, because the Armenians have proved their capacity for self-government even under the almost impossible conditions of Turkish misrule, while Turks and Kurds have again and again proved incapable of governing themselves, much less of governing others. ”

“ It is true that the battalions of Armenian volunteers took no active part in the battles of July, for they were then in the district of Van and undertaking the heavy duty of rear guard work for the Russian army and the Armenian refugees. But the Turkish Armenians behind the front, who were being deported and massacred as early as the month of July, by their heroic resistance, occupied the attention of four Turkish divisions and tens of thousands of Kurds just at the time when the Turks had such great need of those forces to aid them in their July drive. ”

“ The Armenians, Georgians, and Tartars of the Caucasus, united, would have been able to form with the greatest ease an army of 700,000 men, by which they would have been able to defend the Caucasian mountain-ridge against the Russians. Meanwhile, the entire Turkish army would [Pg 44] have been available to advance immediately toward the interior of Asia and join the 18,000,000 Moslems of Asiatic Russia. We may safely say, neither Persia nor Afghanistan could have remained neutral on seeing such successful achievements by the Turks. ”

“ This resistance on the part of the inhabitants of Van gave the Turkish government a pretext to deport in June and July of the same year the entire Armenian population of Turkish Armenia, with the pretended intention of transporting them to Mesopotamia, but with the actual determination to exterminate them. Out of the million and a half of Armenians deported, scarcely 400,000 to 500,000 reached the sandy deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia, and most of these were women, old men, and children, who were subjected in those desolate regions to the mortal pangs of famine. ”

“ The hope for toleration of racial minorities, which is the indispensable condition for peace in areas of mixed population, would be many times greater in a government by the Armenians than in a government by Turks and Kurds. ”

“ In 1896, when an English correspondent interviewed the Russian minister of foreign affairs, Count Lobanoff Rostowsky, and asked him why Russia did not occupy the Armenian vilayets of Turkey in order to save that Christian people from the Turkish massacres, the Russian minister cynically replied: "We need Armenia, but without the Armenians." ”

“ The Armenians, besides battling on the Caucasian front, where they have been fighting in their own native land, have co-operated unreservedly with the Allies on far distant fronts, as for example on the French front. At the beginning of the war the young Armenian students living in France—about 900 in number—volunteered to serve in the French army for the defence of civilization and freedom. Today, scarcely 50 of them are alive ”

“ One other purpose the writer had in view in writing this booklet: to make the great and generous American public realize that Armenians are not an anaemic and unaggressive people, with no fighting blood in their veins; that the Armenians have not been butchered like sheep, but, on the contrary, have fought most bravely and resisted most stubbornly the savage attacks of the Turks whenever they had an opportunity. ”

“ When Turkish Armenia was almost wholly emptied of its Armenian inhabitants, due to these successive retreats, the Russian government raised all sorts of barriers before the refugees to prevent them from returning to their former homes when the Russian army recaptured the Armenian vilayets. For example, in 1916-1917, scarcely 8,000 to 10,000 Armenians were permitted to go back and inhabit the region of Van; the rest were compelled to stay within the borders of the Caucasus as refugees. ”

“ National independence for Armenia will mean that the Balance of Power, which has always considered the subject nations of Turkey as mere pawns in a diplomatic game, has been replaced by a League of Free Nations opening the way towards a world federation and the parliament of man. ”

“ As soon as the Russian army disbanded, the 3,000,000 Tartar inhabitants of the Caucasus armed themselves and rose en masse. Toward the end of January last, the Tartars had cut the Baku-Tiflis railroad line as well as the Erivan-Joulfa line, and now began to raid and plunder the Armenian cities and villages, while behind, on the frontier, the regular Turkish army had commenced to advance in the first days of February. ”

“ It will mean that the old chaos of international anarchy is to be replaced by a new world order in which peoples and nations shall be free to live their own lives, to speak their own language, to worship in their [Pg 2] own religion and to develop their own civilization, in the fullest friendship and democratic co-operation with the other free nations of mankind. ”

“ But meanwhile the Turks had received new forces from Batoum and renewed their attacks. After a series of bloody battles the armed Armenian and British forces were forced to leave Baku on September 14 and retreat toward Persia, taking with them nearly 10,000 refugees from the inhabitants of the city. As to the condition of those who were left behind, this much is certain; that on the day the city was occupied by the Turco-Tartars, nearly 20,000 Armenians were put to the sword, the greater portion of them being women and children. ”

“ Time after time the Turkish troops made fierce attacks to capture the city, but each time they were repulsed with heavy losses by the gallant Armenian garrison. The Armenians had built their hopes on British assistance, since nothing was expected from the demoralized Russian army. But, unfortunately, the British were unable to reach Baku with large forces from their Bagdad army. Nevertheless, on August 5, they landed at Baku 2,800 men to help the Armenians. ”

“ In the beginning of this world conflagration, in 1914, both the Russian and the Turkish governments officially appealed to various Armenian national organizations with many promises in order to secure the active participation of the Armenians in the military operations against each other, the principal stage of which would be Armenia itself. ”

“ After the separation of the Georgians the Armenian National Council of the Caucasus declared Armenian independence, under the name of the Republic of Ararat, with Erivan as its capital. While the negotiations were going on in Batoum—always between the delegates of the Turks and the three Caucasian races comprising the Caucasian temporary government,—the Turkish armies, after the occupation of Kars, became more aggressive and commenced to advance toward Alexandropol and Karakilissa. ”

“ When the Russians in 1829 captured Erzeroum for the first time, 96,000 Armenians, with the encouragement of the Russian government, left that city and the outlying villages with the Russian army, and emigrated towards the Caucasus, where they founded three new cities, Alexandropol, Akhalkalak, and Akhaltsikh. Only 300 Armenian families remained in Erzeroum, refusing to leave their homes, even in face of the Turkish despotism. Among these was the Pasdermadjian family. ”

“ Against all these Turks and Tartars the Armenians had one army corps made up of some 35,000 regular troops under the command of General Nazarbekoff, and nearly 20,000 Armenian volunteers under the command of their experienced leaders. Armenia's only hope of assistance was their neighbors, the Georgians, who were as much interested in the protection of the Caucasus as the Armenians [Pg 36] were, because the Turkish demands of the Brest-Litovsk treaty included definite portions of Georgia, as well as of Armenia; for example, the port of Batoum. ”

“ Every time that the Russian army was forced to retreat from the recaptured parts of Turkish Armenia, no precautionary measures were taken in order to save the local Armenian inhabitants from the inevitable massacres. ”

“ Pasdermadjian devoted his entire time to better the economic conditions of the Armenian vilayets, and especially worked for the railroad bill, of which he was the real author, but which was known to the public as Chester's bill. Its main object was to build railroads as soon as possible in those vilayets of Armenia which were considered to be Russia's future possessions. For that reason neither France nor Germany wished to undertake it, lest they should arouse the enmity of Russia. ”

“ The critical days in the spring of this year are over, and the complete victory of the Allies and of the United States has been won. "The day is not very far," in the words of the writer, "when ... the representatives of all the nations of the world,—guilty or just,—are to receive their punishment or reward...." ”

“ If the translation can possibly convey the spirit of the original, the sustained eloquence and suppressed emotion with which the author pleads the cause of his unfortunate but brave people, should be intensely effective because they are not mere words, but are based on actual, real, undeniable facts, and are the expression of a soul wholly dedicated to a sacred cause. ”

“ The Armenian peasants from every side appealed to the Armenian volunteers with tears in their eyes and begged to be saved from an inevitable massacre. The commander of the Armenian volunteers, Armen Garo, and his brave assistant, Khetcho, who died like a hero in July, 1915, on the shores of Lake Van, went immediately to General Abatzieff and asked him to revoke his order and permit the Armenian inhabitants to move with the army toward Igdir. ”

“ It will mean an invaluable extension of the principle of democracy in the world. It will mean that the way will be open to develop the great highway between Europe and Asia amid political conditions of a stable and durable peace. ”