George H. Filian

“ If the Armenians are to be left as they are, it is a pity that Europe ever mentioned them in the treaty of Berlin or subsequently; and to intrust reforms in behalf of the Armenians to those who have devoted two months’ time to killing and robbing them is simply to abandon the Armenians to destruction, and to put the seal of Europe to the bloody work. The only way to reform Eastern Turkey is by forcible foreign intervention—not the threat of it, but the intervention itself. ”

“ But for England, Russia would have captured Constantinople, and kept it. But England backed Turkey, and the other powers backed England, and Russia reluctantly withdrew her troops. But Russia has never forgiven England for it; and if England wishes to help the Armenians, no matter how many are massacred, Russia will help Turkey, while the others side with neither. As to there ever being a European concert to reform Armenia, a pleasant dream which has deluded many thousands, I have always laughed at it, and I laugh at it still. The powers will never act together for any such purpose. ”

“ Gladstone said: “Don’t let me be told that one nation has no authority over another. Every nation, aye, every human being, has authority in behalf of humanity and justice.” He had been silent, he said, because he had full confidence that the government knew its duty. If the allegations made should prove to be true, it was time that the execration of humanity should force itself upon the ears of the Sultan of Turkey, and make him sensible of the madness of such a course as was being pursued. ”

“ In my belief, the time is coming when the Protestant nations will unite and protest practically against the outrages of Turkey and Russia. They have no right to persecute Turks or Russians, but they have a perfect right to protect an old Protestant church and the American missionaries. No matter how much it costs, it pays to protect them, and, pay or no pay, it is the duty of America and England to unite and protect them. And if England and America should really unite, Turkey and Russia will yield. I do not at all concur with Americans who favor Russia and hate England. ”

“ In one corner of this foul fever-nest a man might be heard moaning and groaning with the pain of a shattered arm or leg; in another, a youth is convulsed with the death spasms of cholera or poison; in the center, a knot of Turks, whose dull eyes are fired with bestial lust, surround a Christian boy, who pleads for mercy with heart-harrowing voice while the human fiends actually outrage him to death. ”

“ If the Sultan asks a millionaire in Constantinople to send him half his wealth, the millionaire must not refuse; he himself is simply a steward; if the Sultan wants it all it must go to him, and the millionaire must beg bread for a living. At the same time he must praise the Sultan, because the Sultan is God on earth. If he refuses to send his wife or daughter to the Sultan’s bed, or his son or money for whatever uses they are wanted to supply, the Sultan has a right to kill him, and take all his possessions by force, because the man was not a faithful slave. ”

“ What guarantee can we have, then, that those who survive will not be killed or plundered in their turn? None. Will the European powers who signed the Berlin Treaty give any assurance to the Armenians that they will be protected hereafter? No. Is the Sultan a better man since the massacre? No. Are the Turks and Kurds better people since the atrocities? No. They are worse than ever before, because they have a freer hand, and all their passions are roused to greater strength. ”

“ In the name of the most holy and indivisible Trinity, we, Peter the Great, unto all our descendants and successors to the throne and government of the Russian nation: the All-Powerful, from whom we hold our life and our throne, after having revealed unto us his wishes and intentions, and after being our support, permits us to look upon Russia as called upon to establish her rule over all Europe. ”

“ In a word, does he have any more intellectual, moral, or business part in the life of modern civilization than a Hottentot or a Matabele? And do not the Armenians do and have all these things? Are they not in the stream of the same kind of cultivated Christian life led by Americans? Nowhere else on earth, but in the Turkish Empire, can one find millions of gentlemen and ladies and civilized modern citizens ruled over, oppressed, and massacred in hundreds of thousands by a gang of mediaeval Asiatic barbarians, not advanced from the time of Timour or Jenghiz Khan. ”

“ If the allegations are true, it is time that there should be one general shout of execration against these deeds of wickedness from outraged humanity. If the facts are well established, it should be written in letters of iron upon the records of the world that a government which could be guilty of countenancing and covering up such atrocities is a disgrace to Mohammed the prophet, a disgrace to civilization at large, and a disgrace to mankind. Now that is strong language, but strong language ought to be used when the facts are strong. ”

“ It is bound as a Christian state not to let a bloody and sensual Mohammedan barbarism extinguish the light of a sister Christian community; it is bound as a nation of civilized beings not to let a horde of savages like its own Indians stamp out a civilized nation millions [215] in number by horrors unspeakable, every atrocity of butchery, and rape, and torture that ever sprung from the cruelty or the lust of man. These things are as awful, as hideous to the Armenians as they would be to you if fifty thousand Indians overflowed Colorado and inflicted them on your American families. ”

“ If you conquer a country, show no mercy to the people unless they embrace Islam; if they refuse, either kill them or make slaves of them.” What sort of reforms can you expect in Armenia, or in Turkey, when the very religion that is to make people better, inculcates such principles? If one does not know a language he cannot speak it; if he has not a principle he will not practice it; how can the Sultan, a vicious man to begin with, trained in a religion calculated to make a cruel and licentious animal even out of a decent man, reform anything? ”

“ Long before Palestine was called a holy land, Armenia had the name of Holy land, and the Armenians were called the Highlanders.
In a word, Armageddon is the combination of three different words, Armenia—Garden—Eden: Armageddon.
So the final battle will be fought in Armenia. The nation with the greatest part will have the greatest future. As man fell from grace in Armenia, man will be restored to peace and holiness in Armenia. And before that peace, holiness, and restoration come, the greatest battle will be fought in Armenia. ”

“ Conscious that the facts cannot be suppressed or belittled, the representatives and apologists of the ruthless perpetrators of these atrocities are endeavoring to palliate and excuse the enormities which they cannot truthfully deny. In order to shield themselves and their governments from universal execration, the world is asked to believe that the Christians of Armenia were themselves the aggressors, and that the horrors of massacre and rapine which have been visited upon them with such relentless fury were but necessary and pardonable measures of punishment and repression. ”

“ But the Armenian courage and national spirit, and the political and military ability which had governed the Eastern Empire so many centuries, were not extinct. The heart of the nation, forced out of its immemorial lands, still beat strongly, and animated their mass of dukedoms, now forming a compact body in the center of Asia Minor, with a common life and national instinct, which was soon to weld them into a new Armenian kingdom, as true and real a one as the old, Armenians under an Armenian prince, but in a wholly different territory, south and southwest of the former. ”

“ And the Armenian blood, now continually pouring like a river in Armenia, will be the cause and the foundation of the coming freedom of the world. For the present, the world is not free; it is not civilized. ”

“ So when Mohammedans conquer a nation, be sure they will exterminate it. To them mercy means apostasy; to leave a man alive or a woman unravished is to be false to the precepts of Mohammed. They cannot help it, it is their religion; a religion for wild animals. Their priests go to the mosques and preach to them thus: “Believers in Mohammed, love your fellow believers, but hate and kill all others; they are Giaours, heathen dogs, filthy hogs.” To kill a Christian and to kill a hog is all the same to a Mohammedan; there is as little sin in one as the other. ”

“ XIII. Sweden dismembered, Persia conquered, Poland subjugated, Turkey beaten, our armies united, the Black and Baltic seas guarded by our vessels, prepare, separately and secretly, first the court of Versailles, then that of Vienna, to share the empire of the universe with Russia. If one accept, flatter her ambition and vanity, and make use of one to crush the other by engaging them in war. The result cannot be doubted; Russia will be possessed of the whole of the East and a great portion of Europe. ”

“ Thus can Europe be subjugated.
But aside from this, no help could be expected from Russia in any event, because she needs all her strength to save herself from destruction by her own internal decay. She is a great tree, hollow in the inside. The Nihilists and the Constitutional Reformers are both against her, and, in my belief, she will go to pieces in the present Czar’s lifetime. The Sultan’s days are numbered, but the Czar’s and the Emperor’s are too; their own people will rise and depose them. It is against Socialists and Nihilists that they are massing such great armies. ”

“ With marriages so late, and husbands so long absent, Turkish families are small; they do not make good the deaths. And there is a still plainer cause: The soldiers being very poorly fed, and constant fighting going on, ninety per cent. die in the army, and so never have any families; the flower of the nation perishes barren. Those who survive and return are pale and sick, good for nothing, a burden to their families and to the nation. The Armenians have to support the Sultan’s army, since they do not furnish it, but they rear families, and are drowning out the Turks. ”

“ If the Indians possessed all the money, all the intelligence, all the cultivation, and all the morals in America, and the whites were a mob of ignorant, cruel, lustful ruffians holding them down by the organized [335] power of the sword, the comparison would be just. As it is, the Turks correspond fairly enough with the Indians, and the Armenians to the whites, in every other respect than military power. Does a Turk—a true Turk—ever write a book? Does he ever publish a newspaper, or read one? Does he ever build a church, or pay attention to the moral precepts taught in one? ”

“ We are all of us very, very, hungry. Those Turks who were so friendly before have turned now not to know us, they don’t even give a penny. We have no hope from anywhere else; if you do not come to our help, we shall perish! perish! perish! We, with all the villagers shall die. Behold the description of our misery. Read this to all the villagers that are there with you, and notify them that all of you must be the helpers and deliverers of our people, especially to us who are all helpless and on the verge of starvation. ”

“ I do not mean among the common people—theirs is nothing else—but of the educated upper classes, their scholars, teachers, governors, and priests. I came in contact with them for years, and I hated to listen to them, their talk was so full of cursing and filth. You never see the fruits of the spirit in them; only the fruits of the flesh. They do not understand what spiritual life is; with them all is sense,—eating and drinking, finery and lust,—lust above all, everywhere and always, like cattle. They seem never able to forget sex and its uses. Some people think the climate makes the Turks lazy ”

“ When the time comes to marry another wife, he has the girls stand in a row, and chooses one of them by covering her face with a silk handkerchief; then she is taken by the eunuchs to the quarters allotted to the Sultanas, and can have separate servants, carriages, and eunuchs. The life of the Sultan and his big family is the most miserable in the world. The palace is a focus of discontent, quarrels, jealousy, lust, and cruelty; in a word, it is a perfect hell. The women have nothing to do, and nothing to think of; they do not read, they have no work, and no share even in household management ”

“ Over 60,000 Armenians have been butchered, and the massacres are not quite ended yet. In Trebizond, Erzeroum, Erzinghan, Hassankalek, and numberless other places the Christians were crushed like grapes during the vintage. The frantic mob, seething and surging in the streets of the cities, swept down upon the defenseless Armenians, plundered their shops, gutted their houses, then joked and jested with the terrified victims, as cats play with mice. ”

“ But beside life we have nothing, no comfort, no happiness, no property, no church, no religion, all are taken from us. Though we are alive, many of our number were killed, and those who survive are wandering here and there, naked and hungry, and are dying in that manner. ”

“ Great orators are especially likely to be forgotten; they leave no written works of their own, and not being in political life, the common histories do not mention them. The name of Barouyr is wholly unknown to this age; but we have the testimony of a contemporary writer, Eunapius of Sardis,—not a countryman of his, and therefore free from all suspicion of patriotic brag, and most unlikely to make out an Armenian greater than he was,—that he was the most wonderful orator of his time, famous all over the Roman world, and greatly admired even by the emperors. ”

“ I have only begun on the catalogue of taxes which strip most Armenians, and are intended to strip them, of everything but the means of sustaining life and perpetuating their race. When a boy is born, a poll-tax is laid on him,—two dollars on the average,—which must be paid every year as long as he lives, whether he remains in Armenia or leaves it. ”

“ Let it be fully understood throughout the Christian world that the massacre is a religious demand; the Turks have to comply. As a Christian tries to be faithful to Christ and his teachings, so the Turks are trying to be faithful to their prophet and his. They go to the mosques and pray, “Allah, help us; strengthen our hands and sharpen our swords to kill the infidel Armenians.” Then they come from the mosques and begin to kill, and plunder, and outrage, and commit every sort of indescribable atrocities on the peaceable and defenseless Armenians. ”

“ Of course a President could not order three millions of people put to death by letting loose all the savage Indians of the West on them to do as they pleased with them, for the sake of making them worship the Big Manitou; but a Sultan—that is different, even though a Kurd is exactly as bad as an Indian, and an Indian’s knife does not cut throats any more effectively, nor an Indian’s tortures inflict more unnamable horrors of suffering, nor an Indian’s torch burn houses any better, nor an Indian’s beastly lust defile women any worse. ”

“ He said in part:
“The purpose of this meeting is not only to express sympathy with those who have suffered, and are suffering now from the atrocities and barbarous cruelties inflicted by Turkish soldiers, but for protesting against the further infliction of such atrocities. What has been done is done, and cannot be undone; but if it is possible to prevent in any measure a repetition of it in the future, it should become everyone who is not a Christian merely, but a man, to exert himself to the utmost in that direction.” ”

“ Upon hundreds of villages the Turks and Kurds came down like the hordes of Tamerlane, robbed the helpless peasants of their flocks and herds, stripped them of their very clothing, and carried away their bedding, cooking utensils, and even the little stores of provisions which they had with infinite care and toil laid up for the severities of a rigorous winter. Worst of all is the bitter cry that comes from every [324] quarter that the Moslems carried off hundreds of Christian women and children. ”

“ THE PAKRADOONIAN DYNASTY.
For a century after the Mohammedan conquest of Persia, the fortunes of Armenia were apparently at their lowest ebb, and as a country it almost disappears from history; but by one of the compensations of nature, which provides that human force, like other force, cannot be extinguished, but if suppressed will find an outlet elsewhere, its people began a career of brilliancy and power unequaled in its history, and broadened from the rule of a tormented buffer-state to that of the great Byzantine Empire itself. ”

“ We wonder if sympathy and the brotherhood of man and chivalry are wholly things of the past, or are the material and political interests dividing you so great that the massacre of the whole people is a secondary thing? ”

“ For the fifth, the Turks are an exceedingly sensual race, by nature and education, as I have shown. The very religion that should help to make them pure, helps to make them vile. Lust leads them, and they follow; nature prompts, and their religion requires it. I am truly ashamed to tell it, but even when they go to their mosques to worship, they manifest their sensuality. Not only the relations of male and female are very rank, but between male and male they are worse; between the old Turks and young Turks, the very boys, the relations are too disgusting to describe. ”

“ They have never built up anything; they are pure destroyers. Anything which is built in any Mohammedan country is built both by Christian money and by Christian architects; Mohammedans have neither the money, the architects, nor the sense. The day one becomes a Mohammedan he loses his intellect, his skill, and his common sense. Mohammedanism is a poison fatal to any good gifts or graces; it cultivates in him falsehood, cruelty, and lust. ”