Herbert Adams Gibbons

“ Have neutral nations any responsibility in regard to the Armenians?
For neutral nations in general, the answer depends upon whether the influence and action of a nation ought to be confined wholly to internal affairs. Those who give to their own conscience and to God the answer of Cain, say frankly: “No, we are not our brother’s keeper. We have all that we can do to look after ourselves.” If this type of mentality had controlled the councils of the nations throughout the past twenty centuries, would there be a Christian civilization? ”

“ Nothing is more stupid, nothing more against nature and history, than advocating that the solution of the Armenian question and salvation of the Armenian race is in emigration en masse to America or some other country. The Armenians are an indigenous element in Asiatic Turkey. Their wholesale emigration might save the lives of several hundred thousand individuals. But it would break the hearts of most of those who were thus saved, and it would mark the disappearance of the Armenians as a race and a nation, just as certainly as if their extermination by massacre were [51] completed. ”

“ In their pitiful ignorance, in their frenzy of blood-lust, the Turks are turning upon and destroying those whose existence is precious and vital to their community and national [52] life. Travel where you will through Turkey, from one end of the great empire to the other, and you find no community that is prosperous without Armenians. Along the seacoast, the Greeks play an important part in the economic life of Turkey. But in the interior the Armenians are a sine qua non to the Turks. ”

“ Let us come to the concrete reason for the direct responsibility of two nations to intervene on behalf of the Armenians. Among neutral and passive onlookers, who have been silent while the darkest page of modern history is being written, the Americans and Swiss should [67] not forget that their money and their representatives have been working for two generations in Turkey to elevate the Armenians. Together with French, British, Germans, and Italians, the Americans and Swiss have helped to reawaken the national spirit of the Armenian nation. They have infused new life into the Armenian Church. ”

“ The old men and boys, the women and children, were an element of danger to the Ottoman Empire. The Armenians must be rooted out of Turkey. But how accomplish this in such a way that the Turkish Ambassador at Washington and the German newspapers might be able to say, as they have said and are still saying, “All those who have been killed were of that rebellious element caught red-handed or while otherwise committing traitorous acts against the Turkish Government, and not women and children, as some of these fabricated reports would have the Americans believe?” ”

“ As individuals who have left Turkey, these exiled Armenians have a right to do as they choose, as communities, it would have been—it is now—better for them to keep quiet. Although they have no justification for doing so, the Turks and Germans have been using the manifestations made by these small communities outside of Turkey as reflecting the spirit and intentions of the Armenians in Turkey, and have succeeded in confusing many neutrals about the real facts of the Armenian situation. ”

“ One does not need to study deeply, one has simply to read the history of the Ottoman Empire since Great Britain and France saved the Turks by the Crimean War, to realize that the Armenians, from the moment the question of “reforms” was introduced by the Powers in their dealings with the Sublime Porte, have been the unwitting victims of the cause of civilization in the Near East. ”

“ The Armenians, as a Race, have never been, and are not, a Menace to the Security of Turkey. They are Blameless of the Charge of Disloyalty, which has been the Excuse for their Massacre and Deportation. ”

“ Armenians, enrolled in the Turkish army, fought bravely for the common fatherland beside their Moslem brethren. In the hour of danger and humiliation, the Armenians of Turkey stood by their fellow Ottoman subjects. They gave their blood for Turkey. Unlike the Ottoman Greeks, they could be suspected of no secret wishes for the success of the enemy.
It is unfair for the Ottoman Government to cite, as basis for its charges against its Armenian subjects, the fact that Armenians in large numbers are fighting [39] in the Russian army. ”

“ Of the Armenians in Turkey one might have said without fear of contradiction before the terrible events of the past six months, that they were in no place numerically strong enough to jeopardize the political independence of the Ottoman Empire, but that they were everywhere in sufficient number to guarantee its economic independence. ”

“ But in the Ottoman Empire, the situation is different from that of any other country in Europe. There is not a sufficient number of educated men among the non-Christian elements of the Ottoman Empire to form, let alone to guide, public opinion. Consequently, there is no public opinion. The governing power has always been in the hands of a small and corrupt circle, and the Ottoman nation has not developed in self-government, in popular institutions, as have the other nations of Europe. ”

“ It has been Proved through Centuries that Christians and Moslems are Able to Live in Peace and Amity in Turkey, which is Equally the Country of Both.
ONE hesitates, on general principles, to attempt to advise, or to admonish, as to its best interests, a nation at war. In a life and death struggle such as this war has become, it would be naturally supposed that a [44] nation and its rulers are the best judges of what it is to their interest to do. Advice from outside sources is open to the suspicion of being not disinterested. ”

“ The world at heart is not deaf to the appeal of the innocent and helpless. Else we should have reason indeed to believe in the complete disappearance of our twentieth-century Christian civilization. If some issues are debatable, if some events are obscure, if some charges and counter-charges cannot be determined, there are others that can be determined. ”

“ It was my fortune to go to Turkey during the first month of the new régime, and to live in Asia Minor and Constantinople until after the disastrous war with the Balkan States. From 1908 to 1913, I enjoyed exceptional opportunities of travelling in European and Asiatic Turkey, of becoming acquainted with the [14] men who were guiding the destinies of the Ottoman Empire, and of witnessing the fatal events that changed in five years the hope of regeneration into the despair of dissolution. ”

“ The preservation of the Armenian element in Asia Minor is indispensable to the well-being and prosperity of the Turks themselves. Politically, as well as economically, it is impossible for the Turks to continue to exist as an independent, and in any measure at all self-supporting, nation without the help of the Armenians. ”

“ He told the Armenians that the Young Turks had suffered equally with them, and that they had been companions in misfortune. With sublime faith, sublime even though stupid, the bulk of the Armenians believed once more. They accepted the explanation of the massacre, and continued to support the Ottoman Government.
During the four years after Adana, I spent most of my time in Constantinople, and I was constantly with the leaders of the Armenian race. Never once did I hear an Armenian ecclesiastic or other Armenian of weight and reputation speak against the Ottoman Government. ”

“ The Germans, and the Germans alone, will benefit by the extermination of the Armenians. I have pointed out above how the Armenians are the essential factor, the guarantee indeed, of Turkish economic and political independence in Asia Minor. By the same token, they appear to be a stumbling-block to German [63] domination. The Armenians, largely educated in French and American schools, speak French and English. Through their commercial relations with western Europe and America, with England most of all, they have naturally been “in the way” of the German commercial travellers. ”

“ In one large city of Asiatic Turkey, an [61] American missionary, a man whom I know personally and whose word can be trusted implicitly, saw a German officer directing the artillery fire of the Turks upon the Armenian civilian population. In two other places, at least, German consuls defended the Ottoman policy both of massacre and of deportation.
On the broader and more general moral ground of responsibility as brother’s keeper, the German, who alone of all European nations have had, and still have the power to stop these massacres, stand condemned. ”

“ The younger classes of Armenians, who did not live too far from Constantinople, were placed, as in the Balkan wars, in the active army. The older ones, and all the Armenians enrolled in the more distant regions, were utilized for road, railway, and fortification building. Wherever they were called, and to whatever task they were put, the Armenians did their duty, and worked for the defence of Turkey. They proved themselves brave soldiers and intelligent and industrious labourers. ”

“ Other nations, large and small, while still managing to maintain an official neutrality, have found themselves drawn into diplomatic controversies with both groups of belligerents. With the exception of South America, the continents of the world have sent contingents to fight in Europe. The destinies of Africa, Asia, and Australia are at stake, and the destinies [6] of the western hemisphere will, long before the end is reached, be influenced vitally by the tremendous events that are taking place in Europe. ”

“ They have made researches into Armenian history and have given to the world the results of those researches. They have taught the Armenians European languages, and have imparted to a race that had become ignorant and backward, because separated from Europe, the spirit of Occidental civilization. ”

“ Still in the midst of war, still prejudiced by our sympathies and our interests, neither participants nor spectators are in a position to form a definitive judgment upon the many problems of the origin of the war, and upon controversial points that have arisen between the belligerents and between belligerents and neutrals, because of acts of war. ”

“ And yet, Christian Europe never made a concerted effort to save this unhappy race from the results of Europe’s own dealings with the Turks.
The Armenians, of course, always suffered to a certain extent from their social and political disabilities under Moslem rule. But they have lived for centuries in comparative security, and certainly with a large measure of prosperity, as Ottoman subjects. Personal relations between Turks and Armenians have been not at all bad. ”

“ Turkey. The Turks are not, like the Arabs, a fanatical people by nature. The persecution and massacre of Armenians is not, as the general European and American public have erroneously thought, an age-old matter of religious strife. ”

“ But can we assume the attitude of suspending judgment in regard to all that has happened since August, 1914, and all that is happening to-day? The world at heart is not cold-blooded. The world at heart is not [7] hopelessly selfish. ”

“ No household goods, no animals, no extra clothing could be taken along. Food supply and bedding was limited to what a person could carry. And they had to go on foot under the burning sun through parched valleys and over snow-covered mountain passes, a journey of from three to eight weeks. ”