M. Smbat Gabrielean

“ Every turn in the road opens up some new vista of beauty. The Greek villages on the hillsides present a prosperous appearance and an aspect of comfort. The faces that we see wear the bright, quick look which characterizes the Greek face. This is in striking contrast with the careworn look of the people of Armenia, where even the children had none of the brightness of other children: the life seemed too hard, the surroundings too dull, the lowering storms of persecution too near for even the children to smile.
The appearance of Trebizond as we approach it from the east is singularly pretty. ”

“ Armenian progress is buried by Islam in the heaps of slaughtered bodies and under the ashes that cover her ruined and deserted villages.
Why is the Turk so fiercely opposed to progress? Why does he so bitterly hate the progressive Armenians? Because, in the first place, he is Turkish; and because, in the second place, he is Mohammedan.
The Turk is not a member of the best human race—the Indo-European or Arian, like the Armenians. The Turk does not belong even to the next best of races, the Semitic, like the Jews and the Arabs. ”

“ The mutual jealousies and distrusts and diverse ambitions of the Powers of Europe have been as fatal and as horrible in result as the cruel wrath of a Nero, when for the first time he smote the early Christians with the clenched fist of the Roman Empire. Would that some hand could strip off the blood-soaked, dagger-pierced garments of nearly a hundred thousand martyred dead, and lay them at the feet of the nations who were consenting unto their death. Far be it from us to attempt to divide, or measure, or weigh out the guilt that lies with common shame upon them all ”

“ When you lift up your voices here in America in Christian prayers and songs, be sure that at that moment, four thousand miles beyond in Turkey, many voices have been lifted up with the same spirit towards heaven. Yours and theirs ascend together up to the throne of Almighty God. They have no such magnificent buildings for their churches as you have here. In many churches they have no organ or piano; a poor people. Yet if you should see those Protestant churches, their sincerity, their piety, and their love for the truth of God, you would surely say, “Truly the Gospel is preached to the poor.” ”

“ Do you shudder at even this cool recital? Far worse horrors are still being endured by the Christian people of Armenia this very day on ground that is dyed with the blood of a thousand years of martyrdom. And still Christian Europe is unmoved; and the Turk, drunk with the blood of his victims still is propped up on his throne by the arms that should drive him back to the deserts of Tartary: and Christian America contents itself with trying by their relief funds to keep alive the starving remnants of this harried race whose cry to Christendom is “either kill us or in God’s name redeem us.” ”

“ Our written laws condemn cruelty to a horse or cat or dog; our innate sense of justice would compel us to punish the man who should wantonly torture even a rat by roasting it alive. And yet we read of wounded Armenians being thrown into wells where kerosene was poured upon them and then being burned alive and we are as cool as ever. What more is needed to compel us to stretch out a helping hand to tens of thousands of virtuous women and innocent children to save them from protracted tortures with some of which the Gehenna of fire were a swift and merciful death. ”

“ The time has come for every citizen to deliberately accept or repudiate his share of the joint indirect responsibility for a series of the hugest and foulest crimes that have ever stained the pages of human history. The Armenian people are being exterminated root and branch by Turks and Kurds—systematically and painfully exterminated by such abominable methods, and with such fiendish accompaniments as may well cause the most sluggish blood to boil and seethe with shame and indignation. ”

“ Throughout the entire history of the Tartar invasions with all their bloody victories and cruel conquests you see Russia rising again and again across his path like a stone wall. But England, in spite of all professions to the contrary and in spite of the earnest and solemn protests of her people against the atrocities of the Sultan’s reign—and never more hot or indignant words have been uttered throughout England than during the last few months—England has always stepped in just in time to save the Empire from destruction and prolong its barbarous rule. ”

“ In our helplessness we can only take refuge, perhaps, under the arms of the Almighty. Justice and judgment are the habitations of His throne and a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of His kingdom. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.”
When Christendom repeats that phrase “Thy Kingdom Come” in the universal prayer it means the downfall of Islam, the overthrow of every throne of iniquity, and of all kingdoms whose foundations are laid in blood.
The kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of righteousness and between it and the cruel, lustful barbarism of Islam there can be no peace. ”

“ It was to this edifice from fifteen hundred to two thousand of the people fled when the general massacre began, and the story of what took place within its walls on that awful day will never be fully known. These nearly two thousand victims were at the mercy of the merciless soldiers and the worse than merciless mob. The soldiers were first to enter, but they soon allowed the promiscuous rabble to follow and share with them in the carnival of debauchery and blood. The fiendish fanaticism of these Moslems had its climax in setting fire to the victims of their wild fury. ”

“ The riches which excite your cupidity shall be burned. We will destroy the mosque of Omar. We will pound into dust the stone of Jacob which is an object of your worship. We will stay our women and our children with our own hands that they shall never be your slaves. When the Holy City shall become a ruin—a vast tomb—we will march out of it armed with fire and sword and no one of us will ascend to Paradise without first consigning ten Mussulmen to hell. We shall thus obtain a glorious death and in dying shall call down on your head the maledictions of the God of Jerusalem. ”

“ In what nobler cause did ever Christian knight draw sword, or a nation ever spend treasure and blood.
Ours is not the terrible responsibility of the British nation which has suffered commercial considerations to outweigh frenzied appeals for justice and toleration, but it is a weight of shame that will be equally hard to bear in the Day of the Lord, if we, the mightiest Christian nation on the face of the globe, in the darkest night of religious persecution shall put forth no effective hand to deliver this most ancient Christian race from the clutch of fiendish fanaticism. ”

“ Twenty-five provinces were almost depopulated by its ravages and thousands were carried away and sold as slaves in foreign lands. The following year another army of forty thousand men came to ravage the remaining territory. The nation was driven to madness and despair by the devastations committed. But as if all the vials of wrath and the horrors of hell were to be let loose at once, the Saracens, believing they had returned to the subjection of the Greeks, again invaded Armenia. They destroyed every town and village on their line of march, and carried away vast multitudes of captives. ”

“ Before night had fallen the vanquished Sultan in chains, covered with dust and blood, was brought before Timour, who was seated in the shade of his tent playing chess with the son whom he called the hope of his race. The vanquisher showed neither pride nor insolence before the vanquished. He remembered the maxims and respected the finger of God even in the enemy overthrown at his feet. He remembered that he was of the same race, that they were fighting for the same faith and he almost begged his pardon for the victory. ”

“ The integrity of the Turkish Empire must be maintained. All else is mere diplomatic froth, waste breath and ink in the torrents of her speeches and her correspondence with the Porte; and the Turk knows it, and Russia knows it and the world knows it. England is pilloried to-day for her selfishness, if not for her unrighteousness, in all her dealings with the rest of the earth. It is her government, not her people that the world arraigns. ”

“ Russia has been the persistent and bitter foe of Turkey for three hundred years, and Turkey of Russia.
Only once in all that time (1833) did Russia stretch out her hand to aid the Turk, and for reward she received the free navigation of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus for a series of years. She has fought the Turk single-handed and alone: she has fought him when he has had Poland and the Tartars for his allies: when Venice and Austria and Hungary fought under his banners: when Italy and France were his allies: when England, France and Sardinia united to help him in the Crimea. ”

“ The History of this Martyr Nation that has been written in tears and blood as thus rehearsed to you will, I trust, not have been told in vain. May the voice of an outraged humanity be heard above the din of all conflicting political alliances demanding mercy and justice for the perishing.
I believe our indignation would burst into fiercest flame if these awful atrocities could but be realized; and to noble, free and Christian America might be the honor of leading in a glorious crusade for the deliverance of crushed, desolated and bleeding Armenia from the accursed rule of Islam. ”

“ The reader will please turn aside for awhile to consider the rise of an alien religion which was destined to change the map of Europe and the course of history for many centuries; a religion which binds with fanatical zeal a sixth part of the human race; a power, which gathering its forces from the sands of Arabia swept like a fierce and pitiless simoon over the most ancient civilizations, until the flag of the Prophet waved from the Indus to the pillars of Hercules over an empire vaster than that ever ruled by Roman legions and Roman law. ”

“ Thus by the conduct and the persistence of the English government alone was the calling of the Congress made necessary or possible, and by the spirit of England was the Congress dominated, and its final deliverances controlled. At the behest of England were millions of Bulgarians and Armenians handed over again to the tender mercies of the wicked Turk, and Russia was robbed of the glory of her victories.
An international crime like this must cry to Heaven for vengeance and the most powerful and enlightened nation that insisted on it and forced it through is also the most guilty. ”

“ And this war was fought by France and England, not in the cause of freedom; not to redress the wrongs of the oppressed; not to help forward the wheels of progress. No, but to pave the way for the bloody atrocities which in 1876 called forth one long cry of horror and indignation throughout Christendom, while these in turn were to pale before the horrors of 1895–6 to which commercial England has turned a deaf ear, leaving Armenia helpless in the jaws of the wolf. ”

“ We must pass over in silence a period of four hundred years in the history of the Ottoman Empire to open its blood-stained pages in our own era at the narrative of the Bulgarian massacres. The centuries and the peoples have been under the rule of the barbarian; the story is one of continued persecution, outrage, and massacre. The Turk never changes. What he has always done he always will do. And as long as any Christian lands or people remain under his power and at his mercy, so long will there be discontents, disturbances, revolts and massacres. ”

“ The breaking up of the Council was the scattering of the firebrands of fanaticism. Pope Urban traversed several provinces of France that seemed to rise en masse to his appeals. France seemed to have no country but the Holy Land. Ease, property and life were cast into the sacrificial cause. All Christian nations seemed to forget their internal strifes, and to plunge headlong into the excitement of the hour. Western Europe resounded with the Papal Watchword: “He who will not take up his cross and come after me, is not worthy of me.” ”

“ The Turks in their confidential moods have admitted these and worse acts of savagery. The Kurds glory in them at all times. Trustworthy Europeans have witnessed them and described them: and the Armenians have groaned over them in blank despair, and the sweat of their anguish has been blood.
Officers and nobles in the Sultan’s own cavalry regiments like Mostigo the Kurd, glory in the long series of crimes and outrages which have marked their career, and laugh to scorn the idea of being punished for robbing and killing the Armenians whom the Sublime Porte desires them to exterminate. ”

“ Starvation was his best ally. It swept off multitudes he could not reach with the sword. The tender heart of the Sultan of Turkey must not to-day be lacerated with even suggestion that there is more mercy under the cross than under his own blood-red crescent. He turns fair and fertile provinces into cemeteries and makes of villages heaps of ruins, then publishes to Europe that he has restored peace to his people. ”

“ After a fierce battle in which the Armenians were defeated with great slaughter the whole country was ablaze with conflagrations. A city captured after a siege of months was taken by storm. The most dreadful havoc ensued, twelve thousand inhabitants were massacred, churches, palaces pillaged and burned and thirty-five thousand citizens carried into captivity.
These were but the beginning of sorrows and horrors. Invasion after invasion followed until at last peace was bought at the cost of an immense yearly tribute which impoverished the whole people. ”

“ After the massacre, and when the terrified survivors had fled, there was a general looting by the Hamidieh Kurds. They stripped the houses bare, then piled the dead into them and fired the whole, intending as far as possible to cover up the evidences of their dreadful crime.
The rivulets were choked with corpses; the streams ran red with human blood, the mountain gorges and rocky caves were crowded with the dead and dying; among the black ruins of once prosperous villages lay half-burned infants on their mothers’ mangled bodies: pits were dug at night by the wretches destined to fill them ”

“ Human hatred and diabolical spite, combined with the most disgusting sights and sounds and stenches, with their gnawing hunger and their putrid food, their parching thirst and the slimy water, fit only for sewers, rendered their agony maddening. Yet these were not criminals, nor alleged criminals, but upright Christian men, who were never even accused of an infraction of the law. No man who has not seen these prisons with his own eyes, and heard these prisoners with his own ears, can be expected to conceive, much less realize, the sufferings inflicted and endured. ”