Armenians

“ Each year, we pause to remember the 1.5 million Armenians who were subsequently massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. The Meds Yeghern must live on in our memories, just as it lives on in the hearts of the Armenian people. ”

“ The Armenians, from the earliest period of their existence, through all the political disasters which have signalized their history, have exhibited a strong love for a national literature, and maintained themselves as a cultivated people amidst all the revolutions which barbarism, despotism, and war have occasioned. During so many ages they have faithfully preserved not only their historical traditions, reaching back to the period of the ancient Hebrew histories, but also their national character. ”

“ Who are the Armenians? The average American knows very little about them, while few even of the educated classes have much knowledge of the race or its history. Many people regard them as barbarians, partially Christianized. Some think them of Chinese type; most often they are considered as Turks because the chief portion of Armenia is part of the Turkish Empire; every Armenian feels justly indignant at the latter classification. ”

“ I have confessed already to a prejudice against the Armenians, but it is not possible to deny that they are the most capable, energetic, enterprising, and pushing race in Western Asia, physically superior, and intellectually acute, and above all they are a race which can be raised in all respects to our own level, neither religion, colour, customs, nor inferiority in intellect or force constituting any barrier between us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Armenians are not protagonists in the War; they bear none of the guilt for its outbreak and can have little share in the responsibility of building up a better future. But they have been seared more cruelly than any of us by the flames, and, under this fiery ordeal, their individual character as a nation and their part in the community of the civilised world have been thrown into their true relief. ”

“ The problem for the Armenians was not how to overthrow the Ottoman Empire but how to preserve it, and their interest in its preservation was even greater than that of their Turkish neighbours and co-heirs. Our geographical survey has shown that talent and temperament had brought most of the industry, commerce, finance and skilled intellectual work of Turkey into, the Armenians’ hands. ”

“ The Armenians of the present day are the direct descendants of the people who inhabited the country 3,000 years ago. Their origin is so ancient that it is lost in fable and mystery. There are still undeciphered cuneiform inscriptions on the rocky hills of Van, the largest Armenian city, that have led certain scholars—though not many, I must admit—to identify the Armenian race with the Hittites of the Bible. What is definitely known about the Armenians, however, is that for ages they have constituted the most civilized and most industrious race in the Eastern section of the Ottoman Empire. ”

“ The Armenians, very numerous in ancient times, now number only about 4,000,000, of whom 2,500,000 are under the Sultan, 1,200,000 in Russia, 150,000 in Persia, and the rest widely scattered in many lands, but everywhere distinguished for their peaceable and enterprising character. They are the leading bankers, merchants, and skilled artisans of Turkey, and extensively engage in the various trades, manufactures, and agriculture as well. They love their native home and are yet destined to play an important part in the moral and material regeneration of western Asia. ”

“ The Armenians are an adventurous race; they can go anywhere, settle anywhere, and become subject to any State. Some years before the troubles, many of the foreign subject Armenians came over to Turkey, styling themselves Frenchmen, Englishmen and Americans, sometimes in the shape of missionaries, sometimes as teachers. These adventurers, together with the revolutionary Russian subject Armenians, who came mostly from the Caucasus, began to stir up the people of their own race all over Asiatic Turkey in favour of a national independence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Armenians have advanced but a very little way on the road of education. The most enlightened are certainly those in British India, whilst those of them who are Russian subjects have of late considerably improved. Hitherto, the nation has never had a fair chance, but that it has the possibility of progress in it is shown by the fact that no sooner are the Armenians placed under a firm and wise government than they at once begin to go forwards, in every respect. ”

“ Thus from this time onwards the population of Armenia has been mixed, consisting mainly of the two races—Armenians and Kurds. Therefore, while on the one hand many Armenians have left their country because of its successive troubles and settled in Asia Minor, Constantinople, and other Western places, after the manner of the Jewish "dispersion," in the present day the land is largely stocked with a rude, alien, Mohammedan race, inferior to the original inhabitants both in civilisation and in morals. ”

“ They are original and often quaint and express the feelings of Armenians who live far from their native mountains and fields, showing how they pine for the land of their birth, reflecting the natural beauties of their fatherland, and their yearning for their hearth and the dear faces of home. ”

“ The total number of Armenians is estimated at 2,900,000 (in Turkey, 1,500,000; Russia, 1,000,000; Persia, 150,000; Europe, America and East Indies, 250,000) .
History.—The history of Armenia has been largely influenced by its physical features. The isolation of the valleys, especially in winter, encouraged a tendency to separation, which invariably showed itself when the central power was weak. The rugged mountains have always been the home of hardy mountaineers impatient of control, and the sanctuary to which the lowlanders fled for safety in times of invasion. ”

“ But those who know something of Asiatic Turkey will recognize with him that the Armenians are, by their intelligence and their irrepressible energy, the race best fitted to restore prosperity to regions desolated by Turkish oppression. The educated Armenians, notwithstanding all they have suffered, are abreast of the modern world of civilization. ”

“ All the machinery of whatever civilisation the land may possess is furnished by Armenians. The language which you most often hear is the somewhat harsh Armenian tongue; the legends and historical memories which attach to the great works of Nature have for the most part an Armenian origin. Over the area of the Armenian tableland, as it is delimited in the present work, these people are found in nearly double the numbers of any other race. In the preceding chapter I have established the natural frontiers of the country within Russian territory ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The number of the Armenians in Turkish Armenia and in Asia Minor was not considered to be below two millions and a half. [69]
The Armenians lived (before this world war) in their respective villages, towns and cities. If a town, or village is not exclusively occupied by the Armenians, then they had their own district clustered by [Pg 134] themselves with sufficient churches and schools for their religious and educational needs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now the Armenians, though an ill-used, were a very far-away people; not one out of a thousand Englishmen had ever seen an Armenian, or even framed any clear picture of the nature or geographical disposition of an Armenian. ”

“ Thus the Armenian race became scattered over the face of the earth, whilst only a remnant still lives in the land of its ancestors. The Armenians are to be met with all over the East. There are large numbers of them at Constantinople and a few other towns, such as Adrianople, Gallipoli, and Rodosto. In the towns of the interior, however, their number is small. ”

“ There are about five millions of Armenians in the world at present: three millions in the Turkish Empire, a million and a half in Russian Armenia, and half a million more scattered through Persia, India, and Burmah, Egypt, Europe (there are two or three hundred thousand in the Austrian Empire) , and America. ”

“ Europeans will flock in, and a new era dawn. Who are the commercial class? The Armenian Christians or Europeans; not a Turk or a Kurd among them. Commerce means, then, the increase of the Christian population; wealth, greatness, security for the Armenians; finally freedom from the Ottoman power. Therefore that power forbids any improvement of the backward conditions. [39]
1 The word “Armenian” is not altogether indicative of race, it refers more particularly to those who are Christians. Any who have forsaken the faith and become Mohammedans are no longer regarded as Armenians, but are Turks. ”

“ In Armenia—the name and geographical existence of which are not recognized in Turkey—there are probably six hundred thousand native Armenians, or one-fourth of the whole number that are scattered throughout the Porte’s dominions. The climate is temperate and bracing. Facilities for travel and transportation are exceedingly meagre, and all the methods employed by the natives are unusually primitive. “Valis,” or municipal governors, are appointed by the government at Constantinople to administer the laws, and none but Moslems hold official positions. ”

“ Thirdly, the Armenians are much more advanced intellectually to-day than they were forty years ago, while their neighbours—Turks, Kurds, and others—are stagnating in the same primitive state as they were forty—or, for that matter, four hundred—years ago. ”

“ They were still in the mountains on their native soil, and had no suspicion of the terrors of the desert. That was the last I saw of the Armenians, but such experiences are unforgettable, and I publish them here with the most earnest appeal for help. Many of the Armenians may be guilty and may only be suffering what they have brought upon themselves, but the poor women and children need our help. ”

“ The Cilician Armenians were mainly shepherds and husbandmen, but they were also one of the most civilised and progressive sections of the Armenian race. Schools, both Armenian and American, had been established in the mountains, and the mountaineers were in close contact with Adana, Tarsus, Mersina and the other ports and cities of the Adana plain, where commerce and industry were almost entirely in the hands of the Armenian element—an element constantly reinforced from the reservoir of Armenian population in the highlands. ”

“ As just and accurate an estimate of the Armenian character as any I have read is that written by Sir Charles William Wilson, perhaps the foremost authority on the subject, for the Encyclopædia Britannica: "The Armenians are essentially an Oriental people, possessing, like the Jews, whom they resemble in their exclusiveness and widespread dispersion, a remarkable tenacity of race and faculty of adaptation to circumstances. They are frugal, sober, industrious and intelligent and their sturdiness of character has enabled them to preserve their nationality and religion under the sorest trials. ”