*£l\e ^\ racial} ^jrotibles 
 
 aijd 
 
THE ARMENIAN TROUBLES 
 
 AND 
 
 WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES 
 
 BY 
 
 A CORRESPONDENT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 1895 
 
Press of J. J. Little & C 
 Astor Place, Is'ew York 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The five letters now published in this pamphlet were orig- 
 inally reproduced by an influential newspaper of New York. 
 They were written at and sent from Constantinople, where 
 impartial and correct information was accessible. The 
 author, in republishing these letters, together with further 
 evidence, has only one wish in view, and that is to impart to 
 his readers a true and thorough knowledge of the present 
 Armenian troubles. He believes that the whole atmosphere 
 on this subject has been polluted with falsehoods and exaggera- 
 tions, and trusts that the present short and condensed pam- 
 phlet will help in bringing some light on a question so often 
 misrepresented. 
 
ARMENIAN TROUBLES AND WHERE 
 THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES. 
 
 L 
 
 The Turkish Government has never denied that serious 
 disturbances have taken place at the district of Sassoun. 
 What it has denied is the accusation that there was a pre- 
 meditated massacre; and yet this is the absurd basis upon 
 which is built the whole Armenian agitation, both in Amer- 
 ica and Europe. The mere idea that the Sultan would 
 order a massacre of his Christian subjects, Armenians or no 
 Armenians, is ridiculous in itself, and denotes a credulous 
 belief in the falsehoods and calumnies propagated by the Ar- 
 menian revolutionary committees. 
 
 People cannot understand here in Turkey how serious 
 American newspapers could accept and print in their columns 
 assertions made with the object of throwing odium on the 
 legitimate authority of a friendly power. Mere affirmations 
 ought not to be considered as sufficient. Proofs ought to be 
 asked above everything else. If such were the case, the most 
 wild absurdities about Turkey would never appear in the daily 
 press. What, however, has surprised some people most is to 
 see the boldness and fanaticism of not a few American clergy- 
 men, who try to impart a religious and fanatical tendency to 
 a question that is, and ought to remain, a political one. 
 
 That Turkey does not make any religious distinctions be- 
 tween her subjects is shown by the fact that Armenians, who, 
 as a race, are certainly much inferior to the Turks, occupy 
 very high positions in Turkey. While this is the case with 
 Mohammedan Turkey, may we ask who are the Christian 
 governments that reward their Jewish subjects, for example, 
 with corresponding honors and influence ? And yet the Jew- 
 
6 
 
 ARMENIAN TROUBLES 
 
 ish race is indeed a great one, for it has left a mark in the 
 history of mankind. 
 
 What Turkey wants is peace, and she is determined to have 
 it. The Sassoun disturbances were brought about by the 
 Armenian revolutionary committees. Turkey as an indepen- 
 dent State had to put down these disturbances. She did it 
 with a severity less great than the one displayed by England 
 in similar circumstances. As regards now the demand for 
 reforms, let it be remembered that reforms are needed in 
 every country, and not in Turkey alone. We have not heard 
 that the Irish question has been solved, and yet nobody rec- 
 ommends to England to abandon her sovereign rights and 
 independence. Turkey will stick to the same rule, for she 
 has the same rights and the same independence. In the 
 meantime, it would be well for American public opinion, in- 
 stead of showing an implicit faith in Armenian falsehoods, to 
 let these Armenian Christians know that they ought, for their 
 own sake, to abandon their seditious agitation. The rest will 
 necessarily follow. 
 
 II. 
 
 In our previous letter we affirmed that the Sassoun troubles 
 were brought about by the criminal efforts of Armenian revo- 
 lutionary committees, and that no reliance whatever ought to 
 be placed on Armenian testimony and assertions. We now 
 propose to prove these two affirmations, not by Turkish — that 
 is to say, Mussulman — testimony, but by American and Euro- 
 pean ; namely, Christian testimony. 
 
 The man who, above all, gave the most explicit and true 
 account of the Armenian revolutionary movement is the Eev. 
 Cyrus Hamlin himself. On the 23d of December, 1893, or, 
 in other words, only a few months before the revolt of Sas- 
 soun, he published in the Congregationalist a truly prophetic 
 statement, the perusal of which is absolutely necessary for an 
 impartial understanding of the case. Here is this statement r 
 
 " An Armenian ' revolutionary ' party is causing great evil and suffer- 
 ing to the missionary work and to the whole Christian population of cer- 
 tain parts of the Turkish Empire. It is a secret organization, and is 
 
AND WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES. 7 
 
 managed with a skill in deceit which is known only in the East. In a 
 widely distributed pamphlet the following announcement is made at the 
 close : 
 
 " ' This is the only Armenian party which is leading on the revolution- 
 ary movement in Armenia. Its centre is Athens, and it has branches in 
 every village and city in Armenia, also in the colonies. Nishan Garabe- 
 dian, one of the founders of the party, is in America, and those desiring 
 to get further information may communicate with him, addressing Nishan 
 Garabedian, 15 Fountain Street, Worcester, Mass., or with the centre, 
 M. Beniard, Poste Restante, Athens, Greece.' 
 
 "A very intelligent Armenian gentleman, who speaks fluently and 
 correctly English as well as Armenian, and is an eloquent defender of 
 the revolution, assured me that they have the strongest hopes of prepar- 
 ing the way for Russia's entrance into Asia Minor to take possession. In 
 answer to the question as to how, he replied : ' These Huntchaguist bands, 
 organized all over the empire, will watch their opportunities to kill Turks 
 and Kurds, set fire to their villages, and then make their escape into the 
 mountains. The enraged Moslems will then rise and fall upon the de- 
 fenseless Armenians and slaughter them with such barbarities that Rus- 
 sia will enter, in the name of humanity and Christian civilization, and 
 take possession.' 
 
 " When I denounced the scheme as atrocious and infernal beyond any- 
 thing ever known, he calmly replied : 'It appears so to you, no doubt, but 
 we Armenians are determined to be free. Europe listened to the Bulgar- 
 ian horrors, and made Bulgaria free. She will listen to our cry when it 
 goes up in the shrieks and blood of millions of women and children.' I 
 urged in vain that this scheme would make the very name of Armenian 
 hateful among all civilized people. He replied : ' We are desperate ; we 
 shall do it.' ' But your people do not want Russian protection. They 
 prefer Turkey, bad as she is. There are hundreds of miles of contermi- 
 nous territory into which emigration is easy at all times. It has been so 
 for all the centuries of Moslem rule. If your people preferred the Rus- 
 sian Government, there would not now be an Armenian family in Turkey.' 
 ' Yes,' he replied, ' and for such stupidity they will have to suffer.' 
 
 " I have had conversations with others who avow the same things, but 
 no one acknowledges that he is a member of the party. Falsehood is, of 
 course, justifiable where murder and arson are. In Turkey the party 
 aims to excite the Turks against Protestant missionaries and against 
 Protestant Armenians. All the troubles at Marsovan originated in their 
 movements. They are cunning, unprincipled, and cruel. They terror- 
 ize their own people by demanding contributions of money under threats 
 of assassination — a threat which has often been put into execution. 
 
 "I have made the mildest possible disclosure of only a few of the 
 abominations of this Huntchaguist revolutionary party. It is of Russian 
 origin ; Russian gold and craft govern it. Let all missionaries, home 
 and foreign, denounce it. Let all Protestant Armenians everywhere 
 boldly denounce it. It is trying to enter every Sunday-school and de- 
 ceive and pervert the innocent and ignorant into supporters of this craft. 
 We must, therefore, be careful that in befriending Armenians we do 
 nothing that can be construed into an approval of this movement, which 
 all should abhor. While yet we recognize the probability that some Ar- 
 menians in this country, ignorant of the real object and cruel designs of 
 the Huntchaguists, are led by their patriotism to join with them, and 
 while we sympathize with the sufferings of the Armenians at home, we 
 must stand aloof from any such desperate attempts, which contemplate 
 the destruction of Protestant missions, churches, schools, and Bible work, 
 involving all in a common ruin that is diligently and craftily sought. 
 
8 
 
 ARMENIAN TROUBLES 
 
 Let all home and foreign missionaries beware of any alliance with, or 
 countenance of, the Huntchaguists." 
 
 No one really knows whether the Eev. Cyrus Hamlin is 
 considered to he a prophet in his own country, but his 
 prophetic faculties as far as the last Armenian revolt is 
 concerned are not denied in Turkey. They are simply marvel- 
 lous ; for, months before the occurrence of the Sassoun troubles, 
 the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin had exactly and minutely shown what 
 they would be. And yet, after the fulfilment of his own 
 prophecy, the Eev. Cyrus Hamlin was bold enough to say 
 that the above statement was written by him only " to show 
 the absurdity of the revolutionary plotters." The reverend 
 gentleman must have a candid and innocent soul. Other- 
 wise he would not have attempted to prove to fair-minded 
 Americans that the " bloodthirstiness " of the Armenian 
 revolutionary plotters is synonymous with their "absurdity/' 
 We suppose that the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin will also attribute to 
 the " absurdity of revolutionary plotters " the following 
 statement, showing his past guilty interference in Turkish 
 affairs. One of these Armenian " plotters" made some time 
 ago to the Boston Herald this extraordinary admission, which, 
 for the honor of Robert College, if not for his own, the Rev. 
 Cyrus Hamlin ought, if he can, to contradict : 
 
 " Several years ago," writes the Armenian, "I heard him lecture at 
 Amherst, Mass. How proud he was to tell his audience the important 
 part taken by the Bulgarian graduates of Robert College in securing the 
 freedom and independence of their country ! I ask the Rev. Gyrus Ham- 
 lin if he was not aware of the existence of patriotic societies among his 
 Bulgarian students," etc. 
 
 But in order to show that the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin's prophecy 
 holds good, let American readers reflect on the following 
 passage of a letter written by the special correspondent of the 
 Associated Press, who visited Turkey after the Sassoun revolt, 
 and who, although bitterly opposed to the Turkish Govern- 
 ment, wrote as follows : 
 
 " It is a fact that certain of the Armenian conspirators arranged to 
 murder the Rev. Edward Riggs and two other American missionaries at 
 Marsovan and fasten the blame upon the Turks, in order that the United 
 States might inflict summary punishment upon the Turkish Govern- 
 ment, thereby making possible Armenian independence. One will search 
 
AND WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES. 9 
 
 a long time in the pages of history for a more diabolical plot than that. 
 Moreover the missionaries would have been murdered had not an 
 Armenian friend warned them. Dr. Riggs has unselfishly given his life to 
 the education of Armenian youth in the missionary schools, and done more 
 than any Armenian has ever tried to do toward making Armenians worthy 
 of autonomous government. Yet the revolutionary conspirators apparently 
 gave that fact little thought. ... It is, of course, impossible to say 
 to what extent radical ideas prevail among the revolutionary propagan- 
 dists, but the plans of some of the leaders are shocking in the extreme. 
 
 "In brief, their plans are to commit atrocities upon Turks, in order 
 that the infuriated Turks shall shock the Christian world by the fiendish 
 outrages of their retaliation. When remonstrated with in regard to these 
 un-Christian plans, the men who are responsible for them merely say : 
 ' It may seem to you cruel and barbarous, but we know what we are 
 doing, and why we are doing it.' 
 
 " The financial methods of these men are almost as ingenious as their 
 plans of political agitation. Certain Armenians of a lower grade of 
 mental ability are required to furnish so many thousand piastres to the 
 committee, and the means of obtaining the money are plainly mapped 
 out. Here is a case in point. 
 
 " A wealthy Turk in the service of the Government in Constantinople 
 received a letter one morning, saying that unless he deposited 12,000 
 piastres in a certain place within twenty-four hours he would be killed. 
 An investigation led to the discovery of the fact that the letter was writ- 
 ten by an Armenian who had been in his employ as a trusted servant for 
 several years. The servant confessed his guilt, but he asserted in self- 
 defence that revolutionary agitators had compelled him to write the letter 
 under penalty of death. It was a case of choice of wills, and the poor 
 wretch saved his life at the expense of a long term of imprisonment. It 
 is believed that a great deal of money is raised in this way, but whether 
 or not this money gets beyond the pockets of the revolutionary agitators, 
 no man pretends to know. There is a theory that this money is used in 
 the purchase of rifles and ammunition, but that is a matter known only 
 to the agitators themselves." 
 
 The reason why English public opinion is generally in favor 
 of the Armenians is both political and religious. No real es- 
 teem for the Armenians themselves exists in England. Be- 
 sides, everybody admits in Europe that Armenians are, as a 
 race, much inferior to the Turks. Armenians, even in olden 
 times, showed no greatness. Their influence in the world has 
 been absolutely nil. In science, in art, in literature, in war- 
 like achievements, they have left no trace. But they are 
 Christians ; and this is one reason why English public opinion 
 is in their favor. The political reason lies in the fact that 
 England wishes to harass Turkey for the just opposition of 
 the latter to English scandalous encroachments on Egyptian 
 territory, which, after all, belongs legitimately to the Sultan. 
 It is just as if England had taken possession of one of the 
 American States, and at the same time were fomenting dis- 
 
10 
 
 ARMENIAN TROUBLES 
 
 content for, and disapprobation of, the treatment of the Indian 
 race which Columbus found supreme on this continent. 
 
 Such being the real state of things, we consider that it is 
 quite time for public opinion in the United States to see how- 
 erroneous and even anti-American is the policy which consists 
 in helping England in her political aspirations in the East. 
 American public opinion ought to remain aloof from Euro- 
 pean intrigues. It ought especially to learn to estimate cor- 
 rectly the value of Armenian assertions and of the Armenian 
 moral standard. 
 
 "If," writes the Associated Press correspondent above quoted, "the 
 detailed facts of the Sassoun massacre are ever established, it must be in- 
 dependently of Armenian testimony, or their value may be seriously 
 questioned. In the first place, every Armenian with whom it has been 
 my lot to come in contact seems to have a very vague idea of the value 
 of truth. In the second place, in his anxiety to make out a case against 
 the Turk, he is willing to publish as fact any grotesque rumor that he may 
 chance to fall over in the street. In the third place, he does not really 
 know what actually took place in the Sassoun mountains, but his vanity 
 will not permit him to acknowledge it, and so, to be up with the times 
 and to help along the cause of his people, he embellishes the rumor that 
 he hears, and frequently says that he is in secret communication with 
 friends in Moosh and Bitlis, who are harboring Sassoun refugees. The 
 average Armenian cannot be believed on oath." 
 
 In this deplorable condition of Armenian honesty, we find 
 a true explanation of the following remarkable incident, an 
 account of which was given at the time, as follows, by all the 
 newspapers : 
 
 " The story which has been thrilling the world for some time past, of 
 the wife of the Armenian leader Grego, who, rather than suffer dishonor 
 at the hands of her Turkish persecutors, threw herself, with her child in 
 her arms, into an abyss, and was followed by other women until the 
 ravine was filled with corpses, has been exploded, as many persons pre- 
 dicted it would be, at the time it was sprung upon the public. It has 
 been discovered that the horrible narrative is a reproduction, with addi- 
 tions and embellishments to suit the occasion, of an old tale told in poetry 
 by Mrs. Hemans years ago, under the title of ' The Suliote Mother.'" 
 
 In the face of all the innumerable Armenian falsehoods of 
 this kind, word has just reached us that Mr. Gladstone, in his 
 Chester speech, asserted that the world is in possession of in- 
 dependent American testimony favorable to the Armenians. 
 No greater error has ever been made. Mr. Gladstone ought 
 to have known better. There is absolutely no American tes- 
 
AND WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES. 11 
 
 timony regarding the Sassoun troubles. And the reason is 
 very simple. No American was at the Sassoun district at the 
 time of the revolt. The Rev. F. D. Greene, it is true, pub- 
 lished a slanderous pamphlet on the " Armenian Crisis in 
 Turkey/' in which he printed a few documents supposed to 
 be well authenticated. But as no American-born citizen saw 
 anything of the Sassoun disturbances, it follows necessarily 
 that said documents were written either by Armenians or by 
 American missionaries, under the inspiration of Armenians. 
 Therefore the Rev. F. D. Greene's pamphlet is based upon 
 Armenian falsehoods. This makes it utterly and completely 
 valueless. Mr. Gladstone owes to us to show where and how 
 he was able to find a single genuine American document fa- 
 voring the Armenian allegations ; that is to say, the allega- 
 tions of a people who "cannot be believed on oath." Facts, 
 however, have very seldom disturbed Mr. Gladstone's fanati- 
 cism. We trust that Americans, having no political views on 
 Turkey, will see how dangerous it is to encourage, either by 
 word or by moral help, Armenian revolutionists for the sim- 
 ple reason that they are Christians. " Armenia," wrote some 
 time ago the correspondent mentioned above, " is preparing 
 for war. The revolutionary party has now both money and 
 guns. During the past eight weeks money has poured into 
 the revolutionary treasury in a steady stream from the Arme- 
 nian colonies in Batoum, Tiflis, Baku, Erivan, Etchmiadzin, 
 and other places in Russia, and from Rescht, Kazvin, Tehe- 
 ran, Tebriz, Khoi, and other cities in Persia. I have not 
 visited the Armenian colonies on the north coast of the Black 
 Sea, nor the large colony at Ispahan in Southern Persia, but 
 I am reliably informed that revolutionary agents have been as 
 busy there as elsewhere. I have myself seen a considerable 
 sum of this money raised publicly, and I am told that the 
 wealthy Armenian merchants in the cities I have named have 
 made large private contributions, with promises of more for 
 future use if needed. 
 
 "The money raised publicly has been obtained by means 
 of balls, social entertainments, theatrical performances, and 
 lotteries. These functions were ostensibly for the ' benefit of 
 the Sassoun refugees.' But it was a very thin disguise. It 
 
12 ARMENIAN TROUBLES 
 
 was thoroughly understood what the money was wanted for, 
 and that the Sassoun refugees would not see a penny of it ex- 
 cept in the shape of rifles and ammunition." 
 
 The cries, therefore, in favor of the Sassoun refugees and 
 the famished are either based on Armenian falsehoods or 
 uttered by those who have political aims to further and attain. 
 Could Americans be deceived by such a very " thin disguise " ? 
 We doubt it. 
 
 III. 
 
 Lord Salisbury's assertion in his speech on the address — 
 namely, that Turkey's independence " exists by reason of the 
 agreement of other powers that they will not interfere with 
 it, and that they will maintain it" — may sound well to the 
 ears of Turkey's detractors, but, if true, the same assertion 
 may also be considered as applying with equal force to every 
 power on earth. And the reason is simple enough. Suppose, 
 for argument's sake, that the European powers, one and all, 
 were to combine their forces, by land as well as by sea, and, 
 with a unity that necessarily would become overwhelming, 
 were to fall upon all British possessions : where would the 
 "independence" of the British Empire be? No doubt it 
 would speedily vanish. 
 
 An "agreement," therefore, tacit or not tacit, always ex- 
 ists between civilized nations, an agreement the purport of 
 which is that they will not "interfere" with each other's 
 "independence," and that they will "maintain" it. Other- 
 wise there would be no stability in human affairs, no politi- 
 cal life among nations, no progress. Now, Lord Salisbury 
 may think, if he chooses, that England is an unassailable 
 power, whose first serious defeat from a coming foe would 
 not be the certain signal of her collapse and dismemberment. 
 He may assert that Turkey is, on the contrary, a vulnerable 
 power. But let him ask the Eussians what they think of 
 the Turkish soldiers. Let the whole world answer to this. 
 Turkey's "independence" is as certain as England's. To 
 
AND WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES. 
 
 13 
 
 break down her "independence" Turkey's enemies must 
 fight first. Words are misleading when they do not corre- 
 spond to facts. 
 
 It seems, however, as if Lord Salisbury had lost the 
 memory of some facts especially concerning English cruelty. 
 His non-reference to the Indian mutiny of 1857, and his ab- 
 staining to compare it with the Sassoun revolt were most 
 characteristic. Anybody who knows anything about English 
 history and English tenderness of heart remembers with what 
 savage cruelty, with what streams of blood, the English sol- 
 diery put down the rebellion of that year. Even Armenian 
 falsehoods as applied to Sassoun were below the truth in 
 comparison with the English application in India of an im- 
 perial policy of extermination and death. Such words as 
 "butchery," "hellish deeds," " piteous moans," " piercing 
 cries," "shrieks," "screams," "vain voices of blood and 
 agony/' and the like, that fill Mr. Dillon's article on Turkey 
 which has just appeared in an English magazine, apply a 
 thousand times more to the British repression of the Indian 
 mutiny of 1857 than to the Turkish repression of the Arme- 
 nian revolt of Sassoun of 1894. 
 
 Even to-day, if there were to manifest itself in India an 
 agitation equal to the one described by the Eev. Cyrus Ham- 
 lin himself as having existed eighteen months ago in Asiatic 
 Turkey among Armenians, the same English soldiery would 
 use absolutely the same cruel means for preserving the " in- 
 tegrity " of the British Empire. And yet no Christian power 
 would think of raising its voice against such a policy. No 
 public meetings would take place in America to condemn a 
 Protestant country. The past has shown us that such would . 
 be the case. And even in the present time, who in Europe 
 or in the United States sends a word of sympathy to those 
 Mussulmans, to those Mussulman women and children, to 
 those Mussulman villages that are being plundered and out- 
 raged by savage Bulgarians ? 
 
 Whatever the cause of this conduct may be, nothing, we 
 consider, will be found more instructing and more edifying 
 than the perusal of a remarkable letter published by Mrs. S. 
 L. Baldwin, in the New York Tribune. Every impartial 
 
ARMENIAN' TROUBLES 
 
 American will surely judge Turkey with more charity after 
 reading the following passages of said letter : 
 
 "Let us be correct and fair in our records. There is cause for us 
 Americans not to be too free with our exhortations, epithets, and threats. 
 The Chinese are not sinners above all others. If you will grant me space 
 in your paper, I will give you reliable details of such outrages against 
 the Chinese in the United States — not in interior cities, but that have 
 taken place in Boston, New York, and Brooklyn, as well as in San Fran- 
 cisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Tacoma, Denver, Seattle, and other places 
 — that at least ought to make us silent as well as sad in our present grief 
 over the Ku-Cheng cablegram. I know of no terrible massacre in China 
 in 1885 ; but I can give the most horrible details of one that occurred 
 right here in our honorable (?) country. 1 had the painful duty of 
 writing the only detailed account of it published in the East, and had to 
 lay down my pen and leave my desk three times before I could go through 
 with it. I had the triple official documents — Chinese, United States, and 
 Union Pacific Railroad — from which to make my painful, reliable record. 
 
 " In that massacre, which does distinguish 1885 in our history, more 
 Chinese were killed, shot down, burned alive, in one awful hour, that 
 day in September at Rock Spring, Wyoming, than were English and 
 Americans killed in China in twenty-five years. For the Ku-Cheng 
 outrage men will be arrested and executed, officers will be removed and 
 degraded, and all destroyed property will be made good. For the Rock 
 Springs massacre of fifty perfectly innocent people — so all authorities, 
 our own Messrs. Cleveland and Bayard among them, declared — up to 
 this date of August 6, 1895, no human being has been arrested, much 
 less punished. All the hard-earned gains of these fifty people were 
 stolen or destroyed, for which our highest authorities declared that 'in 
 justice' there was no claim for indemnity, but 'ex-gratia' it might be 
 given ; but even ' ex-gratia ' it was not granted until, a few years later, 
 our own West China Mission was raided — no one hurt — and we wanted 
 $25,000 for our destroyed property, and our Government had enough 
 shame left to hurry up and pay the ' ex-gratia' sum before it shook the 
 American flag before the Chinese Government and threatened a gunboat 
 if the said Chinese Government — so infamous — did not right our fearful 
 wrongs, and ' in justice,' not ' ex-gratia,' pay up quickly ! Again I say, 
 let us be fair ! 
 
 "I conclude with a question : Is it a greater offence to 'Our Father' 
 for His American, English, and French children to be killed in China 
 than His Chinese children to come to a like tragic end in the United 
 States ? If an offender's sin is to be judged by the light he has, what 
 * must the answer be ? I am in deep grief for the beloved friends thrust 
 out of life in Ku-Cheng, and I am and have been these many years in as 
 great sorrow for my Chinese friends so brutally robbed and killed in this 
 land filled with gospel light." 
 
 IV. 
 
 Word has just reached here from Kara-Hissari-Charki that 
 a band of Armenians attacked Nedjib Effendi, substitute to 
 the Attorney-General, when on his way to Sivas, accompanied 
 
AND WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES. 15 
 
 by gendarmes and by Rami Effendi, chief of the correspond- 
 ence at Tchoroun. Rami Effendi, as well as the gendarmes, 
 were dangerously wounded, while Nedjib Effendi was carried 
 to the woods and murdered. 
 
 It is by deeds similar to the above that Armenian revolu- 
 tionists, according to their own admission, expect again to 
 bring about very serious troubles in Asiatic Turkey. In ad- 
 dition to the above, it may, perhaps, be of interest to give also 
 the following facts, taken out of many, and showing the crimi- 
 nal work of the Armenian revolutionary committees : 
 
 1. An Armenian priest, suspected of spying, was quite re- 
 cently murdered at Scutari, just opposite Constantinople, by 
 Armenian agents of the revolutionary party. 
 
 2. Thirteen pupils of the American College at Marsovan, 
 having been expelled last year because their fathers were sus- 
 pected of being mixed up in the Armenian movement, suspi- 
 cion has fallen on the college, and among the list of persons 
 condemned by the Armenian committee are five professors of 
 the college, two being Americans. 
 
 3. An Armenian named Garabed Agha was assassinated at 
 Marsovan, close to the church door, as he was going to attend 
 early service. He was the chief man of the Protestant com- 
 munity, and Chairman of the Council of Thirty, which is re- 
 sponsible for the peace of the city. It was alleged that he had 
 given the Government information in regard to the revolu- 
 tionists. 
 
 Commenting on the murder of Garabed Agha, the Rev. 
 George E. White, an American missionary at the Congrega- 
 tional School at Marsovan, wrote as follows : 
 
 " There are two parties of Armenians. Some say : ' We must be loyal 
 to the Turkish Government. We cannot effect a revolution. We are too 
 few.' Others say : ' We will assassinate and stir up until we overturn 
 this Turkish Government.' And these revolutionists are ready to kill 
 any of their brother Armenians or missionaries who do not help on the 
 rebellion. They killed Garabed Agha because he would not help the 
 rebellion." 
 
 4. The Rev. Dr. Dwight, a leading American missionary, 
 made recently the following statement, which shows not only 
 what Armenian agitation means, but also the praiseworthy 
 
16 
 
 ARMENIAN TROUBLES 
 
 efforts of some Turkish Governors tending to prevent the out- 
 break of a fresh Armenian revolt : 
 
 " More than a year ago," said the Rev. Dr. Dwight, "sixteen persons 
 at Marsovan received written notice that they would be killed unless they 
 would cooperate with the Armenian revolutionists. President Tracey 
 and Professor Riggs, of Marsovan College, were two of these. They had 
 incurred the ill-will of the revolutionists by refusing to receive in the 
 college the sons of certain men suspected of being revolutionists. Gara- 
 bed Agha and another man were two of the sixteen who received notice, 
 and both were assassinated. A Turkish guard was furnished, at the re- 
 quest of Mr. Terrell, to protect the American families from the assassins. 
 The local governor informed the Armenians, after the killing, that he 
 intended to arrest all suspected persons ; that their object was to provoke 
 Turkish vengeance in order to secure the sympathy and intervention of 
 Christian Europe, but that they would not succeed, as he had caused to be 
 preached in the mosques for months that such was their object, and that 
 any Turk who killed a Christian would be the worst enemy of Islam. " 
 
 5. The Eev. James T. Barton, one of the Secretaries of the 
 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, re- 
 ported the following incident : 
 
 " At the graduation exercises at the American College at Karpoot, 
 after the distribution of diplomas, it was intended by the Faculty to have 
 an address read thanking the Sultan, in the name of the people of Kar- 
 poot The address was to have been read by an Armenian graduate. 
 When the Armenians heard that the address was in their name, they pro- 
 tested, and warned the student who was to read it that if he did so he 
 would lose his life. This made him afraid, and he refused to deliver the 
 address. At last the American missionaries prevailed upon an Armenian 
 teacher, Nigoghoss Tenekejian, to read it. When the day selected 
 arrived, and as the teacher arose to speak, the populace began to sing the 
 most radical of all Armenian revolutionary songs. The uproar was so 
 great that the missionaries could not get the address read. The day 
 following the incident, ten shots were fired into the house of the Armenian 
 member of the college, and a placard placed on his door which read : 
 ' If you continue your present course, be sure your life will be taken 
 away.'" 
 
 Facts like the above have opened the eyes and aroused the 
 indignation of unprejudiced men of all countries. But no 
 more able description of that feeling of indignation can be 
 found than in the following passage of a fearless American 
 newspaper, the perusal of which will surely give satisfaction 
 to the sense of justice of many impartial readers : 
 
 "It appears that the Armenian conspirators arc ready to threaten, or, if 
 need be, to assassinate, all who refuse to join in their conspiracy, and 
 that from this scheme of violence they exclude neither their own people 
 nor the American missionaries who have gone to Asia Minor to labor 
 for their advancement. They have already murdered a number of 
 Armenians, many of them priests, and it is no longer a secret that they 
 
AND WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES. 17 
 
 have threatened the lives of American missionaries whom they suspect 
 of alack of sympathy with their plans of bloodshed and disorder. The 
 truth appears to be, as The Post has insisted all along, that the whole 
 trouble is due to the Armenian incendiaries and to their programme of 
 organized agitation. Thousands of intelligent and law-abiding Armen- 
 ians dwell peacefully in Turkey, receiving the impartial protection of the 
 law. They practically control the commerce of the country ; they are 
 bankers, merchants, professional men ; they hold office under the govern- 
 ment, and are esteemed and respected accordingly. But these pestiferous 
 firebrands — meaning the desperate criminals who make the trouble at 
 home, and their accomplices in England and America who distort and 
 misrepresent the facts to prejudice the outside world against Turkey — 
 these indefatigable criminals whom we are now beginning to see in their 
 true colors, deserve no sympathy from civilized people anywhere, and 
 should not longer be permitted to mislead honest men with their false- 
 hoods and their impudent pretensions." 
 
 But Turkey's detractors insist that there was a premeditated 
 massacre at Sassoun. They willingly and intentionally leave 
 aside the fact that the Armenian committees were the real 
 instigators of a serious revolt there, which had to be put down 
 by the Turkish Government. All Christian governments, 
 like Russia, England, and even the United States, surely had 
 at times to employ brutal force in order to suppress disturb- 
 ances and rebellion. 
 
 When the great " de Maistre " was asked why he showed 
 such an earnest opposition to the abolition of capital punish- 
 ment, he answered by these words : " Que Messieurs les 
 assassins commencent ! " In the same way, let Armenian 
 committees cease their criminal intrigues and assassinations ; 
 let them abandon revolt, and, soon enough, repression on the 
 part of the Turkish Government will stop. What Armenians 
 need most at the present moment is, we think, good advice. 
 What they get is, unfortunately, bad advice. We consider, 
 for instance, as constituting very bad advice, all the hatred, 
 all the exaggerations, all the slanders that abound in the Rev. 
 Frederick Davis Greene's pamphlet on Turkey. This agita- 
 tor — for he is one— undertook the task of proving his story 
 by so-called " genuine " testimony. With that aim in view, 
 he published in his pamphlet some anonymous letters, about 
 which, however, he wrote in an "explanatory note" the fol- 
 lowing : " It must be borne in mind that no writer was an 
 eve-witness of the actual massacre. . . . The letters are 
 largely based on the testimony of refugees from that region, 
 or of Kurds and soldiers who participated in the butchery, 
 2 
 
18 ARMENIAN TROUBLES 
 
 and who had no hesitation in speaking about the affair in 
 public or private/' 
 
 It follows, therefore, that the testimony given us by Mr. 
 Greene is a second-hand testimony, or, rather, solely an Arme- 
 nian testimony, for only children could believe Mr. Greene's 
 assertion that genuine Kurds and genuine Turkish soldiers 
 gave to American missionaries the details that Armenian agi- 
 tators and their friends were striving to obtain. As for 
 Armenian testimony, in one of our previous letters we have 
 already shown that, according to the opinion of the best friends 
 of the Armenians, the latter cannot be believed "even on 
 oath." 
 
 V. 
 
 A convincing proof that the Constantinople riots were pre- 
 meditated and organized by the Armenian revolutionary com- 
 mittees is to be found in the fact that Armenian newspapers^ 
 published out of Turkey, announced a few weeks before the 
 occurrence of said riots that they would take place at Con- 
 stantinople. The Turkish authorities knew besides from 
 other sources that such would be the case, and they were 
 fully prepared to meet any emergency. Provocation and 
 intimidation seem to be the plan of the Armenian revolu- 
 tionists — provocation to the authorities and intimidation to 
 their co-religionists. Bloodshed is the crowning result of 
 their criminal efforts, supported, we are sorry to state, by 
 English and American public opinion. 
 
 Admitting that Americans have no direct interest in Euro- 
 pean politics, the partiality shown by them toward the Ar- 
 menian instigators of disorder has no excuse. The reason of 
 such partiality must be because the Armenians are Christians. 
 Still, this is certainly a bad reason ; for, in spite of their 
 Christianity, the Armenians are certainly an inferior and 
 unreliable race, which was just as inferior and just as desti- 
 tute of any sterling qualities or fame at an epoch when it had 
 its own government in Asia. In the present day, Armenians 
 are scattered about all over Asiatic Turkey, and they consti- 
 tute in any Turkish province the minority of the population, 
 which fact alone makes the use of the word " Armenia " 
 
AND WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES. 19 
 
 simply preposterous. There may be an Armenia out of 
 Turkey, but surely there is no Armenia in Turkey. There 
 are Armenians there, and that is enough. A New York 
 newspaper, the enmity of which to the Turkish Government 
 is not denied, wrote lately the following : 
 
 " The statement has been made and repeated until it has become trite, 
 without, however, having any apparent effect upon some people, that 
 there is no country now existent which can fairly be termed Armenia. 
 Historical Armenia included the southwestern Caucasus, a section of 
 northwestern Persia, and that portion of eastern Turkey now included 
 in the provinces of Erzeroum, Van, and Bitlis, with part of those of 
 Diarbekir and Harpoot. The Caucasus section is still predominantly 
 Armenian in population, but under rigid Russian rule. The Persian 
 Armenians are comparatively few in number, and are found chiefly in 
 the plain of Salinas and in the city of Khoi. In the Turkish provinces 
 there are but four sections, of limited area, that would even ten years 
 ago be fairly called Armenian — the plain of Moosh and Harpoot, the 
 City of Van, and the Passen and Knus region, near Erzeroum. Already 
 the" Kurds, Circassians, and other Moslem tribes were driving them out, 
 and within the last five years they have so nearly accomplished their 
 purpose that to-day they probably far outnumber the Christians in those 
 very sections. Where, then, are the Armenians ? All over the empire." 
 
 To state, therefore, that there is an Armenia in Turkey is 
 to make an erroneous statement. But erroneous statements 
 on this Armenian question are so many that to contradict 
 them all would be almost an impossibility. All these false 
 statements originate from the Armenians themselves, whose 
 veracity is an unknown quantity. If Constantinople had 
 been a small town in Asiatic Turkey, the Armenians would 
 unmistakably have asserted, and such men as W. W. Howard, 
 Dillon, and the Rev. F. D. Greene, basing their assertions 
 solely on Armenian testimony, would have promptly affirmed, 
 that the Constantinople riots had as instigators not the Ar- 
 menians, but the Turks, and that during those riots thou- 
 sands upon thousands of Armenians, women and children 
 included, were tortured and killed by Turkish soldiers. Con- 
 stantinople being where it is, even the Daily News, of London 
 — that is to say, a newspaper whose policy is to try to ruin, if 
 possible, and to destroy Turkey — was obliged to remark : 
 
 " Two points ought, in justice to the Turks, to be noted. First, that 
 it is beyond doubt that a large number of those Armenians who took 
 part in the demonstration on Monday were armed. Secondly, the Gov- 
 ernment has not employed troops, nor allowed rifles to be used. The 
 police were armed with revolvers, but the soldiers have only been em- 
 ployed as patrols, and I am not aware of any allegation of misconduct 
 against them." 
 
20 
 
 ARMENIAN TROUBLES 
 
 t 
 
 When, therefore, a European delegate, attached to the 
 Commission of Inquiry that has been conducting an examina- 
 tion at the district of Sassoun into the alleged atrocities com- 
 mitted in that part of Asiatic Turkey, says, as he does, that 
 the allegations of Mr. Dillon and his Armenian friends are 
 gross exaggerations, his statement must be true. Said dele- 
 gate asserts most positively that the stories of wholesale mas- 
 sacre and violations of women, those connected with the 
 number of killed — which number fluctuates, strange to say, 
 in one and the same pamphlet (we mean the slanderous 
 pamphlet of the Rev. F. D. Greene) between 3,000 and 
 25,000— and those in relation to the finding of forty bodies 
 buried in a pit at Gheliguzan, and to the throwing of Arme- 
 nian women over a cliff to escape dishonor : all those ridicu- 
 lous stories that made such a deep impression on credulous 
 people already prepared to hate the Turk are, one and all, ab- 
 solutely fictitious. The delegate, moreover, contends that the 
 Armenians, instead of being remorselessly butchered while in 
 a condition of helplessness, made a spirited stand against the 
 troops, and were, just as during the Constantinople riot, 
 armed. The European Commission of Inquiry has also proved 
 that, instead of 30,000 Christians having been driven into 
 exile, as alleged, the entire number of inhabitants of the dis- 
 turbed district, Moslem and Christian, did not exceed 4,000. 
 
 However the administration of distant Turkish provinces 
 may be, if even it were bad — and in that case it could be 
 reformed — the fact now remains that the so-called Sassoun 
 massacres have never existed. We do not say that no excesses 
 have taken place there. In time of revolt, especially at places 
 where the central government is powerless to exercise its 
 influence, excesses do always take place. But the responsi- 
 bility of those excesses lies with the criminal instigators of 
 disorder, and that is precisely what the European and Ameri- 
 can public opinion, influenced by a huge religious agitation, 
 refused to see and to admit. One of the most prominent 
 Armenians living at Constantinople, but who deprecates the 
 foolishness of this Armenian agitation, gave, according to the 
 New York Sun, the following true version of the Sassoun 
 revolt : 
 
AND WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES. 21 
 
 "It was a regular battle, begun by our people attacking the Ham- 
 idie Kurdish troops (that is, committing an act of high treason), and 
 perpetrating horrible cruelties on such Kurds as fell alive into their 
 hands. These barbarous acts were the work rather of Armenian brig- 
 ands, whom the revolutionists pressed into the ranks, than of the vil- 
 lagers themselves, who by no means are addicted to cruelty. Well, the 
 fortune of war was favorable to the Armenians, who, partly armed with 
 rifles, drove the Kurds before them like a flock of sheep. They resolved 
 to wipe out the Kurds once for all, and would have done so it they had 
 not been stopped in time ; indeed, God only knows what would have 
 happened. All Kurdistan would have been in revolt had it not been for 
 the foresight and energy of Zekki Pasha, who ordered troops to march to 
 the scene of the disturbance and soothe the ruffled spirits of the Moham- 
 medans and Christians. Then, to be sure, certain excesses were com- 
 mitted, mainly by Kurds, who were thirsting for revenge," 
 
 The increased agitation since Sassoun, on the part of the 
 Armenian revolutionists in the Turkish provinces, and in Con- 
 stantinople itself, proves in a forcible and clear manner that 
 the above assertions are true to the letter. But, unfortunately, 
 it is a very hard thing to convince people who are guided by 
 secular prejudices or by political motives. Even Americans 
 fail to perceive the political side of the Armenian intrigues in 
 England. The Armenian agitation in the United States is 
 not, it is true, political. It is merely religious, based not 
 upon the intrinsic merits of the Armenians, which are totally 
 lacking, but upon the fact that they are Christians. The 
 result is that Armenian intrigues are upheld, both by English 
 and American public opinion, although fatally tending to an 
 armed rebellion in Turkey. The Missionary Boards -are, we 
 believe, to a great extent to blame for this disturbance of the 
 sense of fairness on the part of Americans. The missionaries 
 evidently trust that, by helping the Armenians in this emer-* 
 gency by organizing relief funds, and by having the money 
 distributed to the Armenians alone, to the exclusion of any 
 other nationality— which latter fact is a very curious one, 
 supposing that there is a general famine out there— they 
 would increase later on the field of their operations and use- 
 fulness, which means that they would make more converts to 
 Protestantism, although the Armenians are already Christians. 
 What would Europe and America say if the Turks were to 
 exercise— which they do not— the doctrine of proselytism ? 
 Would they call it persecution ? 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The Boston Advertiser of May 21, 1895, published, about 
 Admiral Kirkland's special report on Armenian affairs, the 
 following telegram : 
 
 " Washington, May 20. — The Navy's investigation of the recent Arme- 
 nian troubles throws doubt on the reports that atrocities were committed. 
 
 "The report of this investigation, which has just been received at the 
 Navy Department, is made by Rear-Admiral Kirkland, Commander-in- 
 Chief of the European Squadron. The ships of this squadron are now on 
 their way to Gibraltar from the Mediterranean coast of Asia-Minor, where 
 they have been cruising, attempting to substantiate the reports that the 
 Sultan's soldiers outraged Armenians. 
 
 "The report is dated at Alexandriatta, the latter part of April, and 
 states that at all the ports the Marblehead and San Francisco, the vessels 
 comprising the squadron, called at, they found American citizens working 
 at their usual avocations, and apparently undisturbed by acts of molesta- 
 tion on the part of the Turkish Government. Their interrogation by the 
 officers of the ships developed the fact that nothing had occurred to dis- 
 turb them in their occupations, and that they had not been interfered with 
 in any way. 
 
 "Admiral Kirkland states that rumors of atrocities in the Armenian 
 country had reached the ports, but they lacked verification. Some of the 
 most improbable stories of cruelties were told, but when they were traced 
 to their origin it was found that there was nothing in them. He exam- 
 ined a number of people in the hope of obtaining some substantiation of 
 'cruelty' reports, but his examination invariably failed, and he gave it 
 as his opinion that the reports had been very much exaggerated. 
 
 " The Admiral exonerates the Sultan from all blame in connection with 
 the trouble between the Kurds and Armenians. ' The Sultan had as much 
 to do with this trouble,' he says, 'as had the Governor of Massachusetts.' 
 
 "His conclusion that there were no atrocities is concurred in by the 
 diplomatic representatives of the United States with whom he came in 
 contact during the cruise," 
 
 The New York Herald of August 18, 1895, published, 
 about Admiral Kirkland's opinion on American missionaries 
 in Turkey, the following telegram : 
 
 " London, August 17, 1895. — The United States cruiser San Francisco 
 will on Tuesday next proceed to Havre, where she will go into dock to be 
 cleaned and overhauled. The work will take at least a fortnight, and 
 much longer unless the vessel is ordered away by the United States Navy 
 Department. 
 
 "Rear- Admiral Kirkland, commanding the European station, whenever 
 
24 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 he speaks upon the subject, is emphatic in his condemnation of the mis- 
 sionaries in Turkey. He says that he has found that one of the most 
 prominent Sunday-school teachers in Syria spent three years in the Peni- 
 tentiary at Pittsburg, Pa. , and that, taken altogether, they are a bad lot. 
 The cause of all the trouble, Admiral Kirkland asserts, is that, relying 
 upon the protection of the American Government, the missionaries defy 
 the local laws, and do not merit the despatch of a war-ship at every appeal 
 made by the missionaries, most of which appeals are not true." 
 
 Extract from the Boston Globe of November 2, 1895 : 
 
 Eev. Judson Smith, Secretary of the A. B. C. F. M., talked 
 with a Globe reporter last evening, in regard to the reported 
 attempt to burn the American college at Marsovan, Asia 
 Minor. He said in substance : 
 
 " While I have no definite information in regard to the details of the 
 reported incendiary attempt, I doubt if the Turks themselves are respon- 
 sible. Strange as it may seem, we have more to fear continually from 
 Armenians than we have from the Mohammedans. 
 
 ' ' The reason for this fact is found in the- inimical feeling aroused 
 among members of the Armenian revolutionist society who have been 
 expelled from the college at various times during several years past, be- 
 cause we cannot approve of their political course, and are consequently 
 unwilling to be held in any way responsible for their unlawful measures 
 or actions. 
 
 "American missionaries have always been loyal to the Turkish gov- 
 ernment and laws, and have avoided everything in any way calculated to 
 indicate sympathy with Armenian revolutionary plots. Those revolu- 
 tionists are like the Russian nihilists, and cannot accomplish any good 
 purpose. The Armenians, as a people, lack the cohesiveness and single- 
 ness of purpose necessary for success ; they have not the political sense 
 that made it possible for Bulgarians to become a nation. 
 
 " The whole aim of the Armenian revolutionists seems to be to keep up 
 such a perpetual broil in the Turkish Empire that eventually Europe will 
 feel compelled to break up the power of the Turk. Whether Armenians 
 commit crimes, or are themselves the victims of Turkish outrages, is all 
 the same to the revolutionists ; whoever is the victim, their game is still 
 played. This sort of thing is abetted by Armenians in America and else- 
 where, and it is a great pity they could not all be kept in their native 
 land. Members of this society will get into our college sometimes, and 
 we feel obliged to expel them, hence incurring their enmity and threats. 
 
 " I am not surprised," continued Mr. Smith, "at the reported assassi- 
 nation of Mr. Grarabed, who was understood to be a marked man by the 
 revolutionists. He was a Protestant Armenian, and one of the most 
 prominent citizens in his community, as well as a good friend of the 
 missionaries. It is quite likely he was murdered by Armenians ; but I 
 am sure it must be a mistake when it is reported that he was or had been 
 one of the revolutionists and had been expelled from the college on that 
 account. I am very sure that he was too old a man to have been a stu- 
 dent there at any time since the college was started, in 1886. 
 
 "This is not the first attempt to burn the institution. Threats have 
 been made against the principal officials of the college for years, and 
 about five years ago a new building connected with it was burned. It 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 25 
 
 was the girls' building, although I don't think that fact had anything to 
 do with its selection for destruction, but rather its situation, which gave 
 better opportunity for the incendiary to escape without detection. 
 
 ''We have already suspected the Armenian revolutionists of being 
 guilty of that offence, but we never absolutely fixed it upon any individ- 
 ual. There was evidence, however, of the presence of Turkish police 
 officials, under such circumstances as to render it almost certain that 
 they were at least indifferent spectators of the affair, and, although very 
 unwillingly, the Turkish Government was brought by the United States 
 to so regard the matter that they ultimately gave us over $2,000 to- 
 ward a new building." 
 
 Mr. Smith says the college has now about 180 young men 
 students and 100 girls. Dr. C. C. Tracy, who has been in 
 charge since its foundation, and Prof. Edward Riggs have 
 been especially marked by members of the revolutionary party, 
 and the Turkish Government some years ago granted them a 
 guard for their better protection. 
 
 Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, the artist and writer, told to a 
 New York Tribune reporter the following about Armenians 
 in Turkey : 
 
 " The turning point of the entire difficulty in this Armenian matter is 
 this: No subject of Turkey can leave his country without first obtaining 
 a government permit so to do. This is easy enough to secure if he can 
 show that he has business interests calling him away, and armed with it 
 he can go away and remain as long as he desires and ultimately return to 
 his home. But those Armenians are not doing this. In one way or 
 another, they make their way out of Turkey clandestinely, and at once 
 come to the United States. Here they remain long enough to secure 
 their declaration of citizenship. Then they secure passports as American 
 citizens and at once return to their homes, with the sole purpose of acting 
 as agents for one of the many revolutionary societies. If caught, which 
 they are sure to be, they claim the protection of the American Minister, 
 hoping thus to save their heads. It is in this that the United States are 
 at fault. Under no other government can they carry out such a design. 
 They cannot do it in England, or France, or Germany, or Russia — only 
 in America. 
 
 " How they get out of Turkey I am not prepared to say, although there 
 are numberless methods to be adopted. They can get down to Athens, 
 or go by way of Sofia, or possibly they might be able to work their way 
 up through Bulgaria. Anyway, the fact remains that they do elude the 
 vigilance of the Government, and with only one object in view. Why, 
 just before I left Constantinople an Armenian was arrested, having 
 a passport. He had in his possession forty-one revolutionary docu- 
 ments when arrested, and was armed besides. Yet Minister Terrell 
 secured his release. This man in his trial before the Minister declared 
 that he had come to this country simply to secure immunity from pun- 
 ishment by appeal, in case of arrest, to the American Minister, and that 
 his purpose was to aid the revolutionists. I consider it a distinct outrage 
 that this should be permitted. 
 
 "Another thing. There is not the slightest hope for the Armenians in 
 
26 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 case of an uprising. The Turks outnumber them in any part of the 
 country three to one, and this reminds me of still another thing, which 
 should be forcibly brought to the attention of the various missionary socie- 
 ties. They should be warned in time of the danger of sending missiona- 
 ries over there, for in case of trouble they will assuredly be killed. Nothing 
 can save them. An illustration of the hopelessness of the Armenian 
 cause is to be found in the recent massacre at Stamboul. I was in Stam- 
 boul only two days before that massacre occurred. The Armenians had 
 gone up" ostensibly to present a peaceful petition to the Grand Vizier. 
 Yet nearly every one of them was later on found to be heavily armed, 
 and when the officers tried to disperse them, as being where they had no 
 right to assemble, under Turkish law, they resisted, and the rest is known. 
 The officials were clearly in the right. 
 
 "It is a saying in Constantinople that one Hebrew is good for two 
 Greeks, a Turk is good for two Hebrews, and an Armenian can dispose of 
 all of them. The Armenians are looked upon as the terrors of the com- 
 munity. They are the serving people of Turkey. The men act as porters, 
 and I have seen two of them place an upright piano on their backs and 
 walk straightaway up a hill with it. The thing seems hardly conceivable, 
 but I have seen them do this on the hill of Pera. They are canny boys, 
 I can tell you, and very muscular ; but they are in a hopeless minority, 
 and the Mahommedans hate them as they do the devil. I feel assured that 
 England will one day regret the attitude she has taken on this question, 
 but I am naturally more interested in the position of the United States. 
 Judge Terrell, our minister here, is working night and day. He is inde- 
 fatigable and upright and just. He has the respect of the Sultan, too, 
 to a remarkable degree ; but then America is held in high esteem by 
 the Sublime Porte. I was sufficiently long in Constantinople to study 
 these things with some degree of care. At first I did not pay much 
 attention to them, for my profession is far apart from the consideration 
 of such matters ; but insensibly I was drawn into it, and I can safely 
 assure the Tribune that I am telling only the bare facts as they exist." 
 
 The following contains Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith's opinion 
 on Turks and American missionaries : 
 
 "I've just returned from Constantinople," said Mr. F. Hopkinson 
 Smith, the author and artist, to a Boston Herald representative in New 
 York two or three days ago. " While there I had an opportunity, through 
 talks with Minister Terrell and two of the Sultan's aides, to learn all the 
 inside facts about the Armenian atrocities. The whole matter has been 
 grossly misunderstood, if not misrepresented, in this country. The root 
 of the trouble lies in the missionaries sent out to Armenia from England 
 and America. Instead of trying to help the people, they teach them that 
 they are ill-treated, and sow the seeds of discontent and rebellion. They 
 have started all the difficulty, and when the blame is properly placed it 
 will rest upon their heads. 
 
 "We hear a great deal in this country about 'the barbarous Turk.' 
 Now, I have travelled and painted all over the globe, and know pretty 
 well the inhabitants of all countries ; and let me tell you that I never met 
 a more civilized, humane, intelligent, cleanly, pious, and chaste man than 
 the typical Turk. He is quiet and respectable ; he is preeminently kind 
 and good to his family, and his religion enters into every part of his life. 
 On my former visit to Constantinople, four years ago, I met a good many 
 Moslems, and during my recent visit I came to know many more Turks 
 of the best classes ; and I make that statement without hesitation. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 27 
 
 " For instance, I spent several days painting in the streets of Constan- 
 tinople. The Sultan would not give a permit to do this, because he had 
 refused such a privilege to divers Englishmen, and he did not wish to 
 establish a dangerous precedent. He sent an official to accompany me on 
 my trips, and every day that man left me three times and went into the 
 mosque to say his prayers. Just think of the power of a religion which 
 makes every man of a whole nation lay aside his business three times 
 every day and prostrate himself toward Mecca in prayer ! 
 
 "Go out here in Wall Street and try to persuade the people to go to 
 church three times a day. You couldn't club them into it. The best of 
 them only attend service once or twice a week. What are we, as a reli- 
 gious nation, that we should attempt to force our religion upon everv other 
 nation on earth ? We might as well start out to make silk hats for the 
 world, and club eveiy head into the right shape to fit them. 
 
 "See how humane the Turks are to animals. I don't know how many 
 hundred thousand dogs there are in Constantinople, but probably there 
 are fifty to each block. Every few minutes, if you are watching what 
 goes on around you, you will see a Turk go over to a bake-shop, buy a bit 
 of bread, or something else that the dogs will eat, and feed them. No- 
 body owns these creatures. They have been common property for a thou- 
 sand years, I suppose ; yet, ugly and mangy as they are, they never go 
 hungry. Nor do they ever suffer violence. Striking a dog in the streets 
 of Constantinople means imprisonment for a year. Why, I've seen a team 
 come along one of those narrow streets when a dog was lying in the way, 
 and the driver would stop his donkeys and lift the dog out of the way, 
 rather than run the risk of hurting him. I never saw any one beat or kick 
 a donkey in Turkey. The people recognize that these creatures are their 
 faithful servants, and treat them kindly. The love existing between the 
 Turk or the Arabian and his horse is proverbial. 
 
 " What have we in the way of religion to teach these people ? Noth- 
 ing. It's pure bumptiousness for us to try to 'convert' them. They 
 neither want nor need our religion. They've got a better one of their 
 own. Better for them, I mean, not for us. They are already more reli- 
 gious, as a people, than we are. 
 
 " Another point. What order of men are they whom the English and 
 the American religious bodies send out as missionaries ? If you have 
 ever noted closely the students in our training-schools for the ministry 
 you must have discovered that as a class they are far from representing 
 the best, or even a very good, type of American manhood. Many of them 
 are young men from country towns and villages who could not make a 
 decent living in any other calling. They go to these schools, in many 
 instances, because they can get their education at half price, or free. 
 Of course their poverty is no disgrace ; but they are poor in every sense 
 of the word. They hear a sermon by some returned missionary, who 
 wishes to arouse interest in the country in which he has lived, and 
 straightway they are called to labor in the same field. Such sermons are 
 apt to take hold of the less intelligent and more impressionable men, and 
 it is often the men who are not fitted to take the high rank among 
 the ministry in their own country who feel themselves drawn to work in a 
 foreign land. The result is that we send out the most incapable specimens 
 of our rural population — men of uncouth manners, who have learned a 
 little Latin and Hebrew, the representatives of half a dozen religious sects, 
 which are at constant war with each other about their creeds — to convert 
 a cultured, courteous, pious, humane, temperate race, whose unified reli- 
 gion enters as much into the life of its members as does their business. 
 
 " Now and then we hear of some girl in a country town who thinks 
 she has a mission to do good to the heathen. She had far better go down 
 
28 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 to the factory in her own village and minister there ; but no, there is no 
 glamour about that. Imagining that she is a new Joan of Arc, our hys- 
 terical friend tells some missionary body all about it, and they send her 
 over to Turkey. You can picture to yourself the amazement and disgust 
 with which the Turks regard such missionaries. Superb specimens of 
 physique, they look upon these little, wizened, dried-up, spectacled women 
 with infinite contempt ; just as they scoff at the idea of adopting a reli- 
 gion of which the various schools cannot agree. 
 
 " Well, colonies of such boors and cranks go over to Armenia, or some- 
 where else, and found schools. The children come to be taught, and 
 eventually they join some one or another Christian church. They are pari- 
 ahs as long as they live — marked boys and girls, branded men and women, 
 who have lost caste among their fellows. What have they gained ? 
 ' Christianity,' you may say. Very true ; but if they would lead pure 
 and noble lives under the religion of Mohammed, how are they better off ? 
 We surely cannot believe that heathen who lead good lives according to 
 their lights do not go to heaven. 
 
 " Pretty soon some one comes along and hits an Armenian over the 
 head. The missionaries keep telling their converts and the poor people 
 that the Turk did it. They tell them that they are abused, and stir them 
 up to rebellion. The result is bloodshed, as you have seen. Here on my 
 desk is a letter just received from Mr. Terrell, with whom I had many 
 conversations when in Constantinople. He says : ' We have certain in- 
 formation that 10,000 have been killed within a month.' That official 
 statement, of course, includes those slain on both sides. 
 
 " He adds another statement, equally significant, to the effect that, so 
 far as can be learned, not one American missionary has been injured. 
 The Turks like the Americans who come to Constantinople far better 
 than the Englishmen, and they like America better than England, partly 
 because as a nation we do not meddle with their affairs. When I have 
 been painting in the streets I have never been subjected to discourtesies 
 from the crowd which always assembled to watch me, except two or three 
 times ; and on those occasions the reason was that they supposed that I was 
 an Englishman. When they learned that I was an American they ceased 
 to annoy me, and even apologized for their rudeness. And they carry 
 , this esteem for Americans to the point of sparing our missionaries, even 
 when the latter have sown the seeds of discontent in the hearts of their 
 subjects." 
 
 Taken from the pamphlet, " Kurds and Armenians," by S. 
 Ximenez : 
 
 "Without wishing to extol the Kurds, although it seems to be the 
 fashion now to charge them with all kinds of outrages, and to describe 
 them as most savage hordes, I may state that I know them thoroughly, as 
 I have seen them closely and lived with them for months. I met the first 
 Kurdish tents one day's distance from Angora, and since then I never lost 
 sight of them until I arrived in Lazistan. I saw, on my journey through 
 Galatia, Cappadocia, Mesopotamia, and the districts which are situated 
 in a northern direction towards the Black Sea, sometimes Turks, and at 
 other times Armenians, Arabs, Chaldeans, Greeks, and Kopts— but I 
 never was one day without seeing Kurds. I was thus enabled to observe 
 that the Kurds belonging to the great nomad tribes are harmless, whilst 
 the Kurds settled in villages are sometimes to be blamed, and often to be 
 pitied. In my opinion it is not absolutely necessary to look at humanity 
 from an exclusively religious point of view. The idea of impugning sys- 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 29 
 
 tematically the Mussulmans in the name of I do not know what principle, 
 and merely because they are Mussulmans, strikes me as being quite out 
 of place in this philosophical and tolerant century. In the present con- 
 dition of the Asiatic provinces of the Ottoman Empire, nothing is more 
 unfair and wicked than to try and create privileges for the sole benefit of 
 one special population. Such questions ought to be considered more lib- 
 erally and from a higher standard. When I knew Anatolia only by what 
 was published in European papers or said in the clubs at Pera, I must 
 own that I shared some of the widely spread opinions, which appeared 
 logical because brilliant and delusive. I had a somewhat vague notion of 
 an Asia which must have been laid waste and given up to rapacious ma- 
 rauders ; of periodically ransacked Christian villages, where any one who 
 was not a Mohammedan could not possibly live ; and I thought that I 
 understood then the great crusades undertaken on behalf of the oppressed, 
 the appalling stories circulated by itinerant preachers, and the emulation 
 of so many people who seem so anxious to play the part of victims whereby 
 they might secure a handsome income. Well, I do not pretend that on 
 the Anatolian tableland every one is happy ; it is about the same there 
 as it is even in the most civilized countries, where the government is pro- 
 ceeding smoothly, and where almost every day some new progress is re- 
 corded. Whatever the admirers of the Turkish Empire, who would let us 
 believe that everything is as well as it can be beyond the Bosphorus, may 
 say to the contrary, I am of opinion that there is a crisis in Asia Minor, 
 that some modifications are necessary, some of which are gradually car- 
 ried on, whilst some others are prospective. But a great fact, which ap- 
 pears in a vivid light to all who have travelled through Asia Minor, is 
 that happiness as well as sorrows are the common lot of every people, 
 whatever their race and creed may be. Any other estimate of the diffi- 
 culty merely displaces the question without settling it. Every one knows 
 that the Turks are not exterminators. All the different people under the 
 Ottoman rule have been able to preserve their own traditional way of liv- 
 ing, with their special features, manners, hopes, and creeds. After so 
 many centuries they are still integral — more integral, no doubt, than they 
 would be if they had been independent ; but also with intestine quarrels, 
 or with struggles against a foreign enemy belonging to the same religion. 
 I will not quote names, but it would not be difficult to mention a certain 
 people which, having been most corrupt and devoured by its own vice, 
 owes its salvation and the nattering advantage of being able now to con- 
 sider itself a nation, to the Ottoman conquest. And if the Turks did not 
 exterminate the conquered nations at a time when no one would have 
 asked them to account for massacres, what use is it now to ascribe 
 tendencies to them which are in opposition to their own interest and 
 character ? 
 
 "I have travelled much, and I do not know of any country where 
 greater toleration prevails than in Turkey. A collection of isolated fasts 
 which have happened at more or less long intervals of time, and in 
 regions more or less isolated from each other, may, when cleverly com- 
 piled under the form of a general report, help to the making up of a 
 crushing Blue Book. Until now it never occurred to any one in Europe 
 to select from any police record all the murders, rapes, and robberies 
 committed in one town during a defined period, and to draw the conclu- 
 sion therefrom that the said town is exclusively composed of brigands 
 and murderers. Yet these are the proceedings employed in regard to the 
 Turkish Empire when some busybodies want to interfere with Turkish 
 affairs. Instead of sifting the question thoroughly and taking into 
 account the social condition of the country, with a view of remedying by 
 logical means some unavoidable evils under particular circumstances, the 
 
30 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 critics are busying themselves with such compilations, to which they are 
 careful to add gross exaggerations, coarse language, and serious charges, 
 which, while redundant and fetching, fail however to bring about a solu- 
 tion, and are often the cause of conflicts. It has become an easy task, 
 one which is well received by the public, to shriek in the name of human- 
 ity; such shrieks are always resounding, and if hollow they are noisy. 
 They are more eagerly listened to by sympathetic crowds than logic and 
 reason and impartial statements, which require a full knowledge of facts 
 and a thorough mastery of the subject. It would be interesting to ascer- 
 tain how many really searching and substantial papers have been pub- 
 lished on the Armenian Question since it has been debated in the English 
 press. Amongst various travellers who have lately been ■ through Asia 
 Minor, one only, Mr. Lynch, has written on the matter, and it is to be 
 wished that any one approaching the subject should expatiate upon it 
 with the same passionless and unbiased judgment as this distinguished 
 writer, who contributed such remarkable articles to the Contemporary 
 Review a few months ago on that question. Although 1 do not agree 
 with all he says, I cannot help owning that Mr. Lynch did not waste his 
 time during his travels to Erzeroum, Van, Moosh, and Eitlis, and that 
 his conclusion is both instructive and commendable. Another writer, 
 Mr. Richard Davey, who recently sojourned in Constantinople, studying 
 all the texts in regard to the affairs in Asia Minor, has just written an 
 article in the Fortnightly Review which in my opinion is far-reaching, as 
 he boldly exposes the part played by the British element in the Turco- 
 Asiatic conflicts. The article in question is noteworthy for its fairness 
 and impartiality. Great and influential English Reviews, however, with 
 contributors boldly expounding their opinions, are less in touch with a 
 certain portion of the public than some small Boston papers, for instance, 
 which are replete with reports about the Turks cutting open the head of 
 an Armenian, wherein they introduce poisonous and maddening flies, a 
 kind of torture which causes the greatest indignation amongst those who 
 are simple enough to believe such wild stories. And the detractors of the 
 Porte are always sure to be successful slanderers when they vituperate the 
 Kurds, whose very name seems to have become synonymous with savage 
 cruelty." 
 
 Taken from the pamphlet, " A Few Facts about Turkey 
 Under the Sultan Abdul Hamid II. " : 
 
 " It is a fact that faithful and law-abiding Armenians are not only pro- 
 tected, but also employed in very high official positions, one of them 
 even being, at the present moment, a Minister of the Imperial Crown. 
 The fact is, also, that the Armenians in Turkey, numbering a little over 
 900,000 (for they are no more), have their own schools, that their language 
 and literature are preserved, that their nationality is respected, that their 
 leading men are promoted in the scale of high honors and positions, 
 while Christian Europe and America have no care for the Jews, and 
 while Catholic Spain has not allowed a single Mussulman family to re- 
 main on its European tsrritory, and has centuries ago expelled them "all. 
 The reason of this colossal difference lies in the fact that Islamism is in- 
 deed a religion essentially and radically tolerant. If it were not, Turkey 
 would not have had at the present moment a single Christian subject in 
 any part of her vast dominions, aud, for the benefit of the Turks, there 
 would not exist now what is called the Eastern question. Turks suffer 
 in our days from the tolerance that forms an intrinsic and essential part 
 of their religion. Europe and America ought to be thankful to them. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 31 
 
 Instead of that, we see not a few eloquent Christian fanatics who counte- 
 nance in Turkey what certainly they would not encourage in their own 
 countries, nameiy, insubordination and revolt. Is this justice ? 
 
 •' The same spirit of injustice to Turkey is shown in regard to the policy 
 of Turkey toward the Armenians naturalized in the United States on their 
 return to the country of their birth, and many unfair accusations are 
 made against the Sublime Porte for its insisting, in the absence of any 
 naturalization treaty between Turkey and America, upon applying a law 
 which is both wise and necessary, and which had been promulgated long 
 before these Armenian troubles had begun. A short statement of facts 
 as they really are, and not as disguised by Turkey's detractors, will, it is 
 trusted, be deemed useful for the understanding of the case. 
 
 " The law concerning Ottoman naturalization is dated January 19, 
 1809, and is as follows : 
 
 " ' Article 1. — Every person born of Ottoman father and mother, or 
 only of an Ottoman father, is an Ottoman subject. 
 
 "'Art. 2. — Every person born on Ottoman territory, of foreign 
 parents, may, within three years after attaining majority, claim as of 
 right the character of an Ottoman subject. 
 
 " 'Art. 3. — Every major foreigner who has resided during five con- 
 secutive years in the Ottoman Empire may obtain Ottoman nationality 
 by applying, directly or through an intermediary, to the Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs. 
 
 " ' Art. 4— The Imperial Government may, by extraordinary act, con- 
 fer Ottoman nationality on the foreigner who, without having fulfilled 
 the conditions of the preceding article, should be deemed worthy of this 
 exceptional favor. 
 
 " ' Art. 5. — The Ottoman subjectwho has acquired a foreign nationality 
 with the authorization of the Imperial Government, is considered and 
 treated as a foreign subject ; if, on the contrary, he is naturalized as a 
 foreigner, without the previous authorization of the Imperial Govern- 
 ment, his naturalization shall be considered as null and of no effect, and 
 he will continue to be considered and treated in all respects as an Otto- 
 man subject.' 
 
 No Ottoman subject can, in any case, naturalize himself as a foreigner, 
 except after having obtained a certificate of authorization issued in vir- 
 tue of an Imperial irade. 
 
 " ' Art. 6. — Nevertheless, the Imperial Government may declare loss of 
 the character of an Ottoman subject against any Ottoman subject who 
 shall have naturalized himself in a foreign country, or who shall have 
 accepted military functions under a foreign government, without the 
 authorization of his sovereign. 
 
 " ' In this case the loss of the character of an Ottoman subject shall 
 entail ipso facto the interdiction of the return to the Ottoman Empire 
 of the person who shall have incurred it. 
 
 " ' Art. 7. — The Ottoman woman who has married a foreigner may, if 
 she become a widow, recover her character of an Ottoman subject by 
 making declaration to that end within three years following the decease 
 of her husband. This provision is, however, only applicable to her per- 
 son. Her property shall be subject to the laws and general regulations 
 controlling the same. 
 
 " ' Art. 8. — The child, even when a minor, of an Ottoman subject who 
 has naturalized himself as a foreigner, who has lost his nationality, does 
 not follow the status of his father, and remains an Ottoman subject. The 
 child, even when a minor, of a foreigner who has naturalized himself 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 an Ottoman, does not follow the status of his father, and remains a 
 foreigner. 
 
 " " Art. 9. — Every person inhabiting the Ottoman territory is reputed 
 an Ottoman subject, and treated as such, until his character as a for- 
 eigner shall have been regularly proved. ' 
 
 " Armenians and their friends in America have witnessed publicly that 
 the law, a copy of which has just been given, is applicable solely to Ar- 
 menians, and to Armenians naturalized in no other country but in the 
 United States. The very perusal of the law shows these accusations to 
 be meant to misguide public opinion. The law is for all former Turkish 
 subjects, with no reference to their nationality and creed, who might have 
 been naturalized either in the United States or in any country in Europe. 
 Armenians, however, have no wish to seek for a European naturalization. 
 The reason is threefold : First, Europe knows well the Armenians, while 
 America does not. Second, The endeavors made by American mission- 
 aries to convert the Armenians, and to give them a certain education, 
 considered by Mr. Ximenez as inimical to the Turkish Government, 
 prompt the latter to give their preference to thp United States. Third, 
 Armenians consider the American law on naturalization more advanta- 
 geous to their secret plans and intentions, for American passports do not, 
 for instance, contain the following clause, that is always to be found on 
 English passports : 
 
 " 'This passport is granted with the qualification that the bearer shall 
 not, when within the limits of the foreign state of which he was a sub- 
 ject previously to obtaining his certificate of naturalization, be deemed 
 to be a British subject, unless he has ceased to be a subject of that 
 state, in pursuance of the laws thereof, or in pursuance of a treaty to 
 that effect.' 
 
 "If such a wise clause were put on all American passports, Armenians 
 who wish now to become American citizens, in order to hide themselves 
 behind the protection of the United States Government, would very 
 promptly abandon American citizenship altogether, to the great relief of 
 the State Department of Washington. The proof that Armenians almost 
 never get naturalized in good faith, but, with perhaps no exception, in 
 order to make use, if possible, of the United States Government against 
 Turkey, is shown by the following extract of an official report of the 
 present able United States Minister at Constantinople, Mr. Alexander 
 Terrell, who, under date of September 29, 1893, writes : 
 
 " 'The European emigrant in the United States generally naturalizes 
 in good faith : the Asiatic very rarely does. I am in a position to know 
 that it is the rule, rather than the exception, that the Armenian returns 
 soon after he is naturalized, and goes back with the intention of re- 
 maining.' 
 
 "The statement was made above that American missionaries side, on 
 the whole, with Armenian revolutionists against Turkey. This statement 
 is based on the written declarations made lately by the American Board 
 of Control for Foreign Missions, who, instead of advising the Ar- 
 menians 10 be law-abiding subjects of the Sultan, and to preserve a digni- 
 fied silence until the result of the investigation about the Sassoun troubles 
 is made known, considered more to the point to affirm the existence of 
 cold-blooded massacres, when that Board ought to have known that no 
 cold-blooded massacres of any kind are countenanced by the Turkish 
 Government, and that the very presence in Turkey of American mission- 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 3a 
 
 aries and American schools, missionaries and schools existing principally 
 for the conversion of Armenians to Protestantism, proved beyond doubt 
 the tolerant spirit of the Turkish institutions. If American missionaries, 
 continue to side with discontented Armenians in Turkey, they will follow 
 a policy contrary to the wish of the American Government and people. 
 Turkey, at all events, must have peace at all cost in her own possessions. 
 She cannot allow foreign intrigues on her territory, and she is justified in 
 resenting the following admission made by an Armenian about the parti- 
 cipation of Americans in the Bulgarian affairs of 1875 : 
 
 "' I see of late,' writes that Armenian to the Boston Herald, ' Rev. Cyrus 
 Hamlin has been writing letters of sympathy and support to the various 
 meetings held in this country in behalf of the Armenians, in unmistak- 
 able terms as to his present attitude toward their cause. Several years 
 ago I heard him lecture at Amherst, Mass. How proud he was to tell his 
 audience the important part taken by the Bulgarian graduates of Robert 
 College in securing the freedom and independence of their country ! I 
 ask Bev. Cyrus Hamlin if he was not aware of the existence of patriotic 
 societies among his Bulgarian students, etc' 
 
 " According to a French saying, we are only betrayed by our friends. 
 Let American missionaries and their Board realize that it is not their 
 duty and mission to help in ' securing the freedom and independence ' 
 of any nationality in Turkey, or to countenance secret societies, or to 
 accuse before the world the Turkish Government of massacres that have 
 not and cannot have any existence in reality. Their duty is simple 
 enough. It consists in confining their policy and utterances to the strict 
 observance of the laws of the country that gives them hospitality. While, 
 therefore, it is to be wondered why American missionaries, instead of de- 
 voting all their energies and good intentions on American Indians or on 
 American negroes, choose to go to Turkey to educate in a certain fashion, 
 and to convert, if possible, Christian Armenians to Protestantism ; and 
 while it is a fact that the Sublime Porte, thanks to the teachings of tol- 
 erance of its predominant religion, is willing to allow them, under its 
 laws, to pursue their work ; no one in all fairness could blame Turkey 
 for manifesting uneasiness for the public utterances and written state- 
 ments inimical to her government, made lately by the Board of said mis- 
 sionaries, and tending fatally to encourage further revolt and further 
 disturbances on her territory. The United States would certainly not 
 allow such a guilty manifestation on the part of any foreign missionaries 
 that might come here to educate and convert our "Indians, for example, 
 especially if the latter were implicated, as Armenians acknowledge them- 
 selves to be, in revolutionary schemes. What is right for the United 
 States, why should it not be right for Turkey ? The Armenian agitation, 
 based on falsehoods and exaggerations, and also on a pre-arranged plan, 
 as described by Rev. Cyrus Hamlin himself, has been supported and in- 
 tensified by many people for the only reason that the Armenians are Chris- 
 tians, which fact tends to prove that mere fanaticism animates Turkey"s 
 detractors. If this were not the case, the irresponsible and wild alle- 
 gations of revolutionary Armenians would never have been believed and 
 commented upon by people who call themselves impartial, without cor- 
 responding and convincing proofs. Turkey, therefore, sees now that she 
 cannot implicitly rely on impartiality and on justice." 
 
 The following is a letter which will be read with interest as 
 containing further evidence of the guilty interference on the 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 part of American missionaries in Turkey. It was addressed 
 to the Boston Herald, and signed by Mr. F. Hopkinson 
 Smith, already quoted : 
 
 "In an interview with one of your reporters some days since, I made 
 some statements regarding the condition of affairs in Turkey which came 
 under my immediate notice. These remarks have created some astonish- 
 ment and no little anger among many good people interested in the cause 
 of foreign missions. 
 
 "The interview was, in the main, correct, certain allowances being made 
 for a picturesque style of delivery more the reporter's than my own. and 
 for certain conflicting statements in regard to the Sultan being a humane 
 man and at the same time giving permits to murder his subjects — the 
 first of which is true and the last, of course, absurd. I am often aston- 
 ished at the memory of the reporter, and slips like these are common to 
 all interviews. I must disclaim, however, all reference to our mission- 
 aries as ' cranks and boors.' It has never been my habit to speak of a 
 woman earning her bread in any department of life, missionary or other- 
 wise, in any such terms, and I do not propose to begin now. 
 
 "As many of my statements have been charged to insufficient informa- 
 tion on the condition of the Turk, dense ignorance of the past and pres- 
 ent results of missionary work, mental bias, etc., I add to them the 
 following data : 
 
 " In support of my statements that ' the missionaries sow the seeds of 
 discontent and rebellion,' I quote first from a distinguished Spanish 
 traveller, Senor Ximenez, fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of 
 England, who, on his return to London, immediately after the Sassoun 
 troubles of a year ago — the first of these disturbances — was quoted as fol- 
 lows in an English journal : 
 
 " ' Senor Ximenez is disposed to lay much of the blame for the disturbed 
 condition of Armenia on the American Methodist missions in Asia Minor. 
 He says that they give the Armenians a superficial education out of all 
 proportion to the needs of the community. The pupils of these missions, 
 he adds, are never satisfied to return to their homes and work their land. 
 They continually speak of American liberty, and in nearly every case, 
 says Senor Ximenez. the Armenian agitators are shown to have been 
 pupils of the Methodist missions.' 
 
 " Second, as regards the helpless and law-abiding Armenian, I quote 
 from a letter written by Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, published as far back as 
 Dec. 23, 1893, in the Congrec/ationalist, which, in view of recent events, 
 is prophetic. Dr. Hamlin says : 
 
 " ' An Armenian " revolutionary " party is causing great evil and suffer- 
 ing to the missionary work and to the whole Christian population of cer- 
 tain parts of the Turkish Empire. It is a secret organization, and is 
 managed with a skill in deceit which is known only in the P^ast. In a 
 widely distributed pamphlet the following announcement is made at the 
 close : 
 
 " ' " This is the only Armenian party which is leading on the revolu- 
 tionary movement in Armenia. Its centre is Athens, and it has branches 
 in every village and city in Armenia, also in the colonies. Nishan Gara- 
 bedian, one of the founders of the party, is in America ; and those desir- 
 ing to get further information may communicate with him, addressing 
 Nishan (iarabedian, No. 15 Fountain street, Worcester, Mass., or with 
 the centre, M. Beniard, Poste Restante, Athens, Greece." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 35 
 
 'A very intelligent Armenian gentleman,' continues Dr. Hamlin, 
 who speaks fluently and correctly English as well as Armenian, and is an 
 eloquent defender of the revolution, assures me that they have the strong- 
 est hopes of preparing the way for Russia's entrance to Asia Minor to 
 take possession. In answer to the question as to how, he replied: " These 
 Huntchaguist bands, organized all over the empire, will watch their 
 opportunities to kill Turks and Kurds, set fire to their villages, and 
 then make their escape into the mountains. The enraged Moslems will 
 then rise and fall upon the defenceless Armenians, and slaughter them 
 with such barbarities that Russia will enter, in the name of humanitv and 
 Christian civilization, and take possession." 
 
 " 'When I denounced the scheme as atrocious and infernal beyond any- 
 thing ever known, he calmly replied : "It appears so to you,, no doubt ; 
 but we Armenians are determined to be free. Europe listened to the Bul- 
 garian horrors and made Bulgaria free. She will listen to our cry when 
 it goes up in the shrieks and blood of millions of women and children." 
 I urged in vain that this scheme will make the very name of Armenian 
 hateful among all civilized people. He replied : " VV'e are desperate : we 
 shall do it." ' 
 
 " Third, as regards the superiority of the Mohammedan religion for the 
 Mohammedam over any religion we can give him, I quote from Hon. 
 Robert Ourzon's ' Armenia, ' published by Murray in 1854, pages 234-235. 
 Ourzon was the British member of the commission appointed by England, 
 Russia, Turkey, and Persia in 1842, for fixing the then uncertain boundary 
 between Turkey and Persia : 
 
 " ' The superiority of the Mohammedan over the Christian cannot fail to 
 strike the mind of an intelligent person who has lived among these races 
 • • * The Turk obeys the dictates of his religion, the Christian does 
 not ; the Turk does not drink, the Christian gets drunk ; the Turk is 
 honest, the Turkish peasant is a pattern of quiet, good-humored honesty, 
 the Christian is a liar and a cheat ; his religion is so overgrown with the 
 rank weeds of superstition that it no longer serves to guide his mind in 
 the right way. It would be a work of great difficulty to distinguish the 
 pure faith preached by the apostles from the mass of absurdities and 
 strange notions with which Christianity is encumbered in the belief of 
 the villagers in out-of-the-way places, among the various sects of Chris- 
 tians in the dominions of the Sultan. This seems to have been the case 
 for centuries, and it has produced its effect in lowering the standard of 
 morality and injuring the general character of those nations who are sub- 
 jects of Turkey and not of the Mohammedan religion. For, of two evils, 
 it is better to follow the doctrines of a false religion than to neglect the 
 precepts of a true faith. ' 
 
 "I also quote from an interview with a leading Armenian, published 
 two weeks since in the New York Tribune : 
 
 "'If any people can know what real Christianity is, we are the people ; 
 and we are proud of our faith and of the heroism of our ancestors, who 
 fought and died and were martyred for the cause of Christ. But the 
 missionaries are not satisfied with our style of Christianity, and insist on 
 converting us to their form of belief. Their work, while it has added so 
 many thousands of names to their list of proselytes, has also brought dis- 
 cord to homes, has disrupted families, and has given rise to strife and 
 controversy.' 
 
 " No one need lose his temper over this matter, and abuse is neither logi- 
 cal nor courteous. Much more additional data could be given, but the 
 above is sufficient to convince reasonable people that there are two sides 
 to the Armenian question."