12 
LAND 6f WATER 
November 14, 1918 
The Armenian Massacres: By H. Morgenthau 
THE old conquering Turks had made the Chris- 
tians their servants, but their parvenu des- 
cendants bettered their instruction, for they 
determined to exterminate them wholesale 
and Turkefj' the Empire by massacring the 
non-Moslem elements. Originally this was not the 
statesmanlike conception of Jalaat and Enver ; the man 
who first devised it was one of the greatest monsters known 
to histor>', the "Red Sultan," Abdul Hamid. This man 
came to the throne in 1876, at a critical period in Turkish 
history. In the first two years of his reign, he lost Bulgaria, 
as well as important provinces in tlie Caucasus, his last 
remaining vestiges of sovereignty in Mbntenegro, Serbia, and 
Rumania, and all his real powers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
Greece had long since become an independent nation, and 
the processes that were to WTencli Egypt frAm the Ottoman 
Empire had already begun. As the' Sultan took stock of 
his inheritance, he could easily foresee the day when all the 
rest of his domain would pass into the hand of the infidel. 
What had caused this disintegration of this extensive Turkish 
Empire ? The real cause, of course, lay deep in the charac- 
ter of the Turk, but Abdul Hamid saw only the more obvious 
fact that the intervention of the great European Powers 
had brought reUcf to these imprisoned nations. Of all the 
new kingdoms which had been carved out of the Sultan's 
dominions, Serbia — let us remember this fact to her ever- 
lasting honour — is the only one that has won her own inde- 
pendence. Russia, France, and Great Britain have set free 
all the rest. And what had happened several times before 
might happen again. There still remained one compact race 
in the Ottoman Empire that had national aspirations and 
national potentialitie;5. In the north-eastern part of Asia 
Minor, bordering on Russia, there were six provinces in 
which the Armenians formed the largest element in the 
population. From the times of Herodotus this portion of 
Asia has borne the name of Armenia. The Armenians of 
the present day are the direct descendants of the people 
who inhabited the country three thousand years ago. Their 
origin is so ancient that it is lost in fable and mystery. There 
are still undeciphered cuneiform inscriptions on the rocky 
hills of Van, the largest Armenian city, that have led certain 
scholars — though not many, I must admit— to identify the 
Armenian race with the Hittites of the Bible. What is 
definitely known about the Armenians, however, is that for 
ages they have constituted the most civilised and most 
industrious race in the Eastern section of the Ottoman 
Empire. From their mountains they have spread over the 
Sultan's dominions, and form a considerable element in the 
population of all the large citieg. Everywhere they are 
known for their industry, their intelligence, and their decent 
and orderly lives. They are so superior to the Turks intel- 
lectually and morally that much of the business and industry 
had passed into their hands. With the Greeks, the Armenians 
constitute the economic strength of the Empire. These 
people became Christians in the fourth century and estab- 
lished the Armenian Church as their State religion. This is 
said to be the oldest Christian church in existence. < 
In the face of persecutions which have had no parallel 
elsewhere, these people have clung to their eariy Christian 
faith with the utmost tenacity. For fifteen hundred years 
they have lived there in Armenia, a little island of Christians 
surrounded by backward peoples of hostile religion and 
hostile race. Their long existence has been one unending 
martyrdom. And ^now, as Abdul Hamid, in 1876, 
surveyed his shattered domain, he saw that its most 
dangerous spot was Armenia. He believed, rightly or 
wrongly, that these Armenians, like the Rumanians, 
the Bulgarijuis, the Greeks, and the Serbians, aspired to 
restore their independent mediaeval nation, and he knew 
that Europe and America sympathised with this ambition. 
The Treaty of Beriin, which had definitely ended the Turco- 
Russian War, contained an article which gave the European 
Powers a protecting hand over the Armenians. How could 
the Sultan free himself permanently from this danger ? An 
enlightened administration, which would have transformed 
the Armenians into free men and made them safe in their 
lives and property, and civil and religious rights, would 
probably have made them peaceful and loyal subjects. But 
the Sultan could not rise to such a conception of statesman- 
ship as this. Instead, Abdul Hamid apparently thought that 
there was only one way of ridding Turkey of the Armenian 
problem— and that was to rid her of the Armenians. The 
physical destruction of 2,000,000 men, women, and children 
by massacres, organised and directed by the State, seemed 
to be the one sure way of forestalling the ftirther disruption 
of the Turkish Empire. 
.A.nd now for nearly thirty years Tiu-key gave the world 
an illustration of government by massacre. We in Europe 
and America heard of these events when they reached 
especially monstrous proportions, as they did in 1895-96, 
when nearly 200,000 Armenians were most atrociously done 
to death. But through all these years the existence of the 
Armenians was one continuous nightmare. Their property 
was stolen, their men were murdered, their women were 
ravished, their young girls were kidnapped and forced to 
live in Turkish harems. Yet Abdul Hamid was not able 
to accomplish his full purpose. He attempted to exterminate 
the Armenians in 1895 and 1896, but found certain insuper- 
able obstructions to his scheme. Chief of these were Eng- 
land, France, and Russia. These atrocities called Gladstone, 
then eighty-six years old, from his retirement, and his speeches, 
in which he denounced the Sultan as "the great assassin," 
aroused the whole world to the enormities that were taking 
place. It became apparent that unless the Sultan desisted, 
England, France, and Russia would intervene, and the. 
Sultan well knew that, in case this intervention took place, 
such remnants of Turkey as had survived earlier partitions 
would disappear. Thus Abdul Hamid had to abandon his 
Satanic enterprise of destroying a whole race by murder, 
yet Armenia continued to suffer the slow agony of pitiless 
persecution. Up to the outbreak of the European W'ar not 
a day had passed in the Armenian vilayets without its out- 
rages and its murders. The Young Turk regime, despite 
its promises of universal brotherhood, brought no respite to 
the Armenians. A few months after the love-feastings already 
described, one of the worst massacres took place at Adana, 
in which 35,000 people were destroyed. J|" 
And now the Young Turks, who had adopted so many of 
Abdul Hamid's ideas, also made his Armenian policy their 
own. Their passion for Turkifying the nation seemed to 
demand logically the extermination of all Christians — Greeks, 
Syrians, and Armenians. Much as they admired the Moham- 
medan conquerors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
they stupidly believed that these great warriors had made 
one fatal mistake, for they had had it in their power com- 
pletely to obhterate the Christian populations, and had 
neglected to do so. This policy was, in their opinion, a fatal 
error of statesmanship, and explained all the woes from which 
Turkey had suffered in modern times. Had these old Moslem 
chieftains, when they conquered Bulgaria, put all the Bui 
garians to the sword, and peopled the IBulgarian country 
with Moslem Turks, there would never have been any modern 
Bulgarian problem and Turkey would never have lost this 
part of her Empire. Similarly, had they destroyed all the 
Rumanians, Serbians, and Greeks, the provinces which are 
now occupied by these races would still have remained 
integral parts of the Sultan's domain. They felt that the 
mistake had been a terrible one, but that something might 
be saved from the ruin. They would destroy all Greeks, 
Syrians, Armenians, and other Christians, move Moslem 
families into their homes and upon their farms, and so make 
sure that these territories would not similarly be taken away 
from Turkey. In order to accomplish this great reform, it 
would not be necessary to murder every living Christian. 
The most beautiful and healthy. Armenian girls could be 
taken, converted forcibly to Mohammedanism, and made the 
wives or concubines of devout followers of the Prophet. 
Their children would then automatically become Moslems, 
and so strengthen the Empire as the Janizaries strengthened 
it formerly. These Armenian girls represent a high type of 
womanhood, and the Young Turks, in their crude intuitive 
way, recognised that the mingling of their blood with the 
Turkish population would exert a eugenic influence upon 
the whole. Armenian boys of tender years could be taken 
into Turkish families and be brought up in ignorance of the 
fact that they were any'thing but Moslems. These were 
about the only elements, however, that could make any 
valuable contributions to the new Turkey which was now 
being planned. Since all precautions must be taken against 
the development of a new generation of Armenians, it would 
be necessary to kill outright all men who were in their prime 
and thus capable of propagating the accursed species. Old 
men and women formed no great danger to the future of 
Turkey, for they had already fulfilled their natural function 
of leaving descendants ; still, thev were nuisances, and, 
therefore, should be disposed of. 
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