[97] Tracy, “Historical Sketch of Missions in Asiatic Turkey,” pp. 20-21, (A.B.C.F.M.) [98] The Annual Report of the American Board, pp. 100, 105, for year 1915. [99] The Armenian common and high schools--beside the Mission institutions--were many, but Abdul Hamid had reduced them. Since his overthrow they were again flourishing before the war. [100] The Annual Report of the American Board, pp. 103, 107 for year 1915. [101] The Annual Report of the American Board, pp. 103-107 for the year 1918. [102] Tracy, “Historical Sketch of the Missions in Asiatic Turkey,” p. 34. [103] Tracy, “The Historical Sketch of the Missions in Asiatic Turkey,” page 16. XI THE ARMENIAN QUESTION The previous brief history of this people, especially since the introduction of Christianity into Armenia, has furnished the reader with sufficient facts to show him that the real trouble of this nation began from the time of its conversion to Christianity, and has come down to the present time. What the Armenians have been suffering now is just a little more intensified than what they have suffered in the past by the hands of the fire-worshiping Persians. Had they received Zoroastrianism, forced upon them in the fifth century, they might have changed the entire aspect of the history of Western Asia. Or, had they embraced Mohammedanism in the seventh century, when fanatic missionary soldiers of Mohammed fell upon them, sword in hand, and massacred thousands upon thousands in cold blood, because they refused to accept the sensual religion of a sensual and bloody man, again the history of Western Asia might have been differently written. When their infant sons were torn away from their parental bosom by the Ottoman rulers, and reared in Islamism and inured to the profession of arms, whose skill, vigor, and courage shook the foundations of the then civilized world, then, we say, had the Armenians renounced their religion and professed the Mohammedan faith and entered the army, they would have brought “to bear on the problems of the battlefield all the subtlety of intellect developed by ages of mental activity,” unquestionably would they have saved the Turkish Empire from the inevitable dissolution into which she has plunged herself. This also would have undoubtedly given a different feature to the Ottoman history. Why have the Armenians been so cruelly persecuted, oppressed, tortured and butchered? Why were their beautiful daughters abducted, their wives ravished, they themselves massacred by the Kurds, Circassians, and Turks? Not because they belong to a different nationality--though they do--but because they belong to a different religion--they are Christians. So I beg the reader to bear in mind that the real trouble or the Armenian question, at the bottom, is the old conflict, first between Christianity and Paganism, then between Christianity and Mohammedanism, and now with Pagan-Mohammedanism.