Armenia and Her People; or, The Story of Armenia by an Armenian — John Shaqi
Armenia and Her People; or, The Story of Armenia by an ArmenianFilian, George H.
History
Armenia and Her People; or, The Story of Armenia by an Armenian
Filian, George H.
Armenia; Armenian question
These are all facts, proved to superfluity, though the Sultan denies
them and instructs his ministers everywhere to deny them. How often
has the Turkish minister in Washington, Mavroyeni Beg, officially
(?) declared the Armenian atrocities to be fiction, giving the
papers lying statements (which come from the Sublime Porte), and
asserted that the Armenians were the aggressors! It is precisely
as though one should account for a devastated sheepfold, with the
wolves raging about in it, by alleging that the lambs had wantonly
assailed and slain the wolves first. Some pretended to believe this
rubbish; but most people, to their credit, are only the more angered
and disgusted by it. The Turkish proverbs, occasionally good, are
generally evil,--a significant index to the race; one of the commonest
is this: "Yalan yigitin kullesi dir" (A lie is the fortress of the
brave). Kill, plunder, ravish, and then deny it; not simply deny it,
but charge those very things to your enemy, and make them an excuse
for all you do to him or his. Such are the principles of the Sultan,
the false successor of the false prophet of Arabia. At the very time
when noble American and European Christians are sending help to the
survivors of his massacres, to the half-million homeless, naked,
starving, heart-broken beggars he has made from prosperous citizens,
he coolly denies that anything has happened but the putting down of
a few local riots. He writes to Queen Victoria sympathizing with her
expressions of humane sentiment, but declaring that the reports were
invented by evil-disposed persons; that on the exact contrary, it was
the Turks who were first attacked while praying in the mosques. He
assures the Queen that his measures have succeeded in restoring order.
And this same Sultan a few months ago, before the greatest of the
recent massacres, wrote to Lord Salisbury as follows:--"Take the words
of my honor, I will make reforms in Armenia. I will keep before me
every article of the desired reforms, and will order the governors
of the provinces to carry them into effect." He at once began to put
this pledge of his "honor" into effect, by sending orders from Yildiz
Kiosk to the provincial governors in Armenia to root out or convert
the accursed infidels. Since that promise of his "honor" months
have passed away; and during the time at least eighty thousand more
Armenian Christians have been killed, and even death has been the most
merciful "reform" he has bestowed on the land. The word in his mouth
means beggaring, burning, ravaging, violating, mutilating, torturing,
and assassinating. When all the leading Armenians are slain and their
helpless families forced to become Mohammedans, after the women have
been dishonored,--in a word, when all the Armenian Christians are
exterminated, then Armenia will have been reformed. A special chapter
is devoted to the person and doings of this eminent reformer.
THE AUTHOR.
A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND BIRTHPLACE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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