The Armenian Crisis in Turkey: The Massacre of 1894, Its Antecedents and Significance, With a Consideration of Some of the Factors Which Enter Into the Solution of This Phase of the Eastern QuestionGreene, Frederick Davis
History
The Armenian Crisis in Turkey: The Massacre of 1894, Its Antecedents and Significance, With a Consideration of Some of the Factors Which Enter Into the Solution of This Phase of the Eastern Question
Greene, Frederick Davis
Armenian massacres, 1894-1896; Armenian question
And things have now arrived at such a pass that in such action lies the
only hope of preventing a terrible catastrophe, which will eclipse even
the massacres of Sassoun. The wheels of progress will not go backward
except as they are broken. The Christians of Armenia can be
exterminated, but it is too late for them to accept slavery or Islam.
They may be slaughtered like sheep, but they will not all die like dogs.
The revolutionary movement, as it is called, is thus far nothing but a
blind turning of the worm. It is ill considered, without resources,
reckless, and foreign to the real spirit, objects, and methods of the
Armenians on Turkish soil. It is not denied that there are a few
Armenians in Europe who, in despair and for lack of better teaching,
have imbibed Nihilistic views and are trying, in a very bungling way, to
apply them. They are hated by the vast majority of Armenians in Turkey.
They are related to the question at issue in the same way and degree as
train wreckers and box-car burners were to the industrial problem during
the riots of Chicago in July last, and deserve the same treatment. The
Turks take great pains to thrust them into public notice, as a cloak for
themselves, and with good success. The Turkish Government and its
partisans, in order to conceal the real character of the massacre in
Sassoun, has made persistent, extensive, and dishonorable use of a
letter by the first President of Robert College, Constantinople, Dr.
Cyrus Hamlin, written December 23, 1894. Dr. Hamlin’s vigorous and
indignant protest may be found in Appendix C.
[Illustration:
ZEIBEK, TURKISH SOLDIER, “IRREGULAR.”
]
The idea of Armenian revolution is a new thing in the history of that
peaceable race, which has quietly submitted for centuries to the yoke of
the Turk. But it is the natural outcome of the horrible situation in
Armenia since the Treaty of Berlin, and the disease is bound to grow
more virulent and contagious until the European doctors apply vigorous
and radical treatment to the “Sick Man.” It is difficult to see how
anything but a surgical operation can be helpful. The knife has
frequently been used in the case of this incurable patient during the
present century, and always with excellent results, as for instance in
the case of Greece, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Boznia-Herzegovina, and Egypt.
A situation in many respects parallel to that in Armenia existed until
lately in Bosnia and Herzegovina. How quickly and completely that
difficult problem has been solved, is narrated by M. de Blowitz in the
October, 1894, issue of _The Nineteenth Century_, from which I condense
in his own words.
“The orders, given after the taking over of the country, to surrender
all arms or to destroy them, was given a sweeping application. Yet,
before the victorious entry of the Austro-Hungarians, each Bosnian each
Herzegovinian, was a walking arsenal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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