The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
History
The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
Armenian question; Armenians; World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Refugees
In order to test the soundness of my own conclusions as to the value of
the evidence, I have submitted it to the judgment of three friends, men
for whose opinion everyone who knows them will have the highest
respect—a distinguished historian, Mr. H.A.L. Fisher (Vice-Chancellor of
the University of Sheffield); a distinguished scholar, Mr. Gilbert
Murray (Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford); and a
distinguished American lawyer of long experience and high authority, Mr.
Moorfield Storey, of Boston, Mass.—men accustomed in their respective
walks of life to examine and appraise evidence; and I append the letters
which convey their several views.
This preface is intended to deal only with the credibility of the
evidence here presented, so I will refrain from comment on the facts. A
single observation, or rather a single question, may, however, be
permitted from one who has closely followed the history of the Turkish
East for more than forty years. European travellers have often commended
the honesty and the kindliness of the Turkish peasantry, and our
soldiers have said that they are fair fighters. Against them I have
nothing to say, and will even add that I have known individual Turkish
officials who impressed me as men of honesty and good-will. But the
record of the rulers of Turkey for the last two or three centuries, from
the Sultan on his throne down to the district Mutessarif, is, taken as a
whole, an almost unbroken record of corruption, of injustice, of an
oppression which often rises into hideous cruelty. The Young Turks, when
they deposed Abd-ul-Hamid, came forward as the apostles of freedom,
promising equal rights and equal treatment to all Ottoman subjects. The
facts here recorded show how that promise was kept. Can any one still
continue to hope that the evils of such a government are curable? Or
does the evidence contained in this volume furnish the most terrible and
convincing proof that it can no longer be permitted to rule over
subjects of a different faith?
BRYCE.
LETTER FROM MR. H.A.L. FISHER,
VICE-CHANCELLOR OF SHEFFIELD UNIVERSITY,
TO VISCOUNT BRYCE.
The University,
Sheffield,
_August 2nd, 1916_.
MY DEAR LORD BRYCE,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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