The Armenian question is not a question of Armenia. That is the first and the last word.

That is not a paradox; it is a fact. The Armenian question is not a question of Armenia, but of Armenians, and of Armenians in the provinces ruled by the Turk. Where are these provinces? On the slopes of Mount Ararat, on the borders of Persia, in the neighbourhood of Erzerum? Yes; but not only there.

The Armenians are everywhere in Turkey, especially in Asiatic Turkey. Hence, the Armenian question is not a question of provinces; it is a qestion of a whole Europe. It is this which compels Russia to approach it with such caution. We know what it means, and we see only too clearly what frightful conflagration may burst out everywhere if—I need not finish that sentence.

England can approach it with less anxiety. Her house is not next door. Ours is. We simply dare not play tricks. For we may have the whole Eastern question on our hands at a moment’s notice, and we are not ready for that extra work. Nobody is; and universal unreadiness does not seem to prove that the question is so ripe for settlement as some people here in London appear to believe.

I said the Armenians are everywhere. Where is the Armenian question at this moment most dangerous? Not in Sassoun; not in Asia at all. The most burning Armenian question is to be found in Constantinople. All the problems which baffle European diplomacy in the districts just beyond the frontier dominated by our fortress of Kars are confronting us in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, within gunshot of the Sublime Porte. You want to prevent massacres in Sassoun, and you are horrified by massacres in Stamboul, and you will shortly be equally horrified by other massacres in other cities and in other provinces. For the Armenians are everywhere.

There are, it is said, nearly 100,000 of them in Constantinople. How many there are of them elsewhere in the Sultan’s dominions—who can say?

The Armenians are everywhere, and everywhere they are in evidence. They are the bankers, the traders, the money-lenders, the money-makers of the East. It is not as it was with the Bulgarians. There you had to deal with a nationality rooted in the soil with a history, with a territory well defined and capable of being erected into a principality. But the Armenians! You might as well propose to redress all the grievances of all the Jews in Europe by prescribing reforms for the Polish ghetto as to solve the Armenian question by a project confined to a single pashalik.

I do not wish to say a word that would seem to belittle the sufferings of the Armenians. I am happy that their sufferings have touched the hearts of so many Englishmen. But yon must pardon me for saying that it seems somewhat absurd that so intelligent a nation should only be roused to sympathy by sensation. The incidents, revolting as they are, which have excited so much attention, are only the ordinary, normal incidents of Turkish rule—perhaps slightly exaggerated this time, but that is all.

These atrocities which you denounce differ in only one respect from the regular order of the day in the Sultan’s empire. Usually they are perpetrated retail. This time it has been wholesale.

For my part, it does not seem to make so enormous a difference whether I am killed by myself, or whether a hundred of my neighbours share my fate at the same time. To me both would be equally unpleasant. All this killing, outraging, and pillaging is the regular system of Turkish administration, which has gone on unchanged since the Turks conquered the Christian populations of the East.

It is abominable. I admit. Every Russian regards it as a negation of God erected into an empire. Russian history is largely one long series of passionate protests against its continuance, protests sealed with the blood of our noblest and bravest sons. But England has insisted upon its maintenance. England has protected the Turk; he is her special protege. Hence it is somewhat odd that when he acts as he has always done, only, perhaps, in one or two places a little more so, English people should be clamouring for instant intervention, regardless of all risks.

It is very noble, no doubt, but a trifle inconsequent and impulsive. Russia, whose sympathies with the Christian East are not intermittent and spasmodic, and who does not need to be sensationalised into a crusade, cannot forget everything and everybody except only the Armenians. There are other Christian races even nearer to our heart. The Monophysites-arminiens are neither akin to us by blood nor closely united to us by their faith. Every Christian nationality in Turkey is an oppressed nationality, suffering just such horrors as those of which the Armenians complain. If we are to intervene by remonstrances on behalf of outraged humanity it would be folly to deal with the Armenians exclusively. The Macedonians, for instance, have an even greater claim upon the sympathies of Europe, and not the Macedonians alone. The mere accident that the habitual usage to which the Christians are subjected had assumed sensational dimensions in a district chiefly inhabited by Armenians is no reason why the other sufferers should be neglected. I do not mention this as a reason for doing nothing. On the contrary, I live in the hope that England may act logically and consistently and deal with the question as a whole.

If we are to use force, or the menace of force, if we are to invoke the cumbrous machinery of a European conference, if the concert of Europe is to be brought into play, let us at least see to it that so tremendous a weapon is not unsheathed to cut a small tangle in the net instead of using it to cleave the Gordian knot. It would be just as easy to do much as to do little. It would be worth while grappling with the whole questions as a whole.

I very much doubt whether the game is worth the candle, so long as the only question is referring to the vague reforms to these small provinces.

What should then be done? Simply this: Leave the Sultan in Constantinople, but on the condition of his being permitted to occupy the throne, compel him to put the whole of his dominions alike in Asia, in Europe, into commission. That is the only policy that is worth discussing, and you will probably find that Europe could just as easily compel him to assent to that, as to admit a European commission in what are called his Armenian provinces.

This is no monstrous demand. So far as the European provinces are concerned it is no more and no less what the Sultan promised to do when he signed the Treaty of Berlin. Have you already forgotten Article 23 of that famous Dead Letter?

“The Sublime Porte undertakes to introduce reforms into European Turkey, which, in order to make them correspond to the wants of every province, should be deliberated upon by commissions, in which the respective local elements should  be permanently represented, the final settlement of the projected reforms to made by a European commission.”

That European commission assembled. It drew up an organic statute on the basis of the constitution of Eastern Roumelia. All the Powers agreed as to what should be done, and—and—nothing whatever has been done!

If you are really so much in earnest about redressing the wrongs of the Armenians, do you not think you had better see what can be done at the same time in enforcing the 23rd Article of the Treaty to which the signature of England, that solemn sanction, was appended in 1878?

If you have asked me to state the Russian point of view, I think I have faithfully described that view, to the best of my understanding.

Russia wants peace. Russia is passionately desirous of being permitted breathing time, growing time, without the fret and danger of war threatened or war made. Russia would eagerly hail any practical proposal for beginning the simultaneous disarmament of Europe by an agreement to arrest all further armaments, and therefore Russia protests against the light-headed, reckless fashion in which some Englishmen are brandishing lighted torches on the powder-magazines of Europe. But if we are to use force to overcome the reluctance of the Sultan to give effective guarantees for the decent government of his oppressed subjects, do not let us incur so tremendous a risk without having a definite object.

To place the whole of the Sultan’s dominions under European commissions—yes, that would be worth while. But meeting in order to improve the administration of three provinces inhabited partly by Armenians and Kurds on the Russian frontier—well, I doubt. О.K. 

 

ТHE EDITOR ОF THE DAILY CHRONICLE

Sir,—In reply to your leader of this morning, allow me to say a very few words. Russia does not even wish to attempt moral impossibilities. Her position is the same to-day as it was in 1878, and long before 1878.

We have, as you admit, loyally supported your belated attempts to undo the mischief you have done in supporting the Turks. But it is for you to take the chestnuts out of the fire this time. We did our share long ago.

—Yours truly,

O.K.

4, Portman Mansions, W., Oct. 10.