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 Erzeroum? 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 question 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 you 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 protégé. 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 sensationalized 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 question as a whole.