The Cry of Armenia
2Ki_19:37 : ’93They escaped into the land of Armenia.’94
In Bible geography this is the first time that Armenia appears, called then by the same name as now. Armenia is chiefly a table-land, seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, and on one of its peaks Noah’92s ark landed, with its human family and fauna that were to fill the earth. That region was the birthplace of the rivers which fertilized the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve lived there, their only roof the crystal skies, and their carpet the emerald of rich grass. Its inhabitants, the ethnologists tell us, are a superior type of the Caucasian race. Their religion is founded on the Bible. Their Saviour is our Christ. Their crime is that they will not become followers of Mohammed, that Jupiter of sensuality. To drive them from the face of the earth is the ambition of all Mohammedans. To accomplish this, murder is no crime, and wholesale massacre is a matter of enthusiastic approbation and governmental reward. The prayer sanctioned by highest Mohammedan authority, and recited every day throughout Turkey and Egypt, while styling all those not Mohammedans as infidels, is as follows: ’93O Lord of all creatures? O Allah! Destroy the Infidels and Polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of the religion! O Allah! Make their children orphans and defile their bodies; cause their feet to slip; give them and their families, their households and their women, their children and their relatives by marriage, their brothers and their friends, their possessions and the race, their wealth and their lands as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures!’94
The life of an Armenian in the esteem of those who make that prayer is of no more value than the life of a summer insect. The Sultan of Turkey sits on a throne impersonating that brigandage and assassination. At this time all civilized nations are in horror at the attempts of that Mohammedan government to destroy all the Christians of Armenia. I hear somebody talking as though some new thing were happening and that the Turkish government had taken a new role of tragedy on the stage of nations. No, no! She is at the same old business. Overlooking her diabolism of other centuries, we come down to our century to find that in 1822 the Turkish government slew fifty thousand anti-Moslems, and in 1850, she slew ten thousand, and in 1860, she slew eleven thousand, and in 1876, she slew ten thousand. Anything short of the slaughter of thousands of human beings does not put enough red wine into her cup of abomination to make it worth quaffing. Nor is this the only time she has promised reform. In the presence of the warships at the mouth of the Dardanelles, she has promised the civilized nations of the earth that she would stop her butcheries, and the international and hemispheric farce has been enacted of believing what she says, when all the past ought to convince us that she is only pausing in her atrocities to put nations off the track and then resume the work of death. In 1820, Turkey, in treaty with Russia, promised to alleviate the condition of Christians, but the promise was broken. In 1839, the then Sultan promised protection of life and property without reference to religion, and the promise was broken. In 1844, at the demand of an English minister plenipotentiary, the Sultan declared, after the public execution of an Armenian at Constantinople, that no such death penalty should again be inflicted, and the promise was broken. In 1850, at the demand of foreign nations, the Turkish government promised protection to Protestants, but to this day the Protestants at Stamboul are not allowed to build a church, although they have the funds ready, and the Greek Protestants, who have a church, are not permitted to worship in it. In 1856, after the Crimean war, Turkey promised that no one should be hindered in the exercise of the religion he professed, and that promise has been broken. In 1878, at the memorable treaty of Berlin, Turkey promised religious liberty to all her subjects in every part of the Ottoman Empire, and the promise was broken. Not once in all the centuries has the Turkish government kept her promise of justice. So far from any improvement, the condition of the Armenians has become worse and worse year by year, and all the promises the Turkish government now makes are only a gaining of time by which she is making preparation for the complete extermination of Christianity within her borders.
Why, after all the national and continental and hemispheric lying on the part of the Turkish government, do not the warships of Europe ride up as close as is possible to the palaces of Constantinople and blow that accursed government to atoms? In the name of the Eternal God, let the nuisance of the ages be wiped off the face of the earth! Down to the perdition from which it smoked up, sink Mohammedanism! Between these outbreaks of massacre the Armenians suffer in silence wrongs that are seldom if ever reported. They are taxed heavily for the mere privilege of living, and the tax is called ’93the humiliation tax.’94 They are compelled to give three days’92 entertainment to any Mohammedan tramp who may be passing that way. They must pay blackmail to the assessor, lest he report the value of their property too highly. Their evidence in court is of no worth, and if fifty Armenians saw a wrong committed and one Mohammedan was present, the testimony of the one Mohammedan would be taken and the testimony of the fifty Armenians rejected; in other words, the solemn oath of a thousand Armenians would not be strong enough to overthrow the perjury of one Mohammedan.
A professor was condemned to death for translating the English Book of Common Prayer into Turkish. Seventeen Armenians were sentenced to fifteen years’92 imprisonment for rescuing a Christian bride from the bandits. This is the way the Turkish government amuses itself in time of peace. These are the delights of Turkish civilization. But when the days of massacre come, then deeds are done which may not be unveiled in any refined assemblage, and if one speaks of the horrors, he must do so in well-poised and cautious vocabulary. Hundreds of villages destroyed! Young men put in piles of brushwood, which are then saturated with kerosene and set on fire! Mothers, in the most solemn hour that ever comes in a woman’92s life, hurled out and bayoneted! Eyes gouged out, and dead and dying hurled into the same pit! The slaughter of Lucknow and Cawnpore, India, in 1857, eclipsed in ghastliness! The worst scenes of the French revolution in Paris made more tolerable in contrast! In many regions of Armenia the only undertakers today are the jackals and hyenas. Many of the chiefs of the massacres were sent straight from Constantinople to do their work, and having returned, were decorated by the Sultan. To four of the worst murderers the Sultan sent silk banners, in delicate appreciation of their services.
Look at this picture. It is a copy of a private letter from Armenia: ’93Rev. Grigos Hachadoovian, a minister of the Gospel, whom I knew personally, was the pastor of the Second Congregational Church of Kharpoot, my native city. When the Turkish soldiers commenced shooting all over the city he took his wife and children and went to the church. Soon about sixty of his congregation joined him. Naturally, good and earnest Christians as they were, they lifted their voices up to heaven for help. While in prayer the Turks rushed in and demanded of the minister to become a Mohammedan then and there, with his congregation. He refused promptly. The Turks removed the pulpit, made a butchering platform, cut off the head of the minister and actually cut him to pieces before his congregation. Mind you on the platform from which he had preached Christ for twenty years. This horrible spectacle seems to have had no effect upon the devout Christian Armenians, as they all refused to denounce Christ and pray to Mohammed and all were killed in the church to the last man, woman and child.’94 What do you think of that picture, Christian people of America? That is the Mohammedanism some people would like to have introduced into our country.
Five hundred thousand Armenians put to death or dying of starvation! This moment, while I speak, all up and down Armenia, sit many people, freezing in the ashes of their destroyed homes, bereft of most of their households, and awaiting the club of assassination to put them out of their misery. No wonder that the physicians of that region declared that among all the men and women that were down with wounds and sickness and under their care, not one wanted to get well. Remember that nearly all the reports that have come to us of the Turkish outrages have been manipulated and modified and softened by the Turks themselves. The story is not half told or a hundredth part told or a thousandth part told. None but God and our suffering brothers and sisters in that far-off land know the whole story, and it will not be known until, in the coronations of heaven, Christ will lift to a special throne of glory these heroes and heroines, saying, ’93These are they who came out of great tribulation and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb!’94 My Lord and my God! thou didst on the cross suffer for them, but thou, surely, O Christ! wilt not forget how much they have suffered for thee! I dare not deal in imprecation, but I never so much enjoyed the imprecatory Psalms of David as since I have heard how those Turks are treating the Armenians. The fact is Turkey has got to be divided up among other nations. Of course the European nations must take the chief part, but Turkey ought to be compelled to pay America for the American mission buildings and American schoolhouses she has destroyed, and to support the wives and children of the Americans ruined by this wholesale butchery. When the English lion and the Russian bear put their paws on that Turkey the American eagle ought to put in its bill.
Who are these American and English and Scotch missionaries who are being hounded among the mountains of Armenia by the Mohammedans? The noblest men and women this side of heaven. Some of them men who took the highest honors at Yale and Princeton and Harvard and Oxford and Edinburgh. Some of them women, gentlest and most Christlike, who, to save people they never saw, turned their backs on luxurious homes to spend their days in self-expatria-tion, saying good-by to father and mother, and afterward good-by to their own children, as circumstances compel them to send the little ones to England, Scotland or America. I have seen these foreign missionaries in their homes all around the world, and I stamp with indignation upon the literary blackguardism of foreign correspondents who have depreciated these heroes and heroines who are willing to live and die for Christ’92s sake. They will have the highest thrones in heaven, while their defamers will not get near enough to the shining gates to see the faintest glint of any one of the twelve pearls which make up the twelve gates. This defamation of missionaries is augmented by the dissolute English, American and Scotch merchants who go to foreign cities, leaving their families behind them. Those dissolute merchants in foreign cities lead a life of such gross immorals that the pure households of the missionaries are a perpetual rebuke. Buzzards never did believe in doves, and if there is anything that nightshade hates it is the water-lily. What the five hundred and fifty American missionaries have suffered in the Ottoman Empire since 1820 I leave the archangel to announce on the Day of Judgment. You will see it is reasonable that I put so much emphasis on Americanism in the Ottoman Empire when I tell you that America, notwithstanding all the disadvantages named, has now over twenty-seven thousand students in day-schools in that Empire and thirty-five thousand children in their Sabbath-schools, and that America has expended in the Turkish Empire for its betterment over ten million dollars. Has not America a right to be heard? Ay! it will be heard! I am glad that great indignation meetings are being held all over this country. That poor, weak, cowardly Sultan, whom I saw a few years ago ride to his mosque for worship, guarded by seven thousand armed men, many of them mounted on prancing chargers, will hear of these sympathetic meetings for the Armenians, if not through American reporters, then through some of his three hundred and sixty wives. What to do with him? There ought to be some St. Helena to which he could be exiled, while the nations of Europe appoint a ruler of their own to clean out and take possession of the palaces of Constantinople. To-night this august assemblage in the capital of the United States, in the name of the God of Nations, indicts the Turkish Government for the wholesale assassination in Armenia, and invokes the interference of Almighty God and the protest of Eastern and Western hemispheres.
But what is the duty of the hour? Sympathy, deep, wide, tremendous, immediate! Munificent contributions have already been made by Americans and distributed by our missionaries in Turkey. But the Turkish Government is opposed to any relief of the Armenian sufferers, as I personally know. Last August, before I had any idea of becoming a fellow-citizen with you Washingtonians, fifty thousand dollars for Armenian relief was offered to me if I would personally take that relief to Armenia. My passage was to be engaged on the City of Paris, but a telegram was sent to Constantinople, asking if the Turkish Government would grant me protection on such an errand of mercy. A cablegram said the Turkish Government wished to know to what points in Armenia I desired to go with that relief. In our reply, four cities were named, one of them the scene of what had been the chief massacre. A cablegram came from Constantinople saying that I had better send the money to the Turkish Government’92s mixed commission and they would distribute it. So a cobweb of spiders proposed a relief committee for unfortunate flies! Well, a man who would start up through the mountains of Armenia with fifty thousand dollars and no governmental protection would be guilty of monumental foolhardiness. The Turkish Government has in every possible way hindered Armenian relief.
It has been said that if we go over there to interfere on another continent, that will imply the right for other nations to interfere with affairs on this continent, and so the Monroe Doctrine be jeopardized. No, no! President Cleveland expressed the sentiment of every intelligent and patriotic American when he sent out from the White House a warning to all nations that there is not one acre or one inch more of ground on this continent for any transatlantic government to occupy. And by that doctrine we stand now and shall forever stand. But there is a doctrine as much higher than the Monroe Doctrine as the heavens are higher than the earth, and that is the doctrine of humanitarianism and sympathy and Christian helpfulness which one cold December midnight, with loud and multitudinous chant, awakened the shepherds. Wherever there is a wound it is our duty, whether as individuals or as nations, to balsam it. Wherever there is a knife of assassination lifted it is our duty to ward off the blade. Wherever men are persecuted for their religion it is our duty to break that arm of power, whether it be thrust forth from a Protestant church or a Catholic cathedral or a Jewish synagogue or a mosque of Islam. We all recognize the right on a small scale. If going down the road we find a ruffian maltreating a child, or a human brute insulting a woman, we take a hand in the contest if we are not cowards, and though we be slight in personal presence, because of our indignation we come to weigh about twenty tons, and the harder we punish the villain the louder our conscience applauds us. In such case we do not keep our hands in our pockets, arguing that if we interfere with the brute the brute might think he would have a right to interfere with us, and so jeopardize the Monroe Doctrine.
The fact is that that persecution of the Armenians by the Turks must be stopped, or God Almighty will curse all Christendom for its indifference and apathy. But the trumpet of resurrection is about to sound for Armenia. Did I say in opening that on one of the peaks of Armenia, this very Armenia of which we speak, in Noah’92s time the ark landed, according to the myth, as some think, but according to God’92s ’93say-so,’94 as I know, and that it was after a long storm of forty days and forty nights, called the Deluge, and that afterward a dove went forth from that ark and returned with an olive leaf in her beak? Even so now, there is another ark being launched, but this one goes sailing, not over a deluge of water, but a deluge of blood’97the ark of American sympathy’97and that ark, landing on Ararat, from its window shall fly the dove of kindness and peace, to find the olive leaf of returning prosperity, while all the mountains of Moslem prejudice, oppression and cruelty shall stand fifteen cubits under. Meanwhile, we would like to gather all the dying groans of all the five hundred thousand victims of Mohammedan oppression, and intone them into one prayer that would move the earth and the heavens, hundreds of millions of Christian voices, American and European, crying out, ’93O, God Most High! Spare thy children. With mandate from the throne hurl back upon their haunches the horses of the Kurdish cavalry. Stop the rivers of blood. With the earthquakes of thy wrath shake the foundations of the palaces of the Sultan. Move all the nations of Europe to command cessation of cruelty. If need be, let the warships of civilized nations boom their indignation. Let the Crescent go down before the Cross, and the Mighty One who hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written ’91King of kings and Lord of lords,’92 go forth, conquering and to conquer. Thine, O Lord, is the kingdom! Hallelujah! Amen!’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage