THE ARMENIAN CHURCH: ITS HISTORY AND

то

ITS WRONGS.

all who have followed the recent course of events in Asia Minor it is evident that a crisis has been reached in the development of the Armenian question, and that the utmost vigilance is required on the part of the Powers responsible for the conclusion of the Berlin Treaty. By the sixty-first article of that historic document the Porte undertook "to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds," as well as "to periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application." For the last fourteen years that stipulation, which constitutes the neglected charter of Armenian liberties, has been persistently violated by the Porte, while the Powers have failed to enforce its fulfilment. Petty jealousies, not based on real divergences of interest, have stood in the way of concerted action. Public attention has been diverted to other issues, the facts have been obscured by misrepresentation, and the channels through which information can penetrate from the East to the West have been poisoned at their source. The knowledge to be obtained from Consular reports, scanty as it necessarily must be, is in itself, however, sufficient to lay the foundations of a powerful indictment against the Turkish methods of administration; and, when supplemented by the testimony of persons living in the localities themselves, intimately acquainted with the circumstances they describe, and whose items of intelligence are conveyed by a slow and difficult process into the hands of their friends in Europe, those reports show that the continued neglect of the Powers to perform their obligations, and to bring pressure to bear on the Porte with a view to an improvement in the condition of Armenia, has resulted in a recrudescence of oppressions and persecutions, and has brought about a state of affairs which constitutes, unless

remedial measures be adopted in sufficient time, a menace to the peace of the world as well as to the continued existence of the Ottoman Empire.

What are the principal causes of the present crisis? In the first place, the unchecked raids and exactions of the Kurds, particularly in the vilayets of Van, Bitlis and Erzeroum, continue to render insecure the lives and property of the peaceable Armenians of the plains. The work of Mrs. Bishop and the Consular reports received from these districts, notably those of the late Mr. Clifford Lloyd, supply ample confirmation of the existing lawlessness.

In the next place, the evils of the situation are aggravated, not in those vilayets only, but throughout Asia Minor, by the tyranny and exactions of the Turkish officials themselves, and by the want of protection accorded by them to those over whom they bear rule. In March of the present year, for instance, information reached this country that at Yozgat and at Cæsarea goods coming by caravan addressed to Christian merchants were continually pillaged by Moslem villagers on the way, so that orders for goods from Constantinople could not be carried out; that all business was at a standstill; that the prisons were full of Armenians who had been arbitrarily arrested; and that for all this there was no redress. In the same neighbourhood, in February, a large body of police and Bashi-Bazouks was sent to arrest men who were supposed to be in hiding at Everek, with the result that the guardians of public order attacked every Armenian house in the town, broke open boxes for valuables, and violated several women. Incidents of that kind are of frequent occurrence. At Marsovan, again, the burning of part of the Anatolia College, and the arrest of two professors and many other innocent persons by order of Husref Pasha, a Circassian ex-brigand, who was at the head of the gendarmerie, are facts which have attained of late to widespread notoriety.

Thirdly, there has been a considerable increase in the number of Armenian prisoners, which is now estimated by one of the highest authorities in the National Church of Armenia to amount to nearly two thousand, who are scattered over Asia Minor, and are also confined in prisons outside its limits, as, for instance, at St. Jean d'Acre and Tripoli, in Barbary. In numerous instances torture has been added to the other horrors of a Turkish gaol. In the case of one of the prisoners at Angora, live insects were inserted under the skin, and other sufferings inflicted, with the object of extorting false evidence.

In the fourth place, one of the aggravating features in the situation consists in the attacks which have been directed against the Christian religious bodies. The occurrences at Marsovan, and the irregularities in the proceedings before the court at Angora, afford instances of the treatment which has been meted out to pastors and teachers of the Evangelical Protestants, of whom it is believed that there are some fifty thousand among the Armenians. Roman Catholics, too, have been subjected to persecution, though in their case it has taken the milder form of extortion by blackmail. But the chief sufferers have been the members of the National Church of Armenia, to which the majority of the people belong, and which excites a special interest by reason of its great antiquity, its continuous history, and the oppressions it has undergone during the greater part of its long career. The recently elected Catholicos, Khrimian, was, until the last few weeks, forcibly detained at Jerusalem, in violation of the sixty-second article of the Berlin Treaty, and prevented from journeying to Etchmiadzin, the Armenian Lambeth, now in Russian territory. The Archbishops of Marash and Zeitoum are still in prison after a mock trial; the Bishops of Moush and of Fermouz share the same fate; and a vast number of clergy and schoolmasters have been sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for having given instruction in the principles of the Christian religion to congregations and classes assembled in Armenian churches and schools.

The demands put forward by the Armenians are neither extravagant nor revolutionary. They do not even claim for themselves the amount of local autonomy which has been granted, to the advantage of all concerned, to the inhabitants of the Lebanon, though a claim of that kind would come with great force from a people who have exhibited in various parts of the world, wherever they have had the opportunity, so many conspicuous examples of administrative and commercial ability, and who, with a history, a literature, and a civilisation of their own, are at present exposed to the cruelty and rapacity of the less civilised races with which they are interspersed. What the Armenians ask is simply that the reforms stipulated in the Berlin Treaty should be carried into effect, and that the Powers should use every effort to bring to an end the persecutions of which they are the victims. The best friends of the Armenians have steadily discountenanced any advocacy of seditious proceedings, and prefer to appeal to the sense of justice of Europe and to the best interests of the Turkish Government. The Anglo-Armenian Associa

tion has confined itself to the task of carrying out the policy laid down by its founder, Mr. Bryce, of collecting information from trustworthy sources, and of endeavouring to influence public opinion and Governmental opinion in this and other questions, with the object of securing redress for the grievous wrongs to which the Armenians have to submit, by bringing home to the signatory Powers the real character of the evils for which they are in a great measure morally responsible.

It may be asked, what are the specific reforms which may be regarded as involved in the sixty-first article of the Berlin Treaty ? A gentleman whose intimate experience of Turkish and Armenian affairs extends over a considerable number of years, and whose high authority. would at once be recognised, if it were desirable to make his name public, enumerates, in addition to protection of homes, lives, and property, the following heads under which improvements might be effected: (1) That the Armenian Church should be free to manage its own affairs under the Constitution granted by the late Sultan; (2) that there should be permission for the Armenians, and other Christians as well, to build churches and worship according to their faith; (3) that Christian education should be freed from the limits lately imposed upon it, that Christian property should not be taxed to support Moslem schools, and that the Armenians, as well as other Christians, should be entitled to educate their children according to their own faith; (4) that the Armenians should be freed from exceptional laws and police regulations, i.e., that they should not be treated as criminals merely because they are Armenian Christians; (5) that in the courts and civil administration the Armenians should be represented, and treated on an equality with Moslems; and (6) that the Armenians should be allowed to carry on their legitimate commercial affairs without interference." These demands, which are essentially moderate and reasonable in character, may be regarded as the irreducible minimum which England and Europe should strive to obtain for the Armenian subjects of the Porte.

It is clearly desirable that England should do everything that in her lies to secure concerted action on the part of as many of the Powers as may be willing, in the interests of peace and humanity, to co-operate with her in the task. She herself has not been altogether unmindful of her duty in the matter. It was mainly through the influence of the British Foreign Office that in April of the present year some five hundred Armenians who had been arrested in the provinces of Sivas and Angora, on charges of alleged sedition, were released from prison.

Neither have the strenuous efforts of Sir Arthur Nicolson on behalf of the Angora prisoners been altogether unavailing. More complete results, however, might be obtained if England were to take the initiative in inducing other Powers to act with her-not necessarily by issuing an invitation to a formal conference, a proceeding against which objections might be urged; but by securing their assistance in a joint remonstrance, with the object of bringing about the fulfilment of the pledges contained in the sixty-first article. There are good reasons for thinking that some, at any rate, of the signatory Powers would not be disinclined to participate in action of that character, if the invitation were seriously pressed, and that their united efforts would attain the desired object with less friction than would be the case if isolated action were alone attempted.

Why, it may be asked, should England be expected to take the initiative at all? The answer is, first, that it was mainly through the influence of this country that the definite advantages which the Armenians would have gained under the sixteenth article of the Treaty of San Stefano were replaced by the problematical benefits to be derived from the sixty-first article of the Treaty of Berlin. In the second place, under the Cyprus Convention "the Sultan promised to England," in return for certain advantages, "to introduce necessary reforms, to be agreed upon later between the two Powers, into the Government and for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte" in the Asiatic territories. It is evident, therefore, on these two grounds, that Great Britain, by virtue of her action in 1878, assumed a moral obligation of a peculiar character, in addition to that which she shares with the other Powers. Even if the Cyprus Convention be regarded as dead or dormant, that moral obligation remains unimpaired.

The recent occurrences at Angora have excited in this country an amount of attention and of indignation which recalls, in some measure, the feeling created in the public mind by the treatment of the Neapolitan prisoners and by the record of the Bulgarian horrors. Two facts must, however, be remembered. The first is that the Angora trials constitute merely an incident in a series of long-continued oppressions and persecutions. The second is that neither in the case of Naples nor in that of Bulgaria had this country the political or the moral responsibility which she has incurred in the present instance. King Bomba was not kept on his throne by virtue of any Berlin Treaty of which England was a signatory, and there was no Cyprus Convention by which we were bound to defend the Turkish power in Bulgaria against external