Chapter VIII

The stories that have been so assiduously circulated about wholesale “massacres” of Armenians have a distinct object in view, viz: to influence the future policy of the British Government and to prepare the public mind for the desired settlement—the incorporation of Armenia in the Russian Empire.

The advocates of this arrangement naturally uphold the correlative policy of Great Britain annexing Mesopotamia. Superficially considered the idea looks attractive, however opposed it may be to the proclaimed objects with which we embarked on this war. It would appear, however, that the supporters of the scheme have not properly considered the profound underlying dangers of their project. The very fact of the great importance attached to the Anglo-Russian Alliance should inspire one with the gravest doubts as to the wisdom of the suggestion. Two great Powers with frontiers meeting along such a tract of country may at any moment not see eye to eye on every question. There is no continuity in international politics; they change from day to day according to the needs of a situation which can never be permanently fixed. It is the duty of statesmen to look further than the immediate present, and England will never forgive it, if in the settlement at the conclusion of the war they permit mistakes, which would almost inevitably lead to friction between two prospective neighbours and present friends.

In this connection it may be useful to recall the prophetic words of Sir Henry Layard, one of our ablest and most far-sighted diplomatists:

It would probably signify little to the rest of Europe whether
Russia retained Armenia or not. But England has to consider
the effect of the annexation to Russia of this important
Province upon the British Possessions in India. Russia would
then command the whole of Asia Minor and the great valley of
the Euphrates and Tigris which would inevitably fall into her
hands in course of time.... The moral effect of the conquest of
Armenia and the annexation of Ghilan and Mazanderan by Russia
upon our Mohammedan subjects, and upon the populations of
Central Asia cannot be overlooked by a statesman who attaches
any value to the retention of India as part of the British
Empire.

Mr. Grattan Geary, than whom no writer has studied more closely the question at issue, speaks thus of the enormous advantage which the Power in possession of highland Kurdistan would have over the one that ruled lowland Mesopotamia:

Diarbekir is the key to the valleys of both the Tigris and
the Euphrates—once there, they can decide whether they will
move down the former to Bagdad, or down the latter to a point
where they can command both rivers and reach the gulf ...
the forests at the head of both rivers supply the means of
constructing with small cost light boats or rafts, for floating
reinforcements and military stores to any point where a General
might choose to establish an entrenched camp, so that it would
be almost impossible to shake his hold of the country, once he
had entered and taken possession.... For it must be borne in
mind that the swift currents of those rivers will enable an
army to move without fatigue or difficulty from North to South,
while a force moving northwards must toil along a roadless
country where rapid marching is out of the question....
Once an army gets into the Mesopotamia plains, there is no
fortified place there that could withstand it for an hour,
and the current of the rivers would save even the trouble of
locomotion. There would be nothing absolutely novel in this
line of invasion. The Emperor Trajan and a couple of centuries
later the Emperor Julian, descended the Euphrates with large
fleets put together in the Armenian mountains.

It is interesting to note that in Mr. Grattan Geary’s opinion a powerful nation holding Kurdistan could equally from Diarbekir overrun Syria and seriously menace Egypt.

It may therefore not be out of place to consider how the Armenian question stood immediately before the outbreak of the European war.

The policy of the British Government, bound by the Cyprus Convention to maintain the integrity of the Sultan’s dominions in Asia, had been to strengthen the position of Turkey by loyally endeavouring to ameliorate the unrest which the revolutionary societies had stirred up amongst the Armenians. It is well known that all schemes of reform proposed by Great Britain or by Turkey herself, had been without exception cold-shouldered or openly opposed by Russia, firstly because they would, if successful, destroy any excuse for intervention and subsequent annexation; secondly because they contained some form or other of self-government, which Russia feared would not only encourage the national feeling of the Ottoman Armenians (who would look to England as their protector rather than to Russia), but would also encourage a similar national sentiment amongst the Armenians in the Caucasus.

With the advent of the Anglo-Russian Entente, our policy was revised. There are many Englishmen who believed, and still firmly believe, that wise and prescient statesmanship should have succeeded in reconciling, or at least allaying, the hereditary animosity which existed between our new friend and our old, traditional ally, and that in any case it would have been more worthy and more dignified, besides being to the advantage of this country, had we openly declared that under no circumstances would we sacrifice sacred obligations and old friendships to a policy of expediency. Public opinion, awakened by recent occurrences in the Near East, at last realizes how mistaken was the attitude of our Government towards Turkey. Official Russia, we believe, would have appreciated and accepted our point of view. Progressive Russia most certainly would have done so.

Unfortunately the British Government apparently thought otherwise. In 1912, the Porte without any outside pressure and being genuinely anxious to improve the condition of her Asiatic provinces, demanded (under the terms of the Cyprus Convention) that they should be supplied with British administrators, but these were refused.

The Russian Government then took up the question of reforms, and Turkey appealed to Germany to protect her from the very unpalatable scheme put forward by Russia. Germany gained a nominal victory, but success really rested with Russia. As a compromise a thoroughly unpracticable scheme was adopted, by which two Inspector Generals were appointed, one of whom was a Dutchman and the other a Norwegian. Neither had any knowledge of the Near East: one spoke no language other than his own, and the other in addition spoke only a few words of French. Then came the European War, and neither of these gentlemen ever reached Kurdistan. The scheme was foredoomed to failure, as was, indeed, expected. In this connection the Russian “Orange Book” is full of interest. We find there that during the negotiations, on July 8th, 1913, M. Sazanoff sent the Porte a vigorous despatch, in which he laid stress on the fact that the integrity of the Ottoman Empire largely depended upon the degree of pacification of the Armenian provinces. He further declared that:

The Imperial Government cannot admit a chronic state of
anarchy, which by reason of the proximity of the Turkish
frontier, cannot fail to have a most pernicious effect on the
neighbouring provinces of the Caucasus.

Further light is thrown on the situation as it was then, by an article published at that time in the “Nineteenth Century” by Mr. Noel Buxton, who had been travelling in Kurdistan. Mr. Buxton is all the more convincing because the object of the article apparently was to prove, that the only salvation of the district was annexation by Russia. Mr. Noel Buxton wrote:

The present aim of Russia’s policy is also, perhaps, to prevent
the Kurdish chiefs in the Turkish territory _from making terms
with the Turks or on the other hand with the Christians_, and
so to keep up the _excuse for possible intervention_.

Mr. Buxton then proceeds to justify this policy of creating disorder. It was the policy his friends the Bulgars had pursued with such success in Macedonia with the Komitadjis[11] (as was to be expected, we now find Mr. Buxton taking a prominent role in damning the Turks for the recent alleged massacres). Mr. Walter Guinness, M.P., in his description of a tour made in Kurdistan about the same time as Mr. Buxton, corroborates the evidence of that gentleman. He mentions numerous indications of an active Russian propaganda not only amongst the Armenians, but among the Kurds as well. He adds:

_Many of these (the Kurds) are armed with Russian rifles, and
in the mountains I found, in an out of the way village, a
Russian dressed as a Kurd, and living the life of the Kurds._

Russia was arming both the Kurds and the Orthodox Armenians. The object was two-fold: the Kurds would resist the measures taken by the local officials to enforce the decree against the carrying of rifles, which had been promulgated by the Turkish Government in order to enforce law and order, and the Armenians, excited by agents-provocateur and revolutionaries, would be encouraged to revolt. In either event there would be disturbances, which would enable Russia to point to the failure of European control as justification for her armed intervention followed by annexation, on the ground that this was the only possible solution. The observant student of current history will no doubt perceive in this desired end an interesting and instructive parallel to the handing over to Austria of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and her final cynical annexation of those provinces; whether the parallel would stop here, if the object is gained, may be told by some future historian.