And the years that have followed from 1896 to 1909 have had the same tale of woe to unfold; a tale of horrors such as have never been surpassed in the history of nations.
The opinion of the Turkish Pasha, “The way to get rid of the Armenian Question, is to get rid of the Armenians” was followed by “le Sultan Rouge,” and that the monster and assassin who sat on the Turkish throne from 1876 to 1909 was not able to accomplish this policy to the bitter end of complete extermination, was no doubt due to the grit and stubborn endurance of the victims.
A Turkish writer has made the remark, “There are Armenians, but there is no Armenia.” This assertion would be true if meant in a political sense only, for of all civilized races on earth, Armenians are politically one of the most forlorn, but the country has not been wiped off the map. It still occupies the geographical place it has held since history has been written. The land of the Euphrates and Tigris, that Araxes valley, where, as simple and primitive Armenians will to this day assert in unshaken belief, God made man in His own image, and the country round the base of Ararat, where the generations of men once more began to people the earth.
Once the land of Ararat was an independent kingdom until the tide of victory rolled over it and conquered its independence. Hemmed round by three Great Empires, Russian, Turkish and Persian, the unfortunate geographical position of the country became the cause of its people’s ruin.
It is of bitter interest to Armenians to know that Ararat is the point where the three Empires, Russian, Turkish and Persian, meet, whilst the children of the land of Ararat have passed under the sovereignties of Czar, Sultan and Shah. Thus it may be true that there is no Armenia in the political sense of the word, but if Armenia has lost her independence, the Armenian people have survived.
The Author of “Transcaucasia and Ararat” thus writes of them:--
“The Armenians are an extraordinary people, with a tenacity of national life scarcely inferior to that of the Jews.”
The remark is true. There are two nations of antiquity who notwithstanding unremitting persecutions, and centuries of loss of independence, have survived their contemporary nations; their fortunes have run on parallel lines, though their national characteristics have been different in some respects. Together with his other avocations, the Armenian is mountaineer, soldier, labourer, agriculturist, while the Jew is purely a dweller in cities; but the same virility of life, the same mental and physical strength have sustained both. The sons of Heber, great grandson of Shem, have however become wise in their generation, the Jew is now more American than the American, more British than the British, more French than the French, more German than the German. Not so the sons of Haik, great grandson of Japhet, for with the same determined obstinacy with which he has clung to his faith, the Armenian clings to his nationality. He has known how to resist Russian endeavours of absorption, and Turkish systems of extermination. When he gives up his nationality, it will be the story of the hunted animal brought to its last gasp.