“I SHALL DO NOTHING FOR THE ARMENIANS,” SAYS THE GERMAN AMBASSADOR

I suppose that there is no phase of the Armenian question which has aroused more interest than this: Had the Germans any part in it? To what extent was the Kaiser responsible for the wholesale slaughter of this nation? Did the Germans favour it, did they merely acquiesce, or did they oppose the persecutions? Germany, in the last four years, has become responsible for many of the blackest pages in history; is she responsible for this, unquestionably the blackest of all?

I presume most people will detect in the remarks of these Turkish chieftains certain resemblances to the German philosophy of war. Let me repeat certain phrases used by Enver while discussing the Armenian massacres. “The Armenians have brought this fate upon themselves.” “I explicitly warned them myself.” “We were fighting for our national existence.” “We were justified in resorting to any means that would accomplish these ends.” “We have no time to separate the innocent from the guilty.” “At the present time Turkey has only one duty; that is to win the war.”

These phrases somehow have a familiar ring, have they not? Indeed, I might rewrite all these interviews with Enver, use the word Belgium in place of Armenia, put the words in a German general’s mouth instead of Enver’s, and we should have almost a complete exposition of the German attitude toward subject peoples. But the teachings of the Prussians go deeper than this. There was one feature about the Armenian proceedings that was new, that was not Turkish at all. For centuries the Turks have ill-treated their Armenians and all their other subject peoples with inconceivable barbarity. Yet their methods have always been crude, clumsy, and unscientific. They excelled in beating out an Armenian’s brains with a club, and this unpleasant illustration is a perfect indication of the rough and primitive methods which they applied to the Armenian problem. They have understood the uses of murder, but not of murder as a fine art. But the Armenian proceedings of 1915 and 1916 evidenced{241} an entirely new mentality. This new conception was that of deportation. The Turks, in 500 years, had invented innumerable ways of physically torturing their Christian subjects, yet never before had it occurred to their minds to move them bodily from their homes, where they had lived for many thousands of years, and send them hundreds of miles away into the desert. Where did the Turks get this idea? I have already described how, in 1914, just before the European war, the Government moved not far from 100,000 (?) Greeks from their age-long homes along the Asiatic littoral to certain islands in the ?gean. I have also said that Admiral Usedom, one of the big German naval experts in Turkey, told me that the Germans had suggested this deportation to the Turks. But the all-important point is that this idea of deporting peoples en masse is, in modern times, exclusively Germanic. Anyone who reads the literature of Pan-Germany constantly meets it. These enthusiasts for a German world have deliberately planned, as part of their programme, the ousting of the French from certain parts of France, of Belgians from Belgium, of Poles from Poland, of Slavs from Russia, and other indigenous peoples from the territories which they have inhabited for thousands of years, and the establishment in the vacated lands of solid honest Germans. But it is hardly necessary to show that the Germans have advocated this as a state policy; they have actually been doing it in the last four years. They have moved we do not know how many thousands of Belgians and French from their native land. Austria-Hungary has killed a large part of the Serbian population and moved thousands of Serbian children into her own territories, intending to bring them up as loyal subjects of the Empire. To what degree this movement of populations has taken place we shall not know until the end of the war, but it has certainly gone on extensively.

Certain German writers have even advocated the application of this policy to the Armenians. According to the Paris Temps, Paul Rohrbach, “in a conference held at Berlin some time ago, recommended that Armenia should be evacuated by the Armenians. They should be dispersed in the direction of Mesopotamia, and their places should be taken by Turks in such a fashion that Armenia should be freed of all Russian influence and that Mesopotamia might be provided with farmers which it now lacked.” The purpose of all this was evident enough. Germany was building the Bagdad railroad across the Mesopotamian desert. This was an essential detail in the achievement of the great new German Empire, extending from Hamburg to the{242} Persian Gulf. But this railroad could never succeed unless there should develop a thrifty and industrious population to feed it. The lazy Turk would never become such a colonist. But the Armenian was made of just the kind of stuff which this enterprise needed. It was entirely in accordance with German conceptions of statesmanship to seize these people in the lands where they had lived for ages and transport them violently to this dreary, hot desert. The mere fact that they had always lived in a temperate climate would furnish no impediment in Pan-German eyes. I found that Germany had been sowing these ideas broadcast for several years; I even found that German savants had been lecturing on this subject in the East. “I remember attending a lecture by a well-known German professor,” an Armenian tells me. “His main point was that throughout their history the Turks had made a great mistake in being too merciful toward the non-Turkish population. The only way to ensure the prosperity of the Empire, according to this speaker, was to act without any sentimentality toward all the subject nationalities and races in Turkey who did not fall in with the plans of the Turks’.”

The Pan-Germanists are on record in the matter of Armenia. I shall content myself with quoting the words of the author of “Mittel-Europa,” Friedrich Naumann, perhaps the ablest propagator of Pan-German ideas. In his work on “Asia,” Naumann, who started life as a Christian clergyman, deals in considerable detail with the Armenian massacres of 1895-96. I need only quote a few passages to show the attitude of German state policy on such infamies. “If we should take into consideration merely the violent massacre of from 80,000 to 100,000 Armenians,” writes Naumann, “we can come to but one opinion—we must absolutely condemn with all anger and vehemence both the assassins and their instigators. They have perpetrated the most abominable massacres upon masses of people, more numerous and worse than those indicted by Charlemagne on the Saxons. The tortures which Lepsius has described surpass anything we have ever known. What, then, prohibits us from falling upon the Turk, and saying to him: ‘Get thee gone, wretch!’ Only one thing prohibits us, for the Turk answers: ‘I, too, I fight for my existence!’—and, indeed, we believe him. We believe, despite the indignation which the bloody Mohammedan barbarism arouses in us, that the Turks are defending themselves legitimately, and, before anything else, we see in the Armenian question and Armenian massacres a matter of internal Turkish policy, merely an episode of the agony through which a{243} great empire is passing which does not propose to let itself die without making a last attempt to save itself by bloodshed. All the great Powers, excepting Germany, have adopted a policy which aims to upset the actual state of affairs in Turkey. In accordance with this, they demand for the subject peoples of Turkey the rights of man, or of humanity, or of civilisation, or of political liberty—in a word, something that will make them the equals of the Turks. But just as little as the ancient Roman despotic state could tolerate the Nazarene’s religion, just as little can the Turkish Empire, which is really the political successor of the Eastern Roman Empire, tolerate any representation of Western free Christianity among its subjects. The danger for Turkey in the Armenian question is one of extinction. For this reason she resorts to an act of a barbarous Asiatic state; she has destroyed the Armenians to such an extent that they will not be able to manifest themselves as a political force for a considerable period. A horrible act, certainly, an act of political despair, shameful in its details, but still a piece of political history, in the Asiatic manner.... In spite of the displeasure which the German Christian feels at these accomplished facts, he has nothing to do except quietly to heal the wounds so far as he can, and then to let matters take their course. For a long time our policy in the Orient has been determined: we belong to the group that protects Turkey, that is the fact by which we must regulate our conduct.... We do not prohibit any zealous Christian from caring for the victims of these horrible crimes, from bringing up the children and nursing the adults. May God bless these good acts like all other acts of faith. Only we must take care that acts of charity do not take the form of political acts which are likely to thwart our German policy. The internationalist, he who belongs to the English school of thought, may march with the Armenians. The nationalist, he who does not intend to sacrifice the future of Germany to England, must, on questions of external policy, follow the path marked out by Bismarck, even if it is merciless in its sentiments.... National policy: that is the profound moral reason why we must, as statesmen, show ourselves indifferent to the sufferings of the Christian peoples of Turkey, however painful that may be to our human feelings.... That is our duty, which we must recognise and confess before God and before man. If for this reason we now maintain the existence of the Turkish state, we do it in our own self-interest, because what we have in mind is our great future.... On one side lie our duties as a nation, on the other our duties as men. There are times when, in a conflict of duties, we{244} can choose a middle ground. That is all right from a human standpoint, but rarely right in a moral sense. In this instance, as in all analogous situations, we must clearly know on which side lies the greatest and most important moral duty. Once we have made such a choice we must not hesitate. William II. has chosen. He has become the friend of the Sultan, because he is thinking of a greater, independent Germany.”

Such was the German state philosophy as applied to the Armenians, and I had the opportunity of observing German practice as well. As soon as the early reports reached Constantinople it occurred to me that the most feasible way of stopping the outrages would be for the diplomatic representatives of all countries to make a joint appeal to the Ottoman Government. I approached Wangenheim on this subject in the latter part of March. His antipathy to the Armenians became immediately apparent. He began denouncing them in unmeasured terms; like Talaat and Enver, he affected to regard the Van episode as an unprovoked rebellion, and, in his eyes, as in theirs, the Armenians were simply traitorous vermin.

“I will help the Zionists,” he said, thinking that this remark would be personally pleasing to me, “but I shall do nothing whatever for the Armenians.”

Wangenheim affected to regard the Armenian question as a matter that chiefly affected the United States. My constant intercession on their behalf apparently created the impression, in his Germanic mind, that any mercy shown this people would be a concession to the American Government. And at that moment he was not disposed to do anything that would please the American people.

“The United States is apparently the only country that takes much interest in the Armenians,” he said. “Your missionaries are their friends and your people have constituted themselves their guardians. The whole question of helping them is therefore an American matter. How then, can you expect me to do anything as long as the United States is selling ammunition to the enemies of Germany? Mr. Bryan has just published his Note, saying that it would be unneutral not to sell munitions to England and France. As long as your Government maintains that attitude we can do nothing for the Armenians.”

Probably no one except a German logician would ever have detected any relation between our sale of war materials to the Allies and Turkey’s attacks upon hundreds of thousands of Armenian women and children. But that was about as much progress as I made with Wangenheim at that time. I spoke to{245} him frequently, but he invariably offset my pleas for mercy to the Armenians by references to the use of American shells at the Dardanelles. A coolness sprang up between us soon afterward, the result of my refusal to give him “credit” for having stopped the deportation of French and German civilians to the Gallipoli Peninsula. After our somewhat tart conversation over the telephone, when he had asked me to telegraph Washington that he had not “hetzed” the Turks in this matter, our visits to each other ceased for several weeks.

There were certain influential Germans in Constantinople who did not accept Wangenheim’s point of view. I have already referred to Paul Weitz, for thirty years the correspondent of the Frankfürter Zeitung, who probably knew more about affairs in the Near East than any other German. Although Wangenheim constantly looked to Weitz for information, he did not always take his advice. Weitz did not accept the orthodox imperial attitude towards Armenia, for he believed that Germany’s refusal effectively to intervene was doing his Fatherland everlasting injury. Weitz was constantly presenting this view to Wangenheim, but he made little progress. Weitz told me about this himself, in January, 1916, a few weeks before I left Turkey. I quote his own words on this subject:

“I remember that you told me at the beginning,” said Weitz, “what a mistake Germany was making in the Armenian matters. I agreed with you perfectly, but when I urged this view upon Wangenheim he twice threw me out of the room!”

Another German who was opposed to the atrocities was Neurath, the Conseiller of the German Embassy. His indignation reached such a point that his language to Talaat and Enver became almost undiplomatic. He told me, however, that he had failed to influence them.

“They are immovable and are determined to pursue their present course,” Neurath said.

Of course, no Germans could make much impression on the Turkish Government as long as the German Ambassador refused to interfere, and, as time went on, it became more and more evident that Wangenheim had no desire to stop the deportations. He apparently wished, however, to re-establish friendly relations with me, and soon sent third parties to ask why I never came to see him. It is doubtful whether we would have met again had not a great personal affliction befallen him. In June Lieut.-Col. Leipzig, the German Military Attaché, died under the most tragic and mysterious circumstances in the railroad station at Lule Bourgas. He was killed by a revolver-shot. One story said{246} that the weapon had been accidentally discharged, another that the Colonel had committed suicide; still another that the Turks had assassinated him, mistaking him for Liman von Sanders. Leipzig was one of Wangenheim’s intimate friends; as young men they had been officers in the same regiment, and at Constantinople they were almost inseparable. I immediately called on the Ambassador to express my condolences. I found him very dejected and careworn. He told me that he had heart trouble, that he was almost exhausted, and that he had applied for a few weeks’ leave of absence. I knew that it was not only his comrade’s death that was preying upon Wangenheim’s mind. German missionaries were flooding Germany with reports about the Armenians and calling upon the German Government to stop them. Yet, overburdened and nervous as Wangenheim was this day, he gave many signs that he was still the same unyielding German militarist. A few days afterward, when he returned my visit, he asked:

“Where’s Kitchener’s Army?

“We are willing to surrender Belgium now,” he went on. “Germany intends to build an enormous fleet of submarines with great cruising radius. In the next war we shall therefore be able completely to blockade England, so we do not need Belgium for its submarine bases. We shall give her back to the Belgians, taking the Congo in exchange.”

I............