II

BY THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF MEATH

'CONSTANTINOPLE Riots.

Further details of massacres. Six thousand defenceless people murdered.' So run the headlines of a sober, unsensational, leading newspaper, appearing this 9th day of September, in the year of our Lord 1896.

Six thousand defenceless people murdered! One's breath is taken away if one thinks of the meaning of these words. If 6,000 people had passed away within a few days by the visitation of God; if they had died of, say, the cholera, or of any similar deadly disease; if they had suddenly been swallowed up by an earthquake, or had been overwhelmed, as sometimes has occurred in China, by a gigantic flood, we should all have been horrified; but to be murdered, and murdered in cold blood by their fellow-subjects and fellow-citizens, suddenly and without warning, not in China or in some far-off, semi-civilised or uncivilised land in Asia or Africa, but in Europe, and in a capital largely inhabited by Europeans, under the very walls of the palace of their sovereign, to whose ears their dying shrieks may quite possibly have reached, within sight of the Embassies representing the most powerful and most civilised countries of the world, and under the very eyes of the police and soldiery paid by them for their protection and defence, but who, under the spell of some mysterious influence, stood passive spectators of these horrible scenes of carnage! What more sickening and ghastly story of wholesale murder is it in the power of the imagination of man to conceive?

One has to return in thought to the awful massacres of St. Bartholomew, when a sovereign hounded on his soldiery to the destruction of his own people, for a parallel to the fearful situation which now reigns in Constantinople. But this dreadful crime occurred more than three centuries ago, and it might have been hoped that the world had made some progress since those days.

Let it not be said that the 6,000 men suffered for the crime committed by some twenty-five of their co-religionists in seizing by

violence the Ottoman Bank and in hurling bombs at the Turkish soldiers.

These few misguided men were responsible for their own crimes and assuredly deserved punishment, but what had the innocent 6,000 done that they should be massacred in cold blood? As well say that because some Protestant Englishmen have been wounded by the bombs of Roman Catholic Irish dynamiters, that therefore it would be legitimate for the British to massacre 6,000 Irish Roman Catholics in the streets of London.

The Sultan is directly responsible for these murders, and should not be allowed to escape from the just punishment of such an awful crime. When massacres occurred in Armenia it was possible for him to plead inability to restrain the passions of his Mohammedan subjects. in distant portions of the Empire. He could urge that inefficient police and undisciplined soldiery far from the restraining hand of his centralised power had broken loose from his control, and, excited by their Mussulman fanaticism, had committed crimes in the heart of Asia which he greatly regretted and which should never be repeated. He might, I say, plead this in extenuation of the horrible massacres in Asia Minor which have justly excited the wrath and indignation of Europe, though every indication has gone to show that, far from restraining his soldiery and officials in these distant regions, he directly encouraged them in their bloody work of massacre; but no such excuse can be made in the present case.

The Sultan of Turkey, whatever may be his power in the distant portions of his Empire, is certainly supreme and all-powerful in his own capital. He surrounds himself with the most trustworthy and best disciplined men both in the army and in the police. It is notorious that nothing can take place in his capital without his being instantly acquainted with it. His spies are in all parts of the city, and report direct to him the conversation and movements of all suspected persons. A revolutionary movement in which so many persons were engaged as in the attack on the Ottoman Bank could hardly have been organised without some intimation of the intention of the conspirators having reached the ears of the Sultan through his numerous detectives, and in the excited state of the populace it would only have been natural to anticipate that some reprisals would be made by the Mussulmans on the Christians, if precautions were not. taken to prevent them.

Had the Sultan desired the massacre of the Armenian Christians in his capital he could not have planned a better course of action than to allow these twenty-five mad revolutionaries to carry out their foolish and wicked designs, knowing that the Mussulmans would certainly revenge the outrage, and that if the police and soldiers were held aloof from the disturbances for forty-eight hours, the dis

contented and, from his point of view, dangerous Christian Armenians, the source of so much trouble and annoyance, would be wiped out of existence, and that he and his advisers would be freed for ever from their hateful presence in the capital of his Empire. It is impossible to say what actually occurred in the palace, but knowing the power of the Sultan, and the means at his disposal for becoming acquainted with all that was going on in his capital, and for suppressing at once any riot or disturbance, and considering that murder was permitted to go on practically unchecked for some forty-eight hours, and that 6,000 men lost their lives during that time, almost within sight of the palace of the all-powerful autocrat, the man who can acquit him of some share in these atrocious crimes must indeed be gifted with a charitable spirit.

"The Assassin who sits on the throne of Turkey. . . Him whom I wish always to call the Great Assassin.'

Such are the terms applied in recently published letters by Mr. Gladstone to the Sultan. To most men the name will not appear exaggerated or undeserved.

Righteous as is the indignation which we may feel towards the Assassin on the throne, we cannot, in justice, forget that there are exalted and distinguished personages in other countries who cannot be exonerated from all blame in regard to these massacres. We know from the despatches published in the official Blue-books that the Prime Minister of England was prepared after the first massacres of Armenians in Asia Minor to have put a stop, if necessary by force, to any recurrence of these horrors, had he received the smallest encouragement from the great European Powers, and that he reluctantly desisted from interference on hearing that Russia would not only not assist England in her efforts to stop further massacres, but would resent any independent action on her part. It has been stated, with what truth I know not, that private approaches were made by the Government of Great Britain to that of the United States (whose people had shown marked sympathy with the victims of persecution, and whose missionaries had been eye-witnesses of many atrocities, and had personally suffered from the disturbed state of the country), and that Lord Salisbury declared his readiness to risk the dangers of foreign hostility could he be assured of the support of the Republic of the West, but that such an assurance could not be given, as American traditional policy did not permit the Republic to entangle herself in European alliances, or to take any part in the political affairs of the Old World.

Whatever others may have done, the Prime Minister of Great Britain has, at all events, performed his duty. Short of plunging his country and Europe into a general war for the sake of the Armenians

-an act of quixotic madness, which even such a righteous cause

would have failed to justify-he could not have done more. If he has failed to bring about a concert of Europe for the purpose of compelling the Turk to cease his murders and brutalities and to conduct himself like a civilised being, the fault lies not with Great Britain, but with those Powers whose selfish jealousy forbids them to combine with their neighbours in enforcing peace and respect for law and order on the bloodthirsty tyrant of the Bosphorus.

As I write, a telegram from Paris states that while at breakfast together on the journey from Breslau to Goerlitz, the German Emperor spoke with the Czar upon his approaching visit to France. His Majesty is said to have alluded to his projected stay in the French capital as a fresh pledge of peace, and then, referring to his late visit to Vienna, he announced that a complete understanding had been arrived at between Russia and Austria, with the object of effecting a pacific solution of the Eastern Question. In any case, the telegram continues, the Czar stated that Russia and Austria would only actively intervene in the event of any third Power endeavouring to act alone.

Of course, this statement may be perfectly untrue, and may have its sole foundation in the brain of a Parisian reporter; but if it be true, it means that whilst Russia and Austria decline to interfere in the internal affairs of Turkey, they will not permit any other Power to do so.

In the meantime the blood of 6,000 men, murdered in Europe, in addition to that of the thousands who have already met their deaths during the last six months in the Sultan's dominions on the other side of the Bosphorus, cries aloud to Heaven for vengeance.

How long will the populations of Christian Europe permit these atrocities to be committed with impunity by the crowned assassin of the Yildiz Kiosk?

His object is evidently to sweep from his dominions the hated Giaour-either by death or banishment. Having murdered 6,000 Armenians, he is now deporting the rest to the inhospitable shores of Anatolia and to other distant portions of his Empire, where death awaits them either by starvation or at the hands of mobs of fanatical Mussulmans, who assuredly await their arrival.

Encouraged by the jealousies between the Powers, which in the past have ensured him impunity, the Sultan seems to have become reckless. If he be permitted to destroy the Armenians, who can guarantee that in his madness he will not attempt similar violence against Christian foreigners residing within his dominions? Are we to wait for justice to be executed until he commits such a final act of murderous folly? In such a case, the one remaining satisfaction would be that this scene would be the last in the horrible drama, as

the Assassin, his throne, and his dynasty would once for all be swept from the soil of Europe amidst the universal execrations of an outraged world.

Let us hope that the Powers of Europe will awake to their respon sibilities and anticipate such a fell catastrophe by deposing the reckless Imperial madman before he can shed further blood, or finally exterminate the last remnants of an ancient Christian race.

MEATH.