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I've never come across this reference
before, but I am so bowled over... C.F. Dixon-Johnson really told it like it
was, all the more impressive for having gone against the prevailing beliefs,
and particularly for defending a nation his own country was at war with. Now
THAT spells integrity..! Bravo.
Professor
Türkkaya Ataöv wrote the following, taken from www.ataa.org.
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The Russians
restricted the Armenian Church, schools and language; the Turks on the contrary were
perfectly tolerant and liberal as to all such matters. |
The First World War was a series of armed hostilities of the major
world powers between 1914 and 1918, in which the Entente of Britain, France and Tsarist
Russia (later joined by the U.S.A.) fought against Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman
Empire and some lesser states. The British and the Turks were, therefore, in the opposing
camps. Engaged in combats in four fronts (namely, the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia, the
Sinai and the Canal, Iraq and Gallipoli) and hard-pressed in the East, the Ottoman
Government decided on the deplacement of sections of the Armenian population. This
decision and the ensuing events caused much reaction on the part of the countries fighting
or opposing the Turks.
Nevertheless, a British writer, C.F. Dixon-Johnson, published a book
of 63 pages, entitled The Armenians, in the crucial year of 1916, to give the
public, in his own words in the Preface, "an opportunity of judging whether or not
the Armenian Question has another side than that which has been recently so assiduously
promulgated throughout the Western World". He adds that whatever hardships the
Armenians might have suffered, the responsibility for them must to a great extent rest
with those who "inspired their helpless dupes with impracticable aspirations which
were bound to lead to disaster". After preliminary remarks on the earliest history
and ethnological characteristics of the Armenians, the author refers to the rule of the
Seljuk Turks as being "mild and liberal". He notes that the early Turks
"greatly improved the condition of the country, restored law and erected many public
buildings..." (p. 14-15). He later (p. 19) observes that Sultan Mehmet the Second
(1444, 1451-81) of the Ottoman Turks "granted religious freedom" to the peoples
in his dominion, organizing "all the non-Moslems into communities or millets under
their own ecclesiastical chiefs, with absolute authority in civil and religious
matters".
The author quotes the following (p.20) comments of Sir Charles
Wilson, in the latter’s article in the Encyclopedia Britannica: "This imperium in
imperio secured the Armenians a recognized position before the law, the free enjoyment of
their religion, the possession of their churches and monasteries, and the right to educate
their children and manage their own municipal affairs..." He also cites
"Odysseus" (Sir Charles Eliot) who in his book Turkey in Europe (London, E.
Arnold, 1900) tells us that until the years succeeding the Turkish-Russian War of 1877-78,
"the Turks and Armenians got on excellently together... The Russians
restricted the Armenian Church, schools and language; the Turks on the contrary were
perfectly tolerant and liberal as to all such matters. They did not care how the Armenians
prayed, taught and talked... The Armenians were thorough Orientals and appreciated Turkish
ideas and habits... (They) were quite content to live among the Turks.... The balance of
wealth certainly remained with the Christians. The Turks treated them with good-humoured
confidence..." (p.21) He also quotes Gratan Geary’s Through Asiatic Turkey
(London, M.S. and R. Sampson, 1878), which records that the religious toleration of the
Ottoman Government "was complete" and that the state "never in any way
interfered with what the Christians did or taught in the schools or the churches.
"Geary writes that" it was impossible to desire more absolute liberty of worship
or teaching".
(…)
"...(Armenians) will undertake the most desperate political
crimes without the least forethought or preparation; they will bring ruin and disaster
on themselves and others without any hesitation..."
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"A few of the more educated Armenians hope
to secure in some way the autonomy of the country in which they by no means form the
majority of the population. Whether they could keep the Mussulman majority of the
population in order we need not inquire.... Asia Minor is Turkish.... The Armenian
Christians are the minority of the population."
As this British writer observes even in
1916, (when his country and the Turks were engaged in battles on three fronts), the
Armenians constituted the minority in Eastern Anatolia. Although there are
several other British and French documents establishing the same numerical fact; I
shall nevertheless limit myself to the text of C.F. Dixon-Johnson. He also quotes
Fred Burnaby who expresses the following opinion in his On Horseback Through Asia
Minor: ".... Should the Armenians ever get the upper hand in Anatolia, their
government would be much more corrupt than the actual administration. It was
corroborated by the Armenians themselves..." (p.28). He then cites (p.29)
Sir Mark Sykes expose of the Armenians in his The Caliph’s Last Heritage (London,
Macmillan, 1915):
"...They will undertake the most
desperate political crimes without the least forethought or preparation; they will
bring ruin and disaster on themselves and others without any hesitation; they will
sacrifice their own brothers and most valuable citizens to a wayward caprice; they
will enter largely into conspiracies with men in whom they repose not the slightest
confidence; they will overthrow their own national cause to vent some petty spite on
a private individual; they will at the very moment of danger grossly insult and
provoke one who might be their protector... they will betray the very person who
might serve their cause... The Armenian revolutionaries prefer to plunder their
co-religionists to their enemies; the anarchists of Constantinople threw bombs with
the intention of provoking a massacre of their fellow-countrymen.
… Writer C.F. Dixon-Johnson
then dwells on the "Armenian atrocities" and asserts that they have a
family likeness to the "Bulgarian atrocities". Comparing the British
Ambassador Sir Henry Layard’s dispatch to Lord Derby on the "Bulgarian
atrocities", dated 1877 with Sir Mark Sykes account of the events commencing
with the disturbances at Zeitun in 1895, he says that they show how both happenings
have originated and how both were "grossly exaggerated". He points out
that "every alleged massacre in Turkey is almost the same, whether we consider
the Bulgarian atrocities in 1876, the disturbances in Sassun in 1896, those in
Constantinople in the same year, or those at Van in 1915". He adds: "In
every case we find the same charges of connivance by local of officials acting under
orders from Constantinople, the same gross exaggerations and the same stories of
bestiality..." (p.32). Referring to
"unutterable" forms of torture of which the Turks are freely accused,
he quotes Odysseus: "These are often spoken of as being so terrible that the
details cannot be given in print, but I believe them to be largely the invention of
morbid and somewhat prurient brains. Medical testimony makes in certain that no
human being could survive the tortures which some Armenians are said to have
suffered without dying".
(…)
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...The
suggestions of the pro-Armenians that these were "unprovoked massacres inspired
by the Turkish Government" were false. |
Author Dixon-Johnson maintains that the
suggestions of the pro-Armenians that these were "unprovoked massacres inspired by
the Turkish Government" were false. He quotes the following passage from Sir
Edwin Pears book: "As a friend to the Armenians, revolt seemed to me purely
mischievous. Some of the extremists declared that while they recognized that hundreds of
innocent persons suffered from each of these attempts, they could provoke a big massacre
which would bring in foreign intervention." Dixon-Johnson goes on to note (p.37) that
in 1896, the revolutionaries having failed to stir up a general rise in Asia, were
"determined to adopt desperate measures in Constantinople in the hope of forcing the
hands of the Ambassadors. They attacked the Ottoman Bank with bombs and revolvers,
killing twelve guards. They seized the European staff as hostages and threatened to blow
up the building with all who were in it. The ambassadors appealed to the Porte, which
allowed them to guarantee a safe conduct to the conspirators. Bombs were also thrown in
the Grand Rue de Pera, and "some of the conspirators who had taken a position upon
the roofs of the houses in that, the principal thoroughfare of Constantinople, fired upon
the populace in the street below". Dixon-Johnson continues as follows:
"There seems little doubt
that the revolutionists had contemplated a series of attacks at different important
points, to be followed by a more or less general rising of the Armenian population....
"A cry went through the city that the
Armenians had risen in revolt and were massacring the other citizens. Many persons armed
themselves with cudgels and, joined by a cosmopolitan mob from Pera and Galata, many of
whom were Greek anxious to pay off old scores on their hated commercial rivals, wreaked
vengeance on the Armenian population. The soldiers and police took no part in the killing.
It is estimated that about 1,000 persons perished, including those killed by the bombs
and revolvers of the conspirators. What happened in London and Liverpool after the sinking
of the Lusitania affords an idea of how the East End people of London, who claim to be far
more highly educated... would have behaved if German desperadoes, after murdering twelve
of the sentinels on guard at the Bank of England, had been allowed to escape free in
deference to the representations of the American and Spanish Ambassadors, especially after
the fears and passions of the mob had been aroused by German aliens shooting and bombing
from the roofs of the houses..."
Dixon-Johnson also refers to the impressions of
Sidney Whitman, who came to Istanbul in 1896 as correspondent of the New York Herald. His
visit was in direct connection with the "so-called Armenian atrocities", as he
terms them. He reported from the Ottoman capital and also published his considered
opinions and eye-witness accounts in the Turkish Memories (New York, Scribner, 1914). For
some time, the diplomatic and consular representatives of the foreign powers in the
Ottoman capital were sending alarming reports to their governments and these, supplemented
by accounts from newspaper correspondents, had fanned a flame of resentment against the
Moslem Turks. This was more particularly the case in England and in the U.S.A. Gordon
Bennett, the proprietor of the New York Herald, had the "discernment to perceive that
the Armenian question was in the main a political one" (pp.10f) and that the
disturbances had their source in religious fanaticism directed against the Christian as
such". He wanted to give the Turks "an opportunity of making their own version
of things known to the world". He added: "In many cases it would appear that the
matter sent to the papers by their correspondents in Turkey is biased against the Turks.
This implies an injustice against which even a criminal on trial is protected".
...The Turks have fought
gallantly and cleanly, and have treated our wounded and prisoners with kindness and
humanity. It is inconceivable, therefore, that these same Turks without any
provocation (and Lord Bryce himself has said that there was no religious fanaticism),
should have committed the devilries of which they are accused...
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Correspondent Whitman states that the agitation on the part
of the Armenian committees in the different capitals of Europe had been carried on
to such purpose that there was hardly an American or English newspaper which had a
good word left to say of the Turks, let alone their government. He observes: "A
horde of adventurers of various nationalities, déclassés of every sphere of life,
cashiered officers among the rest, who had left their native country for its good,
were eking out precarious livelihood by providing newspaper correspondents, if not
Embassies, with backstairs information. The agitation carried on in England by Canon
McColl and the Duke of Westminster, backed by sundry fervent Nonconformists, had the
effect of exhibiting the fanatical Turk as thirsting for the blood of the
Christian".
And yet, Dixon-Johnson remarks, not a single Christian
other than the Armenians was molested. With regard to the Jews Sidney
Whitman tells us how a Jewish money charger, mistaken for an Armenian, had been set
on by the mob; when it was ascertained that he was a Jew, he was released but the
crowd ran after him, and brought him back to collect his money, which was scattered
on the ground. Dixon-Johnson asks: "Would any other mob in the world have acted
thus under similar conditions?" (p.39)
Correspondent Whitman further says that in one hospital he
visited he found about forty Turkish soldiers, who were lying there, wounded by
Armenian bombs or revolver shots during the street fighting. The same day the police
discovered a large quantity of explosive bombs in a Pera house, which, it was said,
had been brought there with Russian connivance. Whitman underlines that although
foreign correspondents were invited to inspect the find, which was afterwards
publicly exhibited at Tophane (Arsenal), such was the general disinclination to
admit any fact which could tell in favour of "the great provocation the Turks
had received from the Armenian revolutionaries that hardly and publicity was given
to this discovery of bombs".
Correspondent Whitman tells us that after the news had spread
to Europe of the attack on the Ottoman Bank and the events that followed, a number
of artists of illustrated newspapers arrived in Istanbul, commissioned to supply the
demand for atrocities. But the dead had been buried, and no women and children
suffered hurt, and no Armenian church had been desecrated. A certain Melton Prior,
the renowned war correspondent of the time, a man of strenuous and determined
temperament, one who wished to rise superior, "declined to invent what he had
not witnessed". Whitman adds: "But others were not equally scrupulous. I
subsequently saw an Italian illustrated paper containing harrowing pictures of women
and children being massacred in a church".
Coming to the events of 1915, Dixon-Johnson writes:
"Now... we find once more the same influence at work.... There is absolutely no
reason why we should implicitly believe the reports which have been so assiduously
circulated in the Press.... The exploiters of these stories are under the same
disability, having only heard one side, and that an extremely biased one". He
adds that no Englishman would condemn a prisoner on the evidence for the defence.
The Editor of the Economist says that "we must not allow our standards of proof
to decline in judging reports of atrocities". And this is especially necessary
"when sensational stories are passed as authentic reports for the acceptance of
a public prone to believe anything". Captain Granville Fortescue, a war
correspondent, gave an example of how stories were manufactured and disseminated by
means of the press all over the world, in his book What of the Dardanelles?:
"The rumours of a revolution in Turkey have been so many and frequent, that I
must state they have not the least foundation in fact.... Time and again I have read
long dispatches... which purport to describe the troubled condition in Turkey. I
remember an item that told of a riot in Constantinople. Reference was made to the
looting of the Pera Palace Hotel by a stop-the-war mob. On the date mentioned in the
dispatch I was in this hotel. The whole story was pure invention..."
Lord Bryce, Noel Buxton or Aneurin Williams, who spoke about
the events of 1915, would not willingly deceive the British and the world public,
but "some well-known hand" has been deceiving them. May not this hand have
been that of the wealthy Armenian Committees which are spread over Europe and
America, and who have never hesitated as to the means chosen for the attainment of
their objects, because with them the end justifies the means?" (p.43)
When the Earl of Crewe replied on October 5, 1915, in the
House of Lords to the Earl of Cromer’s question as to whether H.M.’s Government
had received any information confirmatory of the statements made in the press in
relating to "renewed massacres of Armenians", he based his information on
a report of the British Consul at Batum, which in turn relied on a Tiflis newspaper,
probably The Horizon, "an Armenian propagandist organ and therefore quite
unreliable".
Challenging the Lord Bryce statement that
there was not the slightest basis for the report that the Armenians had themselves
provoked the massacre by rising in conspiracy, Dixon-Johnson writes that "the
facts... are otherwise". He observes that the Turks had just sustained in the
Caucasus a severe defeat. They needed every available man and every round of
ammunition to check the advancing Russians. It is therefore incredible, he retorts,
that without receiving any provocation they should have chosen a particularly
inopportune moment to employ a large force of soldiers and gendarmes with artillery
to stir up a hornet’s nest in the rear. He says that "military considerations
alone make the suggestion absurd". He adds:
"On the present war we have the overwhelming and
convincing testimony of all rank, from Lord Kitchener downwards, that the Turks have
fought gallantly and cleanly, and have treated our wounded and prisoners with
kindness and humanity. It is inconceivable, therefore, that these same Turks without
any provocation (and Lord Bryce himself has said that there was no religious
fanaticism), should have committed the devilries of which they are accused, and in
this connection we have the curiously illuminating observation by a celebrated
correspondent, on his return from the seat of the last Balkan war, that paradoxical
as it might seem, the Turks were the only Christians in the Balkans! This brief
examination of the Turkish military and political situation, and of the Turkish
character, ought sufficiently to refute the suggestion that the Turks were the
aggressors and acted without provocation.... The Armenians themselves commenced the
troubles by rising in rebellion." (p.46)
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It appears
obvious that the Turkish authorities, anxious for the safety of their lines of
communication, had no other alternative than to order the removal of their rebellious
subjects to some place distant from the seat of hostilities, and their internment
there. |
Dixon-Johnson relates (p. 47) that bands
of armed Armenian volunteers were already operating in the country as early as March
1915, and Lord Bryce as well as the "Friends of Armenia" were appealing
for funds to clothe and equip them before these "alleged unprovoked
massacres". Furthermore, Tsarist Russia was also arming the Armenians and
assisting in fomenting rebellion. For instance, the Armenians of Van believing,
after the Turkish defeat at Sarikamis, that the complete victory of Russia was
assured, thought that their opportunity had arrived. Urged by the Russian agents and
their own revolutionaries, they rose in revolt, and, as a Times correspondent
admits, in an unguarded moment, "finally captured the town of Van and took
bloody vengeance on their enemies". In June the Armenians betrayed the town to
the Russian troops. Dixon-Johnson admits that "there were organized rising in
other parts of Asia Minor also" (p.48). Henry Wood, the correspondent of the
United Press Agency (U.S.A.) reported that the Armenians not only were in open
revolt but were actually in possession of Van and several other important towns. He
relates that in Zeitun when the Turkish authorities tried to enlist the young
Armenians for military service, the soldiers were attacked and three hundred killed.
Let us listen to the author’s further remarks:
"It appears obvious that the Turkish authorities,
anxious for the safety of their lines of communication, had no other alternative
than to order the removal of their rebellious subjects to some place distant from
the seat of hostilities, and their internment there. The enforcement of this
absolutely necessary precaution led to further risings on the part of the Armenians.
The remaining Moslems were almost defenceless, because the regular garrisons were at
the front as well as the greater part of the police and able-bodied men. Already
infuriated at the reports of the atrocities committed at Van by the insurgents, in
fear for their lives and those of their relatives, they were at last driven by the
cumulative effect of these events into panic and retaliation and, as invariably
happens in such cases, the innocent suffered with the guilty".
The author declares (p.49) that the Turk never deigns to
explain his own case while "the pro-Armenians always manage to hold the field,
appalling the public by incessant reiteration and exaggeration as to the number of
victims, and apparently valuing to its full extent the wisdom of the old Eastern
proverb give a lie twenty-four hours start, and it will take a hundred years to
overtake it." Lord Bryce, speaking in the House of Lords on October 6, 1915,
said that possibly 800,000 (later increased to one million) Armenians were
destroyed. Dixon-Johnson adds, to this figure the 250,000 refugees in Russia for
whom funds are requested as well as 13,000 refugees in Egypt, arriving to a total of
1,063,000 Armenians. He adds, on the other hand, that according to Sir Charles
Wilson, the total Armenian population of the nine provinces was only 925,000. He
mentions by way of comparison that the number of "Arabs killed by the Italian
newspapers" in the Tripolitan war exceeded three times the population of the
country. He also cites what he calls "the most extraordinary reports" from
Mersin, that the same Lord Bryce has apparently furnished to the English newspapers.
The Armenians sent from this city were reported to be "about 25,000".
Dixon-Johnson reminds that the total population of Mersin was 20,966 persons, of
whom 11,246 were Moslems, 2,441 Jews and the remaining 7,279 Christians of various
sects Greek, Armenian, Latin and Nestorian. He exclaims:
"How 25,000 Armenians could have been sent from Mersin
out of a total Christian population of 7,279 (at least one-half of whom were
Greeks), is difficult to understand" (p.50)
The Times report of Lord Bryce’s
statement in the House of Lords quotes him as saying that at Trabzon, "the
Turkish authorities hunted out all the Christians, gathered them together and drove
them down the streets to the sea. There they were all put on sailing boats and
carried out some distance into the Black Sea, and there thrown overboard and
drowned; the whole Armenian population of from 8,000 to 10,000 was destroyed in that
way in one afternoon". The Times, in a leading article, adds the further
information that "the Italian Consul who reports this enormity, saw it done
with his own eyes". Dixon-Johnson considers the number of sailing boats
necessary to carry so many people "some distance" out to sea. Furthermore,
the account of the same event, as given in the Messagero of Rome, is "entirely
different the (Italian) Consul (Signor Corrini) being made to say that the
banishment of Armenians under escort and wholesale shootings in the streets
continued for a whole month", while there is nothing about shipping out to sea
and drowning en masse in one afternoon.
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...The stories so circulated have a distinct object in mind: to influence
the future policy of the British Government and to prepare the public mind for a
desired settlement. |
Dixon-Johnson compares the original accounts relating to the number
of Bulgarians killed in the 1876 risings with the Armenians who lost their lives in the
1896 Sassun disturbances and concludes that only 6.4 per cent of the Figures originally
circulated later proved to be correct. He states that Lord Bryce’s estimate is probably
"similarly excessive" (p.51). He adds that "all the stories of Turkish
misdeeds have proved on investigation to be gross exaggerations beyond the belief of any
thoughtful person". He relates the" assiduously circulated" stories to the
"Armenian agencies acting undoubtedly under the instructions from a central
Bureau". He quotes Sidney Whitman: "Everything had been carefully prepared in
Asia and in the Press of Europe and America before the Armenian outbreak (1895-96) to boom
a second Bulgaria. Dixon-Johnson refers to "the Bulgarian atrocities" as
affording a very good example of how easily a prejudiced sentimentalist can be deceived.
He relates the case of Canon McColl’s visit, at Gladstone’s request, to the Balkans to
collect evidence. His guide, a Levantine, points out on the horizon a large number of
erections, which he asserts were "hundreds of impaled Christians". McColl’s
report makes a great sensation in England as "irrefutable first-hand evidence". But
later proof comes forth that no Christian had been either massacred or crucified anywhere
near that district, and furthermore that the supposed figures were nothing but the common
haycocks of the country, built around a pole, and which after the hay has been eaten by
the cattle until only a few bunches are left might bear rather the appearance suggested by
the guide.
Dixon-Johnson believes that the stories so circulated have a
distinct object in mind: to influence the future policy of the British Government and to
prepare the public mind for a desired settlement (p.54). Quoting Noel Buxton’s
article in the Nineteenth Century, Walter Guinness’s (M.P.) description of his tour in
Eastern Anatolia and a Times article (December 31, 1913), he dwells on active Russian
arming of the Armenians. The last-mentioned Times article had warned its readers that
there was great danger of the introduction into Asia Minor of Macedonian methods with
band-warfare-and all its attendant horrors. In short, Russia was arming the Armenians
(pp.58-59).
The author also comments: "Some people, perhaps, will say that whether
these stories of massacres be true or false, it is inopportune to defend the reputation of
a nation with whom we are at war". He replies: "If this argument were true, it
would apply with equal force as a criticism of the officers and men who have written home
from Gallipoli, giving spontaneously such whole-hearted and generous testimony to the
bravery and chivalry of the Turks." He maintains that such " untrue
assertions" should not be disseminated just because they "might be detrimental
to an enemy". He says that the neutral nations would be "influenced in our
favour if we show ourselves fair minded". He adds that the object of the
propagandists "is simply to basis public opinion in this country still further
against an already misjudged and badly maligned enemy". He reminds the reader how
critical the situation was for Turkey, "that for her it was a matter of life and
death". Unless the danger was removed, "the Turkish army on the Caucasus would
have been hopelessly cut off and the Moslem population exterminated at the hands of the
revolutionaries" (p.60).
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Holdwater: Mr. (or Ms.)
Dixon-Johnson, you were truly a person of integrity. Unlike the hysterics who cry
"Armenian Genocide," totally ignoring the incredible arguments provided by
those as yourself, but especially you... while your nation was at war with the enemy
you courageously decided to defend, all in the name of honor, and the Truth.
Truth, honor and integrity...
qualities that supersede one's loyalty to one's tribe. How pathetic that next-to-no
Armenians subscribe to this notion, at least not publicly.
The complete book is now
online at this page.
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