September 25, 1913, Vol. XIII. No. 22

As Pickthall’s travelogue from Turkey continues he recounts two events. First he mentions that in his 16 days spent at the Pera Palace Hotel, while otherwise seeking a house, he saw many foreign war correspondents. In particular he noted the many people who attempted to influence the reporters, including one Armenian who repeatedly claimed that he possessed private information, presumably of fictional Turkish treachery. Second, Pickthall recounts his time with his Turkish language teacher, who was a Christian from Diyarbakir. Of him, Pickthall said, “Though we talked together long and freely, I could not discover that he had ever so much as heard of Turkish fanaticism — Christian though he was, and mixing, as he did, continually with Mahommedans.”

November 27, 1913, Vol. XIV. No. 4:

This issue contains three articles concerning the Ottoman Empire, though none discuss the Armenian issue directly. Ali Fahmy Mohammed, a former Egyptian nationalist, argues in his piece, “England & Turkey,” for a stronger British policy supporting the C.U.P. Marmaduke Pickthall continues his travelogue, in this episode conversing with a conspirator who supports policies that would have quickly divested the Ottoman Empire of its Arab provinces. Finally, Pickthall publishes a letter to the editor entitled, “A Plea for Civilisation,” in which he, like Fahmy, urges Britain to be consistent in its support for the C.U.P. and to help preserve the unity of the Ottoman Empire. Of particular interest, Pickthall notes that the Ottoman government had requested that the British government send administrators to the “Kurd-Armenian Vilayets” but that England failed to do so. Pickthall correctly feared that the British, who had once worked to strengthen the Ottoman state, would now work to undermine it.

In Vol. XIV. No. 5 (December 4, 1913) and in Vol. XIV. No. 18 (March 5, 1914), neither of which are attached, several writers respond to Ali Fahmy Mohammed’s piece, and Mohammed responds in turn. This dialog provides interesting insights into the frail state of the Ottoman government during the era, but it does not address the Armenian issue directly, other than where Mohammed alleges that in the Sultan’s attempted counterrevolution against the C.U.P. he employed religious rhetoric to encourage the Muslims of Adana to massacre Armenians there.

October 28, 1915, Vol. XVII. No. 26:

In this issue, Pickthall, in, “On Coaxing the Neutrals,” chastises the British government for inflaming passions against Turks who would not otherwise be predisposed to becoming a natural enemy of the British.

Ezra Pound’s insults drew a rebuke from Arshag Bodigian. The language used by Bodigian is what is oft-repeated today, that there occurred a “cold-blooded and organized massacre of nearly a million unfortunate Armenians, men, women, and children, without mercy…” He later uses the phrase, “systematic extermination of a nation.” Then, recycling the propaganda of the day, Bodigian quotes Gladstone, “To serve Armenia is to serve civilization.”

November 4, 1915, Vol XVIII. No. 1:

Walter Guinness

Here, Marmaduke Pickthall vents his anger at the British government for failing to prevent the massacres of Muslims and Christians in eastern Anatolia that the government knew were likely. Of importance, Pickthall cites a first-hand report by a member of British Parliament, Walter Guinness, that demonstrated Russian connivance. In quoting Guinness, Pickthall refers to “Impressions of Armenia and Kurdistan” published in the “National Review” on January 1, 1914. C.F. Dixon-Johnson’s quotes of Guinness presumably originate in this article. Guinness also was part of a British delegation aimed at easing tension in western Anatolia during the Greek occupation in 1921. Pickthall writes,

“In the year 1913 the British Government was requested by the Porte to provide a number of inspectors to superintend the reforms which the Turks had undertaken in the Kurd-Armenian vilayets; where, as an outcome of the Balkan War, and the consequent weakening of the local garrisons on the one hand, and of Russian intrigues on the other, the situation had become extremely critical. Mr. Walter Guinness, M.P., describing a tour which he made that year in Armenia and Kurdistan, mentions ‘numerous indications of an active Russian propaganda’ not only among Armenians but among the Kurds as well. ‘Many of them (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.’ Rifles supplied to the Kurds were sure, sooner or later, to be used against the Armenians. At the same time, Russia was arming the pro-Russian—that is, Orthodox-section of the Armenians in Turkish provinces adjacent to the Russian frontier. The Armenians thus, who are by no means lambs, would be emboldened to revolt against the Turkish Government; the Kurds would slay them in the name of law and order-a mere name in Kurdistan in these days, respected only when it suits the Kurds and Russia, posing as protector of the slaughtered Christians, wouId cry to Europe: ‘See what you have done by thwarting my desire to take those provinces.’”

Later, Pickthall, addresses the allegations of Armenian massacres at Van, the relocation orders, and also decries the hyperbole in the British press on the issue. The story told by Pickthall at the very time of the controversy is largely the story told today, without change or embellishment, by the Turkish government. He writes,

And now we hear about Armenian massacres, and Englishmen are filled with pious horror, laying all the blame upon the Turks. Let us try to understand what has actually happened. Some Armenians, in Armenia proper, Turkish subjects, rose in arms and betrayed the town of Van to the Russians. When the news of this occurrence spread throughout the Empire, the common people in some places rioted against Armenians, just as the people in the East End of London rioted against the Germans upon the news of the sinking of the ‘Lusitania’ but with this difference, that the Arab and the Kurdish mobs, being three hundred years, at least, behind the London mob in civilisation, did what the London rabble of three centuries ago would have done, and killed their victims. Following on these disorders the Turkish Government ordered the removal of the whole Armenian population from the war zones to concentration camps of some Sort—as much with a view to their protection, it seems but fair to suggest, as with a view to prevent further treachery. When the Turkish forces retook Van, there was a slaughter of Armenians in that district by the Kurds, their ancient enemies, who, as we have seen, were armed with Russian rifles before the war, at a moment when the Turks were wishing to disarm them. In one American report that I have seen, the Kurds, not Turks, are specified as the offenders. But it is all one to the enemies of Islam and they are powerful just now in England—since Kurds are Muslims of a sort. Unruly as the Scottish Highlanders three centuries ago, the Kurds have always raided the Armenians on the least excuse whenever the Turkish Government had its hands too full to deal with them. They are enemies to Turkish government in time of peace, and very uncongenial and mistrusted friends in time of war. And it must be remembered that the Armenians, in their native land, are far from being the sheep-like, inoffensive crowd that they are sometimes painted.

That the recent massacres of Armenians—whatever their extent, and that we cannot ascertain at present took place at the command, or in any sense with the connivance, of the Turkish Government, seems most improbable. We are not now in Abdul Hamid’s reign. The chief desire of the present rulers in Turkey has always been to prove their country worthy to take rank among the civilised, enlightened empires or the world, and their ideas of civilisation and enlightenment are derived from English and French sources, not from German frightfulness. The most that can be fairly laid to the charge of the Turkish Government, I should say, is the military execution of proved traitors and the removal of reputedly disaffected populations from the danger zones—this last a forcible proceeding involving hardship and discomfort to the deported; but, considering the state of war, and the straits in which the Turks were placed, a necessary military precaution, no ‘atrocity. Therefore, it seems unfair to count the many thus removed among the victims, especially as it is possible that in some cases they were removed to save their lives. We have the evidence of British prisoners of war at Urfah on the Euphrates, as to the kind of treatment the Armenians received from infuriated patriots in small provincial towns, inadequately garrisoned and unpoliced, on the news of the betrayal of Van. And the general order for removal seems to have followed pretty closely upon those disorders. Yet, I came the other day upon the headline: ‘Armenian Horrors: 800,000 Victims,’ to a newspaper paragraph, which stated that the number of the victims could not be much less than eight hundred thousand killed and deported. The statement loses all its force when one reflects that the total number of the deported from a hundred districts might easily be eight hundred thousand.

One cannot help contrasting the publicity accorded by our Press to this Armenian tragedy with the silence of the same Press on the subject of the Balkan tragedy in 1912-13. As one of the handful of Englishmen who tried to get a hearing for the Turkish case on that occasion, I can personally testify to the firmness of the censorship which we encountered. Yet, the tale we had to tell was much more horrible than anything which we have yet heard from Armenia; and the perpetrators were our ‘fellow Christians.’’ A few men who knew the East thought the facts deserved to be published, in the interests of religious toleration, as showing that bad Christians in those lands could be as bestial as bad Mohammedans in time of war. But our rulers, in their wisdom, thought it inadvisable that such enlightenment should reach the general public, who were told that the atrocities Committed by the Balkan Christians were ‘no more than is customary in all Eastern warfare.’ Quite so. And on behalf of the whole Muslim world today, I claim that these atrocities committed by the Kurds and Arabs are ‘no more than is customary in all Eastern warfare.’

“The writer in the ‘Observer’ begins:

‘Terrible stories of the Armenian atrocities carried out by the Turks are given by Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee in a book which will make its appearance to-morrow, and which also contains Viscount Bryce’s speech in the House of Lords. Dealing with the outrages against the women, Mr. Toynbee states: ‘Some were sold into shame. One Moslem reported that a gendarme had offered to sell him two girls for a mejidieh (about 3s. 26.). They sold the youngest and most handsome at every village where they passed the night, and these girls have been trafficked in hundreds through the Ottoman Empire. Abundant news has come from Constantinople itself of their being sold for a few shillings in the open markets of the capital and one piece of evidence in Lord Bryce’s possession comes from a girl no more than ten years old, who was carried with this object from a town of North-Eastern Anatolia to the shores of the Bosphorus. These were Christian women, as civilised and refined as the women of Western Europe and they were enslaved into degradation.’ One can imagine that the author was anything but pleased to find this passage about women chosen for quotation in an article recommending his work by a paper with a large ‘family’ circulation. But that is not among the points I wish to raise. Nor do I doubt that atrocities of the sort described-and worse-have been committed, though it would take more than ‘abundant news’ (whatever that may mean), it would require the evidence of my own eyes, to convince me that Armenian girls have been ‘sold in the open markets of the capital.’ But, apart from that false touch, the crimes mentioned are so far from being ‘Unimaginable Horrors’ that they are simply the horrors which everyone who knows the East expects in Eastern war; and anyone who thinks them ‘unimaginable’ does not know the East, and therefore cannot see them in their true perspective. I would restrict the right of judgment in this case to those Englishmen who have either actually witnessed, or have been in the neighbourhood and atmosphere of, at least two massacres, one by Muslims, and the other by Eastern Christians. Men who have had that experience have undergone a training more severe than that of any nurse in hospital; they have passed the scream, the shudder, and the sickness, and can be of real use.

They will tell you that the man or woman who is eager to stand forward as a victim, who tells the most heart-rending and connected story of atrocities, and is prepared to swear to everything, has, ten to one, seen nothing of the horrors. His fiction is generally to be detected by some fancy detail like ‘sold in the open markets of the capital.’ The genuine victim sits and moans he does not speak; and to get anything like a coherent narrative from him is a work of hours, or even days. Nor is this narrative, when obtained, necessarily veracious. Things seen and heard get mixed in a distracted mind, and in the matter of numbers particularly it is almost impossible to arrive at a conception of the truth. ‘Nine thousand-ten thousand-all the population - what do I know!’ is the kind of answer given to the European questioner, who, if he is a fool, upon the strength of that, writes down, ‘Nine thousand as the lowest estimate.’ Eastern inquirers tend to accept all statements of their co-religionists, and their report must therefore be received with caution.

…

‘These were Christian women, as civilised and refined as the women of Western Europe and they were sold into degradation.’ What does Mr. Toynbee mean by that? Does he mean that the peasant girls and women of Armenia are as civilised and refined as English ladies of the wealthy classes, or as the girls and women of a Suffolk village, or as the harridans of a London slum or as the prostitutes of London and Paris? The statement is unnecessary, and it seems to me deplorable, because it is an appeal to the religious fanaticism, being based on the fanatical and altogether false assumption that Christians are intrinsically better than Mohammedans, and their lives more worth. That assumption, inculcated by the foreigner, whether as a private missionary or as the intriguing agent of a foreign Government, is at the root of all the troubles in Eastern Anatolia, where a Christian minority has been taught to regard itself as of infinitely more importance than a Mohammedan majority, and has been egged on to sedition, anarchism, and rebellion with the notion that Christians ought to rule over Mohammedans, being intrinsically superior. Such a view, espoused by English public men, can only in the present serve, as it has served in the past, to increase the fanaticism, the horrors and the misery in Asia Minor. And it is untrue. Are the Eastern Christians better people than the Mohammedans in time of peace; more honest, kind, and just in all their dealings? And if Kurds, Arabs, and Circassians have in time of war behaved like devils towards Armenians; and if the Turks in time of war have not manifested the horror which we ourselves experience at the tale of rapine and bloodshed, it is not because they are Muslims, but because they are Orientals. The Christians of those regions are as ruthless when victorious. The massacres have never been on one side only. Does Mr. Toynbee really suppose that Muslim women would suffer less than Christian women in the circumstances he describes? Is he so ignorant of Eastern life as to suppose that Muslim girls are by nature or education less modest than the daughters of the Christians of those regions? I recommend him to a study of the Christian brothels of Constantinople, whose keepers are accustomed to buy girls from Christian parents in times of peace. The Turks have often tried to close those houses, but have been prevented by the fact that the proprietors, being almost without exception foreign subjects, are protected in their ‘privileges’ by some Christian Power. The imputation to the Muslims of a lower standard of morality than that habitually used by Christians in the East is quite unwarranted; and its obtrusion in his summing-up of evidence betrays the bias of the judge.

While the systematic extermination of Muslim noncombatants in many parts of Thrace and Macedonia was going on in the winter of 1912-13, the British Government gave a hint to the Press to be silent on the subject. This silence caused much indignation among British Muslims, who received reports of the atrocities from Muslim sources doubtless in excess of the truth. We understood at the time that it was imposed for high reasons of policy. At the present moment, when millions of Muslims are exasperated to the last degree against the British Government, it seems to me that there exist good reasons why an anti-Muslim note should not be sounded loudly in the British Press. A mere campaign of hate can serve no useful purpose, and may add the problem of internal war to the many problems which already vex our rulers. Will not the Government, which now has legitimate and complete control of the press, take the same measures to suppress the Armenian which it employed to throttle the late Balkan outcry? High reasons of policy for such an action are not lacking, Allah knows !

I would find this a useful piece to add to any submission made by member of the T.B.M.M. in their effort to have the British government properly label the infamous Blue Book as propaganda and cease referring to it as an historic source. The same advice also stands for entries in the December 16, 1915 and May 24, 1916 editions discussed below.

December 16, 1915, Vol. XVIII. No. 7:

Though many other issues of The New Age favor the Turkish case, this particular edition may be the strongest. First, Marmaduke Pickthall provides a well-argued and thorough refutation of the Blue Book. Then, C.F. Dixon-Johnson, and another man, Douglas Fox Pitt, respond to Arshag Bodigian’s allegations concerning the numbers of Armenians lost during the relocations.

I excerpt the majority Pickthall’s riposte to Toynbee below:

“Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee invited me to read his book entitled ‘Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation,’ seeming confident that, if I did so, I should change my views. He assured me that these atrocities differed from all previous atrocities in that they were ‘ordered from above and carried out through the local officials of the Ottoman Empire—a political measure conceived and executed in cold blood to secure a political object. . . . If Mr. Pickthall will examine the evidence he will see that this is so.’

I have had no opportunity of examining the evidence, and I know not where it is to be found; but I have read Mr. Toynbee’s book, and can find there nothing serious in support of his contention that the Turkish Government ordered ‘the extermination of the Armenian race.’

On p. 27 we read: ‘But meanwhile [i.e., during the first months of the war] the Government at Constantinople — if Government is not too good a name for Enver, Talaat, and the rest of that ‘Committee of Union and Progress’ which Lord Bryce has justly described as a ‘gang of unscrupulous ruffians’— meanwhile, this unprincipled and all-powerful organization was working out its plans, and it began to put them into action in April.’

Arnold Toynbee

‘The scheme was nothing less than the extermination of the whole Christian population within the Ottoman frontiers. For the war had temporarily released the Ottoman Government from the control, slight as it was, which the Concert of Europe had been able to exert. The belligerents on one side were Turkey’s allies and very good friends; and Enver, looking to the future, relied upon their promised victory to shield himself and his accomplices from the vengeance of the Western Powers and Russia, which had always stood between the malignant hostility of the Turkish Government and the helplessness of its Christian subjects (!). The denunciation of the ‘Capitulations’ broke down the legal barrier of foreign protection, behind which many Ottoman Christians had found more or less effective shelter. Nothing remained but to use the opportunity and strike a stroke that would never need repetition. ‘After this,’ said Talaat Bey, when he gave the final signal, ‘there will be no Armenian question for fifty years.’ …



The massacres at Adana in 1909 are ascribed to the Young Turks by Mr. Toynbee, as if there were no doubt about the matter. I was in Syria at the time, and fanatical emissaries landed at Tripoli, Beyrout, and Jaffa with the same purpose with which they landed at Mersin, of preaching massacre of Christians. But they were arrested by the local Committees of Union and Progress and deported, which does not look as if the Young Turks were the instigators. It is true that members of the local committee at Adana took part in the massacres, but that committee had been captured by disguised reactionaries. There are several other cool assumptions in this book. After a careful reading of all Mr. Toynbee’s evidence, which, with but one exception, has a strong Armenian flavour, I have come to the conclusion, and so I think would anybody else who knew the state of Turkey, that all that the Turkish Government planned or ordered was the forcible deportation of the Armenians from a number of districts to concentration camps. The camps were of a very rough description and were sometimes distant more than a month’s journey from the Armenian’s home. In what one can imagine to be the condition of the provinces, for so vast an undertaking to be done humanely the Turks would have had to give up fighting for six months and devote their best troops and their best officials to this work. As things were, the deportations were a real martyrdom for the deported and an occasion for plunder and brutality to local malefactors, high and low. The mere order for deportation was enough to make the Armenians think that they were going to be massacred; and, as Mr. Toynbee with his Oriental experience must be well aware, the mere conviction of impending massacre produces a large crop of circumstantial narratives concerning massacres in other places. On p. 38 there is a good description of the panic:—

‘All the morning the ox-carts creaked out of the own, laden with women and children, and here and there a man who had escaped the previous deportations. The women and girls all wore the Turkish costume that their faces might not be exposed to the gaze of drivers and gendarmes—a brutal lot of men brought in from other regions. The panic in the city was terrible. The people felt that the Government was determined to exterminate the Armenian race, and they were powerless to resist. … Most of the Armenians in the district were absolutely hopeless. Many said it was worse than a massacre. No one knew what was coming, but all felt that it was the end. …’

Poor wretches! But compare that picture with the Stoicism of the Turks on similar occasions—for many such have been—and you will understand that the latter could not realise the sufferings of a more timid race in deportation. The first batch of the deported are always believed to have been murdered a day’s or two days’ journey from their starting-point. But there is no statement from an actual witness of such murder. The horrible list furnished by the President of a Missionary College (evidently American) in a town of Anatolia (there is here good reason for the omission of the name of the place, but in other cases, where no description of the informant is given, no imaginable reason) on p. 99 ff. is evidently three parts hearsay from Armenian sources; and the item, ‘one reported taken to a Turkish harem,’ shows a thoroughly Armenian ignorance of Turkish manners in the present. The evidence of Fraulein Beatrice Rohner, a Swiss lady missionary, the only evidence with name and place attached, as to the condition of the deported after their arrival at Deyr el-Zor—their destination-and their tale of sufferings upon the road is woeful reading; but the numbers of Armenians seen by her on three successive days seemed to me to dispose of the idea of their extermination by order of the Government; so does Mr. Toynbee’s statement on p. 60, based no doubt on further evidence: ‘These swamps (near Aleppo) were allotted to the first comers; but they did not suffice for so great a company, and the later batches were forwarded five days’ journey farther on, to the town of Deyr el-Zor.’ If the Turkish Government had really wished to exterminate the Armenians there was nothing to prevent its doing so that I can see. I notice that Mr. Toynbee mentions only four of the camps to which the dispossessed Armenians have been sent— Aleppo, Deyr el-Zor, Sultaniyeh, and, in one place, Konia. My information says that there are several others.

…

I turn now from the deportations to what Mr. Toynbee calls ‘murder outright’—the slaughter of Armenians near the Russo-Turkish frontier—which is described as altogether unprovoked. On p. 84 we read: ‘When the Russians began to cross the frontier in their turn, the Ottoman authorities in the border province of Van let loose the Turkish troops and Kurdish irregulars on the Armenian population. In the countryside the Armenians were overwhelmed, but in the town of Van itself, when they had seen some of their leading men murdered and massacre overshadowing the rest, they took up arms, expelled the murderers, and stood a siege of 27 days —1,500 defenders against 5,000 assailants equipped with artillery—till they were triumphantly relieved by the advancing Russians.’ The whole account given by Mr. Toynbee of this portion of the war being derived from Russian-Armenian sources—an Armenian journal, ‘The Horizon’ of Tiflis, being freely quoted—it is natural that we find no mention of the intrigues which have been worked from Tiflis, and the smuggling of arms into Turkish Armenia in the two years previous to the war. The Turkish version is that the Armenians rose on the approach of the Russians and succeeded in holding the town of Van for them. It was immediately upon this news that the Turkish Government ordered the deportation of all Armenians in proximity to the frontier or the coast, in view of the ramifications of the Armenian revolutionary societies and the desperate nature of their propaganda.

…

I have never been a hater of Armenians; I had always hoped, with Mr. Toynbee, that they and other Christian populations would contribute to the progress and regeneration of the Turkish Empire. It has always struck me as horrible that Greeks and Syrian Christians, no less than Kurds and Muslim Arabs, should regard that race as vermin: it amounts to that. And I must say that I have never met a Turk who took that view of them; for the Turk they are the millet-i-sadikeh (the loyal sect), most favoured in old days, which has turned against its patrons and become an enemy. Mr. Toynbee quotes the ‘Frankfurter Zeitung’ to the effect that the Armenians are more intelligent than the Turks. Well, so they are, and in precisely the same way they are more intelligent than the English. It was an Armenian— Nubar Pasha who called us ‘the Turks of the West.’ There are certain efforts of the intelligence which do not occur to us as possible for man to make. The Armenian recognises no such limitations, and this it is which has made him so disliked throughout the East. The typical Armenian esteems it meritorious not only to exaggerate but to invent occurrences calculated to excite the pity of the Western world. He has more than once, in well authenticated cases, attempted the murder of a European benefactor and protector in order that the murder of a European might rouse the indignation of the Powers against the Turks. He is at all times his own unscrupulous advocate, in striking contrast to the Turk, who—as Captain Dixon-Johnson mentioned in his admirable letter on this subject which appeared some weeks ago in THE NEW AGE-never has been known to plead his cause at all. Mr. Toynbee gives us the Armenian case in all sincerity. Going on the ground to which he objected in his letter-that of past experience-I believe, and truly hope, that the disaster will prove to be much less than he imagines.”

May 4, 1916, Vol. XIX. No. 1:

By the date of this edition, Captain C.F. Dixon-Johnson’s, “The Armenians” had already been published and, apparently, had been read by persons of influence, among them, Sir Mark Sykes, whom Dixon-Johnson cited in his work. Sykes, having spent time in eastern Anatolia and having formed an opinion of Armenians, sought to distance himself from Dixon-Johnson in a letter to the Times. Pickthall exposes Sykes’s rapid change of heart and responds

Mark Sykes

“…Would not anyone reading [Sykes’] letter suppose that Captain Dixon- Johnson’s work was in the nature of an attack on the Armenians, and that the quotations made by the author from the published works of Sir Mark Sykes were wrested from their true meaning, or unwarrantably introduced in such a work? Instead of that being the case, the pamphlet is a temperate, judicial and, in my opinion, well-written protest against an hysterical or hasty judgment in the matter of Armenian massacres, a judgment which might lead to rash political conclusions. The author supports his case by quotations from official papers and from writers whom he judged to be of some authority. Not least among these he reckoned Sir Mark Sykes on account of that gentleman’s acquaintance with Armenia.

…

Turning to the pamphlet in question, I find the following quotation from [Sykes’] ‘The Caliphs’ Last Heritage’ (published in the autumn of [1915]).

‘…[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; 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, but may at any moment become their destroyer; by some stinging aggravation or injury they will alienate the sympathy of a stranger whose assistance they expect; they will suddenly abandon all hope when their plans are nearing fruition; they will betray the very person who might serve their cause; and, finally, they will bully and prey on one another at the very moment that the enemy is at their gates. … The Armenian revolutionaries prefer to plunder their co-religionists to giving battle to their enemies; the anarchists of Constantinople threw bombs with the intention of provoking a massacre of their fellow-countrymen. The Armenian villages are divided against themselves; the revolutionary societies are leagued against one another; the priests connive at the murder of a bishop; the Church is divided at its very foundations. … If the object of Armenians is to secure equality before the law, and the establishment of security and peace in the countries partly inhabited by Armenians,* then I can only say that their methods are not those to achieve success.’ [End of Sykes quotation.]

At the asterisk, Pickthall inserts a footnote, “According to an Armenian estimate, the Armenians formed 33 per cent of the total population of the six provinces commonly called Armenia in 1913.” Pickthall continues, referring to Dixon-Johnson’s use of Sykes,

“…Sir Mark Sykes writes decidedly and with the vehemence of firm conviction; and he should not be surprised much less annoyed—if one of his admiring readers thought him quite sincere; prepared to stand or fall by his decided utterance. The utterance is indeed so decided that the author’s firm conviction of its truth alone could justify its publication. I believe it, from my own slight knowledge of Armenians, to be true; and I, in common with many other Englishmen who have hitherto regarded Sir Mark Sykes as a friend and possible champion of the much misjudged Mohammedan majority in Turkey, am anxious to know what has caused this sudden change in his opinions.

…

If [Sykes] will consult a book entitled “Travel and Politics in Armenia,” by Noel Buxton and Harold Buxton, with an Introduction by Viscount Bryce (Smith, Elder, 1913), he will find this political object (partition of the Ottoman Empire) stated at considerable length, with amazing candour and simplicity, in the chapter entitled ‘The Function of the Powers’ (pp. 123- 159), and it is permissible to suppose that it has not altered since the war. Moreover, [Dixon-Johnson’s] pamphlet was not written with the purpose of attacking those gentlemen, but with that of opposing their political propaganda to the extent of warning the British public that there is another side to the whole question, and that it would be unfair to deliver judgment till we know the case for the defence.

That, I contend, is a perfectly legitimate aim in a publication, and if the pro- Armenian friends of Sir Mark Sykes object to temperate and reasoned opposition, they must be in a truly pitiable state of mind. I ask every reader of ‘The Armenians,’ by C. F. Dixon-Johnson, to compare it with the pamphlet ‘Armenian Massacres: The Murder of a Nation,’ by Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee, and then, and not till then, to think about it.”

Incidentally, in his book, “A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East,” David Fromkin writes, “Sykes who had a reputation for picking up opinions and arguments without taking the time to think them through, now showed that he could discard them with equal ease. … [After once writing that Armenians have no good points,] Sykes met with Armenian leaders in Cairo, and enthusiastically proposed the creation of an Armenian Army … to invade Turkey.”

May 24, 1916, Vol. XXI. No. 4:

An anonymous contributor or group of authors reviews the infamous Blue Book. The review appears shortly after the Blue Book, which was originally presented in Parliament as an official governmental document, was made available to the general public. The reviewer considers the Blue Book a “powerful pleading” by one side in a dispute, and therefore, something less than a definitive judgment weighing the merits of both sides. Indeed, the reviewer suggests that a Royal Commission could weigh the evidence and reach a more definitive conclusion. The reviewer also criticizes the Blue Book for employing evidence of “unequal value.” In addition, the reviewer emphasizes those parts of the Blue Book that lead one to believe that the Armenian relocations were for a valid political purpose, not because of racism or religious fanaticism. Consider the following:

“Viscount Bryce says that ‘it is, however, for the reader to form his own judgment on these documents as he peruses them’; but he permits himself to make one observation: ‘The Young Turks, when they deposed Abd-ul- Hamid, came forward as the apostles of freedom, promising equal rights and equal treatment to all Ottoman subjects. The facts here recorded show how that promise was kept. Can anyone still continue to hope that the evils of such a government are curable? Or does the evidence contained in this volume furnish the most terrible and convincing proof that it can no longer be permitted to rule over subjects of a different faith?’

The evidence itself is of most unequal value, ranging from articles in Armenian papers to official reports; but it does definitely establish the facts of massacre and deportation, with all the accompanying horrors. What is not clear is the extent of this suffering, and the prime responsibility; and if we may make a suggestion, we think that it would be well if a representative body were to examine this evidence and publish its findings as, for example, a Royal Commission would do. It is impossible for the ordinary reader to determine (to mention one difficulty) the responsibility of the Turkish Government for the massacres; there is much evidence which shows that massacres were perpetrated by Kurds and other bands of robbers, who cannot reasonably be regarded as instruments of the Turkish Government without some proof. That the deportations were ordered by the Government is definitely proved; and the most agonising of these records recount the awful sufferings of populations for whose transport, and sustenance, no adequate provision was made. … All this is definitely proved, although, as we say, no precise computation of the extent of the tragedy has been made, and the general impression is that the whole Armenian people has thus been distributed or destroyed. But another difficulty presents itself to the reader. Viscount Bryce’s question suggests what is alleged in many of these documents, viz., that the Turkish Government ordered these deportations with the sole purpose of exterminating the Armenian nation because it was Christian. But the evidence is conflicting; there are allegations made in this volume, by Armenians as well as others, to the effect that in some provinces, notably Cilicia and Ourfa, the Armenians were engaged in revolution against the Turkish Government, and were expecting help from abroad. If this be true, although it does not modify the horrors here recounted by one iota, yet it does modify the case against the Turkish Government. The transport of a disaffected population from what was, or was likely to be, a war zone, is a not unusual practice of Governments, and cannot be attributed to any peculiar malignity of the Turks towards Christians. Mr. Arnold Toynbee, who edits the volume, has in an appendix (there are several appendices) attempted to answer some of these questions: for example, with regard to the extent of the tragedy, he says: ‘We can sum up this statistical inquiry by saying that, as far as our defective information carries us, about an equal number of Armenians in Turkey seem to have escaped, to have perished, and to have survived deportation in 1915; and we shall not be far wrong if, in round numbers, we estimate each of these categories at 600,000.’

We will also quote his conclusion concerning the responsibility of the Turkish Government, which is so emphatic that we think that it must be determined by more conclusive evidence than is here published. ‘The exact quantitative scale of the crime thus remains uncertain, but there is no uncertainty as to the responsibility for its perpetration. This immense infliction of suffering and destruction was not the work of religious fanaticism. Fanaticism played no more part here than it has played in the fighting at Gallipoli or Kut, and the ‘Holy War’ which the Young Turks caused to be proclaimed in October, 1914, was merely a political move to embarrass the Moslem subjects of the Entente Powers. There was no fanaticism, for instance, in the conduct of the Kurds and Chettis, who committed some of the most horrible acts of all, nor can the responsibility be fixed upon them. They were simply marauders and criminals who did after their kind, and the Government, which not only condoned, but instigated, their actions, must bear the guilt. … The behaviour of the gendarmerie, for example, was utterly atrocious; the subordinates were demoralised by the power for evil that was placed in their hands; they were egged on by their chiefs, who gave vent to a malevolence against the Armenians which they must have been harbouring for years; a very large proportion of the total misery inflicted was the gendarmerie’s work; and yet the gendarmerie were not, or ought not to have been, independent agents. The responsibility for their misconduct must be referred to the local civil administrators, or to the Central Government, or both.’

This is, of course, very powerful pleading, and the concluding paragraph (which we have not space to quote) refers to statements in various documents to enforce the conclusion that ‘the Central Government enforced and controlled the execution of the scheme, as it had alone originated the conception of it; and the Young Turkish Ministers and their associates at Constantinople are directly and personally responsible, from beginning to end, for the gigantic crime that devastated the Near East in 1915.’ But the power of this pleading does not disguise the fact that it is still a pleading, and not a judgment; the very deliberation with which Mr. Toynbee acquits the actual perpetrators of the outrages from responsibility reveals the advocate’s intention to fasten the responsibility on the Turkish Government. … But if neither religious fanaticism nor the suppression of revolutionary activity is allowed to explain the action of the Turkish Government, we are confronted with an apparently causeless malignity as the motive of the tragedy, which is really incredible.”

May 15, 1919, Vol. XXV. No. 3:

Pickthall appears twice in this issue, once in an essay entitled, “America and the Near East,” and again in a letter to the editor. In his first entry, Pickthall discusses America’s skewed view of the Ottoman Empire. He is especially critical of missionaries, from which America gained much of its knowledge of the region:

“Concerned entirely with Anatolia, he [Dr. White, the missionary] propounds a wondrous theory about ‘retroversion to type,’ a phrase of which he seems enamoured. The Muslims of Asia Minor being mostly the descendants of Christian converts to Islam, he tells us, will revert to Christianity when relieved of the inducement and support of Turkish rule. So Christians, one might argue, would revert to paganism if relieved of the attentions of their pastors, and garden products would revert to wild flowers if relieved of the attentions of the gardener. A large majority of the population is Muslim, he admits, but what of that? … Having proved to his satisfaction that the Shia’ and one half of the other Muslims will ‘retrovert’ to Christianity when rid of Turkish rule, and that the Christian populations will go on increasing as compared with the Muslims as in the past- ‘I, am convinced,’ he writes, ‘that the Mohammedan Turks do not increase in numbers, possibly as the penalty of nature for the permission of polygamy, while the Ottoman Christians do increase rapidly unless checked by periods of massacre.’ It seems never to have occurred to him that the Muslims have been decimated annually by military service in defence of an empire which the Christians merely inhabited.”

Pickthall then takes on another American “expert” on the region, Major E. Alexander Powell, former American Vice Consul in Syria.

“Of the political position Dr. White and Major Powell are both ignorant enough to swallow our delightful war-time propaganda blindly. The soldier (once a diplomat) is jubilant on the commercial prospects opened up by recent British conquests. ‘The plains across which tramped the glittering hosts of Cyrus and Alexander will ere long resound to the hoot of British locomotives and the clatter of British harvesting machines’—[Pickthall commenting:] which once were German—‘water will flow again in those Babylonian canals which were dug when the world was young’—[Pickthall commenting:] and which the Turks were doing their best to restore to use when we attacked them.—‘The red and white flag of Armenia will flutter once more from the towers of Van and Erzeroum. In Jerusalem the walls of the Temple will rise again.’ … —This is retroversion with a vengeance.

…

[W]hat is the good of noting every error of a writer who knows as much about the East as I know about the trade of Chicago.”

May 22, 1919, Vol. XXV. No. 4:

Kouyoumdjian responds to Pickthall in a letter to the editor. First, Koyoumdjian summarizes Pickthall’s argument as, “Turks and Armenians were living quite comfortably, until European intrigue and especially Czarist intrigue stepped in and bribed a few wild and wooly Armenian revolutionaries to upset the cordial relations between these two pacific peoples.” Kouyoumdjian admits that Czarist intrigue and Armenian revolutionaries played their roles, though, according to Kouyoumdjian, much less than Pickthall alleges. However, Kouyoumdjian disagrees wholly with Pickthall’s assertion that Turks and Armenians had lived together in peace. He calls this theory, “a lie cloaked in plausibility.” He then notes that the theory is only true relative to the 1915-1919 period during which, Kouyoumdjian implies, 3 million Armenians were killed. But again, Kouyoumdjian, expressing Armenian pride, helps the Turkish argument, admitting that Armenians instigated violence, massacred others, and brought massacres upon themselves:

“Armenia, after centuries of fighting and losing battle, lay quiet and dulled, and began to lose that national essence which had kept her a nation for so long, her self-respect—until, in the last century, by wildly pricking Kurdish blood from the fastnesses of Zeytoun and Sassoon, she regained it doubly, and with it strength to fight again over her own dead body. She fought, was massacred, and did indeed massacre.

…

Time over again I have said that Armenia’s punishment has not been entirely undeserved (from the Turkish point of view), that she has asked for trouble and got it.”

May 29, 1919, Vol. XXV. No. 5:

Pickthall continues the dialogue, responding to Kouyoumdjian’s letter to the editor. To revisit the historical context of this dialogue, the Ottoman Empire had been vanquished and occupation forces held most major cities. The issue of whether to partition the remnant Ottoman heartland had been settled; how to accomplish this partition, and in what portions, remained unsettled. Pickthall feared that a partition of the Ottoman Empire, which would bring large populations of Muslims under the rule of Christian minorities, thereby humiliating the Muslims, would spark a fierce Muslim revolt that would benefit neither Muslim nor Christian and would imperil Britain’s Near East policy. In southeast Anatolia, the French formed an Armenian legion, which after landing, attempted to secure Adana and the surrounding region. The legion, according to French documents, proved ineffective as an occupation force and mostly served to exact vengeance against Muslims. In the sight of such atrocities, the French disbanded the legion and thousands of Armenians, including many who had emigrated from other parts of Anatolia to the Adana area in hopes that it would one day become a majority Armenian homeland, fearing reprisals eventually retreated and disembarked with the French forces.

Pickthall largely recapitulates his argument in the first part of his letter. He then provides new evidence to bolster his claim that Czarist intrigue was largely responsible for destabilizing eastern Anatolia, referring to several sources in Tblisi that were heretofore unknown to me:

“When Mr. Kouyoumdjian accuses me of exaggerating the part played by Czarist intrigue in the Armenian troubles of the last six years, I can but laugh. Czarist intrigue kept Eastern Anatolia in a turmoil all through the years 1913-14. It deliberately ordered and prepared extensive massacres, which the Turkish Government had much difficulty to prevent. On one memorable occasion full reports were published in the Tiflis papers of a massacre which had been fixed for a certain day, and which the writers did not know had been frustrated. Mahmud Shevket Pasha, having collected most amazing evidence of Russia’s guilt, was going to make a great appeal to Europe when he was assassinated. It was Czarist intrigue which prevented England from providing those inspectors for Armenia which we had as good as promised to the Turkish Government. If Mr. Kouyoumdjian desires further light upon this subject he will find it in a document of unimpeachable authority, a brochure published by the Czarist Government itself to prove to the Armenians the great interest it took in them. It is entitled ‘The Reforms in Armenia, 12th November, 1912-10th May, 1914,’ and was translated into Armenian by one Setrak Avakian (Tiflis, 1915). Czarist intrigue in Anatolia was not diplomatic. It was murderous and utterly cynical. It egged on the two sections of the population to destroy each other, caring not a jot for either. Its weapons were the bomb, the rifle, and the machine-gun supplied in secret to the very firebrands whom the Turks, desiring to restore good older, had disarmed. I never yet knew anyone who took it as a joke, nor do I think that anyone could really do so.”

July 10, 1919, Vol. XXV. No. 11:

Pickthall continues his defense of the defeated Ottoman Empire in an essay entitled, “Between the Lines.” He begins by reporting his perception that Turks defend themselves poorly in European controversies:

“As I have often had occasion to remark in these columns, the Turk never sticks up for himself in the controversy against Europe. He does not know how to do so. With a strong case which any advocate could make convincing, he puts himself in the wrong from a tendency to accept the point of view of his opponents — a tendency which results from a sense of material defeat or helplessness. It is natural for a warlike people to accept the condition of defeat in war, and to think that by accepting that condition they appeal most strongly to the generosity of the conqueror. There is also the feeling that it is a waste of time to seek to demolish prejudices so robust as those which Europe cherishes regarding Turkey, even though those prejudices may be based upon false information. The Turk is thus the worst possible champion of his own cause. Anyone in possession of the facts could state his case much better than he can state it. … [In Paris,] they have thrown away their own true case, and accepted the mere ‘propaganda’ case of the Allies; instead of taking the offensive in discussion, as they had the right to do, for the treatment Turkey had received from the Allies conducing to the war was downright infamous, they assumed a deprecating, defensive attitude and apologetic tone, and positively asked for what they got-a snub the more offensive for its bland hypocrisy.”

With particular derision toward Damad Ferid Pasha, Ottoman Representative at the Interallied Conference at Paris, Pickthall condemns the weakness of the Turkish presentation:

“The weakness and the falsehood of the case presented by Damad Ferid Pasha may be judged from these two points out of a dozen I could mention: that he represents the fear of Czarist Russia's designs on Constantinople which animated the Committee as quite groundless; and, when speaking of Armenian massacres, mentions only that numbers of Muslims were condemned to death for treason by the Committee, and not (what is a fact) that vast numbers of helpless Muslims were massacred by Armenians in the first place!” [emphasis in the original].

Pickthall continues to bemoan Damad Ferid Pasha’s weakness and the Allied reply that it elicited, including the accusations that the war was “accompanied by massacres whose calculated atrocity equals anything in recorded history.” The article concludes much as it began, cursing Ferid’s weakness and the Allies’ smugness.

March 25, 1920, Vol. XXVI. No. 21:

Nine months later, under the heading, “Imperial Suicide,” Pickthall delivers a letter to the editor that continues to rail at the press for misrepresenting Turks. He begins by criticizing the Daily Mail newspaper for putting a picture of Mustafa Kamil, the dead Egyptian nationalist leader, over a caption of Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk). Also, in the context of ongoing fighting in the southeast, Pickthall comments:

“Reports with regard to events in the vilayet of Adana (at present isolated), emanating from Beyrout or Constantinople, are declared to be ‘authoritative,’ while telegrams from Armenians in Marash itself, who say that they are in security, are regarded as fictitious. Lies which every Englishman who knows the East detects immediately -- lies with regard to population, customs, character — are circulated by extremely costly Press advertisement, while letters of protest and correction go unpublished. No impartial international inquiry into the whole question of Armenian massacres has been instituted in the ample time which has elapsed since the conclusion of the Armistice with Turkey; the Turkish Government has asked for such inquiry, but the Armenian organizations and Armenian partisans refuse to hear of such a thing, declaring that the Bryce and Lepsius reports are quite sufficient to condemn the Turks—in other words, that judgment should be given on the case for the prosecution alone. The inter- Allied Commission which investigated the unfortunate events in Smyrna last year made a report unfavourable to Greek claims. Therefore that report has not been published here in England, though in other countries it has long been public property.

…

This conjunction of dense ignorance and cunning falsehood is fraught with instant danger to the British realm. Enormous sums of money are being spent daily on utterly misleading propaganda, a propaganda of which the methods are so far from English as to suggest the presence here in England of the very scum of the Levant. Everything that apparently boundless wealth can do is being done to persuade the man in the street that Oriental sentiment is negligible, and that, far from being dangerous to England, the policy of supporting Eastern Christians, right or wrong, against non- Christians is the only way of future peace for humankind.”

Indeed, the Ottomans not only asked for British help in administering the Armenian vilayets before the war, after being defeated, the Ottoman government asked for a neutral commission of inquiry and were again denied. Each time, the victors chose to rest on accusations made in documents produced as propaganda.