Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1896 — THE CRY OF ARMENIA [ARTICLE]

THE CRY OF ARMENIA

DR. TALMAGE RELATES HORRORS OF THE MASSACRE. I .. ', r The Turk Placer No Value on the Life of a Christian—Heroic Work of Mis-sionaries-Duty of the Nations to Stop Persecution. Our Weekly Sermon, It was appropriate, that in. the presence at his Washington church of the chief men of this nation and other nations Dr. Talmage should tell the story of Armenian massacre. What will be the extent or good of such a discourse none ctm tell. The text was II Kihgs xix., 37, “They escaped iato the land of Armenia.” —I nßiWe geography -t his is the first time that Armenia appears, called then by the same,name As now. Armenia is chiefly a sea, and sn one of its peaks Noah's ark landed, with its human family and fauna that were to fill the earth. That region was the birthplace of the rivers which fertilized the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve lived there, their only roof the crystal skies and their carpet the emerald' of rich grass. Its inhabitants, the ethnologists tell us, are a superior type of the Caucasian race. Their religion is ■ founded on the Bible. Their Saviour is our Christ. Their crime is that they will not become followers of Mohammed, that' Jupiter of sensuality. To drive them from the face of , the earth is the ambition of all Mohammedans. To accomplish this murder is no crimp, and wholesale crelsaTnatreroFeiithusiastieapprobation and governmental reward. The prayer sanctioned, by highest Mohammedan authority and recited every day throughout Turkey and Egypt, while styling all those not Mohammedans as infidels, is as£ollows: “O Lord of all creatures! O Allah, destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies tJI the religion! O Allah, make their children orphans and defile their bodies! XJause their feet to slip, give them and their families, their households and their women, their children and their relatives by marriage, their brothers and their friends, their possessions and the race, their wealth and their lands as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures!”

Turks at the Old Business. The life of an Armenian in the presence of those who make that prayer is of no more value than the life of a summer insect. The sultan of Turkey sits on a throne impersonating that brigandage and assassination. At this time all civilized nations are in horror at the attempts-of that Mohammedan government to destroy all the Christians of Armenia. I hear somebody talking as though some new thing were happening, and that the Turkish government’had taken a new role of tragedy on the stage of nations. No, no! She is at the same old business. Overlooking her diabolism of other centuries, we come down to our century to find that ,in 1822 the Turkish, government slew 50, 000 anti-Moslems, and in 1850 she slew 10,000, and" in 1860 she, slew 11,000, and in 1876 she slew 10,000. Anything short of the slaughter of thousands of human beings does not put enough red wine into her cup of abomination to make it worth quaffing. Not is this the only time she has promised reform. In the presence of the warships at the mouth of the Dardanelles she has promised the civilized nations of the earth that she would stop;her butcheries, and the international and hemispheric farce has been enacted of believing what she says, when all the past ought to persuade us that she is only pausing in her atrocities to put nations off the track and then resume the work of death. In 1820 Turkey, in treaty with llussia, promised to alleviate the condition of Christians, but the promise was broken. In 1830 the then sultan promised protection of life and property without reference to religion, and the promise was broken. In 1844, at the demand of an English minister plenipotentiary, the sultan declared, after the public execution of an Armenian at Constantinople, that no such death penalty should again be inflicted, and the promise was broken. In 1850, at the demand of foreign nations, the Turkish government promised protection to Protestants, but to this day the Protestants at Stamboul are not allowed to build a church, nithough they have, the funds ready, and the Greek Protestants, who have a church, are uot permitted to worship in it. In 1850, after the Crimean war, Turkey promised that no one should be hindered in-the exercise of the religion he professed, and that promise has been broken. In 1878, at the memorable treaty of Berlin, Turkey promised religious liberty to all her subjects in every part of the Ottoman empire, and the promise was broken. Not once iii nlj tfij? centuries has the Turkish government kept her promise of mercy. So far from any improvement the condition of the Armenians has become‘worse and worse year by year, and all the promises the Turkish" government now makes are only a gaining of time by which she is making preparation for the complete extermination of Christianity from her borders.

Blot Out Mohammedanism. Why, after all the national and continental and hemispheric lying on the part of the Turkish government, do not the warships of Europe ride up as close as is possible to the palaces of Constantinople and blow that accursed government to dtomsT In the name of the eternal God let the nuisance of the ages be wiped off the face of the earth! Down to the perdition from which it smoked up sink Mohammedanism! Between these outbreaks of massacre the Armenians suffer in si-., lence wrongs that are seldom if ever reported. They are taxed heavily for the mere privilege of Kving, and the tax Is called “the humiliation tax.” They are compelled to give three days’ entertainment to any Mohammedan tramp/ who may be passing that way. They must pay blackmail to the assessor, lest he/report the value of their property too highly. Their evidence hr codrt is of no worth, and if 50 Armenians saw a wrong committed and ono Mohammedan was present the testimony of the one Mohammedan would be taken and the testimony of the 50 Armenians rejected. In other words, the solemn oath of a thousand Armenians would not be strong enough to overthrow ♦he perjury of one Mohammedan. A professor was Condemned to death for translating the English “Book of Common Prager” into Turkish. Seventeen Armenians were Sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment for rescuing a Christian bride frnm the bandits. This Is the way the TnrfcMi government amuses itself in time of peace % These are the delights of Turkish cijjlisation. ;

' ' ' ' : ' _ ..... « 4 But when the days of massacre eome then deed* done which may not be unveiled in any refined assemblage, one speaks of the horrors he must do so in tveH . poised and cautious vocabulary. Hundreds of villages destroyed! Young men put in piles of brushwood, which are then saturated with kerosene and set on fire! Mothers, in the most solemn hour, that ever comes in a woman’s life, hurled out and bayoneted! Eyes gouged out and 'dead and dying hurled into the same pit! The slaughter of Lucknow and Cawnpur, India, in 1857, eclipsed in ghastliness! The worst scenes of the French revolution in Paris made more tolerable in contrast! In many regions of Armenia the only undertakers to-day are the jackals and hyenas; Many of the chiefs of the massacres were sent straight from Constantinople to do their work, and having returned were decorated by the sultan.y' Turkish Murderers Decorated. To four of the worst murderers the snltan sent silk banners in delicate appreciation of their services. Five hundred thousand Armenians put to death or dying of starvation! This moment, while I speak, all up and down Armenia sit many people, freezing in the ashes of their destroyed homes, bereft of most of their households and awaiting the club of assassination to put them out ui their misery. No wonder that the physicians of that region declared that among all the men and women that were down with wounds and sickness and under not one wanted to get well. Remember that nearly all the reports that have come to us of the Turkish outrages.have been manipulated and modified and softened by the Turks themselves. The story is not half told, or a hundredth part told, or a thousandth part told. None but Goil and our suffering brothers and sisters In that faroff land know the whole story, and it will not be known until, in the coronations of heaven, Christ sha 111 if t.to. a specia 1 throne of glory thesc heroes and heroines, saying, “These are they who came out of great tribulation and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb!” My Lord and thou didst on the cross suffer for them, but thou surely, O Christ, wilt not forget how much they have suffered for.thee! I dare not deal in imprecation, but I never so much enjoyed the imprecatory songs of David as since I. . have heard how those Turks are treating the Armenians. The fact is, Turkey has got to be divided up among other nations. Of course the European nations must take the chief part, but Turkey ought to be compelled to pay America for the American mission buildings and American school houses she has destroyed and to support the wives and ' children of the Americans ruined by this wholesale butchery. When the English lion and the Russian bear put their paws on that Turkey, the American eagle ought to put in its bill.

Missionary Heroes. Who are these American and English and Scotch missionaries who are being hounded among the mountains of Armenia by the Mohammedans? The noblest mbn and women this side of heaven, some of them men who took the highest honors at Yale and Princeton and Harvard and Oxford and Edinburgh; some of those women, gentlest afid most Christlike, who, to save people they never saw, turned their backs on luxurious homes to spend their days in self-expatriation, saying good-by to father and mother and afterward good-by to their own children, as ■ circumstances compel them to send the little ones to England, Scotland or America. have seen these foreign missionaries in their homes all around the world, and I stamp with indignation upon the literary blackguardism of foreign correspondents who have depreciated these heroes and heroines who are willing to live and die for Christ's sake. They will have the highest thrones in heaven, while their defamers will not get near enough to the shining gates to see the faintest gHnt of any one of the twelve pearls which make up the twelve gates. This defamation of missionaries is augmented by the dissolute English, American and Scotch merchants who go to foreign cities, leaving their families behind them. Those dissolute merchants in foreign cities lead a life of such gross immorals that the pure households of the missionaries are a perpetual rebuke. Buzzards never did believe in doves, and if there is anything that nightshade hates it is the water .lily. What the 550 American missionaries have suffered in the Ottoman empire since 1820 I leave the archangel to announce on the day of judgment. You will see it reasonable that I put so much emphasis on Americanism in the Ottoman empire when I tell you that America, notwithstanding all-the disadvantages named, has now over 27,000 students in day schools in that empire and 35,000 children in her Sabbath schools, and that America has expended in the Turkish empire for its betterment oyer $TO,OOO,()0iJ. "Has riot America a right' to be heard? Aye! It will be heard! I am glad that great indignation meetings are being held all over this country. That poor. weak, cowardly sultan, whom I saw a few years ago ride to his mosque for worship,* guarded by 7,000 armed men, many of tffem mounted on prancing chargers, will hear of these sympathetic meetings for the Armenians, if not through American reporters, then through some of his 360 wives. What to do with him? There ought to be some St. Helena to which he could be exiled, while the natiqps of Europe appoint a ruler of their own to clean out and take possession of the palaces of Constantinople. To-night this august assemblage in the capital of the United States, in the name of the God of nations, indicts the Turkish Government for the wholesale assassination in Armenia and invokes the interference of Almighty God and the protest of eastern and western hemispheres. Duty of the Hour. But what is the duty of the hour? Sympathy, deep, wide, tremendous, immediate! A religious paper, The Christian Herald of New York, has led the way with m'unifleent contributions collected from subscribers. But the Turkish government is opposed to any relief of the Armenian sufferers, as I personally know. Last August, before I hud any idea Of becoming a fellow'citizen'with you Washingtonians, $50,000 for Armenian relief was offered me if I would personally take that relief to Armenia. My passage was to be engaged on the City of Paris, but a telegram was sent to Constantinople, asking if the Turkish government would, grant me protection on such an errand of mercy. A cablegram said the Turkish government wished to know to what points in Armenia I deaired to go wijh that relief. In our reply four pities were named, one of them the scene of what had been the chief massacre. A cablegram came from Constantinople saying that I had better send the

money to the Turkish government’s mix-< ed commission, and they would distribute it. So a, cobweb of spiders proposed a relief for unfortunate flies! Well, a man who would start up through the' mountains of Armenia with $50,000 and no governmental protection would be guilty of monumental foolhardiness. The Turkish government has in every possible way hindered Armenian relief. Nfiw where is.that angel of mercy, Clara Barton, who appeared oh the battlefields of. Fredericksburg, Antietam, Falmouth and Cedar Mountain, and Under the blaze of French and German guns at Metz and Paris and in Johnstown - floods, and Charleston earthquake, and Michigan fires, and Russian famines? It was comGerman emperor decorated her with the Iron Cross, for God hath decorated her in the sight of all nations with a glory that neither time net eternity can dim. Born* in a Massachusetts village. she came in her girlhood to this city to serve our government in the patent office, but afterward went forth from the doors of that patent office with--a divine patent, signed and sealed" Jy God himself, to heal all the wounds she,could tdbeh and make the horrors of the flood and fire and plague and hospital fly her presence. God bless Clara Barton! Just as I expected, sho lifts the banner of the Red Cross. The Red Cross of Mercy, Turkey and all nations are pledged to respect and defend that Red Cross, although that color of cross does not, in the opinion of many", stand for Christiahity. In my opinion it does stand for Christianity, for was not the cross under which most of us worship red with the blood of the Son of God, red- with the best blood that was ever shed, red with the blood poured out for the ransom of the world? Then lead on, O Red Cross! And let Clara Barton carry it! *The Turkish government is bound.to protect her, and the chariots ofGod are 20,000, and their charioteers are angels of deliverance, and they would all 'ride <lbwn at once to roll overand trample under the hoofs of their white horses any of her assailants. May the;, $500,000 she geeks be laid at her feet! Then may the ships that carry Atlantic and Mediterranean seas be.guided safely by him who trod into sapphire pavement bestormed Galilee! Upon soil incarnadined with martyrdom let the Red be planted, until every demolished village shall be rebuilded, and every pang of hunger be fed, and every wound of cruelty be healed, and Armenia stand with as much liberty to serve God in’ its own way as in this the best land of all the earth we, the -descendants of the Puritans and Hollanders and Huguenots, are free to-worship the Christ who came ,t° set all nations free. Doctrine of Helpfulness. It has been said that if we go over there to interfere on another continent that will imply the fight for other nations to interfere with affairs on this- continent, and so the Monroe doctrine No, no! .President Cleveland expressed thh sentiment of every .intelligent and pat--riotic American when he thundered from the White House a warning to all nations that there is not one aero or one inch more of ground on this continent for any transAtlantic government to occupy. And by that doctrine we stand now and shall forever stand. But there is a doctrine as much higher than the Monroe doctrine as the heavens are higher than the earth, and that is the doctrine of humanitarianism and sympathy and Christian helpfulness which one cold December midnight, with loud and multitudinous chant, awakened'the shepherds. Wherever there is a wound it is our duty, whether as individuals or as nations, to balsam it. Wherever there is a knife of assassination lifted it is our duty to ward off the blade. Wherever men are persecuted for their religiop it is our duty to break that arm of power, whether it be thrust forth from a Protestant church or a Catholic -cathedral or a Jewish synagogue or a mosque of Islam. We all recognize the right on a small scale. If, going down the road, we find a ruffiin maltreating a child, or a human brute insulting a woman, we take a hand in the contest if we are not cowards, and though we be slight In personal presence, because of our indignation we come to weigh about twenty tons, and the harder we punish' tho villain the louder our conscience applauds us. In such case we do not keep our hands in our pockets, arguing that if we interfere with the brute, the brute might think he would have a right to interfere with us and so jeopardize the Monroe doctrine.

The Ark of Sympathy.The fact is that that persecution of the Armenians by the Turks must be stopped, or God Almighty will curse all Christendom for its damnable indifference and apathy. But the trumpet of resurrection is about to sound for Armenia. Did I say in opening, that on one of the peaks of ArArmenia of speak, in Noah’s time the ark landed, according to the myth, as some think, btlK according to God’s “say so," as I know, and that it was after a long storm of forty days and forty nights, call mJ the deluge, and that afterward a dore went forth from that ark and returned with an olive leaf in her beak? Even so now there is another ark being launched, but this one goes sailing, uot over a deluge of water, but a deluge of blood —the ark of Armenian sympathy —tfhd that ark, landing on Ararat, from its window shall fly the dove of kindness to find fiic olive leaf of returning prosperity, while alf the mountains of Moslem prejudice, oppression and cruelty shall stand fifteen cubits under. Meanwhile we would like to gather all the dying groans of all the 500,000 victims of Mohammedan oppression and intone them into one prayer that would move the earth and the heavens, hundreds of millions of Christians’ voices, American and European, crying out; "O God Most High! Spare thy children. With mandate from the throne hurl back upon their haunches the horses of the Kurdish cavalry. Stop the rivers of blood. With the earthquakes of thy wrath shake the foundations of the palaces of the sultan. Move all the nations of Europe to command cessation of cruelty. If need be, let the warships of civilized dotions boom their indignation. Let the crescent go down before the cross, and the Mighty One who hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written ‘KThg of Kings and Lord of Lords.’ go forth, conquering and to conqne/. Thine, O Lord, is the kingdom! Haflelujab! Amen!” The old gunz of 16 and 20 inch caliber at Fort Hamilton, New York, are giving place to weapons of smaller bore. But the new cannon will carry a shell ten miles, or four times the range of tbe old ones, and con also be fired vAtk much greater praclaieQ,