Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  See note at end of this chapter.

  But in addition to his ludicrous side, there is in him a refined hypocrisy and a subtle cruelty worthy of Abdul Hamid. One instance will suffice.

  There had been some talk that at certain of these concentration camps there was no water supply, and he gave orders, did Jemal the Great and the Merciful, that water should be sent. A train consisting of trucks of water accordingly was despatched to one of those camps, situated in the desert, with no supply nearer than six miles, and an eye-witness describes its arrival. The mob of Armenians, mad with thirst, surrounded it, and, since everything must be done in an orderly and seemly manner, were beaten back by the Turkish guards, and made to stand at a due distance for the distribution. And when those ranks, with their parched throats and sun-cracked lips, were all ready, the Turkish guards opened the taps of the reservoirs, and allowed the whole of their contents to run away into the sand. Whether Jemal the Great planned that, or whether it was but a humorous freak on the part of the officials, I cannot say. But as a refinement of cruelty I have, outside the page of Poe’s tales, only once come across anything to equal it, and that in a letter from the Times’ correspondent at Berne on April 11, 1917. He describes the treatment of English prisoners in Germany: ‘An equally common entertainment with those women (German Red Cross nurses) was to offer a wounded man a glass, perhaps, of water, then, standing just outside his reach, to pour it slowly on the ground.’ Could those sisters of mercy have read the account of Jemal’s clemency, or is it merely an instance of the parallelism of similar minds?

  So the empty train returned, and Jemal the Great caused it to be known in Berlin that he was active in securing a proper water supply for the famous agricultural settlements in the desert, and loud were the encomiums in the press of the Central Powers over the colonisation of Syria by the Armenians, the progress and enlightenment of the Turks, and the skilful and humane organisation of Jemal the Great.

  There is no difficulty in estimating to-day the number of Armenian men who survive in the Turkish Empire. All appeals to the Prussian overlords, such as were made by Dr. Niepage, and the belated remonstrance of the Prussians themselves when they foresaw a dearth of labour for the husbandry of beet and cereals, fell on deaf ears, and I cannot see any reason for supposing that Armenian men exist any more in the Empire. It is more difficult to judge of the numbers of women who, by accepting the Moslem creed and the harems, are still alive. Certainly in some districts there were considerable ‘conversions,’ and Dr. Niepage rates them as many thousands. But the willingness to accept those conditions was not always a guarantee for their being granted, and I have read reports where would-be converts were told that ‘religion’ was a more serious matter than that, and, instead of being accepted, they were massacred. But even if Dr. Niepage is right, we can scarcely consider these women as constituting an Armenian element any more in the country. The work of butchery, the torture, the long-drawn agonies of those inhuman pilgrimages have come to an end because there are no more Armenian victims available. Apart from those who escaped over the Russian frontier, and the handful who sought refuge in Egypt, the race exists no longer, and the seal has been set on the bloodiest deed that ever stained the annals of the barbarous Osmanlis. It is not in revenge on the murderers, but in order to rescue the other subject peoples, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, who are still enclosed within the frontiers of the Empire, that the Allied Governments, in their answer to President Wilson, stated that among their aims as belligerents, was the ‘liberation of the peoples who now lie beneath the murderous tyranny of the Turks.’ There is defined their irreducible demand: never again, after peace returns, will the Turk be allowed to control the destinies of races not his own. Too long already — and to their disgrace be it spoken — have the civilised and Christian nations of Europe tolerated at their very doors a tyranny that has steadily grown more murderous and more monstrous, because they feared the upset of the Balance of Power. Now at least such Powers as value national honour, and regard a national promise as something more than a gabble of ink on a scrap of paper, have resolved that they will suffer the tyranny of the Turk over his alien subject peoples to continue no longer. It is the least they can do (and unhappily the most) to redeem the century-long neglect of their duty. Even now, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, the direst peril threatens those other peoples who at present groan under Turkish rule, and we can but pray that the end of the war will come before Arabs or Greeks or Jews suffer the same fate as has exterminated the Armenians. Too often have we been too late; we must only hope that another item will not have to be added to that miserable list, and that, when the day of reckoning comes, no half-hearted and pusillanimous policy will stay our hands from the complete execution of that to which we stand pledged. The Balance of Power has gone the way of other rickety makeshifts, but there must be no makeshift in our dealings with the Turk, no compromise and no delay. What shall be done with those who planned and executed the greatest massacres known to history matters little; let them be hanged as high as Haman, and have done with them. But what does matter is that at no future time must it be in the power of a Government that has never been other than barbaric and butcherous, to do again as it has done before.

  NOTE ON JEMAL THE GREAT

  Jemal the Great has very obligingly done what I suggested we might expect him to do, and has kicked against the German control of the Syrian army. General von Falkenhayn was sent to take supreme command, and on June 28th of this year Jemal the Great refused to receive orders from him. In consequence General von Falkenhayn refused responsibility for any offensive movement there if Jemal remained in command.

  This promised well for trouble between Turks and Germans, but we must not, I am afraid, build very high hopes on it, for Germany has dealt with the situation in a masterly manner. Jemal was already Minister of Marine as well as commander of the Syrian army, so the Emperor asked him to pay another visit to Berlin, and he has been visiting Krupp’s works and German naval yards, and we shall find probably that in the future his activities will be marine rather than military, and that von Falkenhayn will have a free hand in Syria.

  But this will prove rather disappointing for Jemal, since it seems beyond mere coincidence that towards the end of August Herr von Kuhlmann, the new German Foreign Minister, induced the Turkish Government (while Jemal was at Berlin) to put their navy and their merchant fleet under the orders of the German Admiralty, and already many Turkish naval officers have been replaced by Germans. Thus Jemal will find himself deprived of his military command, because the navy so urgently needed his guiding hand, while his guiding hand over the navy will be itself guided by the German Admiralty.... In fact, it looks rather like checkmate for Jemal the Great, and an end to the trouble he might have given the German control.

  On the eve of his leaving Germany, as yet unconscious probably of the subordination of the entire Turkish fleet to the German Admiralty, he gave an interview to a representative of the Cologne Gazette, which deserves more than that ephemeral appearance. It shows Jemal the Great in a sort of hypnotic trance induced at Potsdam. ‘The German fleet,’ he says, ‘is simply spotless in its power, and a model for all states which need a modern navy — a model which cannot be surpassed.’ ... He went for a cruise in a submarine which proceeded ‘so smoothly, elegantly, calmly and securely that I had the impression of cruising in a great steamship.’ ... He was taken to Belgium, and describes the ‘idyllic life there’: in the towns ‘the people go for walks all day long,’ and in the country the peasants blithely gather in the harvest with the help of happy prisoners.’ (He does not tell us where the harvest goes to, any more than the Germans tell us where the Turkish harvests go to.) He was taken to General Headquarters, which he describes as ‘majestic.’ Finally he was taken into the presence of the All-Highest, and seems to have emerged in the condition in which Moses came down from Sinai.... But one must not altogether despair of Jemal the Great. It is still possible that, on his return to Constantino
ple, when he found that his position, as Minister of Marine was but a clerkship in the German Admiralty, the hypnotic trance began to pass off, and his ambitions to re-assert themselves. He may yet give trouble to the Germans if properly handled.

  CHAPTER IV: THE QUESTION OF SYRIA AND PALESTINE

  It is impossible to leave this heart-rending tale of the sufferings of the Armenian people under the Turks without some account of that devoted band of American missionaries who, with a heroism unsurpassed, and perhaps unequalled, so eagerly sacrificed themselves to the ravages of pestilence and starvation in order to alleviate the horrors that descended on the people to whom they had been sent. Often they were forcibly driven from the care of their flocks, often in the extermination of their flocks there was none left whom they could shepherd, but wherever a remnant still lingered there remained these dauntless and self-sacrificing men and women, regardless of everything except the cause to which they had devoted themselves. They recked nothing of the dangers to which they exposed themselves so long as there was a child or a woman or a man whom they could feed or nurse. Terrible as were the sufferings through which the Armenians passed, they must have been infinitely more unbearable had it not been for these American missionaries; small as was the remnant that escaped into the safety of Persia or Russian Trans-Caucasia, their numbers must have been halved had it not been for the heroism of these men and women. While the German Consuls contented themselves with a few faint protests to their Ambassador at Constantinople, followed by an acquiescence of silence, the missionaries constituted themselves into a Red Cross Society of intrepid workers, and, as one well-qualified authority tells us, ‘suffered as many casualties from typhus and physical exhaustion as any proportionate body of workers on the European battlefields.’ Fully indeed did they live up to the mandate of the American board that sent them out: ‘Your great business is with the fundamental doctrines and duties of the Gospel.’

  At the opening of the European War the American Missions had been at work for nearly a hundred years, and were disseminated over Anatolia and Armenia. They had opened 163 Protestant churches and 450 schools, they established hospitals, and in every possible way spread civilisation in a country where the spirit of the governing class was barbarism. It was not their object to proselytise. ‘Let the Armenian remain an Armenian if he will,’ so ran the instructions from which I have already quoted, ‘the Greek a Greek, the Nestorian a Nestorian, the Oriental an Oriental,’ and in the same wise and open-minded spirit they encouraged native Protestant Churches which were independent of them and largely self-supporting. Naturally in a country governed by monsters like Abdul Hamid and Enver Pasha in later days, they earned the enmity which is the tribute of barbarians to those who stand for civilisation, and when, owing to the extermination or flight of their Armenian flocks, they were left without a charge, and their schools were closed, we find a paean of self-congratulation going up from the Turkish press inspired by the butchers of Armenia. But till the massacres and the flight were complete, they gave themselves to the ‘duties of the Gospel,’ and their deeds shine like a star into the blackness of that night of murder.

  I will take as an example of the superb heroism of those men and women the diary of an American lady attached to the mission at Urmia, a document that, anonymously, is one of the noblest, least self-conscious records I have ever read. The period of it extends over five months.

  Early in January 1915 the Russian troops were withdrawn from Urmia, which lies on the frontier between Turkey and Persia, and simultaneously the Moslem population began to plunder the Christian villages, the inhabitants of which fled for refuge to the missions in the city. Talaat’s official murder-scheme was not completed yet, but the Kurds, together with the Turks, had planned a local massacre at Geogtapa, which was stopped by the American doctor of this mission, Dr. Packard, who, at great personal risk, obtained an interview with the Kurdish chief, and succeeded in inducing him to spare the lives of the Christians, if they gave up arms and ammunition and property. The American flag was hoisted over the Mission buildings, and before a week was out there were over ten thousand refugees housed in the yards and rooms, where they remained for five months, the places of the dead being taken by fresh influxes. The dining-room, the sitting-room, the church, the school, were all given over to these destitute people, and from the beginning fear of massacre, as well as prevalence of disease, haunted the camp. It was impossible to move dead bodies outside; they had to be buried in the thronged yards, and every day children were born. But here is the spirit that animated their protectors. ‘We have just had a Praise meeting,’ records the diarist at the close of the first fortnight, ‘with fifty or sixty we could gather from the halls and rooms near, and we feel more cheerful. We thought if Paul and Silas, with their stripes, could sing praises in prison, so could we.’

  The weeks, of which each day was a procession of hours too full of work to leave time for anxiety, began to enrol themselves into months, and the hope of rescue by a Russian advance made their hearts sick, so long was it deferred. Refugees from neighbouring villages kept arriving, and there was the constant problem before these devoted friends of their flock, as to how to feed them. All such were welcome, and eager was the welcome they received, though every foot of space in the buildings and in the yards was occupied. But somehow they managed to make room for all who came, and for those villagers who, under threat of torture and massacre, had apostatised, there was but yearning and sorrow, but never a word of blame or bitterness. Sometimes there was a visit of Turkish troops to search for concealed Russians, and, as our diarist remarks, ‘We can’t complain of the monotony of life, for we never know what is going to happen next. On Tuesday morning we had a wedding in my room here. The boy and girl were simple villagers.... The wedding was fixed for the Syrian New Year, but the Kurds came and carried off wedding clothes and everything else in the house. They all fled here, and were married in the old dirty garments they were wearing when they ran for their lives.... Their only present was a little tea and sugar that I tied up in a handkerchief and gave to the bride.’

  The eternal feminine and the eternal human speak there; and there, for this gallantest of women, were two keys that locked up the endless troubles and anxieties that ceased not day or night. But sometimes the flesh was weak, and in the privacy of her diary she says, ‘How long, O Lord?’ But for that there was the master-key that unlocks all wards, and a little further on we read, ‘One of the verses that helps to keep my faith steady is, “He that spared not His own Son.” For weeks we have had no word from the outside world, but we “rest in Jehovah and wait patiently for Him.”’

  The conditions inside the crowded yards grew steadily worse. Dysentery was rife, and the deaths from it in that narrow space averaged thirty a day. The state of the sufferers grew so terrible that it was difficult to get any one to look after them at all, and many were lying in the open yards, and the weather, which hitherto had been warm, got cold, and snow fell. It was with the greatest difficulty that food could be obtained for those in health, and that of a kind utterly unsuitable to the sick, while in the minds of their nurses was the bitter knowledge that with proper diet hundreds of lives could have been saved, and hundreds of cases of illness avoided.

  For the dead there was but a small percentage of coffins available, and ‘the great mass are just dropped into the great trench of rotting humanity (in the yard). As I stand at my window I see one after another of the little bodies carried by ... and the condition of the living is more pitiful than that of the dead — hungry, ragged, dirty, sick, cold, wet, swarming with vermin. Not for all the wealth of all the rulers of Europe would I bear for one hour their responsibility for the suffering and misery of this one little corner of the world alone. A helpless unarmed Christian community turned over to the sword and the passion of Islam!’

  On the top of this came an epidemic of typhoid, twenty-seven cases on the first day. Outside in the town the Turkish Consul began hanging Christians, and the missio
ners were allowed to take the bodies and bury them. There were threats that the mission would be entered, and all young men (possible combatants) killed, but this fear was not realised. The typhoid increased, and the doctor of the mission and others of the staff fell ill with it; but the patience and service of the remainder never faltered, while the same spirit of uncomplaining suffering animated the refugees. ‘Mr. McDowell,’ so the diarist relates, ‘saw a tired and weary woman with a baby in her arms, sitting in one of the seats, and said to her, “Where do you stay?” She said “Just here.” “How long have you been here?” “Since the beginning.” (two months) she replied. “How do you sleep at night?” “I lay the baby on the desk in front of me, and I have this post at the back to lean against. This is a very good place. Thank you very much.”’

  In April there comes a break in the diary after the day on which the following entry is made: —

  ‘I felt on Sunday as if I ought to get my own burial clothes ready, so as to make as little trouble as possible when my time comes, for in these days we all go about our work knowing that any one of us may be the next to go down. And yet I think our friends would be surprised to see how cheerful we have kept, and how many occasions we find for laughing: for ludicrous things do happen. Then, too, after dwelling so intimately with Death for three months, he doesn’t seem to have so unfriendly an aspect, and the “Other Side” seems near, and our Pilot close beside us.... I find the Rock on which I can anchor in peace are the words of Christ Himself: “Where I am, there ye may be also.” ... That is enough, to be where He is....’