Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Then comes a break of two months, during which the writer was down with typhoid. She resumes again in June, finding that death has made many changes, and gets back to work again at once. By that time the Russians had entered Urmia, a thanksgiving service was held, the refugees dispersed, and the American Mission went quietly on with its normal work.

  Now I have taken this one instance of the work of Americans at Urmia to show in some detail the character of the work that they were doing, and the Christian and humanising influence of it. But all over Armenia and Anatolia were similar settlements, and, as already mentioned, at the time of the massacres there were established there over a hundred of their churches and over four hundred schools, and from these extracts which concern only one not very large centre, it may be gathered what leaven of civilising influence the sum of their energies must have implied. That lamp shone steady and clear, a ‘kindly light’ in the darkness of Turkish misrule, and in the havoc of the massacres a beacon of hope, not always reached by those hapless refugees. Indeed it seems to have been only on the frontier that the missions were able to save those foredoomed hordes of fleeing Christians; in Armenia and in Anatolia generally the massacres and ‘deportations’ were complete, and by the end of 1915 all American missions were closed, for there were none to tend and care for. Even if the massacres had not occurred, the entry of America into the war would have resulted in a similar cessation of their work, and most probably in a massacre of the American missioners themselves. Their withdrawal, of course, was hailed with a peacock scream of pride by that enlightened body under Talaat and Enver, called the New Turkish party of Progress, for their presence was a bar to the Turkish notions of civilisation, in that their influence made for humanity, and health and education. Now ‘the humiliating and dangerous situation’ (to quote from the columns of Hilal) was put an end to, and Turkish progress could make headway again.

  Similarly in Syria the outbreak of war put an end to ‘the humiliating and dangerous situation’ of the presence of French schools and missions. There, for many years, French missioners had done the same work as Americans in Armenia, work in every sense liberal and civilising, but undenominational in religious matters and unproselytising. That came to an end earlier than the organisations in Armenia, and in Syria now, as over the rest of the Turkish people, Arabs and Jews and Greeks have nothing except German influence and Kultur to stand between them and the spirit of Turkish progress of which the Armenian massacres were the latest epiphany. Germany, as we have seen, stood by and let the Armenian massacres go on, professing herself unable to interfere in the internal affairs of Turkey, though at the time there was not a single branch of Turkish industries, railways, telegraphs, armies, navies over which she had not complete control, exercising it precisely as she thought fit.

  It is useless, then, to base any confidence in the safety of Jews, Greeks, and Arabs from suffering the same fate as the Armenians, on a veto from Germany. If it suits Germany to let those unfortunate peoples be murdered or deported to agricultural colonies, Germany will assuredly not stir a finger on their behalf nor prevent a repetition of the horrors I have dealt with in the previous chapter. Sooner than risk her hold over Turkey by enforcing unacceptable demands, she will, unless other considerations of self-interest determine her, let further massacres occur, if Talaat Bey insists on them. That spokesman of her policy, Ernst Marré, makes this perfectly explicit in his book, Die Türken und Wir nach dem Kriege, upholding from the German standpoint the right of Turkey and the wisdom of Turkey in dealing with her subject peoples as she had dealt with the Armenians. ‘The Turkish State,’ he tells us, ‘is no united whole: Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, cannot be welded together.’ (This, by a somewhat grim and ominous coincidence, is in exact accordance with a remark made to a Danish Red Cross Sister by a Turkish gendarme then engaged in massacring Armenians: ‘First we get rid of the Armenians,’ he said, ‘then the Greeks, then the Kurds.’) Or again, in defence of the Armenian massacres, ‘Only by energetic interference and by expelling of the obstinate Armenian element, could the Ottoman Empire get rid of a Russian dominion.’ Or again, ‘The non-Turkish population of the Ottoman Empire must be Ottomanised.’ Here, then, is the German point of view: the Ottoman Government will be right to ‘dispose of’ its subject peoples as it thinks fit. So far from interfering, Germany endorses, and German influence to-day is all that stands between ‘the murderous tyranny’ and its subject peoples. French, English, and finally American pressure can no longer, since the entry of these nations into the war, be exercised within the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, and the only protection of defenceless aliens is the German Government. It did not stir a finger to save the Armenians, until it saw that depopulation threatened the prosperity of its industries, and it is idle to expect that it will do more if the consolidation of Turkish supremacy demands a further campaign of murder. Greeks, Arabs, and Jews are all completely at the mercy of Talaat’s murder-schedules. The only chance that can save them is that further extermination may not suit Germany’s political aims, and that she may find it worth her while to be peremptory, and forbid instead of endorsing.

  There are unhappily many signs that the butchers of Constantinople are planning further massacres. In February of this year preliminary measures were begun against the Greeks settled in Anatolia. Many were forcibly proselytised, their property was confiscated, and they were forbidden to carry on their businesses. Deportations also occurred, and all Greeks were removed from many villages in Anatolia, into the interior, presumably to ‘agricultural colonies’ such as those provided for Armenians. They suffered terribly from hunger and exposure, and it is estimated that ten per cent. of them died on their marches. Since then, however, there has been no more heard of any extension of those measures, and there seems to have been as yet no massacre of Greeks. It is reasonable to infer that Germany has in this case intervened. She still hoped to win Greece over to the Central European Powers, and clearly any massacre of Greeks by her own Allies was not desirable. King Constantine, among his endless vacillations and pusillanimous treacheries, probably made a firm protest on the subject. But in the kaleidoscope of war, should Greece come to the side of the Allies, it seems most probable that there will occur a wholesale massacre of Greeks. From what we know of the principles on which German Kultur is based, the most optimistic can scarcely hope that the very faintest remonstrance will emanate from Berlin.

  The case of the Arabs in Syria is even more precarious. From the moment that the policy of the Young Turks was evolved, namely, to consolidate Osmanli supremacy by the weakening of its subject peoples, the Ottoman Government has been waiting for its opportunity to get rid of the ‘Arab menace.’ As we have seen, they began by substituting Turkish for Arabic as a written language in all official usages from the printing of the Koran and the prayers for the Sultan down to the legends on railway tickets. The Arab spirit, according to one of the spokesmen of the New Turk party, had to be suppressed, the Arab lands had to become Turkish colonies. ‘It is a peculiarly imperious necessity of our existence,’ we read in Jelal Noury Bey’s propaganda, ‘to Turkise the Arab lands, for the particularistic idea of nationality is awaking among the younger generations of Arabs, and already threatens us with a great catastrophe.’ Against the Arabs the Young Turks formed and fostered a special animosity; they were powerful and warlike, and Enver, Talaat, and others saw that the idea of an Osmanli supremacy could never be realised unless very drastic measures were taken against them. The tenets of Islamism, it is true, forbade Moslems to fight Moslems, but Islamism, as a binding force, was already obsolete in the counsels of the new regime, having given place to Kultur. Of all their subject peoples, the Young Turks hated the Arabs the most, and, had not the European War intervened, there is no doubt that the Armenian massacres, already being planned, would have been followed by Arab massacres. But the armed and warlike Arabian tribes were not so easy to deal with as the defenceless Armenians, and Turkish troops could not be spared in su
fficient numbers to render an Arab massacre the safe, pleasant, and lucrative pursuit that massacres should be. But Jemal the Great, black with his triumph over the Armenians at Zeitun, was Military Governor of Syria, and, the Armenian question being solved, he began to get to work on the Arab question. Owing to the expulsion of the French Missions from Syria in 1914, we have no such full or detailed information as we have from Americans in Armenia, and the following account is mainly derived from the Arabic journal Mokattam, published in Cairo, the information in which is based on the account given by a Syrian refugee. It agrees with pieces of evidence that have come to hand from other sources.

  Ever since the beginning of the war Syria has been an area of direst poverty, starvation, and sickness, which have been the natural co-operators in Jemal’s policy there. All supplies have been commandeered for the troops (including by special clause from Potsdam, the German troops); even fish caught by the fishermen of Lebanon have to be handed over to the military authorities, and the shortage of supplies in Smyrna, for instance, is such that at the end of 1916 there were two hundred deaths daily from sheer starvation, while Germany was importing from Turkey hundreds of tons of corn and of meat. Thus this was no natural shortage, for though supplies were low all over the Turkish Empire, there was not dearth of that kind. It was an artificial shortage made possible by German demands, and made intentional by Jemal’s policy. Beirut was in no better case than Smyrna; Lebanon perhaps was in sorer straits than either. Money was equally scarce, and it fitted Jemal’s policy that this should be so, for when Americans in Beirut had raised funds in America for the relief of the destitute, the Turkish Government forbade their distribution. Arabs and Greeks were dying by the hundred all over the provinces, and the beneficent decrees of nature must not be interfered with. In the streets of towns the poor have been fighting over scraps of sugarcane and orange peel; in the country, to quote from Molcattam, ‘no sooner do wild plants and beans start to grow than the fields are filled with women and children who pick them and use them as food.’ Except for military purposes (including the victualling of German troops) transportation has ceased to exist, and this, too, was part of the policy of Jemal the Great.

  On the heels of famine, like a hound behind a huntsman, came typhus. In the province of Aleppo before the summer of 1916, over 8000 persons had died of it. Doctors and medicines were unobtainable, for all were requisitioned for the needs of the army, and in Damascus and Tripoli, in Hama and Homs, the epidemic spread like a forest fire. No help was sent from Constantinople, none was permitted to be brought by the charitable from abroad, for famine and pestilence among the Arabs were working for the policy of Jemal the Great. There were no troops to spare who should hasten on the work, but the work was progressing by swift and ‘natural’ means. Hunger and pestilence — behold the finger of Allah the God of Love! How superior He showed Himself to the discarded Allah of the Arabs. ‘Ring down the curtain,’ said Jemal the Great, ‘and let no news of the ways of Allah get abroad!’ So a strict surveillance was established on the coast, all boats were chained to the shore, and if any attempted to swim out to ships of the Allied nations which passed, the coast guards had orders to shoot him down. Too much news about Armenian massacres filtered through; there should not now be such leakage. And when starvation and pestilence had firmly established themselves, Jemal the Great went down to see what his personal exertions could effect. All was working in accordance with his plan; the poorer classes of Arabs were dying like flies, but mortality was not so successful among the wealthier, who could, to some extent, purchase food. So Jemal the Great set to work among them. He began by hanging the heads of Syrian-Arabs in Damascus, Beirut, and other cities. No semblance of trial, no prosecution or arraignment, were necessary: he established courts-martial under military control, made lists of the accused, and ordered the courts-martial to condemn them to death. Sometimes he made mistakes, appointing as the members of his court-martial men who were not such sturdy patriots as he, and refused to sentence for no crime the accused whom he nominated. He remedied such mistakes by appointing new boards of more seasoned stuff. Moslem and Christian alike were brought before them, and a general accusation of pro-French tendencies seems to have been sufficient to secure a sentence of death or lifelong imprisonment. He aimed not at the poor and the obscure, for whom hunger and pestilence were providing, but at the rich and the influential. The higher clergy in Christian circles, Bishops and Monsignors, were a favourite target, and among Moslems influential Sheikhs. Sometimes there was a parody of a trial; sometimes the parody was dispensed with, and when the black curtain was last raised over Syria, Jemal the Great had disposed of over eight hundred of the heads of the most influential of Syrian Arabs. He had got rid, in fact, of the whole House of Lords, and something more. Those who are acquainted with ‘feudal values’ among the Arabs will understand what that means. He decapitated, not individuals only, but groups. For devilish ingenuity in this combination of starvation and pestilence for the poor, and death or lifelong imprisonment for the chiefs, Jemal the Great must take rank with Abdul Hamid and the contrivers of the Armenian massacres. He cannot, it is true, owing to lack of troops, obtain the swift results of Enver in Armenia, but between typhus, starvation, and courts-martial, his solution of the Arab question in Syria is making steady progress. And those measures, hideously efficient in themselves, are, beyond any doubt whatever, only the precursors of more sweeping exterminations of the Arab race, which will be effected after the war, if the Allied Powers do not step in to save it. The Faithful of the Holy City, Mecca, have revolted and thrown off the Turkish yoke, and while the war lasts, and Turkish troops are otherwise occupied under Teutonic supervision, they will be able to maintain their independence, for there is no considerable body of Turks which can seriously threaten them. But the Syrian Arabs, so long as the war lasts, are being, and will be, the victims of a quiet scheme of extermination, which, if long continued, will be as complete as that devised and carried out by the butchers of Constantinople for the peoples of Armenia. It is not in the interest of the Germans to save them, and no check is being put on Jemal the Great to hinder him from assisting starvation and typhus to ravage the country, and supplementing their deadly work by court-martial without trial.

  Equally significant of the rage for the destruction of Arabs was the treatment of the Bagdad Arab army corps. In spite of the need for troops one half of it was sent from Bagdad to Erzerum in the depth of winter, without any provision of warm clothing. There, in those cold uplands, the men died at the rate of fifty to sixty a day. Their commanding officer was a Turk, and a creature of Enver’s, called Abdul Kader. Though these troops had fought admirably, he openly called them Arab traitors, and his orders seem to have been merely to get rid of them. There were no courts-martial; they were just taken into a climate which killed them.

  While for the last thirty years the Armenians and Syrians have emigrated in large numbers from the Ottoman Empire, there has been a large immigration of Jews into it. This movement was originally due to the persecution they suffered in Russia. Germany and Austria were closed to them, and, flying from the hideous pogroms that threatened them with extermination, they begun to settle in Palestine. Wealthy compatriots such as Baron Edmond de Rothschild assisted them, and, with the amazing versatility of their race, they, trades-people and town-folk, adapted themselves to new conditions, turned their wits towards husbandry and agriculture, and during the last thirty years have flourished and multiplied in a manner quite unrealised by the western world. In 1881 there were not more than 25,000 of them in the home of their race, but by the beginning of the European War, when their immigration ceased for the present, they numbered 120,000 souls. Till then the Ottoman Government adopted the ancient Turkish policy of neglect towards them, for they were not powerful enough numerically to earn the honour of a massacre, and, in addition, they were useful settlers. Backed by powerful Western influence, French, English, and German alike, they improved out of knowledge the values of t
he lands where they established themselves, and by intelligent management, by conserving and increasing the water supply with irrigation and well-digging, they have brought many thousand acres into cultivation. Originally refugees, fleeing from outrageous persecutions, their immigration by degrees took on a different spirit. Not only were they coming out of captivity, but they were entering into the ancient Land of Promise again. Zionism, the spirit of the returning exiles, animated them, and, according to their prophets, they realised that ‘The Lord shall comfort Zion, He shall comfort all her waste places.’ They had sowed in tears; now, on their return, they were reaping in joy, and, though their land was still under the infidel yoke, they were allowed to dwell in peace, busy, industrious, with the halo of home-coming in their hearts. They paid, of course, their Turkish taxes, but these were not levied in any oppressive manner, and their colonies were thrifty, self-governing, and prosperous. Already before the war, one-tenth of the cultivated land in Palestine was in their hands, they had their own schools, their own methods of organisation, and, more significant than all, Hebrew became a living language again. Germany, intent on her penetration of Turkey, made an attempt to Germanise them also (for Germany, as we shall see, has a very special interest in these Jewish colonies), shook her head over Zionism, for which she tried to substitute Prussianism, and wanted to make the German language compulsory in Jewish schools at Haifa and Jaffa, but her effort completely failed. Nothing could show the inherent vitality of this Jewish colonisation more strikingly.