The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1895-11-10

Turks to sign the treaty of San Ste
made in IL that the government of the
Armenian provinces should be reform
ed and the Christians protected against
the Kurds. Mr.. Brice says:
when at the congress Of Berlin the
treaty of Berlin was substituted for
that of San Stefano, this provision was
carried over to the new instrument,
and the Armenians were thus placed
virtually under the protection of the
six great European powers. But their
condition. so far from growing better.
has since that time grown steadily
worse. The British government has
necessarily demonstrated with the
Turks on their maladministration. and
has tried. through its embassy at Con-
stantinople and its consuls in the in
terror to impose some sort of check
upon the excuses of tyranny, and to
procure the dismissal Of the most cruel
or corrupt officials. But 1t has received,
until quite recently. very little support
from the other five powers; and the
Turks have opposed to its demands
that logged. sluggish resistance, and
those endless evasions and vague
promises of amendment, which are the
usual resource of Oriental diplomacy"
One factor in the situation that is
baneful in it's operation on the almost
defenseless Armenian Christians, is in
the fact of the growing fanatcism of
the Musssulman population. stimulated
by the sultan himself. Claiming to be
calif,-that is to say. supreme spiritual
as well as temporal head of the Mo-
hammedan world.-he has conceived a
higher conceit of his ecclesiastical po-
sition than has any of his predecessors
for centuries past. and has been striv-
ing to strengthen his religious author
ity all the more because he feels that
his material power is fast slipping
away.
The writer of the article in the Cen
fury Magazine insists that the hor-
rors of the recent Sassoun massacre
have not been painted in too dark col
ors. The slaughter was as has been
written, the revolving cruelties oc-
CURED. The object of Mr.. Brice in
writing for American readers is to
suggest along what lines the American
people. who have done much mission
airy work in Armenia, may help to
bring the present deplorable condi-
tions to an end.
The reflections of a scholar are be-
trayed in a paragraph in his article
in which he SAYS: Dark as the pros
pect before those unhappy people may
at present seem. no one who remem-
bers the calamities they have already
endured and survived will despair of
their future. During ten centuries of
humiliation and suffering they have
chung to their faith. when at any mo-
ment by renouncing it they might
have obtained complete equality with
their oppressors. Alone Of all the races
that once inhabited the inland regions
of western Asia. the Armenians have
retained their language. their national
feeling, and their hold upon the soil.
A race with so much natural vigor,
SO much leudCily Ol ire anu 81 MUCH
capacity for assimilating and using
modern ideas. cannot be destined to
extinction, and may some day, when
countries that were among the earliest
homes of civilization have been deliv-
cred from the tyranny of the Turk.
help to repeople those now desolate
and poverty-stricken lands. and re-
store to them some measure Of their
ancient prosperity"