New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1915-10-08
Armenia.

.
whole Armenian race. Two years ago an
appalling tragedy such as this would
have stirred the protests Of the whole
planet; to-day it occupies only fraction
Of the attention Of the reader Of the daily
press, who turns to it from the more strik-
ing details Of some new battle, not in
Asia but in Europe
To-day the world looks neither with
surprise nor with incredulity at the ter
rble history that comes to US from the
romoter regions Of Asia Minor. Why
should there be surprise that the Mahom-
etan is doing to the Armenian Christian
what the German Protestant and Catholic
alike did to the Belgian Roman Catholic?
Why should there be incredibly over mas
sacres in Asia, perpetrated by the semi
civilized Osmanl. which fall short in
method and surpass only in bulk those
Of the Kultured Teuton in the Low Coun-
tries?
What the world had come to associate
with barbarians, with the heather and
the infdel, the yellow and the black races,
Germany has demonstrated is quite as
much the prerogative Of the Christian and
the white race. If the Sultan is now
numbering his thousands of babies, the
Kaiser has killed his hundreds. If the
Kurds are dishor oring women. 1t Is only
in the number Of women ravished that.
H. NF--1o.. oo,, ,.o,,v4 bic c,,poriori+v over
the German Christian. If the Turkish
officers are acting in a systematic fashion
in the destruction Of a population, they
can only surpass in bulk, not in method;
the achievement Of the Germans in Lou
vain.
The offending Of the Armenians is iden-
teal with that Of the Belgians. They de-
sire to live and to live according to their
own ways and their own religion. but
they lie across the pathway of Turkish
power; they resist the benefcent aim Of
the Turk TO subject them to his tyranny;
they prefer their own Prophet 10 his, just
as the Belgians preferred their own King
to the Kaiser and ventured to defend
home, family and frontier.
Terrible as is this new Turkish mas
sacre, it fails TO fire the public simply be-
cause a neutral nation, such as the United
States. which has read and believed the
Enthusiastically veracious reports Of the
German atrocities in Belgium and North
orn France, can find no new words and
feel no new emotion at beholding the Turk
faithfully initiating the Tcuton in the
task of exterminating a population, with
incidental excursions tito lust and thiev-
cry. A nation whose own women and
children have been murdered by German
naval officers knows no fresh horror when
it learns that the Kurd is following the
example Of the German.
This thing that Germany has done in
the world is not a mere injury to written
law. 1t is not mere thrust of sharp
sword through paper promises and parch
ment pledges. This is but a minor detail.
What she has done is to bring us all in
the Twentieth Century back TO the condi-
tons Of the Dark Ages. She has permit
ted her soldiers to assert the doctrine that
womens honor is not inviolate when
German purpose can be accomplished by
permitting a brutal soldiery to terrorize
a helpless population. She has authorized
her sailors to proclaim on the high seas
2 doctrine no pirate ever asserted. She
has scattered the bodies of women and
children over the seas because they hap
pened to come between her and purpose.
The German phenomenon which has
filed the world for more than a year now
is nothing but ole more assertion of the
principle that might is right, violence the
mere warrantable accessory Of a nation
which has gone forth to conquer world.
ism and devotion when performed by Ger
man soldiers or sailors; all the restraints
that civilization, human development, re
ligious evolution have imposed upon men
have been abolished and repealed in so far
as they hamper or even seem 10 hamper
the German soldier embarked upon his
crusade for power and for empire.
This shameful and terrible page Of mod
ern history which is unfolding in distant
Armenia is nothing but an echo and an
extension of the main story, the central
narrative, which must describe the Ger
man incursion into Belgium fourteen
months ago. That was the determining
act, that was the signal TO Turk and Kurd ;
tomorrow it will light the fires in the
Balkans, and Bulgar soldiers may prove
the ready imitators Of Prussian grena-
diers.
Beyond all else the German episode is an
attack upon civilization. Whatever be the
/ incidental issues as between nations and
; races, they have been drowned out in the
food Of German violence and crime. 1t is
! he war for civilization that the French.
the British, the Italians and even the Rus