§ Lord ROBERT CECILI beg to move,
That this House deeply sympathises with the sufferings of the Christian population in Asia Minor, and urges the Government to take every possible means to assist them.I move this Motion in the hope of getting from the Government before the Session ends some statement as to the probable position in Armenia. Perhaps the House will allow me to remind them how the present position has arisen. In the course of the War the Turkish Government made an appeal to the Armenian nation to assist them, and promised them autonomy if they would do so. The Armenian nation declined to do so, because they felt themselves bound to the Allies. It was very largely in consequence of the refusal of the Armenians that the horrifying massacres took place in 1915 by the orders of Tallat Pasha and his accomplices. No such crime of a national character has ever been committed as the crime then committed. Hundreds of thousands, at least, were slaughtered under conditions of the greatest possible atrocity, to the accompaniment of every conceivable torture. The lowest estimate I have ever seen puts the total at 600,000, and there are many estimates much higher than that. In the course of the War we gave more than once the most absolute pledges that in the Peace one of the terms Armenia would receive would he her independence. It fell to me, speaking for the Government on more than one occasion in this House, to give those pledges, but they were given much more formally and precisely by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 5th January, 1918, when, to the Trade Union Congress, he stated the terms of peace which could be offered. We have had it from the Prime Minister in this House that that statement was made with a view to induce Turkey to make peace, if possible. It was therefore regarded as the very minimum of what the Allies intended to ask for. The Prime Minister said, on the date I have mentioned:Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine are, in our judgment, entitled to a recognition of their separate national conditions…It would be impossible to restore to their former sovereignty the territories to which I have already referred.420 Therefore there was an absolute statement that the policy of the Government, on which the Armenians were entitled to rely, as they did rely, was that they should receive their independence. In addition to that, our Ally, the French Government, induced the Armenians to enter the Allied Forces, and some battalions at any rate of Armenians were enlisted by the French on the distinct understanding—so the Armenians assert—that they should receive independence and autonomy at the end of the War. I do not believe that any Minister of the Crown would deny—I should be very much surprised if they did so—that the Armenians were led to believe that they would receive independence and autonomy, and that in consequence of these undertakings they did assist us, that they thus increased the dangers which they ran with the Turks, and that their present sufferings are in part due to what they did then. When it came to the Armistice the matter was not forgotten. I do not make any criticism, for I was a Member of the Government at the time. Looking back on it, I regret now that more stringent provisions were not put into the Armistice. Still, some provisions were put in, and we thought at the time that they would be sufficient to enable us to interfere on behalf of the Armenians if they were threatened with danger.4.0 P.M.
Since that time very grave delay has taken place. If peace had been made with Turkey in the first six months after the Armistice, I have no doubt at all that she would have accepted almost any terms we had chosen to offer. Unfortunately, that was not done. I always understood that the reason the Government thought it impossible to do so was that they were awaiting the decision of the United States as to whether they would or would not accept a mandate for Armenia. With the greatest respect to the Government, that really is not any excuse at all. It was no reason whatever for waiting to make terms with Turkey, or for stating what portion of her territory she was to lose, that we had to settle with some outside party exactly what was to be done with those territories. As a matter of fact, as everyone knows, neither in that case nor in any other case, was anything put into the Treaties that were signed except that the territories in question should be at the disposition of the 421 principal Allied Powers. No statement was made as to the final dealing with them. It was reserved entirely for the Supreme Council to settle afterwards. I cannot help feeling that that delay has been very disastrous to the Armenian race. Then followed some very regrettable incidents in which the Supreme Council tried to put on to the Council of the League of Nations their responsibility in the matter, and the Council of the League was forced to point out that unless they were given troops and money it was impossible for them to undertake the responsibility which was sought to be placed upon them. There followed the removal of the troops from Batum which may have been necessary financially, but which was certainly absolutely disastrous to the Armenians. It effectually prevented any assistance reaching them from that side, which was the only practicable way by which we could approach the Republic of Erivan which was then being set up. I will not go into what I am afraid must have seemed to the Armenians as the almost derisive attempts to assist. Equipment of the most unsuitable kind was sent to them very late, without anyone to instruct them how to use it—at least, so I am informed—and under circumstances which precluded them making any use of it whatever. There followed the attacks by the Turks on the one side and the Bolsheviks on the other in 1920, and the final extinction of the Erivan Republic for all practical purposes.
When at Geneva the other day, I saw a young officer, well known to some of my hon. Friends, who had just returned from Armenia. He gave the most appalling account of the sufferings that the unhappy there are enduring not only by actual and direct oppression, but by the starvation which is the inevitable result of all that the country has gone through and all the circumstances. Shortly before that time we spent £50,000,000 and gave £50,000,000 worth of stores to support General Denekin. If we had given one-tenth of that amount towards taking proper measures to save the Armenian nation I am quite satisfied that it would have been done, but unfortunately we did not take that step. We are now face to face with a fresh disaster to these people and to the other Christians who live down in the South. All that I have been speaking of happened about Erivan and the northern centre. 422 Cilicia down in the South had so far been unmolested. It was handed over to our French Allies under what was hoped to be arrangements for peace, though peace has never followed yet. I believe that in the first instance they did do something towards taking responsibility for the protection of the Christian population. They formed a gendarmerie, they established something in the nature of a Government under French protection in Adana and other places. Information is very difficult to obtain, but we are told that they have made an arrangement with Mustapha Kemal which involves the complete abandonment of the Christian population in that part. The House will perceive that the lot of this population will be far worse now than if the French had never gone there. All those who are known to have assisted the Europeans will, of course, be singled out for special ill-treatment when the Turks resume their domination. We do not know what is actually going on—at least I do not—in internal Cilicia, but we do know that there is an exodus of thousands of unhappy people absolutely destitute pouring down to Alexandretta and the sea coast to avoid what they regard as inevitable destruction, and we do know that the most minatory notices are appearing in the Turkish newspapers as to what they may expect if they remain.
I suppose that the Government will say that they have done all that they can and ask us to suggest. something more that can be done. It is not easy for people outside without official knowledge to know what is practicable at any given moment in international affairs, and, indeed, I am not sure if it would be useful to put forward such suggestions as I have to make, since I do not know whether they will be acceptable or not. But we are not without means of negotiation in this matter, and I trust that those means of negotiation will be effectually used. The position is intensely serious. I see my hon. Friend the Member for East Nottingham (Sir J. D. Rees), who suspects me of what he regards as the greatest crime that anyone can commit, namely, of taking a humanitarian interest in this matter. It is not only humanitarian; it is also a matter of high policy. It is useless for us to deny that our reputation in the Middle East has suffered very severely. A series of incidents have 423 taken place, all of them unfortunate, and some of them which can be described by only a stronger adjective. We have not covered ourselves with glory in Persia, we have deserted the Assyrians, we have not kept faith with the Arabs, the Jews are exceedingly doubtful as to the treatment that we are giving them in Palestine, and I am not sure that the position is not made worse by the fact that we have already spent immense sums in Iraq, where, at any rate, our enemies say that we were led to do so by the hope of pecuniary reward in the way of oil.
§ Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHYThe Prime Minister said so.
§ Lord R. CECILIt is quite unnecessary for me to remind the Government how enormously important is the reputation of this country on, if I may so put it to satisfy my hon. Friend the Member for East Nottingham, business grounds. The whole British Empire is built on good faith. It is built on the knowledge that other nations have had that up till now when we said a thing we would carry out our promise even at great inconvenience to ourselves. I trust that the Government may be able to reassure the House, and I venture to tell them that they would have been in no parliamentary danger whatever in a matter of this kind. I am certain that they will not be actuated merely by that, but that they will consider the immense responsibility that rests upon them, not only to this House and in reference to the present body of the electors, but because they are entrusted with the control and government of the British Empire, and what they do will affect not only us but also those who come after.
§ Mr. A. WILLIAMSI beg to second the Motion.
I do not know whether I understood the Leader of the House to challenge the suggestion that pledges were given to the Armenians during the War. I hope I did not rightly understand that, because it has never yet been denied; on the contrary, those pledges and promises have been reasserted over and over again, notably by the Foreign Secretary in the House of Lords, and I say that, much as I feel the sufferings of these people, who, after all, are aliens to us, I feel even 424 more the question of British honour, and I very earnestly ask this House to consider whether anybody in any future emergency is going to trust to British pledges and British promises if afterwards there is a danger of them being told that it was an expression of intention and was not a pledge. I venture to say that they were very express pledges. Moreover, they were acted upon. The Armenians provided a large number of volunteers and suffered very greatly on the strength of those pledges. They were not only extended to the Armenians but to other races, and the other Christian races in the East also suffered very severely because of their known sympathy with the Entente Powers.
When this matter was being discussed the other day, I asserted that a large number of those in Cilicia, who were now in terror of being exterminated by the returning Turks, were sent back there by the action of the British and French Governments. I have evidence that the French Government induced 200,000 Christian and other refugees to return to Cilicia. It is not, however, so much a question of what the French Government did as what the British Government did, and I will read to the House part of a letter, dated 1st March, 1920, sent to me from the War Office. It is not marked personal, private, or confidential, and there is nothing about it to prevent my making this use of it. In the course of the letter, it is said:
It may help you if I explain the circumstances.I had written to ask whether the people who had lost their lives about that time were among those who had been sent back there by the British Government—Towards the end of last September, Field-Marshal Lord Allenby reported that on our withdrawal from Cilicia and Syria it was feared that a large number of Armenians, at Urfa, Marash, Aintab, Aleppo, etc., might start streaming south in the wake of our troops, when it would be impossible to look after them. He suggested that by agreement with the French these Armenians, particularly those whom we were protecting at Aleppo (to whom I presume you chiefly refer) should be repatriated to Cilicia, a country which would be under French protection, and in which Armenians already formed a large proportion of the population.Therefore there is perfectly clear evidence that these people were repatriated by us and the French back to Cilicia from 425 Aleppo, a place of less safety, and were told that they would there have French protection. The French undoubtedly promised us, when they went into Cilicia, that they would give that protection. The question is, what is to be done by the French Government in carrying out that promise? It is not only a question of the French Government. Quite apart from what the French Government may choose to do, our promises stand, and our promises create an obligation upon us. I am not asking this country to go crusading about the world taking up this and that case of suffering and trying to put it right, but we have certain duties, and I am confining my claim entirely to the duties which we have in regard to this suffering population. Again and again we have intervened in this Matter. The whole course of what we have done ever since the Crimean War constitutes a great obligation, and, more than that, the pledges which we gave in the last War, confirmed by the letter which I have just read and a thousand other pieces of evidence which I could give, fetter upon us and fix upon us an absolute obligation as great as the obligation upon a man to pay his debts. If we do not keep these pledges, who is going to trust us in any future emergency?
Sir J. D. REESThere are two assumptions underlying the speech of my Noble Friend the Member for Hitchin (Lord R. Cecil), neither of which I venture to think is justified. The first is that Turks massacre Armenians and that Armenians do not massacre Turks. I do not know why, when a Turk is killed, it is regarded almost like the killing of beef or mutton, but when an Armenian is killed he is massacred like a martyr.
§ Mr. T. P. O'CONNORThousands of Armenians have been killed for every Turk.
Sir J. D. REESI do not say it happens with equal frequency, because, of course, there are more Turks than there are Armenians, but given equal opportunities there is very little to choose between one side and the other. It is the assumption that there are not two sides to this question which is so exasperating and so provoking to our Mohammedan fellow subjects in India, and so dangerous from the point of view of their loyalty to the British connection. The 426 other assumption underlying the speech of my Noble Friend is—and, of course, the Seconder of the Motion took it as a matter of course—that our French Allies are not as humane as ourselves.
§ Mr. WILLIAMSI must repudiate that entirely. I said nothing of the sort. I said our pledges remained, whatever the action of the French might be.
Sir J. D. REESWhy, then, when the French leave Cilicia, is there all this protest? Why does my Noble Friend point out that the Armenians, all of whom ex hypothesi have been slain, are going down in thousands to Alexandretta and the coast? Why should they urge upon the House to force our humane French Allies to take that care of the Armenians which we would take had we been in charge, and which we are also told we have so lamentably failed to take? My Noble Friend has just said that our reputation in the Middle East has somewhat suffered. I agree, and I would add that our reputation in the Far East has suffered far more, and that for the very reasons which I am endeavouring to state in a very few words—knowing that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is going to speak. The trouble in Malabar is entirely local, and it is due to the Caliphate agitation, which in turn is due to the opinion existing in India—which I confess I share—that there is in England a feeling of preference for the Armenian over the Turk. That feeling, I think, exists on all sides, and, indeed, it is so much a matter of course that it requires some little courage to get up in the House and point out that there is no justification whatever for it. The men who inhabit Asia Minor and the Balkans are all built in very much the same mould and it matters very little, except to those who are under the glamour of Oriental Christianity, which creed they profess. They are good men or bad men in every case according to their dispositions and their opportunities. My Noble Friend says that the Armenians have a special claim upon us because they helped us in the War. I do not wish to disparage the help of any people, but what help have they given? Did they help us, no; they helped themselves to millions of our money and they have been maintained ever since in tens of thousands, and I believe to this very day they are living upon the British taxpayer. I 427 deprecate in this ad hoc Parliament—to use the jargon of a past Parliamentary day—any question of this sort whatever arising. It is quite impossible for me, as one who has lived among Mohammedans for a great part of my life, who has friends among them, and who am, I hope and believe, trusted by them, to sit here and hear these speeches delivered from a purely Armenian party point of view. I should like to ask what tax would my hon. Friends impose upon the suffering British taxpayer in order to succour the Armenians? Are they prepared to recommend the levying of a tax or the spending of a sum of money which we have not got upon succouring the Armenians? Is there to be no end to the insanity of our benefactions? There is no reason in suggesting, even if the Armenians do suffer, that the British taxpayer is to put his hand in his pocket to save them from those sufferings. The fact may be stated that at the present moment the British taxpayer has got a good deal more upon his back than he can carry, and also that the people in India, those Mohammedans who were the conservative, loyal pro-English portion of the population, are suffering under a sense of injustice because in the Treaty of Sèvres and in all the discussions upon it, and in every matter that comes before this House, not only are they not treated as what they are, as people of the Book who revere the sacred figures of our religion only slightly less than we do ourselves, but they are treated as if they were heathens, whereas they regard other people as heathens. They are treated as if they were all cruel, and as if it were wrong for them to have any other people under their control. How hardly it would go with the British Empire if this theory were adopted.
§ Mr. O'CONNORIt has not butchered Mohammedans.
Sir J. D. REESMy hon. Friend is never tired of lifting up his voice one day for Ireland—now no longer distressed Ireland—and another day for Armenia, still distressed and suffering Armenia. It has been suggested that His Highness the Aga Khan no longer represents the feeling of the Indian Mohammedans. I protest against that. The Aga Khan's is still the most powerful and the most 428 representative voice lifted up for the Mohammedans of India. Though he has been distant from India for a season he is on his way there at the present moment, and he is always in constant and immediate communication with India. He is one of the best possible authorities on this subject, and he has lately written upon it and I would add that the Armenians are so clever and so well supplied with money and so excellently organised that it is exceedingly difficult for anyone who speaks against them to obtain a hearing in this country or a place in the Press. I do, with all the energy of which I am capable, lift up my voice on behalf of the Turk and on behalf of his kinsman, the Sunni Mohammedan of India.
Mr. CHAMBERLAIN (Leader of the House)If I rise to intervene, it is only because I do not wish to be thought discourteous by those who gave notice of this Motion, but they might otherwise think I was deliberately waiting with my eye on the clock for the time when all of us are to be sent into space. I find my views on this subject are not very well illustrated in the speeches which have been made on either side. I am not, I hope, lacking in sympathy with our Mohammedan fellow-subjects in India, either in what concerns their Government in the Indian Empire, or in their outlook on the world. On the other hand, I cannot think without something like horror and dismay of the abominable barbarities which have been practised in Armenia, and if I condemn Turkish rule in Armenia it is not because it is Mohammedan rule over Christian people, but because it is a barbarous and brutal rule, which would disgrace whatever Government in which it originated. I deprecate the tendency of my Noble Friend the Mover of the Motion to view his own country in such gloomy colours, and the tendency both of my Noble Friend and of the hon. Baronet the Member for East Nottingham (Sir J. D. Rees) to interpret as a pledge to some particular party who would have the right to call for its execution at any moment and in any circumstances, every statement of intention or of policy offered by a British Minister in either of the Houses of Parliament, or in speaking to a British audience. Take what was alluded to by my Noble Friend—the statament made by the British Government or by the Prime Minister as to the terms on which 429 at a given moment, when War was still in progress, we should have been ready to make peace with Turkey. In that statement the Prime Minister, among the conditions which he would exact from Turkey as the price of peace at that time, mentioned the freedom of Armenia or the autonomy of Armenia.
§ Mr. BARTLEY DENNISSTo recognise the independence of Armenia.
Mr. CHAMBERLAINI do not profess to be quoting the exact words. My Noble Friend speaks of that as a pledge to the Armenian people in respect of what they had incurred in the War.
§ Lord R. CECILThere is another phrase in that same speech which secured Constantinople to the Turks, and that was publicly stated by the Prime Minister to be a pledge on which we could not go back. What was a pledge to the Turks should equally be a pledge to the Armenians.
Mr. CHAMBERLAINI am afraid I have not all the utterances of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister so close to my hand as the Noble Lord, who, think, studies them merely in order to repudiate or condemn. I do, however, deprecate the argument that any Minister who stands at this Box, or speaks in another place to his own people merely to expound the views and intentions of His Majesty's Government, cannot do so without being pledged thereby, and without giving the right to some party or people outside this country to claim that these are pledges binding on the Government upon which they have a right to insist.
§ Mr. A. WILLIAMSThe Prime Minister in the House of Commons on the 29th April, 1920, said:
But I assure my hon. Friends that we cannot dissociate ourselves from the responsibility that is cast upon us by our pledges in respect of the Armenians."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th April, 1920; col. 1520, Vol. 128.]Those are the words of the Prime Minister.