§ VISCOUNT BRYCE rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether they will consider the expediency of occupying, for the purpose of preserving order, the districts of Armenia and Cilicia, in which disorders are most likely to arise, or at least of sending detachments of troops into such districts having regard to the following facts—
- 1. That the demobilisation of the Turkish army under the provisions of the recent armistice is setting loose a large number of armed men likely to be a source of danger to peaceful inhabitants, especially as food is now very scarce in the countries aforesaid.
- 2. That the Christian refugees from the recent massacres who desire to return to their homes and to sow their fields for the next harvest, cannot de so in the present, disorderly condition of these countries.
- 3. That a large number of Christian women who were during the massacres seized or publicly sold by the Turkish officers into slavery in Turkish harems cannot be liberated from this slavery except under the authority and by the action of European officers.
§ I come then, my Lords, to the questions which are raised in the Notice of Motion that I have given. I have made this Notice somewhat full in order that I may spare time by not going into so many details as I should otherwise have to do. I will therefore merely comment upon the points that are raised in my Notice, and ask His Majesty's Government to consider the extreme urgency which the question has, the reasons for the urgency being suggested in the words that I have used. In the first part of the Question I ask whether His Majesty's Government will consider the expediency of occupying, for the purpose of preserving order, the districts of Armenia and Cilicia in which disorders are most likely to arise. There is a provision in the Armistice which was concluded with the Turks that if disorders arise the Allied Powers may send in troops to occupy those districts. It has given great surprise that the terms which were granted by the Allied Governments to Turkey should have been so lenient—so much more lenient than those which were granted, for instance, to Austria—and I think this surprise was not unnatural, because the Turks were absolutely at the mercy of the Allies. They were perfectly helpless. Most of their Army had surrendered, and it would have been easy for the Allied Powers to impose upon them any terms whatever that they thought fit.
§ As your Lordships are aware, the present Government of Turkey contains a number of men who were partners in the guilt of those appalling massacres which took place in 1915. Those of your Lordships who wish to refresh your recollection may turn 36 to the Blue Book which was published by the Foreign Office in 1916, in which you will find an account of the most awful massacres that are anywhere reported in history—an account which no attempt whatever has been made to disprove or to explain away. Not only Talaat Pasha, the most conspicuous among the ruffians who then formed the Committee of Union and Progress, but also several other persons who are still members of the existing Turkish Government, have to bear the guilt of those massacres. That being so, one is surprised that anything whatever except unconditional surrender was required from such a Government.
§ I pass from that to the question of what ought to be done now. Disorder is the chronic condition of these countries. When the Armistice said that if disorders arose the Allied Powers should be at liberty to send in their troops, it seems to have been forgotten that those countries are always in disorder, and that if anything exceptional arose it might be some considerable time. and serious evils might have resulted before news would have reached the Allied Commanders, so as to enable them to send in the troops which would be required to suppress those disorders. I submit to His Majesty's Government that there is a very strong case for sending troops in at the earliest possible moment. But I can quite understand that even the Army in Mesopotamia, which no longer is occupied in active operations against the Turks, might be unable for reasons of transport, or other reasons of that kind, to spare at the moment all the troops that would be needed to occupy the large regions included in Armenia (the six vilayets) and Cilicia. Should that be so, then at any rate it would surely be possible for sufficient forces to be detached from the Army in Mesopotamia and perhaps also from the force which is now occupying Northern Syria, and sent in under British officers to the points which either were most likely to be the seat of trouble, or which commanded the main lines of communication through those countries.
§ I venture to suggest that disorder is always chronic in these regions. Those of your Lordships who have followed their history for the last twenty or thirty years know that to be the case. But at present the situation is exceptionally dangerous and difficult. The Turkish Army has just been demobilised. The Turkish Army had been 37 occupied during the last four years in massacring and plundering Christians wherever it could find them. That army is now removed even from such feeble control as its officers exercised, and the troops, probably with their arms, are let loose to wander over these countries and to rob and murder wherever they please. Further, the temptation, it must be admitted, is greater than usual, because there is a very great scarcity of food, and it is only natural that hungry soldiers with arms in their hands should endeavour to take whatever they can get from the unfortunate peasantry by whom they may be passing. Therefore there is every reason to believe that at present this immense area, stretching from the South-eastern corner of the Black Sea as far as the North-eastern corner of the Levant, is in the hands of disorderly bands who are perpetrating outrages wherever they may find people upon whom they may be perpetrated, and robbing every one who has any food or anything else left.
§ Any one who knows those countries knows what happens when an army is suddenly disbanded, especially such an army as this. I may mention that I have only just received from Paris a copy of a Despatch which has been received from the Transcaucasian region which states that two Turkish divisions,—the 5th and 15th of the Turkish Army—have discarded their Turkish uniforms, and have joined with the Tartar forces which were in existence there, and which were acting at Baku, and in conjunction with those Tartar forces they are bombarding the villages of the Christians, and generally carrying on that sort of guerilla warfare which naturally arises when soldiers are relieved from discipline and still have an enemy on whom they would wreak their will. I do not, of course, venture to authenticate this despatch—perhaps something similar has already been received by His Majesty's Government—but I do desire to call their attention to the statement, because there is nothing improbable about it, and it supplies a further reason why troops should as soon as possible be detached to occupy the district in question. That district, as far as I can gather from the telegram, would appear to be the region south of Baku—between Baku and Enzeli on the coast of the Caspian.
§ The second point I desire to make is that the Christian refugees who escaped 38 from the recent massacres and desire to return to their homes and to sow their fields for the next harvest cannot do so in the present disorderly condition of those countries. When the Turks were driven out of Van by the rising of the Armenians about the middle of 1915 the Russians joined them, and a large number of refugees returned. Subsequently the Turkish Army was greatly strengthened. The Armenians, who had fought with the greatest valour against the Turks, were driven with the Russians out of Van and obliged to return into Russian territory, and the refugees fled with them. This shows the danger of endeavouring to reoccupy a country when it is still in a condition of disorder. But these refugees exist in very large numbers in what were the Russian territories of the Caucasus. Many thousands of them have been supported by the contributions of charitable persons in this country and in the United States. There is nothing that they so much desire as to be able to return at once to their desolated homes, to rebuild their houses, and to sow their fields once more. The necessity is very great, for there has been grave famine in those countries for the last two or three years, and the famine will be worse and worse if the fields are not allowed to be sown now. There is a comparetively scanty population to carry on the operations of agriculture, and it is therefore of the greatest importance for everybody's welfare, the Moslem population as well as the Christian, that order should be as soon as possible restored, and that the fields should begin to be cultivated. The matter is really urgent, because unless the people can return in time for the early sowing there will be no crops next year, and a terrible famine must supervene.
§ Thirdly, a large number of Christians who during the massacres were seized or publicly sold by the Turkish officers into slavery in Turkish harems, cannot be liberated from this slavery except under the authority and by the action of European officers. When the great massacres were going on in 1915, and while the men were being taken out of the towns and slaughtered, so that some of the ravines in the mountains are still full of their skeletons, the young women were either seized and appropriated by Turkish officials and Turkish military officers or else were brought into the market and sold to the highest bidder. The older women were driven out along the roads and 39 nearly all perished from hardship and want of food before they reached their destination in the distant Syrian desert. These young women, who were seized to be carried off and consigned to the most odious kind of slavery in the Turkish harems, are still wearing out their miserable existence there. They are numbered probably by thousands. They cannot be released except by the presence of European officers and European troops. And surely there is no one among your Lordships who will not sympathise with these unfortunate women, taken from their parents and their husbands, forced into a faith that they detest, obliged to call themselves Moslems, and subjected to the tyranny of their oppressors. Surely it is an obligation of humanity of the highest order that we should at once endeavour to liberate them before it becomes more difficult, as it does become more difficult with every year and every month.
§ I may add that a similar fate befel a large number of young boys. The older ones above the age of twelve or thirteen, those who could be caught, were all killed, without exception. The younger ones were handed over to dervishes and carried away to be brought up in Moslem monasteries as Moslems, taught to detest the faith of their parents, taught to detest the parents themselves, and without any hope of seeing their parents again. Many of those unfortunate boys might also still be rescued, but with them, as in the case of the women, every month that passes makes the process of rescue more difficult. I hope, therefore, that you will think that a very strong case exists for immediate action in these matters, and that it becomes an obligation and duty of humanity upon the Allied Powers to do what they can to rescue the people who are held in slavery and provide safety for thee refugees who wish to go back and try to rebuild their homes and bring some sort of faint first tinge of prosperity to countries that have been devastated.
§
I have only to-day received a telegram upon a matter which, although it does not directly concern my Question, is of so much interest that I will mention it and ask the attention of His Majesty's Government to it. I have just received it from a Committee at Geneva which has been, for the last three years, collecting subscriptions from charitable Swiss citizens and sending them out to the relief of Armenian
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refugees. It is authenticated by a Genevese gentleman of great distinction belonging to one of the highest families in the city and by an American missionary who served for a long time in the city of Adana. The telegram reads—
I beg to call your attention to the fact that many Armenian orphans and deported women have been during the past three years devotedly cared for by German missionaries in several places—
They name the places, but the names have been so much distorted in the telegram that all I could do is to guess that one of them is Kharput—
We fear it would cause terrible distress if such missionaries should be compelled to withdraw before a new relief force could arrive and take over the work. We would express the hope that some delay might be granted until arrangements could be made.
Your Lordships will be glad to hear, I think, not only that the American missionaries in Asiatic Turkey have done their very best to relieve all the distress they could find, but that these German missionaries made the strongest possible representations to the German Government begging them to force the Turks to stop the maasscre, representing to them that the name and fame of Germany would be for ever sullied and disgraced if the German Government were to stand by and appear to give its acquiescence to the massacres which the Turks were committing.
§ Those appeals fell upon deaf ears. The late German Government—one is glad to call it the late German Government—not only refused to take any action to stop the massacres, but they forbade any information to be published regarding them in Germany. They suppressed the report of the missionaries, and they did their very best to keep the whole thing from the knowledge of the German people, or to invent false stories representing the Christians as having been the aggressors. I hope His Majesty's Government will feel that it would be proper that these German missionaries should not be disturbed in their charitable work, and that instructions should be given to any troops who may occupy the country that the missionaries should be allowed to carry on that work which is guaranteed in the way I have described until a relief force can come. I am glad to hear that the American Relief Committee, which has done so much to alleviate the sufferings of the Eastern 41 Christians during the last three years, is preparing to send out a large relief force with ample funds for the benefit of the refugees. It would not be safe, of course, for them to traverse the country, or to attempt to distribute these funds, unless they could have such protection as the entry of British troops would afford.
§ I know that it may be difficult for His Majesty's Government to answer in detail the points which I have put to them. They would probably require to communicate with the military authorities abroad, and they might find it difficult to do more than to undertake to give careful and sympathetic consideration to the facts which I have endeavoured to lay before your Lordships and them. I hope, however, that they will do that, recognising the gravity of the matter, and I therefore leave the subject with confidence in their hands.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYMy Lords, I should like to be allowed to say a few words about this matter, because circumstances have led me to be in close touch with some of the Christians of the regions to which the noble Viscount has referred, though perhaps my relations have been closer with those who lie a little to the south and east of the region which Lord Bryce has mentioned. I speak of the Christians on the borderland between Persia and Turkey—Van, Urumiah, and so on; mainly Nestorian Christians, and a certain number of Armenians with them. I am constantly in touch with those people, and, strange to say, even during the war, with that determination and perseverance to overcome difficulties which has characterised their whole story, they have got not only communications but emissaries through where other emissaries have failed to pass.
No terms can be used which would be too strong in describing the horrors which have been narrated to me by Christians from these regions—namely, those to which the noble Viscount had referred; the frequent putting up of women and girls to public auction as he troops passed, the old women driven away and the girls sold as cattle. A great many of the men were massacred, but those that were left succeeded with great courage in routing the Turkish and Kurdish forces which were trying to overcome them. I understand, as every one must, the extreme difficulty the Government would have in giving detailed replies or promises about I he matter 42 at present; but the thing which always surprised me about that region is that the fact of some utterances being made, some assurance being given that we are not forgetting them, and that help will come to them where possible, does find its way to these people in a way which one would have thought impossible and makes a great difference to them. One would not imagine that meetings held in this country, arguments used in this House, or utterances made by the Government, would get through to these people. But they do get through. One has found again and again that they know more about these things than one would have thought possible; and anything we can say to them to assure them that they are not forgotten may be of inestimable value to people who have been suffering untold outrages and horrors of every kind, and who are now exposed to the outrages of soldiers, disbanded, reckless, and in search of food.
We owe a great debt of gratitude to the American missionaries who have remained at their posts through difficulties such as would have driven away almost anybody else. The same applies to the English missionaries, and, we are bound to admit it, to the German missionaries. There can be no question of the difficulties which they have all had to face. I felt that I could not remain silent, but that I must endorse every word Lord Bryce has said as to the gain that would come directly or indirectly from anything that could be said, still more from anything that could be done, to show that we have not forgotten these people.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORDMy Lords, I cannot reply in detail to the Questions put by Lord Bryce, but I can give the noble Viscount an assurance in general terms which I think he will find satisfactory. The subject he has raised is one which is at this moment engaging the serious attention of His Majesty's Government in consultation with their Allies. I regret that a statement of the precise action which it may become necessary or desirable to take, in view of the situation described by the noble Viscount, cannot at this moment be made; but I gladly take this opportunity of assuring him that His Majesty's Government are fully alive to the gravity of the national and humanitarian interests involved, and are determined to spare no efforts to secure full satisfaction for the rightful claims of the Armenians.