Note 7 — II
Reading edition
Mr. P. W. Wilson's sympathetic and appreciative articles in The Westminster Gazette and The Daily News and Leader of February 3, 1917, appeared after the above was written. While I am most grateful to Mr. Wilson and the two great organs of British public opinion, I avail myself of this opportunity to make one or two observations on some of the points Mr. Wilson has raised—
"The first impulse of the refugee" has not only been "to start a shop" but also to start a school and improvise the means of continuing the publication of the newspaper he was publishing in Van before the exile, as the Belgians have done here under more favourable circumstances. The toleration practised by Armenians and their Church is not due to adversity, but the true understanding of Christianity. The spirit of toleration breathes through the pages of the history of the Armenian Church from the earliest times.
Mr. Wilson says: "It is doubtless regrettable that the Armenians should have failed to recommend their progressive conception of life to the Moslems around them." This is a striking example of the misconception that so often exists in the minds of even the most sympathetic observers of Armenian affairs. Mr. Wilson knows no doubt for how much prestige counts in the East. If the European missions with all the prestige of their great nations, governments, embassies, consulates, etc., behind them (to say nothing of the unlimited funds at their disposal) have had such little success in Moslem countries, is it reasonable to blame the Armenians, oppressed, harried, tortured, massacred, plunged into the depths of misery, for not having fared better? What respect could the Armenian's religion inspire among his Moslem neighbours who murdered his bishops and priests, desecrated his churches and inflicted the most revolting insults upon the outward symbols of his faith, while his powerful co-religionists stood by and did nothing? Under these circumstances what better service could the Armenian render his religion than die for it? In happier days, the early Armenian Christians were largely instrumental in converting the Georgians.