An address by Garabed K. Daghlian
to the Faculty and Students of Alfred University
Alfred, NY
Feb. 21, 1912
It is difficult to persuade an audience like you, who have been accustomed to excellent, hearty, intellectual dinners as a regular mid-week affair every Wednesday, to stop today and be satisfied with a meagre, plain lunch which I am going to serve you. I advise you, however, to try and make the best of it, as apparently you are not going to escape it.
I have to apologize for my English which after all is a foreign and hence acquired language for me, and I would like you to disregard mistakes which I am likely to make in choice of words, pronunciations, and accents.
My topic, the Armenian, is one that I would not have thought of speaking about if it were not for the afct that I was expected to take that kind of a topic rather than anything else, as I gathered froh the indirect suggestions of friends here. So, as an Armenian myself, I consider it an honor to give you a few facts about and a few phases of the Armenian life.
First. The political life of the Armenians from the earliest times up to the present. The Armenian history goes back to the uncertainties and myths of th eprehistoric times. The authentic history begins at about the seventh century B. C. when we find the Armenians as a kingdom occupying the northeastern plateau of Asia Minor, known and marked on maps as Armenia. As every nation in the early times, so the Armenian has his history connected at some unknown early time with some mythical being or hero. The hero of teh Armenian history was a man named Haig who revolted against Pel after the tower of Babel, and became the first Armenian king. According to authentic history and investigations along different fields, it is without doubt today that the Armenians have moved eastward from the southeastern part of Europe, crossed the length of Asia Minor south of the Black Sea, and settled in Armenia as an independent kingdom. This migration must have taken from fifteen to twenty-five hundred years, and has been one of following the line of least resistance, eastward towards Armenia. One of the earliest authentic sources about the Armenian kingdom and race is given by Xenophon in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Ath Armenians have been ruled by four dynasties. The first, called Haigazian, was from the earliest times to 331 B.C. to the invasions of Alexander the Great; second, Arshagoonyantz, from 180 B.C. to 428 A.D.; third, Pakradoonyantz, from 885 to 1045 A.D.; fourth Roopinyantz, from 1080 to 1375 A.D.; and since then the Armenians have been under Turkish rule.
The culmination of the political life of the Armenian can well be said to be under the reign of King Tigranes, who had the title of The Great and who brought to subjugation all the neighboring kingdoms, even Assyrians, and entered into alliance with Lucullus and Pompeius. He built the city of Diarbekir which is now the capital of one of the States in Turkey and is the only city with massive ancient walls around it. It is on the river Tigris.
Today the total number of Armenians all over the world hardly adds up to five million. Of these, two million are in Turkey, one and a half million in Russia, one million in Persia, 150,000 in Europe, and 250,000 in other places, as Egypt, Abyssinia, East India, United States, South America, etc. In fact there is an Armenian colony almost in every land under the sun.
Racially the Armenian belongs to the Indo-European division of the Caucasian race.
The Hittite, Egyptian, Assyrian, Chaldean, and many other ancient monarchies passed away politically and also racially and morally. The Armenian, however, was spared the assimilating force of the ages and kept its individuality as a distinct race through the most difficult trials, invasions, tribulations, and persecutions. This cannot be considered as a mere coincidence.
Second. A few characteristics of the Armenian.
The Armenians have been known from the earliest times and until now men of good and dexterous hands, industrious, and inclined to business. As far back as I have been able to trace, my own ancestors have been workers in gold and silver. In my home town of 75,000 population, 25,000 Armenians control pretty nearly teh entire useful arts, and the greater part of the business. This is the case almost in every town where there are Armenians. Another characteristic, the Armenian is definite, decided, and obstinate in his convictions. He stands for his opinions. He more than stands for them. He also dies for them if necessary. The darkest pages of Armenian history have been written because of the fact that he thought Christianity was good enough for him and that he was going to stick to it evon though it should cost him endless persecutions and limitless political troubles. Looked at from a different angle, it means he is not easily persuaded, he does not accept everything in an easy and ready way. As another characteristic must be mentioned his openness to truth and faith in truth. This may look contradictory to the previous one, but it is a fact. The Armenian church, the doctrines and evolution thereof, together with the power of easily accommodating himself to new ideas of the present day show that this is a characteristic of the Armenian.
Religiousness is the best characteristic of the Armenian to my mind, which is too plain to say anything about except mentioning it. Again, purity of home and cleanliness of heart are other characteristics of the Armenian as seen from the earliest times that anything reliable is known about the Armenian. His old heather religion, his mythology, and the imaginative stories of the earliest times always bear the stamp of a pure and clean thought and imagination which becomes so much more apparent when contrasted with those of the neighboring peoples at the time.
Further, incongruity or lack of unanimity is another national characteristic. They do not know how to agree upon questions. This is a serious defect and is responsible for many points and phases of the Armenian life and history in the past as well as in the present.
Most of these characteristics are easily explicable in terms of the geography and the climate of the country, the environment and the constituents of the race.
Among the Armenians dark hair, dark eyes, and dark eyebrows are considered beautiful in men and especially in women. The Armenians of Armenia are characterized by short than medium height and aquiline nose. Those of Cicilia and Daurus Mountains are taller and lighter in complexion.
Third. Religion, language, literature, and music of the Armenian.
King Diridatis, through the activities of Bisop Gregory, adopted Christianity as the national religion of the Armenians at about 250 A.D. It makes the Armenian the first government adopting Christianity in the world. There are good reasons to believe beyond any doubt that Christianity had its roots among the Armenians right after the apostolic age and there were organized secret churches in Armenia long before the official adoption. Before this they had a heathen religion. Aramazt was the chief God, father of all gods, Anahid his daughter, matron of the land, and ideal of all virtues, and Vahakn, his son, the incarnation of manliness and god of war and victory. So, Christianity has been the uninterrupted religion of the Armenians since the third century officially and much before that secretly.
One of the most ancient and important institutions of the Armenians is the Armenian church, known, a very little, to the world as the Gregorian church. This church stands today as the embodiment and treasury of the ideals, life, traditions, and the devotions of the Armenian for over a period of 2000 years. Because many customs and ceremonies from the heathen religion were introduced into the new, assuming Christian meanings, a principle which if the missionaries in heathen lands were to adopt nowadays, their good work would be crowned with more success.
This church, to tell the truth, as it is now, is not an ideal place for the proper inculcation and growth of evangelical Christian life as also in Greek orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, from which two churches it is distinctly separate in essential doctrines and church traditions.
Since the middle of the last century, or a little before, Protestant evangelical Christianity has been introduced among the Armenians through mostly American missionaries. Now there is a Protestant church in almost every Armenian community. These missionary activities have done lots of good and often have had a good reaction to wake up the old church into more spiritual livelihood.
The church recognized a head called Catholicos who is chosen by the people and, as it is now, ratified by the Russion Tzar on account of the seat of the Catholicos---Etchmiazin---being a town in Russian Armenia. This head is purely a religious one, and has always been free in the past from the moral weaknesses and unreasonable claims and authorities that were common to Popes in the past.
The Armenian language has its old, and modern forms. It is one of the most perfect languages. It has an alphabet of thirty-eight letters which includes all kinds of sounds found in known European languages. So that an Armenian is found in a more favorable position with respect to acquiring the different sounds found in Russian, German, and other European languages. The language belongs to Indo-European family and is a nearer relative to Latin and Greek division of it than to Persian and Sanskrit. There are many words in Armenian taken from Persian. For instance, the word "daughter" in English, is taken from Persian word "Doochter" and the Armenian has it as "toosder".
The Armenian alphabet was invented about 400 A.D. by Mesrop, until when the language was written in Syriac and Greek characters. Soon after the invention of the alphabet there was produced a literature which is considered the golden age of Armenian literature. The old Armenian is our Greek and Latin. All the ecclesiastical literature and official writings were done in it. One of the first things was the translation of the Bible int Armenian, which now is one of the most ancient texts of the Bible. This version of the Bible is used in the Armenian church services until now.
The Armenians had a temple literature belonging to the pre-Christian era, but the clergy, after the adoption of Christianity, destroyed it along with the idols and the temples.
The modern literature is mostly in new Armenian and dates not more than about one hundred years back from our times. The predominating element in Armenian literature is the religious. we have had no deep philosophers, great scientists, and poets like Kants, Newtons, or Shakespeares. But it is a great question whether it was possible that such could be produced under the dark shawow of the venomous tree of the long, degrading Turkish rule, since the close of the 14th century. In spite of this, every Armenian is proud of men of modern times like Arsen Pakradooni, Ghevont Alishan, Kamar-Katiba, Beshigtashlian, Raffi, Khrimian, etc. who were poets, philosophers, writers, church fathers, and novelists of equal fame for an Armenian as a Tennyson or Webster for others, and who have produced work which will live as long as the best of literature in any tongue.
The 400th anniversary of teh first use of the printing press in Armenian comes this year and is going to be duly celebrated this month.
Armenian music is perhaps the most unique and characteristic feature. It divides itself into sacred music, folk-songs, and national and revolutionary music. As you see there is no rag-time music; and to fil the needs of this the Armenian has to go to the Turk who always keeps a good supply of attractive and filthy rag-times, and naturally, no Armenian can both indulge in rag-time and keep his reputation in respectable circles. The general air of the armenian music is minor key. It is an everlasting mourning, as it would be expected to be since the Armenian whenever has had the chance to sing it has been on the broken harp of a depressed heart. I know enough of music in general to realize the beauty and enjoy the harmony in good European or American music and acknowledge that these are worderfully perfect and beautiful. At the same item I love to sing the old Armenian songs and melodies which were sung in nearly the same form for many hundreds of years by my forefathers, and which fulfil even today the requirements of perfect music for the common mass of the Armenian people, by being able to bring them to their knees and to move their hearts to perfect devotion in big churches in cities as well as in small cottages on lonely hillsides.
The Armenian music is written with an original set of characters and not on scales as music is written generally.
Fourth. The Armenian under the Turkish rule and the Armenian massacres.
Since 1375 when the Armenian political independence came to an end by Turkish conquest, the Armenians have been a subject race. After Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror took Constantinople, he gave religious freedom to his non-moslem subjects, and organized them under ecclesiastical and semi-political sub-governments. So, he appointed one of the Armenian bishops as the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1461, through whom the Armenians were represented to the government and who was a member of the senate ex officio. But things changed rather soon and before long the Armenians were considered by the moslem authorities as a harmful element, because they never showed signs of assimilation and further, always were progressive and on the alert, so that, as a subject, they were found to be too lively and too intelligent for the Turk. So the policy of the Sultans and the chief princes charnged and crystallized into what is known as the "secret wisdom of the government," which was nothing better than to keep the Armenian in the lowliest level, just above extermination. So, they were made to wear special kinds of clothes, to live in lowly houses, not to ride horseback, not to show up in any way. If an Armenian was known to be of good means, a moslem chief in the town would want to borrow money from him. He had to give it, and it would never come back. IF he owned a good farm, a moslem chief would hire it and the term thereof would never expire. The Armenian was taxed so heavily that if he could keep barely alive he would consider himself lucky. This continued with more or less variation until the beginning of the 19th centure. The invasion of Mohammed Ali pash of Egypt under the commandership of his son, Ibrahim pasha, shook the Turkish rule a little, and after those uprisingsn the Armenians were treated a little better. In fact, General Ibrahim Pasha was looked on by the Armenians in sections which he invaded as an angel sent from heaven to protect them against Turkish persecutions. And my own grandfather who died sixteen years ago at the age of about eighty was full of the stories of those early days of Armenian persecutions, as he was told them, and stories of the invasions of Ibrahim Pasha, of which he had been an eyewitness.
So, beginning with about 1840 or so, the Armenians began to feel rather relieved, and there began the renaissance of the modern Armenian. A period of about twenty to thirty years free from systematic persecution, engaged in business, learning, and education, made the Armenians show up quite distinctly to the infernal eyes of the young Abdul Hamid. So, as soon as he resumed the Turkish throne, he said to himself the "secret wisdom of my forefathers" towards the Armenians is to be resumed. And he really did so. But this resulted in the organization of revolutionary parties among the Armenians protesting and revolting against such policy which was known by its fruits. And this in turn gave the desired excuse for Hamid to let the Kurds, Circassians, and whenever necessary government soldiers loose against poor Armenians in the from of highway robbers, killers, and stealers. These were mostly limited to old Armenia regions. Pretty soon the Sultan found good enough excuse even to make small massacres in villages and small towns. Complaints to the government would onlyincrease the persecution. Robbers were honored and decorated with ornaments from the Sultan. In 1893 a larger massacre in Van (Sassoon) attracted the attention of Europe to this sore condition of the poor Armenian. England took the initiative in proposing to the powers to demand from the Sultan reforms in Armenia. Germany said---through Bismarck---that she did not care a straw about reform in Armenia. So this is in perfect harmony with what a historian says about Bismarck, namely, when he was a tiny baby he had a drop of conscience but it oozed out of his cranium. But, in time it was possible that the powers could agree upon some form of reform bill about the Armenian question to be presented to the Sultan. The Sultan, by typical Turkish procrastination, succeeded in postponing the acceptance of the bill for about six months. During that time European policy changed a little. Germany and Russia made Abdul Hamid understand that in case he did not carry on reforms in Armenia they "certainly would not press him". The English cabinet also changed at this crucial time, and the new one felt tired and cared little for the Armenian reforms. Hamid started a trial massacre in Trebizond to see how it would work. Nothing was said. So he felt sure it was safe to sign the bill of reforms. He did. The day was celebrated throughout the country and Christian Europe. But the Sultan executed the reforms in the diametrically opposite sense. He sent out orders throughout his country for carefully arranged massacres. Massacre after massacre followed for six months. The country was bathed with Armenian blood. One hundred thousand Armenians were killed by swords, axes, spears and those who had bullets had the easiest death. Houses were burned and looted. Stores were broken into and looted, and even the sites of the houses were dug deep in search of treasures. My home town was one of the luckiest, losing only about three hundred men. But there was not one Armenian shop or store that was not annihilated. Men, houses, and towns who resisted most suffered most in general, with few exceptions. The sights of those days, trampling over dead bodies, seeing men hacked with swords, etc. etc. are scenes that the Armenian will not forget and keep telling when his hairs are gray and his knees too weak to walk. And? Nothing was doen or said to Hamid who had chosen to find his comfort in shedding Armenian blood. This Sultan is now a prisoner in Salonica, deprived of his wealth and honor, and left alone to wind up the rest of his days with only thirteen of his flock of wives.
Thirteen years passed. The constitutional government was declared in Turkey by the young Turks. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity were the key notes of everything. You would hear the words echo from the hills and vales. Young Turks were thought to be a different thing from the old Turks. But these young Turks proved before one year elapsed after the new government that "pigs was pigs", and the Adana massacre of 1909 (three years ago next April) was the result. This massacre is so recent that you all must remember it in the papers. When I left my home---Aintab---two months after this last massacre, three years ago next July, to come to America to study, I took a trip through part of the country where the massacres had happened two months ago then. I spent a week in the Amanus Mountains and the plains around the gulf of Alexandretta. It was perfectly safe to travel then. It was the most pitiful sight to see villages burned down to ashes, and the condition of the survivors who were women and children, because the moslem is too chivalrous to kill a woman. I saw many human skeletons on the wayside. In one village where I stopped fora little rest one afternoon, I alighted under the mulberry trees in front of the burned Protestant church. A good lady had filled me a basket with good things to eat in the morning. I tried to eat. And there appeared two little ghostly faces, but they were not ghosts. Ther were the only members who could walk, in a family, the rest being sick and lying under a fig tree about a hundred yards away. I was no beast, so I gave my basket to them. They led me around in the village. They showed to me the debris of the Protestant church, in which ten ministers from neighboring towns, on their way to a conference, were burned. One of my professors from my college was in the number. They took me to the Armenian church where 250 were burned. I could see the mark of human fats on the walls.
But this massacre ended differently. Justice was done to some extent by the government by punishing hundreds who were condemned to be the cause or active participants in this outrage.
One thing about massacres must be born in mind that they are not a periodic happening. There is nothing accidental about them. In the massacres of 1895-6 Russia and Germany have as much moral share as Abdul Hamid. The interests of a handful of Armenians were nothing compared to those of these two big nations. So the Armenia was allowed deliberately to be trampled down under the feet of the devouring great Scarlet Beast. And this is in perfect harmony with the codes of morals of either government, in the fact that one persecutes Jews and the other does such little acts as sending battleships to Agadir, etc. At the same time every Armenian acknowledges the good that individual German and other European societies have done to Armenians in line of helping them in the most humanitarian ways. The massacre of three years ago, however, was of a different character. It was a surprise to the entire world. The factors in it were to my mind,
Fifth. This having been the Armenian of the last 550 years, would it sound unnatural if I would mention three points which are true about the modern Armenian, namely:
Sixth. Of coures now you wish I would stop. But I will tell you one thing more. That is about the social affairs in Armenia and especially among young folks. I can assure you that you people are ahead of the Armenian in this respect, a good deal more than in other things. No girl or boy here in America would like to be a girl or boy in Armenia, because then she would not have fellows and he would not have girls. A little episode will make it clearer. One of the progressive and very active missionary ladies in my home city got one day the bright idea of trying to bring the young men and young women together and to make them accustomed to social ways. She invited the Senior classes of the boys' college and the girls' school to her home together with some of the young instructors from both schools. I also was invited to come. I was a little late, and came in to see two big rooms in her house made into one by opening folding doors, and all the boys sitting on one side and the girls on the other, all silent as coffin nails. Other help from other American ladies and gentlement arrived too, and it was some good while before the crowd in the house could be mixed together and the thing kept going some. Whereas in this country, as you know, even in this Alfred, the committees of the faculty are not equal to the task of keeping you boys and girls away from each other.
The athletic interests also are not in the condition they ought to be among the Armenian students. They don't play American football and baseball because (1) they have not got the money to buy the outfits, and (2) they have more perfect and up-to-date ways of getting killed or hurt in Turkey. But they do have tennis, association football, basketball, and a good many native games.
Now I have tried to give you a superficial idea of what an Armenian is.
Thank you for listening.