East would dispute the justice of this amiable epithet. It is one of the misfortunes of this unhappy race that nobody likes them. Long ago St. Gregory of Nanzianos said: "I do not find the Armenians a noble race; they are very sly and vicious";[1] most of his countrymen would still endorse that statement. Armenians are not an attractive race. It is true that the ghastly persecution they have suffered should make people sympathize with them; but they seem to cringe and weep under it only, they never show fight;[2] so even the persecution has rather increased their neighbours' scorn. They share the unpopularity of the Jew for much the same reason. The people of the near East conceive the Armenian as a sharp man of business, a money-lender at usury, too clever for the simple peasant he despoils. Certainly the hatred of them and the readiness Kurds and Turks show to massacre them comes from economic rather than religious reasons. For why should Monophysites be more hateful to Moslems than the Orthodox? And their fellow-Monophysites the Jacobites are not massacred. It is the financial prosperity of Armenians and the idea that they have sucked their money from guileless peasants which makes them so hated. Many people, even Christians, will tell you that the savage Kurd who massacres has at least the virtues of a savage; he is brave, hospitable, honourable in his way. So they say they prefer him to the Armenian who can only weep when he is attacked,[3] but who, in spite of everything, comes up again by clever business dealings.
The particular Armenian massacres which aroused the horror of the world did not begin till the latter half of the 19th century. Till then the Armenians were not worse treated than other Rayahs in Turkey. But, more obviously than in the case of any other millah, they have a claim to separate national existence and national aspirations. During the Russian war (1829), then by
- ↑ Oratio xliii. 17 (P.G. xxxvi. 517).
- ↑ I have heard stories of one Kurd climbing up into a hay-loft where about ten Armenians were hiding, quietly killing them all, and then coming down again. The Armenians wept, and prayed him to spare them.
- ↑ I think certainly the most astonishing part of the story of the massacres is the ease with which whole districts of Armenians were calmly killed by quite small numbers of Kurds at their convenience. There does not ever seem to have been even a show of resistance.
