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Les Massacres d'Armenie |
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Go and try to open the eyes of some of the bourgeois back home, who, from father to son, are mesmerized into idiotic stupor, do I dare say, about the alleged ferocity of my poor friends the Turks. At the beginning of the Balkan War, was I not scoffed at, insulted, menaced enough for having taken their defence, for having dared to say that the Bulgarians, on the contrary, were cruel brutes and that their Ferdinand of Coburg (of whom all our ladies had taken fancy to and displayed his colors) was nothing but a wretched monster.) Of that one, for example, of Coburg, I am vindicated today, because he has unmistakably proven what I have tried to warn: five times traitor in ten years and firing behind the back of the Allies without warning them, I do not see how one could ask for more! As to his soldiers, -- almost direct descendants of the Huns, -- I could relate first hand of their atrocities, I could cite about the devastating reports of the international commissions sent to the scene, but no one wanted to hear. No, it were the Turks, always the Turks, the Turks that one wanted to shame, and, as Gospel truth, one accepted at home, the periodic short communiqués of the Palatinate Ferdinand, who repeated this refrain: "The Turks massacre, the Turks continue to kill and commit the worst of horrors, etc., etc." For different reasons, I will keep quiet about the dealings of some of the Christian allies of the good Bulgarians of the era. My goal, today, is only to affirm, once again, this acknowledged truth, furthermore to those amongst you who have taken the time to document, namely, that the Turks have never been our enemy. The enemy of the Russians, oh! that unquestionably yes, they are and how, by all means, they would not be, under the continuous and relentless menace of the latter, who do not even make an effort to hide their obstinate intention to destroy them. It is not to us that they have declared war, but to the Russian, and who in their place would not have done the same? Later, history will say, among other things, how it was begun, that war, by some savages from Germany, aboard the small boats of the Sultan's fleet and who, in order to make things irreversible, did not hesitate to fire, without warning to the Russian side even before Enver, who perhaps still hesitated, was informed about it. Besides, what do the Turks owe us? Since the Crimean Expedition, we have not stopped to march with their enemies, and, in the last place, during Balkan War, without doubt, in order to thank them for their generous hospitality, that they gave us during all the years in their country, we have grossly insulted them, continuously, in almost all our newspapers, that which caused them, I know, the most painstaking stupor. It is a desperate act that in order to escape being crushed by Russia, that they threw themselves to the arms of the detested Germans, -- I say detested, because I am assured by a intimate minority, basically, they excrement it. Like how then to wish upon them a fatal error without mercy which had so many extenuating circumstances and for which that are prepared to make an honourable apology. Oh! what prejudice brought on to France, if we would have had to give the Russians this Constantinople, which was a French city from the heart, a city where we could have said to be at home, and where the Russians, barely arrived, would have expulsed us as undesirable intruders! What breach of this principle of nationalities, nevertheless invoked today by all peoples, what breach if it would have been executed a certain shady signed agreement which tore, on top of Stamboul, from the Turkish homeland, still its cradle since its birth and all the Asiatic cities, Trebizond, Harput conquered by arms, it is true, but, which, with the centuries became centers of pure Turkishness! But this dubious Sazonnow agreement, recently divulged by the Bolsheviks, the Russian defection made it fall in deliquescence, and now, the day of solemn rules, the question of Turkish nationality will be put to the members of the Peace Conference, and it is then to those I put all my hope, for my poor Ottoman friends, even though one has already circumvented them, I know that, in order to render them unfavorable for their cause, but I have confidence in them just the same, because they could not fail to be, here like in all things, impeccable and magnificent justiciary. I said that they were not our enemy, these so slandered Turks, and that they went to war with us against their heart. Moreover, I also said, and I said all my life, that they compose the most healthful elements, the most honest of all the Orient, -- and the most tolerant also, much more than the Orthodox element, although this last assertion is to make the non initiated wild. Now, on these two points, here are all of a sudden, since the war, thousands of witnesses who give me reason, even before the most hardheaded. Generals, officers of all ranks, simple soldiers, who left France full of prejudices against my poor friends of over there and considering me a dangerous dreamer, spontaneously wrote to me, for pure conscience sake to tell me unanimously: "Oh! how you know them well, these chivalrous people, so gentle to the prisoners, to the wounded, and treating them as brothers! Count on us, upon our return, to join en masse our testimonies to yours." I would like to be able publish them all, these innumerable signed letters, so sincere and so touching, but they would be a fill a book! To end, here is an anecdote, which I chose from a thousand, because it is typical. In 1916, an out of control French seaplane fell in Palestine, near a Turkish military post; the officers in charge there, after having made with courtesy, our aviators prisoners, telegraphed to the pasha, Governor of Jerusalem to ask for orders, and they were word-for-word answered this: "Treat them as your best relatives or your friends." The recommendation was, moreover, foreseen, because they had already treated them as brothers or friends fallen from the sky. And a few days later, when they received the order to send them to Jerusalem, knowing them to be money-less, they pitched in together to loan them necessities to make their trip comfortable. And finally, without worrying to be disowned by our fighters down there, I dare to say that most of our soldiers, returned from the mad escapade of Dardanelles, would have been wasted at the beaches, if the Turks did not put in a great effort to let them re-embark; in general, they ceased fire on the French boats each time there was not a German brute tailing them. |
