Forty Days of Musa Dagh (20 page)

 

 

The attentive general listened scrupulously, though his languid pose most
clearly indicated: This is the kind of rigmarole one has to hear at least
twelve times a day. "All very regrettable. But the supreme commander of
a great military power is responsible for the security of his war areas."

 

 

"War areas?" Lepsius cried out -- and at once controlled himself, trying
to manage Enver's calm. "'War areas' is the one fresh nuance. All the rest
-- Zeitun, high treason, intrigues -- was there already. Abdul Hamid made
masterly use of all that, if the Armenians cared to believe it all over
again. I'm an older man than you are, Excellency, and I saw it all on the
spot. But when I think of these deportations, I almost want to apologize
to that old sinner. He was a bungler, a harmless child, compared to this
new method. And yet, Excellency, your party only took power because it
wanted to replace the bloodshed of the old Sultan's time by justice,
unity, and progress. The very name of your Committee proclaims it."

 

 

This stroke was daring, indeed rash. For an instant Johannes Lepsius sat
expecting the war lord to stand up and conclude the interview. Yet Enver
sat quietly on, not the lightest shadow clouding his suave serenity.
He even bent forward, confidentially. "Dr. Lepsius, may I show you the
other side? . . . Germany, luckily, has few, or no, internal enemies.
But let's suppose that, in other circumstances, she found herself with
traitors in her midst -- Alsace-Lorrainers, shall we say, or Poles,
or Social-Democrats, or Jews -- and in far greater numbers than at
present. Would you, Herr Lepsius, not endorse any and every means of
freeing your country, which is fighting for its life against a whole
world of enemies without, from those within? . . . Would you consider
it so cruel if, for the sake of victory, all dangerous elements in
the population were simply to be herded together and sent packing into
distant, uninhabited territory?"

 

 

Johannes Lepsius had to hold on tight by both hands to keep himself from
springing to his feet and giving full rein to his indignation.

 

 

"If my government," he said very distinctly, "behaved unjustly, unlawfully,
inhumanly" ("in an un-Christian way" was the expression on the tip of
his tongue) "to our fellow countrymen of a different race, a different
persuasion, I should clear out of Germany at once and go to America."

 

 

A long, wide-eyed stare from Enver Pasha. "Sad for Germany if many other
people think as you do there. A sign that your people lacks the strength
to enforce its national will relentlessly."

 

 

At this point in the interview the pastor was overcome by a great fatigue.
It was born of the sensation that, in his way, this little, closed-up
fellow was in the right. The hoary wisdom of the world is always, in
its way, right against Christ's wisdom. But the worst of it was that
Enver's rightness infected, at this instant, Johannes Lepsius, and lamed
his will. The uncertain destiny of his fatherland descended on his soul
with the weight of a mountain. He whispered; "It's not the same thing."

 

 

"Quite right. It's not the same thing. But it's we who gain by the
comparison. We Turks have a hundred times harder struggle to assert our
rights than you Germans."

 

 

Lepsius, tortured and absent-minded, pulled out a handkerchief, which he
held up like a parliamentary banner. "It isn't a question of protecting
yourselves against an enemy in your midst, but of the planned extirpation
of another race."

 

 

This he jerked out in a sullen voice; his eyes, no longer able to endure
Enver's coo1 detachment, strayed towards the study with its three heroes
on the wall. Had Monsignor Saven, the Patriarch, no right there? Lepsius
suddenly remembered that he was here to discuss economics. Quickly he
gathered strength for a fresh encounter: "Excellency. I won't presume
to waste your time in empty discussion. But may I venture to draw your
attention to certain rather grave drawbacks, which you yourself perhaps
may not yet have considered very carefully -- naturally enough, weighed
down as you are by your burden as commander-in-chief. I may perhaps
know the interior, Anatolia, Cilicia, Syria, better than you do, since I
worked for years under difficult conditions in all that territory. . . ."

 

 

And so, in hurried words -- he felt time ebbing away -- he developed his
plea. The Turkish empire, without the Armenian millet, would be bound
to go to pieces economically, and its army would, as a consequence,
be endangered. Why? He did not care to insist on the export trade,
ninety per cent of which was in Christian hands, and His Excellency
knew as well as he did that most of the foreign trade was conducted
by Armenian firms, so that in consequence one of the most essential
branches of war industry, the provision of raw materials, as well as of
manufactured goods, could only be successfully managed by these firms --
for instance, by such a world-established business as Avetis Bagradian
and Sons, which had branches and representatives in twelve different
European cities. And as to the interior itself, he, Lepsius, years ago,
on his journeys there, had seen that Armenian agricultural methods in
Anatolia were a hundred times ahead of Turkish small landholding. In
those days Cilician Armenians had imported hundreds of threshing-machines
and steam-ploughs from Europe and, by so doing, given the Turks a strong
incentive to massacre, since they not only slaughtered the ten thousand
inhabitants of Adana but also broke up the machines and ploughs. In that
alone, and nowhere else, lay the real mischief. The Armenian millet, the
most progressive and active section of the Ottoman population, had for
years been making vast efforts to lead Turkey out of its old-fashioned,
primitive methods of agriculture into a new world of up-to-date farming
and budding industrialization. And it was for just this very beneficent
pioneering work that Armenians were being persecuted and slaughtered by
the vengeful violence of irritated sloth.

 

 

"Let's admit, Excellency, that craftsmanship, trade, and peasant industry,
which in the interior are almost exclusively Armenian, could be taken
over by Turks -- who is to replace all the numerous Armenian doctors,
trained in the best universities in Europe, who care for their Osmanli
patients with the same skill as for their own people? Who's to replace all
the engineers, all the solicitors, all the export traders, whose work so
indefatigably drives the country forward? Your Excellency will perhaps
tell me that, at a pinch, a people can live without intellect. But it
can't live without a stomach. And at present the stomach of Turkey is
being slit open, yet you hope to survive the operation."

 

 

Enver Pasha heard this out, his head inclined gently on one side. His whole
aspect, incisive, youthful, subdued only by that hint of shyness in him,
displayed as few unintentional creases as did his uniform. The pastor,
on the other hand, was already beginning to look dishevelled. He was
sweating, his tie was askew, his sleeves worked their way up his arms.
The general crossed his short but slim legs. The glittering riding boots
fitted as though they were on trees.

 

 

"You speak of the stomach, Herr Lepsius." He smiled effusively.
"Well, perhaps after the war Turkey may have rather a weak one -- "

 

 

"She won't have any stomach left at all, Excellency."

 

 

Unruffled, the commander continued: "The Turkish population is forty
millions. Well, now -- try to see it from our point of view, Herr Lepsius.
Is it not a great and worthy policy to try to weld these forty millions
together and establish a natural empire, which henceforth will play the
same part in Asia as Germany does in Europe? This empire is waiting. We
have only to grasp it. I agree that among Armenians one finds an alarming
proportion of intelligence. Are you really so much in favour of that
kind of intelligence, Herr Lepsius? I'm not. We Turks may not be very
intelligent in that way, but on the other hand we're a great and heroic
people, called to establish and govern a world empire. Therefore we
intend to surmount all obstacles."

 

 

Lepsius twisted his fingers but said not a word. This spoilt child was the
absolute master of a great power. His finely modelled, attractive little
head brooded on such statistics as might have amazed all who knew the
reality. He could produce none to blind Dr. Lepsius, who was precisely
aware that in Anatolia there were scarcely six million pure-bred Turks;
that, if one went into Northern Persia, to the Caucasus, to Kashgar
and Turkestan, he would not be able, even by including all nomad
Turkic tribes, the vagrant horse-thieves and steppe-dwellers spread
across a land as wide as the half of Europe, to trump up as many as
twenty millions. Such dreams, he reflected, the narcotic of nationalism
engenders. Yet at the same time he was moved to pity for this porcelain
war god, this childlike Antichrist.

 

 

Johannes Lepsius' voice became soft and surcharged with wisdom:
"You want to found a new empire, Excellency. But the corpse of the
Armenian people will be beneath its foundations. Can that bring you
prosperity? Could no more peaceful way be chosen, even now?"

 

 

Here for the first time Enver Pasha laid bare his deepest truth. His smile
had no longer any reserve in it, a cold stare had come into his eyes,
his lips retreated from a strong and dangerous set of teeth.

 

 

"There can be no peace," he said, "between human beings and plague germs."

 

 

Lepsius came down on this in a trice: "So you openly admit your intention
of using the war to extirpate the Armenian millet?"

 

 

The War Minister had decidedly said too much. He retired at once within
his impregnable fortress of discourteous courtesy. "My personal opinions
and intentions are all contained in the memoranda published by our
government on the subject. We are acting under the force majeure of the
war, in self-defence, after having waited and observed as long as we
could. Citizens who work to destroy the state render themselves liable
in all countries to be dealt with by the sharp process of law. So that
our government is within its legal rights."

 

 

They were back at the beginning. Johannes Lepsius could not manage to
stifle a sound like a groan. He could hear Monsignor Saven's voice:
"Don't moralize! Be matter-of-fact! Arguments!" Oh, if he could but
remain matter-of-fact and use oniy arguments keen as razor blades! But
this very necessity to keep sitting, the impropriety of springing to his
feet to answer, set his nerves despairingly on edge. He, the born speaker
on committees, at public hearings, needed room, freedom to move in.

 

 

"Excellency" -- he pressed a hand against his wide and finely shaped
forehead -- "I'm not going to speak to you in platitudes. I won't say
that a whole people can't be made to suffer for the misdemeanors of a few
individuals. I won't ask why women and children, small children, as you
yourself were once, must suffer a bestial death for the sake of a policy
of which they haven't so much as heard. I want you to look at the future,
your people's future, Excellency! Even this war will end some day, and
Turkey will be faced with the necessity of concluding peace terms. May
that day be a good one for all of us! But, if it should be unlucky, what
then, Excellency? Surely the responsible head of a people must take some
measures against the possibility of an unfavorable ending of the war. And
in what position will the Ottoman peace commission be to negotiate if
it finds itself faced with the question: 'Where is your brother Abel?'
A highly painful situation. The victorious Powers -- may God prevent it! --
might use this pretext of a great crime that has been committed to share
out the booty remorselessly among themselves. And General Enver Pasha,
the man who, in such a case as that, would be the greatest among his
people, the man who had shouldered all responsibility, whose word had been
all-powerful -- how would he defend himself then against that people?"

 

 

Enver Pasha's eyes had begun to dream; he said quite seriously: "Thank you
for this very excellent hint. But any man who goes into politics must possess
two special qualifications: first, a certain levity, or, if you like,
indifference to death -- it comes to the same thing; and, secondly,
the unshakable belief in his own decisions, once they are taken."

 

 

Herr Pastor Lepsius stood up. He crossed his arms upon his breast, almost
in the fashion of the East. This guardian angel, sent by God to shield
the Armenian people, was in a pitiful state. The big handkerchief hung
out of his pocket, his trousers had worked up almost to his knees, his
tie wandered nearer and nearer to his ear -- even his pince-nez seemed
to have vanished utterly.

 

 

"I implore Your Excellency" -- he bowed before his seated interlocutor --
"let it end today. You have made such an example of this enemy in your
midst -- who is not one -- as history has never recorded. Hundreds and
thousands are dying on the high-roads of the East. Make an end today. Give
orders to keep back these new edicts of transportation. I know that not
all the vilayets and sanjaks have been depopulated yet. If, for the sake
of the German ambassador and Mr. Morgenthau, you still hesitate with the
great deportations in Western Asia Minor, spare Northern Syria, Aleppo,
Alexandretta, Antioch, for my sake. Say: 'This is enough.' And when I
get back to Germany, I'll sing your praises wherever I go."

 

 

And still the pastor would not sit down again, although the general's
patient hand had several times pointed to his chair.