DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4752#0169
IN ASIATIC TURKEY 159
in the long run except an ignominious retreat from
their position, amid the contempt and the re-
probation of mankind, whose feelings they arc now
outraging. They are now abusing the resources of
civilised society and government, to support and prop
up the feeblest and most contemptible administration
by which barbarism and organised disorder ever
tried to stifle enlightenment and order. But they
cannot do more, they do not even pretend to do
more, than prolong its dying agonies a few months
or years ; they do not think, and they hardly plead
as an excuse, that they are lessening the inevitable
dangers of its dissolution by postponement; some
of them, doubtless, know (as those of my acquaint-
ance, that are most familiar with the East, all feel)
that they are only increasing those dangers by
staving them off for the moment. They can drill
a good army for the Sultan, and Turks are very
good material for soldiers ; but they cannot put
permanent vitality into the Asiatic reaction.
The thing which they can and will succeed
in doing is that they destroy the moderate and
orderly element in the new movement; for the
sober, intelligent, and reasonable men among the
Armenians, those who have borne the toil and
danger of patiently, quietly educating the people
in the ways of peace, are far most exposed to
massacre, and have been specially marked out in
in the long run except an ignominious retreat from
their position, amid the contempt and the re-
probation of mankind, whose feelings they arc now
outraging. They are now abusing the resources of
civilised society and government, to support and prop
up the feeblest and most contemptible administration
by which barbarism and organised disorder ever
tried to stifle enlightenment and order. But they
cannot do more, they do not even pretend to do
more, than prolong its dying agonies a few months
or years ; they do not think, and they hardly plead
as an excuse, that they are lessening the inevitable
dangers of its dissolution by postponement; some
of them, doubtless, know (as those of my acquaint-
ance, that are most familiar with the East, all feel)
that they are only increasing those dangers by
staving them off for the moment. They can drill
a good army for the Sultan, and Turks are very
good material for soldiers ; but they cannot put
permanent vitality into the Asiatic reaction.
The thing which they can and will succeed
in doing is that they destroy the moderate and
orderly element in the new movement; for the
sober, intelligent, and reasonable men among the
Armenians, those who have borne the toil and
danger of patiently, quietly educating the people
in the ways of peace, are far most exposed to
massacre, and have been specially marked out in