Armenia and its sorrows

CHAPTER V.
TO
THE ORIGINS OF TROUBLE.
appreciate the causes of the long chapter of
Armenian horrors which has cuhninated in the
fearful atrocities of the past few years, we need to
recall the incidents connected with the introduction
of Christianity into the country. What the people
are now sutfering is neither more nor less than what
they endured in the fifth and following centuries
at the hands of the fire-worshipping Persians. If
they had then returned to Zoroastrianism, or if, two
centuries later, they had embraced Mohammedanism,
when the soldiers of Islam massacred thousands of
them in cold blood, the whole course of their subsequent
history would have been changed.
It should never be forgotten that the question is
essentially one of religion. The Turks have no reason
for disliking the Armenians apart from this. Indeed,
we venture to assert that they greatly prefer the
industrious and peaceable Armenians to the idle and
turbulent Kurds. But the Kurds are nominally
Mohammedans, while the Armenians are very decided
Christians. Hence the Kurds are allowed to have
their way, and the Armenians are subjected to every
indignity and outrage.
In the fourth century St. Chrysostom described the
state of affairs in terms almost identical with those
which have appeared in the columns of present-day
newspapers.
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V