Dear Schoolmate:

This new story in our series is about a people whose name you heard often during the Great War; perhaps you even sent some of your own pennies across the ocean to help them; for no one, not gallant little Belgium itself, suffered more in the war than did the Armenians. We sometimes think of them as the Belgians of the East, for their resistance delayed the advance of Turkish battalions, just as Belgium’s brave stand prevented the first onrush of the Germans; and the Turkish revenge has been more horrible than the German.

The bulletins of the Near East Relief Committee, which raised money for food and clothing and medicine and helpers in Western Asia, tell us how the Turks tried to annihilate the Armenians, and how, among the four million Armenians, Syrians, Jews, Greeks, and Persians who survived, four hundred thousand were orphans. In those first four months after the armistice, they were still dying every day, by hundreds, of starvation and disease, they were homeless and naked. Miss B. S. Papazian, an Armenian, has written a little book about her people, “The Tragedy of Armenia,” in which she says: “The Armenians of Turkey to the number of about a million, old and young, rich and poor, and of both sexes, had been collectively drowned, burned, bayoneted, starved, bastinadoed, or otherwise tortured to death, or else deported on foot, penniless and without food, to the burning Arabian deserts.” The whole story of their sufferings is too terrible for children to read; yet, American children are not willing to shut their eyes and ears to the sorrows of their brothers and sisters, whether in France or Belgium, or close at home in our American city slums, or far over seas in Asia Minor. I wonder how many boys and girls who read this letter, adopted a French orphan, or gave a little refugee a merry Christmas? And how many had a share in feeding and clothing and educating some little forlorn Armenian child?

But this story of Archag, and his life at the missionary school, is not in our Schoolmate Series merely because Armenians are a persecuted people whom American children ought to love and to succor; it is here also because there are a good many Armenians in America, and more are coming, whose children will be American citizens in another twenty years. The Armenians, like our own Puritan forefathers, came here to escape religious persecution; so those of us who happen to be descended from the early settlers in New England ought to have a strong fellow-feeling for this other race of Christians who have suffered for the sake of their religion and have hoped to find religious freedom here with us.

The Armenian Church, for which Armenians suffer martyrdom in our enlightened twentieth century, is one of the most ancient of the Churches of Christendom. Its founder was St. Gregory, called the Illuminator, who received a heavenly vision and built a little chapel, in A. D. 303, on the spot on which the vision came to him. It was this Gregory who converted King Tiridates of Armenia to Christianity, and it was King Tiridates who proclaimed Christianity the State religion of Armenia, some years before the Emperor Constantine made it the state religion of Rome. The Armenian Church is a democratic church, for the clergy in the villages are appointed and paid by their own congregations, and often in poor places the priest and his wife work in the fields with the peasants. The Armenian’s Church is the true home of his spirit. He has no country of his own, for the region which we think of as Armenia was, before the Great War, divided among three nations, Russia, Turkey, and Persia, and arbitrarily ruled by them. The Armenians were a subject people; but in their religion they were free, and they have endured torture and death for the sake of this dear freedom.

According to one of their own writers, Aram Raffi, the name “Armenia” first appears in the fifth century before Christ, but the Armenians themselves have a name of their own, which they like. They call themselves “Hai,” and their country “Hayastan,” because they have a tradition that they are descended from “Haik,” the son of Torgom, great-grandson of Japheth, Noah’s son. If you will look at your map of Asia Minor, you will find that Mount Ararat, on which Noah’s Ark rested after the flood went down, is at the meeting place of the three divisions of Armenia, the Russian division, the Persian, and the Turkish; and it is not strange that with this beautiful snow mountain soaring over their enslaved country, the Armenians should trace their ancestry back so directly to Noah.

It was during the latter part of the last century that the Turkish Government set the Kurds on to massacre the Armenians. The massacres of 1895–96, the massacre at Van in 1908, and those at Adana and in Cilicia, in 1909, were all carried out by the consent of the Turkish authorities. And because of these persecutions the Armenians began to leave Asia Minor for America.

The Kurds, who committed the atrocities under the instigation of the Turks, are a semi-nomad race, living part of the year in tents; a picturesque, wild, ungovernable people, practicing a sort of highway robbery as a trade, and a sort of Mohammedanism as a religion. The Armenians, on the other hand, are farmers and merchants, thrifty, intelligent, peaceful, eager for education, and, as you have read, devoted Christians. It is not strange that two peoples so different in habits and temperament should find it difficult to live together, as neighbors; and the Turks, who are jealous of the intelligence and industry and ability of the Armenians, and hate them also for their Christianity, have not scrupled to stir up the Kurds against them. What is still worse, they have compelled the Armenians to live unarmed among their armed and fierce Kurdish enemies. We sometimes hear the Armenians called cowardly, but if we had to live unarmed among a hostile race who carried good modern rifles, we, too, might be called cowards.

No; we need not think of Armenians simply as a down-trodden and feeble folk, who have run away helplessly from danger, and to whom Americans must be compassionate and charitable. They have something to give us, as well. Their diligence is a good gift; they work hard, and they are intelligent in their work. Their faithfulness to God is the best of gifts. And they have a great love of education. This gift, if there were no other, would win for them a place in the Schoolmate Series. In a book called “Travel and Politics in Armenia,” by Noel and Harold Buxton, published in 1914, which you may like to read some day, we get a vivid idea of the love of the Armenians for their schools. The authors say:

“There is a remarkable contrast between the villages of Armenians and the villages of Kurds. We had traveled for days in a Kurdish district, a waste of bare, sandy hills, with never a tree or any sign of cultivation. Our halting-place for lunch proved to be an Armenian village, and luscious melons were put before us, which the arid soil produces in abundance as soon as a little irrigation is applied to it. While we sat in the Khan (inn), the local schoolmaster appeared—a wonder still more remarkable than the melons, for whoever heard of a school in a Kurdish village? We seemed to be suddenly transported to a center of civilization. This educational activity is beyond all praise. Here was a man of some ability, prepared to live a lonely life in an isolated village, for the sake of his nation and the younger generation.”

They go on to tell us of the school system, which is voluntary and without Government aid. There is—or perhaps since the War, one should say was—a National Committee for Education which sat at Constantinople; the teachers were paid by the Committee, and there were School inspectors for each district, in Turkish Armenia. Pupils who could afford it paid for their schooling, but those who were poor were not kept out by their poverty. Does not this sound very modern, and American, and democratic? Surely, these are people who will make good Americans.

And going to school in Armenia was an exciting adventure, before the War. Listen to the story which the Buxtons tell of a Secondary Boys’ School founded more than fifty years ago at Varag, by an Armenian Bishop, a pioneer in modern education in Armenia:

“At the time of the massacres (1909) masters and boys had to fly to the mountains, and while they were absent, the buildings were completely destroyed by fire. Nevertheless, an entire reconstruction was undertaken. The Church, which happily was not destroyed, occupies one side of the courtyard and the new buildings occupy the other three; a second courtyard is now nearing completion (1914). A second attempt was made less than three years ago to despoil this institution. The attacking party, about a hundred strong, was repelled by five Armenian revolutionaries, aided no doubt by the ‘young blood’ of the college. Now (1914) there are seventy boys and seven teachers, all laymen. The system is pre-eminently practical. The pupils are destined for teaching, and since it is considered part of a village schoolmaster’s duty in Armenia to be able to assist peasants in agricultural matters, thorough instruction is given in fruit, vegetable, and poultry culture, dairy work, and general gardening. The school grounds form a delightful oasis of irrigated lands in the midst of surrounding desert. The school printing press was stolen by the Government and the compositor abducted; but a more modern machine has taken its place. Every boy takes his share, out of school hours, in carpentry and house-work. The court-yard forms a fine play-ground, and here, having mentioned Boy Scouts, I found myself surrounded by an ardent crowd, thirsting for scout lore, and begging to be enrolled at once as ‘tenderfeet.’”

What may have been the fate of this boys’ school at Varag, since 1914, I dread to imagine. As it was a native school, there is no mention of it, so far as I know, in the reports of American Missionary Schools. We can only hope that some of those seventy boys and their seven masters still live, and will one day take heart to build up the old school again.

Besides the native schools, there are the schools and colleges established in Asia Minor by American Missionaries, and to these also the Armenians flock. The author of “Archag” has laid some of the scenes of his story in one of these famous missionary schools, the Central Turkey College at Aintab, and has given us a lively picture of the ardent young Armenians at their games and their studies. Ever since “Tom Brown at Rugby,” school stories have been the fashion, and it is reassuring to see how curiously akin schoolboys are, all the world over, whether they be English lads at Rugby, or Oriental youngsters at Aintab. Beneath their fezzes and zoubouns, our Armenian hero and his friends are genuine boys at heart, with a boy’s sense of honor and love of good sport. The picture of the school, too, is one for Americans to be proud of, with its devoted teachers, its high intellectual standards, and its Christian atmosphere. And its record during the War has been very fine. In the Report of the American Board of Missions, 1918, I read that the four missionaries who were able to stay there “have all been carrying a heavy burden for, unlike many of our stations to the north which were practically depopulated, Aintab has had an ever-increasing number of refugees to care for. At times the attitude of the local officials was distinctly hostile and the danger of further massacre was great, but the opportune arrival of a British force on December 15, 1918, saved the day and already there are signs of recovery. Christian services are being attended by great crowds. The Mission paper, Rahnuma, is being published by the College press, and has practically become the official organ of the British Commander. Schools will doubtless open soon.”

But if schools and schoolboys are much alike, the world over, vacations in Armenia are very different from American holidays. No boys’ camps for Archag and his friends! Their adventures are much more thrilling than your summer hikes and canoeings. There are no patriot-outlaws in our mountains. But I must stop, or I shall be telling you Archag’s story, and that would not be fair. Only this, let me say: our author, like all good story-tellers, uses his imagination to make his story come alive; he embroiders, as the French say, upon his facts; but if you will read in the “New York Evening Post,” for Saturday, November 29, 1919, the account of Antranik, the Armenian patriot who came to this country to ask help for his countrymen, you will find that fiction is no more romantic than fact, in Asia Minor; and you will find Antranik,—this very same hero, I think,—mentioned in our story.

Read the story, dear Schoolmate, and make friends with these Armenian boys, who suffer so steadfastly for their country and their God.

Affectionately yours,

Florence Converse.