The quadruple Entente with Serbia and Belgium bring the number of the Allies to six, who is, then, this seventh Ally of whom we do not know? This is how the general public will question, because the facts concerning this Ally are not sufficiently brought before them by the British Press. And yet, all the while, this small Allied Nation is fighting on the side of the Allies, and her sacrifices are comparatively greater than those incurred by any nation at war at the present time. They are staking all they have, possession, home, life, country and national existence, in the sacred cause of the Allied Nations. It is easy to guess that seventh Ally to whom I allude is the Armenian nation.
The Armenians began to fight on the side on the Entente from the very beginning. They did not wait an invitation, they did not bargain. The cause of the small nations, the principle of nationalities, for which the Entente Powers have drawn the sword, was so near to their heart, and corresponded so exactly to their secular aspirations, that at once they jumped at it, and at the signal given they threw themselves unreservedly, heart and soul, into the arena. The Balkan nations are to-day offering a sad spectacle of self-interest. They are waiting to see which side is the stronger, in order to side with it. Armenia did not do that. The righteousness of the cause for which the triplice began the war attracted them from the beginning and full confidence in the Allied powers for their future remuneration moved them to action, and so they fought. Over a hundred thousand of them are fighting in the Russian Army, about 20,000 Armenians Volunteers are also fighting in the Caucasus: Armenian Volunteers are also fighting even in France in the ranks of the Allies. It is even said that General Alexieff, the present Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army, is an Armenian by origin.
Appeal to the Allied Nations.
To be just, it must be admitted that England tried from time to time, in a measure, to redeem her humane and treaty obligations, but she found latterly Germany on her path to negative her efforts at Constantinople, and so the treaty articles on behalf on Armenia suffered to be treated as so many scraps of paper. Now, however, that Great Britain and the Allied Powers have at last risen in holy indignation against that nefarious doctrine of scrap of paper, and are actually fighting for the sacredness of treaties, the Armenians greatly hope that the Allies will not stop at half-measures, and that they will not apply the principle to Belgium alone and forget a still older victim of the scrap of paper doctrine, bleeding Armenia. The task of doing justice to Armenia at the close of the war will be so much easier considering that there will then be no more German obstruction, and Russia being more friendly with the Armenians. England will encounter no difficulty in doing justice to this sorely tried nation, their seventh Ally.
But till then, and while the Armenians are fighting, they are at a loss to understand the ignorance, indifference, back of interest of the British public and the silence of the British Press regarding Armenian affairs and needs, which at the present juncture are not less important and pressing than those of Belgium and Poland. Hundreds of thousands of Armenian refugees, whose homes are destroyed and able-bodied men fighting, massacred or deported, are fleeing from the country, naked, hungry, diseased, to take refuge bin Russia. Considering the fact that it was owing to Britain's unfortunate, intervention that Armenia was condemned to remain under the Turkish misrule in 1878, and consequently to undergo the present misery one would have naturally expected that the British public would have been anxious to seize every opportunity for redeeming their obligation towards this greatly wronged people, now their Ally. Instead of that the coldness and lack of interest in their just cause greatly surprises the Armenians. The heartrending appeals on their behalf from certain quarters are inadequately responded to British generosity must be exercised on a much larger scale than it has yet been, if these people the only hope for Armenian’s future, have to be kept alive.