Tea at Trianon: More on the Armenian Genocide

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, May 7, 2010

More on the Armenian Genocide

A thoughtful article by R.J. Stove. To quote:

Forgotten amid the unctuous blather about the Turks' "secular democracy", save for a January statement to the EU by Nicholas Tavitian of the Armenian General Benevolent Union, is one simple statistic. The first genocide of the 20th century took place at Turkish hands: the elimination campaign that began in 1915. During this campaign, two out of every three Armenians - 1.5 million altogether - died horribly.

On Armenian Memorial Day (April 24) in 2003, George W. Bush made just one brief reference to the massacres as a "tragedy", thus suggesting some impersonal tsunami-like Act of God. UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has dismissed all invocations of Armenia's fate with his supercilious query, "Why rake up the past?". Successive Turkish régimes' attitude has been similarly vulgar, though less stupid and more obviously dishonest.

Few even today know much of the Armenian genocide. It is of no interest to Hollywood. (The sole notable movie on the subject has been Ararat, a small-budget independent production starring French singer-actor Charles Aznavour - the child of Armenian refugees from the Turkish genocide. Big-budget studio scenarios have always been scrapped to appease Turkish lobby pressure.)

As long ago as 1984, this writer completed a degree in history (!) without the smallest awareness that the genocide happened. (We never found out about Ukrainian famines either, thanks to the resident Stalin expert's solicitude.) Undoubtedly the prevailing ignorance at what Australia still charitably chooses to call "universities" is much worse now. Some harsh facts about Armenia - "martyr-nation of Christendom", to quote the title of a 1919 book on the topic - therefore seem apposite.