ent the reforms that had
been promised by treaty, and thus to better the condition of the
Armenians, by securing to them a certain share in the local and
municipal government. But the Armenians are a scattered and subject
people, different in race and religion and language from the ruling
Turks, and the demand for giving them some kind of independence
alarmed the Turkish Government and inflamed the fanaticism of the
Mohammedans. The only result of European intervention was a frightful
massacre of the Armenians, which the European Powers witnessed without
any serious attempt to stop. Such are the consequences of
misunderstanding the real political situation and the forces at work.
Probably many people in England had a very hazy notion of what the
Armenians were, or what their name signified. We have always to
remember that throughout Asia, and indeed over the greater part of the
non-Christian world, the various sections of the population very
rarely use for themselves, or indeed for the country that they dwell
in, the name that is used for them by Europeans. As our own system has
become territorial, as we call any natural-born inhabitant of France a
Frenchman, and so on, we are led by a false analogy to talk of Turkey
and the Turks, Persia and the Persians, India and the Indians, China
and the Chinese. But these broad designations denoting modern
nationalities are not used in Asia by the people themselves, to whom
such a conception is foreign. I know of no terms in the languages of
these countries that correspond to our words, Turkey, India, China, as
geographical expressions, and I think that the names used by Europeans
for outlying countries or peoples often come from some accident or
chance, or mistake, or by taking the name of a part of a country for
the name of the whole. In Asia the people still class themselves, in
their ordinary talk, by names designating religion or race. A curious
example of a religious designation still survives, by the way, among
Europeans in South Africa. When the first Portuguese explorers of the
African coast asked the Arab traders about the indigenous tribes,
they, being Mohammedans, said that the natives were all Kafirs, which
means Infidels. This was supposed to be the general name of a people,
and it has been handed down to us so that we still call the South
African natives Kaffirs. I doubt whether the tribes concerned have
ever used or recognised among themselves this unsavoury name. I