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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
292
ot" " friends of Armenia " were formed. This European
movement was distasteful to the Murderer-Sultan. He issued
a declaration that he would relieve his distressed subjects
himself. By so doing he gained a sort of " moral right " to
close the country against foreign relief and keep out prying
eyes as far as possible. His measures of relief, however,
were mainly farcical, and gave his tools new opportunities
for extortion and violence. The gendarmes could barter
corn for young Christian girls.
Refugees should be entitled to receive back their stolen
property, but nothing of the kind was done. The thousands
of Armenians who had escaped over the frontier to Russian
territory, or elsewhere, were refused permission to return ;
" they had not obtained leave to escape from Turkey, and had
no passports." Their property was " legally " confiscated
by the local authorities on behalf of the Sultan, and Moslems
took it over. This seems to be a typically Turkish practice ;
they have adopted exactly the same procedure towards refugees
in quite recent years (cf. p. 26).
Now that the European Powers had so completely betrayed
the Armenian cause in spite of all promises and expectations,
it was not to be wondered at if the Armenians in their despair
tried to take the matter into their own hands. The young men
organized themselves in small armed bands which kept to
the inaccessible mountain tracts. They tried to take vengeance
for the misdeeds of the Kurds and the Turks, and to help the
Armenian population in any way they could. Some of their
leaders even made agreements with Kurdish khans and their
followers who were dissatisfied with the Turkish tyrants.
These bands may have handled the Turks none too gently
at times ; but that was only natural, and in any case it was
nothing to what their countrymen had suffered from the
Turkish bloodhounds. Nevertheless it was bound to give
the Turkish authorities an excuse for fresh acts of violence.
While, as we have seen, much was done privately both in
Europe and in America to help the Armenians, and while the
various mission stations, which the Sultan could not touch,
received and saved from dcstruction thousands of homeless
children, the Governments of the Great Powers still did
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