Interview with General Antranik with a Correspondent of The Guardian (UK) in 1919

ARMENIA’S NEED OF PROTECTION

ANTRANIK AND THE WORLD’S INDIFFERENCE

Mr. Scotland Liddell, the correspondent of the British press, in a dispatch from Gerusi, Caucasus, dated February 1,  says:-

 Following on my visit to the Mussulman villages in the Zangezurski Province, I rode here last night, crossing in the dark from the Tartar district into country inhabited by Armenians. I came alone without an escort, and as is usual when crossing such boundary lines at the  present time, I was fired on. The darkness was fortunate.

 To-day I had lunch and an interview with General Antranik at his headquarters in the town. Antranik, a handsome man of 53, has personality. The Mussulman with whom I have been living these past ten days declared him to be a bandit. But much has been done in Antranik’s name of  which he is quite innocent. My meeting with him has strengthened this belief.

 For thirty-three years Antranik has fought against the Turk. On one occasion he and 49 men were besieged in a monastery at Arakelots. They held out for twenty-two days against 4,000 Turks, and escaped in safety. In the Balkan War of 1912 Antranik went with his small band of warriors and fought with the Bulgarians against Turkey. In 1914 he was at Varna. On August 25 of that year he left for the Caucasus, where he raised a volunteer army of Armenians. In the two years 1914-1916 he and his men marched nearly 5,000 miles and fought 39 battles, but it was not until 1917 that the  Russians gave him the rank of officer in their army.

 It is difficult to write briefly of Antranik’s doing in the past two years. Bolshevism ruined the once splendid Russian army and the Russian soldiers left the front. Antranik remained to carry on his great struggle against his country’s oppressors. He fought against cruel odds. He had no artillery and no machine-guns, there was little bread, and many of his men deserted. There were thousands of Armenians refugee women and children who had to be protected. Antranik held out, and even when Armenia made peace with the Turks last year he did not cease to fight. It was, he told me, a shameful peace, and to that he would not agree. Finally, when the armistice was signed, he returned to Gerusi.

Antranik is the one great Armenian national hero. They have a superstition that nothing can harm him, and it is certainly a very remarkable fact that in all his long years of fighting he has never once  been wounded.

 All this information as to his career I received by frequent questioning. Antranik himself talked only of the present and the future state of Armenia. Some of the figures he gave me were appalling. Nearly 1,000,000 Armenians have been massacred during the war by the Turks. In the Caucasus alone there are over 250,000 Armenian refugees at the present time. At Erivan there are upwards of 8,000 orphans. In the Crimean and in the Southern Russian Black Sea districts there are at least another 35,000 refugees who fled from Armenia. If no help is given immediately, the Armenian refugees in the Caucasus will die of hunger. They must be sent back to their former holdings, and they must have the necessary agricultural machinery to enable them to raise their crops. Unless help is forthcoming before the spring most of the people will be lost.

 Race  Threatened with Extinction.

 “I am shocked,” said Antranik, “at the indifference of the whole world to the sufferings of Armenia. Not only the Allies but also all the European countries are heartless and without pity. I am not referring to the present time nor even to the past four years, but I speak now of the past thirty or forty years, when the whole world has been shockingly callous and indifferent to our sufferings. The Allies have done nothing. All the Armenian intellectuals have either been murdered or they have emigrated. We are in need of leaders for the poor people. Unless we have help, and unless Armenians will come from Europe and America to assist us, our whole race will die out. Those who have the means  will themselves emigrate, and the poorer folk will die.

  “The great question of the future, as far as we are concerned, is who will be master here. Without the protection of another country Armenia cannot exist. She cannot rule herself. There would always be  unrest and little combats with the Tartars over racial matters.”

 Antranik defended himself against the charges of having wantonly destroyed Tartar villages. The fault, he said, lay with the Tartar leaders, who chose to sympathise with the Turk instead of with the Allies. They opposed him in every way, so he was compelled to combat against them. Incidentally he told me this: “I believe that there was a German Turkish scheme to raise 300,000 men in the Caucasus last year, and to send these men through Persia to threaten India.” In that case it was Antranik’s intention to work his way down to Persia and to join the British forces there.  The collapse of Turkey put an end to the scheme.

 Antranik is shortly going to retire. He has travelled in Europe before – Paris, Antwerp, Berlin, Rome, and he has been in England. He tells me he has already got a  future home in view – Manchester.-Press Association War Special.

The Manchester Guardian (aka The Guardian now)

Thursday, March 13, 1919 Page 8