[Inclosure.—Extract.]
The Secretary of
State to Mr. Straus.
Department of State,
Washington, January 25,
1906.
Sir: I have to acknowledge, by reference
from the President, your letter of the 19th instant in regard to the
exercise of his good offices in behalf of the Armenians.
The President has referred to this department for acknowledgment Mr.
James B. Reynolds’s letter of the 18th instant, with which was
presented a petition unanimously signed by influential
representative men in France, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Great
Britain, Holland, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, appealing to the
President to take action to prevent cruelties suffered by the
Armenian subjects of Turkey.
The high standing of the petitioners would lend, if that were
possible, even greater interest to this question, which has already
had the earnest consideration of the President for many years
past.
The sympathy of the American people with the oppressed of every
country has been repeatedly expressed by various branches of this
Government, and in the case of the unfortunate Armenians has been
eloquently voiced by the American nation itself. There is no room
for doubt in any quarter as to the desire of the President that
these Armenians should possess the security of life and property
which it has been the concerted aim of the European powers to secure
to them.
The powers so concerting to conclude the existing treaty of Berlin in
1878—Great Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Russia,
and Turkey—are, with exception of the last named, represented among
the signers of this petition by many of their eminent citizens and
subjects. Others of the petitioners belong to European powers not
signatories of that treaty but interested in all that may tend to
the maintenance of wholesome government and the conservation of a
political balance throughout Europe. The United States, also a
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nonsignatory, is by the unwritten law of more than a century debarred
from sharing in the political aims, interests, or responsibilities
of Europe, just as by the equally potent doctrine, now nearly a
century old, the European powers are excluded from sharing or
interfering in the political concerns of the sovereign states of the
Western Hemisphere.
The fulfillment of treaty obligations between the European states is
distinctly a political question, as to which the Western Hemisphere
can have no voice or part beyond expression or sympathy within
appropriate bounds. It is only when the United States is itself a
party to a treaty with a European state, or is aggrieved by some act
of a European state done contrary to international law and justice,
that the United States can act in defense of its own rights, or in
redress of the wrongs it may suffer.
As regards the specific suggestions of Mr. Reynolds’s letter, it may
be said that as the interpretation and fulfillment of treaty
obligations is one of the questions which the enlightened sentiment
of the age declares should, in default of a direct settlement by
mutual agreement, be referred to impartial arbitration, it might be
found difficult, if not inconsistent, to bring those very questions
of treaty construction and fulfillment before a conference assembled
to discuss the provisions to be made for impartial international
arbitration. I presume that Mr. Reynolds may really have had the
approaching second peace conference of The Hague in mind when he
asks the President to “secure the consideration of the needs of
Armenia by The Hague tribunal at its next session.” There is no
Hague tribunal holding periodic sessions. The permanent court of The
Hague has no judicial organization or jurisdiction as a body. It
merely furnishes an array of impartial jurists, from among whom two
or more parties to an international difference may, at their own
pleasure, draw arbitrators or an umpire. If the Armenian question is
to be brought forward for consideration as a general proposition by
the second Hague conference, it would be appropriate that it should
be introduced by a treaty party, rather than by an outsider. Once
before that conference, the delegates of the United States could
treat it with a free hand and within permissible limits.
The proposition that the President take the initiative in convening a
special conference to settle the Armenian question could not be
admitted unless it were admissible that a European power could
rightfully take similar action to bring about a special conference
for the settlement of a question of the internal administration of
an American republic, or of the treaty relation of other American
republics thereto.
The sufferings of the Armenian subjects of Turkey cry aloud for
remedy and redress. They shock the humanitarian sense of all
mankind, and the world has joined in deploring and condemning the
racial antagonisms which have arrayed the incompatible elements of
the Turkish population against each other, even as they have arrayed
the incompatible elements of the Russian population against the Jew
in Russia. No right-minded man can witness such occurrences without
craving the power to prevent them; I most sincerely wish that the
United States had that power; but in equal sincerity I am convinced
that efforts on our part short of rightful and potential
intervention could accomplish nothing, and, implying, as they
necessarily would, unstinted reprobation of the acts and motives of
another State, would do more harm than good to the unfortunate
creatures whom it is aimed to benefit. As for moral persuasion being
brought to bear, that implies a susceptibility to persuasive
influences which is hardly to be presumed in the present
instance.
I am, sir, etc.,