Now let us see what positive services from a military point of view this same martyred people rendered to the allied cause on both sides of the Turco-Russian boundary line.
MILITARY SERVICES RENDERED BY THE ARMENIANS ON THE CAUCASIAN FRONT
In order to have an adequate comprehension of the events which took place on the Caucasian front, it would be well to bear in mind that all the peoples of Trans-Caucasia, including the Armenians, felt great enmity toward the government of the Czar, whose treatment of them in the past had been very tyrannical and very brutal. For this very reason, the Turco-German propaganda had easily won the sympathy of nearly 3,000,000 Tartars and 2,000,000 Georgians. The dream of the Tartars was to join the Ottoman Turks and re-establish the old great Tartar Empire, which was to extend from Constantinople to Samarkant, including all the lands of the Caucasus and Trans-Caspia, while the Georgians, through their alliance with the Turco-Germans, hoped to regain their lost independence in the western Caucasus. Only the 2,000,000 Armenians of the Caucasus were not influenced by the Turco-German propaganda, although they hated the Russian despotism as much as their neighbors. But, on the other hand, having very close acquaintance with the psychology of the Turkish race and with their ulterior aspirations, the Armenians had the political wisdom and courage to put aside their petty quarrels with Russian Czarism and throw in their lot with the allied cause.
[Illustration: Armenian volunteers of the Caucasus taking the oath of allegiance administered by the church dignitaries before leaving for the battlefield in October, 1914.]
These were the circumstances under which the mobilization of 1914 took place in the Caucasus. The Armenian reservists, about 160,000 in number, gladly responded to the call, for the simple reason that they were to fight the arch enemy of their historic race. Besides the regular soldiers, nearly 20,000 volunteers expressed their readiness to take up arms against the Turks. The Georgians, on the other hand, answered the call very reluctantly, and the Armenian-Georgian relations were greatly strained from the very beginning. The attitude of the Armenians toward the despotic Russian government was incomprehensible to the Georgians, who thought that, because the Armenians sided with Russia,--the oppressor of all the Caucasian races,--they must be unfriendly to the Georgians. Many Georgian young men crossed the border from Batoum, went to Trebizond, and prepared bands of volunteers under the leadership of Prince Abashizé in order to aid the Turks. As to the Tartars, not being subject to call, they assumed the role of spectators on the one hand, and on the other used every means to arm themselves, impatiently awaiting the arrival of the Turks. The great land-owners of the provinces of Erivan, Elizavetpol, and Baku began to accumulate enormous stores, and prepare a huge reserve of sugar and wheat. The price of one rifle, which was 100 rubles ($50), rose to 1500 rubles ($750). Through Persia, the Germans took to the Caucasus great sums of money in order to push forward the task of arming the Tartars from the very first days of the war. Great numbers of young Tartars went to Persia and joined the Turkish armies. And all this was carried on in broad daylight under the very eyes of the short-sighted Russian bureaucracy.