To those of us in our native country, and those who, under fate’s harsh compulsion, are not;
who give our lives voice in our mother tongue, and who give them voice in another;
who stand beneath the lofty domes of our ancestral faith, and who, persecuted, have taken refuge beneath the wings of other creeds and sects;
who are on the roads leading to our native land, and on the roads leading away from it;
who see the homeland as destruction, and who see it as salvation.
To all of us:
weak and strong, despondent and confident, virtuous and prodigal sons of one and the same ancestral home; proud of our national existence, and ignorant or wilfully ignorant of that very existence; wrapped in the glory of personal successes, and emerged from life’s thickets naked as at birth; rulers and the humble, whose presence beneath this sun is already the homeland’s existence and strength.
To each and all of us:
we have entered the square of nations and peoples. Beneath the heavy gaze of doubters and ill-wishers, we are raising a house called Armenia. The sincerity of each and all our efforts will scatter a tremor of respect over the masses of our ill-wishers, draw ranks of friends from among them and place them beside us, sovereign human beings. Conversely, the incompleteness of our effort, the shortfall of our faith and devotion to our work, will fill with the contempt of ill-wishers and even friends, become from generation to generation an eternal brand upon each and all of us, beneath whatever sky we live and in whatever civic or religious garments. Even the glorious events and crowned figures of our history will turn away from us, because this, and only this, is how it is: our time of human life, every hour and moment, affirms or denies the past. Let each and all of us, in our own hour and in our own way, renew and authenticate our crowned ancestor’s belonging to us. Otherwise, “David did not fight here”; otherwise, “The Narek was not written here”; otherwise, we are fragments of a wandering tribe without memory or home.
Or are we incapable of devotion?
Or was the blood we shed in many world wars not our blood, but tribute to the Caesars?
Or were our sacrifices to the last drop merely our tribute as subjects to foreign rulers?
Or were the unfoldings of our splendid human gifts in the palaces of other times and countries merely displays of talent before those who ruled us?
Now we are both our own rulers and our own subjects. No one, no one else before our God called unfortunate, will enjoy our Honesty and Honour. No one will bestow a title upon each person’s stature, assign our abasement, or mark our devotion to our work with a medal. The great witness and reward will be our Armenian home itself; the great accuser, that home’s incompleteness.
We are raising a home that will be visible from every corner of the world and be the pride of us all. Its burning torches will cast light into every corner, seek children of Armenia in the shadows, give them a national face and pride. Its existence will exalt the lofty among us, raise the fallen, straighten the humble; it will give a family name to the renowned, identity to the nameless, protection to those left without a guardian.
We have founded a Homeland, we are raising a Homeland, and it does not ask for our compassionate alms. Strangers too wish and are able to show compassion, for compassion is the master’s attitude towards the pitiable. The Homeland demands the faithful effort of all its sons, of us, every year, every day, this very hour. Its humiliation tomorrow is our certain betrayal at this moment. In our old country, shaken to its foundations, we are raising a Homeland. Its walls will remain stone-silent before today’s doubters, and its high arches will ring with kind memories of those who laid much of their abundance and little of their little at those arches’ foundations. May good be with each and all of us.