After returning from Europe, Nubar observed, at the first meeting of the AGBU’s central board held since his return, on 13 March 1914, that it would now be necessary to define “a new approach, as a result of the recent plan for Armenian reforms. . . . Today,” he went on, “the AGBU is called upon to play a more important role; it must encourage the reforms by promoting the creation of agricultural unions, loan programs for the purchase of land, and other useful institutions.”104 The failure of the reforms in the Armenian provinces - more precisely, the Young Turk regime’s extermination of the population they were intended to benefit - quite simply put an end to the Union’s operations on behalf of the Ottoman Armenians, whose socio-economic development had been its main mission. Hardly had World War I broken out than the AGBU lost all contact with the sixty-one Ottoman chapters scattered throughout the Empire. It observed that transfers of funds were becoming increasingly problematic—the banks had frozen the accounts—and that incoming dues payments and donations were declining precipitously. For all these reasons, the doors of the forty AGBU schools and other educational institutions (two more had been added over the course of the year) remained closed in September, when the 1914-15 school year would normally have begun: only the Kelegian orphanage in Dörtyol and the teacher-training institute in Van were still functioning.105 So that the Union could continue its work, the Board appealed to its members to remit their dues and donations to the treasurers of their local chapters, a list of whose names was published in the official AGBU organ, Miutyun. Read all
The Outbreak of the First World War
Mihran Ghazarosian, named a member of the central board after the 4 April 1914 resignation of M. Margossoff (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).