Ashot Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 The Assassination of Armenia NOVEMBER --1915 THE most brutal, the most ruthless, the most inexcusable, and the most widespread massacres of Christians in the last one thousand years are deluging Armenia with the blood of men, women, and children. Whole villages are wiped out by fire, sword, and deportation. It seems evident that this movement against the Armenians is part of a concerted scheme against all non-Turkish and Christian inhabitants of Turkey. It is estimated that already 800,000 have perished at the hands of the Turks and Kurds in their fiendish "Holy War." In the massacres of 1895-6 under the Sultan Abdul-Hamid II., according to carefully prepared statistics, 88,243 Armenians, of whom about 10,000 were Protestants, were murdered; more than 500,000 robbed of all they possessions; 2,493 villages and towns were plundered; 568 churches, of which 50 were protestant, were pillaged and destroyed, and 282 others were turned into mosques. In many places the victims were offered the choice death or Islam and unhesitatingly chose to die rather than most of them possess. In 1909, soon after the Young Turks came into power, there were 5,000 or more who died in the Adana onslaught for which the government disclaimed responsibility. To-day, however, the Yong Turk government is responsible for the systematic program of extermination. Is not Germany also responsible--if not for inciting the outrage, at least for failure to demand that Turkey, her ally, immediately put an end to these butcheries. Turkey would not dare to continue a course that would involve the loss of German military and financial support. The following is the text of the government order covering the case. Art. 2d. "The commanders of the army, of independent army corps, and of divisions may, in case of military necessity, and in case they suspect espionage or treason, send away, singly or in mass, the inhabitants of villages or town and install them in other places." The original orders to commanders may have been reasonable humane; but the execution of them has been for the most part currently harsh, and in many cases accompanied by horrible brutality to women and children, to the sick and the Aged. Whole villages were deported at an hour's notice, with no opportunity to prepare for the journey, not even, in some cases, to gather together the scattered members of the family, so that little children were left behind. The accounts of the sorrows of Armenia are harrowing reading. Many of the facts have already been published. We gather many of them here that the readers of the REVIEW may make them a subject of sympathetic prayer, and that some may be led to give financial help toward the relief of the surviving widows and orphans.* For obvious reasons the names of the various writers can not be given at this time. These are known to the American Committee, who vouches for them and their statements. In most cases it is necessary to conceal the place form which the statements were written, and even the name of the cities and towns referred to, in order that the writer or his interests may not suffer irreparable harm. Documentary Evidence We quote from a few of the documents which are in the possession of the American Committee: The reports of persecution, plunder, and massacre of Armenians in the interior parts of the country began to come in April, when the scattering of large numbers of innocent people was manifestly a part of a campaign of extermination. July 10. Persecution of Armenians assuming unprecedented proportions. Reports from widely scattered regions indicate systematic attempt to uproot peaceful Armenian populations, and through arbitrary arrests, terrible tortures, wholesale expulsions and deportations from one end of the empire to the other, accompanied by frequent instances of rape, pillage, and murder, turning into massacre, to bring destitution and distraction upon them. This is not in response to fanatical or popular demand, but is purely arbitrary, and directed from Constantinople. Untold misery, disease starvation and loss of life will go on unchecked. July 16. "Deportation of and excesses against peaceful Armenians are increasing, and from harrowing reports of eye-witnesses it appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress." Protests and threats are unavailing and probably incite the Ottoman government to more drastic measures, as they are determined to disclaim responsibility for their absolute disregard of capitulations, and I believe nothing short of actual force, which obviously the United States is not in a position to exert, would adequately meet the situation. July 31. "Armenians, mostly women and children, deported from the Erzerum district, have been massacred near Kemakh, between Erzerum and Harput." Similar reports from other sources, that probably few of these refugees will reach their destination. . . . In many cases the men were (those of military age were nearly all in the army) bound tightly together with ropes or chains. Women with little children in their arms, or in the last days of pregnancy, were driven along under the whip like cattle. Three different cases came under my knowledge where the woman was delivered on the road, and because her brutal driver hurried her along she died of hemorrhage. I also know of one case where the gendarme in charge was a human man, and allowed the poor woman several hours' rest, and then procured a wagon for her to ride in. some women became so completely worn out and hopeless that they left their infants beside the road. Many women and girls have been outraged. At one place the commander of gendarmerie openly told the men to whom he consigned a large company that they were at liberty to do what they chose with the women and girls. . . . The Use of Torture The trouble for the Armenians began, as for all other nationalities, with the collection of soldiers. The government swept off all men possible for military service. Hundreds of the bread-winners marched way, leaving their wives and children without means of support. In many cases the last bit of money was given to fit out the departing soldier, leaving the family in a pitifully destitute condition. A number of Armenians were quite well off and paid their military exemption free. A much larger number escaped in one way and another, so there were more Armenians than Turks left in the city after the soldiers had gone. This made the government suspicious and fearful. The discovery of Armenian plots against the government in other places added to his feeling. The special Armenian troubles began in the beginning of May. In the middle of the night about 20 of the leading men of the Armenian political parties were gathered up and sent to where they have been imprisoned ever since. In June the government began looking for weapons. Some of the Armenians were seized, and, by torture, the confession was extracted that a large number of arms were in the hands of different Armenians. A second inquisition began. The bastinado was used frequently, as well as fire torture (in some cases eyes are said to have been put out). Many guns were delivered, but not all. The people were afraid that if they gave up their arms, they would be massacred as in 1895. Arms had been brought in after the declaration of the constitution with the permission of the government. and were for self- defense only. The torture continued, and under its influence one fact after another leaked out. Under the nervous strain and physical suffering many things were said which had no foundation in fact. Those inflicting the torture would tell the victim what they expected him to confess, and then beat him until he did it. The college mechanic had constructed an iron "shot" for the athletic games, and was beaten terribly in an effort to fasten the making of bombs on the college. Some bombs were discovered in the Armenian cemetery, which aroused the fury of the Turks to white heat. It should be said that it is very probable that these bombs had been buried there in the days of Abdul Hamid. . . . Through the intervention of a Turk, the college was able to free those of its teachers already taken, and obtain a stay of proceedings against all of its teachers and employees, by the payment of the sum of 275 Turkish liras. Later this same Turk said that he believed that he could obtain the permanent exemption of the entire college by the payment of a further sum of 300 liras. The money was promised, but after some negotiations, which showed that no definite assurance of exemption would be forthcoming, the matter was dropt. . . . Panic and Outrage The panic in the city was terrible. The people felt that the government was determined to exterminate the Armenian race, and they were powerless to resist. The people were sure that the men were being killed and the women kidnapped. Many of the convicts in the prison had been released, and the mountains around ----------- were full of bands of outlaws. It was feared that the women and children were taken some distance from the city and left to the mercy of these men. However that may be, there are provable cases of the kidnapping of attractive young girls by the Turkish officials of------------. One Moslem reported that a gendarme had offered to sell him two girls for a mejidieh. The women believed that they were going to worse than death, and many carried poison in their pockets to use if necessary. Some carried picks and shovels to bury those they knew would die by the wayside. During this reign of terror notice was given that escape was easy; that any one who accepted Islam would be allowed to remain safely at home. The offices of the lawyers who recorded applications were crowded with people petitioning to become Mohammedans. Many did it for the sake of their women and children, feeling that it would be a matter of only a few weeks before relief would come. This deportation continued at intervals for about two weeks. It is estimated that out of about 12,000 Armenians in ---------, only a few hundred were left. Even those who offered to accept Islam were sent away. . . . Dragged to Exile June 28, 1915 I wish to inform you to conditions here. They are very bad daily getting worse. I suppose ---------- told you of the horrible things taking place in -----------. Just such a reign of terror has begun in this city also. Daily the police are searching the houses of the Armenians for weapons, and not finding any, they are taking the best and most honorable men and imprisoning them; some of them they are exiling, and others they are torturing with red hot irons to make them reveal the supposedly concealed weapons. Four weeks ago they exiled 15 men and their families, sending them to the desert city of ----------, three days' journey south of here. The Gendarmerie Department seems to have full control of affairs and the Mutessarif upholds them. They are now holding about 100 of the best citizens of the city in prison, and to-day the gendarmerie chief called the Armenians Bishop and told him that unless the Armenians deliver their arms and the revolutionists among them, that he has orders to exile the entire Armenian population of --------- as they did the people-----We know how the latter were treated, for hundreds of them have been dragged through --- on their way to the desert whither they have been exiled. These poor exiles were mostly women, children and old men, and they were clubbed and beaten and lashed along as they had been wild animals, and their women and girls were daily criminally outraged, both by their guards and the ruffians of every village through which they passed, as the former allowed the latter to enter the camp of the exiles at night, and even distributed the girls among the villagers for the night. These poor victims of their oppressors' lust and hate might better have died by the bullet in their mountain home than be dragged about the country in this way. About 2,000 of them have passed through ---------, all more dead than alive; many hundred have died from starvation and abuse along the roadside, and nearly all are dying of starvation, thirst, or being kidnapped by the Anaza Arabs in the desert where they have been taken. We know how they are being treated because our -------- exiles are in the same place, and one young Armenian doctor, who was there making medical examinations of soldiers for the government, has returned and told us. . . . The Young Turk government pursues unceasingly, and every day with added violence, the war to the finish that it has declared against its Armenian subjects. The provinces inhabited by Armenians, which were already under the reign of indescribable terror, have been evacuated by force. Thus the Armenian communities,-------------- and ------------ , have been brutally deported, deprived of all their possessions, to the deserts of Mesopotamia. A great number of families have embraced Mohammedanism to escape a certain death. . . . A Widow's Story A week before anything was done to --------, the villages all around had been expired and their inhabitants had become victims of the gendarmes and marauding bands. Three days before the starting of the Armenians from -------------, after a week's imprisonment, Bishop ------------- had been hanged, with seven other notables. After these hangings, seven or eight other notables were killed in their own houses for refusing to go out of the city Seventy or eight other Armenians, after being beaten in prison, were taken to the woods and killed. The Armenian population of -------- was sent off in three batches; I was among the third batch. My husband died eight years ago, leaving me and my eight-year-old, daughter and my mother extensive possessions, so that we were living in comfort. Since mobilization began, the --------- commandant has been living in my house free of rent. He told me not to go, but I felt I must share the fate of my people. I took three horses with me, loaded with provisions. My daughter had some five-lira pieces around her neck, and I carried some twenty liras and four diamond rings on my person. All else that we had was left behind. Our party left June 1st (old style), fifteen gendarmes going with us. The party numbered four or five hundred persons. We had got only two hours away from home, when bands of villagers and brigands in large numbers, with rifles, guns, axes, etc., surrounded us on the road, and robbed us of all we had. The gendarmes took my three horses and sold them to Turkish mouhadjirs, pocketing the money. They took my money and that from my daughter's neck, also all our food. After this they separated the men, one by one, and shot them all within six or seven days-- every male over 15 years of age. By my side were killed two priests, one of them over 90 years of age. These bandsmen took all the god-looking women and carried them off on their horses. Very many women and girls were thus carried off to the mountains, among them my sister, whose one-year0old baby they threw away; Turk picked it up and carried it off, I know not where. My mother walked till she could walk no father, and dropt by the roadside on a mountain-top. We found on the road many of those who had been in the previous sections carried from ---------; some women were among the killed, with their husbands and sons. We also came across some old people and little infants still alive but in a pitiful condition, having shouted their voices away. We were not allowed to sleep at night in the villages, but lay down outside. Under cover of the night indescribable deeds were committed by the gendarmes, bandsmen, and villagers. Many of us died from hunger and strokes of apoplexy. Others were left by the roadside, too feeble to go on. One morning we saw fifty to sixty wagons with about thirty Turkish widows, whose husbands had been killed in the war; and these were going to Constantinople. These women wanted to take my daughter, too, but she would not be separated from me. Finally we were both taken into their wagons on our promising to become Moslems. As soon as we entered Erzrum, they began to teach us how to be Moslems, and changed our names, calling me -Sahlmmed and her Reyna The Plight of the Exiles If it were simply a matter of being obliged to leave here to go somewhere else, it would not be so bad, but everybody knows it is a case of going to one's death. If there was any doubt it, it has been removed by the arrival of a number of parties, aggregating several thousand people, from Erzerum and Erzinggan. I have visited their encampment a number of times and talked with some of the people. A more pitiable sight can not be imagined. They are, almost without exception, raggedy, filthy, hungry, and sick. That is not surprising, in view of the fact that they have been on the road for nearly two months, with no change of clothing, no chance to wash, no shelter, and little to eat. The government has been giving them some scanty rations here. I watched them one time when their food was brought. Wild animals could not be worse. They rushed upon the guards beat them back with clubs, hitting hard enough to kill them sometimes. To watch them one could hardly believe that these people were human beings. As one walks through the camp, mothers offer their children and beg one to take them. In fact, the Turks have been taking their choice of these chidren and girls for slaves, or worse. In fact, they have even had their doctors there to examine the more likely girls and thus secure the best ones. There are very few men among them, as most of them have been killed on the road. All tell the same story of having been attacked and robbed by the Kurds. Most of them were attacked over and over again, and a great number of them, especially the men, were killed. Women and children were also killed, many died, of course, from sickness and exhaustion on the way, and there have been here. Several different parties have arrived and, after remaining a day or two, have been pushed on with no apparent destination. Those who have reached here are only a small portion, however, of those who started. By continuing to drive these people on in this way it will be possible to dispose of all of them in a comparatively short time. A Plea For Intervention Viscount Bryce, formerly British Ambassador to the United States, has made, through the Associated Press, a powerful plea that America should try to stop the Armenian slaughter. Lord Bryce is not one to misstate or exaggerate facts. Among other things, he says: "In Trebizond City, where the Armenians numbered over ten thousand, orders came from Constantinople to seize all Armenians. troops hunted them, drove them to the shore, took them to sea threw them overboard, and drowned them all--men, women, and children. This was seen and described by the Italian Consul." Lord Bryce's statements are confirmed by reports which come direct from those who have firsthand knowledge. Of the Armenian people as a whole one third or more are gone, and this third includes the leaders in every walk of life, merchants, professional men, preachers, bishops, and Government officials. There is no certainly for those who are just now free. It is only temporary measures, such as bribes or special favors, that have secured postponement. "It seems possible that something can be done to save those few who are left. Permission has recently been obtained through the German Embassy for those connected with the German Mission, teachers and their families, orphans and servants, a circle of several hundred, to remain. It is time that America take whatever steps are possible to secure permission through the American Ambassador for the remnant of the Armenians to remain in their homes or to escape unharmed to more hospitable territory. American Missionary Interests* America has more interest in Turkey than any other country, or possibly than all Europe together. This interest is not political, but humanitarian. In 1819 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions began work in the Ottoman Empire, and has now for nearly a century prosecuted that work with vigor and statesman-like foresight and breadth. The missionaries have introduced into the country the printing-press and a periodical literature, modern medicine and sanitation, the Modern hospital, new industries and commercial enterprises, and western education, culminating in the well-organized colleges and graduate schools. Some of these institutions are: the Syrian Protestant Collage at Beirut, with its graduate schools; Robert College at Constantinople; and the Constantinople College for Girls, each one of these incorporated in the Unites States and possessing a plant worth more than a million dollars. Besides these institutions of international repute there are others, like the International College at Smyrna, Anatolia College at Marsovan, Teachers' College at Sivas, Euphrates College at Harput, Van College at Van, Aintab College at Aintab, Central Turkey College for Women at Marash, the American Collegiate Institute for Girls at Smyrna, St. Paul's College of Tarsus, and, in addition, three times and academies with their intermediate and preparatory schools dotting the country from the Black Sea to Arabia. Among the many institutions to suffer is the American Mission College at Harput. One of the reliable informants writes: "Approximately two-thirds of the of the girl pupils, and six-seventeenth of the boys have been taken away to death, exile, or Moslem homes. Of our professors four are gone and three are left. "Professor Tenekejian, who was the protestant representative of the Americans with the Government, was arrested on May 1st. No charge was made against him, but the hair of his head, mustache and beard was pulled out in a vain effort to secure damaging confessions. He was starved and hung by the arms for a day and a night and was severely beaten several times. About June 20th he was taken out toward Diaarbekir and murdered in a general massacre on the road. "Professor Nahigian, who had studied at Ann Arbor, was arrested about June 5th and shared Professor Tenekejian's Fate of the road. "Professor Vorperian a Princeton man, was taken to see a man beaten almost to death. He started onto exile under guard with his family, about July 5th, and was murdered beyond Malatia. "Professor Boojicanian, an Edinburgh Graduate, was arrested with Professor Tenekejian, suffered the same tortures, and in addition had three finger-nails pulled out by the roots, and was killed in the same massacre. "Of the female instructors one is reported killed in Chunkoosh, one reported taken to a Turkish harem; three have not heard from; four others started out into exile, and ten are free. The Armenians as a people have been the most responsive to the appeals of modern education . The majority of the 25,000 students in the schools north of Syria have been from this historic and virile race. Thousands have taken graduate courses in the United States. It can be said that America discovered the Armenian race and introduced it to the Western World. it is, therefore, eminently fitting that at this time of death-struggle America should be the first to lift its voice in protest, and the most ready to offer its help to save this nation from annihilation. There are some four hundred Americans now in Turkey connected with the various boards and institutions. With those are associated fully ten times that number of trained natives, mostly Armenians, Greeks, and Syrians, all engaged in conducting a work that aims at bringing to that country the blessings of a Christian civilization. These Americans are remaining at their posts, endeavoring in every way in their power to relieve and save their people. Upon the Armenians and the Greeks the blow is falling, but there have been intimations that the Jews' turn will soon come. There are many indications that the Turks as a whole entertain no hostile feelings toward the Armenians and the Greeks, and would not carry out these drastic measures of extermination were they not forced to do so. Some have declared that the measures are un-Mohammedan, and so contrary to the teaching of their religion. In many places the local Turkish authorities have emphatically protested. The Governor of -------- was called to Constantinople to answer to the charge of not obeying orders in carrying out the drastic measures of the central government. Others have told the missionaries that the measures were most cruel and unnecessary and even disastrous to the country, but they were finally forced to obey. Lenient and unwilling governors were transferred, like the one at ---------, in whose place was installed the Governor of --------. who had already carried out with vigor the order of massacre and extermination. So far as can be ascertained, the two Turkish officers, Enver ***** and Talaat Bey, are the source of these measures. There are many who believe (and among these are the missionaries in large numbers, as well as others) that Enver ***** is under the pay of the Kaiser. Who are the Armenians?* In the strict use of the term, there is no Armenia at the present day. The name is not used either politically or geographically with reference to a definite territory. When used the name refers in general to a region centering about Lake Van in Asiatic Turkey, and extending thence north and southwest. Ancient Armenia was a country whose bounds continually changed with the fortunes of war. The greater part of the region now lies within the Turkish Empire, and is also called Kurdistan. This region contains only a fraction of the Armenian race. It is inhabited by Turks, Armenians, Russians, Persians, Kurds Caucasians, Greeks, Nestorians, Yezidees, Syrians, and Jews. The early history of the Armenians as so mixed with myth and legends that the truth is difficult to find. During the Assyrian and Median periods there was evidently a great organized monarchy, with a strong military power, in the lake Van basin. At times they were formidable enemies of the Medes. This country was well known to the Assyrian as early as the ninth century B. C. It was inhabited by four race--the Mairi, the Urarda, Minni, and the Hittites. These races appear to have maintained their independence until the time of Assur-bani-pal, about 640 B. C., when the last king of this series succumbed to the Assyrian yoke. But, at the time of Herodotus, everything seems to indicate that a strange people had entered the land, bringing with them a new language, new names and customs, and a new religion. The source from which they came is doubtful. Herodotus and Stephen believe they came from Phrygia, while their language and religion would indicate Median. One thing is certain: the old Turanians had ceased to rule, and the Armenian race ceased to rule, and the Armenian race had been formed, which is undoubtedly a mixture of the ruling Aruan tribes with the primitive Turanian populations. (The word "Armenia," used in Isaiah 37:38 and 2 Kings 19:37, is an incorrect translation for "the lands of Ararat.") Armenian histories describe the events of some sixteen centuries respecting which contemporary evidence has not yet been found. According to them, the first ruler of Armenia was Haik, the son of Togarmah, the son of Gomar, the son of Japheth, the son of Noah. The Armenian histories also narrate that at the time of the captivity of Israel a certain number of the Hebrews escaped to the mountains of Armenia and intermarriages took place. Later the Armenian king, Kikran (Tigranes), was the friend and ally of Cyrus. His successor was Vahakn, celebrated in song and story for his great victories, and defied after death. In 67 B. C. Armenia became an ally of Rome, But rebelling, their king, Ardavaz, was captured by Pompey and beheaded in Alexandria by Cleopatra, 30 B. C., and the country became tributary to Rome. The country was in turmoil for two and a half centuries thereafter. It was the Constant effort of Persia to subvert Armenian Christianity and establish Magianism in its stead. To this end, cruel persecutions were undertaken, and frequent incursions were made. From 632 to 859 A. D. Armenia was the scene of almost incessant struggle between the Eastern Empire and the Mohammedans, and it became by turn subject to each. It maintained its independence until 1375, when the last Armenian king, Leo VI., was captured by the Egyptians and Banished. From this time Armenia lost its separate national existence. The greater part of the country was annexed to Turkey, while the eastern section remained subject to Persia, and the northeast to Russia. Russia took another large section of Armenia in 1878. In Moral traits the Armenian compares favorably with the other race of the East. The Armenians are cultivators of the soil, artisans, merchants, and bankers. They are persevering, and shrewd in financial dealings. In Asiatic Turkey the Greeks alone can compare with them in trades, professions, business ability, and general intelligence. In spite of the general increase of poverty throughout Turkey, the Armenians, up to the period of massacres of 1895-96, held their own better than the other race. The number of Armenians in the world is estimated at from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 two-thirds of whom reside in Turkey. The remainder are in Russia, Persia, India, China, Africa, Europe, North and South America, and other countries. Up to the present time the nation has preserved its individuality to a remarkable degree, resembling in this respect, as in others, the Jews. With their dispersal throughout the world, however, the Armenians intermarry with other race, and a distinct tendency to race disintegration has appeared. The Armenian Church and Beliefs Armenian writers claim that the Armenian Church goes back to the time of Christ. One Abgar or Abgarus, King of Edessa, as said by Meses of Khorene, the Armenian historian, to have been converted by hearing of the wonderful works of Jesus, and to have been baptized by Thaddeus, one of the seventy disciples first sent out as missionaries. This Abgar is held by the Armenians to have been their king, although Tacitus calls him King of the Arabs. It was not, however, until the fourth century that the Armenian nation as a whole accepted Christianity. At the beginning of that century Gregory the Illuminator preached at the Court of Armenia with such effect that from that day to this Christianity has been the national religion of the Armenians. For this reason the Armenian Church is often called "The Gregorian Church." The Armenians themselves, however, call it "The Church of the Illuminator (Lusavorchagan)." Persecution, as usual, only served to endear the Church to the people, and from that time it has been identified with their nationality. Under Turkish rule each religious body is also a political organism. The Armenian Church is little more than that at present. It is, therefore, inseparably identified with the race, and is pervaded by much of the corruption of Oriental Christianity. [*A special American Committee of eminent Americans has investigated the reports, and while the sources of information must be withheld for the present, the committee vouches for the truth of the statements. This committee includes the Right Rev. David H. Greer, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of New York; Oscar S. Straus, former Secretary of Commerce and Labor, and ex-Ambassador to Turkey; Cleveland H. Dodge, of Phelps Doldge & Co.; the Rev. Dr Stephen S. Wise, Rabbi of the Free Synagog, New York; Charles R. Crane, of Chicago, Vice-Charman of the Finance Committee of the Democratic National Committee during the last campaign; Arthur Curtis James, Director of many railroads and of the Hanover National Bank, the United States Trust Company, and of Phelps, Dodge & Co.; the Rev.Dr. Frank Mason North, of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church; John R. Mott, of the International Committee of the Young Men's Christian Association; William W. Rockhill former Ambassador to Turkey and former Ambassador to Russia; William Sloane, 575 Fifth Avenue; the Rev. Dr. Edward Lincoln Smith, of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; the Rev. Dr. Frederick Lynch, of the New York Peace Society; George A. Plimton, of Ginn & Co., a trustee of Constantinople College; the Rev. Dr. James L. Barton, for many years a missionary in Turkey, and now the Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; the Rev. Dr. William J. Haven, one of the founders of the Epworth League; Stanley White, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions; Professor Samuel P. Dutton, an authority on Balkan affairs. Gifts for the relief of survivors may be sent to Chas. R. Crane, Treasurer, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York.] Missionary Review Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 Protest of German Teachers Against Massacres of Armenians NOVEMBER, 1915 This protest to the German Foreign Office was written and signed by the Faculty of the German High School at Aleppo, Turkey, and came into the possession of the British Government through the censorship of the mails. A copy of it was found in a letter written by Dr. Edward Graetner, one of the signers, from Basle, Wsitzerland, on July 7, to a distinguished German theologian in a neutral country. It is presented here, with the private letter of Dr. Graetner, as documentary confirmation of the current reports of atrocities committed by the Turks against the Christian Armenians in Turkey. ALEPPO, Oct. 8, 1915. We humbly beg to report the following to the Foreign Office: We feel it our duty to call the attention of the Foreign Office to the fact that our school work, the formation of a basis of civilization, and the instilling of respect in the natives will be henceforward impossible if the German Government is not in a position to put an end to the brutalities inflicted here on the exiled wives and children of murdered Armenians. In face of the horrible scenes which takes place daily near our school buildings before our very eyes, our school work has sunk to a level which is an insult to all human sentiments. How can we masters possibly read the stories of "Snow-white and the Seven Dwarfs" with our Armenian children, how can we bring ourselves to decline and conjugate, when in the courtyards opposite and next to our school buildings death is reaping a harvest among the starving compatriots of our pupils? Girls, boys, and women, all practically naked, lie on the ground breathing their last sighs amid the dying and among the coffins put out ready for them. Frothy to fifty people reduced to skeletons are all that is left of the 2,000 to 3,000 healthy peasant women driven down here from Upper Armenia. The good-looking ones are decimated by the vice of their jailers, while the ugly ones are victimized by beatings, hunger, and thirst. Even those lying at the water's edge are not allowed to drink. Europeans are prohibited from distributing bread among them. More than a hundred corpses are taken out daily from Aleppo. All this is taking place before the eyes of highly placed Turkish officials. Forty to fifty people reduced to skeletons are lying heaped up in a yard near our school. They are practically insane, and have forgotten how to eat. If one offers them bread they push it indifferently aside. They utter low groans and await death. Ta-a-lim el alman (the cult of the Germans) is responsible for this, the natives declare. It will always remain a terrible stain on Germany's honor among the generations to come. The more educated inhabitants of Aleppo maintain that the Germans do not really approve of these outrages. Perhaps the German people, too, are ignorant of these events. How would it be possible otherwise for the usually truth-loving German press to report the humane treatment of Armenians accused of high treason? But it may be that the German Government's hands are tied by reason of certain contracts. No-- when it is a question of thousands of helpless women and children who are being driven to certain death by starvation the words "opportun" and "Kompetenzvertage" can no longer have any meaning. Every cultured human being is competent to intervene, and it is, in fact, his sacred duty to do so. Our esteem among the generations to come is at stake. The more refined Turks and Arabs shake their heads sorrowfully when they see brutal soldiers bringing convoys through the town of women far advanced in pregnancy, whom they beat with cudgels, these poor wretches being hardly able to drag themselves along. There are, moreover, dreadful hecatombs of Human beings, as shown in the enclosed decree of Djemal *****. This is a proof that in certain places the light is feared, but people have not yet the will to put an end to these scenes, which are degrading to mankind. We know that the Foreign Office has already received descriptions of the local condition of affairs from other sources. Since, however, the procedure of deportation has no way been ameliorated, we feel it more than ever our duty to submit this report for your perusal. Above all, we realize to the full the danger with which German prestige is here threatened. DIRECTOR HUBER, DR. NIEPAGE, DR. GRAETNER, M. SPIELER. In his own letter, Dr. Graetner gives further details of what he witnessed: I am going to tell you more about the Armenians episode, for this time the question was not one of the traditional massacres, but of nothing more nor less than the complete extermination of the Armenians in Turkey. This fact Talaat Bey's Turkish officials cynically admitted with some embarrassment to the German Consul. The Government first made out that they only wanted to clear the war zone and to assign new dwellings to the emigrants. They began by enticing the most warlike of the mountaineers out of their rocky fastnesses. This they did with the help of the securities of the Turkish Empire, of the heads of their own churches, of the American missionaries, and of one German Consul. Thereupon began expulsions from everywhere, even from districts to which the war will never be carried. How these were effected is shown from the fact that out of the 18,000 people driven out of Kharput and Sivas only 350 reached Aleppo, the protest of these were by no means at the end of their troubles. Those who did not die here (the cemeteries are full) were driven by night to the Syrian steppes, toward the Zor on the Euphrates. Here a very small percentage frap out their existence, threatened by starvation. I state this as an eyewitness. I was there in October of last year and saw with my own eyes several Armenian corpses floating in the Euphrates or lying about the steppe. The Germans, with a number of laudable exceptions, witness these things quite unperturbed, holding out the following excuse: "We just need the Turks, you see!" I know for a fact, moreover, that an employee of the German Cotton Association and one on the Baghdad Railroad were forbidden to help the Armenians. German officers have also raised a complaint against their Consul for his sympathy with the Armenians, and a German teacher, although most capable, was not appointed to a school of the Turko-German Association on account of his having an Armenian wife. They are afraid that the Turks might take offense at this. The Turks are less considerate. "The question is one of a Turkish internal affair; we must not mix ourselves up in it !"This is what one constantly hears people say. One it was a question, however, of persuading the Armenians to yield, they did mix themselves up in it ! The Armenians of Urfa, seeing the fate which had befallen their compatriots from other districts, refused to leave their city and offered resistance. Thereupon no less a person than Count Wolf von Wolfskehl ordered the town to be bombarded, and after the surrender of 1,000 Armenian men he had not the power to prevent their being massacred. New York Times - Current History Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 AMERICANS' DEATHS LAID TO THE TURKS NOVEMBER 3, 1915 The strain and shock of the tragedies that the war has brought to Turkey during the last year is responsible for the deaths of five of the American missionaries on duty in the Turkish Empire since the first of last May, the period covered by the Turkish Campaign against the Armenians, according to the annual report of the Rev. Dr. James L. Barton, the foreign secretary of the Board of Commissioners of yesterday. The missionaries whose deaths are attributed to the terrible conditions in Turkey were Mrs. Mary E. Barnum, died at Harpoot, May 9, after fifty-six years of service in Turkey; Mrs. Charlotte E. Ely, died at Bitlis, July 11, after forty-seven years continuous service: the Rev. George P. Knapp, died at Diarbekir, Aug. 10, after twenty-five years service at Harpoot and at Bitlis; Mrs. Martha W. Reynolds, wife of the Rev. Dr. George C. Reynolds, died Aug. 27 from injuries received while in flight from Van to Tiflis, Russia, and Mrs. Elizabeth Ussher, died of typhus fever at Van, July 14, after sixteen years of service. The report goes into the war situation in detail. Among the hundred of thousands who perished in Turkey, Dr. Barton states were "professors and teachers in our schools pastors and preachers, pupils, and all other classes, "every one of whom he adds, "miserably perished at home, or toward northern Arabia or elsewhere where vast multitudes have been exiled." "Probably in all history," Dr. Barton continues, " two hundred missionaries have never been called on to pass through more terrible experiences than have our missionaries in Turkey during the last nine or ten months, and the end in not yet." Referring to the treatment of Americans by the Turkish authorities, Dr. Barton says that when Harpoot was made a military center several of the buildings of Euphrates College were voluntarily turned over to the Turkish military authorities. A large dormitory was not and the American Consul sealed the door with the official seal of the United States. "This seal." adds Dr. Barton, "was ostentatiously broken by the Kaimakam of Harpoot, and so since March the college has discontinued its work altogether. The mission buildings at Aflon and Kara Hissar were early taken possession of by the Government, as was the school building at Adabazar. "In their dealings with Americans the officials have assumed that the decree of abrogation of the capitulations has put all foreigners under local official control. As result their houses as well as their persons have been searched repeatedly, their communications with the United States Consuls and even with the Ambassador have often been suppressed, their movements seriously obstructed, and in one instance, that of Dr. and Mrs. Smith at Diarbekr, they try by court-martial. No charges worthy of consideration were preferred. Several missionaries have suffered brief periods of imprisonment." New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 A MISSIONARY POISONED The Rev. F. H. Lesile of Michigan Killed at Urfa NOVEMBER 13, 1915 BOSTON, Nov. 12.---The death by poison of the Rev. Francis H. Leslie of Northport, Mitch., a missionary stationed at Urfa, Asiatic Turkey, was announced today by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Ambassador Morgenthau at Constantinople, who notified the State Department at Washington of the death, reported that he was making a thorough investigation to determine the responsibility, and that, pending the result of this inquiry, he had formed no opinion as to the case. The Ambassador's information was based on a telegram from the Consul at Aleppo. Mr. Leslie, who had been acting as an intermediary for 300 British, French Italian, and Russian refugees who were interned at Urfa, had been in close touch with the Consul. He had been appointed consular Agent by the United States to facilitate his handing of monthly allowances sent to the interned persons, but the Turkish Government, according to the Rev. James L. Barton, Secretary of the American Board. Mr. Leslie had been the only missionary R Urfa, which is a remote station in North Mesopotamia on the Arabian border, since 1912. The station included an extensive industrial plant, employing several thousand persons. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 CHURCH PLEA FOR ARMENIA Anglican and Eastern Union Petitions President Wilson NOVEMBER 14, 1915 The Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches Union, and organizations and of Russian, Greek, and Syrian members of the Orthodox Eastern Church resident in the United States, has addressed a petition to the President in behalf of the Armenians. The petition urges that he makes earnest representations to the German Government as the ally of Turkey with respect to the destruction key with respect to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of Armenian Christians. "We would earnestly suggest, " runs the petition, "that by a strong presentation of the deep concern of the American people and of the prejudice that is produced in this country against Germany's cause by the absence of any known effort on her part to prevent the deliberate extermination of a Christian people by her Turkish ally, the Imperial Government, to sure on the Ottoman Government, to give orders to bring to an end this persecution and massacring." The petition also asks that the American mission schools be protested, and that American transports be sent to take away as many of the Armenians as possible to Christian countries. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 SAYS LADY PAGET WILL KEEP UP WORK NOVEMBER 17, 1915 Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. LONDON, Nov. 16.--William Prickett, Princeton, 1915, and a Rhodes Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, has just reached England from Serbia, where he was attached for four months to Lady Paget's hospital. Mr. Prickett left Serbia on Oct. 12, believing, as at that time did the majority of people in Serbia, that the Bulgarian scare blown over, and he went to Constantinople with letters for American Ambassador Morgenthau. "Ambassador Morgenthau, with the weight of ten nations affairs on his back, is greatly overworked, but he is in good health and generally held to be the most popular man in Constantinople. He took me and another friend through two hospitals in which were Turkish wounded. Mr. Morgenthau the day before had sent hundreds of flowers to these hospitals, and the wounded knowing from whom they came, received them with cheers. The French and English hospitals have been taken over by the American Red Cross. "Coal in Constantinople now costs almost $3 a ton; food is said to be double and triple the normal prices, and there is a great shortage in even the most necessary drugs. The Russian blockade of the mouth of the Bosphorus is not entirely effective because four coal boats were reported to have reached Constantinople from the Turkish shore of the Black Sea. "The Armenian massacres are said to have been due to the Turks desire to possess the Armenians property, as they are the wealthiest class in Turkey. The Turkish excuse was that they were disloyal. Armenians wounded in the Turkish Army are said to return home, only to find their families massacred. "It took five days to make the journey from Constantinople to Hatoniki, during which time we could buy only bread. The windows of the trains were painted white, so we traveled all day and night without being able to see anything. The French and English landing at Saloniki was in progress when we reached there. I saw in Saloniki during the landing at least one Bulgarian officer, and I was told that a son of the Kaiser had passed through Saloniki on his way to Athens. The Bulgarian Consul at Salonoki said the Bulgarians had on fear that Greece would enter the war. "I heard in Constantinople and in Saloniki that Turkey had conceded to give Bulgaria as a second concession all territory down to the Enos-Media line including, of course, the city of Adrianople" New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 DENIES BLAME IN ARMENIA NOVEMBER 17, 1915 LONDON, Nov. 16.--In the course of a discussion in the House of Commons tonight of the Armenian massacres. Lord Robert Cecil, Under Secretary of State or Foreign Affairs, refused the suggestion made, he said, in the United States that British agents had intrigued and stirred up the Armenians to revolt, and that Great Britain, therefore, was responsible for the massacres. "There was no provocation whatever," said Lord Robert. "The massacres were premeditated with the intention on the part of their instigators, the Committee of Union and Progress, not to punish the insurrectionists, but to exterminate the Armenian race." Lord Robert declined an invitation to give to pledge of the Government to employ all the resources of the army and navy in order to save the Armenians New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 REBEL TURK FOR ARMENIANS NOVEMBER 22, 1915 BERLIN, Nov. 21, (by Wireless to Sayville, L. 1.) --The Overseas News Agency says: "Telegrams from Damascus state that Djemal *****, commander of the Turkish forces in Syria, has ordered that the chiefs of two Turkish bands be hanged for ill treatment of Armenians." Dispatches from Athens last Tuesday announced that Djemal *****, the Turkish Minister of Marine, had revolted against the Ottoman Government while on a mission to Syria and was leading an Arab uprising, according to reports in the Constantinople newspapers. The American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, formerly the American Committee on Armenian Atrocities, among the members of which are Bishop Greer, Cardinal Gibson, Rabbi Wise, and many other prominent citizens, gave out yesterday, through its Secretary, Dr. Samuel P. Dutton, a statement in the course of which it was announced that about 300,000 non-Mohammedans had escaped from Turkey into Russian Caucasia and that efforts were now under way to relive the suffering that existed among them. The movement has the support of the State Department in Washington. The American Committee has organized a Relief Commission in Tiflis, Russia, among the members of which are J. W. Smith, the American Consul, and the Rev. Dr. Samuel G. Wilson of the Presbyterian Mission Board. The office of the committee, of which Charles R. Crne is the Treasurer, is at 70 Fifth Avenue. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 TURKEY IS UNEASY OVER GERMAN ARMY NOVEMBER 23, 1915 According to German reports, the advent of the first detachment of the Kaiser's troops in Constantinople was hailed with extravagant enthusiasm. ON the other hand, significant warnings to Germany not to expect special privileges from Turkey and apparent reluctance to have German armies enter Turkish territory for operations against Egypt or elsewhere were expressed by Halil Bey, forms the triumvirate reputed to be in supreme control of Ottoman Affairs, in an outspoken interview granted by him to Emil Ludwig, special correspondent of the Berliner Tabeblatt. It appears on the first page in that newspaper's issue of Oct. 23, just received here. Halil Bey's statements, says Ludwig, corroborate what Enver ***** and Talaat Bey had already told him some months ago. "I believe in the friendship between Turkey and Germany," Halil Bey is quoted as saying, "but the Germans must understand that they must not come here as conquerors, but as collaborators. Germany's policy, we know, has always been friendly to us, and we hope it will be even more so after the war. Distrust of the great European powers is deeply implanted in Turkey, and can be rooted out only gradually. " Is it to be wondered at? For centuries our land has been badly treated and could not afford to trust Europe, whose great powers sought to cheat it. You will have to excuse Turkey for its attitude. In order to create complete trust, Germany, which has never maltreated us, must raise our credit without demanding special privileges, such as all the others have demanded. "This is possible on account of geographical and economic conditions, and it is possible only in the case of Germany. We are primarily an agricultural country, while Germany is primarily industrial. Even in the case of Austria-Hungary, the situation is otherwise. we fill our needs by barter. We seem poor, and we need money, but we are rich. Over there in Asia are our treasures. German capitalists, who will come here after the war, must profile by investment. But--no special privileges any more. That is all over. Remember what an extraordinary situation there has been here. In other countries a foreigner comes after a native in the matter as Armenians, in Turkey, it was the reverse." "How about an attack on Egypt?" inquired the correspondent. "We have enough men for it," replied Halil Bey. To the inquiry whether Egypt was a war goal of Turkish military policy Halil Bey replied: "We hope to secure something for ourselves of there as to be acquisition of territory. But the goal of the war assuredly is the strengthening of Turkey at home. And the Germans ought to help us in that." The correspondent also touched upon the Armenian question, which he calls the "thin ice of Turkey, which one avoids as dangerous." Halil Bey said on this subject that the Armenians had been guilty of treason and conspiracies with the Russian and other anti-Turkish activities. He declared that the Mohammedan population of Armenia had become so enraged at the Russophile elements that they had finally resorted to violent acts. The Turkish Government, he added, despite its own wishes, had been powerless to check these outbursts because the land was without policemen, who had been turned into soldiers and transported to the front. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 PLAN TO RECONQUER ALL MOSLEM WORLD NOVEMBER 28, 1915 The Tribuna of Rome printed on Nov. 14 the following information, which, it states, it had received from trustworthy sources in Constantinople: "Troops continue to arrive here from Anatolia. Uniforms and arms are lacking, however, and the recruits are trained with ancient muskets taken from the arsenal. "The German successes have revived the hopes and enthusiasm of the Turks. The priests are now preaching was to the death, and announce the approaching conquest of Egypt, Tunis, Libya, Morocco, the Caucasus, and India. The priests are also proclaiming that the Kaiser is the messenger of Mahomet, and that his name is mentioned in the Koran, where he is called Muhib ul Islam. "Thanks to the Kaiser, Bulgaria has paid homage to the Sultan. "A great expedition, it is asserted, is being organized against Egypt, in which the Turks, the Bulgarians, Germans, and Arabs will participate, the latter, as a result of the German victories, having recognized the divine mission of the Sultan. Preparations have actually begun in Asia Minor, where many German engineer officers have arrived. "It is affirmed that, in view of the expedition against Egypt, the Senussi have called to the command a true Senussi, named Sidi Idris el Mahdi, who up to the present has been living in holy places. "It is also announced that negotiations are taking place Between Constantinople and Addis Ababa, to secure the co-operation of Abyssinia against the Sudan contemporaneously with the Turkish attack against Egypt. "A telegram from a German source states that the first convoy of 20,000 tons of Rumanian cereal left Braila on Nov. 12 for Germany. Huge purchases of cereals have also been made in Bulgaria. Marshal von Mackensen has informed the Bulgarian Headquarters Staff that by the Kaiser's orders all the booty which the Germans take in Serbia will be handed over to Bulgaria." New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 (edited) REFUGEES FROM ADANA HERE Dr. Chambers Says He Had to Bring Away the Women and Children SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1915 Among the passengers who arrived yesterday from the Near East on the Greek Line steamship Themistocles were the Rev. Dr. William N. Chambers. who has been doing missionary work in Asia Minor for thirty years; his wife, and a number of women and children from the mission at Adana. Dr. Chambers said that conditions had become so intolerable in Asia Minor that he was compelled to bring out all the women and children. He was arrested and kept in jail for two days by the Turks because he was a British subject, but the United States Consul procured his release. Besides Mrs. Chambers, who is a sister of Talcott Williams, Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, the party included Mrs. Cyril H. Haus and her four children, Mrs. W. L. Nute and her son, Miss Mary G. Webb, and Miss Lyla Khyat. Speaking of his arrest at Alexandretta on Dec. 22, Dr. Chambers said that eighteen Indians and himself, all British subjects, were locked up for forty-eight hours. He was released and the Indians were deported. "From the City of Adana," he continued, "the Turks deported 18,000 Armenians, and in the district of Adana the number ran up to many additional thousands. They were sent into the Syrian Desert country. Fifty miles of the journey was made by rail and the remainder on Foot. I did not see any atrocities, but I did see a great deal of suffering." New York Times Edited April 23, 2008 by Ashot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 TO AID ARMENIAN ORPHANS Montclair Man Gives Land for a Home at Dundee Lake SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1915 Special to The New York Times. MONTCLAIR, N. J., Nov. 26--Dikran M. Bedikian of this town has given six acres of land and three buildings at Dundee Lake, north of here, as a home for Armenian children orphaned by the war, and prominent men and women of Montclair have started a campaign to raise $100,000 to endow the institution. Arrangements have been made to transports a number of the homeless Armenian children to this country, one of the steamship links having agreed to bring them over free of cost. The children will be taught useful trades and be given a Christian education at the home. The institution will be known as the Armenian Pilgrims Home, and it is planned to provide accommodations for about one hundred. To stimulate interest in the campaign to raise the endowment fund the local committee has arranged for an exhibition flight Walter Edwards, aviator on Saturday afternoon, Dec. 18. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 (edited) A RED CROSS FLAG THAT SAVED FOUR THOUSAND DECEMBER 1, 1915 A NARATIVE BY DIKRAN ANDREASIAN, TRASLATED BY STEPHEN TROWBRIDGE FROM the day that Turkey entered the war there had been much anxiety among the people of Zeitoun as to whether the Turks would treat the Armenians of those mountain districts with some new form of cruelty and oppression. Zeitoun is--we must say was--a city of seven thousand by many villages, also Christian, in the heart of the Taurus Mountains. I had been serving for year as the pastor of the Armenian Protestant Church in Zeitoun, and the narrative which follows is one of personal experience. Early in the spring of this year the Government toward Zeitoun, summoning the elders and notables of the city and commencing an inquisition with the punishment of the bastinado. Absurd and impossible changes were made against the Armenians for the purpose of extorting money. Meanwhile some six thousand regular troops were quartered in the barracks above the city. An attempt to take the Armenian monastery by storm cost the Turks some casualties and failed of its object. The young men who were within stoutly defended themselves, and not until attacked by field artillery was the monastery taken. Fifty of the leading men in Zeitoun were summoned to the barracks "for a conference with the commander." they were at once imprisoned and their families were sent for. Every one waited anxiously for these people to return, but after a while it was learned that they had been sent away to an unknown destination. A few days later another and larger group of families were ordered to the barracks, and were forthwith driven off with threats and curses of a distant banishment. In this way three or four hundred families at a time were sent off on foot, with no proper supply of food, by devious routes through the mountains, some northwest toward Konia, some southeast toward the hot and unhealthy place of Mesopotamia. Day by day we saw the various quarters of the city stripped of inhabitants, until at last a single neighborhood remained. In addition to my duties as pastor I happened to be in charge of the Mission orphanage. The commanding officer sent for me one morning and told me to make ready at once for departure. "Your wife is also to go," he said, "and the children in the orphanage." We made our preparations hurriedly, for we were allowed to take but little with us. As we were leaving I looked back with an aching heart and saw our beloved church empty and lonely. The last company of our seven thousand people was streaming down the valley into banishment ! We had seen massacres, but we had never seen this before! A massacre at least ends quickly, but this prolonged anguish of soul is almost beyond human endurance. The first day's exhausted all of us. In the dark, as we lay down upon the open ground, Turkish muleteers came and robbed us of the few donkeys and mules that we had. Next day, in forlorn condition, the children with swollen and blistered feet, we reached Marach. Through the earnest request of the American missionaries, an order was secured from the Governor for my wife and myself to return to my home town, Yoghonolook, near the sea, twelve miles west of Antioch. The governor granted this permit on the ground that my wife and I were not natives of Zeitoun. My heart torn between the desire to share banishment with some fragment of my congregation and the desire to take my wife to place of comparative safety in my father's home. But, order having once been issued, I had no alternative but to obey. At Aintab we found the large Armenian community in the utmost anxiety, but at that time the order to leave had not arrived. Rumors reached us that the villages by the sea to continue southward, difficult though the journey was at such a time. The last part of our way lay through a historic valley--the fertile plain of Antioch. It was here that Chrysostom preached in the fervor of his early ministry before he was called to Byzantium. And it was to a secluded chapel on our own mountain-side that he used to withdraw for prayer and communion with God. As a boy I had often looked with wonder and reverence at the massive stones of the ruins of St. Chrysostom's Chapel. IT was in this very Antioch that Barnabas and Paul labored with such spiritual energy, and here they set forth upon their momentous task of spreading the Christian faith. The Roman road by which they walked form Antioch to Seleucia can still be traced in the valley bellow my native town, and the stone piers from which Roman ships set sail at Seleucia are not entirely demolished by the storms and earthquakes of the centuries. The city of Antioch, once so gallantly defended by the Crusaders, has long been under the rule of the Turks, and the minarets of Islam are ten times more numerous than the church belfries. In April, 1909, the Protestant and Gregorian congregations suffered one of the cruel persecutions in history. The people of my own home town, Yoghonolook, are simple, industrious folk. For years past their chief occupation has been the sawing and polishing by hand of combs from hard wood and bone. Many of our men are also expert wood-carvers. In the neighboring villages the chief occupations are the culture of silkworms for producing raw silk and the weaving of silk by hand looms into handkerchiefs and scarves. Our people are very fond of their churches, and since the opening of schools by the American missionaries most of our children have learned to read. Every home is surrounded by mulberry trees, and many beautiful orchards cover the terraced slopes toward the south and west. Travelers who have been to southern Italy tell us that the villages near Naples very much resemble ours. The broad, rough back of Mousa Dagh (i. e., Mount Moses), known in Arabic as Jebel-el-Ahmar, rises up eastward back of us. Every gorge and crag of our beloved mountain is known to our boys and men. I mention these facts about my village home so that you may feel something of the quiet, happy life which was so rudely and so completely broken up by this last attempt of the Turks to exterminate our race. Twelve days after I had reached home an official order from the Turkish Government at Antioch was served upon the six villages of Mousa Daugh to prepare for banishment within eight days. You can scarcely imagine the consternation and the indignation which this order caused. we sat up all night debating what it would be best to do. TO resist the forces of the Turkish Government seemed almost hopeless, and yet the scattering of families into a distant wilderness raided by fanatical and lawless Arab tribes seemed such an appalling prospect that the inclination of both men and women was to refuse the summons and withstand the anger of the Government. All, however, were not of this mind. The Rev. Haroutune Nokhoudian, the pastor of the Protestant Church in Beytias, for example, came to the conviction that it would be folly to resist, and that the severity of banishment might possibly be modified in some way. He was in favor of yielding. Sixty families from his own village and a considerable number from the next village, agreeing with him, separated themselves from us and went down to Antioch under Turkish guards. They were shortly expelled in the direction of the lower Euphrates. (We have lost all track of them now and may never hear of them again.) Our firm friends, the American missionaries, were cut off from us 120 miles to the north at Aintab. Communications with the outside world being practically severed, we were thrown upon our own resources, and we realized that our one hope was in the mercy of God. Fervently we prayed that he would strengthen us to do duty. Knowing that it would be impossible to defend our villages in the foothills, it was resolved to withdraw to the heights of Mousa Dagh, taking with us as large a supply of food and implements as it was possible to carry. All the flocks of sheep and goats were also driven up the mountain-side, and every available weapon of defense was brought out and furbished up. We found that we had a hundred and twenty modern rifles and shotguns, with perhaps three times that number of old flintlocks and horse pistols. That still left more than half our men without weapons. It was very hard to leave our homes. My mother wept as if her heart would break. But we had hoped that possible while we were fighting off the Turks the Dardanelles might be forced and deliverance come to the country. By nightfall the first day we had reached the upper crags of the mountain. As we were preparing to camp and to cook the evening meal a pouring rain set in and continued all night. For this we were all prepared. There had not been time to make huts of branches, nor had we any tents or waterproof clothing. Men, women, and children, somewhat over five thousand in all, were soaked to the skin, and much of the bread we had brought with us was turned into a pulpy mass. We were especially solicitous to keep our powder and rifles dry. This the men managed to do very well. At dawn next morning all hands went to work digging trenches at the most strategic points in the ascent of the mountain. Where there was no earth for trench-digging rocks were rolled together, making strong barricades behind which groups of our sharpshooters were stationed. The sun came out gloriously, and we were hard at it all day strengthening our position against the attack, which we knew was certain to come. Toward evening we held a mass meeting for the election of a committee of defense which should have supreme authority for our six communities. Some favored an election by show of hands, but others argued that, as this was a matter of such vital importance, the regular congregational methods of choice by secret ballot should be followed. And they offered to get together enough bits of paper to carry out the ballot! Our people have become very much attached to these democratic methods taught by the missionaries. Without much delay scraps of paper, more or less torn and wet, were gathered and the ballot was cast. A governing council thus being established, plans were at once made for defending each pass in the mountain and each approach to the camp. Scouts, messengers, and a central reserve group of sharpshooters were chosen and were assigned their duties. The summons from the Government had been served July 13. The eight day's grace had now almost elapsed, and we were aware that the Turks must have discovered our movements. The whole Antioch plain is people with Turks must and Arabs, and there is always a strong military garrison in the Antioch barracks. On July 21 the attack began. The advance guard was two hundred regulars, and their captain insolently boasted that he would clear the mountain in one day. But the Turks suffered several casualties and were driven back to the base. When they advanced for a more general attack, they dragged up a field-gun, which, after some experimentation, secured the range and wrought havoc in our camp. One of our sharpshooters, a lion-hearted young fellow, crept down through the brushwood and among the rocks until he was in very close range of the field-gun, which was mounted on a flat rock. Having made himself an ambush of branches, he watched for a good opportunity. He was so near that he could hear the Turks talking to one another as they loaded the gun. Then, as one gunner stepped out into view, the young man picked him off with the first shot. With five bullets he killed four gunners! The certain thereupon threw up his hands in dismay, and , not being able to discern our sharpshooter, ordered the gun to be dragged to a place of shelter. Thus were we saved from a disastrous gun-fire on that day and several days to come. But the Turks were gathering forces for a massed attack. They had sent word through many Moslem villages calling the people to arms. Army rifles and plentiful ammunition were handed out from the Antioch arsenal, until the mob of four thousand Moslems thirsting for massacre became a formidable foe. But the chief strength of the Turks was in the three thousand regular troops accustomed to discipline and inured to hardship. Suddenly one morning our scouts brought word to headquarters that the enemy was appearing at every pass in the mountain. Here and there the Turks had already gained the cliffs and shoulders of the crest. Our reserve body of defenders was--very unwisely, as we afterwards realized--sent in small groups to these various points. No sooner had our ravine. All the other advances had been feints, and were not followed up. By the time our men discovered the situation and rallied from distant points the Turks had shot down our scouts and had poured though an important pass. To our dismay, we saw them already in full occupation of high ground, threatening our camp. Reinforcements kept pushing up the mountain, and as the afternoon drew on we saw that we were completely outnumbered. We saw also that the range of the Turks' rifles was far superior to that of our old-fashioned firearms. By sundown the enemy had advanced three companies through the dense underbrush and forest to within four hundred yards of our huts. A deep, damp ravine lay between, and the Turks decided to bivouac rather than to push on in the darkness. Our leaders hurriedly took counsel together, whispering very quietly and not allowing any light in camp. Every one knew that a crisis had been reached. Finally a venturesome plan was adopted: to creep around the Turkish positions in the dead of night and thus carry out an enveloping movement, closing in very suddenly with a fusillade and ending with a hand-to-hand encounter. If this plan should fail, we knew that everything was lost. Through the dark, wet woods our men crept with extraordinary skill. It was here that our familiarity with those crags and thickets made it possible to do what invaders could not attempt. The circle was practically completed when, with a flash and a crash on all sides, our men delivered their attack, rushing forward with desperate courage. In a very few moments it was evident that bewilderment and alarm had thrown the Turkish camp into the utmost confusion. Troops were rushing hither and thither in the black night, stumbling over rocks and longs, officers shouting contradictory commands and struggling vainly to rally their men. Evidently the impression was given of a very substantial Armenian attack, because in less than half an hour the Turkish colonel gave the order to retreat, and before dawn the woods were practically clear of the troops. More than two hundred Turks had been killed and some booty taken: seven Mauser rifles, 2,500 rounds of ammunition, and one mule. There was no sign of any renewal of fighting. But we knew that our foes were not defeated; they were only driven off. During the next few days they roused the whole Mohammedan population for many miles around--a horde of perhaps fifteen thousand. With this larger number they were able to surround and lay siege to Mousa Dagh on the land ward side. Their plan was now to strive us out. On the seaward side there was neither harbor nor any communication with a seaport. The mountain sloped directly into the sea. We were fully occupied in the care of our wounded and the reparation of the damage done in camp. Special meetings were held to thank God for deliverance thus far, and to intercede with him for our families and little ones. Gregorians and Protestants were fused into one faith and fellowship by this time that my wife was confined and gave birth to her first child, a son. She suffered much in the flight down the seaward trail some days later, but I carried her and helped her as much as possible. Thank God, she is in good health now, and so is our little son. When we discovered that our mountain was in a state of siege, we began to estimate our food resources. During the first week on the heights we had exhausted the bread, olives, and cheese that we had brought from home. Very few had been able to bring flour or other cereals, so for a month past we had been living on our flocks, using the goats' milk for the little children and the sick, and slaughtering a number of sheep and goats every day. This constant meat diet was not good for us, but, on the other hand, we were profoundly thankful that we were spared the suffering of starvation. We made a careful count of the flocks, and found that even with a reduced ration of meat our supply would last not more than two weeks longer. Under the pressure of this anxiety we began to think of plans for escape be sea. Before the siege had entirely closed in we had sent a runner to make the dangerous trip, eighty-five miles through Turkish villages, to Aleppo, the capital of the province, with an appeal to the American Consul, Mr. Jackson, to sent us help by sea, if possible. But it is not at all likely that our messenger ever reached Aleppo. It occurred to us that possibly a battle-ship of the Allies might be in Alexandretta Harbor, thirsty-five miles to the north. So one of our young men, who was a strong swimmer, volunteered to creep through the Turkish lines and take a message in English strapped inside his belt. He succeeded in reaching the hills overlooking the harbor, but saw that there was no battle-ship, and returned. His plan had been to swim out to sea, circling around to reach the battle-ship, thus avoiding the Turkish sentries of the roads leading into Alexandretta. We then prepared triplicate copies of the following appeal, and appointed three swimmers to be constantly on the watch for any passing ship to strike through the surf and swim out at such an angle as to meet the vessel: To any English, American, French, Italian, or Russian admiral, captain, or authority whom this petition may find, we appeal in the name of God and human brotherhood: We, the people of six Armenian villages, about 5,000 souls in all, have withdrawn to that part of Mousa Daugh called Damlajik, which is three hours' journey northwest from Suedije along the seacoast. We have taken refuge here from Turkish barbarism and torture, and most of all from the outraging of the honor of our women. Sir, you must have heard about the policy of annihilation which the Turks are applying to our nation. Under cover of dispersing the Armenians, as if to avoid rebellion, our people are expelled from their houses, deprived of their gardens, their vineyards, and all their possessions. This brutal programmed has already been applied to the city of Zeitoun and its thirty-two villages, to Albustan, Geoksun, Yarpouz, Gurin, Diarbekir, Adana, Tarsus, Mersin, Deort yol, Hadjin, etc. And the same policy in being extended to all the one and a half million Armenians id different parts of Turkey. The present writer was the protestant pastor in Zeitoun a few months ago and was an eyewitness of many unspeakable cruelties. I saw the highway, barefooted children six or seven years old by the side of aged grandparents, hungry and thirsty, their feet swollen from the toilsome journey. Along the road one heard sobs and curses and prayers. Under the pressure of great fear, some mothers gave birth to children in the bushes by the side of the road. Immediately afterward they were compelled by the Turkish guards to continue their journey toll kind death arrived to give an end to their torture. The remainder of the people who were strong enough to bear the hardships of the march were driven on under the whips of the gendarmes to the plains of the south. Some died of hunger. Others were robbed along the way. Others were stricken with malaria and had to left by the roadside; and, as a last act of this dark and foul tragedy, the Arabs and Kurds massacred all the males and distributed the widows and girls among their tribes! The Government some forty days ago informed us that our six villages must go into exile. Rather than submit to this we withdrew to this mountain. We now have little food left, and the troops are besieging us. We have had five fierce battles. God has given us the victory; but the next time we will have to withstand a much larger force. Sir, we appeal to you in the name of Christ! Transport us, we pray you, to Cyprus or any other free land. Our people are not indolent. We will earn our own bread if we are employed. If this is too much to grant, transport at least our women, old people, and children, equip us with sufficient arms, ammunition, and food, and we will work with you with all our might against the Turkish forces. Please, sir, do not wait' until it is too late! Respectfully your servant, for all the Christians here, DIKRAN ANDREASIAN September 2 But days passed and not even a sail was seen. The war had reduced the coastwise shipping to a minimum. meanwhile, at my suggestion, our women had been making two immense flags, on one of which I printed in large, clear English: CHRISTIANS IN DISTRESS--RESCUE This was a white flag with black lettering. The other was also white with a large red cross at the center. We fastened these flags to tall saplings and set a watch at the foot to scan the horizon from dawn to dark. Some days we had rain, and on others heavy mists and fogs, which are rather prevalent along our bit of coast. The Turks again attacked us by several approaches, and we had some severe fighting, but never at such close quarters as during the first general engagement. From one the first general engagement. From one point of vantage we were able to roll boulders down the precipitous mountain-side with disastrous effects to the enemy. Our powder and cartridges were running low, and the Turks evidently had some idea of the straits we were in, for they began shouting insolent summons to surrender. Those were anxious days and long nights. One Sunday morning, the fifty-third day of our defense, while I was occupied in preparing a brief sermon to encourage and strengthen our people, I was startled by hearing a man shouting at the top of his voice. He came racing though our encampment straight for my hut. "Pastor ! pastor !" he exclaimed; "a battle-ship is coming and has answered our waving. Praise God ! Thank God ! Our prayers are heard ! When we wave the Red Cross flag, the battle-ship answers by waving signal flags. They see us and are coming in nearer shore !" This proved to be the French cruiser Guichen, a four-funnel ship. While one of its boats was being lowered some of our young men raced down to the shore and were soon swimming out to the stately vessel, which seemed to have been sent to us from God. With beating hearts we hurried down to the beach, and soon an invitation came to the captain for a delegation to come on board and narrate the situation. He sent a wireless to the Admiral of the fleet, and before a great while the flagship St Jean d'Arc appeared on the horizon, followed by other French battle-ships. The Admiral spoke words of comfort and cheer to us, and gave an order that every soul of our community should be taken on board the ships. The embarkation took some time, of course, and an English cruiser was invited to take part in the transportation to Port Said, Egypt. We were taken on board four French cruisers and one English, and were very kindly cared for. In two days we arrived at Port Said, and are now settled in a permanent camp which has been provided for us by the British authorities. We are especially grateful to Mr. William C. Horn blower for the excellent organization of this camp and to Colonel and Mrs. P. G. Elgood and Miss Russell for their untiring efforts on our behalf. The Armenian Red Cross Society of Cairo, recently organized, of which the Gregorian Bishop is Honorary Chairman, Mr. Fermanian, of the Kodak Company, Director, and Professor Kayayan, Secretary, has sent us a staff of three doctors and three nurses. An accurate census has been taken, which shows that the survivors number: Babies and children under four years of age . . . . . . . . . . . . .413 Girls from four to fourteen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .505 Boys from four to fourteen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606 Women above fourteen years of age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,449 Men above fourteen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,076 --- Total number of soul rescued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4,049 After the Turks' first challenge, July 13, we had eight days' parley and preparation. For fifty-three days we defended ourselves on Mousa Dagh; and a two days' voyage brought us to Port Said on September 14. We do not forget that our Savior was brought in his infancy to Egypt for safety and shelter. And the brethren of Joseph could not have been more grateful than we are for the corn and wheat provided. With greetings to American, British, French, and Armenian friends, in the name of Christ under the shadow of those Red Cross we are indeed one people. Outlook Magazine Edited April 23, 2008 by Ashot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 (edited) SONGS OF EXILE Hymns and Poems Through Which the Armenians Have Cried Out Against their Persecution By Alice Stone Blackwell December 4, 1915 IN this time of bitter grief among the Armenian people, readers of THE SURVEY may like to look into their thoughts and aspirations as revealed in their poetry. For among the people of many nationalities that have been flung into the American melting pot, the Armenians have one of the most interesting and heroic histories. The Armenians are Aryans and of pure Caucasian blood. James Bryce wrote of them, many years ago: "They are a strong race, not only with vigorous nerves and sinews, physically active and energetic, but also of conspicuous brain power. Among all those who dwell in western Asia they stand first, with a capacity for intellectual and moral progress, as well as with a natural tenacity of will and purpose, beyond that of all their neighbors---not merely of Turks, Tartars, Kurds and Persians, but also of Russians. "Thus they have held a very important place among the inhabitants of Western Asia ever since the sixth century. If you look into the annals of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire, you will find that most of the men who rose to eminence in its service as generals or statesmen during the early middle ages were of Armenian stock. So was it also after the establishment of the Turkish dominion in Europe. Many of the ablest men in the Turkish service have been Armenians by birth or extraction. The same is true of the Russian service." Lamartone calls the Armenians "the Swiss of the East." Dulaurier compares them to the Dutch. Dr. James L. Barton, of the American Board of Foreign Missions, and former president of Euphrates College in Turkey, says: "I know the Armenians to be, by inheritance, religious, industrious and faithful. They are the Anglo-Saxons of eastern Turkey. They are not inferior in mental ability to any race. I say this after eight years' connection with Euphrates College, which has continually from 550 to 625 Armenians upon its list of students, and after superintending schools which have 4,000 more of them." Like evidence has been given by a long list of Armenians who have taught in the missionary schools and colleges in Turkey-- Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, the Rev. Frederick D. Greene, Dr Grace Kimball, Dr. Lyman Bartlett and many others. From a large acquaintance among the Armenians in this country, extending over more than twenty years. I can bear personal testimony to their worth. Among them, as among all other nationalities, there are all sorts of persons, good, bad and indifferent; but Lord Byron wrote with truth: "It would perhaps be difficult to find in the annals of a nation less crime than in those of this people." The native home of the race is a mountainous region of western Asia, lying around Mount Ararat, and containing the sources of the Tigris, Euphrates and Araxes rivers. According to tradition, it was the site of the Garden of Eden. The Armenians have lived there since before the dawn of history. Christianity is said to have been preached in Armenia early in the first century in Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew. It is historic fact that in A. D. 276 the king and the whole nation embraced Christianity, under the preaching of St. Gregory, called "the Illuminator." The Armenian national church in its doctrines and services, may be roughly described as half-way between the Greek Church and High Church Episcopalianism. Some of its early hymns breath a poetic devotion, like the following by St. Gregory of Narek (born 951, died 1011): The Christ Child "The lips of the Christ Child are like to twin leaves; They let roses fall when he smiles tenderly. The tears of the Christ Child are pearls when he grieves; The eyes of the Christ Child are deep as the sea. Like pomegranate grains are the dimples he hath, And clustering lilies spring up in his path." As a Christian nation whose lot has been cast beyond the frontiers of Christendom, the Armenians have had to suffer constant persecution--in early times from the Persian fire worshippers; in later centuries, from the Mohammedans. Their country has been invaded successively by the caliphs of Baghdad, the sultans of Egypt, the khans of Tartary, the shahs of Persia, and the Ottoman Turks. All these invasions were accompanied by fierce persecutions and great barbarities; but the Armenians have held tenaciously to their faith for more than fifteen hundreds years. In the middle of the fifth century Armenia had already lost its national independence. It was ruled by feudal chiefs and princes who were subject to the King of Persia. The Persians at this time were aiming at the conquest and conversion of the world. In A. D. 450 the Persian king called upon the Armenians to embrace fire worship; and upon their unanimous refusal, he invaded their country with a vast army. The battle was fought on the plain of Avarair, under Mount Ararat. The much smaller force of the Armenians was defeated, and their leader, Vartan, was killed. But the stubborn resistance offered by men, women and children convinced the Persian monarch that it was impossible ever to make fire worshippers of the Armenians, and he gave up the attempt. This battle was the Armenian Marathon, and the national songs are full of allusions to it. The Armenian mountaineers of the Caucasus still drink the health of Vartan at their festivals, and wreathe his portrait with red flowers on the anniversary of the battle. In the minds of the common people, all sorts of picturesque superstitions cluster about Avarair. A particular kind of red flowers grow there, which are found nowhere else, and it is believed that they sprang from the blood of the Christian army. A species of antelope, with a pouch on its breast secreting a fragrant musk, is supposed to have acquired this peculiarity by browsing on grass wet with the same blood. It is also believed that at Avarair the nightingales all sing. "Vartan, Vartan!" Geographically, Armenia is the bridge between Asia and Europe; and for centuries the Armenians acted the part of Horatius, and "kept the bridge," driving back wave after wave of invasion from Asia. Alone among the Asiatic peoples, they gave aid and comfort to the Crusaders, acting as their guides and supplying them with provisions. One of the most popular Armenian poets, Raphael Patkanian (born 1830, died 1892), recalls these services in his Complaint to Europe "Have you forgotten, Europe, how the dart Of the fierce Persian pointed at your heart, Until, on that dread field of Avarair, Armenian blood quenched his fanatic fire? "Have you forgot the fell and crushing blow Prepared for you by Islam long ago? We would not see your desolation the, Burning of cities, massacre of men. "Two hundred years Armenia, bathed in blood. Europe was safe, our living wall behind, Until the enemy's huge strength declined. "Have you forgotten, Europe, how of yore your heroes in the desert hungered sore? What then could strength or force of arms avail, Had we not fed your hosts, with famine pale?" Armenia, am Asiatic Poland, was long since divided between Russia, Persia and Turkey. The Armenians have suffered oppression in all three, but the worst persecutions have been in Turkey. Protection was guaranteed to the Armenians by the principal European powers, under a treaty signed nearly forty years ago; but the mutual jealousy of the European nations has prevented the pledge from being kept, and the historic of the Armenians for many years past has been one long tragedy. The chronic condition in Turkey was well described by one of the best Armenian poets. Bedros Tourian, the son of a blacksmith of Scutari, who died of a blacksmith of Scutari, who died of consumption on 1872, at the age of twenty. At the time of his writing, the Christians were forbidden by law to possess any weapons, while their oppressors were fully armed: New Dark Days "The centuries of bloodshed Are past, those cruel years; But there is still one country Whose mountains drip with tears, Whose river banks are blood strained, Whose mourning loads the breeze,-- A land of dreary ruins, Ashes, and cypress trees. "No more for the Armenian A twinkling star appears; His spirit's flowers have faded Beneath a rain of tears. Ceased are the sounds of harmless mirth, The dances hand in hand; Only the weapon on the Koord Shines freely through the land "The peasant sows, but never reaps; He hungers evermore. He eats his bread in bitterness, And tastes of anguish sore. Lo! tears and blood together drop from his pallid face; And these are our own brothers, Of our own blood and race! "The forehead pure, the sacred veil Of the Armenian maid, Shall rude hands touch, and hell's hot breath Her innocence invade? They do it as men crush a flower, With no compunction stirred; They slaughter an Armenian As they would kill a bird. "O roots of vengeance, heroes' bones Who fell of old in fight, Have ye all crumbled into dust, Nor sent one shoot to light? Oh, of that eagle nation Now trampled by the Koord, Is nothing left but black-hued crows And moles with eyes obscured? "Give back our sister's roses, Our brothers who have died. The crosses of our churches, Our nation's peace and pride! O Sultan, we demand of thee And with our hearts entreat-- Give us protection from the Koord. Or arms his arms to meet!" Many of the Armenian poems breathe high spirit and courage, like the lines to Liberty, by Michael Ghazarian Nalbandian, who was born in 1830 and died in 1866, of lung disease contracted in a Russian prison: Liberty "When God, who is forever free, Breathed life into my early frame-- From that first day, by His free will. When I a living soul became-- A babe upon my mother's breast. Ere power of speech was given to me. Even then I stretched my feeble arms Forth to embrace thee, Liberty! "Wrapped round with many swaddling bands. All night I did not cease to weep, And in my cradle, restless still, My cries disturbed my mother's sleep. 'O mother!' in my heart I prayed, 'Unbind my arms and leave me free!' And even from that hour I vowed To love thee ever, Liberty! "When first my faltering tongue was freed, And when my parents' hearts were stirred With thrilling joy, to hear their son Pronounce his first clear-spoken word, 'Papa, Mamma,' as children use, Were not the names first said by me; The first word on my childish lips Was thy great name, O Liberty! " 'Liberty!' from on high replied The sovereign voice of Destiny: 'Wilt thou enroll thyself henceforth A soldier true of Liberty? The path is thorny all the way. And many trials wait for thee; Too strait and narrow is this world For him who loved Liberty.' " 'Freedom!' I answered, 'on my head Let fire descend and thunders burst; Let foes against my life conspire, Let all who hate thee do their worst. I will be true to thee till death: Yea, even upon the gallows tree The last breathe of a death of shame Shall shout thy name, O Liberty!' " In consequence of chronic persecution, Armenians are now to be found scattered all over the world. Hence Armenian poetry is full of the laments of exiles. Some are by distinguished men, like The Wandering Armenian to the Cloud, by the late Archbishop Khorene Nar Bey de Lusignan: The Wandering Armenian to the Cloud "Cloud, whither dost thou haste away So swiftly through the air? Dost thou to some far-distant land An urgent message bear? "With gloomy aspect, dark and sad, Thou moves on through space. Dost thou hide vengeance, or has grief Overshadowed thy bright face? "Did a wind come and exile thee Far from thy heavenly home, Like me, in homesickness and tears Across the world to roam? "Like me, who wander now, my grief's sole comrades left to me, While, yearning for my fatherland, I pine on land and sea? "Cloud, when thy heart is full of tears Thou hast relief in rain; When indignation brims thy breast. Fierce lightning's tell thy pain. "Though my heart too is full, my brow With painful thoughts oppressed, To whom can I pour forth the grieves That fill an exile's breast? "O cloud, thou hast no native land! Far happier thou than I. To north, to south thou floatest free. At home in all the sky. "But I, at every step, shed tears, In sorrow and in gloom. Each step away from mine own land Is nearer to my tomb!" Other popular songs of exile are by authors who are otherwise little known like C. A. Totochian's poem: The Wandering Armenian to the Sallow "O swallow, gentle swallow, Thou lovely bird of spring! Say, whither art thou flying So swift on gleaming wing? "Fly to my birthplace, Achdarag. The spot I love the best; Beneath my father's roof-tree, O swallow, build thy nest. "There dwells afar my father, A mournful man and gray, Who for his only son's return Waits vainly, day by day. "If thou should chance to see him, Greet him with love from me; Bid him sit down and mourn with tears His son's sad destiny. "In poverty and loneliness, Tell him, my days are passed My life is only half a life, My tears are falling fast. "To me, amid bright daylight, The sun is dark at noon; To my wet eyes at midnight Sleep comes not, late or soon. "Tell him that like a beauteous flower Smith by a cruel doom, Uprooted from my native soil, I wither ere my bloom. "Fly on swift wing, dear swallow Across the quickening earth, And seek in fair Armenia The village of my birth!" Some favorite songs are of unknown authorship, like The Wanderer "Oh, heavy hearted is the wanderer In foreign lands, who hath his country left! In gazing on the fever of his heart, Even the rocks with sorrow would be cleft. "When you on any man would call a curse. Say, 'Be a wanderer from your native land! And may your pillow be the mountain side. And may you sleep at night upon the sand! !'And, when you think upon your fatherland, May you from head to foot be full of Pains!' My heart is a cracked vase; in vain I pour Water therein; unfilled it still remains. "Each bird of heaven halth its companion found, I am alone and solitary still; Each stone is fixed and quiet in its place; I roll forevermore by vale and hill." Anonymous too is the song of the homesick Armenian girl: The Song of the Homesick Armenian Girl "I was a quince-bush growing on a rock. A rocky cliff that rose above the dell. They have uprooted and transplanted me Unto a stranger's orchard, there to dwell And in this orchard they have watered me With sugar water, that full sweetly flows O brothers, fear me back to my soil. And water me with water of the snows!" The grief of the exile's mother has been voiced, among others, by Siamanto and by Daniel Varoujan, two of the most distinguished of the modern Armenian poets. Both of them were lately deported to have perished. Varoujan wrote The Longing Letter "My mother writes: 'My son on pilgrimage How long a time must pass ere your moon poor head To my warm bosom I may press, at home " 'Oh, long enough upon strange stairs have trod Your feet, which in my palms I warmed one day-- Your heart, in which my breasts were emptied once, Far from my empty heart has pined away! " 'My arms are weary at the spinning wheel; I weave my shroud, too, with my hair of snow. Ah, would mine eyes could see you once again, Then close forever, with my heart below. " 'Always I sit in sadness at my door, And tidings ask from every crane that flies. That willow slip you planted long ago Has grown till over me its shadow lies " 'I wait in vain for your return at eve. All the brave fellows of the village pass The laborer goes by, the herdsman bold-- I with the moon am left alone, alas! " 'My ruined house is left without a head. Sometimes for death, and always for the cheer Of my own hearth I yearn. A tortoise I, Whose entrails to its broken shell adhere! " 'Oh, come, my son, your ancient home restore! They burst the door, they swept the larders bare. Now all the swallows of the spring come in, Through shattered windows, open to the air. " 'Of all the glodly flocks of long ago One brave ram only in our stable stands. His mother once--remember, little son-- While yet a lamb, ate oats out of your hands. " 'Rice, bran and clover fine I give him now, To nourish his rich djak, of noble size; I comb his soft wool with a wooden comb; He is a dear and precious sacrifice. " 'When you come back, his head with roses wreathed, He shall be sacrificed to feast you, sweet; And in his blood, my well-beloved son, I then will wash my pilgrim's weary feet.' " The Mother's Dream "Let me write now and tell you of my dream. It was upon the midnight of All Saints. Sudden before me your four brothers knelt: They wore no shrouds, no vestiges of flesh; Groping in darkness, with abysmal eyes, Weeping before their mother thus they came TO tell their memories of other days. " 'Mother, the dawning of the bygone days We four together, from beneath the ground, Today have sought once more your little door TO tap on it, companioned by the storm Mother, be not afraid, no strangers we! And, lonely in your slumber, wait at least And let us watch your face in death's dark night!' " 'Mother, the holiness of bygone days! Out of my heart, death our poor graveyard's earth, Mother, a flower of love for you has grown!' " 'Mother, the sweetness of the bygone days! For you two jars with my salt tears are filled.' " 'Mother, the happiness of bygone days! For you have burning roses, flowers of hope, Sprung into fiery blossom from my soul!' " 'O mother, the heroic manliness Of bygone day! Out of my breast-bones now Two shields for your protection have been wrought.' " 'Mother, your peerless beauty in the past! How many furrows now have marked you brow!" (Thus spake your eldest brother). 'All alone Under your roof-tree, how can you endure? These seven years, we seven times have tapped Upon your little door, but till tonight We never yet have found the door unclosed. What traveler do you await tonight? Behold, your fragile hut is tottering. Like to a heap of moldering coffin-boards. Se how the leaves, storm-rent, fall from the trees! The guiltless doves are dying in the brook, And still upon the threshold of your home, Mother, the black snakes lick our dried-up blood. The garden has no leaf, no fruit, no brier. We four together have been through the hut, And at the sight of us our broken swords Gave out once more a single flash of light Empty the larder was, and in the barn A white lamb bleated, biting at its hoofs Mother, the plenty of the bygone days! The love and pity of the bygone days! How can you live here in your empty hut, Here in your empty hut how can you live? "The four were mute; but when I spoke your name And sobbed tempestuously in my dream, They wildly, with bowed heads, began to weep. But still,' I said, your brother is alive. The little one, who did not see you die. It is for him alone I live today.' Then they burst forth, and poured upon mine eyes The terrible black tear drops of the dead A brother, oh, we have a brother yet. A brother, oh, a brother in the world! Mother, the misery of coming days! Hereafter, how shall we to earth return Now how, oh, how shall we to earth return?' " The poetic nature of the Armenians is seen also in their prose. Eghiche, an Armenian bishop of the Fifth century has left us a graphic history of the Persian invasion of A. D. 451, of which he was an eye witness. In the eighth chapter he describes the fortitude shown by the Armenian women, After the princes and nobles had been killed or carried away captive, and the country reduced almost to a desert. Writing nine hundred years before Chaucer Eghiche says: "But I cannot enumerate all the wives of the heroes, both of those who were in fetters and those who had fallen in battle for there are more whom I do not know than those whom I know. I know by name and by sight about five hundred; not only those who were the highest in rank, but many of low degree. All of them together being kindled by a holy emulation, put on the same virtue of fidelity. They forgot even the name of the luxury belonging to their hereditary freedom, and became like men who have suffered from the beginning after the manner of peasants, and who have passed their lives in this world amid hardships. "The elder ones took upon themselves the greater endurance. They were comforted by the invisible force of the eternal hope, and accepted the heavy burden of bodily pain. For although each of them had had hereditary servants, there was now nothing to distinguish between mistress and maid. All wore the same dress, and all alike slept on the ground. Neither one made the other's bed. There was no distinction even in their food. All the mattresses were of the same dark color, and all the pillows were alike black. They had no special makers of spiced dishes, nor bread-markers set apart for service at table, but everything was in common. None poured water on the other's hands, neither did the younger ones offer towels to the elder. The delicate women had no soap, nor was oil offered to them for rejoicing. No costly platter was set before them, neither were cup-bearers found at their festivals. For none of them did an usher stand at the door, neither were the nobles called by them. "The brutal chambers of the young brides became dusty and dusty and dim, and spiders webs were spun in their palaces were destroyed, and the vessels of their table service were in disorder. Their palaces fell, and the fortress of their refuge crashed down in ruin; their flower-gardens dried up and withered, and the wine-bearing vines of their vineyards were torn up. With their eyes they saw the spoiling of their goods, and with their ears they heard of the sufferings of their dear ones. Their treasures were confiscated, and nothing at all was left of the ornaments of their faces. "The delicately reared women of the land of Armenian, who had been brought up in luxury and petted in costly clothing and on soft couches, went untiringly to the houses of prayer, on foot and barefooted, asking with vows that they might be enabled to endure their great affliction. Those who from childhood had been reared on oxen's brains and the choicest pieces of the deer, were now glad to eat vegetable food, like savages. The skins of their bodies, blackening, became dark, because by the day they were sunburned, and all night they slept on the ground. The everlasting psalms were the murmurs of their lips, and their complete comfort were in the reading of the prophets. "The women paired off two by two, like the animals, as equal and harmonious, drawing strait the furrow of the kingdom, that they might reach the harbor of peace without fail. They forgot their womanly weakness, and became brave males in the spiritual warfare. Doing battle, they fought against the cardinal sins; they pulled up and threw away their deadly roots. With simplicity they conquered guilefulness, and with sacred love they washed away the dark coloring of envy. They cut off the roots of avarice, and the death-bearing fruits of its branches dried up. With humility they trampled upon arrogance, and with the same humility they reached the heavenly height. With prayers they opened the closed doors of heaven, and with holly petitions caused the angels of redemption to descend. They heard the good tidings from afar, and glorified God in the highest. "The widows among them became again as virtuous brides, and put away from them the reproach of widowhood. And the wives of those who were in fetters willingly restrained the physical appetites, and became partakers of the sufferings of the imprisoned saints. In their lives they resembled the brave martyrs in their deaths, and from a distance they became teachers of consolation to the prisoners. With their fingers they worked and were fed, and the pensions granted them by the court they sent year by year to their husbands for their comfort. They became like the bloodless cricket, which lives without food, by the sweetness of its song. "The snows of many winters melted, the spring arrived, the new birds came, life-loving men saw and rejoiced; but they could never see those for whom they longed. The spring flowers reminded them of their loving husbands, and their eyes longed in vain to see the desirable beauty of their faces. Their hounds died, and their hunting excursions were ended. No yearly festivals brought them from afar. The women looked on their dining places and wept; and they remembered them in all their assemblies. Many monuments were raised to them, and the names of each inscribed thereon. "But while thus upon all sides their minds were storm-beaten, the women did not retreat, or weaken in heavenly virtue. To outsiders they appeared mourning and sorrowful widows, but in their own souls they were adorned with heavenly love. They ceased to ask anyone who had come from a distance. !When shall we see our dear ones?' The desires of their prayers to God were only that they moght finish their course with courage, filled with heavenly love, even as they had begun." Armenian women are proverbial for their chastity, which makes the horrible treatment inflicted upon them in Turkey the more grievous. Armenian poetry is not all sorrowful. There are many love poems, tender and passionate; many beautiful lullabies, often addressed to fatherless children; much patriotic poetry; and some fine poems upon general subjects. A good example of these last is The Bond, by Archag Tchobanian: THE BOND "All things are bound together by a tie Finer and subtler than a ray of light. Color and sound and fleeting fragrances, The maiden's smile, the star-beam sparkling bright. Are knit together by a secret bond Finer and subtler than a ray of light. "Sometimes an urn of memories is unsealed Just by a simple tune, or sad or gay. Part of the past with every quivering note From its dark sleep awakens to the day. Just through a simple tune, or sad or gay. "Flowers call back men and women to our thoughts; A well-known face smiles on us in their hue; Their bright cups, moved by the capricious wind, Can make us dream of eyes, black eyes or blue; We in their fragrance feel a loved one's breath; Flowers cal back men and women whom we knew." But nothing can call back the 800,000 Armenian men, women and children who have been done to death since last March. It is now fully established, by abundant evidence from unimpeachable American sources, that the Armenians in Turkey are being systematically exterminated I would most earnestly urge the many able men and women of humanitarian sympathies who read THE SURVEY to use their utmost influence with persons in power to stop the slaughter, in whatever way seems to them individually the most hopeful; and to apply their best intelligence to the problem how to make such cruelties impossible for the future. In the meantime, we can contribute to the relief fund; we can welcome such refugees as may escape to our shores; and we can give our warm sympathy to the many thousands of Armenians among us, who are heartbroken for the fate of their kindred at home. p. 100, GATEWAY OF THE ANCIENT FORTIFIED CITY OF DIARBEKIR The inscriptions and stone cannon-balls are commemorative of the Armenians' perpetual; fight for existence. p. 101, WOMEN WORKING IN THE NEAR HARPOOT The city is 4,500 feet above sea level; the buildings of the flourishing school may be seen in the middle ground. p. 102, DOMESTIC LIFE IN ARMENIA SPINNING OUT OF DOORS GRINDING FLOUR BAKING BREAD p. 103. SIEGE OF THE CITY OF VAN The Armenians, aided by the Russians, successfully repulsed the Turkish attack last spring; later were forced to flee, and now the ruined shell of the city is held by the Russian forces. p. 104, FORMER OFFICERS OF THE STUDENTS' SOCIETY OF AMERICA Left to right, A Chmichian (Harvard), when last heard from, a teacher at Aintab; R. Racoubian (Columbia)a teacher at Sivas, whose life is believed to have been forfeited; D. Loolejian (Yale), a teacher at Harpoot who has suffered extreme torture. p. 104, VICTIMS OF SIEGE Refugees in the American mission compound at Van during the siege. p. 105, REFUGEES Pausing at the frontier town of Ikder on their way to Edgmiatsin, in the Caucasus. p. 105, THE CATHEDRAL AT EDGMIADSIN Parts of it date back to the fourth century. It is the seat of the Katholikos, or head of the Christian Armenian faith. At the present day the only native institutions which has been preserved to the Armenian people is the church. Survey Magazine Edited April 23, 2008 by Ashot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 (edited) THE GREAT WAR DECEMBER 13, 1915 THE GREAT WAR November 29-- Bulgars capture Prisrend. Kaiser visits Vienna. November 30--Serbs leave Monastir. Three Austrian ministers resign. December 1--Italy will not make separate peace. British retreat down Tigris from Baghdad. December 2--Germany asked to recall Captains Boy-Ed and von Papen. Austrians invading Montegro. December 3--Allies ask freedom of action in Macedonia. Anglo-French campaign in Cameroon progresses. December 4--Germans renew attacks on Dvinsk from western side. Italian attacks on Gorz slacken. December 5--Rumania commandeers foreign shipping in her ports. Chinese cruiser "Chao-ho" mutinies at Shanghai. The Armenian Massacres The photographs given here show how one small band of Armenians from the villages about Antioch escaped the destruction which has a miracle that with less than a thousand men and with and with not enough guns to go around and with little food and ammunition these Armenian families were able to hold the mountain on which they had taken refuge against an army of 7000 Turks under German officers. Their entire stock of arms consisted of 150 old French rifles, 500 shotguns, 50 revolvers and 2000 daggers. The attacking Turks several times got within five yards of the trenches when they were driven back by the gun fire and the rocks rolled down upon them by the Armenian men and women. The Turks have taken care to avoid injury to the American missionaries who have in many cases been able to save Armenian families from slaughter and the girls in the American schools from being carried off to the harems. But it is now reported that the Super-intendment of the American mission at Urfa, the Rev. Francis Hayes Leslie, has been murdered by the Turks while trying to protect the Armenians under his care. Dr. Leslie is a graduate of Fargo College, North Dakota, and had been sent back to Urfa before the war together with Dr. Bridge, of Michigan. The commission of which Viscount Bryce is the head reports that the extent of the massacre and the cruelties practiced are greater than at first supposed. Since last May 800,000 Armenian men, women and children have been murdered, a crime unparalleled in history. The worst details of the atrocities as told by the refugees at Tiflis are too hideous to be printed in a magazine but we quote a few passages from the Bryce report : At Mush early in July the authorities called on the Armenians to hand over their arms and a large ransom for the notables of the town and the leading men. The villagers were subjected to revolting tortures. Finger nails and toe nails were forcibly extracted, teeth were knocked out, noses whittled down and the victims done to death in lingering agony. The female relatives of the victims who came to their rescue were outraged before their eyes, and the shrieks of the mutilated men and the death cries of the victims filled the air. The method employed in disposing of the women and children in the concentrated camps was by burning. In the hill country of Sasun 1500 surviving warriors were surrounded by 30,000 Turks and Kurds. Then followed a desperate, heroic struggle for life. Men, women and children fought with knives, scythes, stones--anything they could get. SERBIA CONQUERED The only two remaining towns of importance in Serbia, Prisrend and Monster, have now been surrendered, so six weeks after the Austro-German forces began their invasion the country has been completely conquered. p.112, THE FLAG OF SAFETY p.112, THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT OF THE CHRISTIANS, FROM ANTIOCH One of the most moving incidents of the Great War is the marvelous escape from massacre of a body of Armenians from six villages just west of Antioch. Notified that they were to be banished to the deserts of Mesopotamia within eight days and knowing that this would mean death for most of them, they fled to the hills overlooking the Gulf of Alexandretta. Here they defended themselves for fifty-three days against an overwhelming force of Turks until finally their Red Cross flag caught the attention of a passing French Cruiser which carried them to Port Said and safety. Those rescued included a thousand men, fourteen hundred women and eleven hundred and four hundred babies. Independent Magazine Edited April 23, 2008 by Ashot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 THE BLACK COMPANY December 15, 1915 BY GREGORY MASON STAFF CORRESPONDENT About three months ago Mr.Gregory Mason, of the editorial staff of The Outlook, was sent by this journal to Russia to gather material for a series of articles which should report and interpret affairs and conditions in Russia as relating to the present war. Mr.Mason carried many introductions and talked with men of all ranks, from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the peasant. It was impossible for him to write and send articles, written frankly and fearlessly although impartially, would be stopped by the Russian censors. He made, however, copious notes in abbreviated form, and on leaving Russia these notes were secreted and taken across the border by a friend and delivered to him on shipboard. Otherwise they would not have passed the censor. The Outlook now has the pleasure of printing the first of the articles, which is in a measure introductory and includes what seems to us extremely interesting material gathered by Mr.Mason on his voyage to Russia. - The Editors My first glimpse of the war between Russia and Germany was in Brooklyn. Theoretically the seas off the American coast to the three- mile limit set by international law are neutral territory, but for all practical purposes I stepped into Russia when I put my foot on the first plank of the Russian-American Line's Brooklyn pier. The approaches to the long gray dock and the two gangways planted against the side of the liner Kursk were guarded by special policemen in olive uniforms, and detectives scrutinized every box and bale that was being jerked into the vessel's hold by whining donkey-engines for signs of German tampering. No time bombs to blow out the ship's sides in mid-ocean would find their way into their craft if her owners and the Russian Government could help it. The baggage of every passenger on arrival at the dock was carefully searched for explosives, and once aboard the steamer the passengers were permitted to return ashore only by special permission of the captain, although the liner lay bound in her berth for fifty hours after the scheduled hour of her departure for Archangel, waiting for a delayed consignment of three hundred machine guns which were sorely needed in the sodden trenches before Riga. Else might and agent of the enemy have engaged passage on the Kursk, planted an infernal machine in his cabin, and slipped ashore at the last moment to avoid the fate which he had prepared for others. A friend, coming to bid me bon voyage, being refused admission to the pier because he had no passport or steamer ticket, resourcefully wormed his way along one of the splintered string-pieces beneath the dock, and was dashing for an apparently unguarded gangway to the ship when he fell into the rough embrace of an enthusiastic and muscular detective. Only a prompt and emphatic identification saves him from arrest as a suspected dynamiter. To such measures of rigid precaution have the desperate and lawless activities of Germany's agents in America driven the transatlantic steamship companies. The ship's passengers were made to feel distinctly secondary in importance to her cargo-the heaviest she had ever carried - consisting almost entirely of the stage properties of war, poorly disguised in boxes suspiciously tall for the advertised claim that they contained "Remington Typewriters." Blatantly naked, however, were the rolls of cruel barbed wire that filled every nook and cranny between the boxes, and drove the majority of steerage passengers from their purchased quarters into the second cabin. We boasted only five passengers in the salon, four Americans and a Russian; and, as second-cabin reservations had been bought by only one person, there was ample room there for the one hundred and fifty steerage passengers who were forced out of the steerage to make way for barbed wire. About a third of this number were Russian laborers and small merchants returning home, but a hundred were Armenians who were voluntarily setting out for the Caucasus to fight the Caucasus to fight the Turks. They were a motley throng as they scrambled up the gangway into their new quarters, tin trunks, paper suit-cases, large wicker hampers, and other nondescript hand baggage characteristic of the poor immigrant on their shoulders, one tanned young Samson carrying a huge blanket roll in one hand and a crude gilt-framed crayon portrait of his Caucasian parents in the other, while another youth, white tennis shoes on his feet and a tall hat of dirty white sheepskin on his head, guarded in his hands a new straw hat of the type with a rounded crown which was a Broadway fad during the past summer. When at length the hatches had been battened down on the last piece of cargo - a huge box that might have held a hydraulic press, a mortar of large proportions , or a quantity of chemadahns (trunks), as the Russians call their larger shells, it was deep twilight, and the illumined sky-scrapers of lower New York towered like a cluster of giant lighthouses against a bottle-blue sky Nearing the Narrowa, the searchlight of one of the twin destroyers guarding the harbor mouth whirled across the heavens like a great silver sword and fell full upon us, and a moment later, to make the inquisition easier, a golden autumn moon climbed up and sat on the horizon wall. Satisfied by his examination, the destroyer whistled a shrill permission for us to proceed. Soon the pilot was dropped, the ship's nose gradually swung to a course much farther north than the regular transatlantic lanes lie, and in the ghostly light of the now haze-shrouded moon our voyage of mystery began. Save for the ship's captain, those on board knew only that our destination was Archangel and our war cargo the most valuable one ever landed at that White Sea port on the Arctic Circle. We might run through the Strait of Denmark between Iceland and Greenland or we might pass east of Iceland, standing the chances of meeting the German submarines that had been seen off the Norwegian coast. But certain it was that the Kursk must go far above the Arctic Circle - farther north even than the latitude of the Magnetic Pole or of Point Barrow, grim northernmost cape of Alaska; and, in readiness for either icebergs or the Germans who would like so well to jettison our cargo, two lifeboats were swung overside from the bridge, to hang there through the voyage. Touched, perhaps, by the brooding beauty of the night and something of this sense of mystery that pervaded the ship, the youths of Armenia, black in the white moonlight, sang the weird chanting songs of the Caucasus, coming back frequently to a quavering refrain which ended in a crescendo wail: "For the sake of God it is hard To bow our heads to coward Turks. It is better to die without bread Than to surrender to the enemy - pitiless and infidel." Long after the moon's height indicated the arrival of a proper bedtime, they sang, yet in the morning they were up before us, marching, wheeling, and going through rudimentary military maneuvers on the broad after main deck. Under the double leadership of a solemn-faced young man in a khaki uniform that looked like that of an American regular and a brisk little chipmunk of a fellow with a swarthy face, eyes that blazed like tow small searchlights, and wide mouth that tried hard but in vain to suppress the contagious smile that had been born on it, they drilled in two groups marching and counter marching, firing imaginary volleys with brooms as rifles, stalking imaginary foes in laborious crawling over the deck, and perforating a large peach basket with their broomstick bayonets. Once the two commanders brought their companies face to face, and with sticks leveled they fired volleys into each other at close quarters, after a manner of fighting that has been unpopular since the Boer War. So close were the two groups that the broomsticks of the opposing front ranks almost touched each other. The men were aiming at the head. "You fools," snapped the smaller commander, "don't aim at de heads! Aim at de big targets, de chests and de stomachs. We're after total killings, not fancy bull's eye work." "If de Turks do that, it's bad for you, Char' Chaplin," said a big dark man in the front rank of the group commanded by the little namesake of the world's most famous moving-picture comedian; "but if they was trying' for your head a regiment of them couldn't get you ten feet away. It's ver' small and it's ver' solid." At this quip, the first crack in a discipline that had been flawless for two hours, the men broke ranks as if on a signal, and with joyous whoops Charl' Chaplin was lifted high and spanked. The big man who had chaffed his commander, and who had held the letter aloft while punishment was inflicted, approaches me. He wore a brown cap, a tight red jersey that showed off each ripple of the muscles on his powerful frame, blue trousers, and a pair of bicycle shoes. On the broad crimson front of the jersey, in white letters, was the word "Indian," carrying a strong connotation, for the man had the high lean cheek-bones and varnished skin of an American aborigine. But I soon learned that he was a professional motor-cycle rider, and that this white-lettered garment of flame was his "colors." "You goin' to fight, too, Mister?" he asked, sidling up and glancing at me somewhat warily. "No, I'm not. I'm an American, you see." "What of it? Lots of us is Americans, but we' re all goin' to fight. This feller's an American, but he's goin' to fight the bloody Turks. Ain't you, Slim?" he said, turning to a handsome man of about forty, with the lean grace and soft tread of a partner, who had come up behind us noiselessly to overhear the conversation. "Betcher life I am," replied "Slim," with a flashing smile. "But you are an American, are you not?" I queried. "By blood, yes. But I been a machinist in Springfield, Mass., for twenty-two years; got my citizenship papers, all my relatives here, hardly a friend in the old country, yet I'm goin' back to fight them Turks, an' paying' my own expenses too. Course, I've probably inherited an anti-Turk prejudice, but still I don't see how any American feller, born so or naturalized, can calmly stand by and see these Germans an' Turks butcherin' women and children and old men and generally letting hell loose over a quarter of the globe. "The Turks ain't so bad as the Germans, either. We've been fightin' the Turks now for several hundred years, and we know their ways pretty well. But the Germans are certainly teaching them tricks that they never dreamed of. Germany is bound she'll wipe all the Christians out of Turkey, and she ain't a bit particular how she does it." This remark was applauded by a dozen of the speaker's companions who had gathered around us, and the man of serious mien in the khaki uniform said, quietly, in English that had no flaws: "That's right; and even the Turks are becoming disgusted with Germans' ways of making war. The Turk indulges in cruelty now and then, as a man indulges in alcohol or drugs, but the calculated, scientifically applied cruelty of the Germans in this war is even to him repugnant." "Are you an American too?" I inquired, impressed by his easy way of speaking and the khaki clothes. "Yes, by adoption. I've been in the States ten years. Graduate of an American business college. Have a small business of my own in Providence, Rhode Island. This is the uniform of Rhode Island National Guard." "Why do you want to fight?" In a voice still quiet, but with something hard in it, he replied: "The Turks killed my father, mother, and brother. Is that reason enough?" Without stopping, he went on: "If it isn't, they carried off my two sisters, and you know what that means." After a pause during which no one spoke, I asked: "And after the war, will you come back to America?" The sternness left his face, he smiled for the first time, and, shrugging his shoulders, answered: " Oh, but J may be killed." "We all want to comeback to America, Mister," interjected a very young fellow, toothless and paler than the others, dressed for Arctic weather above the waist in heavy flannel shirt, red and black Mackinaw coat, and tall caracul hat, but tropically clothed from the waist down in white linen trousers, white silk socks, and white tennis shoes. "America is best place for Armenian boy. But we're all countin' on bein' killidd, so there won't be no bad surprises ahead for us." It was true. To a dozen of them singly I put the same question during the course of the voyage, and each one answered that he hoped to return to America, but that of course the chances were that he would be "killidd." Yet they were impatient to get to the front, and a more cheerful company never sailed the seas. For eight days we saw no other ship, there was no event to break the monotony, and the only visible life apart from that on the Kursk were the whales that rolled and spouted in basking joy, and a hundred gulls that were always hovering over our wake, gladly flying across the Atlantic for the privilege of picking a week's free board out of the steamer's garbage. Yet the Armenians never seemed bored, like the Russians, who sat about and stared at the sea in a sort of bovine apathy. After two hours' hard drilling every morning the remainder of the day spent by these quick, vital fellows from western Asia in leapfrog, or in the graceful dances of their country, which, unlike the dances of America, require slim, muscled bodies and a swift sure-footedness. And every evening, bareheaded in the still, autumn cold of the Arctic, they threw the chanted choruses of their songs at the sky where the Aurora Borealis flickered and flared like a fire behind a curtain. The stories of all of them were much like the stories already told. Perhaps a fifth of them were naturalized Americans, another fifth had already taken out their first papers, and every one of them had been in America at least a year and could speak English. They were part of a stream of Armenians that has been pouring down into the Caucasus from the United States, Canada, England, France, and elsewhere, but particularly from America, for several months now, practically all of them Turkish Armenians, relying on the promise of the Russian Government that part of whatever territory which they may take from the Turks will be given to them as an autonomous Armenia under Russian protection. Almost every ship from New York to Archangel for the past three months has been carrying Turkish Armenians back to fight their hereditary enemy and his adopted war lord. They pay their own expenses back to Russia, are transported by the Russian Government to Tiflis, in the Russian Caucasus, where they are drilled by Russian officers and formed into Armenian regiments, the Russian Government supplying half of their equipment and they themselves buying the rest out of their own pockets. Most of them have had military training in Turkey. For instance, "Charl' Chaplin," the little leader who drilled his company on the careening decks of our ship, had been a lieutenant in the Ottoman army during the first Balkan War. By the 15th of last October 26,000 Turkish Armenians had taken the field against their ancient overloads, and 15,000 more were drilling at Tiflis, these groups being entirely distinct from the 75,000 Russian Armenians that had already been welded into the Czar's army. Fully 2,800 of these Turkish Armenians had been contributed by the Armenian colony in the United States. At the time this article goes to press it is safe to state all of the above figures with a twenty-five per cent increase. The recruiting of these Armenians abroad has been conducted by the Patriotic Armenian Society, the Social Democratic Huntchagist. The word Huntchagist means alarm bell, and since its foundation this society has been watchful to sound the alarm whenever the liberties and rights of Armenians have seemed in particularly serious danger from Russia or Turkey. The Huntchagist was instrumental in starting the revolt of 1887 against Russia, whose policy had been sternly repressive since the assassination of the Czar Alexander II. It was Russia's promise to the Armenians to aid them in getting that security which Turkey had promised to give them by the Treaty of Berlin, with some additional pledges thrown in by Russia at the time of the opening of her Caucasian campaign against the Turks a year ago, which turned the feet of Armenians from all over the world back to the picturesque mountains between the Black and the Caspian Seas, where they have been vainly struggling for independence against Romans, Persians, Greeks, Tartars, Turks, and Russians since the first Armenian conquest by Pompey in 66 B.C. The Armenians have learned not to place great faith in the promises of Russia, but they now believe that the Armenian question, like the Belgian question, will be one to be settled at the international peace conference after the war, and they are confidently hoping that the Powers will insist that the Armenians get the reforms promised them by the Treaty of Berlin. Indeed, Setrack Shalon, leader of the Armenian colony at Providence, Rhode Island, who was in charge of those who sailed with us on the Kursk, told me that the allied Powers had privately given the Armenians assurances that their rights would be cared for after the war. The former head of the Huntchagist, a man named Paramaz, was banged, with twenty of his compatriots, at Constantinople several months ago, but on the strength of the assurances of the Allies, his successor, S. Saba Koulian, has gone to Egypt and has organized, or is organizing , several Armenian units in the British forces there. The majority of the Armenians on our steamer to Archangel had come originally from the city of Sivas, on the Kizil Irmak River, in northern Turkish Asia, or from the environs of that city. "But there's no Armenians left in that old town," sadly remarked an Armenian who had been in Armenia ten years, and still wore the blue shirt and cap of a porter at a well-known New York hotel. "They've all been killed or sent back into the Arabian deserts." He looked menacingly at a chubby young man with dancing black eyes, long black hair, and a month's growth of black beard on his plump cheeks - a shoemaker from Richmond, Virginia, the clearest singer and the most tireless dancer among the lot. " 'Blackie,' there, had a wife and six children in Sivas," he said, "and he has given up all hope of them; hasn't heard a word from them since Turkey declared war. A month ago he began to let his hair and beard grow, and he has sworn not to cut them till he gets his first Turk." The speaker, an oldest man, who had fought the Turks in his day, and who had himself recently lost a brother and father in one of the last outbreaks of Ottoman blood frenzy, was the one pessimist in the lot. He alone was somewhat doubtful of the attainment of which the other ninety-nine were so confident, namely, the construction of an autonomous Armenian Republic under Russian Protection, consisting of the provinces of Sivas, Erzerum, Van, Diabekr, Bitlis, Mamouret U1 Aziz, and Adana, with the city of Adana near the Mediterranean as capital, and with Trebizond as a Black Sea port. The others, piling dream upon dream, sitting in the sun in the lee of the second-cabin smoking-room one afternoon, had come to the point of discussing candidates for the Presidency of the Armenian Republic, and were in the act of taking a straw vote to see how the preference lay among their own group, when the blue-shirted porter rose and beckoned me to the taffrail over the thundering screw, which was sending hundreds of gallons of foamy water up to the surface in boiling whorls. "Poor devils, they'd better kill their goose before they cook it," he muttered; "and if they do kill it, before they can eat they'll have to fight off the bear, who will want it all fir himself." "We're only fighting with the Russians by chance. Before the Germans got hold of the Turks they were easier on us than the Russians." "Then why do you leave a good and certain job in America for the uncertainties of war?" "What can we do? Every day we get word of friends and relatives killed. I just heard that my brother and a cousin were hanged. My friend over there" - indicating a prosperous-looking little man in a new fur coat - "had a good butcher business in Chicago. Member if the Illinois National Guard, but he's just lost two brothers, so he comes too. " He was silent a minute, his eyes following the little specks of pearl and silver over our wake, which were the pursuing gulls, then resting on the broad westerly plane of the sea, glinting gold in the setting sun. "Who owns the sea?" he asked, suddenly. I told him that it was the property of no man or nation, but was subject only to certain international rules and guarantees, and he said, thoughtfully: "That's good. Then it's the best place for Armenian boy to be." Then, with sudden cynicism and an air of weariness: "Oh, I know that international bunk. Belgium was subject to certain 'international rules and guarantees.' The sea, like everything else, belongs to the strongest. But I can tell you that if we can't cook and eat our goose we are going to make it feel pretty sick. At the meeting of this band of boys before sailing, when we elected a leader and pooled our money with a treasurer , we selected a name. It's hard to translate, but in Armenian it means ' the company of horror-spreaders.' We'll spread horror among the Turks. You might call us the Black Company." For eight days we had seen no other ship, yet we knew what was happening in the world of man; we even knew that there had been a gun fight in the Harlem Casino and that two men had died because they wanted the same woman. From the Unites States, England, and Germany we got the essential news of the outside world without the padding that one must take with it in the metropolitan newspapers. The moon, rising suddenly on our port bow on the eighth night, told us that we were going to slip to the east of Iceland , preferring the chance of a submarine there to the certainty of ice on the other side. The Black Company was gathered in its usual place near the stern, singing its favorite battle song. Here is a rough translation which the wizened "Charl' Chaplin" wrote for me on the margin of a newspaper: "ARMENIA The imperious and enraged troops of the enemy Surround our haughty mountains. Don't lose your courage, brave Armenians, This is not a novelty for you. We have learned from our fathers to die like brave soldiers, Who have died leaving us that advice. Sasoon and Dalvorig are surrounded by the Kurds, The passes of Dalvorig are closed with Turks. We want to see you, brave Mourad,* Draw your sword without fear. Our brothers far away are not going to stay always indifferent. They will come to your help soon. We will go against cannon with brave hearts, We will fight the famine with milk and vegetables. For the sake of God it is hard To bow our heads to coward Turks. It is better to die without bread Than to surrender to the enemy, pitiless and infidel. Girls of Armenia, take powder and lead, Fill the empty shells without fear, And you, fearless women of Armenia, Take sword and gun and encourage the brave boys of Armenia. Let us free our Fatherland with the blood of your sons." [An Armenian revolutionist and hero recently hanged by the Turks.] The moon slid behind a sable, cloud, the quavering voices of the swarthy company which had mingled with the moaning of the north wind in the rigging ceased, when a pinpoint of light suddenly flashed far to port and began to signal in winking Morse. A light on our bridge winked back, our engines suddenly went dead, and we slid along in silent expectancy. In ten minutes we could make out a black shape - cruiser, submarine, or what? In fifteen we could see that she was a small passenger steamer, a British auxiliary cruiser, no doubt. A longboat put off, eight men at the oars and three officers in the stern sheets bulking huge in sweaters and life-preservers as they rowed under our stern, which was crowded now like a grand stand, no noise coming from us, and none from them but the muffled creaking of their oars. On a rope ladder over the port side forward the three officers came aboard and went at once to our bridge, and the eight seamen in the light from our decks turned up broad red British faces to chaff our crew, showing the name "Andes" on their hat-bands. "Gahvoritye li vui po Rooski?" (Do you speak Russian?) I shouted at the largest of them , heavy but hard of body, whose face expressed good nature overlaying a shrewdness and a sternness that could not be trifled with - the sort of sailor that has kept England ahead on the seas since the defeat of the Spanish Armada. "Gahvoritye li vui po Rooski?" "No, but we drink it," came the quickly bellowed response. "Got any with you?" We had none, but we had cigarettes and American newspapers that were just as welcome. The three wiry officers, all smaller than their men, climbed down again, having warned our captain to give the coast of Norway a berth of at least two hundred miles, for submarines of the Kaiser had been reported in the fiords. The long-boat shot away, eight sparks showing in the darkness where eight British tars were happily rowing in a perfect unison that brought from us a cheer which shamed the soughing wind and the shrill-crying gulls. The British navy, as usual, was on the job. Six days more cruising the calm Arctic seas that Baffin and Barents cruised, where sea and clouds were so close that one could believe the quaint Roman myth that in the north the gods dwell, for there the heavens rest on the earth; and then again at evening we saw a light. After fully half an hour of winkings, in which we thought the craft must be learning the history and credentials of every one of us, a small fishing sloop converted into a patrol boat came within earshot, and in Russian a voice naively inquired: "What ship is that?" Learning that we were a friend with munitions, he bade us anchor, for the mine zone was near. We were close to Cape Swiattoi Nos (Holy Nose), and by gray morning light we could see the barren coast of Lapland rising almost sheer, seamed and corrugated like a long gray pile of volcanic lava long cold. Now ewe saw another instance of England's value to her allies in this war, for ahead were four little British steam trawlers, part of a dozen that Great Britain had sent from the North Sea to sweep away the mines from the approach to Russia's only open European port. The trawlers went ahead in pairs, each pair dragging between them a long iron chain. If any mines lay in our path, these chains would catch their moorings, bringing the huge submerged bombs to the surface, where they could be explored with a rifle bullet or with a shell from one of the three-inch guns which each trawler carried. On the previous trip of the Kursk four mines had been destroyed, but this time the trawlers caught nothing in the thirty hours' run into the neck of the White Sea, whence it was safe for us to proceed alone. Along the coast of Lapland we saw the disintegrating bodies of half a dozen mine-struck ships, and when we had fallen in behind our escorts at Swiattoi Nos there followed us in single file eleven freighters, some of which had been waiting a week for the arrival of a ship whose cargo was considered sufficiently important to warrant the dispatch of trawlers to bring it in. We could not help asking ourselves, "Were Archangel a German port, would those ships have been kept waiting a week for such protection?" Up to the first of October ten ships had been struck by these mines, and about a hundred of the infernal devices had been fished from the sea and destroyed by the Russians. The Slavs say that the mines are by neutral ships in the pay of Germany, and they declare that Norwegian fishermen are the usual offenders. Norway as a whole is distinctly in sympathy with the Allies, but her fishermen have a long-standing grievance with the Czar over the question of their rights on the Russian banks, and may be that some of them are low enough to vent their spite in this diabolical form for German gold. The White Sea, clear green at its entrance, became a dirty yellowish brown, a sign that we were nearing the mouth of the North Dwina River. Ahead, a long strip of breaking waves showed where the bar lay. At the deepest point there were only twenty-two and a half feet of water on the bar; we drew twenty-two feet, and dared not cross in the rough sea then running, lest a big wave slipping from under the vessel should let her down on the bar and break her in two. Twenty-four hours later a pilot took us through, the big ship trembling because there was no water under her keel, and spinning on her heel as she followed the twisting channel, only seventy yards in width, with Russian mines on each side, and farther back the combers breaking in white clouds on the shallows like shells bursting on a field of snow. That channel must be dredged before Archangel is accessible to the largest steamers. Inside the bar we anchored for the night, and in the morning saw before us a country which the tourist has never disturbed. Saffron in the late-rising Arctic sub, the main branch of the North Dwina " stretched leisurely off in a pleasant plain" of dark-green, close-parked fir trees, so short that from the uppermost deck of the steamer we could see other branches and articulate veins of the great stream threading the widespread forest like bright-colored ribbons, some of them mere ditches, none of them very wide. The main channel itself was barely broad enough for two large steamers to pass each other - a process which was constantly going on, "empties" or with war supplies from America or England passing up the river, and cargoes of lumber, wheat, or butter going down. With the Baltic closed to the butter trade and the Dardanelles locked on Russian wheat, these commodities are flowing out of Archangel as rapidly as the railway and docking facilities permit. From fifteen to twenty million poods of wheat had been shipped to Russia's allies between May 1 and December 1, according to our excellent and energetic Russian commercial attaché, Mr. Henry D. Baker, and nearly a million poods were waiting for steamers at Archangel when I arrived. A pood is thirty-six pounds. Each bend of the river disclosed sawmills grouped on both banks, and the air was filled with the filled with the fine smell of clean lumber. Here and there on marshy patches between sawmills were small thatch-roofed log huts of the fisher-folk, and in the stream sad-faced women were rowing heavy boats which their lords and masters steered. The whole scene was busy, grimly energetic, yet almost melancholy - so far out of tune with the spirit of the Armenians , who as usual, were dancing and prinking about the ship, that a Russian merchant of sober mien, looking down at them from the promenade deck, remarked: "Poor fools! Don't you know that now there is an ocean between you and America? This is Russia." Ten or fifteen miles of such scenery; then the river curved, widened, and on the left bank almost as far as the eye could see were the gold church spires of Archangel, shaped like giant beets with their roots in the air. Archangel, somewhat above the latitude of Nome, Alaska, a town of about 20.000 inhabitants, with a small export trade in flax, furs, and timber, before the war, is to-day a city of 40.000, uncommonly unattractive, composed as it is mainly of yellow or brown two-story structures of logs and clapboards extending along the six-mile length of the Troitske Prospect, with a gold-and-white cathedral at intervals to break the monotony, but uncommonly in earnest for a Russian town. With thirty-five large docks where there were three or four at the beginning of the war, with a corresponding increase in the number of warehouses, business buildings, and offices, the town which Boris Gudonov opened to international trade has had a mushroom growth, yet bids fair to escape the swift decay of that vegetable. Except for the ice which locks the harbor for two or three months in winter despite all attempts to keep it open with ice-breakers, as a port Archangel has few equals in the world. With sixty to seventy miles of water-front, a river from one to three miles in width and twenty to forty feet in depth, with a little dredging Archangel harbor could hold the argosies of the world. Alexandrovsk, on the Kola Peninsula in Lapland, whose port is ice free, is being connected by rail with Petrograd and otherwise developed to take the place of Archangel as a breathing-hole for Russia in winter when the port on the Dwina is closed; but it will probably never have the trade of that port during the open season, for, in addition to a railway to the country's capital which is rapidly being improved and will eventually be double-tracked, Archangel has, through the Dwina, water communication with much of the interior of European Russia. Yet with these facilities the city was clogged with freight when I saw it. The railway was doing its best, the river steamers were coming and going, and I counted eighty-six ocean-going steamers of an average of 5.000 tons burden in port, besides innumerable sailing ships, yet the sheds and warehouses were full, and the sidewalks, streets, squares, and all open places were piled with the sinews of war. All available tarpaulins had been used to cover the cotton, the ammunition, and the valuable machinery for making ammunition from America, yet there was much machinery left to stand and rust in the ceaseless rain and snow of autumn. An ambulance purchased by the American colony at Petrograd had been standing in Archangel six months, and supplies for the American Red Cross had been waiting there nearly as long. After years of carelessness and inefficiency these traits have become almost ingrained in Russian character> Awakened by the war, Russia is trying nobly to reform, not yet, unfortunately, with entire success. Standing on a dock among bales of Virginia cotton, watching the efforts of stevedores and cargo shifters to bring order out of chaos, familiar voices assailed my ears. "Hello, Mister! Armenian boy very glad to see you again." The passenger ferry to the station on the river bank opposite the town was passing the pier end, carrying - bag and baggage - the Black Company. Always happy , the company's spirits were irrepressible now that the ocean was crossed and the dearly hated enemy near. Picturesque and temperamental they were, a bright bit of Oriental color in that dreary Russian landscape, as the ferry moved out into the river and they threw back that favorite verse of their war song: "For the sake of God it is hard To bow our heads to coward Turks. It is better to die without bread Than to surrender to the enemy, pitiless and infidel." Outlook Magazine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 MORE AID FOR ARMENIANS Relief Committee Issues Another Call for Funds DECEMBER 10, 1915 Samuel T. Dutton, Secretary of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, said yesterday that, although more than $100,000 had been sent to the sufferers, more relief was needed. He also said that the British and American committees were working together. "T. P. O'Connor, who is a member of the General Committee of the Armenian Refugees (Lord Mayor's) Fund," he said, "is chiefly responsible for the closer co-operation. He has written to both Oscar S. Straus and myself, and it was through his suggestion that we have been able to work together to better purpose than before. "I cable to Ambassador Morgentau yesterday for a report on conditions in Armenia, and expect to nave his reply in a few days. "We have combined all the various Armenian relief committees under the general name of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, and each committee is working harmoniously with the main office. We received $15,000 yesterday from the Boston committee and $1,000 from Hartford, and we hope that the money will continue coming in, as the need of it is very great." New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 LOOKS TO GERMANY TO SET TURKEY FREE Dr.Nazim Bey Says that Teuton Success Means Ottoman Independence December 22, 1915 BERLIN, Dec.12, (via London) "Turkey has abundance of foods and other material of all kinds which she can supply to Germany if Germany needs them," said Dr.Nazim Bey, Secretary of the Young Turks' Committee and one of Turkey's most prominent men. In a statement to the Associated Press on his arrival in Berlin today. "It is only a question of transportation, which seems to be in a fair way to solution." "There is no lack off anything in Turkey. For example, we have 30.000.000 kilograms of cotton which Germany can have the moment she solves the transportation problem, hot to speak of 10.000.000 kilograms of reserve supply in the shape of mattresses and other articles in Turkish homes. The same is true of copper. Of this we have at least 10.000.000 kilograms (88.184.000 pounds) which Germany can have at any time." Because of the abundance of necessaries and of the progress of military affairs to this time. Dr. Nazim Bey predicts eventual victory for the central powers. He is certain Germany will find a way to effect transportation communications with Turkey in a short time. "Such a success will mean independence for Turkey for the first time," he continued. "There is immeasurably less of peace propaganda in Turkey today than anywhere else. You must remember that for decades there has hardly been peace for ten consecutive years with us, and accordingly we are accustomed to conflicts. We reckon that the present conflict will last one to two years more, but we are really indifferent as to the duration of the war. In any event Turkey will be the last to call a halt." "Turkey is enthusiastic for a number of reasons. First , she had never fought previously under such favorable conditions. Second, the thought of eventual independence stimulates the troops tremendously. Third, the soldiers are spurred on by hatred of their enemies. This hatred is engendered by illegal acts. The Turks regard the Allies as real barbarians, and when captured in a wounded condition frequently refuse food or drink from their captors, though when conditions are reversed the Turks give their prisoners freely of their food. " Dr. Nazim Bey spoke calmly except when the subject of the world's impression of Turkish-Armenian relations was brought up. Of this he talked in bitter words. America in particular, he said, - had gained a false impression in two ways. First, investigators of conditions had not been neutral or unbiased. Second, these investigators went to the wrong sources for their information to Greeks, Jews, and Armenians, who are Turkish subjects and have grudges to air. "Every time a Turk does something praiseworthy in this world he is hailed as an Armenian," he continued, "but or acts basely, he is a Turk or something else." Expressing himself as an ardent admirer of America and most things American and admitting that Turkey needed the trade of the United States even more than of Germany. Dr.Nazim Bey nevertheless asserted that the delivery of ammunition by Americans to the Allies had served greatly to estrange his people from the United States. He thought it would be some time after the war before this feeling would die down sufficiently to make Turkey a field for American business. He said the breach had been widened by the "injustice of the American press toward Turkey." Thanks to Germany, Dr. Nazim Bey continued, Turkey had gradually been lifting herself from a sort of financial slough of despond, so that for the last three months the Government had been able to pay for all its purchases out of money loaned. He summed up the financial position of the Turkish Empire as follows: "One cannot say that the situation is good for our export trade has been stopped and consequently our income is reduced. But it is not serious". Dr. Nazim Bey takes issue with those who have said the British could have broken through the Dardanelles in March if they had been willing to make a little greater sacrifice. He says that the principal forts were not damaged, and that they had plenty of ammunition to repel any attack. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 AS TO MOSLEM UNITY December 22, 1915 (10:16) To the Editor of the New York Times: I beg to take exception to the statement to the effect that the Moslem world is divided. There is not only a lack of evidence to support this statement, but close followers of the trend of affairs in the East have been struck by the spirit of enthusiasm exhibited throughout the Mohammedan countries since Turkey's entry into the present conflict. It is true that England, whose policy has always been directed to prevent Turkey from becoming a power strong enough to become a symbol for the progress of all Moslem races, has tried to attain her purpose by "appointing a Sultan" to the Egyptian throne, but this attempt has not only failed to materialize but has had the rather unlucky effect of making the "Arabs furious against the British for having appointed a Sultan of Egypt, which title they claim, is reserved for the Caliph II. Constantinople," as Neufeld, who has just returned from a journey in Arabia, says. The fact that the so-called Sultan has at several times narrowly escaped assassination by the Egyptian themselves indicates that he is not altogether welcomed even by his own countrymen. What has Turkey done to assure the happiness of the Ottoman Empire? To say nothing of the admitted defeat inflicted on the "mistress of the seas" by the "sick man of Europe" in the Dardanelles, we have crushed at least two revolutions, one in Yemen, organized by England for the formation of a new Caliphate under British control, in which England's participation had become an open fact when her former Commissaries, Iman Yahya and Seyid Idris, renewed their allegiance to the Ottoman authorities: the other in Armenia, which was frustrated by virtue of the precautionary measures taken by the Government to the utter disappointment of England and Russia, who had spent millions in carrying out their seditious propaganda. New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 GERMANY PROTESTED ARMENIAN MASSACRES December 23, 1915 BOSTON, Dec.22. - The German Government on August,9 last filed at Constantinople a protest against the Turkish treatment of Armenians, according to Dr. James L.Barton, Chairman of the Serbian Relief, who today made public the text of the protest. In a statement quoting the official statement transmitted by the German Embassy at Constantinople, Dr. Barton speaking for the committee, called attention to the fact that Count Ernest von Reventiow, the German naval expert, in a recent statement, published in the Tages Zeitung in Germany and cabled to the United States, strongly defended Turkey's massacre of the Armenians on the basis of military necessity. "One wonders," Dr. Barton added, "whether von Reventiow knows that throughout the length and breadth of the Turkish Empire, after the men (who only were capable of revolution, but who, according to every known evidence, did not revolt) had nearly all been disposed of, the attack fell upon the widows and orphans, who were driven from their homes by hundreds of thousands at the point of the bayonet." "It is possible that von Reventiow knows that fully one-half of these refugees miserably perished from violence, exposure and chronic starvation. He must be ignorant of the sickening reports made by many eyewitnesses - American, Italian, Bri German - civilian and official, who tell of seeing these helpless inoffensive women and girls brained because they clamored for food or forced into Islam because perchance they were comely, of women throwing their babies into rivers or over precipices to save them from the impending horror of continued existence." "He cannot have known that on August, 9 of this year, in Constantinople, the German Ambassador, in the name of his Imperial master, filed a protest against these horrors with the Turkish Government couched in the following words: " 'The German Embassy regrets to have to realize that, according to information received from impartial and reliable sources, acts of violence, such as massacres and plunders, which could not be justified by the aim that the Imperial Government was pursuing, instead of being checked by the local authorities, regularly followed the expulsion of Armenians, so that most of them perished before reaching their destination. It is chiefly from the provinces of Trebizond, Diarbekir, and Erzeroum that these facts are reported; in some places, as in Mardin, all Chistians, without distinction of race or religion, had the same fate." " 'At the same time the Imperial Government has thought it right to extend the measure of expatriation to the other provinces of Asia Minor, and very recently the Armenian villages of the district of Ismit, near the capital, have been evacuated under similar conditions." " 'Under such circumstances the Germany Embassy, by order of its Government, is obliged to demonstrate once more against these acts of horror.' " New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 BULGARS AND ARMENIANS December 23, 1915 To the Editor of the New York Times A telegram from London, dated Dec.21, which appeared in the columns of The Times and of some other papers, purports to give the contents of a dispatch to The London Times to the effect that "all Armenians in Adrianople have either been massacred or deported by the Bulgarians, 1600 men being deported to Asia Minor," and that "many were placed on fishing vessels bound for Asia Minor." Unless we suppose that in the transmission of the above dispatch the word "Bulgarians was by mistake substituted for "Turks," the whole story is sheer nonsense. In the first place, Adrianople is not in Bulgaria or under Bulgarian rule. In the second place, the deported could not have been sent to Asia Minor " on sailing vessels," because Adrianople is an inland town at least 150 miles from the sea, and all the intermediate territory between is and the sea is under Turkish rule. But the strangest part of the dispatch is that the first half of it asserts is contradicted by the second half, namely, that a memorial had been presented (by Armenians, of course,) to the Bulgarian Government "invoking interference in behalf of the persecuted Armenians" and giving "a frightful picture of their sufferings in Asia Minor at the hands of the Turkish authorities." Every sensible man will see that the Armenians could not very well ask the Bulgarian Government to interfere against its own doings or its own authorities. The whole dispatch is evidently an intentional or unintentional muddle. The truth of the matter is that of all the peoples in the Near East the Armenians and the Bulgarians have invariably maintained most kindly and friendly relations with each other. At the time of the massacres in 1896, when Greece and Rumania refused them any asylum, thousands of Armenians fled for refuge to Bulgaria, where they were kindly received and treated. A large number of them have permanently established themselves in the country, and during the Balkan wars many of them fought in the Bulgarian ranks. During the recent persecutions, also, hundreds of Armenians who succeeded in making their escape from Constantinople or other places found safety in Bulgaria. A memorial presented by an Armenian deputation, last August, to the Bulgarian Prime Minister, begging for Bulgaria's interference in the behalf of the Armenians, was officially forwarded to the Turkish Government , while the Bulgarian press unanimously look up their defense and urged upon Turkey their better treatment. A BULGARIAN New York, Dec.22, 1915 New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 Turkey's Past and Future JANUARY 3, 1916 To the Editor of The New York Times: In the columns of your last Sunday's issue I read a letter by Djevad Eyoub, under the title "New Turkish Power," in which he states that just as Ertogrul, 631 years ago, with his 400 warriors helped the weaker of the two fighting armies and came out victorious, thus causing the rise of the military power of the house of Osman, so a descendant of the same house (Enver *****) views this gigantic conflict and decides to throw his lot with what seems the weaker (Tsutonic) side, and this is going to mean not only rise in military power to Turkey, but in Kulture also history repeated itself. In 1803 a general massacre of the Armenians by the famous descendants of Ertogrul, whom Djevad Eyoub calls the defender of the weak and helpless, sent 250,000 weak and helpless men, women, and children to their graves. Again, in 1908, a carefully planned massacre wiped out in the State of Adana 30,000 weak and helpless Armenians. History repeats itself. And even in 1915 which according to Djevad Eyoub, dates the rise of Turkey in power and Kultur, 950,000 Armenians met their deaths either by massacre or by starvation in the desert. Is it possible that a nation can rise in power again when that power was secured with the sword alone? As for her army, Turkey has to thank the Kaiser for it German coin, German brains, German guns and the German submarines are working behind the Turkish forces. Removed all these Germanic factors and the Turkish Army is no more. S. S. KAISH. Syracuse University, Dec. 30, 1915 New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 500 ARMENIANS SLAIN UNDER TURKISH ORDER JANUARY 15, 1916 LONDON,Jan.14.--Armenian refugees arrived at Erivan, Russian Trascaucasia, state that 500 Sasun Armenians who were forced by cold and famine to surrender to the Turks under the Government amnesty, were killed by order of the Governor of Mush. The men were massacred and the women and children drowned in the Euphrates River. This news was telegraphed to Viscount Bryce by an Armenian refugee worker. Commenting on the telegram to Viscount Bryce from the frontier of Russian Transcaucasia and Asiatic Turkey, the Armenian Refugees Committee in London says: "This seems to indicate the final destruction of the unfortunate Armenian peasantry who fled to the mountains to escape massacre. They were the most manly part of the Armenian nation, leading a quiet life in the remote valleys of the Euphrates." New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 SAVED BY AMERICAN CONSUL JANUARY18, 1916 GENEVA, Jan 17, (via London.).-- Thirty Armenian refugees, some of them formerly wealthy, have arrived here by way of Egypt and Italy, and others are to follow them. The Armenians say that it was solely??? owing to the energetic action of the American Consul at Aleppo, who adopted a strong attitude with the Turkish military authorities, that thousands of Armenian lives at Aleppo and in the surrounding regions were saved. They assert that the German Consul, Herr Roesseler, took no action to stay the Turks. One of the Armenians, a man eighty years of age, said: "America saved us from death, but there are many thousands in our country who are waiting to be saved from slavery. Only America can help us. Thousands of Armenians have crosses the frontier into Russia, but the Armenian national has virtually been annihilated by the Turks." New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashot Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 SUBMARINES AND ARMENIA JANUARY 26, 1916 To the Editor of the New York Times: There is method in Turko-Teunic madness if Turkey admits the responsibility for the sinking of the Persia. It is a well-known fact that at the beginning of the world war Turkey did not possess any submarines worth the name. She may have later constracteristic Turkish slothfulness would render it well night impossible. Let us grant, however, that Turkey has since constructed some submarines. But where could she procure the crews to man them? It has often been asserted that it is easier to construct submarines than to train officers for them. German submarine officers might be Turkofied by wearing red fezzes of their heads, or bearing on their arms red bands with the inscription, "Mohammed is the prophet of God," yet they would not cease to be Germans. If the United States is deceived by this latest Teutonic trick, Germany will accomplish two things: first, she will be in position to continue her barbarous submarine warfare in the Mediterranean under the Turkish flag, as she will undoubtedly advise Turkey not to accede to any American demands for reparation; and secondly, by a severance of diplomatic relations between the United states and Turkey, which may result from the Persia dispute, the despicable German plan for exterminating the Armenians will be consummated. That the German Government has been the instigator of the worse-than-massacre deportation of the Armenians has often been intimated, even by Turkish officials and priests. And taking into consideration the German control of the Turkish Government in Constantinople, it is obvious that the Kaiser could have instantly terminated those Turkish atrocities had he so desired. M. Victor Bernard, the eminent French publicist, whose impassioned appeal to President Wilson in behalf of the Armenians will be published in The New Armenian not only directly accuses the German Government but reveals also its motive, saying: So long as the influence of liberal powers was paramount in Constantinople, the Turkish Government viewed in a friendly spirit the educational endeavors of the American and French missionaries, and acknowledged that their work promoted the growth of wealth throughout the entire Ottoman Empire. And the Sublime Porte wants to declare with pleasure that the Armenian pupils, were the Millet-l-Sadik, (faithful nation,) to whom the Sultan entrusted the highest and most important posts of his civil administration. But when German influence came to predominate over the Sultans and their camarilla, the Armenians were persecuted tortured, and massacred by the hundred thousands. After the massacred by the hundred thousands. After the massacres of 1896 and 1909, perpetrated by the order of Abdul Hamid, the Yong Turks undertook to extirpate systematically the Armenian nation, and the work of extirpation is being executed in those provinces where one day the Baghdad Railway is expected to transport the German colonies. Accordingly, if the Armenians are not extirpated the prospects of German colonization in the fertile Armenian provinces will become nil. Thus far the only obstacle that has prevented the consummation of the Kaiser's plan for the total destruction of the Armenians has been the American financial assistance rendered the persecuted Armenians through the United States Ambassador Consular agents, and the American missionaries. Should America be caught in the Teutonic snare by regarding Turkey as responsible for the Persia slaughter and should the next step be the severance of diplomatic relations between the United States and Turkey, the hope of saving the remnants of the noble Armenian race will vanish, and there will be assured for the Germans "a place in the sun" on the graves of a martyred nation ARSHAG MAHDESIAN. New York, Jan 24, 1916 New York Times Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.