Armenian Genocide Contemporary Articles

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BRYCE ASKS AMERICA TO SUCCOR ARMENIANS

 

JANUARY 26, 1916

 

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

 

LONDON, Jan 25.--Viscount Bryce called upon Ambassador Page today to urge America to interpose in aid of the Armenians who, driven out of their homes by the Turks, sought refuge in the wilds of Syria. Lord Bryce told Mr. Page that the predicament of the Armenians was becoming even worse than when the Turks started the slaughter, and said that the need of help was imperative. He informed the Ambassador that he had called as the representative of Armenians but were unable to do anything. Unless America was able to afford aid, he said, the Armenians eventually would starve to death on the barren plains of Syria.

 

Lord Bryce urged Mr. Page to acquaint the American Government with the facts so that speedy relief might be afforded. Mr. Page assured Lord Bryce that he would at once inform Washington.

 

New York Times

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THE AMERICAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS

THE FATE OF THE ARMENIANS

 

FEBRUARY, 1916

ONE of the few results that may be looked for from the War of Nations is the erection of an autonomous, or partly autonomous Armenians state in Asia Minor, although here, as with Poland, there is little likelihood that all the fractions of this unhappy race can ever be united under a single government, for at present the Armenians are divided among three different nations, Russia, Turkey, and Persia, their political lot closely resembling that of the Poles in this respect. Some aspects of the Armenians situation are presented in an article in Nuova Antologia (Rome), by a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Signor Filippo Media. At the outset he notes that but for Disraeli's opposition, the Armenian question might have been settled at the Congress of Berlin, in 18878, by constituting an Armenian dependency under the nominal suzerainty of Turkey. A petition signed by 200,000 Armenians had been presented, and several of the delegates were inclined to support the project, but Disraeli and his assistant, Salisbury, opposed it inflexibly. The chief cause of this opposition was the fear that the new Armenian state would follow the example of the Balkan states and gravitate toward Russia, and would thus render Turkey more vulnerable in case of a Russia attack in Asia Minor.

 

The same indifference to the fate of the Armenians, dictated by considerations of political expediency, prevented any attempt to enforce the article of the Berlin Treaty requiring the Turkish Government to reform the local abuses in Armenia, under the general supervision of the powers. As is well known, this article has always remained a dead letter, and not even the impression caused by the terrible happenings of 1895 and 1896 could induce the powers to interfere. The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bourgeois, replied to an interpellation in the Chamber of Deputies, that in view of " the delicacy of the subject," his answer would have to be given personally and in writing, and in the very midst of the massacres, the Czar sent an autograph letter to the Sultan, Abdul Hamid accompanied by valuable gifts. To make the balance between the Allies and the Central Powers even, we are reminded that about the same time the German Emperor sent his photograph, with a friendly inscription, to the Sultan.

 

While this Italian writer is evidently a decided pro-Armenian, the general exactness of his presentment can scarcely be questioned. The recent revival of the Armenian persecutions in the most aggressive form is matter of recent history, and we must feel all the greater satisfaction that at last some apparently effective steps have been taken by a neutral whose power and influence are due, not to temporal, but to spiritual force. Of this, Signor Meda writes as follows:

 

The efforts of Monsignor Dolci, the Apostolic Delegate at Constantinople, though whom Benedict XV has transmitted his remonstrances and solicitude to the Sublime Porte, have been crowned with a considerable measure of success. In fact, the Turkish Minister of the Interior was induced, last September, to send a circular to the governors of the Empire, in which it is stated that the object of the measures taken in regard to the Armenians was only to check the rebellious activity of that nationality and its aspirations for the formation of an autonomous state, and not to massacre the Armenians.

 

In accordance with this, orders were given to suspend their expatriation, to protect those who had already been expatriated, on their way to the new districts assigned to them, and to provide them with requisites for the establishment of new abodes. All who should attack them on the way, or who should commit any acts of brigandage, were threatened with heavy penalties, and, finally, it was ordained that all failing to conform to these instructions should be denounced.

 

It appears that the Turkish authorities did not confine themselves to this circular, as information secured from the Apostolic Delegate is said to confirm the report that certain officials were punished, and that in many places the persecution had ceased. The warmest thanks were sent to the Holy See by the Armenian patriarch, with the earnest wish that the Armenian blood that had been shed, both of Roman Catholics and Gregorians, might serve a union between the two churches.

 

Of course, at best, this is only a step in the right direction, and any real a improvement of conditions can only come when the Turks are brought under the control either of the Allies or of the Central Powers, as will inevitably happen, whatever may be the result of the war.

 

American Review

Edited April 23, 2008 by Ashot

[Ashot]

THE LIVING AGE

THE MURDER OF ARMENIA

 

February 5, 1916

Not the least service performed by Lord Bryce and Mr. Toynbee in their pamphlet on "Armenian Atrocities" (Hodder & Stoughton), is that they have told the truth in carefully chosen words of moderation; that they have rejected all "coffee-house gossip" and unsubstantial rumor; that they have expressed themselves with almost as much detachment as if they were telling a tale of deeds done "long ago, and ill-done, too." Any expression of violence and deep anger, even of a desire for vengeance, is absent from this truthful and detached record of what is perhaps the most horrible story of the world.

 

The tale is in each the same. It comes from forty or fifty centers - populous towns, each linked by telegraph to Constantinople and Berlin. On a given date, all the male adult Christian population are led away from the city and massacred in some neighboring valley. In some cities as at Trebizond or some coast or river town, the nuisance of shooting or hacking these populations to death is averted by taking them out to sea and sinking the there - a clean, expeditions job, whereby thousands can be destroyed in a few minutes. If that were all that were done - and this at the most is all that could be regarded as necessary by some Eastern conqueror or potentate of the Dark Age - a deed would have been accomplished, frightful but not unparalleled. But what followed is unprecedented - an action committed not in the heat of battle or lust, or animated by fanatic religious fervor, but an action such as might be undertaken by skillful, efficient insects, who hated not or loved not, but just had chosen so. From every town the Christians women and girls and old men and women were assembled in great companies. All their houses and household goods had already been seized by the Turks of the town. Under the charge of some of the lowest ruffians of each city, they were dispatched to their allotted destination, some hundreds of miles away. These caravans traversed the mountains and burning desert, oppressed with hunger and thirst. Their tracks could be marked by those who fell out by the way, and were left to die. The girls had largely been trained at the German and American Mission Schools - some of the women in Europe - even on Germany. Many could speak European languages, and would have passed as Europeans. They were driven forward by the blows and whips of their intolerable escort. Many of them had had their clothes torn from them, and were toiling naked over the desert sands. Pregnant women gave birth to children on the way, and were driven forward with the rest, and died. At every village up and down the prettiest girls were sold to the local Governors or rich Turks to do with them as they pleased, or for the brothels of Anatolia or Constantinople. At night their escorts or the neighboring Kurds inflicted upon the remainder every element of bestiality or lust - under the sanction of the Governors, that "they could do with them what they pleased." We read f their arrival at various Turkish towns, but of no attempt of the Turks to succor them, and of any attempt to do so by native Christians who remained being sternly forbidden. When all the young and pretty women had gone, their escorts, tired of the work, would kill the remainder; literally, as in the Scriptural text, seeking the blessing that accompanies those who "take thy children and dasheth them against the stones."

 

Gradually, under the subjugation of this process, the very elements of humanity seem to have been beaten out of them. They had no men except the oldest, no priest to preach the religion which has sustained them against the Turk for five centuries. "Many began to doubt the existence of God," says on witness. "Don't you see what has happened? God has gone mad," was the cry of another. "The Armenians on their arrival in a Turkish town," says one, "could not be recognized, as the result of their twelve days' march. Even in this deplorable state, rapes and violent acts are of everyday occurrence." Some women carried poison with them, others pocks and shovels to bury the dead. The later caravans on the road came upon the remains of the former, "women, husbands, and sons killed; old people and infants still alive, but in pitiful condition, having shouted their voices away." Those who were too weak to keep up were bayoneted and thrown into the river, "and their bodies floated down to the sea, or lodged in the shallow river on rocks, where they remained for ten or twelve days and putrefied." They were not allowed to sleep in the village, but lay down outside. "Under cover of the night, indescribable deeds were committed by the gendarmes, brigands, and villagers." The people found themselves in the necessity of eating grass. When this particular party reached the Euphrates, "the worst and most unimaginable horrors were reserved for us. The mutilated bodies of women, girls, and little children (those who had gone before) made everyone shudder. The brigands were doing all sorts of evil deeds to the women and girls that were with us, whose cries went up to heaven. All the remaining children under fifteen were flung into the river." In other testimonies (these are, in the main, American Consuls, German or Swiss missionaries), "the caravans are exposed in front of the Government buildings in every town or village where they pass, in order that the Moslems may take their choice."

 

The journey's end, as Mr.Toynbee remarks, is an exact copy of the scheme by which the Young Turks settled the problem of the pariah dogs of Constantinople. The survivors were finally deposited, mainly at the "agricultural colonies" - one southeast of Aleppo, which was uninhabited, owing to the fever of the marshes: the other in the burning desert beyond Der-el-Zor, on the banks of the Euphrates. A visitor sees the first party herded through Aleppo (where the German Consul is all powerful), creatures scarcely human, and deposited in the swamps, where all perished. The remainder were driven on to Der-el-Zor, given up on the way to the Kurds and the Bedouin. A Swiss missionary, Fraulein Beatrice Rohner, describes from personal observation this last scene: "It was evident from their clothing that they had been well-to-do. It was a daily occurrence for five or six children to die by the roadside. ' Why do they not kill us at once?' they cried to her. 'For days we have had no water to drink, and our children are crying for water. At night the Arabs attack; they steal the clothes we have been able to get together; they carry away by force our girls, and outrage our women. If any of us are unable to walk, the convoy of gendarmes beat us. Some of our women threw themselves down from the rocks into the Euphrates in order to save their honor - some of these with their infants in their arms.' " This evidence dates from months ago. Death by now has provided a merciful release.

 

The remains of the Armenian nation have fl into Trans-Caucasus, over the mountains, under every circumstance of cold and hunger; but with hope instead of utter despair for guiding star. Attempts are being made by American and English friends to succor them, but they are dying like flies from privation and disease. More subscriptions for the Lord Mayor's Fund might save a few. But over the greater part of Asia Minor "Delenda est Armenia" waves over the bones of a murdered nation. Christianity in the East is dead - and the certificate of its destruction can be truthfully given by the "Young Turks," the "Committee of Union and Social Progress," when they welcome the German Emperor to the capital of his coveted "place in the sun."

 

What can be said of German complicity? This: (1) That from May to October, 1915, when the vast tragedy was being accomplished, there were German Consuls, all powerful, at every town, who could have telegraphed the facts to their Ambassador at Constantinople, and in an hour from there to Berlin; (2) that all demands made by the American Consuls to the German Consuls to appeal for stoppage or amelioration of these horrors were refused; (3) that the record of the Belgian atrocities differed in degree only, but not in kind, from the German; (4) that Enver ***** had been educated at Berlin, decorated with German Orders, and would undoubtedly have followed any advice given him by his Royal ally; and (5) that the Turks in Anatolia being incredibly stupid and unreachable, the whole apparatus of trade, commerce and culture had fallen into the hands of the Armenians, and the elimination of a million of them would leave a gap specially suited to the kind of German immigration which most feels the pressure of population for expansion abroad. More than this at present we cannot say.

 

But no German emigrants will go to a protected Anatolia. No German Empire will stretch from Berlin to Baghdad: and a bankrupt, decimated, limited race, bound in between secure boundaries, will learn, at length, that God exists, and His wheels grind exceedingly small. I remember following Mr. George Eussell in resigning my position on the Balkan Committee, when Enver and Talaat and other "Young Turks" were feted in London, and quoted glibly passages from Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, and concealed successfully the eternal ferocity of the Turk. I am glad today that I was not deceived by that "gang of ruffians," as Lord Bryce calls them, who have successfully combined the vices of the East and the West. We cannot reverse the vast holocaust of misery and outrage which for six months has cried to Heaven for vengeance and cried in vain. But we can swear an oath and keep it with an equal mind that the sword shall not be sheathed until Turkey-in-Asia is rent in pieces; that no Christian, or people of other race, shall henceforth be ruled by the Turk; and that the Turks shall obtain no advantage - nor the Germans either - from the lands they have depopulated and the people they have destroyed. If that can be accomplished this war will not altogether be fought in vain, or our dead sacrificed without a purpose. We cannot forget our own past guiltiness in the matter. John Bright appealed to posterity for vindication against a cynical Parliament and an absurd coalition in opposing the Crimean War. We were told later on by a Tory statesman that we had then put our money on the wrong horse. We had not put it on a "horse" at all, but on a ravening, half-maniacal wild beast, thirsting always for blood and outrage. A generation afterwards, J.R. Green saw England, under Disraeli, "drifting into war - into war on the side of the Devil and in the cause of Hell." The result was the destruction of the San Stefano treaty and the substitution for it of the Treaty of Berlin - from which most of modern European tragedies, including this war, have directly arisen. Today, the amateur diplomatist blames Sir Edward Grey for not having made an alliance with Turkey instead of finding himself openly at war with her, and she the Kaiser's friend. We can congratulate him and his people on that friendship: a live nation cemented to a corpse, for whose misdeeds he is responsible, and who, in the fullness of time, even perhaps through this desperate sortie to the East in which he is engaging, will drag him down into the same destruction as she is destined inevitably to endure.

 

C.F.G.Masterman.

 

The Living Age

[Ashot]

SAW ARMENIANS GO STARVING TO EXILE

 

FEBRUARY 6, 1916

The story of a journey through Turkey, from a port on the Mediterranean to Constantinople, is told in the January bulletin of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions by a member of the party who recently arrived in this country. The trustworthiness of the narrator is vouched for by the board.

 

The journey to Constantinople began on a Monday morning, a few weeks ago. The first stop was a little village where the party had to remain three hours. While there the travelers went to the home of a young Armenian woman, the wife of an Armenian physician who had a year before gone to the front as a member of the Medical Corps of the Turkish Army. The fact that her husband was at the front for Turkey and ministering to Turkish wounded and sick did not little children from exportation by the Turks came, ordered her and the children to leave, and then plundered the house.

 

"It was one of the saddest hours I ever lived through," says the person who tells this story, "and we knew that in hundreds of other homes in that very town the same heartrending scenes might be witnessed. The courage of that little woman who knew she must take her two babies and faces starvation and death with them! Her smile was like a beacon in that mud village, where hundreds were-doomed. Her husband was far away, ministering to those who were sending her and her babies to destruction.

 

" 'It is the slow massacre of our entire race," said one woman. 'It is worse than massacres, replied a man.

 

"The town crier went through all the streets of the village, crying out that any one who helped the Armenians in any way, gave them food, money, or anything would be beaten and cast into prison. To help them we could do nothing; we were powerless to save their lives.

 

"Already the Turks had taken the American school and church, and after a procession through the streets had consecrated the church into a mosque and made the school a Turkish school. They had taken down the cross and put up the crescent. Some weeks before they had exiled the faithful Armenian pastor, who for a great many years had toiled there, as he said, 'to make a little oasis in the desert.'

 

"Hardly had we left the town when we began to meet one train after another, crowded, jammed with these poor people being carried away to some spot where no food could be obtained. At every station we stopped we came side by side with one of these trains. It was made up of cattle cars, and the faces of little children were looking out from behind the barred windows of each car. The side doors were open, and one could plainly see old men and old women, young mothers with tiny babies, men, women, and children all huddled together--human beings treated worse than cattle are treated.

 

"About 8 o'clock that evening we came to a station where stood one of these trains. The Armenians told us that they had been in the station for three days, with no food. They said the Turks forbade their buying food. At the end of each train was a car of Turkish soldiers, ready to drive the poor people on when then they reached the desert, or to whatever place they were being taken.

 

"They told us that twenty babies had been thrown into a river as a train crossed, thrown by the mothers themselves, who could not bear to hear their little ones crying for food when there was no food to give them. One woman gave birth to twins in one of those crowded cars, and crossing a river she threw both her here babies and then herself into the water. Those who could not pay to ride in these cattle cars were forced to walk. All along the road, as our train passed, we saw them walking slowly and sadly along driven from their homes like sheep to the slaughter.

 

"A German officer was on the train with us, and I asked him if Germany had anything to do with this exile, for I thought it was the most brutal thing that had ever happened. He said, "You can't object to exiling a race; it's only the way the Turks are doing it which is bad." He said he had just come from the interior himself and had seen the most terrible sights he ever saw in his life. Hundreds of people were walking over the mountains, driven by soldiers. Many were dead and dying by the roadside. Old women and dying by the roadside. Old women and little children too feeble to walk were strapped to the sides of donkeys Babies lay dead in the road. Human life thrown away everywhere."

 

"Another man on the train said that in one train he was in the mothers bagged him to take their children, to save them from such a death. He said that an Armenian, a leading business man in ------, told him that he would rather kill his four daughters with his own hand than see the Turks take them from him. This Armenian was made to leave his home, his business and all he had, and started off with his family to weak to whatever place the Turks desired to exile him.

 

"When we reached a station near Constantinople we met a long train of Armenians that had just been exiled. Some of our party talked with one of the native teachers from the American school. Among other things he said that an old man was walking the street when the order came to leave. The old man was deaf and did not understand. Because he made no move to leave the soldiers shot him down in the street.

 

"On every train we met we heard the heartrending cries of little children."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

TELLS OF GREAT PLAIN BLACK WITH REFUGEES

 

FEBRUARY 7, 1916

 

A letter written by Dr. Richard Hill a member of the American commission that went into the Caucasus to investigate conditions among the Armenian refugees who fled into Russia to escape the Turks, has been received by Dr. Samuel T. Dutton of the Americans Committee, under whose auspices the commission is working. Dr. Hill writes:

 

"I dined with a gentleman who had come up out of Persia about the time the last great exodus took place. He relates that he saw the great Erivan Plain black with a slow moving mass of humanity that seemed to fill and overflow the horizon. They must have numbered close to 230,000 and they were aimlessly, listlessly wandering in the torrid heat.

 

"Children, were dying by the hundreds, sometimes the frenzied mothers would in their helpless mad grief, fling their children from them over the roadside into the fields, so their emaciated and starved babies. Old women and men were dropping out by the roadside, too far gone to go another step. Epidemics had already appeared and were claiming their victims by the hundreds. From that throng he said there went up such an unutterable wall of woe and misery that he was compelled to close the window in his railway compartment to try to shut out the sound of that concentration of agony and pain.

 

"They had been on the march constantly for weeks. Children had lost their parents, parents their children. Out of hundreds of stories that are daily coming to band it is bard to make a choice, for all alike are most touching. We hear, for instance, of Cossack transports picking up scores of little children left by the roadside to die and of their bringing these in on their wagons, sharing their frugal meals with them; of women found dead by the roadside and a baby trying to waken the mother by pulling at her face and demanding food. Of new-born babies left just as they were born, carelessly flung aside the mother often dying shortly afterwards, or of a Russian officer out at the front sitting crouched over a little fire that he had made out of a few sticks, and of a little girl stiff with he cold and hungry, slipping into the circle of heat of the fire and without apology snuggling up to him and going fast asleep in a moment in the kindly warmth of the fire and of that officer sitting cramped for hours in order to let the little wolf sleep in the folds of his big army coat.

 

"I have looked into the faces of hunted, haunted children prematurely old though the children prematurely old through the months of horrors that they have gone though; into the eyes of young women and girls, alas, too apparent the condition they are in. Hateful outrage and nightmare being them more and worse facing them, after a month or two."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

AMERICAN BURNED ALIVE BY TURKS

 

FEBRUARY 8, 1916

 

PETROGRAD, Jan 12, (Correspondence of The Associated Press.)--Dr. Jacob Sargis, an American Methodist medical missionary, who has arrived in Petrograd after narrowly escaping death at the hands of the Turks and Kurds in Urumiah. Persian Armenia, asserts that among the outrages committed against the Christian refugees was the burning to death of an American doctor named Simon or Shimmun, as he was known there. His identity was not established further, but the story of the outrage, as told by Dr. Sargis, was as follows:

 

"Dr. Shimmun was in the village of Supurghan when the Turks attacked that place. He was among those who took refuge on a mountain near the lakes. He was captured and told that since he had been a good doctor and had helped the wounded, they would not kill him, but that he must accept the Mohammedan faith. He refused, as almost all Christians did. They poured oil on him, and, before applying the torah, gave him another chance to forsake his religion. Again he refused and they get his clothes afire. While fleeing in agony due to the flames the Turks shot him several times. After he fell to the ground unconscious they hacked his head off. Mr. Allen, an American missionary, who went from village to village burying the victims of this butchery, found the body of Shimmun half eaten by his doers.

 

The Catholic mission there took 150 Christians of all sets and kept them in a small room and tried to save them, but at least forty-nine of them, among them one Bishop Dinkha of the Episcopal mission, were bound together one night, taken to Gagin Mountain, and there shot down."

 

Dr. Sargis was born in Persia, but went to America in 1883, and was educated there by assistance of Dr, W. F. Oldham, and former Bishop of India. He is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan and Ohio Medical Universities, and was for a time resident physician of the Protestant Hospital at Columbus, Ohio.

 

He was doing relief work in Urumiah on Jan. 1 last year when the Russian Army retired from Urumiah and a hundred surrounding villages.

 

There were still left in Urumiah and the villages 45,000 persons, chiefly Armenian refugees, when the Turks and Kurds entered. The latter at once began the work of extermination of the Christian population. In one town alone, Gulfarchin, in one night, according to Dr. Sargis, seventy-nine men and boys were tied hand to hand, taken to a hill outside the village and shot. Their wives and daughters were distributed among the Turks, Kurds, and Persian Mohammedans.

 

"On the second day after the Turkish officers came, " continued Dr. Sargis.

 

Dr. Sargis turned the tables on the Arab doctor by alleging that he was insane and having him put under guard and on a milk diet, notwithstanding he was a doctor in Khalil Bey's army.

 

"Soon after the Russians left Urumiah a German machinist, Neumann, who came in with the Turks, announced himself as German Consul. By his orders a Christian by the name of Mushi was hanged. Eighty-five hundred persons died in the vicinity of Urumiah in five months; 1,500 were killed and the rest died of cold and hunger.

 

"They had a good many wounded and sick. As soon as they heard that I was an able physician, they took me, gave me a bodyguard, and put me in charge of Urumiah Hospital. That was how I came to learn most of their secrets; I helped their wounded and sick. One day there were sixty men brought from Bashkal, all well-to-do citizens, some of them noted men of that place. They were used as heists of burden, forced to carry rolls of barbed wire into Urumiah. The next day they were all taken to the Castle of Ismayil and every one was shot or hacked to death.

 

"About that time Nuri, the Governor of Garv, told me that he had received word from the Turkish commander to kill all the Armenian soldiers in the Turkish army. He said that for my sake he would not do it, but that somebody, else would. Twenty-nine were killed about fifteen miles from Urumiah, at Karmad. We had eight of them in the city, fine fellows, some of them educated in Beirut. They had been disarmed, and one night the Turks took them to the suburbs and shot them. But one of them named Aslam escaped. He dropped with the others, but was not hit. After the butchers left he made his way to the Presbyterian mission college. I was notified and asked to take care of him. I kept him until the Russian Army came. He joined and is now fighting with them.

 

"In the First Turkish Corps, commanded by Khalil Bey, There were about 400 Armenians. One of them, Gubankyan, a graduate of Beirut, told me that they were all doomed to be butchered. When they appointed me head physician of the hospital they gave me plenty of helpers, including seven Christian nurses, six Arabs, and one Greek, Gubankyan told me that if I did not help them they would be killed.

 

"An Arab physician, Bahadin Effendi, was appointed to work under my direction. My Greek nurse warned me that Bahadin had already killed more than fifty Armenian Christians and cautioned me to watch him. One night about 10 o'clock Bahadin sent for me, saying that he was sick. Fortunately for me, the Greek and two Armenian nurses went with me. When I reached the hospital I found that Bahadin was not sick at all. He said to me: "What business have you to disturb me at this time of the night? Your coming shows that you have some design upon my life. I told him that it was a mistake, that the overtaken by an officer, who said that the doctor was not done with me. I protested, but was ordered to go back. So I put my trust in the Lord and went.

 

"The doctor greeted me with the question: 'Who gave you permission to leave the room? and continued: 'You are a prisoner and you will never seethe light of tomorrow's sun.' I told him that I was helping the wounded for the sake of humanity. He cut me off by saying: 'This is wartime. The top of your hat is green. That means that you are a descendant of the prophet, and it will give me pleasure to destroy your life tonight. I must think how I shall kill you. I could throw you out of the window, but that would be too quick. I could shoot you, but that also is too good for you. I shall have to use my sword. You sit down there in that corner and these Turkish nurses will sing your, funeral before I begin to cut you up.'

 

"The Turks began to sing a droning chant, and had no choice but to sit and listen. My bodyguard, the Greek nurse Theodore and two Armenian soldiers, the latter my servants, stood outside the door and when they heard the chanting they thought it was all over with me. The Greek, who was a shrewd fellow, told my bodyguard to enter, and if he say me, to say that the patients wanted to see the doctor. All of a sudden I saw him enter with a lantern. He saluted the Effendi and said: 'The patients want the doctor.' I didn't save Bahadin a chance to say a word. I was up stop me, but they were too late. My bodyguard and the Armenians and the Greek followed close behind me and I got away. I reached home at midnight. My wife and children thought I was already dead."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

RANSOMS ARMENIAN GIRLS

 

FEBRUARY 13,1916

 

The American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, among the members of which are Cardinal Gibbons, Oscar S. Straus, Bishop Greer, Charles R. Crane, and many other prominent Americans, announced yesterday that it had undertaken the work of reclaiming Armenian women and girls who were in the hands of the Turks, and also the paying of ransom, when necessary, to recover the captives.

 

"From information furnished this committee," the statement said, "it is authoritatively estimated that there are hundreds of these young girls and women who today are in the hands of the Turks and Kurds. A great many of them have been reclaimed, but many more remain to be saved. Upon authentic authority it is asserted that there as on an average of one out of every twelve of these young women who is returned to her family by those who were her captors.

 

It is principally from personal influence that the way is opened for this work of reclamation. The Turkish officers for so much money will give information as to where these young women may be found. Further payments will cause them to be brought to some appointed place, and then it is a matter of how much money will be paid for their release.

 

"So far as the payment of ransom money is concerned, no estimate as to the average amount is possible. An instance cited is that of a Russian orthodox priest who was a Persian by birth. The Kurds demanded $15,000 ransom for his release, but when $5,000 was offered they accepted it.

 

"It is for this work that urgent appeals are being made by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. Contributions may be sent to Avenue, New York."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

APPEALS FOR ARMENIANS

 

FEBRUARY 18, 1916

 

Dr. William A. Shedd, an American missionary of the Presbyterian Board, who has been engaged in active work for twenty years in Persia and who returned recently to this country, has written Secretary of State Lanshing regarding the Armenian atrocities. In his communication he says:

 

There is absolutely no question as to the effects of the outrages suffered by the Armenians nor as to the responsibility of the Turkish Government for these outrages. Precisely similar outrages took place a year ago on Persian soil during the period of Turkish occupancy and in part perpetrated directly by Turkish officers and those who were under Turkish orders. In the course of these outrages helpless men and women were killed, women suffered outrage and women and girls were taken captives, while as a result of the conditions of life several thousand died from epidemics.

 

"I am sure there are a great many thoughtful Americans who, like myself, feel that silence on the part of our Government to make no public protest against a crime of such magnitude perpetrated by a Government on noncombatants, the great majority of them helpless women and children, is to miss an unusual opportunity to serve humanity, if not to risk grave danger of dishonor on the name of America and of lessening our right to speak for humanity and justice. I am aware, of course, that it may seem presumptuous to suggest procedure in matters of diplomacy; but the need of these multitudes of people suffering in Turkey is desperate, and the only hope of influence is in the Government of the United States."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

Promising to Hang Some Turks

 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1916

 

Included in the dispatches about the fall of Erzerum is the statement that t he victorious Russians intend to hold the Turkish officials, civil and military, personally responsible for their atrocious treatment of the Armenian population, and that there are to be many trials for murder, the inevitable end of which will be the hanging in large numbers of those who ordered or permitted the massacres.

 

It is hard--for most, probably impossible--not to receive this news with satisfaction and to hope that it may turn out to be true. Of course, on general principles, the amount of killing in progress over a considerable portion of the earth's surface is already somewhat more than sufficiently great, and its increase in not desirable, but there really seems to be no way to convince the Turks that some of their policies are intolerable, even in such a world as this has come to be, except by arguing with the men who devise and execute those policies in he one way they understand.

 

How far, if at all, below the Sultan himself and his chosen or self-selected Ministers, the line of direct, personal responsibility and direct, personal punishment should be direct, personal punishment should be drawn is a question to which the Russians can probably be trusted to find an answer in the number and importance of the prisoners' they are able to take. They are not a squeamish lot, the Russians, and they would do the job well if they set about it. Their own record in the treatment of helpless peoples whose existence they found obnoxious or inconvenient can be held, according to the point of view, either for or against their right to reprehend the Turks for slaughtering Armenians. On the one hand, one might say that it little became the Russians to find fault with any peculiarities of Turkish politics, but on the other, their competence is indubitable for the exercise of deserved as well as of unearned severity.

 

Again, we are often told that the Russia of today is a new Russia, with new habits and ambitions. That, if true, makes it unnecessary and injudicious too industriously to take up old grievances against her. At any rate, she is keeping excellent company, nowadays, and it is only fair to credit nations as well as individuals with sharing the virtues of their associates.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

BRYCE TRUST AMERICA

 

FEBRUARY 23, 1916

 

PARIS, Feb. 22.--Lord Bryce, who heads the British delegation to the Anglo-French Parliamentary conference, has given an interview to The Paris Journal.

 

"The situation in the United States is much too complicated and changes too quickly from day to day," he said, "for me to be able to form any conjectures as to the manner in which events concerning the Washington Government are liable to develop. There is, however, one thing which should be known, ad it is that the sympathies of the great majority of the American people go out clearly and indisputably to the Allies. I never had the slightest fear of real difficulties arising between the United States and the Allies, because it is hardly necessary for me to say that there are historical reasons why a genuine friendship should be felt in the United States for France and Great Britain."

 

Lord Bryce expressed his satisfaction at the fall of Erzerum. He said:

 

"The cause of the Armenians is especially dear to me. There is no people in the world which has suffered more. It has been a victim not of religious fanaticism, but of cold-blooded, premeditated hatred on the part of the brigands who term themselves the Turkish Government and who do not intend to permit the existence of any national vitality except in their own element."

 

Although he had just got in touch with the members of the French Senate conferences, Lord Bryce said he already felt that the meetings and the exchanges of views would be of the greatest benefit both during and after the war. "The great problem which the allied Governments will have to face at the end of hostilities." he said. "will be the creation of some instrument able for all time to prevent a conflagration such as now plunges Europe in desolation."

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

THE AMERICAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS

THE KURDS: THEIR CHARACTER AND CUSTOMS

 

MARCH, 1916

 

BY YOUEL B. MIRZA

 

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, the Kurds attracted the attention of the civilized world by falling upon the Armenians and massacring them. Taking advantage of the cataclysm in the Western world, the Kurds and the Turks appear now to be determined upon settling once for all the question of exterminating the Armenian race. The wholesale murder of the Armenians is not due to religious hatred, as it was at first supposed. A chief reason for this slaughter is economic jealousy. The Armenians are thrifty, industrious, and, for the most part, a well-educated people. Practically all the rug industry in the Orient is controlled by them. They live and dress better than their neighbors. Such things have always hurt the false Kurdish pride The recent atrocities inflicted upon the Christian races by the Kurds in this war have been observed and published broadcast.

 

The aim of this article is not to review the well-known subject of Armenian massacres, but rather to give the reader information gathered from first-hand observations of the Kurds, their land, and their predominating characteristics.

 

The origin of the Kurds has not been satisfactorily settled, but it is believed that in their veins flows the blood of Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Assyrians. In early times the Kurds preferred mountains for their place of habitation, and took great pride then, as they do now, in being called "Gurdu," a title which signifies "warrior."

 

Today the "Gutu" are better known in the Occident as Kurds, and number about two million, five hundred thousand,1 and have their abodes mostly in Kurdistan. Their land, which is extremely mountainous, rises to the east of the upper Tigris in the direction of Urumiah. The area of this space is sixty thousand square miles. There is not a mile of railway in the whole country and neither is there a road fir for traveling except by caravan.

 

No people are more mistrusted by the Persians and the Turks than the Kurds. They do not consider a man's religion and standing; they would rob a Turk or a Persian as well as an Armenian or a Greek. The Ottoman Porte and the Persian Shah have not the power to interfere; for that very reason, I Believe, the Russian rule in northern Persia was a great blessing to the peace-loving peasants, as Russia was the only government which was able to establish order and to create fear among the Kurds. Of two million, five hundred thousand Kurds, there is no one who calls himself lawgiver and ruler, no one who assumes the authority to punish his fellow Kurd. Law with a Kurd is a personal matter. Each individual considers himself his own king and prince. A monarchy of self-control is unknown among them. The Kurdish mind is his constitution , his gun and sword the means by which he enforces his law and justice. Such a state of affairs is not, of course, favorable to the establishment of a stable government, nor is such an atmosphere conducive to the development of the better qualities of human nature.

 

Occasionally some queer stories have been told by visitors to Kurdistan; one of these remains in my memory as exemplifying the schooling of a young Kurd. My grandfather, who had been doing missionary work among the Kurds, related the following conversation with a chieftain: "You have several sons, I understand?"

 

"Yes," answered the chief.

 

"Are they all married?"

 

"All but poor Ali, and no girl will marry him, because he is not a successful thief and robber."

 

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

 

"Oh, I have advised him," responded the chief, "to carry with him a gun and a sword, and I have explicitly impressed upon his mind, that no matter how bloody and evil the deed he might commit, it will only add respect and honor to his name and family."

 

Such is the advice of the Kurdish father to his son. The word kill is the most used term in the whole Kurdish vocabulary. If tow Kurds were in conversation, it would not be very long even for one who knows nothing about the language to detect the word "ulderam,"2 "I shall kill him." It would indeed be very unusual to see a young Kurd without a club in his hand, a dagger in his belt, or a gun on his shoulder.

 

Allegiance of any description is, according to philosophers like Rousseau, a folly, if not a crime, and quite beneath the dignity of a human being. Such is the philosophy of the Kurds. They love personal liberty and under no condition will they willingly subject themselves to any ruler. The Kurds take no interest in modern reforms. They dislike the light of civilization. We hear of every known nationality and people in America except the Kurds. Civilization has never penetrated the Kurdish character; they have preferred their barbaric freedom to law and justice. They have no established homes; in summer they live in tents of goats-hair on the mountain tops, and in winter in mud villages. Their usual diet consists of bread and buttermilk, and cheese made of goat's milk. They have experienced little change since "Noah's Ark rested on the Mount of Ararat." James Bryce, in his "Transcaucasia and Ararat," p.256,gives a graphic picture of the Kurds:

 

Through the Empires of Assyria and Persia and Macedon, through Parthian Arsacidæ, and Iranian Sassanidæ, through the reigns of Arabian Khalifs, and Turkish Sultans, and Persian Shahs, these Kurds have roamed as they roam now, over the slopes of the everlasting mountains, watering their flocks at this spring, pitching their goats-hair tents in the recesses of these lonely rocks, chanting their wildly pathetic airs with neither a past to remember nor a future to plan for. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of the Kurds is great devotion among the members of families. This is exemplified in the following incident. A chief from the mountains of Kurdistan descended into the plains of Urumiah and there engaged in plundering, the property of the citizens of the state of Azerbaijan. The militia was ordered to trap the culprits. The chief was subdued. They were brought into the city, and all were sentenced to death except the chief, who was spared for his gray hairs.

 

Among them was a youth of twenty, strong and healthy; his rugged appearance made an instant appeal to every spectator, and the cry rose, "Save him, save him!" Immediately the old chieftain, whom the Governor had forgiven on account of his age rushed forward and demanded, before they proceeded with the execution, to speak to the Governor. After the poor old man had experienced much rough treatment was granted. In true Oriental fashion, he thus addressed the Governor: O, eye of my home and of my family. We did come from the mountains to carry some food to our families and to our herds. We admit that we have done harm to your law-abiding citizens. You have sworn that the guilty men should die, and it is just, but I, who am pardoned on account of my age, come here to demand a favor of my lord. The youngest of my family is with me; he came here because I asked him. This is his first offense. He is young, and has hardly tasted the sweets of life; is just betrothed. I am here to die in his stead. Inshallah, inshallah (in the name of God) let a worn-out old man perish, and spare a youth, who may long he useful to his family, to feed the flocks and tend the sheep. Let him live to drink of the waters flowing from the fountains and silvery streams of Kurdistan, and to till the ground of his ancestors.

 

The Governor was greatly moved by the old man's appeal. He granted the chief's wishes, and the old man went to meet his fate, while the youth cried wildly and became distracted with grief because the Governor reversed his decree and took the more valuable life of the aged chief. This is characteristic of a system which bears today more clearly than any other traces of the patriarchal government.

 

[1 There are no means by which we can obtain with accuracy the exact population of Kurds, for neither in Persia nor in Turkey has a government census been established.]

[2 The word "ulderam" is Turkish in origin, as the Kurdish language is largely intermingled with the Turkish and Persian languages.]

p. 130 Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, New York

KURDISH TROOPS IN THE TURKISH ARMY

p. 131 YOUNG KURDISH WOMEN AT COTNI, MUSH PLAIN

 

American Review

Edited April 23, 2008 by Ashot

[Ashot]

DETAIL ARMENIANS' PLIGHT

 

MARCH 2, 1916

 

Dr. Samuel T. Dutton, Secretary of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, has received from several German nurses, who are in the Armenian section of Turkey, letters confirming reports from other sources of the Armenian population. Dr. Dutton said yesterday that, while he could not make public the names of the nurses, he was in a position personally to vouch for their trustworthiness.

 

There are several communications. One of these says in part:

 

"Just now I am coming back from a ride on horseback through ------------- plain where thousands of exiles are lying on fields and streets without any shelter, exposed to the power of any kind of brigands. I found men and women badly wounded, their bodies cut open and with broken skulls or in a terrible condition through stabs with the knife. Fortunately I was provided with clothes, so I could change their bloody things and then bring them to the next inn, where they were nursed.

 

"Many of them were so exhausted from the enormous loss of blood that they died in the meantime."

 

Still another report says in part "The camp in ---------- itself is the saddest thing I have ever seen. Right at the entrance a heap of bodies lay unburied. I counted thirty-five in another place twenty-two, right close by were the tents of those people who were very ill. In one single day the burial commission buried as many as 580 person."

 

For the relief of these conditions the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief is appealing for funds. Contributions may be sent to Charles R. Crane, Treasurer 70 Fifth Avenue.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

PLEA FOR THE ARMENIANS

 

MARCH 5, 1916

 

Reminding his hearers that in 1823 President Monroe, Daniel Webster, and the entire American nation protested against the massacre of the Greeks by the Turks, George Haven Putham. speaking last night at the dinner of the Stationers and Publisher's Board of Trade at the Hotel Astor, asserted that the United States today should protest against the similar massacre of the Armenians.

 

"It is the duty of all of us," he said, "at this crisis to support the President in fulfilling the duty of the republic, the Government and the American people. It is our duty to protect Americans, Whether they be at home or abroad. One hundred years ago France went mad under Napoleon. Today we see another great nation which has been affected by madness. It is the duty of the other States of the civilized world to surround it, to stop its fury, and to drive it back to the kennel, where it can do no harm.

 

"To me it is a disgrace that this country has done nothing to protect the Armenians from massacre by the Grandsons of the men against whom our government and our forefathers protested when they massacred the Greeks. Today, I regret to say, we seem to do nothing yet it is the plain duty of the United States to use its influence to relieve the smaller nations from pressure and to prepare to take our place in their interest in the conference that will conclude this war."

 

"The President of the Board of Trade, Arthur P. Jackson, presided, and the toastmaster of the evening was Stephen Farrelly. The other speakers were the Rev. Cyprus Townsend Brady and Burges Johnson, Professor of English at Vassar College.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

RUSSIANS SLAUGHTER TURKISH THIRD ARMY

 

MONDAY, MARCH 6, 1916

 

LONDON, March 6.--The Russian soldiers at Bitlis, according to a Petrograd dispatch to the Morning Post, took a terrible revenge on the Turkish troops for the cruelty which the Turks were alleged to have practiced to ward the Armenians in that district. The correspondent says:

 

"Terrible slaughter followed the capture of the Turkish positions at Bitlis. The Russian troops had witnessed at Van, Mush, and many other places, an appalling sight, the massacre: namely, by Turkish fanatics of tens of thousands of Armenian Christian men, women, and children. It was unlikely after such deeds that any quarter should be given. This colossal killing completed the destruction of the Turkish third army.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

ARMENIANS GET RELIEF

 

MARCH 8, 1916

 

A reply was received yesterday from the Department of state in Washington to the recent letter of Dr. William A. Shedd relative to the Armenian situation. Dr. Shedd wrote to Secretary Lansing, asking guidance from him in an effort to obtain intercession on the part of the United States Government to save the suffering Armenians from further Turkish persecution. The letter from the State Department, signed by Second Assistant Secretary Alvey A. Adec, says in part:

 

"In his latest telegram (received by the department on March 1) the Armenian Charge dataries at Constantinople states that during his last interview with the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs the Minister emphatically asserted that all deportation of the Armenians had ceased and that no more would take place and that Protestant and Catholic Armenians who had been deported would be allowed to return to their homes. The Charge adds that some amelioration of the Armenian situation is already noticeable and that American relief is now being distributed among the surviving Armenians without local official interference."

 

Contributions for the suffering Armenians may be sent to Charles R. Crane, Treasurer, American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

RUSSIANS SEIZE PORT OF RIZEH

 

THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 1916.

 

LONDON, March 8.--The Russians found only sixteen Armenians alive in Erzerum out of the usual Armenians population of 40,000, according to information received in Petrograd and forwarded by Reuter's correspondent in the Russian capital.

 

"The Turkish inhabitants or Erzerum," the correspondent adds, "stated that a few days before the capture of the fortress by the Russians all the Armenians in the town were driven out by the police in a westerly direction, where the Kurds, who had been forewarned, massacred all of them."

 

 

Armenian Refugees Here The armed Italian liner America arrived in the bay yesterday from Naples and Geneva with 187 cabin passengers and 1,727 steerage passengers, the largest number of immigrants bought to this country on any one ship since the war began. Many of the Italians on board were young and able-bodied, but they explained that the Italian Government had released they had families in this country.

 

On the boat were forty-five Armenian refugees, who had been brought to this country by the American Committee of Armenian and Syrian Relief. All were formerly inhabitants of the villages Habatlee and Batyas on Mount Moses, bordering on the Mediterranean, eighteen miles from Antioch.

 

Late last Summer, they said, the 10,000 inhabitants of the two villages received word from Turkish officials that they had been ordered deported to a desert in the interior. During the time given them for preparation to leave their village, about 5,000 men, women, and children fled to refuges on Mount Moses, the remainder being driven under a guard of soldiers to some place in the interior from which none are known to have escaped. The refugees on the mountain twice repulsed a force of Turks sent to dislodge them. Finally they stole from the mountain fastnesses to a slope near the Mediterranean which was patrolled by numerous French ships. Here they said out a huge square of white cloth, made by sewing sheets together, with a large red cross in the center made of cloth from garments. This was observing by a French cruiser, which brought rescue to the whole party, which numbered at the time 4,200.

 

All were taken to port Said, and many of them will be brought to this country in small numbers by the American Committee.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

MORGENTHAU SEES WILSON

 

MARCH 10, 1916

 

WASHINGTON, March 9.--Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey, made a detailed report today to President Wilson on his work in Turkey since the outbreak of the war.

 

Mr. Morgenthau also spoke of the need for supplying sufferers in Palestine with more food soon and recounted vivid stories of massacres of Armenians.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

BEAT OFF 4,000 TURKS

 

MARCH 12, 1916

 

Details of their defense against the Turkish troops and their escape ever the rugged paths of Mount Moses were given yesterday by Ohannes Klijeian, one of the forty-five Armenian refugees who arrived Friday on the Royal Italian steamship America. Most of these refugees have been discharged from Ellis Island and the majority of them have gone to various places in Pennsylvania, where arrangements have been made for them to obtain employment.

 

"Our decision to fight the Turks," said Klijeian, "was reached by watching the fate of other Armenians. We had seen them sent off to exile, then had heard of the terrible persecution they suffered and of their murder. Each village was notified that its inhabitants must make ready to go. Our time came. We held secret meetings, we realized that we were going to certain and horrible death, and, knowing that resistance could not be worse, decided to fight to the last.

 

"It was on Aug. 5 that four villages, of which my own home, Bityas, was one, united their populations. There were 618 from my village and a few more than 4,000 in all. When the Turks learned that we had gone up into Mousa Dagh (Mount Moses) 200 soldiers were sent after us. We had 127 rifles, some old shotguns and horse pistols. We had reached the upper crags of the mountain and had had time to dig hasty trenches and roll large rocks together, making the best barricade we could. The Turks attacked us, suffered severe losses, and were driven back.

 

"Then they made arrangements for a more general attack, dragging up two field guns, which wrought havoc in our ranks. Peter Gragosian, a boy of 14, crept down through the brushwood and among the rocks. He was so close he could hear the Turks talking. With five bullets he killed four gunners.

 

"The Turks were bent on reaching us, and 4,000 strong, succeeded in having a part of their troops occupy high ground threatening our camp. Reinforcements kept coming up the mountain, and we knew something must be done. There was a hurried council of our leaders to meet what we knew was the crisis. As a result of the council our men crept around the Turkish positions in the dead of night, closed in suddenly with a fuallade, and it succeeded, for in a few moments the Turkish camp was thrown into bewilderment and alarm, and the troops, thinking it a much more substantial attack than it was, broke and fled in all directions.

 

"Then followed many days of ???lety and hardship. They kept coming after us and we defended ourselves as best we could. We had captured some guns and ammunition from the Turks, which we used against them."

 

Later, as THE NEW YORK TIMES has told, the women among these refugees made a huge white flag, with a red cross in the center, the display of which on the mountain brought French warships to the rescue.

 

New York Times

[Ashot]

PUBLIC OPINION (New York) combined with THE LITERARY DIGEST

 

The Literary Digest for June 17, 1916

 

The ARMENIAN EXILES are eating grass in a vain effort to postpone the death by starvation that has already overtaken thousands. The only alternative to death for these unfortunates of the Turkish Empire is the adoption of the Mohammedan, faith. Some, indeed, yield to this extremity, but we learn from the New York Evening Post that "the fortitude of most of the people under the sufferings which they are undergoing is wonderful, and they are not losing their Christian faith. The men of the families of many of the exiles are still serving in the Turkish Army." Mr. Henry Morgenthau, late Ambassador to Turkey, has given out that one of the main reasons for his recent resignation was his "great desire to make known to the people of the United States some of the conditions in the Turkish Empire, especially as those conditions affect the Armenians." In an interview in the New York Times he recalls his childhood tears over the scenes in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Evangeline"; but all these things, he avers, are nothing compared to what went on in Turkey under his own eyes. Most of the stories that have reached the United, he says, are founded on facts. He continues:

 

"The Armenians were living just as quietly and peacefully as possible, in friendship and close contact with their Turkish associates, when suddenly they were picked out to be deported. It was then that my heart bled for them. I had been given the privilege of dispensing charity without stint and with full authority on behalf of the English, Russian, French, and Italian nations - even the Serbians had sent me money, and Russia and Italy permitted me to help the poor Montenegrins in my charge. Suddenly, without available funds, I was confronted with the terrific problem of the destitute Armenians. Can you conceive how I felt? It was then that I sent an appeal to the Secretary of State for help, and the response came promptly."

 

"If the people of the United States could only see the distress as I have seen it. If they could see the gaunt, little figures of children, the little orphans brought to Constantinople by friendly Turkish officers, the need of prompt aid would be fully realized. There were two children I shall never forget who had lost their parents, and, nearly dead, were mere skeletons covered over by skin. There were women who came into Constantinople whose condition I cannot describe women who had to become Moslems in order to save their lives and reach the city."

 

"If I dared repeat the tales I have heard, sworn to and signed, they would make men and women weep and every one would see the need of sympathy and help. I wish I had the power to picture an Armenian refugee encampment and to tell how an American missionary hospital fed from its back door a thousand starving persons a day on an average of 3 cents a person with the $30 a day we gave it."

 

"There is no use of accusing anybody or finding fault with any one. What this great country should do to show its appreciation of the wonderful blessings that have been showered upon us is for each one of us to make up his mind to do his share. Picture that you are personally responsible for the starvation of one or two persons if you do not give funds to save them. Twenty-five dollars will enable an Armenian family to be established in comparative comfort. I believe every person would be happier to sacrifice something and give $25 for the Armenians." The money so far received has not been sufficient to help many people. The Turkish Government at first interfered with relief-efforts, but is now showing a change of heart. The present as well as the prospective need is immense. Americans may think they have been generous until they reflect on the 30 cents per capita of our relief-donations:

 

"It may be a Little indiscreet to say this, but I want to say that unless help is given to the suffering Armenians as well as to the destitute Moslems in Turkey, there will be a fearful amount of starvation next winter. They have not sufficient seed to plant their crops or animals to plow their soil. There is less than 10 per cent. Of the arable land under cultivation."

 

"The United States with its 100.000.000 people has contributed only the insignificant sum of $30.000.000 to all of suffering humanity abroad. We ought to drop our heads in shame. Our 100.000.000 people, who have average wealth of $1.600 have not given more than 30 cents a piece. Every one who has not contributed ought to be ashamed of himself. These Armenian people are exposed to the weather with very scanty clothing and nothing to eat, with disease rife among them, and hundreds are dying from starvation. We are the only people to whom they can appeal for help to-day, the only people who dare express their sympathy by actual giving. The people of other nations are afraid and unable to do it."

 

"We can raise in this country easily $500.000.000. That is only $5 per capita. If we are worth $1.600 each on an average, that is less than one-third of 1 per cent. Let the whole world understand that we are not willing to profit by this war, but we are willing to disregard profit and to be a big brother listening to the needs of the whole world."

 

"We have been hearing of the brotherhood of men. If we are all brothers, and we are, have we a right to live on in comfort and luxury and allow these people to starve? I do not think we have. I believe that it is our duty, it is our privilege , for each of us to assume the guardianship of as many of the Armenian people as we can. I do not preclude the other countries. They are suffering just as much. I believe the moral force of America will be doubled and trebled if the rest of the world understands that we are ready and willing and anxious to help the suffering masses."

 

p.134 AMERICAN PARTICIPATING IN ARMENIAN FREEDOM

The U.S flag by a Russian officer amid the Allied forces outside the Governor's house at Trebizond just after the capitulation by Turkish forces. This ancient city on the Black Sea was the seat of Armenian massacres.

 

The Literary Digest

[Ashot]

THE OUTLOOK

THE MISSIONARY REVIEW of the WORLD

RECENT REPORTS FROM TURKEY

 

Missionary Review July, 1916

 

The Russians continue to advance in Asia Minor, but more slowly than at first. As they occupy the Armenian territory, the surviving Christians come out of their hiding-places and peace is restored to the remnant - but Asia Minor as a whole is in a pitiable condition.

 

The havoc wrought by the Turks can be better realized when we think that the number of Armenians, men, women and children massacred or starved to death in the past year would take three days and two nights to pass a given point marching twenty abreast without a break!

 

The American Board received a cable from the charge daffier at Constantinople, urging that all the missionaries in the interior of Asia Minor be withdrawn on account of increasingly tumultuous conditions, but a message from the United States Consul at Tiflis, Russia, stated that conditions in the region of Van are suitable for the missionaries who were driven out to return. The American Board new has four stations under the Russian flag, Van, Bitlis, Erzroom, Trebizond, and has found the Russian officials extremely friendly.

 

Matters, evidently, are very different in the Turkish territory and on the Russian side of the line. The American Board expects the male missionaries to return to Van at an early date. They will travel via Russia and the Caucasus and, for some time to come, will be occupied mainly in relief work. The missionaries still in Asia Minor (one hundred and twelve in number) are advised to consult with Treasurer Peet at Constantinople and the Unites States Embassy as to the wisdom of their remaining at their posts.

 

A company of eight missionaries from eastern Turkey, desiring to leave for home, have been detained at Beirut since January 1st, the Turkish government refusing to allow the United States battleship Des Moines to take them off.

 

In America, the Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief has been stirred to renewed activity by a recent cablegram which states that many of the Armenian exiles, deported from their homes by Turkish soldiers, are reduced to eating grass and are dying of starvation by hundreds.

 

"Sufferings among exiles have been greatly increased on account of their having refused to accept Mohammedan religion in accordance with offers generally made them. The fortitude of most of the people under the sufferings which they are undergoing is wonderful, and they are not losing their Christian faith. The men of the families of many of the exiles are still serving in the Turkish army."

 

The Committee has commissions at work in several cities of Turkey and Persia and relief is being distributed under the direction of American missionaries and United States consuls, each city being the distributing point for a large section of country where are thousands of destitute people. It is estimated that in Turkey, Persia, Syria, and Palestine there are approximately a million Armenians, Nestorians, and native Christians who are destitute and suffering for want of food and the necessities of life.

 

Missionary Review

[Ashot]

TURKEY'S TREATMENT OF THE ARMENIANS

 

July 5, 1916

In Mr. Davenport's article in The Outlook on "President Wilson's Foreign Policy" our Government is represented as saying, in regard to its treatment of the Armenians: "We did all we could. We made protests. We got Germany to protest. . . . Of course, there is a measure of excuse, not for the massacre, but for the policy of the Turkish Government, which was to remove the Armenians from the immediate seat of war. Other countries would have done the same thing, but in an entirely different way."

 

Did Germany protest? In a certain way and form, indeed; but why did her military officers have an important part in directing the soldiers who did the business? Did our Government know whom it was dealing with when it secured the "protest"?

 

Would "other countries" have taken away from their homes, where at best they could obtain only a scanty subsistence, a hundred thousand families, non-combatants, with the fewest exceptions, as innocent of offenses against the Government under which they were living as a newly born child, consisting in large part of mothers with their little children, and those who were soon to be mothers - would "other countries," the United States, for example, have done this, even of done in the best way possible? It would have been impossible to do such a thing without involving those "removed" in a great deal of suffering, together with the certainty that they would be left without support, left to die, after reaching any new home. Is any one innocent enough to suppose that a million of people were removed from the "immediate seat of war" for their own safety? Would any other nation, if it happened to be at war with Turkey, have adopted such a measure? Although some Armenians, if opportunity offered, would have joined Turkey's foes (justly indeed, though unwisely), was a whole nation of people to be taken out of their homes, and thus left inevitably, for the most part, to perish, although this were done "in an entirely different way"? The world has rarely before, if ever, looked upon a crime so fiendish in its conception, so gigantic in its extent, so awful in its frightfulness and its cruelty, so sure ultimately of fatal results, as this attempted blotting out of an entire people whose ancestors had lived in the same quiet homes long before the Turks thought of sizing them for themselves.

 

We, one of the largest and richest Christian nations in the world, having every comfort, living largely at ease and in luxury, have for the space of a year looked with commendable calmness upon this before unheard-of procedure, and "have done before what we could." But has the world heard of so much as our officially spoken opinion of it?

 

Outlook Magazine

[Ashot]

MARTYRED ARMENIA

 

I am a Bedouin, a son of one of the Heads of the tribe of El-Sulût, who dwell in El-Lejât, in the Haurân territory. Like other sons of tribal Chiefs. I entered the Tribal School at Constantinople, and subsequently the Royal College. On the completion of my education, I was attached to the staff of the Vali of Syria (or Damascus), on which I remained for a long while. I was then Kaimakâm of Mamouret-el-Azîz (Kharpout), holding this post for three and a half years, after which I practiced as a lawyer at Damascus, my partners being Shukri Bey El-Asli and Abdul-Wahhâb Bey El-Inglizi. I next became a member of the General Assembly at that place, representing Haurân, and later a member of the Committee of that Assembly. On the outbreak of the war, I was ordered to resume my previous career, that is, the duties of Kaimakâm, but I did not comply, as I found the practice of the law more advantageous in many ways and more tranquil.

 

I was denounced by an informer as being a delegate of a Society constituted on the Lebanon with the object of achieving the independence of the Arab people, under the protection of England and France, and of inciting the tribes against the Turkish Government. On receipt of this denunciation, I was arrested by the Government, thrown into prison, and subsequently sent in chains, with a company of police and gendarmes, to Aaliya, where persons accused of political offences were tried. I was acquitted, but as the Government disregarded the decisions given in such cases, and was resolved on the removal and destruction of all enlightened Arabs - whatever the circumstances might be - it was thought necessary that I should be dispatched to Erzeroum, and Jemâl *****, sent me thither with an officer and five of the regular troops. When I reached Diarbekir, Hasan Kaleh, at Erzeroum, was being pressed by the Russians, and the Vali of Diarbekir was ordered to detain me at that place.

 

After twenty-two days’ confinement in prison for no reason, I was released; I hired house and remained at Diarbekir for six and a half months, seeing and hearing from the most reliable sources all that took place in regard to the Armenians, the majority of my informants being superior officers and officials, or Notables of Diarbekir and its dependencies, as well as others from Van, Bitlis, Mamouret-el-Azîz, Aleppo and Erzeroum. The people of Van had been in Diarbekir since the occupation of their territory by the Russians, whilst the people and officials of Bitlis have recently emigrated thither. Many of Erzeroum officers came to Diarbekir on military or private business, whilst Mamouret-el-Azîz was near by, and many people came to us from thence. As I had formerly been a Kaimakâm in that Vilayet, I had a large acquaintance there and heard all the news. More especially, the time which I passed in prison with the heads of the tribes in Diarbekir enabled me to study the movement in its smallest details. The war must needs come to an end after a while, and it will then be plain to readers of this book that all I have written is the truth, an that it contains only a small part of the atrocities committed by the Turks against the hapless Armenian people.

 

After passing this time at Diarbekir I fled, both to escape from captivity and from fear induced by what had befallen me from some of the fanatical Turks. After great sufferings, during which I was often exposed to death and slaughter, I reached Basra, and conceived the ides of publishing this book, as a service to the cause of truth and of a people oppressed by the Turks, and also, as I have stated at the close, to defend the faith of Islam against the charge of fanaticism which will be brought against it by Europeans. Nay God guide us in the right way.

 

I have written this preface at Bombay, on the 1st of September, 1916.

 

MARTYRED ARMENIA

 

Outline of Armenian History. -- In past ages the Armenian race was, like other nations, not possessed of an autonomous government, until God bestowed upon them a man, named Haig, a bold leader, who united the Armenians and formed them into an independent state. This took place before the Christian era. The nation preserved their independence for a considerable time, reaching the highest point of their glory and prosperity under their king Dikrân, who constituted the city of Dikrânokerta - Diarbekir - the capital of his Government. Armenia remained independent in the time of the Romans, extending her rule over a part of Asia Minor and Syria, and a portion of Persia, but, in consequence of the protection afforded by the Armenians to certain kings who were hostile to Rome, the Romans declared war against her, their troops entered her capital, and from that time Armenian independence was lost. The country remained tossing on the waves of despotism, now independent, now subjected to foreign rule, until its conquest by the Arabs and subsequently by the Ottoman power.

 

THE ARMENIAN POPULATION. --The number of the Armenians in Ottoman territory does not exceed 1.900.000 souls. I have borrowed this figure from a book by a Turkish writer, who states that it is the official computation made by the Government previous to the Balkan war; he estimates the Armenians residing in Roumelia at 400.000, those in Ottoman Asia at 1.500.000. The Armenians in Russia and Persia are said not to exceed 3.000.000, thus bringing the total number of Armenians in the world to over four and a half millions.

 

The Vilayets Inhabited by Armenians. --The Vilayets inhabited by Armenians are Diarbekir, Van, Bitlis, Erzeroum, Mamouret-el-Azîz, Sivas, Adana, Aleppo, Trebizond, Broussa, and Constantinople. The numbers in Van, Bitlis, Adana, Diarbekir, Erzeroum, and Kharpout were greater than those in the other Vilayets, but in all cases they were fewer than the Turks and Kurds, with the exception of Van and Bitlis, where they were equal or superior in number. In the province of Moush (Vilayet of Bitlis) they were more numerous than the Kurds; all industry and commerce in those parts was in Armenian hands; their agriculture was more prosperous; they were much more advanced than the Turks and Kurds in those Vilayets; and the large number of their alien fellow countrymen, is a proof of their progress and of the decline of the other races.

 

ARMENIAN SOCIETIES. --The Armenians possess learned and political Societies, the most important of which are the “Tashnagtziân” and the “Hunohak”. The program of these two Societies is to make every effort and adopt every means to attain that end from which no Armenian ever swerves, namely, administrative independence under the supervision of the Great Powers of Europe. I have enquired of many Armenians whom I have met, but I have not found one who said that he desired political independence, the reason being that in most of the Vilayets which they inhabit the Armenians are less numerous than the Kurds, and if they became independent that advantage to the Kurds would be greater that to themselves. Hitherto, the Kurds have been in a very degraded state of ignorance; disorder is supreme in their territory, and the cities are in ruins. The Armenians, therefore, prefer to remain under Turkish rule, on condition that the administration is carried on under the supervision of the Great European Powers, as they place no confidence in the promises of the Turks, who take back to-day what they bestowed yesterday. These two Societies thus earnestly labor for the propagation of this view amongst the Armenians, and for the attainment of their object by every means. I have been told by an Armenian officer that one of these Societies proposes to attain its end by means of internal revolts, but the policy of the second is to do so by peaceful means only.

 

The above is a brief summary of the policy of these Societies. It is said, that the program of one of them aims at Armenian political independence.

 

Any who desire further details as to Armenian history or societies should refer to their historical books.

 

The Armenian Massacres. --History does not record that the Kurds, fellow-countrymen of the Armenians in the Vilayets inhabited by both peoples, rose in conflict with the latter, or that the Kurds plundered the property of the Armenians, or outraged their women, until the year 1888, when they rose by order of the Turkish Government and slaughtered Armenians in Van, Kharpout, Erzeroum, and Moush. Again, in the time of Abdul-Hamîd II., in 1896, when the Armenians rose and entered the Ottoman Bank at Constantinople, with the object of frightening the Sultan and compelling him to proclaim the Constitution, he ordered a massacre at Constantinople and in the Vilayets. But hitherto there has been no instance of the people of Turkey proceeding to the slaughter of Armenians on a general scale unless incited and constrained to do so by the Government. In the massacre of 1896, 15.000 were killed in Constantinople itself, and 300.000 in the Vilayets.

 

Armenians were also killed in the Vilayet of Adana, some months after the proclamation of the Constitution, but this slaughter did not extend beyond the two Vilayets of Adana and Aleppo, where the influence of Abdul-Hamîd was paramount till the year 1909. I do not, however, find any detailed account of this massacre, or any information as to the numbers killed.

 

The goods and cattle of the Armenians were plundered, and their houses wrecked, more especially in the slaughter of 1896, but many of their countrymen* protected them and concealed them in their houses from the officials of the Government.

 

The Government consistently inflamed the Moslem Kurds and Turks against them, making use of the Faith of Islam as a means to attain their object in view if the ignorance of the Mohammedans as to the true laws of their religion.

 

[* Presumably, amongst the Turks and Kurds. - TRANSLATOR.]

 

DECLARATION OF THE OTTOMAN GOVERNMENT.---”Inasmuch as the Armenians are coming acts opposed to the law and taking advantage of all occasions to disturb the Government; as they have been found in possession of prohibited arms, bombs, and explosive materials, prepared with killed Moslems in Van, and have aided the Russian armies at a time when the Government is in a state of war with England, France, and Russia; and in the apprehension that the Armenians may, as is their habit, lend themselves to seditious tumult and revolt; the Government have decreed that all the Armenians shall be collected and dispatched to the Vilayets of Mosul, Syria, and Deir-el-Zur, their persons, goods and honor being safeguarded. The necessary orders have been given for ensuring their comfort, and for their residence in those territories until the termination of the war.”

 

Such is the official declaration of the Ottoman Government in regard to the Armenians, But the secret resolution was that companies of militia should be formed to assist the gendarmes in the slaughter of the Armenians, that these should be killed to the last man, and that the work of murder and destruction should take place under the supervision of trusty agents of the Unionists, who were known for their brutality. Reshidd Bey was appointed to the Vilayet of Diarberkir and invested with extensive powers, having at his disposal a gang of notorious murderers, such as Ahmed Bey El-Sezi, Rushdi Bey, Khalil Bey, and others of this description.

 

The reason for this decision, as it was alleged, was that the Armenians residing in Europe and in Egypt had sent twenty of their devoted partisans to kill Talaat. Enve, and others of the Unionist leaders; the attempt had failed, as a certain Armenian, a traitor to his Public Security at Constantinople (or according to others, Azmi Bey), divulged the matter and indicated the Armenian agents, who had arrived at Constantinople. The latter were arrested and executed, but secretly, in order that it might not be said that there were men attempting to kill the heads of the Unionist Society.

 

Another alleged reason also was certain Armenians, whom the Government had collected from the Vilayets of Aleppo and Adrianople and had sent off to complete their military service, fled, with their arms, to Zeitoun, where they assembled, to the number of sixty young men, and commenced to resist the Government and to attack wayfarers. The Government dispatched a military force under Fakhry *****, who proceeded to the spot, destroyed a part of Zeitoun, and killed men, women and children, without encountering opposition on the part of the Armenians. He collected the men and women and sent them off with parties of troops, who I killed many of the men, whilst as for the women, do not ask what was their fate. They were delivered over to the Ottoman soldiery; the children died of hunger and thirst; not a man or woman reached Syria except the halt and blinded, who were unable to keep themselves alive; the young men were all slaughtered; and the good-looking women fell into the hands of the Turkish youths.

 

Emigrants from Roumelia were conveyed to Zeitoun and established there, the name of that place being changed to “Reshadiya,” so that nothing should remain to remind the Turks of the Armenian name. During our journey from Hamah we saw many Armenian men and women, sitting under small tents which they had constructed from sheets, rugs, ect. Their condition was most pitiable, and how could it be otherwise? Many of these had been used to sit only on easy chairs [lit., rocking-chairs], amid luxurious furniture, in houses built in the best style, well arranged and splendidly furnished. I saw, as others saw also, many Armenian men and women in good-wagons on the railway between Aleppo and Hamah, herded together in a way which moved compassion.

 

After my arrival at Aleppo, and two days’ stay there, we took the train to a place called Ser-Arab-Pounary. I was accompanied by five Armenians, closely guarded, and dispatched to Diarbekir. We walked on our feet thence to Seruj, where we stopped at a khan [rest-house] filled with Armenian women and children, with a few sick men. These women were in a deplorable state, as they had done the journey from Erzeoum on foot, taking a long while to arrive at Seruj. I talked with them in Turkish, and they told me that the gendarmes with them had brought them to places where there was no water, refusing to tell them where water to be found until they had received money as the price. Some of them, who were pregnant, had given birth on the way, and had abandoned their infants in the uninhabited wastes. Most of these women had left their children behind, either in despair, or owing to illness or weakness which made them unable to carry them, so they threw them on the ground; some from natural affection could not do this and so perished in the desert, not parted from their infants. They told me that there were some among them who had not been used to walk for a single hour, having been brought up in luxury, with men to wait on them and women to attend them. These had fallen into the hands of the Kurds, who recognize no divine law, and who live on lofty mountains and in dense forests like beast of prey; their honor was outraged and they died by brutal violence, many of them killing themselves rather than sacrifice their virtue to these ravening wolves.

 

We then proceeded in carts from Seruj to El-Raha (Urfa). On the way I saw crowds going on foot, whom from a distance I took for troops marching to the field of battle. ON approaching, I found they were Armenian women, walking barefoot and weary, placed in ranks like the gendarmes who preceded and followed them. Then every one of them lagged behind, a gendarme would beat her with the butt of his rifled, throwing her on her face, till she rose terrified and rejoined her companions. But if one lagged from sickness, without help or comfort, to be a prey to wild beast, or a gendarme ended her life by a bullet.

 

On arrival at Urfa, we learned that the Government had sent a force of gendarmes and police to the Armenian quarters of the town to collect their arms, subsequently dealing with these people as with others. As they were aware of what had happened to their kinsmen--the khans at Urfa being full of women and children--they did not give up their arms, but showed armed resistance, killing one man of the police and three gendarmes. The authorities of Urfa applied for a force from Aleppo, and by order of Jemal *****--the executioner of Syria--Armenian quarters into a waste place, killing the men and the children, and great numbers of the women, except such as yielded themselves to share the fate of their sisters--expulsion on foot to Deirel-Zur, after the ***** and his officers had selected the prettiest amongst them. Disease was raging among them; they were outraged by the Turks and Kurds; and hunger and thirst completed their extermination.

 

After leaving Urfa, we again saw throngs of women, exhausted by fatigue and misery, dying of hunger and thirst, and we saw the bodies of the dead lying by the roadside.

 

On our arrival at a place near a village called Kara Jjevren, about six hours distant from Urfa, we stopped at a spring to breakfast and drink. I went a little apart, towards the source, and came upon a most appalling spectacle. A woman. partly unclothed, were lying prone, her chemise disordered and red with blood, with four bullet-wounds in her breast. I could not restrain myself, but wept bitterly. As I drew out a handkerchief to wipe away my tears, and looked round to see whether any of my companions had observed me, I saw a child not more than eight years old, lying on his face, his head cloven by an axe. This made my grief the more vehement, but my companions cut short my lamentations, for I heard the officer, Aarif Effendi, calling to the priest Isaac, and saying, “Come here at once,” and I knew that he had seen something which had startled him. I went towards him, and what did I behold? Three children lying in the water, in terror of their lives from the Kurds, who had stripped them of their clothes and tortured them in various ways, their mother near by, moaning with pain and hunger. She told us story, saying that she was from Erzeroum, and had been brought by the troops to this place with many other women after a journey of many days. After they had been plundered of money and clothing, and the prettiest women had been picked out and handed over to the Kurds, they reached this place, where Kurdish men and women collected and robbed them of all the clothes that remained on them. She herself had stayed here, as she was sick and her children would not leave her. The Kurds came upon them again and left them naked. The children had lain in the water in their terror, and she was at the point of death. The priest collected some articles of clothing and gave them to the woman and the children; the officer sent a man to the post of gendarmes which was near by, and ordered the gendarme whom the man brought with him to send on the woman and children to Urfa, and to bury the bodies which were near the guardhouse. The sick woman told me that the dead woman refused to yield herself to outrage, so they killed her and she died nobly, chaste and pure from defilement; to induce her to yield they killed her son beside her, but she was firm in her resolve and died heart-broken.

 

In the afternoon we went on towards Kara Jevren, and one of the drives pointed out to us some high mounds, surrounded by stones and rocks, saying that here Zohrab and Vartakis had been killed, they having been leading Notables among the Armenians, and their Deputies.

 

KRIKOR ZOHRAB AND VARTAKIS.--No one is ignorant of who and what and where was Zohrab, the Armenian Deputy for Constantinople, his name and repute being celebrated the institution of the Chamber. He used to speak with learning and reflection, refuting objections by powerful arguments and convicting proofs. His speeches in the chamber were mostly conclusive. He was learned in all subjects, but especially in the science of law, as he was a graduate of universities and had practiced at the Bar for many years. He was endowed with eloquence and great powers of exposition; he was courageous, not to be turned from his purpose or intimidated from pursuing his national aims. When the Unionists realized that they were deficient in knowledge, understanding nothing about polity or administration, and not aware of the meaning of liberty or constitutional government, they resolved to return to the system of their Tartar forefathers, the devastation of cities and the slaughter of innocent men, as it was in that direction that their powers lay. They sent Zohrab and his colleague Vartakis away from Constantinople, with orders that they should be killed on the way, and it was announced that they had been murdered by a band of brigands. They killed them in order that it might not be said that Armenians were more powerful, more learned, and more intelligent than Turks. Why should such bands murder none but Armenians? The Falsity of the statement is obvious,

 

Zohrab and Vartakis fell victims to their own courage and firmness of purpose; they were killed out of envy of their learning and their love for their own people, and for their tenacity in pursuing their own path. They were killed by that villain, Ahmed El-Serzi, one of the sworn men of the Unionists, he who murdered Zeki Bey; his story in the Ottoman upheaval is well known, and how the Unionists saved him from his fitting punishment and even from prison. A Kurd told me that Vartakis was one of the boldest and most courageous men who ever lived; he was chief of the Armenian bands in the time of Abdul-Hamid; He was wounded in the foot by a cannon-ball whilst the Turkish troops were pushing these bands, and was imprisoned either at Erzeroum or at Maaden, in the Vilayet of Diarbekir. The Sultan Abdul-Hamid, through his officials, charged him to modify his attitude and acknowledge that he had been in error, when he should be pardoned and appointed to any post he might choose. He rejected this offer, saying, “I will not sell my conscience for a post, or say that the Government of Abdul-hamid is just, whilst I see its tyranny with my eyes and touch it with my hand.”

 

It is said that the Unionists ordered that all the Armenian Deputies should be put to death, and the greater number of them were thus dealt with. It is reported also that Dikran Gilikian, the well-known writer, who was an adherent of the Committee of Union and Progress, was killed in return for his learning, capacity, and devotion to their cause. Such was the recompense of his services to the Unionists.

 

In the evening we arrived at Kara Jevren, and slept there till morning. At sunrise we went on towards Sivrek, and half-way on the road we saw a terrible spectacle. The corpses of the killing were lying in great numbers on both sides of the road; here we saw a woman outstretched on the ground, her body half veiled by her long hair; there, women lying on their faces, the dried blood blackening their delicate forms; there again, the corpses of men, parched to the semblance of charcoal by the heat of the sun. As we approached Sivrek, the corpses became more numerous, the bodies of children being in a great majority. As we arrived at Sivrek and left our carts, we saw one of the servants of the khan carrying a little infant with hairs as yellow as gold, whom he threw behind the house. We asked him about it, and he said that there were three sick Armenian women in the house, who had lagged behind their companions, that one of them had given birth to this infant, but could not nourish it, owing to her illness. So it has died and been thrown out, as one might throw out a mouse.

 

DEMAND FOR RANSOM.---Whilst we were at Sivrek, Aarif Effendi told me--after he had been at the Government offices--that the Commandant of Gendarmerie and the Chief of Police of that place had requested him to hand over to them the five Armenians who were with him, and that on his refusal they had insisted, saying that, if they were to reach Diarberkir in safety, they must pay a ransom of fifty liras for themselves. We went to the khan, where the officer summoned the priest Isaac and told him how matters stood. After speaking to his companions, the priest replied that they could pay only ten liras altogether, as they had no more in their possession. When convinced by his words, the officer took the ten liras and undertook to satisfy the others.

 

This officer had a dispute with the Commandant of Gendarmerie at Aleppo, the latter desiring to take these five men on the grounds that they had been sent with a gendarme for delivery to his office. Ahmed Bey, the Chief of the Irregular band at Urfa, also desired to take them, but the officer refused to give them up to him--he being a member of the Committee of Union and Progress--and brought them in safety to Diarbekir.

 

After passing the night at Sivrek we left early in the morning. As we approached Diarbekir the corpses became more numerous, and on our route we met companies of women going to Sivrek under guard of gendarmes, weary and wretched, the traces of tears and misery plain on their faces--a plight to bring tears of blood from stones, and move the compassion of beasts of prey.

 

What, in God’s name, had these women done? had they made war on the Turks, or killed even one of them? What was the crime of these hapless creatures, whose sole offence was that they were Armenians, skilled in the management of their homes and the training of their children, with no thought beyond the comfort of their husbands and sons, and the fulfillment of their duties towards them.

 

I ask you, O Moslems--is this to be counted as a crime? Think for a moment. What was the fault of these poor women? What it in their being superior to the Turkish women in every respect? Even assuming that their men had merited such treatment, is it right that these woman should be dealt with in a manner from which wild bests would recoil? God has said in the Koran: “Do not load one with another’s burdens,” that is, Let not one be punished for another.

 

What had these weak women done, and what had their infants done? Can the men of the Turkish Government bring forward even a feeble proof to justify their action and to convince the people of Islam, who hold that action for unlawful and reject it? No; they can find no word too say before a people whose usages are founded on justice, and their laws on wisdom and reason.

 

Is it right that these imposters, who pretend to be the supports of Islam and the Khilafat, the protectors of the Moslems, should transgress the command of God, transgress the Koran, the Traditions of the prophet, and humanity? Truly, they have committed an act at which Islam is revolted, as well as all Moslems and all the peoples of the earth, be they Moslems, Christians, Jews, or idolaters. As God lives, it is a shameful deed, the like of which has not been done by any people counting themselves as civilized.

 

THE INFANT IN THE WASTE.-- After we had gone a considerable distance we saw a child of not more than four years old, with a fair complexion, blue eyes, and golden hair, with all the indications of luxury and pampering, standing in the sun, motionless and speechless, The officer told the driver to stop the cart, got out alone, and questioned the child, who made no reply, and did not utter a word. The Officer said: “If we take this child with us to Diarbekir, the authorities will take him from us, and he will share the fate of his people in being killed. It is best that we leave him. Perhaps God will move one of the Kurds to compassion, that he take him and bring him up.” None of us could say anything to him; he entered the cart and we drove on, leaving the child as we found him, without speech, tears, or movement. Who knows of what rich man or Notable of the Armenians he was the son? He had hardly seen the light when he was orphaned by the slaughter of his parents and kinsmen. Those who should have carried him were weary of him--for the women were unable to carry even themselves--so they had abandoned him in the waste, far from human habitation. Man, who shows kindness to beasts, and forms societies for their protection, can be merciless to his own kind, more especially them under the heat of the sun, thirsty and famishing, to be devoured by wild creatures.

 

Leaving the boy, our hearts burning within us and full of grief and anguish, we arrived before sunset at a khan some hours distant from Diarberkir. There we passed the night, and in the morning we went on amid the mangled forms of the slain. The same sight met our view on every side; a man lying, his breast pierced by a bullet; a woman torn open by lead; a child sleeping his last sleep beside his mother; a girl in the flower of her of her age, in a posture which told its own story. Such was our journey until we arrived at a canal, called Kara Pounar, near Diarbekir, and here we found a change in the method of murder and savagery.

 

We saw bodies burned to ashes. God, from whom no secrets are hid, knows how many young men and fair girls, who should have led happy lives together, had been consumed by fire in this illumined place.

 

We had expected not to find corpses of the killed near to the walls of Diarberkir, but we were mistaken, for we journeyed among the bodies until we entered the city gate. As I was informed by some Europeans who returned from Armenia after the massacres, the Government ordered the burial of all the bodies from the roadside when the matter had become the subject of comment in European newspapers.

 

IN PRISON.--On our arrival at Diarberkir the officer handed us to the authorities and we were thrown into prison, where I remained for twenty-two days. During this time I obtained full information about the movement from one of the prisoners, who was a Moslem of Diarbekir, and who related to me what had happened to the Armenians there. I asked him what the reason of the affairs, why the Government had treated them in this way and whether they had committed any act calling for their complete extermination. He said that, after the declaration of war, the Armenians, especially the younger men, had failed to comply with the orders of the Government, that most of them had evaded military service by flight, and had formed companies which they called “Roof Companies.” These took money from the wealthy Armenians for the purchase of arms, which they did not deliver to the authorities, but sent to their companies, until the leading Armenians and Notables assembled, went to the Government offices, and requested that these men should be punished as they were displeased at their proceedings.

 

I asked whether the Armenians had killed any Government officials, or any Turks or Kurds in Diarbekir. He replied that they had killed no more, but that a few days after the arrival of the Vali, Reshid Bey, and the Commandant of Gendarmerie, Rushdi Bey, prohibited arms had been found in some Armenian houses, and also in the church. On the discovery of these arms, the Government summoned some of the principal Armenians and flung them into prison; the spiritual authorities made repeated representations, asking for the release of these men, but the Government, far from complying with the request, imprisoned the ecclesiastics also, the number of Notables thus imprisoned amounting to nearly seven hundred. One day the Commandant of Gendarmerie came and informed them that an Imperial Order had been issued for their banishment to Mosul, where they were to remain until the end of the war. They were rejoiced at this, procured all they required in the way of money, clothes, and furniture, and embarked on the keleks (wooden rafts resting on inflated skins, used by the inhabitants of that region for traveling on the Euphrates and Tigris) to proceed to Mosul. After a while it was understood that they had all been drowned in the Tigris, and that none of them had reached Mosul. The authorities continued to send off and kill the Armenians, family, men, women and children, the first families sent from Diarbekir being those of Kazazian, Tirpanjian, Minassian, and Kechijian, who were the wealthiest families in the place. Among the 700 individuals was a bishop named--as far as I recollect--Homandrias; he was the Armenian Catholic Bishop, a venerable and learned old man of about eighty; they showed no respect to his white beard, but drowned him in the Tigris.

 

Megerditch, the Bishop-delegate of Diarbekir, was also among the 700 imprisoned. When he saw what was happening to his people he could not endure the disgrace and shame of prison, so he poured petroleum over himself and set it on fire. A Moslem, who was imprisoned for having written a letter to this bishop three years before the events, told me that he was a man of great courage and learning, devoted to his people, with no fear of death, but unable to submit to oppression and humiliation.

 

Some of the imprisoned Kurds attacked the Armenians in the goal itself, and killed two or three of them out of greed for their money and clothing, but nothing was done to bring them to account. The Government left only a very small number of Armenians in Diarbekir, these being such as were skilled in making boots and similar articles for the army. Nineteen individuals had remained in the prison, where I saw and talked with them; these, according to the pretence of the authorities, were Armenian bravoes.

 

The last family deported from Diarbekir was that of Dunjian, about November, 1915. This family was protected by certain Notables of the place, from desire for their money, or the beauty of some of their women.

 

DIKRAN.--This man was member of the central committee of the Tashnagtzian Society in Diarbekir. An official of that place, who belonged to the Society of Union and Progress, told me that the authorities seized Dikran and demanded from him the names of his associates. He refused, and said that he could not give the names until the committee had met and decided whether or not it was proper to furnish this information to the Government. He was subjected to varieties of torture, such as putting his feet in irons till they swelled and he could not walk, plucking out his nails and eyelashes with a cruel instrument, etc., but he would not say a word, nor give the name of one of his associates. He was deported with the others and died nobly out of love for his nation of his brave people to the Government. AGHOB KAITANJAN.--Aghob Kaitanjian was one of the Armenians imprisoned on the charge of being bravoes of the Armenian Society in Diarbekir, and in whose possession explosive material had been found. I often talked to him, and I asked him to tell me his story. He said that one day, whilst he was sitting in his house, a police agent knocked at the door and told him that the Chief of Police wished to see him at his office. He went there, and some of the police asked him about the Armenian Society and its bravoes. He replied that he knew nothing of either societies or bravoes. He was then bastinadoed and tortured in various ways for several days till he despaired of life, preferring death to a continuance of degradation. He had a knife with him, and when they aggravated the torture so that he could endure it no longer, he asked them to let him go to the latrine and on his return he would tell them all he knew about the Armenian matter. With the help of the police he went, and cut the arteries of his wrists* . . . with the object of committing suicide. The blood gushed out freely; he got to the door of the police-office and there fainted. They poured water on his face and he recovered consciousness; he was brought before the officer and the interrogatory was renewed.*. . . . The Chief of Police was confounded at this proceeding and sent him to the hospital until he was cured. I saw the wounds on his hands, and they were completely healed. This was the story as he told it to me himself. He desired me to publish it in an Armenian newspaper called Hayrenic (Fatherland), which appears in America, in order that it may be read by his brother Garabet, now in that country would leave none of them alive.

 

I associated freely with the young Armenians who were imprisoned, and we talked much of these acts, the like of which, as happening to a nation such as theirs, have never been heard of, nor recorded in the history of past ages. These youths were sent for trial by the court-martial at Kharpout, and I heard that they arrived there safely and asked permission to embrace the Moslem faith. This was to escape from contemptuous treatment by the Kurds, and not from the fear of death, as their conversion would not save them from the penalty if they were shown to deserve it. Before their departure they asked me what I had heard about them, and whether the authorities purposed to kill them on the way or not. After enquiring about this, and ascertaining that they would not be killed in this way, I informed them accordingly; they were rejoiced, saying that all they desired was to remain alive to see the results of the war. They said that the Armenians deserved the treatment which they had received, as they would never see the necessity for taking precautions against the Turks, believing that the constitutional Turkish Government would never proceed to measures of this kind without valid reason. The Government has perpetrated these deeds although no official, Kurds, Turk, or Moslem, has been killed by an Armenian, and we know not what the weighty reasons may have been which impelled them to so unprecedented a measure. And if the Armenians should not be reproached with a negligence for which they have paid dearly, yet a people who do not take full precautions are liable to be taxed justly with blameworthy carelessness.

 

MY TRAVELING-COMPANIONS.--From time to time I visited the men who had in my company during the journey, but after my release the director of the prison would not permit me to go to them. I used, therefore, to ask for one of them and talk with him outside the prison in which the Armenians were confined. After a while I required for them and was told that they had sent to execution, like others before them, and at this I cried out in dismay. One day I saw a gendarme who had been imprisoned with us for a short time on the charge of having stolen articles from the effects of dead Armenians, and as he knew my companions I asked him about them. He said that he had killed the priest Isaac with his own hand, and that the gendarmes had laid wagers in firing at his clerical headdress. “I made the best shooting, hit the hat and knocked it off his head, finishing him with a second ball.” My answer was silence. The man firmly believed that these murders were necessary, the Sultan having so ordered.

 

THE SALE OF LETTERS.--When the Government first commenced the deportation of the 700 men, the officials were instructed to prepare letters, signed with the names of the former, and to send them to the families of the banished individuals in order to mislead them, as it was feared that the Armenians might take some action which would defeat the plan and divulge the secret to the other Armenians, thus rendering their extermination impracticable. The unhappy families gave large sums to those who brought them letters from their Head. The Government appointed a Kurd, a noted brigand, as officer of the Militia, ordering him to slaughter the Armenians and deliver the letters at their destination. When the Government was secure as to the Armenians, a man was dispatched to kill the Kurd, whose name was Aami Hassi, or Hassi Aami.

 

SLAUGHTER OF THE PROTESTANT, CHALDEN, and AND SYRIAC COMMUNITIES.--The slaughter was general throughout these communities, not a single protestant remaining in Diarbekir. Eighty families of the Syriac Community were exterminated, with a part of the Chaldeans, in Diarbekir, and in its dependencies, none escaped save those in Madiat and Mardin. When latterly orders were given that only Armenians were to be killed, and that those belonging to other communities should not be touched, the Government held their hand from the destruction of the latter.

 

THE SYRIACS.--But the Syriacs in the province of Madiat were brave men, braver than all the other tribes in these regions. When they heard what had fallen upon their brethren at Diarbekir and the vicinity they assembled, fortified themselves in three villages near Madiat, and made a heroic resistance, showing a courage beyond description. The Government sent against them two companies of regulars, besides a company of gendarmes which had been dispatched thither previously; the Kurdish tribes assembled against them, but without result, and thus they protected their lives, honor, and possessions from the tyranny of this oppressive Government. An Imperial Iradeh was issued, granting them pardon, but they placed no reliance had shown them that this is the most false Government of the face of the earth, taking back to-day what it have yesterday, and punishing to-day with most cruel penalties him whom it had previously pardoned.

 

CONVERSATION between a postal contractor from Bitlis and a friend of mine, as we were sitting at a cafe in Diarbekir: Contractor: I see many Armenians in Diarbekir. How comes it that they are still here?

 

My Friend: These are not Armenians, but Syriacs and Chaldeans.

 

Contractor: The Government of Bitlis has not left a single Christian in that Vilayet, nor in the district of Moush. If a doctor told a sick man that the remedy for his disease was the heart of a Christian he would not find one though he searched through the whole Vilayet.

 

PROTECTION AFFORDED BY KURDS TO ARMENIANS ON PAYMENT.--The Armenians were confined in the main ward of the prison at Diarbekir, and from time to time I visited them. One day, on walking from sleep, I went to see them in their ward and found them collecting rice, flour and moneys. I asked them the reason of this, and they said: “What are we to do? If we do not collect a quantity every week and give these things to some of them so that they may protect us from the outrages of their fellows.” I exclaimed, “There is no power nor might but in God,” and went back grieving over their lot.

 

DESPATCH OF THE ARMENIANS TO THE SLAUGHTER.--This was a most shocking proceeding, appalling in its atrocity. One of the gendarmes in Diarbekir related to me how it was done. He said that, when orders were given for the removal and destruction of a members of the family, and delivered them to the Commandant of Militia or one of the officers of Gendarmerie. Men were posted to keep guard over the house and its occupants during the night until 8 o’clock, thereby giving notice to the wretched family shrieked and wailed, anguish and despair showed on the faces of all, and they died even before death came upon them.* . . . . After 8 o’clock wagons arrived and conveyed the families to a place near by, where they were killed by rifle fire, or massacred like sheep with knives, daggers, and axes.

 

SALE OF ARMENIAN EFFECTS, AND REMOVAL OF CROSSES FROM THE CHURCHES.--After the Armenians had been destroyed, all the furniture of their houses, their linen, effects, and implements of all kinds, as well as all the contents of their shops and storehouses, were collected in the churches or other large buildings. The authorities appointed committees for the sale of these goods, which were disposed of at the lowest price, as might be the case with the effects of those who died a natural death, but with this deference, that the money realized went to the Treasury of the Turkish Government, instead of to the heirs of the deceased.

 

You might see a carpet, worth thirty pounds, sold for five, a man’s costume, worth four pounds, sold for two medjidies, and so on with the rest of thee articles, this being especially the case with musical instruments, such as pianos, ect., which had no value at all. All money and valuables were collected by the Commandant of Gendarmerie and the Vali, Reshid Bey, the latter taking them with him when he went to Constantinople, and delivering them to Tallat Bey.* . . .

 

The mind is confounded by the reflection that this people of Armenia, this brave race who astonished the world by their courage, resolution, progress and knowledge, who yesterday were the most powerful and most highly cultivated of the Ottoman peoples, have become merely a memory, as though they had never flourished. Their learned books are waste paper, used to wrap up cheese or dates, and I was old that one high official had bought thirty volumes of French literature for 50 piastres. Their schools are closed, after being thronged with pupils. Such is the evil end of the Armenian race: let it be a warning to those peoples who are striving for freedom, and let them understand that freedom in not to be achieved but by the shedding of blood, and that words are the stock-in trade of the weak alone.

 

I observed that the crosses had been removed from the lofty steeples of the churches, which are used as storehouses and markets for the keeping and sale of the effects of the dead.

 

METHODS OF SLAUGHTER.--These were of various kinds. An officer told me that in the Vilayet of Bitlis the authorities collected the Armenians in barns full of straw (or chaff), piling up straw in front of the door and setting it on fire, so that the Armenians inside perished in the smoke. He said that sometimes hundreds were put together in one barn. Other modes of killing were also employed (at Bitlis). He told me, to my deep sorrow, how he had seen a girl hold her lover in her embrace, and so enter the barn to meet her death without a tremor.

 

At Moush, a part were killed in straw-barns, but the greater number by shooting or stabbing with knives, the Government hiring butchers, who received a Turkish pound each day as wages. A doctor, named Aziz Bey, told me that when he was at Marzifun, in the Vilayet of Sivas, he heard that a caravan of Armenians was being sent to execution. He went to the Kaimakam and said to him: “You know I am a doctor, and there is no difference between doctors and butchers, as doctor are mostly occupied in cutting up mankind. And as the duties of a Kaimakam at this time are also like our own--cutting up human bodies--I beg you to let me see this surgical operation myself.” Permission was given, and the doctor went. He found four butchers, each with a long knife; the gendarmes divided the Armenians into parties of ten, and sent them up to the butchers one by one. The butchers told the Armenian to stretch out his neck; he did so, and was slaughtered like a sheep. The doctor was amazed at their steadfastness in presence of death, not saying a word, or showing any sign of fear.

 

The gendarmes used also to bind the women and children and throw them down from a very lofty eminence, so that they reached the ground shattered to pieces. This place is said to be between Diarbekir and Mardin, and the bones of the slain are there in heaps to this day.

 

Another informant told me that the Diarbekir authorities had killed the Armenians either by shooting, by the butchers, or at times by putting numbers of them in wells and caves, which were blocked up so that they perished. Also they threw them into the Tigris and the Euphrates, and the bodies caused an epidemic of typhus fever. Two thousand Armenians were slaughtered at a place outside the walls of Diarbekir, between the Castle of Sultan Murad and the Tigris, and at not more than half an hour’s distance from the city.

 

BRUTALITY OF THE GENDARMES AND KURDISH TRIBES.--There is no doubt that what is related as to the proceedings of the gendarmes and the Kurdish tribes actually took place. On receiving a caravan of Armenians the searched them one by one, men and women, taking any money they might find, and stripping them of the better portions of their clothing. When they were satisfied that there remained no money, good cloths, or other things of value, they sold the Armenians on thousands to the Kurds, on the stipulation that none should be left alive. The price was in accordance with the number of the party; I was told by a reliable informant of cases where the price had varied between 2,000 and 200 liras.

 

After purchasing the caravans, the Kurds stripped all the Armenians, men and women, of their clothes, so that they remained entirely naked. They then shot them down, everyone, after which they cut open their stomachs to search for money amongst the entrails, also cutting up the clothing, boots, etc., with the same object.

 

Such were the dealings of the official gendarmerie and the Kurds with their fellow-creatures. The reason of the sale of the parties by the gendarmes was to save themselves trouble, and to obtain delivery of further parties to plunder of their money.

 

Woe to him who had teeth of gold, or gold-plated. The gendarmes and Kurds used to violently draw out his teeth before arriving at the place of execution, thus inflicting tortures before actual death.

 

A KURDISH AGHA SLAUGHTERS 50,000 ARMENIANS.--A Kurd told me that the authorities of Kharpout handed over to one of the Kurdish Aghas in that Vilayet, in three batches, more than 50,000 Armenians from Erzerum, Trebisond, Sivas, and Constantinople, with orders to kill them and to divide with themselves the property which he might take from them. He killed them all and took from them their money and other belongings. He hired 600 mules for of three liras a head. After receiving the price, he collected mules belonging to his tribe, mounted the women of them, and brought them to a place between Malatiya and Urfa, where he killed them in the most barbarous way, taking all their money, clothes, and valuables.

 

THE VIOLATION OF WOMEN BEFORE OR AFTER DEATH.---*. . . .[i refrain from particulars. The Gendarmes and Kurds are stated to have been the perpetrators of these acts.--TRANLATOR]

 

INCIDENT OF THE SHEIKH AND THE GIRL.-- I said above that Armenian women were sent off in batches under guard of gendarmes. Whenever they passed by a village the inhabitants would come and choose any they desired, taking them away and giving a small sum to the gendarmes. At one place a Kurd of over 60 picked out a beautiful girl of 16. She refused to have anything to do with him, but said she was ready to embrace Islam and marry a youth of her own age. This the Kurds would not allow, but gave her the choice between death and the Sheikh; she refused, and was killed.

 

BARSOUM AGHA.--Whilst I was Kaimakam of the district of Kiakhta, in the Vilayet of Kharpout, I was acquainted with an Armenian Notable of that place, named Barsoum Agha. He was a worthy and courageous man, dealing well with Kurds, Turks and Armenians, without distinction; he also showed much kindness to officials who were dismissed from their posts in the district. All the Kurdish Aghas thereabouts kept close watch over him, hating him because he was their rival in the supremacy of the place. When, after my banishment, I arrived at Sivrek and heard what had befallen the Armenians, I enquired about him and his family. I was told that when the Government disposed of the Armenians of Kiakhta he was summoned and ordered to produce the records of moneys owing to him (Kurds and Armenians on that district owed him a sum of 10,000 liras); he replied that he had torn up the records and released his debtors from their obligations. He was taken away with the other Armenians, and on arrival at the Euphrates he asked permission to drown himself. This was granted, and he endeavored to do so, but failed, as he could not master himself. So ha said to the gendarmes, “Life is dear and I cannot kill myself, so do as you have been ordered,” whereupon one of them shot him and then killed the rest of the family.

 

NARRATIVE OF A YOUNG TURK.--This youth, who had come to Diarbekir as a schoolmaster, told me that the Government had informed the Armenians of Broussa that their deportation had been decided, and that they were to leave for Mosul, Syria, or El-Deir three days after receiving the order. After selling what they could, they hired carts and carriages for the transport of their goods and themselves and started--as they thought--for their destination. On their arrival at a very rugged and barren place. far distant from any villages, the drivers, in conformity with their instructions, broke up the conveyances ad left the people in the waste, returning on the night to plunder them. Many died there of hunger and terror; a great part were killed on the road; and only a few reached Syria or el-Deir.

 

CHILDREN PERISHING OF HUNGER AND THIRST.--An Arab of El-Jezira, who accompanied to me on my flight from Diarbekir, told me that he had gone with a Sheikh of his tribe, men and camels, to buy grain from the sons of Ibrahim ***** El-Mellili. On their way they saw 17 children, the eldest not more than 13 years old, dying of hunger and thirst. The Arab said: “We had with us a small water-skin and a little food. When the Sheikh saw them he wept with pity, and gave them food could this small supply do to them? We reflected that if we took them with us to the *****, they would be killed, as the Kurds were killing all Armenians by order of the authorities; and our Arabs were at five day’s distance from the place. So we had no choice but to leave them to the mercy of God, and on our return, a week later, we found them all dead.”

 

NARRATIVE OF A PROVINCIAL GOVERNOR.--We were talking of the courage and good qualities of the Armenians, and the Governor of the place, who was with us, told us a singular story. He said: “According to orders, I collected all the remaining Armenians, consisting of 17 women and some children, amongest whom was a child of 3 years old, diseased, who had never been able to walk. When the butchers began slaughtering the women and the turn of the child’s mother came, he rose up on his feet and ran for a space, then falling down. We were astonished at this, and at his understanding that his mother was to be killed. A gendarme went and took hold of him, and laid him dead on his dead mother.” He also said that he had seen one of these women eating a piece of bread as she went up to the butcher, another smoking a cigarette, and that it was as though they cared nothing for death.

 

NARRATIVE OF SHEVKET BEY.--Shevket Bey, one of the officials charged with the extermination of the Armenians, told me, in company with others, the following story: “I was proceeding with a party, and when we had arrived outside the walls of Diarbekir and were beginning to shoot down the Armenians, a Kurd came up to me, kissed my hand, and begged me to give him a girl of about ten years old. I stopped the firing and sent a gendarme to bring the girl to me. When she came I pointed out a spot to her and said, “Sit there. I have given you to this man, and you will be saved from death.” After a while, I saw that she had thrown herself amongst the dead Armenians, so I ordered the gendarmes to cease firing and bring her up. I said to her, “I have had pity on you and brought you out from among the others to spare your life. Why do you throw yourself with them? Go with this man and he will bring you up like a daughter.’ She said: ‘ I am the daughter of an Armenian; my parents and kinsfolk are killed among these; I will have no others in their place, and I do not will to live any longer without them.’ Then she cried and lamented; I tried hard to persuade her, but she would not listen, so I let her go her way. She left me joyfully, put herself between her father and mother, who were at the last gasp, and she was killed there.” And he added: “If such was the behavior of the children, what was that of their elders?”

 

PRICE OF ARMENIAN WOMEN.--A reliable informant from Deir-el-Zur told me that one of the officials of that place had bought from the gendarmes three girls for a quarter of a medjidie dollar each. Another man told me that he had bought a very beautiful girl for one lira, and I heard that among the tribes Armenian women were sold like pieces of old furniture, at low prices, varying from one to ten liras, or from one to five sheep.*. . . [*An unimportant anecdote omitted.--TRANSLATOR.]

 

THE MUTESARRIF AND THE ARMEIAN GIRL.--On the arrival of a batch of Armenians at Dier-el- Zur from Ras-el-Ain, the Mutesarrif desired to choose a servant-girl from amongst the women. His eye fell on a handsome girl, and he went up to her, but on his approach she turned white and was about to fall. He told her to his house. On returning thither he asked the reason for her terror of him, and she told him that she and her mother had been sent from Ras-el-Ain in charge of a Circassian gendarme, many other Armenian women being with them. On the way, the gendarme called her mother, and told her to give him her money, or would kill her; she said that she had none, so he tortured her till she gave him six liras*. . .[*Unfit for reproduction.--TRANSLATOR.] He said to her: “You liar! You [Armenians] never cease lying. You have seen what has befallen, and will befall, all Armenians, but you will not take warning, so I shall make you an example to all who see you.” Then he cut off her hands with dagger, one after the other, then both her feet, all in sight of her daughter, whom he then took aside and violated, whilst her mother, in a dying state, witnessed the act. “And when I saw you approach me, I remembered my mother’s fate and dreaded you, thinking that you would treat me as the gendarme treated my mother and myself, before each other’s eyes.”*. . . [*Unimportant anecdote omitted.--TRANSLATOR]

 

“THE REWARD OF HARD LABOUR.”--The Turks had collected all those of military age and dispersed amongst the battalions to perform their army service. When the Government determined on the deportation and destruction of the Armenians--as stated in their official declaration--orders were given for the formation of separate battalions of Armenians, to be employed on roads and municipal works. The battalions were formed and sent to the roads and other kinds of hard labor. They were employed in this manner for eight months, when the severity of winter set in. The Government, being then unable to make further use of them, dispatched them to Diarbekir. Before their arrival, the officers telegraphed that the Armenian troops were on their way, and the authorities sent gendarmes, well furnished with cartridges, to meet the poor wretches. The gendarmes received them with rifle-fire, and 840 men perished in this manner, shot close to the city of Diarbekir.

 

A CARAVAN OF WOMEN.--[unimportant . The writer describes the inhabitants of Diarbekir, on the arrival of a party, as hastening to select women. Two doctors pick out twenty of them to serve as hospital attendants.--TRANSLATOR]

 

A NIGHT’S SHELTER FOR FIFTY POUNDS.--The man who showed the greatest capacity for exterminating Armenians was Reshid Bey, the Vali of Diarbekir. I have already stated how many were killed in his Vilayet. When news of his removal arrived, the remaining Armenians, and the Christians generally rejoiced, and shortly after the report was current some Armenians, who had hidden themselves, came out from their concealment and walked about the city. The Vali, who was anxious to keep his removal secret and to inspire terror, began deporting Armenians with still greater energy, and those who had come out returned to their hiding-places. One of the principal men of Diarbekir stated that one Armenian had paid fifty Turkish pounds to an inhabitant for shelter in his house during the night before the Vali’s departure, and another told me that a man had received an offer of three pounds for each night until the same event, but had refused from fear of the authorities.

 

CHASTITY OF THE ARMENIAN WOMEN.--*. . . . [*An official relates how he wanted to choose a servant from a boatload of victims, who said they were willing to come as servants, but as nothing else. He took one, and on coming home one night drunk he tried to offer her violence; she reproved him in suitable terms and he conducted himself well thenceforward.--TRANSLATOR.]

 

An Arab of the Akidat told me that he was going along the bank of the Euphrates when he saw some of the town rabble stripping two women of their clothes, but they paid no attention. The women begged for mercy, and finding it unavailing they threw themselves into the river, preferring death to dishonor. He told me also of another women who had a suckling child, and begged food from the passers-by, who were in too great fear of the authorities to help her. On the third day of starvation, finding no relief, she left the baby in the market of El-Deir and drowned herself in the Euphrates. In this way do they show high qualities, honor, and courage such as many men do not possess.

 

WOMEN-SERANTS IN DIARBEKIR.--You cannot enter a house in Diarbekir without finding from one to five Armenian maid-servants, even the humblest shopkeepers having one, who probably in the lifetime of her parents would not have condescended to speak a word to the master whom she now has to serve in order to save her life. It is stated that the number of such women and girls in the city is over 5,000, mostly from Erzeroum, Kharpout and other Vilayets.

 

NARATIVE OF SHAHIN BEY.--Shahin Bey, a man of Diarbekir, who was in prison with me, told me that a number of Armenian men and women were delivered to him for slaughter, he being a soldier. He said: “Whilst we were on the way, I saw an Armenian girl whom I knew, and who was very beautiful. I called her by name, and said ‘Come, I will save you, and you shall marry a young man of your country, a Turk or a Kurd.’ She refused, and said: ‘If you wish to do me a kindness I will ask one thing which you may do for me.’ I told her I would do whatever she wished, and she said: ‘I have a brother, younger than myself, here amongst these people. I pray you to kill him before you kill me, so that in dying I may not be anxious in mind about him.’ She pointed him out and called him. When he came, she said to him, ‘My brother, farewell. I kiss you for the last time, but we shall meet, if it be God’s will, in next world, and He will soon avenge us for what we have suffered.’ They kissed each other, and the boy delivered himself to me. I must needs obey my orders, so I struck him one blow with an axe, split his skull, and he fell dead. Then she said: ‘I thank you with all my heart, and shall ask you one more favor’; she put her hands over her eyes and said: ‘Strike as you struck my brother, one blow, and do not torture me.’ So I struck one blow and killed her, and to this day I grieve over her beauty and youth, and her wonderful courage.”

 

PHOTOGRAPHS OF ARMENIANS lying in the road, dressed in turbans, for dispatch to Constantinople. The Turkish Government thought that European nations might get to hear of the destruction of the Armenians and published the news abroad so as to excite prejudice against the Turks. So after the gendarmes had killed a number of Armenian men, they put on them turbans and bought Kurdish women to weep and lament over them, saying that the Armenians had killed their men. They also brought a photographer to photograph the bodies and the weeping women, so that at a future time they might be able to convince Europe that it was the Armenians who had attacked the Kurds and killed them, that the Kurdish tribes had risen against them revenge, and that the Turkish Government had had no part in the matter. But the secret of this proceedings was not hidden from men of intelligence, and after all this had been done, the truth became known and was spread abroad in Diarbekir.

 

CONVERSION OF ARMENIAN WOMEN TO ISLAM.--When the Government undertook the extermination of the Armenians some of the women went to the Mufti and the Kasi, and declared their desire to embrace the Mohammedan faith. These authorities accepted their conversion, and they were married to men of Diarbekir, either Turks or Kurds.

 

After a while, the Government began to collect these women, so the Mufti and the Kasi went to the Vali and said that the women in question were no longer Armenians, having become Mussulmans, and that by the Sacred Law the killing of Musluman women was not permissible. The Vali replied: “These women are vipers, who will bite us in time to come; do not oppose the Government in this matter, for politics have no religion, and the Government know what they are about,” The Mufti and the Kadi went back as they had come, and the women were sent to death. After the removal of the Vali--in consequence, as it was said, of abuses in connection with the sale of effects left in Armenian houses and shops--orders arrived that the conversion of any who desired to enter Islam should e accepted, be they men or women. Many of the Armenians who remained, of both sexes, hastened to embrace the Faith in the hope of saving their lives, but after a time they were dispatched likewise and their Islamism did not save them.

 

THE GERMANS AND THE ARMENIANS.--Whenever the talk fell on the Armenians I used to blame the Turks for their proceedings, but one day when we were discussing the question, an official of Diarbekir, who was one of the fanatical Young Turk Nationalists, said: “The Turks are not to blame in this matter, for the Germans were the first to apply the treatment to the Poles, who were under their rule. And the Germans have compelled the Turks to take this course, saying that if they did not kill the Armenians there would be no alliance with them, and thus Turkey had no choice.”

 

This is what the Turks said, word for word. And it was confirmed by what I heard from a Turk who was imprisoned with me at Aaliya, on the charge of corresponding with Abdul-Kerim el-Khalil. He said that when passing through Damascus he had visited the German Vice-Consul there, who had told him confidentially that Oppenheim had come on a persecute the Arabs, with a view to causing hatred between the two races, by which the Germans might profit in future if differences arose between them and the Turks. This was a short time previous the execution of Abdul-Kerim.

 

THE KILLING OF THE TWO KAIMAKAMS.--When the Government at Diarbekir gave orders to the officials to kill the Armenians, a native of Baghdad was Kaimakam of El-Beshiri, in that Vilayet, and an Albanian was Kaimakam of Lijeh. These two telegraphed to the Vilayet that their consciences would not permit them to do such work, and that the resigned their posts. Their resignations were accepted, but they were both secretly assassinated. I investigated this matter carefully, and ascertained that the name of the Baghdad Arab was Sabat Bey El-Sueidi, but I could not learn that of the Albanian, which I must regret, as they performed a noble act for which they should be commemorated in history*. . . . [*The writer here describes how a Turkish judge (kadi), to whom the office of Kaimakam was entrusted after the murder of Sabat Bey, boasted in conversation that he had killed four Armenians with his own hand. “They were brave men,” he said, “having no fear of death.”--TRANSLATOR.

 

AN ARMENIAN BETRAYS HIS NATION.--*. . . . [*The author tells the story of an Armenian of Diarbekir who gave information to the police against his own people, disclosing their hiding places. He saw him walking about the streets with an insolent demeanor, giving himself the air of a person of great importance. He considers that such a traitor to his nation deserves the worst form of death.--TRANSLATOR.]

 

THE SULTAN’S ORDER.--Whilst I was in prison, a Turkish Commissioner of Police used to come to see a friend of his, who was also imprisoned. One day when I and this friend were together, the Commissioner came, and, in the course of conversation about the Armenians and their fate, he described to us how he had slaughtered them, and how a number had taken refuge in a cave outside the city, and he had brought them out and killed two of them himself. His friend said to him: “Have you no fear of God? Whence have you the right to take life in defiance of God’s law?” He replied: ”It was the Sultan’s order; The sultan’s order in the order of God, and its fulfillment is a duty.”

 

ARMENIAN DEATH STATISTICS.--At the end of August, 1915. I was visited in prison by one of my Diarbekir colleagues, who was an intimate friend of one of those charged with the conduct of the Armenian massacres. We spoke of the Armenian question, and he told me that, in Diarbekir alone, 570,000 had been destroyed, these being people from other Vilayets as well as those belonging to Diarbekir itself.

 

If to this we add those killed in the following months, amounting to about 50,000; and those in the Vilayets of Bitlis and Van and the province of Moush, approximately 230,000; and those who perished in Erzeroum, Kharpout, Sivas, Istanbul, Trebizond, Adana, Boursa, Urfa, Zeitoun, and Aintab--estimated at upwards of 350,000--we arrive at a total of Armenians killed, or dead from disease, hunger, or thirst, of 1,200,000.

 

There remain 300,000 Armenians in the Vilayet of Aleppo, in Syria, and Deir-el-Zur (those deported thither), and in America and Egypt and elsewhere; and 400,000 in Romanian territory, held by the Balkan States, thus making a grand total of 1,900,000.

 

The above in what I was to learn as to the statistics of the slaughtered Armenians, and I would quote and extract from El-Mokattam, dealing with this subject:

 

“The Basle correspondent of the Temps states that, according to official reports received from Aleppo in the beginning of 1916, there were 492,000 deported Armenians in the districts of Mosul, Diarbekir, Aleppo, Damascus, and Dier-el-Zur. The Turkish Minister of the Interior, Talaat Bey, estimates the number of deportees at 800,000 and states that 300,000 of these have been removed or have died in the last few months.

 

“Another calculation gives the number of deported Armenians as 1,200,000 souls, and states that banishment” (El-Mokattam, May 30th, 1916.)

 

THE ARMENIANS AND THE ARAB THRIBES.--As I approached Diarbekir, I passed through many Arab tribes, with whom I saw a number of Armenians, men and women, who were being well treated, although the Government had let the tribes know that the killing of Armenians was a bounden duty. I did not hear of a single instance of an Armenian being murdered or outraged by a tribesman, but I heard that some Arabs, passing by a well into which men and women had been thrown, drew them out when at the last extremity, took them with them, and tended them till they were recovered.

 

CONCLUSION

 

If the Turkish Government were asked the reasons for which the Armenian men, women, and children were killed, and their honor and property placed at any man’s mercy, they would reply that this people have murdered Moslems in the Vilayet of Van, and that there have been found in their possession prohibited arms, explosive bombs, and indication of steps towards the formation of an Armenian State, such as flag and the like, all pointing to the fact that this race has not turned from its evil ways, but on the first opportunity will kill the Moslems, rise in revolt, and invoke the help of Russia, the enemy of Turkey, against its rulers. That is what the Turkish Government would say. I have followed the matter from its source. I have enquired from inhabitants and officials of Van, who were in Diarbekir, whether any Moslem had been killed by Armenians in the town of Van, or in the districts of the Vilayet. They answered in the negative, stating that the Government had ordered the population to quit the town before the arrival of the Russians and before anyone was killed; but that the Armenians had been summoned to give up their arms and had not done so, dreading an attack by the Kurds, and dreading the Government also; the Government had further demanded that the principal Notables and leading men should be given up to them as hostages, but the Armenians had not complied.

 

All this took place during the approach of the Russians towards the city of Van. As to the adjacent districts, the authorities collected the Armenians and drove them into the interior, where they were all slaughtered, no Government official or private man, Turk or Kurd, having been killed.

 

As regards Diarbekir, you have read the whole story in this book, and no insignificant event took place there, let alone murders or breaches of the peace, which could lead the Turkish Government to deal with the Armenians in this atrocious manner.

 

At Constantinople, we hear of no murder or other unlawful act committed by the Armenians, except the unauthenticated story about the twenty bravoes, to which I have already referred.

 

They have not done the least wrong in the Vilayets of Karpout, Trebizond, Sivas, Adana, or Bitlis, nor in the province of Moush.

 

I have related the episode at Zeitoun, which was unimportant, and that at Urfa, where they acted in self-defense, seeing what had befallen their people, and preferring death to surrender.

 

As to their preparations, the flag, bombs and the like, even assuming there to be some truth in the statement, it does not justify the annihilation of the whole people, men and women, old men and children, in a way which revolts all humanity and more especially Islam and the whole body of Moslems, as those unacquainted with the true facts might impute these deeds to Mohammedan fanaticism.

 

To such as assert this it will suffice to point out the murders and oppressive acts committed by the Young Turks against Islam in Syria and Mesopotamia. In Syria they have hanged the leading men of enlightenment, without fault on their part, such as Shukri Bey El-Jezairi, Emir Omar El-Husseini, Abdul-Ghani El-Arisi, Shefik Bey El-Moweyad, Rushdi Bey El-Shamaa, Abdul- Kerim El- Khalil, Emir Aarif El-Shehabi, Sheikh Ahmed Hasan Tabara, and more that thirty leading men of this class.

 

I have published this pamphlet in order to refute beforehand inventions and slanders against the faith of Islam and against Moslems generally, and I affirm that what the Armenians have suffered is to be attributed to the Committee of Union and Progress, who deal with the empire as they please; it has been due to their nationalist fanaticism and their jealousy of the Armenians, and to these alone; the Faith of Islam is guiltless of their deeds.

 

From the foregoing we know that the Armenians have committed no acts justifying the Turks in inflicting on them this horrible retribution, unprecedented even in the dark ages. What, then, was the reason which impelled the Turkish Government to kill off a whole people, of whom they used to say that they were their brothers in patriotism, the principal factor in bringing about the downfall of the distorted rule of Abdul-Hamid and the introduction of the Constitution, loyal to the Empire, and fighting side by side with the Turks in the Balkan war? The Turks sanctioned and approved the institution of Armenian political societies, which they did not do in the case of other nationalities.

 

What is the reason of this sudden charge of attitude?

 

It is that, previous to the proclamation of the Constitution, the Unionists hated despotic rule; they preached equality, and inspired the people with hatred of the despotism of Abdul-Hamid. But as soon as they had themselves seized the reins of authority, and tasted the sweets of power, they found that despotism was the best means to confirm themselves in ease and prosperity, and to limit to the Turks alone the rule over the Ottoman peoples, they found that the Armenian race was the only one which would resent their despotism, and fight against it as they previously fought against Abdul-Hamid. They perceived also that the Armenians excelled all the other races in arts and industries, that they were more advanced in learning and societies, and that after a while the greater part of the officers of the army would be Armenians. They were confounded at this, and dreaded what might ensue, for they knew their own weakness and that they could not rival the Armenians in the way of learning and progress. Annihilation seemed to them to be the sole means of deliverance; they found their opportunity in a time of war, and they proceeded to this atrocious deed, which they carried out with every circumstance of brutality--a deed which is contrary to the law of Islam, as is shown by many precepts and historical instances.*. . . .

 

[Fa’iz El-Ghusein here gives a list pf citations from the Koran, the Traditions, and from Moslem history in support of this view.--TRANSLATOR.]

 

In View of this, how can the Turkish Government be justified at the present time in killing off an entire people, who have always paid their dues of every kind to the Ottoman State, and have never rebelled against it? Even if we suppose the Armenian men to have been deserving of death, what was the offence of the women and children? And what will be the punishment of those who killed them wrongfully and consumed the innocent with fire?

 

I am of opinion that the Mohammedan peoples are now under thee necessity of defending themselves, for unless Europeans are made acquainted with the true facts they will regard this deed as a black stain on the history of Islam, which ages will not efface.

 

From the Verses, Traditions, and historical instances, it is abundantly clear that the action of the Turkish Government has been in Complete contradiction to the principles of the Faith of Islam; a Government which professes to be the protector of Islam, and claims to hold the Khilafat , cannot act in opposition to Moslem law; and a Government which does so act is not an Islamic Government, and has no rightful pretension to be such.

 

It is guiltless of such a Government, and not to render obedience to those who trample under foot the Verses of the Koran and the Traditions of the Prophet, and shed the innocent blood of women, old men and infants, who have done no wrong. Otherwise they make themselves accomplices in this crime, which stands unequalled in history.

 

In conclusion, I would address myself to the Powers of Europe, and say that it is they themselves who have encouraged the Turkish Government to this deed, for they were aware of the evil administration of that Government, and its barbarous proceedings on many occasions in the past, but did not check it.

[Ashot]

SIGNS OF DEATH IN TURKEY

 

OCTOBER -- 1916

 

LIKE the death throes of a wild beast are the are the frantic efforts of the ruling party in the Ottoman Empire to destroy their fellow countrymen-- the Armenians and others who are of a different race and an opposing faith. The horrors of this march of death have been told only in part, they can not be fully described. Over eight hundred thousand Armenians have already been murdered have been deported to Mesopotamia and Arabia or have fled into Russia and Egypt. How many of these will survive can not be estimated, but the Armenian and the Syrian Relief Committee ( 70 Fifth Avenue, New York) is endeavoring to raise $5,000,000 to feed and clothe the starving and naked and to enable survivors to become again self-supporting.

 

One who has recently traveled in northern Arabia and whose statements are reliable gives this vivid glimpse of the horrors he saw there:

 

"At Meskene I found 3,500 deported Armenians, and more than 100 orphans. A part of the people have settled here as a bakers and butchers, etc., even though Meskene is but a halting-place. All the rest are begging. In every tent there are sick and dying. Any one who can not manage to get a piece of bread by begging. eats grass raw and without salt. Many hundreds of the sick are left without any tent and covering, in the open, under the glowing sun. I saw desperate ones throw themselves in grave-trenches, and beg the grave-diggers to bury them. The Turkish Government does not give the hungry any bread, nor any tent to those who remain outside. There came a caravan of sick women and children from Bab. They were in an indescribable condition. They were thrown down from the wagons dogs. They cried for water, they were given each a piece of dry bread, but no one gave them water.

 

"I sought some one to care for the orphans and I found a young widow from Hadjin, who asked to take a children. She belied to a good family, and gave herself with an intense love to the work for children. Ten days after my departure they had sent the woman with the one hundred children south. A few weeks later I found her in Sepka clothed in rags; she had lost her wits and wandered about the place asking every one: 'Where are my children?' Only two had survived.

 

"In Hamma I found 7,000 deported, three thousand of them hungry ad practically naked. Here there is no grass, for the locusts have consumed everything. The people were, three thousand of them hungry, and practically naked. Here there is no grass, for the locusts have consumed everything. The people were gathering locusts and eating them raw or cooked. Others were looking for the roots of grasses. They catch street dogs and, like savages, pounce upon dead animals whose flesh they eat eagerly without cooking.

 

"At Der Zor and in the neighborhood there are over 30,000 Armenians. The deportees are especially badly treated in the region of Der Zor. The people are driven back and forward with whip blows and can not even take their most urgent necessities. The people have the appearance of lost men. We often see a whole row of ghastly forms, raising suddenly out of a grave and asking for some bread and water. They have all dug their graves and lie waiting death. In Sepka a preacher from Aintab told me that parents have often killed their children. At the Government investigation it was shown that some people had eaten their children."

 

Such is the death struggle. It is inconceivable.

 

Missionary Review

[Ashot]

(An illustrated weekly journal of current events)

ARMENIA

 

OCTOBER 4, 1916

 

The most recent development in the Armenian situation consists in the publication in this country of documents written by German agents of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief Work. German missionaries have long been operating in and about Aleppo, on Asia Minor. They and the German Ambassador at Constantinople sympathize with the American endeavor to save the remnant of the American race, forced by Germany's ally, Turkey, to flee from the Armenian territory northwest of Aleppo. The American Board's statement is as follows:

 

Workers of the American Board in Constantinople speak in the highest terms of the aid they are receiving from German missionaries in central and eastern Turkey in giving out food and clothing to the wretched people in that section. The American Consul at Damascus estimates that five hundred thousand people have been pushed into the vilayets of Aleppo and Damascus. The majority are women and children. They are slowly dying of starvation. The Consul appealed to the treasurer of the Board, Mr. w. w. Peet, in Constantinople asking if a central relief deport could be established near Damascus. Mr. Peet writes his home office in Boston: "Our co-operation with the German missionaries for work in Aleppo has proved so helpful and satisfactory that I am desirous of making a like arrangement for Damascus in answer to this call. I therefore applied to the German Embassy to ask their assistance in securing workers for a Damascus deport. I have not yet had a reply to my application, but the Embassy has telegraphed their Consul and missionaries in that locality, asking that they assist us in this work."

 

Here are some details of the German reports:

 

In every tent there are sick and dying. Any one who cannot manage to get a piece of bread by begging eats grass raw and without salt. Many hundreds of the sick are without any tent and covering, in the open, under a glowing sun. I saw desperate ones throw themselves in grave trenches and beg grave-diggers to bury them.

 

At another place there is no grass; the locusts have consumed everything. The people were gathering locusts and eating them raw. Others were looking for roots of grasses. They catch stray dogs and like savages pounce upon dead animals, whose flesh they eat eagerly without cooking.

 

In Aleppo a German missionary reports housing as many boys and girls as possible, but with the menace always at hand of the Turkish Government's claim of a full right to dispose of children. In Der-Zor, near by, while a former Turkish officer had brought together several hundreds of children and cared for them, the first act of his successor was to end many deported people farther south, "where they must die of starvation and misery. . . All those in need of help have been sent away from Der-Zor. How many we do not yet know, but it is said six thousand were sent southward on foot from Sepka."

 

These accounts are noteworthy, first of all, because they are German, and therefore not the product of bias against Germany; and second, because they confirm the accounts of American missionaries. The situation is as bad as it can be. Unless we can secure entrance of food supplies into the regions affected, with distributors and with liberty to reach the distressed peoples with relief at the earliest moment, a large section of the Armenian race and of the Syrians involved many perish. The American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, with Dr. Lames L. Barton, of the American Board, as chairman, announces from its office at 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City, that it has collected something short of $1,200,000. In the distribution part has gone to Constantinople for uses throughout Asia Minor, part to Tiflis for the refugees in the Russian Caucasus, part to Persia for refugee Armenians and Syrians there, part to Beirut, and part to Egypt. The Committee is trying to secure a general response to the appeal for Armenian and Syrian relief issued by President Wilson. It is combining with the Red Cross in its appeal. In Syria it will work with and under the Red Cross, which has, we are glad to say, at last obtained formal permission from the Turkish Government to enter that region. It now remains to secure the permission of the Allies to pass though the blockade and to guarantee that supplies will not be used for the belligerents.

 

We believe that we have but to make the above facts known to insure a hearty response from all humane people.

 

The Outlook

[Ashot]

(An illustrated weekly journal of current events)

LORD BRYCE ON THE ARMENIAN ATROCITIES

 

OCTOBER 18, 1916

 

The testimony of German as well as of American missionaries confirm the reports of the all but incredible cruelty of the Turkish Government to the Armenians. One letter from Aleppo signed by four German missionaries was published last year in the Swiss papers, and in part at least in German papers, but finally was suppressed by the German censors. It is a detailed story of unspeakable horror addressed to the German Foreign Office, and urging that "our school work will be deprived for the future of its moral basis, and will lose all authority in the eyes of the natives, if it is really beyond the power of the German Government to mitigate the brutality of the treatment which the exiled women and children of the massacred Armenians are receiving."

 

This letter and other evidence from German sources, together with letters from Danish Red Cross nurses, from other foreigners in the East, and from Armenians, are included in the complete report and summary of evidence prepared for publication by Viscount Bryce, formerly Ambassador to the United States, whose report on the Belgian atrocities convinced many before skeptical on the subject. The New York "Times," which prints this report in advance of its book publication, declares that it forms "a record of horror, callous cruelty, and fiendish massacre far more revolting that Lord Bryce's report on German atrocities in Belgium, which shocked the world a short time ago." In a cable dispatch to Dr. James L. Barton Lord Bryce himself says: "Several hundred thousand exiles who survived the horrors of deportation are now perishing of exposure and starvation in the Arabian desert. Latest reports of neutral eye-witnesses describe terrible conditions. Sick people are throwing themselves into graves, begging grave-diggers to bury them; women are going mad and eating grass and carrion; parents are putting children out of their misery, . . . and awaiting death."

 

The evidence amply bears out these statements. Extermination by wholesale, starvation, deportation, torture, ravishment, murder direct and murder indirect, make the other Armenian atrocities of history, foul and terrible as they were, sink into insignificance. And the Government of Germany dare not even protest when its own missionaries appeal to it out of the East lest it hurt the sensibilities of its ally and close friends! Heartless and callous are mild words to apply to the German official attitude. That the atrocities are continuing is due to just this German indifference, which thus becomes blood-guiltiness.

 

Contributions to the relief of the survivors of this attempt to destroy a race, root and branch, should be sent to the office of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, at 70 Fifth Avenue, New York. President Wilson has appointed October 21 and 22 as special days of giving. Let Americans rescue those whom Turks have persecuted and Germans have passed by with indifference.

 

The Outlook