Armenian atrocities, the murder of a nation

*%r
ARMENIAN ATROCITIES
THE MURDER OF A NATION
ARNOLDT^J.
Of
fc* _
TOYNBEE
/,*
4
<r
,,.
-
V-
t
WITH A SPRHCh ORUVRkHB BY
i
lordbryce''
IN
THE HOUSE OF LORDS
ifornia
)nal
ity
HODDHR & STOUQHTON,
London.
New York.
MCMXV.
Toronto.
r>
WAYNE
GEISa LIBRARY
Q
-
S.
VUCINICM
.•-'.
..-_*
i'
:«
c.&
A
MAP
displaying*
THE SCENE OF THE ATROCITIE&
Evtry place
deportations, or
mar
m
this
map,
villi
the exception
April and N
The nine places underlined were the destinations mat
>•
or
both, between
for death.
*
Dhitnotika, Malgara, and Keshan, ia Thrace, are too far
tided
in
square
brackets,
has
been
the
*&*
"such of
scene
of
either
.
the deported
Armenians
as
reached
appear oa this map, but they must be added to the
list.
.
.
them, as waiting'
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAG8.
Statement by Lord Bryce
5
I.— Armenia before the Massacres
II.—The Plan op the Massacres
...
...
17
26
HI.— The Road to Death
39
IV.— The Journey's End
56
V.— False Excuses
VI.— Murder Outright
YIL— The Toll
VIII.
of
Death
The Attitude of Germany
69
83
93
106
THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES.
By
LORD BRYCE.*
As His Majesty's Government have, of
course,
two
from one or
been unable to obtain, except
quarters, such as the Consul at Tiflis quoted
Lord Cromer, any
to
official
what has been passing
Turkey,
I
think
it
information with regard
Armenia and
in
right
make
to
further information which has
various
though
tioning
danger.
sources
— sources
for obvious
them
here,
by
reasons
expose
public
reached
which
I
cannot,
I
my
The accounts come from
Asiatic-
some
me from
can
trust,
by men-
informants
to
different quarters,
but they agree in essentials, and in fact confirm
one
The time
another.
past
is
harm can be done by publicity
publicity that
is
any
fuller
given to the events that have
happened the better
*
;
when
and the
it
will
be,
because herein
lies
The version here printed embodies Lord Bryce's owr
revision and enlargement of the official report of hit
epeech delivered in the House of Lords on October 6tb
1915.
the only possible chance that exists of arresting
massacres,
tlies"
if
they have not
been com*
yet
pleted.
am
I
grieved to say that such information Us has
mc from
number of
reached
several quarters goes to
the
those
who have
perished
various ways to which I shall refer
It
been
lias
estimated at the
Though hoping
mark,
for
\
that figure
cannot venture
there has beeu an
to
of 800,000.
be tar beyond
pronounce
unparalleled
Marmora, only
incredible,
it
destruction of
a very
few of the
cities
This
so far escaped.
systo
maticaUy carried
out with a ruthless efficiency previously
among
the Turks.
a policy
which, as
entertained for
The
far
possession
Kmpire.
Tin-'
unknown
massacres are the result of
as
cau
!
taint
1
.
some considerable time by
gang of unscrupulous adventurers who
in
the
because the proceedings taken have been so
carefully premeditated and
n
the
in
very targe.
is
figure
to
on the Aegean Coast having
so,
that
over the country from the frontiers of Persia
life all
to the Sea of
is
show
of the
Government
ted to pul
ir
of the
arc
has
the
now
Turkish
in practice until
moment had come, and
that moment seems to have arrived ab >ut the month
of April.
That was the time when the-*.* orders
were issued, orders which cam.' down in every case
they thought the favourable
from Constantinople, and which the
officials
found
7
themselves
obliged
out
carry
to
on
pain
of
dismissal.
There was no Moslem passion against the ArAll was done by the will of
menian Christians.
the Government, and done not from any religious
fanaticism, but simply
they wished, for
because
reasons purely political, to get rid of a
element which
non-Moslem
impaired the homogeneity of the
Empire, and constituted an element that might not
always
submit
All that
oppression.
to
I
have
learned confirms what has already been said else-
where, that there
Musulman
this case
all.
the
So
no reason to believe that in
is
fanaticism
can be
far as
made
opportunities
deportations
for
plunder
these
afford,
viewed by the
better
ont,
though of course
sort
which
slaughter
massacres
of
much
and
been
Moslems
It
would
to say that they have often attempted
to interfere, but at
have shown
have
religions
with horror rather than with sympathy.
be too
at
welcomed and used the
natures have
baser
came into play
any
rate they
approval of the
do hot seem to
conduct of the Turkish
Government.
There
is
nothing in the precepts of Islam which
justifies the slaughter
which has been perpetrated.
am told on good authority
I
that high Moslem religious
condemned the massacres ordered by
Abdul Hamid, and these are far more atrocious.
authorities
some cases the Governors, being pious and
humane men, refused to execute the orders that
In
had reached them, and endeavoured
to give
what
protection they could to the unfortunate Armenians.
In two cases I have heard of the Governors being
immediately dismissed for refusing to obey the
Others more pliant were substituted, and
orders.
the massacres were carried out.
As
have
I
systematic.
each town or
said, the
procedure was exceedingly
The whole Armenian population of
village was cleared out, by a house-to-
Every inmate was driven into the
Some of the men were thrown into prison,
house search.
street.
where they were put to death, sometimes with
torture
;
the rest of the men, with the
had
got
separated,
the
they
among
tribes
of
some
When
men
little
they
distance
being taken to
were
some place
the hills where the soldiers, or the Kurdish
who were
bayonetting.
men were
in to help
The women and
sent
kind of soldiers
—to
called
despatched them
slaughter,
gaols
women and
marched out of the town.
children, were
their
off
in
the work
by shooting or
children and old
under convoy of the
lowest
— many of them just drawn
distant
destination,
sometimes one of the unhealthy
which was
districts
in the
more frequently the large
Der el Zor, which lies east of
centre of Asia Minor, but
desert in the province of
from
Aleppo,
iii
beaten or
loot,
They were
the direction of the Euphrates.
driven along by the
many
way, and
day
after day.
behind to perish
left
not keep up with
soldiers
the caravan
:
of hunger.
died
if
many
No
;ill
on
they could
fell
by the
provisions
were given them by the Turkish Government, and
they had already been robbed of everything thej
Not
possessed.
aborning
women were
stripped
to travel in that condition
beneath
sun.
and threw away
carry
them
seem
mothers went mad
Some
of the
their
children, being
The
Further.
marked by a
few
of the
a i'rw
naked and made
caravan
have
arrived
the
at
been prescribed for them
Avhich had
route
was
and comparatively
line of corpses,
to
unable to
destinations
—chosen,
no
doubt, because return was impossible and because
there was
their
prospect that any would
little
hardships.
accounts
of;
these,
had
have
E
American
circumstantial
deportations which bear internal
evidence of being veracious, and
an
survive
who
friend
lias
I
was told by
lately
returned
from Constantinople that he had heard accounts
Constantinople, confirming fully those which
at
had come to me, and that what had struck
him was the comparative calmness with which
these atrocities were detailed by those who had
Tilings which we
first-hand knowledge of them.
find
scarcely
Turkey.
credible
Massacre
excite
was
the
little
ov<h>v
surprise
of
the
in
day
10
Eastern Ruinelia in 1876, and, in 1895-6, in
in
Asiatic Turkey.
When
its
Armenian population was driven from
the
many
homes,
of the
women were
reserved for a more humiliating
mostly
by Turkish
seized
and consigned to
officials,
not killed, but
They were
fate.
or
civilian
their harems.
Others
officers
were sold in the market, but only to a Moslem
purchaser, for they were to be
Never again would
force.
stroke to slavery,
girls
at prices
they see
parents or
—these Christian women condemned
husbands
and
made Moslems by
at
one
The boys
shame and apostasy.
were also very largely sold into slavery,
sometimes of only ten to twelve shillings,
while other boys of tender age were delivered to
dervishes,
to
be carried off to a sort of dervish
monastery, and there forced to become Musulmans.
To
oive
one
remorseless
way
out,
it
may
instance
in
of
the
thorough
which the massacres were carried
suffice to refer to the case of
Trebizond,
a case vouched for by the Italian Consul
present
when
country not
and
who was
the slaughter was carried out, his
having then declared war
against
Orders came from Constantinople that
Armenian Christians in Trebizond were to
be killed.
Many of the Moslems tried to save their
Christian neighbours, and offered them shelter in
Turkey.
all
the
their
houses,
but the
Turkish authorities were
—
11
Obeying the orders which they had
implacable.
they
received,
hunted
out
the
all
Christians,
gathered them together, and drove a great crowd
of them down the streets of Trebizond, past the
fortress, to the
all
edge of the
There they were
sea.
put on board sailing boats, carried out some
on the Black Sea, and there thrown overNearly the whole Armenian
board and drowned.
population of from 8,000 to 10,000 were destroyed
distance
some
in
this
being sent to
some by slaughter, some by
After that, any
death elsewhere.
way,
other story becomes credible
and
;
I
am
sorry to
have received con-
say that all the stories that I
tain similar elements of horror, intensified in
by
cases
stories of
shocking torture.
pitiable case is not that of those
some
But the most
whose misery was
those unfortunate
ended by swift death, but
women who, after their husbands had been killed
of
and
their daughters violated,
their
young
were driven out with
children to perish in the desert
— where
they have no sustenance, and where they are the
victims of the wild
Arab
tribes
would seem that three-fourths
whole nation has been wiped
case
in
around them.
It
or four-fifths of the
is
no
history, certainly not since the time
of
out,
and there
Tamerlane, in which any crime so hideous and
upon
so large a scale has been recorded.
Let
me
add, because this
is
of
some importance
in
12
viuw of the excuses which, as we understand, the
German Government are putting forward, and which
Ambassador
their
given,
in
Washington
is
stated to
have
he talked about " the suppression of
when
riots/' for the
conduct of those
who
that there
no ground
the suggestion that
there
is
on
had been any rising
A certain number
Armenians.
teers
for
of
are their allies,
the
part
of the
Armenian volun-
have fought on the side of the Russians in
Army, but they came, as I have
been informed, from the Armenian population
It may be that some few
of Trans- Caucasia.
the Caucasian
Armenians crossed the
frontier
in order to tight
alongide their Armenian brethren in Trans -Caucasia
for
Russia, but at any rate, the volunteer corps
which
such
rendered
Army
Russian
in
the
brilliant
first
part
service
to
the
of the war was
composed
of
Caucasus.
Wherever the Armenians, almost wholly
unarmed
Russian
Armenians living
they were, have fought,
as
in
the
they have
fought in self-defence to defend their families and
themselves from the cruelty of the ruffians
constitute
what
is
country.
There
is
such
ground
newspapers
has
Government of the
no excuse whatever upon any
called the
some German
allege, for the
Government.
tation
as
who
authorities
and
conduct of the Turkish
Their policy of slaughter and depor-
been
wanton
and
unprovoked.
It
13
maxim
appears to be simply an application of the
once enunciated by Sultan Abdul
Hamid
:
"
The
Armenian question is to
and the policy of
get rid of the Armenians "
extermination has been carried out with far more
thoroughness and with far more bloodthirsty
way
the
to get rid of
;
completeness by the present heads of the Turkish
Administration
—they
describe themselves as the
Committee of Union and Progress
the time of Abdul Hamid.
There are
the
still, I
believe, a
—than
it
was
in
few places in which
Armenians, driven into the mountains, are
About
by French cruisers on
defending themselves as best they can.
5,000 were taken
off
lately
the coast of Syria, and have
Egypt, and they
tell
now been conveyed
to
us that in the heights of
Sassoon and in Northern Syria, possibly also
the mountains of Cilicia, there are
still
in
a few bands,
with very limited provision of arms and munitions,
valiantly defending themselves as
The whole
against their enemies.
is
best they can
nation, therefore,
not yet extinct, so far as regards these refugees
and those who have escaped into
in the mountains,
Trans- Caucasia
;
and
agreed that every
I
am
effort
sure
we
are all heartily
should be made that can
be made to send help to the unfortunate survivors,
hundreds of
whom
are daily perishing
by want and
14
us do
let
I
we
It is all that
disease.
it,
have
authentic
and do
not
so
it
in
England can now do;
quickly.
far
been
able
to
any
obtain
information regarding the part said to
have been taken by German
officials in directing
encouraging these massacres, and therefore
it
or
would
not be right to express any opinion on the subject.
But
it
is
perfectly clear that the only chance of
saving the unfortunate remnants of this ancient
Christian nation
is
found in an expression
to be
that
of the public opinion of the world, especially
of neutral nations, which
may
possibly exert
some
upon the German Government and
induce them to take the only step by which the
influence even
They have hitherto
equanimity.
Let them now
massacres can be arrested.
stood by with callous
tell
the Turkish
Government that they
ing for themselves
that there
are
a
are prepar-
well-earned retribution,
and
some things which the outraged
opinion of the world will not tolerate.
BRYCE.
)
15
THE EVIDENCE.
Tin '/following statement
There
testimonies.
able
based upon uuimpeaeh-
is
are
narratives
the
of
missionaries — Germans as well as Swiss, Americans
and
other citizens of neutral countries.
There are
reports from consuls on the spot, including, again,
the
representatives of the
are numerous private
and
the Allied
the
German Empire.
letters
there are
which
have
scries
the
already
to
closely these,
record the
what they have
seen.
of personal depositions
been
published
mittee of distinguished citizens of the
The nmre
published in
letters
neutral press, which
evidence of eye-witnesses as
And
and
There
by
Com-
a
United States,
independent pier
<
s
f
evidence
are examined, the more precisely they prove
to
cue another
di tails.
out,
sometimes even
The facts contained
full assurance of
to
minutest
them are here presented with
truth.
It
is
of course im-
name such sources of evidence as have not
been named in print, because this would expose
possible
yet
in
their
in the
to
imminent danger such of them as are within
Tu
bear
7t'
ish
dominions.
the
17
ARMENIA BEFORE THE
I.
MASSACRES.
War began by working
The German
and desolation
in
Belgium
the
Latterly
wounds
and
unaccustomed places
industrial
heart
horror
— peaceful
France.
of
has also succeeded in aggravating the
it
Poland
of countries already stricken sore.
has learnt to envy her condition before August,
1914
last
;
the Balkan peoples have been robbed of their
hope of fraternity
;
and now, on the Eastern
fringe of
Germany's arena, the intermittent sufferings
of
Armenian
the
organised,
its
all
race
cold-blooded
have
culminated
attempt
Turkish rulers to exterminate
by methods of inconceivable
in
an
on the part of
it
once and for
barbarity and
wickedness.
The Armenians
are perhaps the oldest established
of the civilised races in
are certainly the
Their home
tween the
Black Seas.
is
Western Asia, and they
most vigorous
at the present
day
the tangle of high mountains be-
Caspian,
the Mediterranean,
and the
Here the Armenian peasant has
lived
18
from time immemorial the hardworking
leading
Here
he was
eve of this ultimate catastrophe.
the
till
life
Armenian kingdom was the
a strong, civilised
first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its
Here Church and people have
national religion.
maintained
vitality against
extraordinary
with
tradition
their
wave upon wave
of
alien conquest
from every quarter.
For many centuries
past,
however, Armenia has
not been co-extensive with the Armenian race
in the Eastern provinces of the
we
find
same phenomenon
the
;
for
Turkish Empire
of
inter-
racial
mixture and disintegration as has been produced in
by the operation of the Turkish regime.
Under the malignant administration of the Moslem
the Balkans
conqueror, the Kurds, also an ancient race, but one
which has remained
from their old
mountains.
pasturage
askance
fields
of
Thus
the
seats over the
They
the
the
neat
Armenian has
himself by finding
goats,
and
inhabitants
lost the
;
and look
well
of
the
for
the
-
tilled
land.
undivided posses-
but he has recompensed
many new homes beyond
For the Armenian
trious peasant, he has
intellectual pursuit?.
wilderness
villages
original
have spread out
Armenian's ancestral
and
sheep
sion of his proper country
borders.
a
prefer
of their
at
uncivilised,
is
its
not only an indus-
a talent for handicraft
The most harassed
and
village in
19
the mountains would never despair of
and these schools were avenues
school,
He
world.
has
that
also
which the Jew displays
talent
for
its
village
to a
wider
commerce
Eastern Europe and
in
the Greek in the Levant, and he plays a similar
role himself, as the skilled
workman and
the
man
Every
town in Northern Syria and Anatolia had, eight
months ago, its populous, prosperous Armenian
of business, in the interior of Asiatic Turkey.
quarter
— the focus
commercial relations
with Constantinople and Europe.
nople
itself,
At Constanti-
Armenian population had
the
more than 200,000, and there were nearly
in
Tiflis,
the capital of Russian
Trans-Caucasia, in
government and
its
with
fact,
risen to
as
many
Trans-Caucasia.
orderly Christian
its
promising economic develop-
ment, had become a second
race.
and
of local skill, intelligence
trade, as well as of the town's
The Katholikos,
home
of the
or head of the
Armenian
Armenian
Church, resides in Russian territory, at Etchmiad-
and there were perhaps 750,000 Armenians on
the northern side of the Russo-Turkish frontier.
zin,
Eight months ago, however, these represented
minority of the race,
for
remained under Turkish
half this majority
Armenia, east
of the Tigris.
about
rule.
The
still
Rather more than
was to be found
of the
1,200,000
a
in the original
upper Euphrates and north
rest
were scattered through
all
20
the
towns between the Euphrates and ConstantiTheir numbers were especially strong
nople.
the
Adana
in
bordering
district of Cilicia, a rich plain
on the north-east corner of the Mediterranean, while
mountain fastnesses above the plain the
in the
towns of
Zeitoun
centres of
Armenian
The condition of
people
—about
the Turkish
They were
<S
hill
and Hadjin were flourishing
life.
these twelve
hundred thousand
per cent, of the total population of
Empire
—had always been unenviable.
treated as a subject race,
and lacked the
right of bearing arms, a status which, in a lawless
country,
left
individual
them peculiarly
Moslem neighbours.
advantages to write
Among
a
at the
their
But there were
off against
rather stupid,
mercy of
such drawbacks.
conservatively
inclined
Turkish population, their commercial genius gave
them a
virtual
monopoly of
trade, and
a corre-
spondingly large share in the wealth of the country.
Hard-earned gains might often in individual cases
be reft away by local tyranny
gifts
;
but the Armenian's
were really indispensable to his meters, and
their general recognition of this fact
was shown by
the general toleration he received from them.
fact,
the subject, Christian, intellectual
In
Armenian
and the dominant, Moslem, agrarian Turk had
settled down
into an effective, if rough and
ready, equilibrium.
21
This old-established adjustment of the Armenian
problem was
by
assailed
first
Abd-ul-
Sultan
His Balkan experience had taught him
Hamid.
the policy of keeping the races of his Empire in
hand by
setting"
Applying
them
to his
it
one
to massacre
another.
Eastern provinces, where he
feared that the intelligent
and
Christian
'active
population might seek liberty as the Bulgars had
sought
it
and obtained
he
1878,
redoubled
the Kurdish
badges and
out to
the
The
the
Kurds
were
in
evoked from
official
world
civilized
new
capacity,
welcome
their
and
duty.
unprecedented Armenian
were the
under
were served
rifles
their
into
services of
Hamidieh Cavalry."
modern
initiated
results
"
new
introduced
exactions,
tribesmen as
Official
massacres
Russia's hands in
at
and ended by enlisting the
oppressions,
they
it
direction,
1895
in
Gladstone
the
that horrified
1896, and
and
last
public
speech
When Abd-ul-Hamid was over1908 and the " Committee of Union and
of his old age.
thrown
in
Progress " proclaimed constitutional government
and equal
there
civil
rights for all
seemed hope of better
Ottoman
things
;
citizens,
but
the
Ottoman Constitution was followed in less than a
year by the equally atrocious though less widespread massacres of Adana.
Even
that
paroxysm
passed, but
it left
a chronic evil behind.
Buxton, who travelled
months
Turkish Armenia a few
in
before the outbreak
reported
of the
present
Young Turks had
the
that
Mr. Noel
war,
recklessly
followed the Hamidian policy of arming the Kurds,
and that a fresh
Then came
moment.
on the German
was
disaster
side,
possible
any
at
Turkey entered
the war.
it
and the crimes began which
will be narrated in the following pages.
The evidence on which
based
has
is
the following account
drawn from various
appeared
Some
quarters.
A
already in print.
It agrees
porated
the
completely
in
United
of
twenty-five
American
Empire,
eminence
and
as
as
to
mission
well
of
-
Cardinal
Dr.
Harvard
4th.
and
work
persons
as
in
1915)
of
—a
two
including
Porte,
Gibbons,
Charles
body
ex-
f'>\\\'
directors
the
Ottoman
in
of
people.
full
in
Inquiry
of
has
material incor-
October
members,
the
Rhinelander,
President
other
(published
Committee
American
ambassadors
on
States
who
Armenian
the
with
Report
the
the
of
with
personal links
it
smaller part
has been sent privately to Lord Bryce,
many
of
is
such individual
Greer
Bishops
W.
University),
Eliot
Mr.
(Ex-
Charles
R. Crane, Mr. Stephen S. Wise and Mr. John R.
33
The evidence
Motfe.*
direct,
with
and
which
credible
unfolds
it
tale.
and
also appalling in the uniformity
is
it
abundant
indeed
is
Part of
neutral witnesses
its
is
it
otherwise
scarcely
from the mouth
—European or American
of
travellers
and men of business who have returned from the
interior of
or
Turkey
permanent residents
their status to be able to
have
seen
on
work began,
since the horrible
the
protected by
sufficiently
communicate what they
Testimony
>pot.
of
this
unequivocal character tonus the backbone of the
American
Committee's statement
but even in
;
these eases the evidence has to be presented, from
•American Committee ox Armenian Atrocities.
70, Fifth
James
L.
Avenue,
Charles
New
York,
Samuel
Barton,!
Chairman.
T.
Duttox,
Secretary
R.
Crane,
Treasurer.
Cleveland H. Dodge,
Charles W. Eliot.
James Cardinal Gibbons.
Rt. Rev. David II. Greer.
Norman Hapgood.
William 1. Haven.
Maurice H. Harris.
Arthur Curtis James.
Frederick Lynch.
H. Pereira Mend is.
John R. jfclott
j
Frank Mason North.
Harry V. Osborn.
Rt. Rev. P. Rhinelander.
Karl Davis Robinson.
William W. Rockwell.
Isaac N. Seligman.
William Sloane.
Edward Lincoln Smith.
Oscar S. Strans.
Stanley White.
Stephen
S. V,
Secretary of the American Mission? Board.
—
24
motives of precaution, in an anonymous form, and
in dealing
with testimony from native Armenian
sources the necessity for the strictest reticence
i3
The crime has been com-
even more apparent.
mitted without pretext, but no excuse for continuing
it
in the cases of individuals
would come
horrors,
Armenians
It
of
evidence
the
own
to their
of
its
and
the
as clear as
is
protected
friends.
headed by the statement of the Katholikos
is
himself, transmitted
from Russia
Union
National Defence
in
lished on September 27th in
and
witness
sufferings
better
their
authors
its
the
Nevertheless,
organisers.
who had exposed
amiss to
pub-
the American press;
which another high Armenian
resident
in
received
from
a
striken
refugees
— the
safety
Caucasus, or
case
this
in the
found
the U.S., and
words are borne out by a confidential
his
letter
Armenian
to the
prominent
And
area.
behind
fellow
made
its
way
Armenians
-
to
has
countryman
nation
Russian
the
territory,
are
the
that
has
in
the
then there
remnant of the
lines
Egypt
across the
For instance, there were
friendly Mediterranean.
the 4,200
neutral
in
ecclesiastic,
— men, women and children
from Selefkeh, the port
of
Antioch,
French cruiser squadron landed
the end of September.
whom
the
safely at Port Said at
They had been seven weeks
in the hills, fighting for life with antiquated
guns
and scanty ammunition, and with their backsto the
sea.
Against Turkish regulars reinforced by all
the blackguards of the
seemed desperate
;
Aleppo slums, their chance
but they knew
it
was the only
chance they had, for the order had come
to prepare
within a week for deportation, and the fate of
all
kinsmen from Anatolia was before
But this is to anticipate the sequence
their deported
their eyes.
of the narrative.
The evidence
sufficiently indicated,
forth
the
beginning.
whole
and
series
it
of
in
will
hand has been
be better to
crimes
from
set
their
26
THE PLAN OF THE MASSACBES.
II
The entrance
Autumn
Young Turk
lot.
War
the
into
aggravate
immediately
not
did
Armenians'
Turkey
of
last
the
policy had extended
the burden of military service to the Christian as
Moslem population
well as the
but that might be
;
regarded in the light of a privilege, as a recognition
of the equality of all
Moreover,
Ottoman
citizens before the law.
many Armenians had
in lieu of enrolment.
It
has been said, and cannot
emphasised too strongly,
be
industrious, prosperous,
peace.
It included a
men and
educated
paid commutation
that
the
race
was
devoted to the works of
large proportion of highly
not a few educated
women, who
had been taught in the schools and universities of
Europe, or in the excellent colleges of the American
missions
;
and
of thinkers
artificers,
it
and
supplied
Turkey with
contrivers, teachers,
which gives a country
its
that class
traders
brain.*
and
The
war, again, was directed against Christian powers,
and undertaken by those who had massacred their
brethren at
*
Adana only
live years before.
many Armenians have
For the
achieved distinction
Napoleon's
opponent in 1812, and Generals Mel'ikoH" and Lazareil in
the Russo-Turkish War of 18/7-8.
in
In Russia
war
as well, for eyaniple Prince Bagration,
—
27
war of patriotism so
many Armenian men remained quietly at home,
and when those who were drafted were deprived
Armenians
was not
it
a
;
arms by order of the Government, and
brigaded into labour battalions to work on the
of their
roads,
is
it
change
improbable that they resented the
of duty.
Thus
the
winter passed with
foreboding of the coming spring.
little
Government at Constannot too good a name for
Enver, Talaat, and the rest of that " Committee of
Union and Progress" which Lord Brycehas justly
But meanwhile the
tinople
—
if
Government
is
described as a "
gang of unscrupulous ruffians,"
meanwhile, this unprincipled and all - powerful
organisation was working out its plans, and it
began to put them into action in April.
The scheme was nothing
less
than the exter-
mination of the whole Christian population within
the
Ottoman
frontiers.
For the war had tem-
Ottoman Government from
as it was, which the Concert
porarily released the
the
of
control,
slight
Europe had been
able to exert.
on one side were Turkey's
friends
upon
;
and Enver, looking
allies
The
belligerents
and very good
to the future, relied
their promised victory to shield himself
his accomplices
powers
and
and
from the vengeance of the Western
Russia,
which
had
always
stood
between the malignant hostility of the Ottoman
28
Government and the helplessness of
Christian
its
The denunciation of the " Capitulations" broke down the legal barrier of foreign protection, behind which many Ottoman Christians had
subjects.
fennel
more
Nothing
or less effective shelter.
re-
mained but to use the opportunity and strike a
" After
stroke that would never need repetition.
this,"
signal, " there will
fi
when he gave
said Talaat Bey,
the final
be no Armenian question for
years."
ffcy
The crime was concerted very
there
is
fifty places.
here,
systematically, for
evidence of identical procedure from over
They
are too
numerous
but every one of them"
is
to be detailed
shewn on the
accompanying map, and they will be found to
include every important town in Armenia proper
and in Eastern Anatolia, as well
as
Bre-nssa in the west, not to speak of a
places in Thrace.
There
ing the monotonous tale
Ismid and
number
of
no object in multiplyof horror, for the uniform
is
directions from Constantinople^ were carried out
With the exception
(
of
six
small villages in
the
iii.-fan hills.
| " I could not bring myself to believe that it was by
order of the Central Government that the Armenians
driven from their homes. It wag only at Constantinople that I learnt this fact, and I learnt also that the
pressure brought to boar by the Embassies had had no
Extract from a letter (written by an Armenian
effect."
Protestant to an American citizen) which was published
on September -1th, 1915, bv the Armenian paper
—
"
Go&ehnag " of
New
York.
29
with remarkable exactitude by the local authori-
Only two
ties.
refused
governor of Everek, in the
the local
and he was at once replaced
district of Kaisarieh,
by a more
On
pliable successor.
kaimakam
the
protest of a
another
of
German missionary
it,
plan
and
spite
(American
of
Committee's
what happened was
On
all,
I
replied
" If the
:
do
as
I
In
Report.)*
been
exempted
themselves
men
of
from
now on
Armenian
military
these were all
general
it
summoned
race that
had
to present
" Able-bodied "
it
included any
and seventy years
of age,
and
marched out of the town by the
They had not
gendarmes.
please."
draft
pain of death.
fifteen
.
gendarmerie
local
received a liberal interpretation, for
male between
Law and
whatever town
streets of
with fixed bayonets, and the Governor
able-bodied
the
would carry out the
might be were occupied by the
all
to
this.
day the
a given
the other hand,
place
the Sultan were to forbid
in
who
obey the Government's instructions.
to
One was
cases are reported of officials
far
to
go,
for
the
gendarmerie had been reinforced for the purpose from
the gaols,
and the brigands and Kurds
waiting in the
hills.
at large
They were waiting
* Hereafter referred to as
A.O.R.
to
were
murder
o
The
the prisoners.
seconded valley witnessed
first
their wholesale massacre,
and, acquitted of their
gendarmes marched back
task, the
leisurely into
town.
This was the
possibility
of
first act.
It
resistance
to
precluded the pitiful
the
was of a more ingenious and
The women,
the remainder of
children who made up
Armenian
population, were
the
now given immediate
—
reaching kind.
far
men and
old
notice of deportation within
week perhaps,
commonly a week, and in no
fortnight.
They were to be
a fixed term
which
second,
or ten days, but
a
more than a
case
whole
unrooted,
households, from their homes, and driven off to an
unknown
while
destination,
houses
their
and
property were to be transferred to Moslems, on a
plan which will be described in the sequel.
It is
hardly possible to imagine to oneself the
implication
of
savages, like the
the
White Man
They were
Red Indians who
across
in
life
the
perity.
They
lawyers
were
and
as
their
They were
towns-
ourselves,
town
sedentary
teachers,
like
Kurds.
and the chief authors of
tions
and
established
shepherds
the
people living the same
retired before
the American continent.
nomadic
not
barbarous neighbours
people
These were not
such a decree.
for
its
local
people,
business
generapros-
doctors
men and
31
ans and shopkeepers, and they had raised solid
monuments
to
costly churches
women were
their
and industry,
intelligence
and well-appointed
as delicate, as refined, as
unused
hardship and brutality as
women
United States.
they were in the
In
fact,
Their
schools.
in
to
Europe or the
cl
personal touch with Western civilisation, for
many
Armenian centres upon which the crime was
perpetrated had been served by the American
of the
missions and colleges for at least fifty years, and
were familiar with the
men and women who
fine
directed them.
Communities
like this, after being mutilate
.1
the wholesale conscription or assassination of
husbands and
roots
fathers,
were
now
by
the
torn up by the
and driven, under the forlorn leadership of
the mothers and the old men, into an exile that
was
to
terminate in a death of unspeakable horror.
There was just one possible loophole of escape,
apostasy, but
It
it
did not do to bid for
it
too eagerly.
had been available in 1895, and the men of one
town on the Euphrates now sought
their
doom.* But
for
their desperate offer
and at another town
in
Anatolia
it:
to avert
was refused
it
;
was only
accepted on the inhuman condition of surrendering
their
*
children below the age of twelve years to
Hoping
to return to Christianity in better 'lays.
'
32
Government, to
the
" orphanages " in the
educated
be
Moslem
in
unknown
faith.
Of course these orphanages were quite hypoThere were dervish convents,
thetical institutions.
however, which were real and terrible enough.
The
dervishes are communities of fanatical
many
devotees,
whom
of
lead a wandering
—a
the interior of Anatoliaprimitive
religion.
their choice of the
Moslem
barbaric
life
survival
in
of
They were allowed to take
young Armenian boys, and one
Lord Bryce's informants describes how bands of
them met the caravans of deported Armenians on
of
their road,
terror, to
and carried
off children, shrieking
with
bring them up as Moslems in their savage
fraternity.
In one place "a plan was formed to save the
children
by placing them
in schools or orphanages,
under the care of a committee organised and supported by the Greek Archbishop, of which the Vali
was president and the Archbishop vice-president,
with three
Mohammedan and three
orders from above
"
many
another
The
mem-
But the plan was rescinded by
(A.C.R.)
bers."
Christian
and
;
of the
boys appear
district, to
have been sent
to
be distributed
among
to
the farmers.
best looking of the older girls are kept in houses
for the pleasure of
rule affairs here.
member
of the
'
members
of the
gang
who seem
to
I hear on good
Committee of Union and Progress
authority that a
33
here has ten of
handsomest
fche
girls id a
ii
i
central part of tbo city, for the Oft
his friends."
reported in
its issue
style) that
—
A
:
and
-If
(A.C.R.)
The Armenian journal
"
in the
le
'•
Horizon" of
Sept. 4th (Aug.
of
Tiflis,
22nd old
telegram from Bukaresc states thai the Turks
have sent from Anatolia four railway-vans full of
Armenian orphans from the interior of the country,
to distribute them among the Moslem families.*
1
Such was the
children
marked out
fate
but even such a
and
alone,
was
sacrifice
who consented
parents
for the
who were young enough
not from
to
;
to "reprieve" the
from immediate death
it
the
Armenian
lor assimilation
torment of
lingering
deportation.
Only
at one place
do we hear that the victims
were given the prospect of ransoming themselves
completely by accepting Islam for their families
and themselves.
Here the
"
lawyer-
The
tions
offices of the
were crowded with
become Mohammedans.
their
But
women and
their escape
witness
who
did
petitioning
it
to
for the sake of
"
children
was
that
recorded applica-
people
Many
states
(A.C.K.)
converts
a
were marched out of the town
like
the rest,
and
were never heard of again.
The majority of the people were not suffered even
to
play
with
hopes
of
security,
and the
week
u
of grace
At the
was occupied by
last
heartrending
scenes.
mentioned town " people made prepara-
tion for carrying out the Government's orders
selling
in
by
whatever household possessions they could
Articles
the streets.
were sold
at less
than
10 per cent, of their usual value, and Turks from
the neighbouring villages filled the streets, hunting
bargains "
for
In
(A.C.R.)
this
instance
the
Government punished any Moslems that actually
by force
seized articles
;
but in general the authori-
were not so meticulous.
ties
the
that
It
Armenians were
must be repeated
people
of
property,
property well earned by intelligent industry, and
the
Moslem
indigent
of
slums had always
the
resented the prosperity which Allah had permitted
to the subject infidel.
come
own.
into his
At
Now
Moslem was
the
tc
a port on the Cilician coast
" sewing machines sold for
1J-
medjidiehs (about
four shillings and ninepence), iron bedsteads for a
few
and
piastres,"
at a hitherto
on the Black Sea we
are
flourishing port
showm
a spectacle of
wholesale felony.
"
The thousand Armenian houses
in the
town
are
being emptied of furniture by the police one after
the other
.
.
.
,
and a crowd of Turkish
women
and children follow the police about like a lot of
vultures, and seize anything they can lay their hands
on and when the more valuable things are carried
out of a house by the police, they rush in and take
;
35
performance every day with
suppose it will take several weekg
to empty all the houses, and then the Armenian
shops and stores will be cleared out." (A.C.R.)
the balance.
my own
A
I see this
eyes.
I
systematic eradication of a whole people, this,
and designed
to that end, for the
told the witness that
He
"
did not
Armenians would be permitted
city in
German
consul
the
believe
to return to the
question, even after the end of the war."
(A.C.R.)
But the Armenians gained
little
their goods, for even the trifling
by
selling
sums they
up
realised
were more than they were permitted to carry with
Their journey money was strictly limited
them.
to a
few
shillings,
and in
fact it
would only have
exposed them to pillage by their guards
had attempted to carry more about
Yet
if
was
still
In
they could not
many
less
cases the notice
At the mountain
women were
" the
their persons.
it
was too short
all,
been especially the case in
"
they
realise their property, there
hope of transporting
out or packing up at
if
and
this
with them.
for selling
seems to have
Cilicia.
village of
Geben," for instance
wash
- tub,
and were
wet clothes in the water and
take the road barefuoted and half -clad, just as they
were. In some cases they were able to carry part of
their scanty household furniture or implements of
agriculture, but for the most part they were neither
to carry anything nor to sell it, even where there was
compelled
at
to leave their
time to do so."
(A.C.R.)
the
36
" In Hadjin well-to-do people, who Lad prepared
food and bedding for the road, were obliged to leave
it in the street, and afterwards suffered greatly from
hrmger," (A.O30
The
tind
bad reason to be thankful
exiles
they could
if
conveyance for their own persons.
the government announced that
an ox-cart for each family.
Sometimes
would provide
it
But
was often
this
only another opportunity for mocker}
In one
7
place,
.
where the people had been given notice to
depart on Wednesday, the carts appeared on Tuesday
;\
r
3.30 a.m., and the people were ordered to leave
' :
at once.
Some were draped from
without even sufficient clothing."
no provision was made at
all.
In other cases
For example,
aforementioned city on the Black
Governor-General
told
Armenians were allowed
"
Carriages."
" seemed to be
But
the
to
their beds
at the
Sea coast, the
witness
" the
that
make arrangements
nobody,"
says
the
witness,
making any arrangements.
who
of one wealthy merchant, however,
for
I
know
paid.
£15
(Turkish) for a carriage to take himself and his
wife
.
.
But about ten minutes drive From
.
the start, they were
commanded by
to leave the carriage,
city."
And
it
the gendarmes
which was sent back
was always the same
owners of the vehicles were always
tale
local
•
to the
for the
Moslems,
who had no intention of accompanying the gruesome
caravan to
its
distant destination.
After one day's
—
37
march, or two, when the victim's
pence had
last
been extorted in bribes, the drivers turned their
oxen about.
as
it
started,
Often the second batch of a convoy,
saw the
carts assigned to the first batch
returning empty to the town, and realised that they
would have
to
travel
the greater part of their
immense journey over the mountains on
From
the impression
it
made on the
foot.*
witnesses,
the scene of departure must in any case have been
harrowing enough.
From
that
town on the
coast
the exiles were despatched in successive batches of
about 2,000 each.
"The weeping and wailing of the women and
Some of these
children was most heartrending.
people were from wealthy and refined circles, some
were accustomed to luxury and ease. There were
clergymen, merchants, bankers, lawyers, mechanics
*
For example, the following incident is related in a
printed by the New York paper " Gotchnag " on
September 4th, to which reference has been made
letter,
already
:
When the Government announced that the
Armenian population must remove from a certain
inland town in Eastern Anatolia, an American
"
missionary, Miss X., obtained
company the deported people.
permission
to
ac-
She bought a
car-
eight carts and six donkeys, for the use of
the pupils and teachers of the missionary school on
The Government had placed an
their journey.
ox-cart at the disposal of each family, bat no one
knows exactly how far the unfortunate deported
riage,
families have been able to ride, or at
what moment
they have been compelled to go on foot."
.
38
tailors,
and men from every walk
The whole Mohammedan
people were
<h..y
And
place
to
be their prey from the beginning, and
animals."
v,
nor,'
is
of life
population knew that these
(A.C.R.)
another description from a different
:
morning the ox-carts creaked out of the
town, laden with women and children, and here and
there a man who had escaped the previous deportations.
The women and girls all wore the Turkish
[he
•'Ail
costume, that their faces might not bo exposed to the
gaze
drivers and
<:(
gendarmes— a
brutal
lot of
men
brought in from other regions
was terrible. The people
full that the Government was determined to exterminate the Armenian race, and they were powerless
The people were sin'.' that the men were
to resist.
The panic
in the city
being killed and the
women
Many
kidnapped.
of
had been released,
the convicts
were
foil of bands of
and the mountains around
in
the
prisons
outlaws
Most of the Armenians
lutely
iu
the district
were abso-
Many said it was worse than a
No one knew what was coming, but all
hopeless.
massacre.
was the end. Even the pastors and leaders
couW offer no word of encouragement or hope. Many
i'eli-
that
began
to
it
doubi even the existence of God.
-train
the
some
of
many
Under
individuals became demented,
them permanently."'
(A.C.R.)
is reported from the
massacres of 1909, when a woman who had seen her child
burnt alive in the village church, answered her would-be
comforters: " Don't you see what ha^ happened? God
* .V
repetition of a case
has grone mad."
which
39
THE ROAD TO DEATH.
III.
In this agonising state of apprehension the bands
women were
of Armenian
driven forth on their
There was a heroism about their exodus,
road.
for there
was
still
a loophole of eseape, the
of apostasy
alternative
husbands and
fathers.
And
in their case, at least,
apostasy brought the certainty of
condition laid
into the
honour
and
harem
— most
yet,
down was
it
have rejected
to
known
it
:
all
that lay before
it
the better part.
them, they might have judged
As
because the
Life at the price of
them seem
they had
if
life,
immediate entrance
their
of a Turk.
of
tempted their
had
that
same
was, they clutched at the desperate chance of
immunity, and presented themselves
for the
march
—playing too unsuspectingly
into their conductors'
For the gaol-bred
gendarmes had no
-
hands.
;tion of
conducting the caravan -intact to
its
destination.
Some were sold into shame
" One Moslem reported
began.
had offered
to sell
him two
(about three shillings
girls
the
before
that
a
for a
and twopence)".
march
gendarme
medjidieh
They
sold
the youngest and most handsome at every village
40
where they passed the night and these girls have
been trafficked in hundreds through the brothels
;
Abundant news has
Ottoman Empire.
of the
come from Constantinople
of
itself
being
their
sold for a few shillings in the open markets of
the capital
and one piece of evidence
;
Bryce's possession comes
than ten years
old,
from
who was
a
in
Lord
no more
girl
carried with
this
object from a town of North Eastern Anatolia to
These were Christian
the shores of the Bosphorus.
women,
and refined
as civilised
as the
women
of
Western Europe, and they were enslaved into
Yet they were more fortunate than
degradation.
their
companions who were denied even
from their
who
;
and these
\vere old
of families, mothers actually with
women, mothers
child,
journey
terrible
this release
were herded on to meet the intolerable
hardships which their journey held in store.
"
Women
the last
with
little
children in their arms, or in
days of pregnancy, were driven along under
Three different cases came
cattle.
knowledge where the woman was delivered on the road, and because her brutal driver
the
whip
under
like
my
Some
hurried her along she died of hemorrhage.
women became
so completely
worn out and
helpless
that they left their infants beside the road." (A.C.R.)
This
latter
fact
is
witnessed
from
quarters.
One
piece of evidence tells of a
throwing
her
dying
child
down
a
several
woman
well,
that
she might be spared the sight of
Another woman,
stifle
its
agony.*
)ast
crowded rattle-truck
a
in
I
on the Anatolian Railway, threw her baby onto the
line.
" Six
agonised mothers,
by this railway
their
little
to
passing through
unknown
an
Konieb
destination, entrusted
Armenian families in
them alive; but the local
them away from the Armenians and
Moslem hands."
children
the
to
the city iu order to save
authorities tore
placed them in
This
comes from the confidential
last incident
high Armenian ecclesiastic which has
letter to a
been mentioned above
;
and testimony from the
American Committee's Report only heightens the
horror.
"An Armenian told me thai he had abandoned
two children on the way because they could nor
walk, and that he did not know whether they had
died of cold and hunger, whether a charitable soul
had taken care of them, or whether they had become
the prey
of wild
beasts.
have been thus abandoned.
thrown
Many
children seem to
One seems
to
have been
into a well."
The same incident
who had come
to
is
recorded by
a
first-hand witness
Constantinople from the interior, and
whose general description
of the deportations
(which tallies
exactly with the personal narratives given here) has been
resumed by Prof. Hagopian in an article published on
September 1st. 101."), by the paper "Armenia" of
Marseilles.
.
42
This confirms the entirely independent
mony
same incident from another source,
to the
and there
testi-
many
evidence of equal weight for
is
other incidents of equal horror.
and a half years old, wearing
only a shirt in rags. She had come on foot
She was terribly spare, and was shivering from cold,
as were also all the innumerable children I saw on
" I
saw a
girl three
.
is
caravans on
.
(A.C.R.)
that day."
Here
.
a
witness
its
road.
who saw one
of
these
They went slowly, most of them fainting from
want of food. We saw a father walking with a oneday-old baby in his arms, and behind him the
mother walking as well as possible, pushed by the
It was not uncommon
stick of the Turkish guard.
"
to see a
woman
the stick."
fall
down and then
rise again
under
(A.C.R.)
"A
young woman, whose husband had been
imprisoned, was carried away with her fifteen-daysold baby, with one donkey for all her luggage.
Aft r one day and a half of travel, a soldier stole her
donkey, and she had to go on foot, her baby in her
arms."
(A.C.R.)
But the robbery
of
their
goods was not the
These poor, worn-out, perishing
worst.
were robbed obscenely of their honour,
who had
women
for
any
not brought a few shillings into the gen-
darmes' pockets by being sold to richer Moslems
were
abandoned to the
brutal lust.
gendarmes'
own more
43
"
At one place the commander
openly told the
men
to
whom
company, that they were
chosa with the
of
(xl.C.R.)
girls."
"The Armenians deported from
who saw them
says another witness
be recognised as a result
march
.
.
.
do what they
at liberty to
women and
Even
of
in
gendarmerie
he consigned a large
a certain town,"
puss,
this
"could not
twelve
days'
deplorable
state,
their
rapes and violent acts are every day
occurrences."
(A.C.R.)
Age was
the only ground of exemption from
women
outrage, and there were
these caravans
;
of extreme age in
age nor sickness gave
for neither
exemption from slow murder by deportation.
"
A
case
worthy
of notice
Her husband had worked
was
that of F.'s sister.
in our hospiUl as a soldier-
She contracted typhus
nurse for many months.
and was brought to our hospital
A few
days before the deportation, the husband was imprisoned and exiled without examination or fault.
When the quarter in which they lived went, the
.
.
.
.
mother got out of bed in the hospital, and was put
on an ox-cart to go with her children." (A.C.R.)
Indeed, the sick and aged could be trusted to die on
the road of their
"
own
accord.
The women believed
worse than death, and
that
many
pockets to use if necessary.
shovels to bur y those they
wayside." (A.C.R.)*
*
The same incident
mitted to
Lord
is
Bryce.
they were going to
carried poison in their
Some carried picks and
knew would die by the
reported in a document trans-
The names
of all the parties
concerned are given with exactitude in both acoounts.
44
Sometimes
soon,
when
misery was ended unexpectedly
their
their tormentors gave?
to their Inst
blood.
for
way prematurely
At one small
whole tragedy was enacted
in
village the
one scene.
men and women were taken a short
from the village into the valley.
The
women were first outraged by the officers of the
'*
Forty-five
distance
gendarmerie, and then turned over
to the
gendarmes
was
by having its brains beaten out on a rock.
The men were all killed, and not a single person
survived out of this group of forty-five." (A.C.R.)
According
to dispose of.
to this witness, a child
killed
The forced exodus of
Armenian population from
1,1
place
on June
evacuated.
An
1915.
1st,
as three-quarters
of
the
a
last
certain
part
of
district
the
took
All the villages, as well
the town, had already
escort of fifteen
been
gendarmes followed
which included 4,000 to 5,000
The prefect of the city had wished them
a pleasant journey.
Bat at a few hours' distance
from the town, the caravan was surrounded by
bunds of a brigand-tribe, and by a mob of Turkish
peasants armed with guns, axes and clubs.
They
the
third
convoy,
persons.
3rst
began plundering their victims, searching care,
fully even (be very
sold to
carry
tin-
young children.
The gendarmes
Turkish peasants what they could not
away with them. After they had taken even
unhappy people, the massacre of
the food of these
the males began, including two priests, one of
was ninety.
In six or seven days
fifteen years of age
all
had been murdered.
beginning of the end.
whom
males above
It
was the
People on hor^e-back raised
45
women, and
the veils of the
(A.C.R.)
ones."
And
curried off the pretty
here
is
the same story at
first
hand (A.C.U.),
from a lady who actually experienced the horrors
of this murderous march.
She
tells
how
the crime began with the hanging
Bishop and seven other notables, and the
of the
wholesale slaughter in a
after
they
"
prison.
three
in
My
my
sive
been
had
The
and
men,
flogged
in
was among the third batch.
I
;
of about eighty
the population was sent off
rest of
batches
wood
imprisoned
husband died eight years ago, leaving me and
mother and my eight-year-old daughter exten
possessions, so that we were living in comfort
Since
mobilisation,
been living in
my
an Ottoman commandant has
house free of rent.
He
told
me
must share the fate of my
people.
I took three horses with me, loaded with
My daughter had some five-lira pieces
provisions.
round her neck, and I carried some twenty liras
an I four diamond ring] on
my parson.
All
else that we had was left behind.
Our party left
on June 1st (old style), fifteen gendarmes going
not to go, but
I
felt I
with us."
Then she
describes, detail for detail, the surprise
attack on the road, the
killing
two
priests
and of every male over
fifteen years of age.
Their
of
horses, their valuables, their food
"
Very many
women and
girls
among them my
the
—
all
were taken.
were carried
off to
whose oneyear-old baby they threw away. A Turk picked it
up and carried it off, 1 know not where. My mother
the mountains,
sister,
46
till she could walk no further, and dropped
by the roadside, on a mountain top. We found on
the road many who had been in the previous
batches some women were among the killed, with
walked
;
husbands and sons. "We also come across some
old people and their infants, still alive but in a
pitiful condition, having shouted their voices away."
their
And
here
again
former
the
witness
exactly
corroborates the narrative.
"
On
the way," says this
other
"
testimony,
we
murdered men and youths, all
There were also women and
covered with blood.
husbands or sons. On the
their
near
killed
girls
heights of the mountains and in the depths of the
valleys numbers of old men and babies were lying
constantly
met
on the ground."
They were on
track
the
convoys and the same
of
the
by witnesses who followed the route
caravan a short
preceding
picture of death
way from
its
given
is
of another
starting point.
" Many persons were obliged to start off on foot
without funds and with what they could gather up
from their homes and carry on their backs. Such
persons naturally soon became so weak that they
fell
behind and 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.'
'
Yer those were fortunate who found even such
a death, tor
they escaped the increasing torments
which the survivors had
to suffer.
47
"We
were not allowed
Under cover
outside.
to
sleep at night in the
Armenian
villages," says the
of
lady, "bul
night
the
down
lay
bable
i
deeds were committed by the gendarmes, brigands
and
Many
villagers.
feeble
too
side,
to
from hnnger and
of us died
Others were
strokes of apoplexy.
The
go on."
lefl
by the road-
parallel account
confirms her once more in almost identical
won Is,
and adds that "the peoplo found themselves in the
necessity of eating grass."
Yet even
so,
many
failed to
warders had to thin the ranks by
succumb, and the
still
more
drastic
means.
"The
the
and
worst
lady continues,
most
unimaginable
"were reserved
horrors,"
for us
at
the
(Western) Euphrates (Kara Su) and
the Brzindjan plain. The mutilated bodies of women,
girls audi lir.lt> children made everybody shudder.
The brigands were doing all sort.- of awful deeds to
the women and girls that were with us, whose cries
went up to heaven. At the Euphrates, the
banks
the
of
I
and gendarmes threw into the river all the v< m lining
children under fifteen years old. Those who could
swim were shot down as they struggled in the water."
But the narrator was condemned
spectacle
fields
and
"
On
hill-sides
were dotted with swollen and
which
with their stench."
day of
outlive this
the next stage of the journey, the
blackened corpses,
second
to
their
It
filled
and fouled th
was not
till
the
thirty-
march that they reached a
temporary halting place, where the narrative comes
to an end.
48
What
do not know, for
way
half
woman's subsequent fate we
the halting place was less than
has been this
to her final
and
destination,
it
possible to conceive the suffering already
into that
of
appalling
is
it
two
The mere
month".
first
—
is
crowded
physical cruelty
a delicate lady
driven thirty-
journey on foot through some of the
clays'
The
roughest mountain-country in the world.
torment could perhaps only be fathomed
spiritual
by actual experience.
out
rative
of
And
scores,
delivered with
this is only
it
enacted in hundreds
it
is
by the mouth of two
is in any way unique.
the same
the contrary,
one nar-
chosen here because
exactitude
witnesses, not because
On
im-
were being
horrors
of Anatolian
towns and villages
and over thousands of miles of savage mountain
April
tives
and repeated from the month of
enacted
trails,
till
are
the
present moment.
And
not
open to
Those gathered
doubt.
American
the
the narra-
Committee's
Report
together
in
were
recorded and endorsed by authoritative
all
auditors.
And
they are not vague denunciations,
or highly coloured generalisations.
course,
many
There
are, of
general accounts of these atrocities
but
;
and
vagueness
they, too, are remarkably free from
exaggeration, and when they are compared with
the first-hand evidence, they show agreement with
in addition to
it
these individual testimonies
even in minute
details.
;
49
For instance there
(published
in
September
1st.
gathered by
the
ia
"
1915)
witness
a
Professor Hagopian's resume
Armenia"
of.
the genera]
who had
on
of Marseilles
impressions
recently
come from
the interior of Anatolia to Constantinople.
He
and
of
soberly
describes,
gangs
the
exactly,
prisoners being driven across the mountains, the
blows of the gendarmes, the children born on the
road,
mothers
the
and old men
haustion, even the incident of the
her baby into the well (see
The somewhat longer
letter
dying of ex-
woman throwing
41 above).
p.
description, given in
i}io,
high Armenian ecclesiastic in neutral
to a
so remarkable in
territory, is
agreement that
its
certain passages deserve to be quoted in illustration.
"In four provinces,"
gave
authorities
deportation
—
execute
partial
a
five
says this
at
the
end
them on
the
caravans
tints
or
"the
local
condemned
to
or ten days' grace, permission
sale
of
road
their
of
privilege of hiring a cart
but,
letter,
those
to
facilities
between several families
the
days,
several
and
to
property, and the
returned
formed used
sometimes several days
to
to
carters
left
i^wn.
The
meet on the morrow,
aftei'
their
start,
with
lands of brigands, or chc with Moslem peasants,
who plundered them of everything.
The hands
fraternised with the gendarmes, and killed the few
men
They carried
women, girls and children, leaving only the
or boys included in theearavans.
off' tli
>
50
women, who were driven along by the gendarmes
old
with blows of the whip and died of hunger on the
roacl.
A.
first-hand witness tells us
how
deported from a certain province were
the
women
left,
after
where they
and the
starvation (fifty or sixty a day)
have merely sent a few people to bury
several days, in the plain of Kharpont,
all
died of
authorities
:
them, so as not to endanger the health of the Moslem
population
.
The caravans of women and children are exposed
front of the Government buildings in every town
village where they pass, in order that the Moslems
"
in
or
may
take their choice.
The caravan despatched from [the actual town
from which the lady was deported whose narrative
we have quoted above] was thinned out in this
fashion, and the ivomcn and children who remained
over were thrown into the Euphrates at the jjlace
called Kemakh-Boghazi, just outside Erzindjan."
"
This passage
it
relates
evidence
witnesses.
sentences
is
particularly important, because
events for which
of two
quite
we
already have the
independent,
Anyone who compares
with
the
extracts
first-hand
the italicised
quoted
from
the
Armenian lady and her fellow-victim immediately
above, will see that the general report
as
it
circulated
—the story
through the interior of Anatolia
and travelled to Constantinople and Marseilles
very far from being exaggerated.
—
is
It is less grue-
51
some,
extreme, in
less
testimony
itself
and
;
its details,
than the original
this evident sobriety of the
we can put
general rumour, in a case where
the
must obviously strengthen our
test,
where the
cases
alleged
facts
are
it
to
belief in
supported by
secondary evidence alone.
secondary
This
however,
evidence,
The
superfluous.
is
really
first-hand testimonies arc abun-
dant enough, and convincing enough, to afford in
themselves a thorough exposition
They
of the
crime.
are concrete statements, fortified throughout
by the names of well-known individuals who have
witnessed these
either
atrocities
or
been
their
For reasons of common prudence these
victims.
names have
be
to
withheld
;
anyone who
but
glances at the American Committee's
Report will
see
by the number of blanks, where names should
be,
how
and personal
direct
Moreover,
the
testimony
From
independent quarters.
Armenian
lady's journey
narrative of
neutral
a
this evidence
comes
the
is.
from
many
town where the
was broken, we have the
foreign resident, the citizen of a
state.
It
is
a
town
on the
Eastern
Euphrates (Murad Su), a meeting-place of routes
from north
to south,
exiles passed this
and very many convoys of
way.
"If," the resident writes, "it were simply a matter
of beinsr obliged to leave here to go
somewhere
else.
52
it
would not be
a
case
so bad. but
going
of
any doubt about
it,
a
thousand
people,
I
have
it
number
arrival of
death.
it
is
If
of parties, aggregating several
from Erzeroum and Erzindjan.
their
visited
everybody knows
them wis
has been removed by the
one's
to
encampment
a
number of
They
times and talked with some of the people.
almost without exception, ragged,
are,
hungry
filthy,
and
ill.
That
fact
that
they have been on the road for nearly
is
not
surprising,
view
in
of
the
two months, with no change of clothing, no chance
to wash, no shelter, and little to eat. The Government
has been giving them some scanty rations hero. I
watched them one time when their food was brought.
Wild animals could not be worse. They rushed upon
the guards
who
carried the food and the guards beat
them back with
them sometimes.
clubs, hitting hard
ro kill
To watch them one could hardly
believe that thes^ people were
"
enough
human
beings.
As one walks through
the camp, mothers offer
and beg one to take them. In fact, the
Turks have been taking their choice of these children
and girls for slaves, or worse. In fact, they have even
had their doctors there to examine the more likely
their children
girls
and thus secure the
" There are very few
them have been
men among them,
killed on the road.
story of having been
Kurds.
best ones.
All
as
tell
most of
the same
attacked and robbed
by the
Most of them were attacked over and over
and a great many of them, especially the men,
Women and children Were also killed.
Many died, of course, from sickness and exhaustion
again,
were
killed.
53
on tho way, and there have been deaths each day that
Several different parties have
they have been here.
arrived and, after remaining a day or two, have been
pushed on with no apparent destination. Those who
have reached here are only a small portion, however,
who
of thoso
all of
them
"Among
By continuing
started.
people on in this
way
it
to drive these
will be possible to dispose of
in a comparatively short time.
those with
whom I
have talked were three
They had been educated at
and spoke
excellent English. They said their family was the
and numbered twenty-five when they
richest in
sisters.
left,
but there were
now
only fourteen survivors.
The other eleven, including the husband of one of
them and their old grandmother, had been butchered
before their eyes by the Kurds. The oldest male
When
survivor of the family was eight years of age.
they
left
they had money, horse3 and personal
,
but they had been robbed of
effects,
including even their clothing.
them had been
left
everything,
said
some
of
absolutely naked, and others with
only a single garment, and
village their
They
when they reached
a
gendarmes obtained clothes for them
from some of the native women.
"
Another
of the
girl
with
whom
Protestant pastor of
member
of her family
I
talked
-.
is
the daughter
She
said
every
with her had been killed, and
she was left entirely alone.
These and some others
few survivors of the better class of people who
have been exiled. They are being detained in an
abandoned school-house just outside of the town and
no one is allowed to enter it. They said they pracare a
54
tically
were
although they were allowed to
in prison,
It was there
go to a spring just outside the building.
All the others are camped
I happened to see them.
in a large
open
with no protection
field
from
at all
the sun.
"The
condition
of:
these people indicate-; the fate
of those
who have
here.
believe nothing has been heard from
I
and are about
left
from
any of
to leave
them as yet, and probably very little will be heard.
The system that is being fallowed seems to be to have
bands of Kurds awaiting them on the road to kill the
men especially and incidentally some of the others.
The entire movement seems to be the most thoroughly
organized and effective
massacre this country has
ever seen."
This
is
the verdict of an eye-witness
Ottoman Government's scheme in
He was
who saw
fall
the
progress.
witnessing in the twentieth century after
Christ the same horrors that had been perpetrated
in these regions six
Christian era.
or Babylonian
and
eiffht
When we
Government
centuries before the
read that the Assyrian
" carried into captivity "
such and such a broken people or tribe, we hardly
seize the
we
meaning of the statement.
with grim realism on
see the process portrayed
the concpterors bas-reliefs,
it
our imagination to the quick.
It
Even when
does not penetrate
But now we know.
has happened in our world, and the Assyrian's
crime was not so fiendish as the Turk's.
ganised and
effective
"
.
-that
is
"Orwhat
a.:>
m
inch a doportati
been
iave
its
means, and that must always
But the Assyrian
implication.
gave the remnant a chance of
.ny rale
end of their journey.
They
life
at
at
the
received houses and
and often brought a new community to
lands,
birth in exile.
The Turk was more
consistent in
his cruelty.
These people were to be deported to
their death,
and nothing should reprieve them.
" I believe nothing has been heard from those
have
from here, and probably very
left
be heard,"
was
says the witness.
in error.
little
who
will
Unfortunately, he
Certainly most of those
who had
been driven over the mountains from the far north
must have
terrible
Cilicia
journey.
as
he surmised,
on
their
But there were others from
and Northern Syria who had a shorter road
to travel,
the
perished,
way.
and these did not succeed in dying by
They were
most hideous scene
reserved for the last and
in the drama.
56
ikkRJiAttl
P. O.
BOX 707
UNIVERSITY. CALIFORNIA
IV.
THE JOURNEY'S END.
The Young Turks' final denouement was not
They had rehearsed it in miniaquite a novelty.
ture some years before, when the " Committee of
Union and Progress" had supplanted the Hamidian
regime at Constantinople, and set itself to eliminate
the abuses of the city.
The worst eyesore was the
army of masterless dogs, which had been permitted
by too tolerant generations to establish
streets,
for
had
itself
in the
and exercise those functions of scavenger
which an easy-going municipal administration
failed
human
provide by
to
Young Turks
promptly and
dealt
agency.
The
effectively
with
They
and marooned them on
these undesirable denizens of their capital.
collected
them on boats
a desert island in the Sea of
animals
solved
perishing
friends
of
starvation.
were thinking
Armenians
last
Marmora, where the
problem of their future by
the
When Enver and
out
the problem
his
of the
Spring, they did not forget this
successful precedent.
The Armenians,
in fact, (or
such of them as
survived the process of deportation), were to be
provided for in the same fashion as the Stambouli
0/
dogs, ami two places were selected
ment
Snltanieh, a
tillage -- of the
centre of Anatolia,
made
wooded,
Konia
was
district in
the
scientifically
a tabled and, with a well-
is
periphery
well-watered
country towards the
situated
the Govern-
o£ these
and the choice was
Anatolia
for
:
by
One
for their ultimate disposal.
mountain-
of
where the towns
sea,
are
with their Armenian inhabitants, and a
cruel desert in
its
inland heart, where even the
Turkman nomad can barely maintain
At Sultanieh, a thousand families
his existence.
of
Armenian
townspeople, assembled by weary marches
from
every quarter, were given a taste of the wilder]
—
a
thousand families, and onty
among them,*
to
provide
fifty
for the
grown men
needs of this
women, children and invalids
flung thus suddenly upon their own resources, in
an environment as abnormal to them as it would
helpless
of
flock
be to the middle-class population of any town in
England
or
Having
France.
established
this
"agricultural colony" on the waste, the Grovern-
*
This
is
vouched for by throe independent testimonies
— a witness in the A.C.R.
:
the letter written (as
in;
evidence shows) by an Armenian Protestant to a citizen
of the U.S.,
'*
which was published
(/otcJtiiftr/"
oil
September
Constantinople, dated June
quoted
at greater
in the
4th, 1015
;
15th, 11*15,
length below.
Armenian paper
and
a
letter
which
from
will
be
58
ment was content, and troubled
colonists no more.
about
itself
its
But Sultanieh was by no means the worst of
the charnel-houses to which the remnant of the
Armenian
race
was
The
consigned.
greater
number were sent on a longer journey to the
south-east, and were concentrated at Aleppo, the
capital of
Northern Syria, for dispersal among the
Arabian provinces beyond.
Between
Anatolia
western half of
the
and
Arabia,
north-
the
Ottoman Empire and
south-eastern adjunct, there
its
a violent climatic
is
The Anatolian highlands are physiologiakin to Europe, and the Armenians who
contrast.
cally
dwell in them are not only Europeans in their
civilisation
but are accustomed to an essentially
European climate
in
the
Balkan
But when you
—the
same climate that prevails
Austria-Hungary.
Peninsula or
descend
the
last
down
highlands, or follow the Euphrates
of these
tier
gorges
its
from the Armenian mountains into the Mesopotamian plains, you pass abruptly out of Europe
into
country of a semi-tropical
find yourself
in
character.
You
Northern Arabia, a vast amphi-
theatre sloping gradually south-eastwards towards
the Persian Gulf, and
merging into some of the
most sultry regions on the face of the
This amphitheatre has
witnessed
many
earth.
ghastly
59
dramas in
its
when
its
more ghastly
day, but none, perhaps,
than the tragedy that
torrid
is
it
now,
inflicted
as a
being enacted in
climate
bein^
is
sentence of death upon the Armenians
thither
deported
from their temperate homes in the north.
the narrative of a resident at
Aleppo who
saw them being herded through that
city to their
Here
is
doom.
The hideous rumour of their pilgrimage had
preceded their arrival, and " at first," he says, " these
stories
were not given much credence
of the refugees are
now
;
but as
arriving in Aleppo,
many
no doubt
any longer remains of the truth of the matter. On
August 2nd, about eight hundred middle-aged and
old women, accompanied by childi"en under the age
of
ten years,
arrived afoot from Diyarbekir, after
forty-five days en route,
condition imaginable.
the
and in the most pitiable
They
young women and
report the taking of
girls
by
pillaging even of the last bit of
the
all
Kurds, the
money and
other
belongings, of starvation, of privation, and hardship
of
every description.
Their deplorable condition
bears out their statements in every detail.
" I am informed that 4,500 persons were sent
from Sughurt to Ras-el-Ain, over 2,000 from
Mezereh to Diyarbekir, and that all the cities of
Bitlis,
Mardin,
Mosul,
Severek,
Malatia,
Besneh,
&c, have been depopulated of Armenians, the men
and boys and many of the women killed, and the
If this
balance scattered throughout the country.
is true, of which there is little doubt, even the
3
60
must naturally die of fatigue, hunger and
The Governor of Dor-el-Zor, who is now
Aleppo, says there are 15,000 Armenians in his
latter
disease,
at
frequently
are
Children
city.
starvation, as the Government
sold
prevent
to
furnishes practically
uo subsistence."
To he
so
to
of Constantinople
dogs
which
for
adrift
cast
starve,
pariah
the
like
That was the destiny
!
Armenians had been deported
these
many hundred agonising
Their penulti-
miles.
mate stage at that city on the
quoted a description by an
Murad Su (we
above)
eye-witness
must have seemed to many the culmination of their
Bat here
misery.
in
Aleppo they were suffering
something worse, and the worst of
come.
We are introduced
Aleppo
of Der-el-Zor.
and the river which
swamps about
tb.c city.
to
it
lies in
by the sinister name
it
buries
in
itself
These swamps were allotted to the
suffice for
later batches
days' journey further on, to the
the capital of the
Euphrates,
the
to
a day's journey to the south-east of
company, and the
rds
still
an oasis of the desert,
waters
comers; but they did not
the
was
all
great
were forwarded
town
next province
where the
.so
a.
five
of Der-el-Zor,
down
river
first
the course of
takes
its
way
Persian Gulf through the scorching-
pes of the Arabian amphitheatre.
On
these final
marches the victims suffered a
change of tormentors.
The Kurds lingered
in the
61
and the Bedawin Arabs took up
hills,
their
role.
" These poor victims of their oppressors' lust and
hate might better have died by the bullet in their
mountain home than be dragged about the country
in this
from
died
and abuse along the roadside, and nearly
dying of starvation, of
are
all
Many hundreds have
way.
starvation
of
thirst,
being
kidnapped by the Anazeh Arabs in the desert
where they have been taken
succumb
selves
"
— Arabs
starvation
to
in
who them-
their
native
And
wilderness, as another witness points out.
so
they came to Der-el-Zor.
We
have a detailed account of what
from
at Der-el-Zor,
source
—the testimony of
a Swiss missionary
has
particularly
a
personally
Armenians
happening
trustworthy
Friiulein Beatrice Kohner,
from Basle.
witnessed
the
Friiulein
sufferings
Rohner
of
the
Der-el-Zor, and has published her
at
description
is
of
them
in
the
" Sonnenaufgang "
(Sunrise), the organ of the " Deutscher Hilfsbund
fur Christliches Liebeswerk
League of Help
the
East).
narrative
"
At
for
Work
im Orient
"
(German
of Christian Charity in
Here are some extracts
from her
:
town in the desert, about
from Aleppo, we saw a big Khan, all
the rooms, the roof and the verandahs of which were
crowded with Armenians, composed mostly of wonieu
Der-el-Zor, a large
six days drive
02
few old
anil children, with, a
inon.
They had
slept
on their blankets wherever they could find any shade.
"
For those mountaineers the desert climate is
On the next day I reached a large Armenian
terrible.
most of the unfortunate
people were sleeping out in the sun on the burning
The Turks had given them a day's rest on
Bands.
camp
of goat-skin tents, but
number
account of the large
from
their
well-to-do
;
clothing
It
It
was evident
people had
they were natives of
village near Zeitoun,
head.
of sick.
these
that
been
Geben, another
and were led by their religious
was a daily occurrence
for five or six of the
They
children of these people to die by the wayside.
were just burying a young woman, the mother of a
little girl
nine year3 of age, and they besought
take this
little girl
me
to
with me.
"Those who have no experience
of
the
desert
cannot picture to themselves the sufferings entailed
—
by such a journey a hilly desert without shade
marching over rough and rugged rocks, unable to
from the muddy waters
which winds its course along in
satisfy one's scorching thirst
of the Euphrates,
close proximity.
"
On
the next day I
met another carnp of theje
There were the same indescribthe same accounts of misery
Why
Zeitoun Armenians.
able sufferings,
do they not
—
us once for
kill
all
?
*
*
rfSked they.
For
'
days we have no water to drink, and our children are
crying for water. At night the Arabs attack us they
;
steal
our bedding, our clothes that
to get together
;
we have been
they carry away by force our
and outrage our women.
If
able
girls,
anv of us are unable
to
f>3
walk, the convoy of gendarmes beat
women threw
themselves
Some
us.
down from
of owe
the rocks into
the Euphrates in order to save their honour
— some of
these with their infants in their arms."
We
read the same horrors in brief in an article
(referred
above)
to
which
contributed to the Journal
on September
"
1st,
1915
Professor
"Armenia"
Hagopian
of Marseilles
:
These unhappy deported people (belonging
in
great part to Zeitoun) have been chiefly deposited in
—
two places one section of them in a swampy region,
which has hitherto remained uninhabited on account
of the deadly malaria
been sent to a
;
while the remainder have
more unhealthy place
still
direction of the Persian Gulf
(i.e.
swamps
that they have begged to be sent to the
their petition has not
in the
Der-el-Zor) so bad
but
;
been granted."
Yet there was nothing but death in the swamps.
" The malaria makes ravages among them, because
of
the complete lack of food and
cruelly ironic to think that the
to
How
shelter.
Government protends
be sending them there to found a colony
:
and
they have no ploughs, no seeds to sow, no bread, no
abodes
;
in fact they are sent with
empty
hands.''
(A.C.R.)
"
When
the refugees
same witness
relates,
first
" the
bought food and clothes
refused to allow
for
came
to
Aleppo," the
Christian
them
;
population
but the Vali
them any communication with
refugees, pretending that they had
all
the
they wanted
64
few days later they could get the help they
In other words, the Government's
needed."
A
was
scheme
importunity
"
by
baffled
—yet not
the
Christians'
local
for long.
The Armenian population
of Cilicia
which has
been exiled to. the provinces of Aleppo, Der-el-Zor,
and Damascus, will certainly die
"
has
According
refused
insignificant
to
to
of hunger.
our information, the Government
in ihe;r homes even the
leave
Armenian colonies
Aleppo and Ourfa,
at
who might otherwise have succoured their unhappy
brethren who have been driven farther south and
the Katholikos of Cilicia, who is still at Aleppo, is
;
we
busy distributing the succour which
are sending
him."
This
August
from the often quoted
is
15th,
Armenian
1915,
ecclesiastic
and
on
dated
letter
addressed
neutral
to
high
a
territory.
shows how the Armenian Katholikos of
Cilicia,
It
the
most prominent representative of his nation in
the
vicinity,
when
exerted
himself
the local Christians had
to
bring succour
failed.
And
this is
from Constantinople,
dated June 15th, 1915, and published on August
28th, by the Armenian paper " Gotchnag " of
borne out by an earlier
New York
"
letter
:
Amongst the thousand
families deported to Sul-
tanieh, there are scarcely fifty
men.
the journey on foot, some of the old
Most have made
women and of
—
women
the infants have died on the road, youug
with
child have had miscarriages, and have been left on
the mountains.
Even
of
deported
these
exile,
victims daily, the
Aleppo
diem
to
it
at this
disease
of
toll
moment,
in their place
people produce a dozen
requires at the present
At
and hunger.
£35 (Turkish) per
You
supply the deported people with bread.
can imagine to yourself what must be their situation in the deserts
where even rhe native araba
arc
famished.
"A sum
of
money
has been sent from Constanti-
nople to the Katholikos of Cilicia
who
now
is
Aleppo, witness of the misery ami agony of his
Here, at
least,
the authorities allow the distribution
of succour to these unfortunates.
so far
proved impossible
to
At Sultanieh
it
has
bring help within their
Government refuses permission,
the efforts of the American Embassy.
reach, for the
spite of
These
sistent,
the "
"
philanthropy were per-
Another Armenian paper,
but unavailing-
A
in
11
efforts of foreign
Bahag"
at
flock.
records, on
Commission
of
fi
September
ve
9tib,
that
members has left America
Armenians in distress.
for Constantinople to help the
The Mission
is
anxious
country to acquaint
actual spot
to travel in
itself
the interior of the
with the situation on the
and take corresponding action; but the
Turkish Government Las refused them permission."
Thus the Young Turkish Government, when
they had herded the remnant of the Armenians to
their
"-.agricultural
colonies,"
insured
themselves
GG
any measures of
against
problem"' of
pened
might
"
hour have deprived their
eleventh
Such,
relief that
the
Armenian
complete " solution."
its
what has hap-
in outline, is the story of
to
at the
Armenian
which was
population
dwelling in peace and prosperity throughout the
towns and villages of the Ottoman Empire, only
And we
months ago.
eight
have confined our-
selves in the narrative to the "
normal
the crime, to the scheme as
was organised by
the
Government
in general
by
it
at Constantinople
" course of
and carried out
their local subordinates.
We
have
not mentioned the extravagances of wickedness
;
and yet the average of horror was surpassed in
many
cases
by the
initiative of particularly fiendish
governors or particularly brutal gendarmes.
tures,
for
instance,
of
mediaeval
cruelty
Tor-
were
commonly practised before their butchery upon the
Armenian men, and the following statement from
a foreign resident in
by
many
an Anatolian town
less detailed allusions
is
supported
:—
"I
was called to a house one day, where I saw a
sheet which originated from the prison and which
was being sent to the wash. I got to the bottom of
the matter by the help of two very reliable persons
who
"
witnessed part of
The prisoner
is
it
themselves
put in a room.
Gendarmes
standing in twos at both sides and two at the end of
67
the
room administer, each in
have enough
as long as they
Romans 40
time of the
their turn, bastinadoes
force in them.
In the
strokes were administered at
the very most
in this place, however, 200, 300, 500
and even 800 strokes are administered. The foot
swells up, then bursts open, owing to the numerous
;
The
blows.
prisoner
then carried back into tho
is
prison and to bed by the rest of the prisoners.
who become unconscious
prisoners
are revived
by means
after these
of cold water,
which
is
Tho
blows
thrown
on their heads.
"
On
the next day,
or,
more
exactly, during the
on
night, as all ill-treatments are carried
as well as in
,
,
at
night in
the whole bastinadoing
is
being carried on again in spite of swollen feet and
was then in
wounds.
I
were
30 prisoners in number, and
also
feet in
such a state
to be amputated, or
man was
,
but in that prison there
had their
that they began to burn and had
were already taken off. A young
all
beaten to death in the space of live minutes.
Apart from the bastinadoing, other methods were
employed, too
chest."
— such
as
putting hot irons on the
(A.C.R.)*
But perhaps the most hideous variation on the
official programme was perpetrated by the Governor of Trebizond
"
A
number
:
of
lighters
have been loaded with
people at different times and sent
*
off
toward
.
It
Another testimony, printed in the same report, declares
was used frequently, as well as fire
torture (in some cases eyes are said to have been put out)."
that " the bastinado
(A.C.R.)
68
generally believed that such persons were drov. tied.
During the early days a large caique, or lighter, was
loaded with men supposed to be members of the
Two
Armenian committee and sent off toward
those
of
one
and
subject
Russian
days later a certain
is
.
who loft in the boat returned overland
wounded about the head and so crazy
make himself understood.
he could say was
" All
'
Boom
!
to
lie
Boom
badly
,
could not
!
He was
'
by the authorities and taken to the Municiwhere he died the following day. A
by
Turk said this boat was met riot far from
another boat containing gendarmes, who proceeded to
arrested,
pal Hospital,
kill all the
men and throw them
thought they had killed them
all,
They
overboard.
but this Russian,
who was big and powerful, was only wounded and
swam ashore unnoticed. A number of such caiques
have
loaded with men. and usually they
left
return
empty
This account
after a
is
few hours/'
quoted from
;i
deposition in the
American Committee's report, and the
roborated
travelled
from
innumerable
tale is
quarters.
It
cor-
has
through the length and breadth of the
Ottoman Empire, and indeed the evidence
for
it
The same witness goes
number of bodies of women
was convincing enough.
on
to describe
how "A
and children have lately been thrown up by the
sea
upon the sandy beach below the walls of the
Italian
Greek
monastery on
women
in
this coast,
and were buried by
the sand where they were found."
6i>
FALSE EXCUSES.
V.
All this horror, both the concerted crime and
local
nians without a shadow of provocation.
at
its
embellishments, was inflicted upon the Arme"
We
are
war," the Turkish Government will probably
reply
;
"
We
The
are fighting for our existence.
Armenians were hoping
enemies
;
about.
They were
for
the
our
victory of
they were plotting to bring that victory
traitors at large in a war-zone,
and we were compelled
with military severity."
entirely contradicted
to proceed against
by the
facts.
These Arme-
nians were not inhabitants of a war-zone.
of the towns
them
But such excuses are
None
and villages from which they were
systematically deported to their death were any-
where near the
in
seat of hostilities.
They were
all
the interior of Anatolia, equally far removed
from the Caucasian frontier and from the Dar-
There
danelles.
was
no
possibility
of
their
co-operating with the armies of the Entente, and
was
it
equall} impossible that they should attempt an
7
insurrection
by themselves,
compact community.
for
They were
they were not
a
scattered in small
settlements over a wide country, and were every
70
where
in a
minority as compared with their Turkish
and military power were safely
in Turkish hands, and the Armenians were partiIt
cularly unlikely to attempt a coup de main.
Civil
neighbours.
must be repented that these Armenian townsfolk
were essentially peaceable, industrious people, as
unpractised in arms* and as unfamiliar with the
idea of violence as the urban population in Western
The Ottoman Government cannot possibly
Europe.
disguise
its
crime as a preventive measure, for the
Armenians were so
against
it
far
from harbouring designs
beforehand, that they actually forebore
resistance even after the
their death-warrant,
only two cases
In
recorded
Government had issued
fact,
in
there are actually
which the deporta-
tion scheme encountered active opposition at all.
There was the successful opposition in the Antioch
district,
hills,
where the Armenian villagers took to the
and fought
to the sea
till
for
seven weeks with their backs
they were almost miraculously rescued
by the French
fleet,
And
under circumstances already
was the desperate heroism
town
in the hinter land of
of Shabin Kar.diissar, a
Trebizond, where -1,000 Armenians took up arms
relate 1 above.
at the
summons
there
to deportation,
and held out against
the Turkish troops from the middle of
*
to
May
to the
For years the Government had taken rigorous measures
prevent thoni from possessing themselves of
rifles.
7J
Then the Turks brought up
beginning of July.
and
reinforcements*
town with
case.
letter to the
and overwhelmed the
artillery
" Karahissar,"
Armenian
it is
ecclesiastic, "
stated in the
was bombarded;
and the whole population, of the country
districts
as well as the town, has been massacred without
pity, not excepting the
Government had
how
eagerly
it
to fear
seized
extermination,
their
Nothing
bishop himself."
could show better than this
how
little
the Turkish
from the Armenians, and
upon the quickest means to
as
soon
as
an
opportunity
appeared.
And
this
wards the
towns.
was the Government's procedure
helpless, unsuspecting
When
it
Armenians
had to deal with the
abh peasant communities
any pretence of
its
in the
less tiact-
in the hills, it
concealing
to-
gave up
intentions,
and
summon them for deoortation,
them nakedly with the sword.
without waiting to
at once attacked
Such was the treatment of Zeitoun, an Armenian
settlement which for eight hundred years had
lived
and prospered
in virtual
independence among
the mountains that overlook the Cilician plain.
The Zeitounlis were distinguished from the other
Armenians of Cilicia. by the possession of" arms,
and they seem to have girded themselves betimes
for
the
approaching
were disarmed,
it
is
death-struggle.
said,
But they
by the promise
that, if
72
they submitted, their defenceless brethren in the
lowland villages would be ransomed from destruction
by
their
The
act.
Turkish
was
promise
broken, of course, as soon as the Turkish object
was secured
and. taken at such a disadvantage,
;
the heroic mountaineers inevitably
"
The bloody
succumbed.
curtain has fallen over Zeitoun, and
the fighting stock of these brave mountaineers has
As
memorable year of crime
the faithful followers and remnants of the Roupenian
dynasty, they had hitherto kept their home3 intact
been subdued in
this
I
and had successfully withstood the Turkish inroads.
They have at last been overcome by heavy Turkish
forces, and the stronghold of Zeitoun is now in tho
hands
of the
enemy
'.
" It appears that after the failure last winter of the
Turkish plan of compaign against the Suez
Djemal Pasha, the Commander of the Syrian
project.^
Canal,
I
Army, led a large force of regulars against Zeitoua.
The Zeitounlis entrenched themselves in their fastnesses and fought for two or three months against an
enemy which outnumbered them greatly, besides
by heavy
being
artillery,
hoping that rein-
forcements would arrive in time for their support.
But no help came and they fought to their last cartridge.
It was towards the end of May that Zeitoun
was taken by the Turks, who massacred all the
inhabitants they found.
A few hundred old women
are said to have been deported to Angora, and others
Mesopotamia, where report says they
ejected to grave indignities " indignities
to the plains of
ar
".
—
73
haw
with which we
Fraulein
Bonner's
which xhe writer
stronger name,
been acquainted already
description
just
bad
Dev-el-Zor.
of
in
and
quoted would have called by a
he been acquainted with ber
terrible narrative.
This
is
the end of Zeitoun, as
the July
Zeitoun
it
is
narrated in
London journal " Arc
but further Eastward another
issue of the
lias
perished,
peasant community, Sassoun, has been holding the
Sassoun
assassins desperately at bay.
tion
hill
of
Armenian
forty
villages,
is
a federa-
situated
in the
country which separates the upper basin of the
Murad
Tigris from the gorge of the
Su.
It
ha-
led a semi-independent, almost self-sufficing exist-
ence for centuries, to the chagrin of the Ottoman
envy of
Government and
the
neighbours
Kurds.
the
Hamid ma-lea
in
On
11
it
in
A.bd-ul-
ma-
May. 1915. the Young Turk-
loth
er
Horizc
-
the
Armenian
journal
published the foilowii
munication from Tgdir.
a
-
-station on the Ri
frontier.
"Ayonng man who
the
prosperous
Zeitoun, for destructi<
i
Septeml
Turkish
less
Sassoun
preliminary experiment in
1895, and
marked
its
At
viUagi
following
b
ol
snoceedcd in escaping from
i
information:
on
August 2nd gives the
— 'Sassoun,
too.
has
bees
"
74
The villages of the plain have
Rouben (one o£ the leaders in the
visited with massacre.
been ravaged.
all
defence),
holding out with his lion-hearted
still
is
companions, a tiny but invincible band, against the
his days are
But
sinister foe.
him one would havo
numbered.
To
save
no time in putting him
to lose
in possession of unlimited quantities of ammunition.'
The
men
Sassoimlis are
of resource.
They have
even learnt to manufacture ammunition from native
But they are being besieged by Turkish
regular troops with heavy guns, and all the Kurds
materials.
on the war path against them.
are
any
Sassoun has
clay that
fallen,
We may
hear
and that 15,000
more Armenians have been ruthlessly destroyed.
That
how
is
Armenians
Yet
the Turks are dealing with the few
in
position
a
to
defend themselves.
the only sin of Sassoun and Zeitoun has been
invidious
their
prosperity
—
a
sin
connection whatever with the Avar.
as
"
the rest, the
in
breaks down, and
which
In their case
war-zone " pretext utterly
there
is
only one instance in
can be put forward with any show of
it
justification
—that
Constantinople
bourhood.
orderly
which has no
of
the
itself or
in
Armenians resident
its
at
immediate neigh-
These Armenians are perhaps the most
and industrious of any in the Ottoman
Empire, yet as their situation might have enabled
them
to
work
in collusion with the Allied forces at
the Dardanelles,
we
will
examine their treatment
75
moment,
for a
to
.sec
whether military considera-
tions may, here at least, have been the real motive
for their deportation.
There
is
ample evidence of
the facts at onr disposal.
"
At Adrianople, by order
Armenian
officials
financial institutions
in
of the
Government, all
public and
administrative,
have been dismissed.
Turkish
comArmenians
The
are
mitting unheard-of atrocities.
About fifty
continually exposed to persecutions.
soldiers
brought
in
from other
districts are
Armenians from tie city have been imprisoned or
The Armenians are forbidden to go abroad,
exiled.
or even to travel about in the Province.
"
The Armenians of Keshan have been deported.
The Armenian boatmen of Silivri have been thrown
into prison
on the charge of revichialling the English
submarines.
"The Armenian church and convent
at
Dbimotika
been confiscated by the Government.
have
Armenians
of
weeks' grace
tation of the
this
to
locality
emigrate elsewhere.
Armenians
of
weeks' grace has been given.
For the depor-
Malgara the same two
Their houses will be
Turks who have emigrated from
The Armenians of Tchorlou have been
occupied by
Serbia.
The
bave been given two
the
deported."
This
is
quoted from a
letter written
from Con-
stantinople which was published on August 28th
by the Armenian journal " Goichnag " of New
—
76
York, ami wo
may
follow the sequel in the " Letter
to an Ecclesiastic'"* so often quoted before
••
The scheme has
been put into execution in
just
very neighbourhood
lli."
:
of
The
Constantinople.
bulk of the Armenians in the district of Ismid and
Province of Broussa have been forcibly removed
to
Mesopotamia, leaving their hearths and possessions.
They have likewise removed the population
Ada-
of
pazar, Ismid, Gegveh, Armacha, and the neighbourhood in fact of all the villages in the Ismid
—
district,
a
except Bagtchedjik, which has been allowed
few days' reprieve.
"
Now
.
.
.
the turn of Constantinople, and the
which has been stricken with acute
panic, is in any case waiting from moment to
moment for the execution of its doom. The arrests
are innumerable, and those arrested are at once
removed from the capital. Certainly most of them
it
is
population,
will not survive.
It
the retail shopkeepers, born
is
in the provinces but settled at Constantinople, that
have been removed up
'
given as specimens).
at least
i'vom
the
till
now, including
Efforts are being
Armenian population
this horrible
names
made to
save
of Constantinople
extermination of the Armenian
we may have
at
Armenian cause
in
nation, in order that in the future
least
(six
some point d'appui
for the
Turkey."
This
letter
bears
date
August
15th,
and
musr,
therefore, be more recent than one published in New
York on August 28th, considering the time it takes for
the mail to travel
from Constantinople to America.
—
77
But
here, too, all efforts
There had
were vain.
been a preliminary assault upon the Armenians of
the capital as early as June
when twenty-
15th,
six of their most prominent representatives were
hanged
light
enough
On
time.
and
court-martial/*
would have been a
it
pay for the immunity of:
Government was only biding
sacrifice to
But
the rest.
summary
after
that had passed,
Yet
its
public
in
the
th, "
September^
Gotchnag
v
reported
:—
that
" In all the quarters of Constantinople they
begun
draw up
to
separate
who are immigrants from
who were born at Constanti-
those
of
lists
Armenia and those
nople.
It is
those that
After
have
Armenians, making
a register of
supposed that they are going
to deport
came from Armenia."
this,
events
followed
September 5th, the "Horizon
quickly.
On
" of Tiflis published a
telegram from Bukarest, announcing that
"The Turks
are continuing
minating the Armenians.
their
From
work
of exter-
Constantinople they
Ten thousand
have deported the Armenian men.
deported men have already been massacred in the
mountains of Ismid."
The
official
After reading
from
*
other
Twenty
scheme once more
this,
sources
of the
we
operation
!
are not surprised to learn
that
names
in
Armenian women and
are
issue of the journal " Ararat."
published
in
the
July
m
child
and
Constantinople
Thrace
have
arrived to swell the " agricultural colony " in the
Anatolian desert.
Thus the Armenians of the suburban provinces
been condemned in the end to the same
their
as
horrible late
menian boatmen
British .submarine-
the
I"
— that
may have
is
revictualled
the excuse for
That
the real motive.
tal
i:
Silivri
at
" Ar-
Anatolian brethren.
is
it all.
revealed in
notification that "their houses will
be occupied by Turkish refugees from Serbia," and
re inevitably
that
,:
reminded of Talaat Bey's boast
after this there will
be no Armenian question
for fifty
:
ion
the
"
is,
Armenian, the place where he was
him no more, and the Turk
7
"
after all. the cue.
stance
and
his
dwelling."
vidence in this light,
policy appeal
we
When we
re-read
sjularity.
en cleared of Armeni
place the
The Turks
Armeni
:om
:.-.
that
have been.
a certain province, are be!
int
ribe#, leai
lens
ahadjirs.
Armenia:.
are in perfect delirium.'"
•'More than
thrown
shall
shall inherit his
see the signs of such a
g
"Pout
exiled.
As
I'
and
til!
all
79
unfortunate people have not even graves for their
"As
soon as the Armenian refugees
their
left
from Thrace took possession of
them. The former had been forbidden to take
anything with them, and they themselves saw all
their goods pass into other hands.
There niust be
about 20,000 to 25,000 Turks in this town now, and
the name of the town seems to have been changed to
houses, niouhadjirs
a Turkish one/'
These
testimonies
three
American Committee's Report
extract from
a
still
from
and here
;
written from
letter,
dated Jnly 8th, which
eupplantation in
taken
are
describes
the
an
is
Athens and
the
process
more incriminating
detail
of
:
''Two missionaries of neutral nationality, with
whom
I
am
personally acquainted, passed
Athens yesterday.
They
just
began
to
through.
inform
me
by saying that the condition of the Armenians in
Cilicia was awful.
The city of Dortyol. alter having
been evacuated of its Armenian population, has been
occupied by Turkish families. The whole of the
Armenian inhabitants have been sent away, turned
out of their homes, and are naturally suffering from
hunger. The exposure is something that cannot
described.
Before evacuation, some nine leading
merchants were hanged
.
"
Zeiioun has met the same
single
*
.
Armenian
Extract from ai
left in
.
fate.
Zeitoun, and
There
all
not a
is
the h<
report dated .Tune 18tb,
1!
so
by Turkish people. My friends could
the
not understand exactly what had happened to
are occupied
Zeitouniots,* but
the
fact
is
that special care has
by the Turkish authorities that too
many of them should not live together. Attempts
have been made to make them Mohammedans, and
taken
been
it is
known
that the authorities attempted foTdistrior three families
bute one, two,
village in the district of
to
each Turkish
Marash.
"They have attempted to do the same thing to
Had in, but. somehow or other, only half the inNaturally the homes of these
habitants have left.
j
have been occupied by Turks.
"The Turks
the
of
same disposition
Tarsos and Adana are showing
as they did before the massacres
of 1909.
" Missionaries
from Beirout
state that the
same per-
secution is in force against Christian Syrians."
There could be no more damning
pieces
of
evidence than these, for they prove incontrovertibly
that
Armenian race was
thought out, and highly
crime against the
the
carefully
deliberate,
organised in
its
execution.
These " mouhadjirs
"
were Moslems from Europe, emigrants from lost
Ottoman provinces which had passed under
Christian rule.
the Balkan
War
They had been mustering
since
within the western fringe of the
diminished Ottoman Empire, a drifting, unmarsh* After
el-Zor,
reading Friiulein Rohner's evidence from Der-
we
are better informed.
ailed
And now
horde
.suddenly
we
them
find
distributed through the Asiatic provinces, even us
far afield as
(
groups nicely proportioned
ilicia, in
Armenian population in each locality, and
moment's notice to occupy the
ready at a
to the
Armenians'
places, as soon as the decree
deportation had gone
Armenian
refugees
forth.
"As
soon as the
mouhadjirs
their houses,
left
from Thrace took possession of them."
no hitch
here,
organisation
implication.
is
for their
There
The
no saving procrastination.
and
masterly,
And no
conclusive
is
in
its
consideration was to exempt
any portion of the race from the common doom.
The Armenians who had been conscribed for
Ottoman army and were actually serving" in
ranks, might at least have
uniform they wore.
organised
them
the
its
been protected by the
Instead, their service merely
for
the
slaughter.
We
have
mentioned how they were disarmed and put to
labour
upon
the
Caucasian front.
communications
Here
is
behind
the
the final chapter in their
story.
"The Armenian soldiers, too, nave undergone the
same fate. To begin with, all have been disarmed,
;md are at work constructing roads. We know from
Armenian soldiers of
the province of Erzeroum, at work on the ErzeroumErzindjan road, have all been massacred.
The
Armenian soldiers of the province of Diyarbekir
a trustworthy source that the
have
all
been massacred on the Diyarbekir-Ourfa and
82
Diyarbekir-Kharpout roads. However, from Kharpout
young Armenians were despatched as soldiers
All were massacred in
to Diyarbekir to work there.
the neighbourhood of Arghana. "We have no newa
from the other districts, but the same fate has
assuredly been inflicted upon them."
1,800
This
is
an extract from the letter addressed to a
high Armenian ecclesiastic, and
it
is
supported by
the independent and direct testimony of a
Moslem
soldier in one of the labour-battalions in question,
who had
been
on
burying
fatigue-duty
massacred Christian comrades.
his
(A.C.R.)
Thus the Ottoman Government
sacrificed
even
military advantage to the complete execution of its
Armenian scheme and the deed is perhaps the
meanest, though far from the most wicked, of all
;
that
been
it
has
done
Yet
shadow
perpetrated.
without
a
this,
of
has
too,
excuse,
to
submissive labourers in peaceful districts, separated
by impassable mountains from the
seat
of
war.
"When we turn to what has happened in the
war-zone,
we
are
confronted
with
atrocities
real
so
hideous that they could never be palliated by the
most
vital military necessity.
83
MURDER OUTRIGHT.
VI.
Turkey's eastern war-zone ran through the homecountry of the Armenian race. For we have already
explained that the Armenians murdered by deporta-
were not in general the people of Armenia
tion
but
proper,
most
the
for
part old-established
settlements scattered through the towns of Anatolia
and
Cilicia
In Armenia proper
towards the west.
the Armenians were not confined to the towns
the peasantry in the open country was
well.
as
the
still
in
In
fact,
Armenians
of
concentrated,
these
eastern
more
somewhat
the
inarches
Armenian
than half
Ottoman Empire
were
outbreak of
war,
the
before
;
;
so
that
the
region
defined by the upper courses of the Euphrates and
Tigris on the west and south, and by the Russian
and Persian frontiers on the north and east, was
occupied by a comparatively homogeneous Armenian
population, except for the settlements of intrusive
Here was the
Kurds.
nation,
its
most famous
historical
centre
cities, its finest
of architecture and art
;
and here,
of the
monuments
precisely, the
Russian and Ottoman battle lines have swayed to
and
fro for nearly a year
Armenian
race.
—a year of disaster for the
—
84
In
the course of the campaign has been us
brief,
In the early winter, almost immediately
follows.
after they had intervened in the war, the Turks
look
on
offensive
the
a
large
Russian frontier, and sent another
to
the
across
scale
army eastward
invade the Persian province of Azerbaijan
;
both
movements broke down, and before the spring
of 1915 their forces had been driven out of
Trans-Caucasia again and compelled to evacuate
Azerbaijan,
capital Tabriz.
When
in the border-province of
troops and Kurdish
In
the
of
its
the Russians began to cross
turm the Ottoman
the frontier in their
population.
occupation
transitory
a
after
Van
let loose
authorities
the Turkish
on the Armenian
irregulars
countryside
Armenians
the
Van
were overwhelmed, but in the town of
itself,
of their leading
men
murdered, and massacre overshadowing the
rest,
when they had
they took
seen
some
up arms, expelled the murderers, and
stood a siege of 27 days
— 1,500
defenders against
5,000 assailants equipped with artillery
triumphantly
were
Russians on
May
by the
relieved
17th,
Thereby,
—
till
they
advancing
the eastern
—
basin of
Lake Van was cleared of the enemy the
Lake Van is the very heart of Armenia
and
the
shore of
in
forces
early
summer months
the
Russian
pushed slowly round the lake towards the
west.
received
But about the end
of
July,
the
Turks
heavy reinforcements, and, resuming the
85
after
three
positions,
weeks they were ejected from
and now the
where it ran in June
with the
lake itself
line
— right across the basin of Van,
be slowly
to
ahead, clearing the country of
enemy
is
Once
forging
Turk and Kurd.
But the geographical conditions are
may
their
runs approximately
dividing the combatants.
more the Russians seem
the
Again
succeeded in reoccupying Van.
offensive,
superior in numbers.
difficult,
and
The Russians
complete the liberation of -Armenia in time
;
but meanwhile the worst catastrophes have occurred,
and the peasantry that was anxiously awaiting
their arrival has either been annihilated
by massacre
or scattered abroad in exile and destitution.
The Turco- Kurdish soldiery began to indulge
the moment hostilities broke out.
The Persian province of Azerbaijan contains a large
itself in atrocities
population of Syriac Christians, and the sufferings
of these people at the
hands of the invading hordes
are described with terrible detail in letters from
German
missionaries* resident
among them,
which were published on October 18th
newspaper
" de
Nieuwe
in the
letters
Dutch
Rotter damsche Coura7it."i
Members of the " Deutsche Orient-Mission."
The "Courant " is the leading journal of Holland,
and it is by no means inclined to give undue prominence
to facts of ill-savour to Germany or her allies
for it i3
one of the few Dutch papers that have been privileged
by the German Administration to sell copies in Belgium.
*
f
;
—
—
8i
we
the contents of these letters
From
following
select the
:
"The latest" news
Armenians have died
within the
last
is
that
£,000 Syrians
and 100
of disease alone, at the missions,
five
months.
with
All
o
villages
in
the
or three exceptions
surrounding
have heen plundered and burnt, 20,000 Christians
have b:en slaughtered in Ourmia and its environs
district,
tv,
Many churches have been destroyed and
."
many houses in the town
also
And
.
here
is
.
burnt,
and
.
a description (rum another letter
:
" In
Haftewan and Salmast 850 corpses, "without
heads, have been recovered from the wells and
Why ? Because the commanding
cisterns alone.
had put a price on every Christian head. In
Haftewan alone more than 500 women and girls
were delivered to the Kurds at Sandjhulak. One
officer
can imagine the fate of these unfortunate creatures.
In Diliman crowds of Christians were thrown into
prison and compelled to accept
Islam.
The men
were circumcised. Gulpardjin, the richest village
in the Ourmia province, has been razed to the ground.
The men were slain, the good-looking women and
girls carried
of
away.
women jumped
The same
into
in Babaru.
Hundreds
the deep river,
when they
saw how many of their sisters were violated by the
hands of brigands, in broad daylight, in the middle
of
the
road.
So also
at
Miandoab
in
the Suldus
district."
These
atrocities
on foreign ground are horrible
enough, but they are altogether dwarfed in scale
:
*7
by what the Turks have been doing more recently
in
own
their
last
Their renewed offensive
territory.
July was accompanied by the complete exter-
mination of the Armenian peasantry in the districts
immediately behind their
over the
lines, as well as
country they traversed in their advance.
The first news of this reached the
Vryemya " of Petrograd on July 22nd.
"
The Turkish
:
'
Nov
the district of Bitlis
After having massacred the
whole male population of this district, the Turks
collected 9,000 women and children from the suratrocities in
indescribable.
are
villages, and drove them in upon Bitlis.
days later they marched them out to the bank
rounding
Two
the Tigris, shot
of
them
all,
and threw the
9
corpses into the river.
"On
down
Euphrates, the Turks have out
the
more than 1,000 Armenians, throwing their bodies
At the same time, four battalions
into the river.
were ordered to march upan the valley of Moush,
to finish, with the 12,000 Armenians inhabiting this
valley.
According
massacre
to the latest information, the
has already begun.
The Armenians are
but through lack of cartridges they will
exterminated by the Turks.
All the
Armenians in the Diyarbekir region will likewise
be massacred."
resisting,
all
be
At Moushj
the
ghastly
at
rate,
t;
was not long
before
Horizon''' of Tinis, reported that
The Turks have
population
it
rumour was confirmed. On August
20th the journal
"
any
in
the
the
whole
male
Moush.
Only
5,000
massacred
plain
of
88
succeeded
have
people
escaping
in
and
finding
refuge at Sassoun, where the insurgent Armenians
are
still
holding out."
these vaguer narratives were not so terrible
Yet
month
which found
detailed account
more
as the
America, and was published on
to
later
September
way a
its
by
4th,
Armenian
the
New York
" Gotchnag " of
journal
:
"Incredible news comes in about the massacres
—
Armenians
men, women and children— have been crowded into
In
a wooden house, and the house set on fire.
at
another
people
one
In
Bitlis.
the
of
village
large
have
1,000
village
only
district,
In
massacre.
the
escaped
men and women by
they roped together
36
another,
dozens,
and threw them into the Lake of Van. A young
Armenian of Bitlis, who was in the army, and who,
after being disarmed and employed on road-making,
succeeded in escaping and reaching Van, relates
that the ex-vali of Van, Djevat Bey, has had all
males
between
massacred
the
ages
He
Bitlis.
at
of
fifteen
had
has
and
their
forty
families
deported in the direction of Sert, but has kept with
him
by
all
tens
the
prettiest girls.
Bitlis
of Turkish
of thousands
is
now
filled
and Kurdish
mouhadjirs.^
The tragedy
of the
was thus of a
tragedy in the
barbaric
Armenians
different
cities of
crudity
here
complexion from their
Anatolia.
in
in the war- zone
the
There was more
manner
of
their
8'J
destruction,
and we miss the fiendish ingenuity of
where
Yet
deportations.
the
Enver
slew
his
thousands, Djevat was slaying his tens of thousands
he was aiming
for
nothing
at
tion of the Armenia!! population
;
than the extinc-
less
in
homeland
the
of the race.
'The retiring
Yet he did uot altogether succeed.
Russians contested stubbornly every mile of ground,
and won respite
for a
proportion of
certain
the
non-combatants to evacuate their threatened homes
m
On
time.
panic-journey through
that
the
mountains the sufferings of these refugees were
and there are incidents that
terrible,
agony of
their brethren
rival
the
who were being herded
over those other mountains of Anatolia hundreds
'
gendarmes.
German
little
Turkish
away, under the lash of the
of miles
;
On
the road," writes one of the
missionaries in Azerbaijan, "
The mother
children.
sat
I
found four
on the ground, her
The hollow-eyed
back resting against a wall.
children ran up to me, stretching out their hands
and
;
crying
closer
dying
Ami
to
Bread
the
!
mother,
Dread
\
'
!
saw
When
that
I
she
came
was
...."'
here
is
a description of the whole scene,
from a resident in Trans-Caucasia, who went to the
frontier-village of [gdir to arrange for the reception
;
90
the
of
refugees,
procession passing
" I
wonder
agonising
if
sight
watched
and
by
it
the
harrowing
:
is
than
possible
to
witness a more
present
the
Human
one.
hundreds from hunger,
beings are dying in
thirst
and exhaustion, and the means for relieving the
There is absolutely no
distress are very scanty.
possibility of
The
even buying bread.
first
contingent
of refugees has already reached this place.
human
Owing
to
had to be
broken up into two channels about 100,000 walked
through the plain 01 Abagha, their rear being guarded
congestion on the roads, the
tide
:
by the Russian army under General N. and the
Armenian regiments under Andranig and Dero
another 50,000 from the city of Van were diverted
into Persia, their rear being defended by the mounted
regiments of Keri and Hamazasp. Bloody rear-guard
actions are being fought to stem the Turks and Kurds,
wh o
are pressing forward in order to cut the line of
retr eat of the
As
Armenians."
dreadful a spectacle, to the eye, as that which
other witnesses were beholding at Aleppo or at the
crossing of the
Murad Su
ence between the two
!
;
and yet what a
Those fainting
differ-
exiles
from
the Anatolian and Cilician towns were being driven
by remorseless enemies
peasants of
life
and
Van were stumbling
safety, cheered
soldiers of
to a lingering death.
These
forward towards
by the knowledge
that the
a friendly nation were fighting, and
dying, to shield their escape.
Yet they had
still
91
much* to
suffer
about the
first
whan they reached
week
in
their destinati
'
:
August, 1915.
"All measures which were humauly possible to
welcome this seething mass of humanity had been
taken at Etchmiadzin, but the strain was beyond
anticipation.
The Fraternal Aid Committee, under
'
'
the presidency of the Katholikos, and the Medical
Corps were fully represented
;
while the National
and the Armenian Committees of
Moscow, Bakou and other places, as well as various
societies and unions, had sent men and women
Bureau
of Tiflis,
All these tended the sick, the exhausted,
workers.
the motherless children, and yet with all this fraternal
by the Russian Armenians, the supply
Cholera, dysentery and
epotted fever soon showed themselves in a virulent
form
while the scarcity of commodities in the
Caucasus and local difficulties curtailed the measure
aid tendered
fell
far short of the need.
;
of succour that could be given."
The
picture
is
heart-rending, but
as " Der-el-Zor,"
same picture
it is
not the
and the bringers of
succour are gradually beginning to cope with the
need.
"
About 20,000 orphan children have already been
cared for
many
;
improvised hospitals have been opened in
localities;
hygienic
measures
have
been
adopted to stamp out the epidemics through which
the figure of mortality reached 200 a clay early in
September.
Trainloads of
flour,
sugar,
tea,
drugs,
clothing and other commodities have been offered by
Armenians throughout Russia.
Prof. Kishkin, the
plenipotentiary of the Federation of Russian Zemstvos,
92
sent to Etchmiadzin to enquire into the
who was
condition of these refugees, describes the situation as
lamentable, and has asked for £50,000 for immediate
needs.
1 '*
Yet from one point of
assistance
a
is
\
iew
tliis
factor of hope, for
because the stream of refugees
break-down o£
it lias
lias
happened
been so great.
X<> less
than 250,000 Armenians from Turkey have
passed
alive
across the
company compared
has found
its
way
Russian frontier
— a large
to the little
band of 5,000 that
Port Said.
This quarter of a
to
million of homeless, starving, disease-stricken people
and stay of the Armenian race.
they can be saved alive, the vitality of Armenia
is
the one hope
If
will
have survived the hideous attempt of the expiring
Turk
to
nations.
blot
her out for ever from the
r.>]l
of
"j"
Quoted from the September number of the journal
"
of London.
.1/ arat
Armenian Refugees (Lord Mayor's) Fund " has
t The
*
••
ik
been organised
and there
required.
Hon.
is
no limit
Subscriptions
Secretary
London. S.W.
from Great Britain,
amount of money
be forwarded to the
to despatch assistance
really
of
the
to
may
Fund
the
at
%,
Victoria
Street,
93
THE TOLL OF DEATH.
VII.
A
quarter of a
destroyed
in
?
of the Armenians in
But how many have been
million
Turkey have escaped.
The Young Turks and
Germany and elsewhere
question, for there
them
to adopt.
we have
is
will
no other
their api dogisi
a
probably press that
apology
line o£
for
In face of the evidence of which
presented a few specimens in these pages,
they will hardly have the face to deny altogether
But they
that this crime has been committed.
submit that
it
only
has been perpetrated
in
will
an
exceptional way, and on a comparatively modest
scale.
That would be
as
shameless a
attempted nakedly to deny
it.
as if they
lie
Numerical
statistics
are of course very difficult to obtain, for a criminal
always writhes under scrutiny, and in view of the
criminal temper of the Turks, the witnesses have
had
to
make
Way, so as
their observations in
to give the
a.i
unassuming
murderers no indication that
note of their actions was being taken.
the few figures
And
vet
we have speak volumes.
For one thing, we know that the batches
of de-
ported Armenians averaged between 2,000 and 5,000
94
— this
souls
we have from many eye-witnesses who
And many towns provided more than
saw hem pass.
i
(•Me
batch
reporl
—a witness
us,
tells
i'or
American Committee's
in the
example, that the third convoy
despatched from a certain town included bet wean
When we remember
4.000 and 5,000 persons.
th
towns and
there are over 50
it
villages,
known
to
us by
name, from which the Armenian inhabitants
have
thus
we can make
a
number condemned
to
herded away,
been
general estimate of the total
deportation throughout the length and breadth of
Anatolia, Cilicia and
Armenia proper.
Here are some actual figures compiled on June
20th,
by
a witness in Cilicia.
The deportation began some six weeks ago with
since which time all the
180 families from Zeifcoun
"
;
inhabitants of that place and
have been deported
Albistan, and
;
also
its
neighbouring villages
most of the Christians in
many from
Hadjin,
Hassan Beyli and Dort Yol.
Kars Pazar,
Sis,
The numbers involved
Of these, about
are approximately, to date, 26,500.
5,000 have been sent to the Konia region, 5,500 are in
Aleppo and surrounding
towns and
villages,
and
the remainder are in Der-el-Zor, Rakka, and various
places
in
Mesopotamia, even as far as the neigh-
bourhood of Bagdad.
on, and there
is
no
The orders already
The process
telling
how
far
it
is
may
issued will bring the
still
going
be carried.
number
in
95
region up^ to 32,000, and there have been as
(hi,-,
none exiled from
Ainfcab,
and
\<:vy
few from Marash
and Ourfa."*— (A.C.R.)
These are the figures
portion
oi
comparatively small
a
the whole area over which the deportations
are being carrier! out
Bix
for
;
and they only cover the
firsi
weeks of a process which has been continuing
ever since, and
still
is
in operation at
present
this
moment.
And
here
They show
are
the
later
in
statistics
number
of
confirmation.
Armenians deported
from sixteen Cilician towns and villages (a fraction
only of the
district
20th above),
who
included in the survey of June
passed through one of the con-
centration centres up. to and including Julv 30th,
1915.
The
The
total
number. of iamilies was
iM<;.\
...
number of individuals was
The number of these individuals that
total
was
seni
still
further afield
was
1.3,255
3,270
...
(A.C.R.)
Tines 13,255 individuals, Erom
16
places
passed through one single halting-place
;
alone,
and we
have no record of the others, deported from
the
The Armenians oi' Ourfa (such
murder outright) were of
on.
*
See
p. t'd
above.
of
escapi
latej
i
;
96
same
who were
driven
different routes,
and so
localities,
by
desert
particular
observation.
witness's
towards
the
escaped this
And
these are
The witness him-
far from being the final figures.
1
adds a postcript to say that 2,100 more have
self
since
arrived
list
was
we have
said,
his
deportations, as
made
and the
up,
have been carried out
continuously ever since.
may show how many
These figures
the journey
;
nominal destination
We
?
head likewise from a
this
have some figures on
letter
dated August
6th,
1
1915, and written from the interior of Anatolia
" In haste
nity,
I
on
started
but what proportion reached their
and in
secret,
profiting
:
by an opportu-
hasten to convey to you the cry of agony
which goes up from the survivors of the terrible
crisis through which we are passing at this moment
.
.
.
place
An
.
thousand
who
inquiry
from which
accounted
has proved that
started, scarcely
for,
I
380
out
of
a
100 have reached the
am writing. Out of the 600 to be
men and boys above 1L years of
women, have been massacred or
drowned outside the town walls by the gendarmes who
conducted them 120 young women and girls and
age, as well as 85
;
10 boys have been kidnapped, so that
among all
these
deported people one does not see a single pretty face.
Among
the survivors, 60 per cent, are sick
;
they are
shortly to be forwarded to another specified locality,
where
them it is impossible to
which they have been exposed
certain death awaits
describe the ferocity to
;
97
from three
they have been travelling for
to
five
months they have been pillaged two— three— fivethey have even had their underclothes
seven times
;
;
ransacked
from providing them with food,
so far
;
when
they even forbid them to drink water
passing by a stream
women and
have been kidnapped
girls
they are
young
three-quarters of the
;
the rest have
;
spend the night with the genHundreds have
darmes who arc conducting them.
died of these outrages, and the survivors have to tell
been compelled
to
of refinements of atrocity so disgusting that one can1
not bear their
recital.'
The same hideous crime
in
cold statistics to leaven the
writer remarks that
there
is
tale
details,
its
agony
of
with
The
!
" no hyperbole to say that
it is
not a single Armenian
there will soon be none
all
in Cilieia either."
left
had been taken, and, of
Armenia, and
left in
these.
All
60 per cent, had
perished before they arrive! at their ultimate goal.
And
another set of
statistic-
We know
that estimate.
that nearly 1,<>00 people
were deported from a certain
Su, and here
••From one
Khom 128
men and
3 girls and
5 people
From
11
9
"
experiences."
212 individuals
village
(60. per
on the Kara
district
an analysis of their
is
56
completely bears out
cent.)
women were
out,
set
Aleppo
reached
killed
on
the
of
alive.
road,
boys were sold or kidnapped, and
were missing.
the same place another party of
were deported.
821 (46
per cent.)
ti'.'o
people
reached A.leppo,
08
men and
20G
girls
women were
57
killed en route.
and young women, and 19 boys, were
70
sold.
23 were missing.
From another
of
whom
21
men
girls
village a party of 128
was deported,
32 (25 per cent.) reached Aleppo alive.
29
and 12 women were killed en route.
and young
women and
13 boys were sold
and
;
18 were missing."
This document bears date July 19th. 1915, and
is
by the head of
signed
and
citizen of a neutral country,
know
the
college,
a
who
is
a
in a position to
is
facts.
Such are the concordant estimates of two inand anyone who reads their
dependent witnesses
;
from which we
narrative, or the other narratives
have quoted above, cannot
self that
in each case, certainly
at
Whatever the exact
Sultanieh
it
on the
or
this
gentleman
which
by the
would
estimated
Armenians that arrived
to
The va^t
way. Yet we
Der-el-Zor.
German Consul
exaggeration — has
30,000.
evci-
clear authority of a witness in the
A.C.R., that the
surely
statistics
nothing but a remnant
majority always perished
have
him-
the percentage of survivors must have been
extraordinarily low.
arrived
to conclude for
fail
there,
at
not
Aleppo
at
guilty
of
number
of
be
the
no
—and
less
than
Unfortunately we are not told the date
this figure applies
:
but even
if
it
were
09
the final figure for the
it
most recent date attainable,
would prove destruction of
German
not even a
on a
life
which
scale
consul, inured to the statistics
of Belgium, could treat as exceptional in character
or inconsiderable in extent.
more abundant
\ et even if the statistics were
and more eloquent
our imagination
to
A
happened.
say
it
means,
lips,
actuality
more
Perhaps nothing brings
community
were
of sensitive,
and of the
people,
individually
members of an
terrible
the
by a
has
It is easy to
what
educational
home more
it
we have
of one
Armenian
by which they
They were the
fates
establishment in
summary
a
which was endowed and
society of foreign missionaries
following
letter
convey
what
of
refined
overtaken.
certain Anatolian town,
directed
to
difficult to realise
crushingly than the record which
little
!
fail
something totally beyond our
for it is
experience.
the
nation blotted out
with the
it
they might
still,
is
taken directly
;
and
from a
which was written by the President of the
College after the blow had fallen.
" I shall try to
banish from
my mind
for the time
the sense of great personal sorrow because of losing
hundreds of
my
friends here, and also
utter defeat in being so unable
to give
sense of
to stop the
tragedy or even mitigate to any degree
and compel myself
my
its
awful
severity,
you concise^ some of
the
eoki
faces
themselves
of
to the
past
the
College.
months as they relate
I do so with the hope
that the
possession of these concrete facts
you
do
to
dependents
something
still left to
"(i) Constituency
girl pupils
there
the
for
may
help
handful of
us here.
Approximately two-thirds of the
:
and six-sevenths of the hoys have been
taken away to death, exile or Moslem homes.
"(ii) Professors:
Four gone, three
left,
as follows
"Professor A., served College 35 years.
of
Turkish and History.
arrested
May
1st
Professor
Besides previous trouble
without
moustache and beard
:
prilled
charge,
out
hair
in
of
head,
vain effort to
secure damaging confessions.
Starved and hung by
arms for a day and a night and severely beaten
Taken out towards Diyarbekir abou
June 20th and murdered in general massacre on the
several times.
road.
"Professor' B., served College 33 years, studied at
Ann
Arbor.
Professor
of
Mathematics,
arrested
about June 5th and shored Professor A.'s fate on the
road.
"Professor C, taken to witness a
man
beaten almost
became mentally deranged. Started with
his family about July 5th into exile under guard and
murdered beyond the first big town on the road.
to death,
(Principal
Princeton.)
of
Preparatory Department,
studied at
Served the College 20 years.
"Professor D.. served College 16 years, studied at
Edinburgh, Professor
of Mental and Moral Science.
Awested with Professor A. and suffered same fcorturi s,
LOI
had three finger
also
by the
roots^
same massacre.
killed in
" Professor E.,
May
nails pulled out
served
College
2~>
years, arrested
not tortured but sick in prison.
1st,
Red Crescent Hospital and
-.
is now free, in
Sent to
after paying large bribes
" Professor F., served the College for over 15 years,
studied in Stuttgart and Berlin, Professor of Music,
escaped arrest and torture, and thus far escaped exile
and death because of favour with the Kaim-makam
secured by personal services rendered.
"Professor G., served the College about 15 years,
and Yale (M.S.), Professor of
June 5th, beaten about the
hands, body and head with a stick by
the
Kaim-makam himself, who. when tired, called on
all who loved religion and the nation to continue
studied at Cornell
Biology, arrested about
the beating
closet,
;
after a period of insensibility in a
broken finger and serious bruises.
"
dark
taken to the Red Crescent Hospital with a
Now
free,
in
Instructors, Male.
(iii)
"Four reported killed on the road in various
whose average term of service is eight
massacres,
years.
Three
not heard from, probably killed on
the road, average term of eervice in the College four
years.
"Two
sick in Missionary Hospital.
" One in
"One engaged
free.
.
in cabinet
work for
the
Kaim-mak m,
102
"
One owner of house occupied by
the
Kaim-makam,
free.
" (iv) Instructors,
"One
Female.
reported killed
Chunkoosh, served the
in
College over twenty years.
"
One reported taken
Turkish harem.
to a
" Three not beard from.
"
Fonr started out
"
Ten
"
Of the Armenian people as a whole we may put
as exiles.
free.
an estimate that three-fourths are gone, and this
three-fourths includes the leaders in every walk of
merchants, professional men, preachers, bishops
life,
and government
"
I
....
officials
have said enough.
Our hearts
the sights and stories of abject terror
The
extermination
of
the
are sick with
and
seems
race
suffering.
to
be the
more fiendish
The orders are
than could be concocted locally.
from head-quarters, and any reprieve must be from
objective,
and the
means employed
"
the .same source
There were colleges
well attended, in all
like this,
as
refined, as
of our
Europe.
their walls
towns.
was every
bit
cultured, as civilised as the atmos-
schools
and
colleges in
Western
Their humanising influence w as one of
T
the most beneficent factors in the
And
well staffed and
the larger Anatolian
The atmosphere within
phere
are
this influence has
Ottoman Empire.
been systematically rooted
—
.
103
and brutally destroyed, by the indiscriminate
dispersion and massacre of both pupils and proiap,
fessors.
The
flower of the
perished in com-
nation has
pany with the innumerable mass of undistinguished
victims and the leaders of the Armenian Church
;
malice of
have drawn on themselves the especial
tiie
persecutor, by
On
half of their Hocks.
"Armenia"
'•
of
"
Hayasdan
Marseilles
of
The
Sept.
22nd the paper
reproduced
the
Sofia
ecclesiastical victims
"
on be-
their courageous efforts
from
following
up to that date
the
list
of
:
metropolitan of Dijarbekir, Tchilghadian
burnt "alive.
The bishop
The
of Ismid,
superior of
the
Hdvagimian
seminary
— imprisoned.
at
Armacha — im-
prisoned.*
The metropolitans of Broussaand
Kaisariyeh, under
arrest.
T,he
metropolitan of
Sivas,
[Calemkiarian
— assas-
sinated.
The
metropolitan
of
Tokat;
Kasbarian
— im-
prisoned.
The metropolitan
of Shabin-Karahissar, Torikian
—
hanged
*
The
letter to the
Armenian ecclesiastic in neutral
been deponed with his clergy
territory states thai he has
and seminarists.
—
104
The metropolitan
Hamazasb
Samsoua,
of
— im-
prisoned.
The metropolitan
Trebizond, Tourian
of
— under
arres
The
metropolitan
Kemakh,
of
Humayak — im-
prisoned.
The metropolitan
Kharpout, Khorenian
of
—assas-
sinated.!
The metropolitan
of Tchar-Sandjak,
Nalbandian
hanged.
The
metropolitan!
Aleppo
of
and
Bitlis
—im-
prisoned.
The metropolitan
Erzeroum, Bishop Saadetian
of
— assassinated."
"
From another
source", says the
learn that the metropolitan of
"Armenia,"
"
we
Baibourt, the Archi-
mandrite Anania Hazarabedian, has been hanged in
company with
It is
eight
an amazing
Armenian
list,
yet
it
notables." J
is
wholly consistent
with the programme of the Ottoman Government.
The Armenian Church has bsen the bulwark of the
Armenian race, and the race is marked down for
*
t
As
stated by
'
;
Gotclmag
"
on Sept. 4th.
Corroborated by the letter to the Armenian ecclesiastic
in neutral territory.
%
Corroborated by
siastic.
the letter to the
Armenian
Eccle-
105
extermination.
Talaat
Bey meant what he
said,
and the Young Turks have given a sardonic touch
of completeness to their work by murdering the
two Armenian
advertised
representatives
in
"Ottoman Parliament".
much-
their
The
letter to
the Armenian ecclesiastic in neutral territory ia-
forme us that
Armenian
way
"MM. Zohrab and
deputies,
who had been
to Diyarbekir for trial
killed the other
sent
on
the
their
court-martial, were
day near Aleppo before reaching
their
destination."
again
if
he heard.
by
Vartkes,
Ahd-ul-Hamid would
smile
106
THE ATTITUDE OF
GERMANY.
VIII.
"
The orders
one
are from head-quarters," writes
of the witnesses quoted in the last chapter, " and
any reprieve must be from the same source." But
where are these " head-quarters " ? For it is vitally
important to penetrate to them,
Armenians that
the
to
Enver and
We
gang
By
enough.
not
is
his
Turkey contracted
the remnant of
are lingering
Sultanieh and Der-el-Zor, are
from their doom.
if
still
agony
in
at
to be rescued
have traced the crime back
but that
at Constantinople,
participating
in
war,
the
herself into the apprenticeship
of Germany, and abandoned her freedom of action
Germany's
to
lead.
What
the
is
attitude
of
Turkey's patron towards the organised murder of
Armenian
the
taken
in
?
matter
And what
by the
on Ottoman territory
officials
"
the
race
According
Syria,
several
to the
action has
corps
of
who
*
'•
is
testimony of the refugees from
German
made
has gone to
consuls
have
directed
or
Special
Herr Rossler. consul at Aleppo,*
Aintab to direct the massacres in
of
The man who contrived the
Zeitoun."
German
?
encouraged the massacres of the Armenians.
mention
been
plot against unfortunate
107
Baron Oppenheim, who
initiated the idea of deporting to Ourfa the women
and children belonging by nationality to the Allies,
person, and
the notorious
though he knew well enough that these unfortunates
would be unable to avoid witnessing there Hie
barbarous acts committed by the troops in the very
streets of the town, which are literally drenched in
blood."
rumour, but of course it is not
Tt is merely a
evidence of a conclusive order.
towards
published
was
cablegram from Cairo which
That
a sinister
is
the end of September in the Paris press.
We
find
the same suspicion, however, reappearing in the
" Gotchnag " of
"A
New York
on September 4th
:
foreign correspondent reports that provincial
who show
governors
lack
of
vigour in
executing
the
order to deport the Armenians, are taken
task
by the German
officials.
redouble
its
The
latter participate
the deportation
execution of
in the
scheme, and
The correspondent
rigours.
on the basis of such evidence as
to
declares,
this, that this
plan
of exterminating the Armenians his been conceived
by the
Germans, and
that
it
has been put into
execution on their advice."
Everyone
will see that these testimonies are not
of the same value as those on which our narrative
crime
of the
itself is
German
cipation
of
proven
and even
vict
;
if
based.
officials
The
is
active
parti-
not sufficiently
further evidence should con-
Herr Rossler and Baron Oppenheim beyond
108
any doubt, we should
accepting the inference
still
have
no warrant for
of u (lotrluvujs " corres-
pondent as to the general complicity of
in Anatolia.
officials
German
that the
It
damning,
is
For
is
it
atrocities,
crime.
But when that
that can be submitted in their
all
has been exhausted
defence
German
initiated the
authorities
The Turks do not need tempters.
has been said,
all
on the whole, unlikely
is,
assuredly
they
that,
clear
;
and
if faint
stand
praise
condemned.
whoever commanded
the
the Germans never made a motion to
countermand them, when they could have been
It is no
stopped at the start by a single word.
exaggeration
stopped
to
say that they could have been
entering the war,
in
for
absolutely,
is
obvious that,
Turkey placed
Germany's power.
many for munitions
it
She
of war
is
by
herself entirely
dependent on Ger-
and leadership in
battle,
for the preservation of her existence at the present
and
for
its
continuance
in
the
future,
should
Germany succeed in preserving it now. The
German Government had but to pronounce the
veto,
and
it
would have been obeyed
;
and the
central authorities at Berlin could have ensured its
being obeyed through their local
spot.
agents on the
For ever since 1895, Germany has been
assiduously extending the network of her consular
£09
service
over
Ottoman Empire.
the
of
provinces
Asiatic
the
all
In every administrative centre
throughout those districts
where massacres and depor-
have occurred —
Armenia /'roper — there
tations
in
is
prestige of these consuls
a
is
Anatolia,
German
and
CUicia,
consid; and
tiie
They
are
unbounded.
the agents of a friendly power, the only power that
offers
Turkey her friendship with no moral con-
ditions attached
and a
;
Turkey's puissant protector and
conqueror, to
the
moreover, that
friend,
ally, the invincible
Turk's docile imagination,
a hostile world in arms against the pair.
to doubt
impossible
that
those
German
could have saved the Armenian nation,
taken
steps
to
do
so,
or
to
if
in
It
of
is
consuls
they had
suppose that
German Government was not informed
was happening
is
of
the
what
good time.
The consuls
know
did not take any action, and we
the reason why.
They were instructed from
" headquarters " to hold their hand.
" Last July the United States
Government invited
German Government in an
effort to end the outrages which have resulted in
wholesale and systematic murder of fully one half
of the million and a quarter Armenians living under
the co-operation of the
Turkish control
"
No
reply ever was received from
invitation to co-operate in this work."
Germany
to
the
110
New York
This statement was published by the
"
Merahi
"
on October
challenged
yet
and
;
by German
adopted
mistakeably-
1915.
<5th,
the
the
has not been
standpoint
identical
officials
reflects
It
of every grade
German
un-
Government's
deliberate policy.*
It
German consuls on
the
criminally apathetic,
it
the spot remained
was because their chief
at
Constantinople gave them the cue
"
The American Ambassador afc Constantinople,
Turkish Government in vain to stop
after asking the
the massacres, proceeded to address himself to the
German Ambassador but Herr Wangenheim declared
that he could not interfere in any way with Turkey's
;
internal affairs."
*
This policy must not, of course, be taken to express
the sentiments of the
German people
The
German
as a whole.
testimony of a German Sister of Meicy and of
missionaries shows that they were no less horrified at the
atrocities
than the American missionaries.
humane people be
naked
facts
— facts
Government
succeeded in
in
Germany
which it
them
itself, if
is
not
So would
they
likely
knew
that
well-drilled press
announced
were invented by the English
own.
their
The Government
keeping from the people the knowledge of
will permit
to learn.
the truth with regard to the massacres of 18S5-6,
of their
all
the
to
when
a
Armenian horrors
serve some selfish purpose
that the
Ill
That
a quotation
from the previous!}
written from Athens on July
letter
is
is
only
a
would
he
while,
it
found
hardly have
it
;
worth his
view of the pronouncements hazarded
in
BernstorfTs
crime
the
It
had he wished to do so
by his more conspicuous colleague
Count
8th. 1915.
rumour, of course, andHerr Wangenheim*
might have contradicted
but
cited
committed
inspiration
first
"The
altogether.
in
the
ai
Washington,
was
alleged
to
deny
atrocities
Ottoman Empire appeal- to be
Armenia is more
pure inventions," he declared.
remote than
apt
is
But
be
to
Belgium,
veiled
and
what
happens
there
corresponding obscurity.
in
in this ease the light has
broken through, and
Las driven Count Bernstorff to revise his posture.
further
After
conference
with
his
principals
in
Europe he
"
submitted
of the
to
the United States
German Consul General
at
Government
a report
Trebizond admitting
and defending a massacre of Armenians on the
ground that the Armenians were disloyal to the
Turkish Government and secretly were aiding and
abetting Russia."
There
is
no doubt about these "demarches" of
the
Ambassador
the
attention
He
at
of
Washington.
the
nation
has died in the meantime.
They have
to
which
struck
he
is
112
and are written large over the
accredited,
editorial
columns of the American press.*
And then there is the Imperial Chancellor himWhen the first year of the German war, and
self.
month
the fourth
Armenian
of the
had
atrocities,
completed their parallel cycle, and he addressed the
Reichstag in review of
the
situation,
he
took
occasion to congratulate his countrymen on " their
Could any
marvellous regeneration of Turkey."
endorsement
unqualified
Having
Enver's
of
satisfied ourselves
"Official
thus as to the attitude
we
Circles,"
some individual Germans express
a
more
be
?
German
of
" solution "
moment through
"The
now
let
their opinion for
the mouthpiece of their press.
Armenian,"
Zeitung"
will
writes
on October
"Frankfurter
the
"enjoys, through
9th,
his
higher intellect and superior commercial ability, a
constant business advantage
banking, and
(
and
footed Turk,
pocket, while the
Armenian
many
is
cases
would De
the
not
unfair.
so
accumulates
Turk grows
poor.
best-hated
man
unjustly,
It
is
money
That
in
is
in
hia
why
the
the East
—in
though a generalisation
easily understandable,
how-
The quotation from the New York " Herald " is taken
random from several dozen leading articles of identical
*
at
in trade, tax-farming,
ommission-agency over the heavy-
purport in as
many
other journals.
lis
ever, that the
half-educated
uneducated populace
and hot-headed chauvinists
victims
in Anatolia,
Moslem
officials, fanatical
at their head,
Buch a generalisation, and
to
wiih
ecclesiastics,
should
destroy
fall
the
innocent with the guilty
"The
ment
difficulties that confront the
in the
Armenian
There
estimated.
the
grades of
lesser
not be under-
the lack of good communications
is
absence of
niter
Anatolia, the
in
Turkish Govern-
question, must
officialdom,
all
the
initiative
in
fury of the
•populace
••
But
spite of
in
these
difficulties
TurJ
the
Government must gather the reins into its hands.
The publie opinion of Germany is firmly
convinced that the Allied Government, after dis.
.
.
.
playing to the world so magnificently
strength, will
now
external
its
give proof of in internal strength
as well."
The
and we
"
Frankfurter
ffive
it
all
"
liberally-minded
is a
honour
paper,
sentiments and
for its
its
S3
But
admonitions.
;\uy
one who 1ms read these
pages will perceive that, whether half- wilfully or
not,
it
has drawn for
itself
picture of the situation.
of initiative"'
gation
from
*
if
— that
"
an entirely erroneous
The
Lesser officials' lack
would be
a
reasonable miti-
the crime were an outburst of fanaticism
below
:
but
it
tells
the
other
way
That there has been no general outburst of
if
this
the
kind
Germany, whose professors have
not the
recklessly been preaching the Pan-Islamic Jihad (Holy
is
War), with
fault
all its
of
implications of hatred and passion.
114
And
crime has been organised from above.
the communications
of Anatolia so bad
did well enough for the Turkish mouhadjirs.
even
are
And
roads and railways are scarce, telegraphs
if
Every
not.
big
town
telegraphic
in
is
Along these
communication with Constantinople.
wires
very
are
They
?
Enver
and
Talaat
;
their
automaton-like sub-
peremptory signal to their
ordinates
radiated
and Herr Wangenheim
(if
von Jagow
had given the word) might have issued as many
telegraphic counter-orders to his energetic
whose
consuls,
(whatever
compeers)
initiative
may be
has
in
German
own
their
spheres
the case with their local Turkish
certainly
been
never
called
in
question.
No,
if
opinion
public
people
are
the
is
some
" Frankfurter Zeitung " represents
in
Germany, then
simply ignorant of the
publicists,
at
any
the
facts.
rate,
who
German
Yet there
are
better
informed.
" If the Porte considers
it
necessary that Armenian
insurrections and other goings on should be crushed
by every means
available,
possibility of their repetition,
so
as
to
then that
and no 'atrocity,' but simply measures
and necessary kind."
is
exclude
all
no 'murder'
of a justifiable
Thus writes Ccunfc Ernst von Reventlow in the
" Deutscher Tageszeitwig" and he has formulated
115
against his country a charge of complicity in the
crime which we might
have
hesitated
bring
to
against her ourselves.
"
Germany
by the
expressed
was
Constantinople.
Is
that.
in
the
internal
how the conclusion
German Ambassador at
That
of her ally."
affairs
intervene
cannot
is
But we can hardly
Germany's motive
leave
of
Turkish
her
at
complicity really
in
no more than a disinterested consideration
sensibilities
it
partner
for the
' ;
?
The
Armenian," as we have quoted from the " FrankZeitung "
furter
"is
the best
East on account of his higher
Well,'
commercial ability."
with
is
all
intellect
now
in the
and superior
the
Armenian,
his talents, has been removed, and here
the consequence, as
in the
man
hated
American
it is
set forth
by
a witness
Committee's Report: —
The results (of the crime) are that, as 90 per cent,
commerce of the interior is in the hands of the
Armenians, the country is facing ruin. The great
"
of the
bulk of business being done on
prominent business
facing bankruptcy.
places
smith,
men
credit,
hundreds of
other than Armenians are
There will not be
left
in the
evacuated a single tanner, moulder, blacktailor,
carpenter,
clay-worker,
weaver,
shoemaker, jeweller, pharmacist, doctor, lawyer or
any of the professional men or tradesmen, with very
few exceptions, and the country will be left in a
practically helpless afcatft."
(A 0.h\)
116
Who
Certainly not the Turk, however
profits ?
much it may gratify his envy. The Armenians,
as we have emphasised again and again, were the
only native element in the Ottoman Empire with
a European training and a European character.
They alone, by this " higher intellect and superior
business ability," were capable of regenerating the
Empire from within, and raising
an organised, civilized, modern
it
to the level of
As
state.
it
is,
that possibility has been destroyed for ever, and
the country has been " left in a practically helpless
condition."
Who
profits
?
Not the Armenian, not
The Armenians, had they been
the Turk.
were destined to occupy a very
the sun," to their
their
own
profit
Turkish neighbours.
be their
heirs
and
1915
to the benefit of
Are the Germans
and executors, and
" Regeneration of Turkey," to
Chancellor
alluded
so
spared,
desirable " place in
is
that
to
the
which the Imperial
paradoxically in
August,
?
This brings
us
face
to- face
with
a
question
which we have been approaching very gradually,
But we
without the possibility of drawing back.
hasten to add that the question
one.
Even
provide
us
welcome
all
of our hope,
at
is
still
an
open
Germany may
that we should
this eleventh hour,
with
an
answer
the more because of the very faintness
if
she will only stretch forth her hand
117
and save the Armenians that remain, from the
doom
of the murdered majority.
But whatever Germany
quickly,
not
only in
order
must do
she
does,
snatch
to
the
it
last
victims from the jaws of death, but because the
judgment of hummity
already going forth over
" This
refuses
all
tarry,
to
and
is
lands.
modern
Armenia is
history which is unfolding in
nothing but an echo and an extension of the main
story, the central narrative, which must describa the
German incursion into Belgium fourteen months ago.
That was the determining act, that was the signal to
Turk and Kurd
shameful
and.
page of
terrible
distant
" To-day the
world looks neither with surprisa nor
with incredulity
at
the terrible history that come3 to
us from the remoter regions of Asia Minor
Germany
" This thing that
is
has done in the world
That
not a mere injury to written law.
minor
detail.
.What she has done
back in the Twentieth Century
is
to
is
but a
bring us
all
to the condition of
the dark ages."*
That
is
the indictment.
cease to deserve
*
From
the
Let
Germany
it.
New York
"Tribune"
of October 8th, 1915
\
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