Armenian atrocities, the murder of a nation
Transcription
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 \ UC SOUl AA 000 811 288 o University of California Library Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. Phone Ft enowals 310/82 5-9188 JUN 2 5 2002 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY University Southej Librar X