chapter I

quote one more reference to the Sassoun massacre and the work of the commission from Dr. J. Lepsius of Berlin, whose book was published in 1896, under the title of “_Armenia and Europe_.”

“Turkish Commission was appointed to inquire into occurrences which took place at Sassoun in the autumn of 1894, when in the massacre in which Turkish soldiers took part, twenty-seven Christian villages were destroyed and thousands of Armenians were murdered. Delegates from the English, French, and Russian consulates were appointed to attend the Commission. At the second sitting held at Moosh, on January 26, 1895, they made what according to European ideas of justice was the natural request that the commissioners, before inquiring into any other matter, should take evidence as to the massacre of Armenians by Turks. The commissioners (Turkish) however alleged that according to their instructions from the Porte they were only to inquire “into the criminal proceeding of the Armenian brigands,” they denied that there had been any massacre of Armenians, and rejected the request of the delegates. The commission sat from January 24 to July 21 at Moosh. Some fifteen to thirty miles from the seat of the massacre, and held one hundred and eight sittings. They declined to listen to the Christian witnesses brought forward by the delegates and would only accept the testimony of Turks, who had been carefully instructed to give such evidence as would prove that the Armenians were alone to blame. Witnesses who ventured to give evidence in favor of the Armenians atoned for their rashness by immediate imprisonment. The consular delegates at last refused to have anything more to do with this farce; they therefore went to Sassoun, and by evidence there obtained established the terrible facts and the innocence of the peaceful Armenian population.”[140]

FOOTNOTES:

[132] Genesis 14:14.

[133] Greene, “The Armenian Crisis in Turkey,” pp. 17-24. (See fuller accounts.) Published by Putnam and Sons, N. Y. and London.

[134] _The Westminster Gazette_, December 12, 1894, reprinted in the _Armenia_, London, Jan., 1895.

[135] Norman, “Armenia and the Campaign of 1877,” p. 378.

[136] Bryce, “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” p. 522, 4th ed.

[137] _The London Times_, Weekly Edition, Jan. 14, 1895.

[138] Greene, “The Armenian Crisis in Turkey,” pp. 129, 130. (See the entire address quoted by Greene.)

[139] _Blue-Book_, Turkey, No. 1, 1895, p. 206.

[140] Lepsius, “Armenia and Europe,” published in Berlin, 1896. I quote from _The New Armenia_, reprinted June 15, 1916.

XV

THE MASSACRE OF 1895-6

“We must beg the reader of the following statements to remember that the Armenian massacres, in which 100,000 innocent people have perished, were directed against a peaceful and defenceless nation.--J. Lepsius.”

While the investigating commission was carrying on its work in the usual Turkish fashion, the British, French, and Russian governments drew out a scheme of reforms for Armenia and submitted it to the Porte through their ambassadors at Constantinople on May 11, 1895.

According to the press despatches the brief outline of this scheme contained the following points:

1. The appointment of a High Commissioner who is to be a Christian.

2. The governors and vice-governors of Van, Erzroum, Sivas, Bitlis, Kharput, and Trebizond be Christians or Mohammedans according to the inclination of the population; but either the governor or the vice-governor to be a Christian, and the appointments are to be confirmed by the Powers.

3. General amnesty for, and release of, all political prisoners.

4. The appointment of a Commission to sit at Constantinople, charged with the application of the reforms and working in concert with the High Commissioner.

5. Complete changes will be made in judicial system--tortures will be abolished.

6. The prisoners will be under surveillance.

7. The police will be composed of Christians and Turks equally.

8. The local and not State officials are to collect the taxes and enough money is to be retained, before it is forwarded to Constantinople, to pay the expenses of the local administration.

9. The inhabitants of Sassoun shall be paid the amount of their losses.

10. The Kurds shall be disarmed.

11. The laws against compulsory conversions to Islam will be strictly enforced.

Supposing that the above synopsis of the reforms demanded of the Porte is true--though these reforms were not officially published--the reader can easily see that the source of the Armenian trouble starts from the head of the government and runs through all its branches down to the very insignificant, yet well-armed peasant, Kurd who may happen to be a member of the Hamilieh regiment.

The evident reason also why the Powers did not wait for the report of the commission and then present their scheme of reforms was three-fold, namely, they had all the facts with regard to the massacre at Sassoun in their possession; they were aware of the dilatory manner the indolent Turk generally moves, and they would thus save time and prevent the unspeakable Turk from committing something worse. They, however, signally failed in all these. If they ever intended to accomplish anything, they indeed did not succeed, and still worse, they provoked the beast.

After a prolonged pressure had been brought to bear on the sultan by the British, French, and Russian governments he seemed to give up his opposition to their demands and in the autumn in order to pacify England--for England, to her credit, was the leading power that took real interest in the matter, realizing her greater responsibility in the case--the sultan wrote to Lord Salisbury and gave his word that the reforms should be literally and immediately carried out. Meanwhile oppressions and imprisonments were still going on as usual.

St. Paul says, “Render to all their dues....” With all sincerity and truthfulness we must say that Abdul Hamid II, the ex-Sultan of Turkey, was the shrewdest, the most wicked and most diabolical ruler that ever sat on the Ottoman throne. He was sure that there was no concert among the signatory powers. The Triple Alliance, then made up of Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany, was not opposing his policy. More than this, his dear friend, the ruler and the press of Germany had suppressed the true nature of the trouble in Turkey, and had created in Germany the false impression that the Turkish government was at the point of being overthrown by the Armenians who were in revolt; that the sultan was justly trying to suppress this rebellion and maintain his divine right to rule.

Dr. J. Lepsius, from whose work--_Armenia and Europe_--we quoted in the preceding chapter, and whose words stand at the head of this chapter, is the author of the following statement: “Truth about Armenia must be made known at last. During the past nine months (1896) the German press has been flooded with statements not merely biased, but, as we shall be able to show, _false, and deliberately intended to deceive Europe_. Care has been taken that the conduct of the so-called ‘rebellious’ Armenians should be set forth in the strongest light as the cause of all the mischief, and at the same time the story of how a great Christian nation has been subjected to massacre and pillage, and how multitudes have been compelled to abjure their faith, is practically unknown in Germany.”

Thus the sultan was sure of the support of Germany. Then again, he was not quite sure whether England could hold with her the other two powers, France and Russia. So he took the traditional course pursued by his predecessors, to move slowly, so far as the reforms were concerned, but the work of the extermination of the Armenian nation must by no means be slackened; every opportunity must be seized, and if no opportunity was forthcoming, one must be devised for excuses of slaughter.

In Armenia and Asia Minor, where most of the Armenians used to live, there was and is hardly any industry. Though a rich country in mineral and agricultural products, yet on account of the absence of good roads and markets, and of robberies and misrule, all efforts toward securing a livelihood have been paralyzed. Money consequently has always been scarce. Continual demand of the government for taxes--sometimes a year in advance--the exactions of the tax-collectors and petty officials keep the Armenians in abject poverty and distress. For these reasons thousands of young men flock to Constantinople to earn money to support their families and to meet these demands.

These men have been hearing of heartrending calamities which had fallen upon their families. Some had heard of the confiscation of their properties, some of their young wives being abducted, some of their sisters being violated, and their aged parents and tender children butchered. A year had passed since the massacre at Sassoun, yet the so-called Christian powers, under whose protection the Christian subjects of the sultan were placed by the Treaty of Berlin, had apparently done nothing. But by attempting to do something and failing, they had actually aggravated their misery.

An open enemy is not as implacable as a secret foe. The Armenians may have also thought that they would, by petitioning the sultan, emphasize the pressure of the Powers for the fulfillment of the promises of reform contained in the Treaty of Berlin. Anyhow the Armenians had prepared a petition to present to the grand vizier in which their complaints and requests were set forth. The authorities were aware of the matter and had instructed the police to prevent the presentation of the petition and had prepared also a counter demonstration against the petitioners by a large number of _softas_ and Turks. On September 30th, 1895, the petitioners started towards the Sublime Porte with their petition to present it to the grand vizier. The police ordered them to disperse and the softas and Turks attacked them. The peaceful procession of the petitioners was turned into a riot, and some five or six hundred Armenians were killed, some of them were arrested and taken to prisons and were there stabbed to death.

The following letter, written by an American resident in Constantinople, who had ample opportunity to verify the facts, will suffice to show how the sultan could and did create opportunities to slaughter the Christians:

“It was very astonishing that the Turks were so foolish as to resist the efforts of the Armenians to present their petition to the sublime Porte. It was contrary to the usage of the country to do so, and could only be explained as a wilful act of hostility to the Armenians; unless the Armenians had broken the peace before the Turks attacked them--which is denied. When the grand vizier, Said Pasha, told the sultan that the demonstration was to take place and asked for his will, the sultan committed the matter to the grand vizier and the minister of the interior to arrange together, giving them full powers. They decided to allow the petitioners to present their grievances, merely taking the precaution to have troops in the neighborhood, out of sight, but so posted as to prevent any surprise in case the Armenians should prove to be riotous. All was ready, and the Grand Vizier was just setting out for the Porte to receive the Armenians, when he was informed by the sultan that he (the sultan) had decided against the demonstration, and had already ordered his troops to resist and disperse any groups of Armenians that might appear. So the whole responsibility for the carnage falls upon the foolish (wicked) decision to override the plans of the ministers.”

If in the capital of the empire, in the presence of the ambassadors of the Powers who were demanding the protection of the Christians from cruelty and oppression, such a barbarism can be permitted, what could prevent the bloodthirsty wretch from inaugurating a general slaughter of the defenseless Armenians throughout his dominions? Thus this terrible occurrence on the 30th of September, of 1895, was the signal for hundreds of other massacres which followed one after the other, not only in the provinces where the reforms were expected to make the people happy, but throughout the empire. And not only over one hundred thousand Christians were in the most frightful manner slaughtered and burnt, but two or three times as many more were left in such destitution, that they had to choose between starvation and apostasy. “Over the most fruitful provinces of the Turkish Empire, a country as large as Germany a stream of blood and desolation was poured forth which was intended to destroy a whole Christian people.... There can be no doubt that the Turks enjoyed the work of massacre, and carried it out with admirable exactness, according to a previously arranged programme, with processions, blowing of trumpets, and prayers from the mullahs, who from the highest minarets invoked the blessing of Allah on the butchery.”[141]

According to press reports, the scheme of reforms submitted by Great Britain, France, and Russia to the Turkish government on the 11th of May, 1895, was signed in due form and on the 17th of October, 1895, handed over to the ambassadors of the powers. Before this, however, the general massacres had begun.

The massacres took place in the following places and times:

Constantinople Sept. 30, 1895 500 Trebizond Oct. 8, 1895 1,100 Ak Hissar Oct. 9, 1895 45 Gumush Khana Oct. 11, 1895 350 Baiburt Oct. 13, 1895 800 Erzingian Oct. 21, 1895 2,000 Bitlis Oct. 26, 1895 3,000 Palu Oct. 25, 1895 650 Diarbikir Oct. 25, 1895 3,000 Kara Hissar Oct. 25, 1895 800 Ersorum Oct. 30, 1895 1,500 Boulouik and Khnus Oct. 30, 1895 700 Tomzara Oct. 28 and Nov. 8, 1895 700 Malatia Nov. 6, 1895 5,000 Arabkir Nov. 6, 1895 4,000 Harput[142] Nov. 11, 1895 2,000 Gurin Nov. 10, 1895 2,000 Sivas Nov. 12, 1895 1,500 Moosh Nov. 15, 1895 350 Marsovan Nov. 15, 1895 125 Aintab Nov. 15, 1895 400 Marash Nov. 18, 1895 1,000 Zilleh Nov. 26, 1895 300 Cæsarea Nov. 30, 1895 400 Urfa Oct. 28 and Dec. 28-29, 1985 10,000 Biredjik Jan. 1, 1896 900 Van } Niksar } June, 1896 20,000 Eghin } Constantinople Aug. 26-27, 1896 10,000

The number of persons killed, about 100,000 The number of houses and shops burnt 12,000 The number of houses plundered 47,000 The persons forced to accept Mohammedanism 40,000 The number of persons left destitute 400,000[143]

It should not be considered that the number given as killed are exact, for some of those reports have gone through the Ambassadors’ revisions, and some places where massacres have taken place have never been noticed, because there was no foreigner, and no native that was able to report was left alive.

“From that date (October 8, 1895) until the end of the year the wave of massacre swept over the six eastern provinces, engulfing the villages, towns, and cities where Armenians lived; innumerable houses, and schools, and churches were burned, a vast amount of property was stolen or destroyed, a great number of women and girls were carried off by Turks and Kurds, multitudes of people were forced to accept the Mohammedan religion, 100,000 Armenian men and boys were slain, and 500,000 Armenian women and children were reduced to beggary. Everywhere it was understood by the Mohammedan population that they were authorized by order from Constantinople, to kill all Armenian men and boys and seize their property. In many places soldiers and officers joined with the mob and shared the plunder. _The massacres were perpetrated in contempt and defiance of Europe_; they were an expression of Turkish wrath and vengeance; they were in short, an attempt to end the Armenian question by the destruction of the Armenians. Europe raised the hope of the Christian population of Turkey, and Europe left them to their fate.”[144]

We had the pleasure, before, of quoting from the work of Dr. J. Lepsius of Berlin, “_Armenia and Europe_.” We are tempted to quote more for a few reasons: First, because he so fearlessly exposed the studied efforts of the official press of Germany to mislead the people with regard to the true nature of the condition of the Armenians who were massacred for their Christian faith, even though it was made to appear that the Turkish government was endeavoring to suppress a revolution which did not exist. Second, because of his courageous exposition of the criminal indifference of Europe to abandon the defenseless Armenians to the ruthless and barbarous tendencies of the Turks. Third, because of his faithfully exposing and showing the true nature of the followers of Mohammed, the absurdity, falsehood, and deviltry of the Turkish government’s excuse of putting down a revolt.

“The Turkish people, equipped and armed by the authorities, were delighted to take their share in the work of murder side by side with the military, the Radifs (Eeserves), the Zaptiehs (Gendarmes), and the lately formed Kurdish Irregulars, called the Hamidieh-Regiment after the reigning sultan. Every one was in the best humor.... A savage and murderous spirit took possession of the people. And what else could be expected? Here an officer urged them on with the cry, ‘Down with the Armenians, it is the sultan’s will!’ Here a Vali exhorted them to ‘Look sharp! Kill! Plunder! and pray for the sultan!’ What inducement had they to cease from murder or from prey! The reward of piety lay before their eyes, for all that they could seize and carry away was to be their own.... The monotonous work of dragging hundreds of defenceless Armenians out of their homes and hiding-places merely to behead, stab, throttle, hang, or beat them, soon palled. The merry mob wanted variety. Simple murder became dull, and the business must now be made more amusing. How would it do to light a fire and roast the wounded at it? To gibbet a few head-downwards? Drive nails into others? Or tie fifty of them together and fire into the coil?... Putting out eyes and cutting off ears and noses was a special accomplishment. Christian priests who refused to become Mohammedans were considered particularly worthy of this fate.... Petroleum and kerosene were at hand. It is true that the authorities intended them to be used only for the purpose of burning down houses and destroying grain. But why not put them to other and more useful purposes?

“There was a certain photographer, by the name Mardiros (martyr, or witness), who had a fine beard, petroleum was poured over it and set on fire. Several Christians were gathered together, kerosene poured over them, and, as they burnt, others were thrown into the fumes and suffocated. A woman with luxuriant hair had gunpowder sprinkled on it, and her head was blown off. In a monastery at Kaghtzorhayatz, an Effendi, by name Abdullah, had a young man and a girl placed close together and with one stroke cut off both their heads. But sword and fire can be dispensed with. The Kurdish Sheikh, Djevher of Gabars, proved this by binding two brothers with ropes and pegging them to the ground with stakes.... The baker in Kesserek, who had already murdered ninety-seven Armenians, which he proved by exhibiting their ears and noses, declared that he would not rest until he had brought up the number to one hundred. But he found his master in Hadji Bego of Tadem, who had butchered more than a hundred Christians, and who, as a sign of his prowess, cut a woman into four pieces and put them on posts to public view. The butcher of Aintab, who stuck the heads of six Armenians on his spit, was outdone by the Turk at Subaschigulp, who slaughtered Armenians like sheep and hung their bodies on meat-hooks. The people of Trebizond brought out the humor of the thing; they shot Adam, the Armenian butcher, and his son, cut them in pieces, stuck the limbs separately on sticks and offered them for sale to passers-by: ‘Who will buy an arm, a leg, feet or hands? Cheap! Who will buy?’ But innocence must be spared. The Sultan had commanded that Christians under seventeen should not be killed. But who heeds such caution?... The Mohammedans of a large village in Marash, saved at least one small child from this fate by throwing it into the fire.

“In Baiburt the destroyers were merciful enough in fourteen houses to burn the babies with their mothers. Ohannes Avakian, a rich civilian of Trebizond, offered the raging mob all his possessions if they would spare his family and himself. His three-year-old child was in his arms. Both were murdered before the eyes of the mother and the other children, and then the crowd seized the spoil. A valiant Turk thinks nothing of strangling children on the knees of their mothers. To play at ball with a baby, and toss it from one bayonet to another before its mother’s eyes seemed pleasant sport for the soldiers of Bitlis.... Although it is a fact that dozens of women and children perished in all the massacres, that in Kiauta and Lessouk a hundred women were mutilated, and amongst the victims at Bitlis were little boys (from five to twelve years of age) of the Church School of Surp Serkis, we must do the Turk the justice to acknowledge that these cruelties were not _invariably_ approved by the head officials.... The populace went beyond their actual instructions when we find that amongst the 450 corpses buried in the cemetery at Sivas all the women had been mutilated. As a rule, however, the authorities did nothing to check the bloodthirstiness of the masses, and whenever the work of murder was too great for the people alone, the soldiers were speedily summoned to help.

“Many of the fleeing Armenians were simple enough to believe that their Churches would be a place of safety; that in the sanctuary they would be spared. But as hundreds of churches and convents had to be reduced to ashes, since the _aim was to do away with every trace of the hated Christian faith_, what mattered the trifling fact that men, women, and children were inside them? In Ressuan the doors of the church were broken open and all the refugees murdered. Three hundred Armenians escaped to the monastery of Maghapayetzatz only to be butchered with the brotherhood. In Indises (district of Luk-Shehri) and in Habusu (district of Harpoot) the churches were burned over the heads of the Christians; but here we cannot blame the people for the soldiers set the example. In Shabin Kara Hissar more regard was paid to the church, the two thousand people who had taken refuge there were at least killed outside the doors....

“It is worthy of record that the dead bodies of Christians were dragged naked out of the towns and villages, horribly mutilated, and then cast out in heaps on the streets, or on dung-hills, or thrown into streams and drains, till asses and Jews were requisitioned to carry the corpses away like the carrion of dead animals. Among the mass of mutilated human flesh no one was able to recognize his own dead. When the dead bodies were not left as food for dogs, or when they were not burned with petroleum, a hole was dug into which they were thrown in a mass. But to men of importance special funeral honors were paid. The priest Mattheas of Busseyid, had his head cut off and placed between his legs, and the young Turks of the town amused themselves by flogging the body. The priest, Der-Harutiun of Diarbekir, and his colleague from the church at Alipunar, together with ten other priests from the district of Tadem, had the skin flayed from their bodies. A special monument was erected to the Abbot Sahag, prior of the monastery of Surp Katch in the district of Kizan, and to his young assistant; their skins were stuffed with straw and hung on trees. The Turks of Arabkir with an imagination worthy of Nero set up the heads of Armenians in rows on long poles, and the commander of the gendarmes at Baiburt, who, on the 26th of October, received from the women of the village of Ksauta five hundred pounds sterling in money and jewels as a ransom for the lives of their husbands and who, a few days later, changed his mind, and collecting together in a field the women and children of the village, had them all pitilessly slaughtered, is worthy of being chief of Tamerlane’s bodyguard.

“At the beginning of the disturbance the inhabitants of twelve villages north and west of Marash fled for refuge to the town of Turnus with the intention of escaping from thence to the mountains near Zeitoun. About four thousand of them were suddenly one morning surrounded by soldiers. A terrible butchery began, and all were slain except three hundred and eighty women and children; these were collected together and driven by the soldiers for two days like a flock of sheep to Marash. The government of the sultan must show how merciful it could be to the innocent, even though these unfortunate women were obliged in the month of December to wade through the mountain snow, and to leave many of their starving children by the wayside, as no halt was permitted. One mother tells us that when she could not carry her two children any longer, she put them on a horse that belonged to the soldiers, and at the next river the little ones were thrown into the water. Would it not have been more merciful to have slain all the 4000 together?

“Has not enough blood been shed? When will the cry of this tortured people reach the ear of Christendom? What answer will those Christian Powers make who, eighteen years ago (1878), stretched a protecting hand over Armenia and presented her with paper reforms, signed and sealed in the name of the Almighty? But enough of this, for there is yet another page of horror to be disclosed.

“‘_Kill the men! Their wives, their daughters, and their property are ours._’ That was the watchword with which the soldiers of Cæsarea urged on the armed mob to murder, plunder, and outrage. And this watchword was heard and obeyed in all the hundreds of towns and villages where the work of murder was carried out. Even before the commencement of the massacres the shameless Turkish soldiers had dared to ask the Christian mothers to keep their daughters for them, saying that soon all the Christian girls in the country would belong to them.

“We must already reckon the number of slain at 85,000 in the massacres of 1895-1896, but who can count all the deeds of shame and infamy, who can number the tens of thousands who were driven into the mountains, sold into harems, exposed in the slave-markets, or who, after having been outraged, were secretly murdered?

“It seems necessary to give some idea of the shame and dishonor to which even at the present time women are exposed. The scoundrel Hadji Bego, who boasted of having killed a hundred Armenians with his own hand, hunted a Christian girl naked through the streets of the town. The Turkish people of Cæsarea, who burnt thirty Armenian houses with their inhabitants, also helped to storm the women’s baths at the bathing hour. And with what reception did those thirty women of Koschmad meet, who wandered over the mountains without any clothes, till they reached Shinas and fell into the hands of the soldiers there? But that was nothing unusual. _There was no massacre in which the murder of the men was not followed by outrage on the women and girls; no plunder in which they were not offered for sale, carried off as spoils, exchanged for horses and donkeys, or exposed in the slave market._ The Agas or officers distributed the girls among the Zaptiehs and soldiers.

“Not safe in their own houses under the eye of their husbands, who had often, bound to door-posts, to witness their fate, outraged and robbed of all protection, hunted from house to house till they fell a prey to dishonor--that, _Christian women, is the fate of your sisters in Armenia_.

“Which of the two do you most pity--the widowed or orphaned girl cowering among rags in some corner of her ruined home, trembling at every footstep of a man, be he Turk or Kurd, who may force his way in and outrage her before her children, or her brothers and sisters; or that other girl who, distinguished perhaps for beauty, has pleased the eye of some Turkish Aga, and, in spite of her cries and tears, has been dragged into his harem, and forced to give up at once her honor and her faith? Can we understand now what drove hundreds of Armenian women to suicide? Or why those fifty women of Lessouk and Krauta threw themselves into the wells, or leapt from the edge of precipices? We can realize the horror that filled the soul of that highborn Armenian lady who was carried off with a troop of women and children and a few men from Uzounova (twenty-five miles east of Harpout). When they reached the banks of the Euphrates she called to her companions, and, rushing to the river, threw herself in. That dishonor is worse than death is proved by the fact, that fifty-five women and children followed her example, and perished in the waters.

“Who would not feel compassion for the unfortunate old man who thus expresses his nameless grief in a letter to his son: ‘Oh, I dare not tell you ... they came and threatened to kill me if I refused to give up your sister. After they had taken everything else--blankets, beds, clothes, provisions, and even fuel--they returned to demand our daughter. I was prepared to withstand to the end, but when she saw that they were about to kill me, she threw herself at their feet, and cried out: “Spare my father! Here I am.”’

“Admirers of Turkish army organization and of Mohammedan civilization ought to know that even the brutality of the Kurdish hordes and the cynicism of the townspeople were thrown completely into the shade by the infamous conduct of the soldiers and officers. Although it fills me with disgust to dip my pen into this sink of corruption, I feel it is necessary that the world should know what deeds are done in this home of promised reforms by the guardians of law and order.

“The truth of the following account is established by two independent testimonies which lie before me: ‘In the village of Husseyinik (vilayet of Harpout), six hundred soldiers (and their officers) collected together in the military depot about the same number of women and young girls; they first outraged them, and then murdered the unhappy victims of their horrible lust.’

“Does not this blood cry to Heaven? And even though the kings of the earth be deaf to its cry, will not God hear?”

It should not be considered superfluous to state that even these facts were brought by such an able and honest man as Dr. Lepsius before the attention of the German people, the German government still courted the friendship of the Turkish government, and have succeeded in keeping the masses of the honest and good Christian people to believe that the Armenians were receiving from the hands of the Turks what they deserved. Strange as it may appear, yet nevertheless it is true, that the Germans were more willing to believe than the Englishmen--like her Majesty’s Government--that Armenians were not suffering all these atrocities on account of “their religious faith.” It is a disgrace to humanity, and especially to the German _Kultur_, that Germans who are so thorough in almost everything, should still be so superficial in this one particular, that they should not see the underlying fact. Dr. Lepsius quotes from a German daily paper which, in discussing the massacre at Sassoun, wrote:

“In the absence of other reasons for European intervention, the English and American press have been obliged to take up the Christian religion of the Armenians. Gladstone, indeed, on the occasion of the farce of the reception of the deputation from Sassoun, did not shrink from speaking of the ‘Armenians persecuted for their Christian faith.’ That is a palpable falsehood. What reason could the Porte have had for suddenly setting on foot a religious persecution, when in the course of hundreds of years it had taken no notice of the Armenian religion? As a matter of fact, a genuine persecution of Christians has never taken place in the Turkish Empire. Moreover, it would be the most imprudent thing the Porte could do to increase the manifold difficulties of its position by a religious persecution....”

The following is the answer which Dr. Lepsius gives, and he also sets an array of facts against biassed opinions:

“It is worth while to reproduce this pregnant summary of a widespread opinion ... for still the German press daily tells the same tale.... We confine ourselves to Armenia, and here we must indeed agree that it not only would be, but _was_ ‘the most imprudent thing the Porte could do,’ to inaugurate a persecution of Christianity. For the Christians number one-third of the subjects of his majesty, the sultan, and--if we weigh instead of counting them--in intelligence, education, practical ability, and moral energy, they take up two-thirds of the entire population of the Turkish empire.... We cannot blame him [the journalist], then, if he is ignorant of the fact that the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the ‘manifold difficulties of its position’ can be traced back in every case to the opposition between Islam and Christianity as well as to the circumstance that the religious law of Islam--which during the last decades has been more than ever the standard of Ottoman policy--does not admit equality of civil rights, and that any concession in this direction from the Porte can only be regarded ‘in principle,’ i.e., on paper....

“What are the Armenian massacres then? Without any question their origin was purely political, or to state it more exactly, they were an administrative measure. But facts go to prove that, considering the character of the Mohammedan people, whose very political passions are roused only by religious motives, this administrative measure _must_ and _did, take the form of a religious persecution on a gigantic scale_. Are we then, simply because of the political origin of this religious persecution, to be forbidden to speak of the Armenians as ‘persecuted on account of their religious belief’? If so, there have never been any religious persecutions in the world; for all such without exception have been associated with political movements, and even the death of Christ was nothing but a political event, for political moves turned the balance at His condemnation.

“We have lists before us of 559 villages whose surviving inhabitants were converted to Islam with fire and sword, of 568 churches thoroughly pillaged, destroyed, and razed to the ground, of 282 Christian churches transformed into mosques, of 21 Protestant preachers and 170 Gregorian (Armenian) priests who were after enduring unspeakable tortures murdered on their refusal to accept Islam. We repeat, however, that these figures express only the extent of our _information_, and do not, by a long way, reach to the extent of the reality. Is this a religious persecution or is it not?... The most shameful desecration of the churches everywhere, the pollution of sacred vessels ... the spitting on Gospels and Bibles which were then torn into a thousand pieces--these were the mere accessories to the drama of vandalism.

“The method adopted for the work of compulsory conversion was everywhere the same.... In some towns and villages, even before the outbreak of the massacres, the choice was given of averting the threatened fate by embracing Islam. Mere threats of death were seldom sufficient; bayonets were pointed at the heart, swords at the throat. When this did not avail, tortures were employed. The priests and preachers, especially who refused to renounce their faith, had to endure absolutely inconceivable tortures before they received the _coup de grace_. The priest Der Hagop of Harpout, became insane, when, clad only in his shirt, he saw the swords of fifty soldiers pointed at him. What was to be done with him? As the Mullahs declared that a madman could not be received into Islam he was for the present thrown into prison for contumacy.

“In the monastery at Tadem the Venerable Archimandrite, Ohannes Papazian, had first his hands and afterwards his arms up to the elbows cut off, on his refusal to accept Islam. When, even then, he would not yield, he was beheaded on the pavement of the church. At Biredjik an old man who refused to renounce his faith was thrown down, live coals were heaped upon him, and, when he writhed in his agony, the fiends held a Bible before his eyes and mockingly bade him read to them some of the promises on which he had pinned his faith.

“At Diarbekir, the great stone church of the Syrian order of St. James, in which a number of refugees were sheltering, was surrounded by Kurds who fired on it, broke open the roof, threw down combustibles and at last succeeded in bursting open the door. Amid the joyous shouts of the mob the refugees were driven into the open in dense masses, and received with a hail of bullets. When the pastor, Jirjs Khatherschian, from Egypt, who happened to be visiting his relations, was recognized as an ecclesiastic he was thrown to the ground, and beaten till he became unconscious. One of the sacred books scattered around was pushed into his mouth, and he was mockingly called upon to preach a sermon. Burning brands fell on him, and when he was aroused from his unconscious state by the pain, and attempted to crawl away, he was seized and hurled into the blazing fire and burnt to death. Are we not reminded of the heroism of the Maccabees by a mother at Ourfa, who, when an attempt was made to force her sons to renounce their religion, came running up and besought them: ‘Let them kill you, but do not deny the Lord Jesus’--and the steadfast pair suffered death by the sword. The women and children followed the men to martyrdom. At Bitlis a hundred women, whose husbands had been slain, were conducted by soldiers to an open place. What was their answer when they were called upon to renounce Jesus and save their lives: ‘No, our husbands died for Him, and we will do the same.’ They were massacred.”

At Cassarea, in the massacre of November 30th, Rev. Dr. Avedis Yeretzian, a pastor and physician, his wife, his eldest son and his brother-in-law were ruthlessly butchered by the Turks and thrown into the flames of their burning house. In another house a Protestant alone with his twelve year old daughter, the mother being absent, a Turk burst into the room where the father was, and killed him on his refusal to embrace the Mohammedan faith. He then went into the room where the girl, unaware of the affair, was sitting. He said to her: “Your father is dead because he would not embrace Islam, now I must make you a Mohammedan, then I shall take you to my home and you will be treated as my daughter. Are you willing?” Her answer was, “I believe in Jesus. He is my Saviour, and I love Him. I cannot do what you wish, even if you kill me.” He fell upon her in his fury and stabbed her in twelve different places. The house was plundered and burnt with the father’s corpse lying therein. The same evening, in another part of the town, a cart drove up to the house where the girl’s mother was staying. A neighbor, a kindly disposed Turk, entered and said: “I have brought you the body of your little daughter. You are a friend of mine, I could not leave it lying there. I am sorry this has happened.”

The British Vice-Consul, Mr. Fitzmaurice, who was sent to Urfa to make an investigation of the massacre, made the following report:

“On Saturday night (the 28th of December, 1895) crowds of Armenian men, women and children took refuge in their fine cathedral, capable of holding some eight thousand persons. They administered the sacrament, the last sacrament, as it proved to be, to eighteen hundred souls, recording the figure on one of the pillars of the church.

“Those remained in the cathedral overnight, and were joined on Sunday by several hundred more, who sought the protection of a building which they considered safe from the mob-violence of the Musulman even in his fanaticism. At least three thousand individuals were congregated in the building when the mob attacked it. They first fired in through the windows, then smashed in the iron door, and proceeded to massacre all those, the majority on the ground floor being men. Having thus disposed of the men, and having removed some of the young women, they rifled the church treasure, shrines, and ornaments to the extent of some four thousand pounds (Turkish--$17,600), destroying pictures and relics, mockingly calling on Christ now to prove Himself a greater prophet than Mohammed.

“A huge, partly stone, partly wooden, gallery, running round the upper portion of the cathedral, was packed with a shrieking and terrified mass of women, children and some men.

“Some of the intruders jumping on the raised altar platform, began picking off the latter with revolver shots, but as this process seemed too tedious, they bethought themselves of a more expeditious method employed against those who had hidden in the wells. Having collected a quantity of bedding and the church matting, they poured some thirty cans of kerosene upon it and then set fire to the whole. The gallery beams and wooden frame work soon caught fire, whereupon, blocking up the staircases leading to the gallery with similar inflammable material, they left the mass of struggling human beings to become the prey of the flames.

“During several hours the sickening odor of roasting flesh prevailed in the town; and even to-day, two months and a half after the massacre, the smell of charred remains in the church is unbearable.

“At 3.30 P.M. at the Moslem afternoon prayer, the trumpet again sounded, and the mob drew off from the Armenian quarter. Shortly afterward the Mufte and other notables, preceded by music, among which were brass military instruments, went round the quarter announcing that the massacre was at an end, and that there would be no more killing of Christians.

“No distinction was made between Gregorians, Protestants, and Roman Catholics, whose churches, also, were rifled. The thoroughness with which some of the work was done may be understood from the fact that one hundred twenty-six Armenian families have been absolutely wiped out, not even a woman or a baby remains. ... After very close and minute inquiry, I believe that close on eight thousand Armenians perished in the two days’ massacre, between 2500 and 3000 of whom were killed or burned in the cathedral. I should not, however, be at all surprised if nine thousand or ten thousand were subsequently found to be nearer the mark.”[145]

Miss Corinna Shattuck, the noble American lady missionary, was alone in the city of Urfa during the massacres. She was both lion-hearted and tender-hearted. She wrote: “It was apparent that the utmost was done (by the officials) to protect me, but how willingly I would have died that thousands of parents might be spared to their children.” It is stated that seventeen Armenian houses and two hundred forty persons were saved from the massacre by her special efforts. “Pastor Abouhaiydian with his six motherless children and many others had fled to the house of an Armenian doctor. The Turks attacked the house and killed forty-five men. The pastor plead for life for the sake of his children, but when he refused to accept the Islam faith they shot him through the heart. The eldest daughter, then in her 17th year, ran to her father, who said to her, ‘Fear not, the Lord is with you. I have no fear for I am going to my dear Saviour.’ The Turks took the children to a mosque, but after three days they were recovered by Miss Shattuck who kept them until claimed by friends.”[146]

The pastor of the Protestant Armenian church at Sivas, Garabed Kuludjizn, was visiting some strangers in a khan; he was seized upon and the demand made of him to deny Christ and accept the Mohammedan faith. On his refusal, he was shot to death by Mohammed’s followers.

The massacre at Marash was--like the rest of massacres in other places--carefully planned by the authorities and carried out with utmost cruelty and barbarism. On the 26th of October about forty Armenians were killed and some shops and houses were looted. But the plans for the general massacre must not have been quite matured, nevertheless, fifteen thousand Armenians, about one-third of the entire population of the city, were completely terrorized. The Christians fled and hid themselves in their houses for a while. On the 18th of November, at 8 A.M., the fearful slaughter and plunder began. The near neighbors of the missionaries fled into the missionaries’ houses for safety, and about two hundred persons were saved. We reproduce the following statements of our missionaries who witnessed the horrors:

“The massacre in the city was fearful beyond words to express. Three Christian quarters, covering a large area, were burned. Two Gregorian Armenian Churches were burned and in one of them the women and children, who had sought refuge there, perished in the flames. The Second and Third Evangelical Churches were looted and the inside of the building was cut to pieces. The venerable pastor of the native church connected with the Church of England, after suffering tortures, was killed. The two head teachers of the American Academy, one of whom was also acting pastor of the First Evangelical Church, were killed, and one of them was flayed alive and then cut to pieces. In all some 1000 Armenians, to whom generally the alternative of Islam or death was given, were most cruelly slain. Children were disemboweled, and the dissevered heads of men and women were kicked about by the soldiers as balls or were carried on pikes through the streets. And this dire work of murdering, robbing and burning was done, not by Kurds, but by the _regular soldiers of the Ottoman Government_, assisted by the Moslem population of the city, and here, as in so many other places, the Armenians were utterly passive victims, without arms or possible means of self-defense. So far as is known, not a Turk was hurt in all the eight hours’ carnage....

“Such is the preparation which his majesty is making, preliminary to the fulfillment of his promise to Lord Salisbury on his honor(?) to carry out the scheme of reform. Such is the state into which England (all unwittingly), by her initiative in elaborating and insisting on reforms, has plunged the Armenians. _Is it to her honor that she now leaves them to be murdered, robbed, burned and martyred?_”

England’s enemies--the enemies she had made in almost a hundred years of defending the barbarous Turk, and her jealous neighbors who were already her enemies--were secretly and openly encouraging the beast in human form to humiliate England through him, and also by befriending him, they were paving the way for their colonial and commercial ambitions. Thus the Armenians were abandoned to their fate. The following statement was made, it may be an attempt of England to throw off her responsibility: “In February, 1896, the cabinet of Lord Salisbury, the minister who had concluded the Convention (both of Cyprus and of Berlin in 1878), confessed that as the Turks had refused to carry out reforms promised in that instrument, it was impossible for England, notwithstanding the possession of Cyprus, to occupy Armenia and prevent the massacres which had happened there, and that it had become practically impossible for her any longer to give either moral or material support to the Turkish power.”[147]

England’s confession of her inability--rather her unwillingness--encouraged the great assassin, the sultan, to do still more of his bloody work. The following statement is given by Dr. Lepsius: “The massacres of Van, Niksar, and Eghin in June of 1896, although in their course, 20,000 Armenians were slaughtered, have, in spite of the details given in the _Frankfort Journal_, made not the slightest impression on the continental press. For the culture of Central Europe, such events lie too far away in the depths of Turkish territory.”

There is one more incident which belongs to this chapter. It is the massacre at Constantinople. The simple narrative of this horrible crime against humanity in general, and the Armenians in particular, is another indictment not only against the sultan, but also against the European Powers.

On good authority we are informed, that the Turkish government knew beforehand that certain revolutionary Armenians from Russia would make an attack on the Ottoman Bank, and had taken the necessary measures, not to prevent the revolutionary action, but to organize, owing to this welcome opportunity, a universal massacre of the peaceful Armenians of Constantinople.

“About noon (on the 26th of August, 1896) a band of Armenians, most of them from Russia, entered the Ottoman Bank, with arms and dynamite, took the employees prisoners and barricaded themselves in the building, with threat that, unless the ambassadors secure a pledge from the sultan of certain reforms, they would blow up the bank with dynamite. To finish with this part of the story, soldiers soon surrounded the bank, and negotiations began with the captors which in the evening resulted in their being permitted to leave the bank, go on board the yacht of the chief manager and leave the country unmolested.

“Who originated this plot I do not know, but it is certain that the Turkish government knew all about it, many days before, even to the exact time when the bank was to be entered, and the minister of police had made elaborate arrangements, _not to arrest these men or prevent the attack on the bank, but to facilitate it and make it the occasion of a massacre of the Armenian population of the city_. This was to be the crown of all the massacres of the year, one worthy of the capital and the seat of the sultan, a final defiance to the Christian world. Not many minutes after the attack on the bank, the band of Turks, who had been organized by the minister of police in Stamboul and Galata, commenced the work of killing every Armenian they could find. They were protected by large bodies of troops, who in some cases took part in the slaughter. Through Wednesday, Wednesday night, Thursday, and Thursday night the massacre went on unchecked. An open telegram was sent by the ambassadors to the sultan Thursday night, which perhaps influenced him to give orders to stop the massacre, and not many were murdered on Friday. I do not care to enter at all into the horrible details of this massacre of some _ten thousand_ Armenians.

“The massacre of the Armenians came to an end on Friday, ... but the persecution of them which went on for months was worse than the massacre. The business was destroyed, they plundered and blackmailed without mercy, they were hunted like wild beasts, they were imprisoned, tortured, killed, deported, fled the country, until the Armenian population of the city was reduced by some _seventy-five thousands_, mostly men, including those massacred.... The poverty and distress of those left alive in Constantinople was often heartrending, and many women and children died of slow starvation.

“Sir Michael Herbert, the British _charge d’affaires_, and some of the ambassadors did what they could to stop the massacre of the Armenians, ... but the ‘concert of Europe’ did nothing. It accepted the situation. The Emperor of Germany went farther. He sent a special embassy to present to the sultan a portrait of his family as a token of his esteem.”[148]

We would have thought it would have been better to give Sultan Hamid enough time to wash his hands of the blood of the Armenians before giving him the portrait of the imperial family. But the King of Prussia thought that Abdul Hamid needed a friend then more than any other time, and the world also may know that Emperor William II of Germany was the friend of the great assassin. We wonder whether congeniality is a condition of friendship among rulers as it is among individuals.

In his Guildhall speech, November 9, 1896, Lord Salisbury was heard again. He declared that England would adhere to the European concert, yet the veto of any one power, meant that the concert could not act, he also admitted that to act separately from the concert would bring about a war; England was not prepared for this, because her strength consisted in her navy, and no fleet in the world could “get over the mountains of Taurus to protect the Armenians.” Thus the European Powers agreed to disagree to force the sultan to be truthful and fulfill his promises of reform, or even to stop his cruel work of extermination of a nation. The result of this disagreement to coerce the sultan to act humanely, and the Powers hiding themselves behind the European concert, was to leave Abdul Hamid to do as he pleased. And he pleased thus: From Constantinople to Van, from the shores of the Black Sea to the shores of the Mediterranean, “with inexpressible cruelty 150,000 men, women, and children were killed, burned or buried alive, and yet Europe seemed powerless.”[149] Why was (or seemed) Europe powerless? Because the veto of any one power meant that the _Concert_ could not act. What power or powers did the vetoing? We have no desire to incriminate any power, for all are guilty. But the evidence, judging by the events past and present, strongly points to the power which has been in desperate love with the modern Jezebel, the only Mohammedan power, for a political wedlock. This political matrimony has been consummated in the autumn of 1914. But let us look back to the time of the courtship.

In 1888 German financiers secured concession from the sultan for a railroad in Asia Minor. And German colonists and expansionists “dreamed of linking the Baltic Sea with the Persian gulf and carrying the Teutonic empire across Asia.” Since then “the government had sedulously cultivated its influence over Turkey.” And shortly after the massacre of ten thousand Armenians in Constantinople, the kaiser, by a special embassy presented to the sultan the Imperial Family Portrait as a “token of esteem.”

FOOTNOTES:

[141] Lepsius, “Armenia and Europe.” See _The New Armenia_ of June 15, 1916, New York.

[142] _The Public Ledger_ (Philadelphia), Feb. 17, 1896, had the following editorial comment on a local Turkish official report: “What purports to be an official list of Turkish outrages in the Province of Harpoot and some of the neighboring villages, prepared by a local Turkish authority, is published. The total number killed is given as 39,234, and the number of destitute as 94,770. The account is somewhat mysterious, as it does not show for what purpose it was made, nor does the report state how a matter, usually so jealously guarded, came to be made public, but it is _authoritative_, and the details are more sickening than the bare aggregate, as they show the number of persons burned to death; the number who perished from hunger and cold; the number of women outraged; the number of forcible conversions to Islam; the number forcibly married to Moslems, etc. It is a chapter more worthy of the Dark Ages than modern civilization, but modern civilization does not seem able to prevent its repetition at the pleasure of the Turk.”

[143] Bliss, “Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities,” pp. 553-4.

[144] Greene, “Leavening the Levant,” p. 36.

[145] Report of Vice-Consul Fitzmaurice, Turkey, No. V., 1896.

[146] Greene, “Leavening the Levant,” pp. 177-8.

[147] Bryce, “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” p. 520, 4th edition.

[148] Washburn, “Fifty Years in Constantinople,” pp. 245-9.

[149] Andrews, “A History of All Nations,” Vol. XX, p. 341. Published by Lea Brothers and Co., Philadelphia.

XVI

THE REVOLUTION AND MASSACRES OF ADANA, 1908-1909

Sultan Abdul Hamid’s despotism during his long and bloody reign had alienated not only all the decent people in his realm, but even some of the worse classes, who, for their liberal views, not for better lives, were listed as his enemies. These were not Turks by descent, neither Mohammedans by choice, but being the children of renegades, whose forefathers professed themselves Mohammedans in order to save their lives, their honor, and their property. Thus these European Mohammedans were largely of Christian extract, and naturally had better chances to learn from the Western nations, especially the army officers, some of whom had been educated in military schools in Europe. Others, who were known and dogged by the numerous spies of Abdul Hamid, fled the country into Europe, and in Paris and other places, carried on a revolutionary propaganda.

The leaders of this movement first influenced the army and navy officers. The latter in turn appealed to their regiments. When they were sure of success, and everything in readiness, then they demanded from Abdul Hamid the restoration of the constitution which he had suppressed in 1877, and other reforms. Their demands were accompanied by the threat to march upon Constantinople with 60,000 men, if they were not immediately granted. Abdul Hamid was shocked. Some thought he would commit suicide. But he was too self-willed and shrewd; and not without some hope of frustrating their plans. He must act at once. There was no chance of doing anything by which he could avoid an immediate disaster. He must have time. He can have it by apparently and gracefully yielding. He said he was now sure that his people were prepared for a constitutional government, that he was willing to govern the nation according to the constitution.

So on the 24th of July, 1908, “by the command of the sultan, telegrams were sent to all divisions of the army and to the governors of the provinces announcing that his Imperial Majesty, Sultan Abdul Hamid, was graciously pleased to proclaim a constitutional form of government. The people were dazed and bewildered, not knowing what to believe, and when reassured their outbursts of joy defied description. Turks, Christians, and Jews joined indiscriminately in their joyful demonstrations.”

The sultan having solemnly sworn that he would rule as a constitutional king and as he appeared to be doing so, he was permitted to remain upon the throne. But he made no delay in attempting to overthrow the individuals and the Parliament as a whole. He used various means by the hands of his underlings and hirelings--softas and mullahs--to whom he shipped unlimited sums of money. Within nine months Abdul Hamid succeeded in inducing half of the garrison of Constantinople, about 12,000 men, to espouse his cause and rise in mutiny.

On the night of April 13th, 1909, these mutinous soldiers did rise and fall upon their officers. They killed some of them and imprisoned others; then they marched into the streets, and went over to Stamboul, and took possession of the House of Parliament. The president of parliament and the minister of justice escaped with their lives, but other ministers fell by the assassins’ bullets. Sultan Hamid’s success, however, was transient. Within a week the Young Turks rallied and hastened their forces from Albania and Macedonia, some 45,000 men well equipped with artillery, ammunition, and provisions. On the 23d of April the commander of the Young Turkey army heard a rumor that Sultan Abdul Hamid in disappointment and rage had planned on the following day a general massacre of Christians and his opponents. General Mohammed Shevket Pasha, the commander, moved his army in the afternoon and night of the same day.

One division occupied the old city, Stamboul, and the other division marched around the Golden Horn and moved upon Pera, the European quarter (on the 24th). Here the defenders of Abdul Hamid showed considerable resistance and a severe battle followed, but by night the mutinous soldiers were defeated, and the Young Turkey army surrounded the hill of Yildiz, situated three-quarters of a mile from the shore of the Bosphorus and separated from Pera by a valley. He was deposed from caliphate by the Sheikh-ul-Islam. He was dethroned by a resolution of Parliament. On the morning of the 27th, the sultan, seeing that there was no more hope for him, surrendered. “The bodyguard was marched out and new troops were sent in. That night several young officers went to the palace of the sultan and summoned him to their presence. He came in, pale as a sheet, trembling like a leaf, and begging for his life. He was told that his life would be spared, but that for the good of the country he must leave the city that night. The Young Turks dealt mercifully with the cruel monarch and allowed him to choose, as his companions in exile, eleven women, one child, two eunuchs, and five servants. These were placed in carriages, and after midnight were driven to the railway station in Stamboul. From here they were sent by a special train to Salonica, three hundred miles west, and were consigned to a strong house prepared for him.”[150] This ended the career as a ruler of Abdul Hamid, who was distinguished for his cruelty, perfidy, and infamy.

On the same day (the 13th of April, 1909) that the mutiny took place in Constantinople, the Mohammedans of the city and province of Adana, fell upon the Christian inhabitants, and within a few days, they killed the people and looted and plundered their property. The massacres were committed in the following places: Adana, Alexandretta, Marash, Mersina, Hadjin, Kessab, Zeitoon, Kirikon, and all the villages. The number of the killed was estimated from 25,000 to 50,000. And those who suffered from diseases and starvation exceeded 150,000.

The following is an extract from a letter written by Mrs. Doughty Wylie, wife of the British Consul at Adana. It was published in the _London Daily Mail_:

“We are having a perfectly hideous time here. Thousands have been murdered--25,000 in this province they say; but the number is probably greater, for every Christian village is wiped out. In Adana about 5,000 have perished. After Turks and Armenians had made peace, the Turks came in the night with hose and kerosene and set fire to what remained of the Armenian quarter. Next day the French and Armenian Schools were fired. Nearly every one of the Armenian Schools perished, anybody trying to escape being shot down by the soldiers.

“The Turkish authorities do nothing except arrest unoffending Armenians, from whom by torture they extort the most fanciful confessions. Even the wounded are not safe from this injustice. For fiends incarnate commend me to the Turks. Nobody is safe from them. They murder babies in front of their mothers, they half murder men, and violate the wives while the husbands are lying there dying in pools of blood. The authorities did nothing, and the soldiers were worse than the crowd, for they were better armed. One house in our quarter was burned with 115 people inside. We counted the bodies. Soldiers set fire to the door and as the windows had iron bars, nobody could get out. Every one in the house was roasted alive. They were all women and children and old people.”

The following is a portion of a letter, by Stephen Van R. Trowbridge. It describes the condition of Kessab and the surrounding villages after the butchery:

“Kessab was a thrifty Armenian town of eight thousand inhabitants, situated on the landward slope of Mt. Cassius (Arabic, Jebel Akra) which stands out prominently upon the Mediterranean seacoast, half way between Alexandretta and Latakia. Kessab is now a mass of blackened ruins, the stark walls of the churches and houses rising up out of the ashes and charred timber heaped on every side. What must it mean to the five thousand men, women, and little children who have survived a painful flight to the seacoast and now returned to their mountain homes sacked and burned! There were nine Christian villages which cloistered about Kessab in the valleys below. Several of them have been completely destroyed by fire. All have been plundered and the helpless people driven out or slain.”

One more witness of the crimes committed against humanity and Christianity may suffice. Rev. Dr. Christie, the President of St. Paul’s Institute, Tarsus, wrote:

April 24th, 1909.--“I doubt if ever a massacre equal in atrocities to this has been known in history.... Among the wounded there are multitudes of men, women and children; we hear of a pastor and his family, seven people burned together in their house; hosts of young women have been assaulted and carried away to harems, and their names changed to Moslem ones. Christian villages like Osmanieh, Baghchi, Hamidieh, Kara Tash, Kristian Keoy, Kozolook, have people in each, eighty or so are left, nearly all women and children. It is the same in the chiftliks (farms); there are hundreds of these on this wide and fertile plain; in every one that we have heard of in the neighborhood of Tarsus or Adana there has been unsparing slaughter of the Christian workers, even the Greeks and Syrians dying as martyrs with the Armenians.

“The annual (Synodical) meeting was to have been held in Adana. So the pastors and delegates of the churches were on the road to the north and east of that city when the trouble began. We have now the names of twenty-seven killed with the particulars of their deaths. Twenty-two churches are left pastorless. It is a fearful blow. Our two missionaries, (Henry) Maurer and Daniel M. Rogers, bring the number up to twenty-nine.”

There was a general impression at the time of the massacres of Adana, that the butchery and plunder in the cities, towns, and in the villages, were due to the reaction, that, “The mutiny and the massacre were the last stroke of the dying monster Sultan Abdul Hamid.” It appeared plausible, and it was even probable. But it was and is firmly believed by others that it was the work of the Young Turks.[151] They did not dethrone Abdul Hamid because he was too cruel to his Christian subjects. Oh! no. They dethroned him, because they wanted to have the glory of finishing the work of the extermination of the Armenian nation. The Young Turks are the legitimate successors of Abdul Hamid, so far as the latter’s determination to annihilate the Armenians was concerned, and this massacre was another step towards their goal. It may be questioned why they should do such a thing at such a time. The answer is that, because there was an easy and plausible way of shoving off the responsibility for the crime on the monster Sultan Abdul Hamid.[152] We are told that Talaat Bey boasted that he had done more in destroying the Armenians in thirty days than Abdul Hamid in thirty years. It is, moreover, stated that when Talaat Bey gave the final signal for the massacre and deportation of the Armenians in 1915, he said, “After this there will be no Armenian question for fifty years.” There would be no Armenian question if the Young Turks intended to rule and run the government according to the Constitution. Armenians would have been satisfied even under the monarchy had they received what was promised to them, namely, religious liberty, the protection of their lives, honor, and property. These, oft-made promises fulfilled, there could be no Armenian question. Why should the Young Turks resort to the cruel process of annihilation of a nation to solve such a simple problem? We have to repeat Vambery’s words: “The conviction is inevitable that until the power of _Islamism is broken_ the true reformation of this land is an impossibility.” (Whether the government is monarchical or constitutional, it made no difference.) “At whose door shall we lay the blame of cherishing such a _viper_? (First at England’s, now at Germany’s.)”

FOOTNOTES:

[150] Greene, “Leavening the Levant,” pp. 41-2.

[151] It was established. See _The New Armenian_, N. Y., August 1, 1916, p. 260.

[152] Abdul Hamid died on the 10th of February, 1918.

XVII

THE REIGN OF THE YOUNG TURKS

After the deposal of Abdul Hamid, his brother, the third son of Sultan Medjid, was put upon the throne of the Ottoman Empire, as Mohammed V. He was born in 1844: he is now the head of a constitutional hereditary monarchy. A grand vizier is appointed by the sultan who forms a cabinet. According to the Mohammedan law and tradition, the sultan being the head of both the state and religion, he also, therefore, appoints a chief to act as the head of the Mohammedan religion--Islam. He is called Sheikh-ul-Islam.

“The constitution provides for a Parliament of two houses, the Senate, and the Chamber of Deputies.” For administrative purposes the empire is divided into Vilayets (states), Sanjaks (counties), Cazas (districts), and Naheyes (smaller districts).

The rulers of these divisions are respectfully called: Vali, Mutassarrif, Kaymakam and Mudeer.

Before the restoration of the Constitution, the Turkish army was entirely made up of the Mohammedans, but since (1908) non-Mohammedans also were drafted into the army.

From the beginning of the new régime, the Young Turks have been having some troublesome times. The first of these troubles was Austria’s annexing Bosnia and Herzegovnia, two Turkish provinces.[153] The inhabitants of these provinces were mostly of Slavonian origin, mainly speaking the Servian language--excepting the Mohammedans, whose forefathers were Christians, but who after the Mohammedan occupation of the country in 1401, and in 1463, had abjured their faith on account of the Turkish oppression.

This oppression and extortionate taxation caused a revolution of the Christians in 1849, but this rebellion was suppressed by Omar Pasha. A more determined uprising against the unjust government took place in 1875. This the Turks failed to put down, and this failure led to the occupation of these provinces by Austria-Hungarians. The Treaty of Berlin entrusted the administration of these provinces to Austria-Hungary, and she has been governing since 1880, finally annexing them.

This annexation was not resented by the Young Turks so much as it was by the Bosnians and Servians. Their desire and hopes of uniting these co-religionists and members of the same Slavonian stock, were now ended. This resentment was intensified after the conquests of the Servians in both of the Balkan wars. Some of these Bosnians and Servians, who had been thus disappointed, formed a conspiracy and committed the awful crime of assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, and his wife, while they were on a visit to Bosnia. The Servian government was accused by Austria of this conspiracy and assassination; then came Austria’s ultimatum to Servia and then the war.

The Powers did not consult the governed; the Bosnians wanted to unite with the Servians their kindred, both in religion and race. Why should not the people have the right to say who should rule over them? The refusal to allow this simple act of justice, like a spark set the world on fire.

The next trouble was Bulgaria’s declaration of independence.[154] Bulgaria had been a principality since 1878, and had been paying annual tribute to the Turkish government. Then came the resistless demand of the Greeks of Crete to unite with Greece. Then the war between Turkey and Italy in 1911-1912.

Still worse than the above incidents was the Balkan war between Turkey on one side and the Balkan States and Greece on the other side. The Balkan allies were Greece, Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenigro. The causes of this war were just the same: the Turkish oppression and massacres, and the ineffectual meddling of the European powers. “Macedonia was ceded by Turkey to Bulgaria in 1878 pursuant to the Treaty of San Stefano, but the Congress of Berlin in the same year revised (substituted) this treaty through the insistence of Great Britain and Austria, and restored the province to Turkey. In article XXIII of the Treaty of Berlin, the signatory powers bound themselves to establish an organic law providing for good government in Macedonia and to see that it was applied. During thirty-four years that followed, this promise was unfulfilled, despite the frequent complaints of the Christian peoples--Bulgars, Greeks, and Serbs--of Turkish misgovernment and atrocities.”[155]

It is the same old story. The Great Powers who made the treaty, article by article, and signed the instrument, then turned and left the Turks to do the rest. That “rest” was for them to go on as usual until the four Balkan states formed an alliance and declared war against Turkey in October of 1912.

The war was fortunately of short duration, but it was the most decisive and humiliating defeat that the Turks had received for a long time. Macedonia was freed from the bloody reign of the Turks, who for nearly five hundred years had held that beautiful country under their iron heel. Nearly two millions of people, three-fourths of whom were Christians, were emancipated from a worse form of slavery. The defeat of the Turkish armies was not due to lack of courage of the Ottoman soldiers. It was solely due to the Turkish unpreparedness, their lack of organization and arrangements for food supply for the army, and to the inferiority of the Turkish artillery. The non-Moslem soldiers for the first time fought alongside of the Moslem soldiers. “The bravery and loyalty of the Armenian soldiers in the Turco-Balkan war were commended by Nazim Pasha, then minister of war.” This Turco-Balkan war ended in May, 1913.

As the consequence of this war, many Mohammedans from Macedonia left their homes, unwilling to become subjects of their former “slaves.” They crowded into Constantinople and other places. The Young Turks tried to settle these refugees in Asiatic provinces of the empire where the Armenian populations made the majority. The object of the Young Turkey government was to reduce the Armenian majority so as to prevent them from asking or expecting any local reforms. The Armenians protested through their representative--the patriarch and the national council.

The second Balkan war, in July, 1913, was a very sad one. This war was between Bulgaria and her former allies, Turkey and Rumania. This war was occasioned by the unwillingness of the victors in the former war, to settle the division of the conquered territory by mutual concessions.

These successive reverses of the Young Turks, who so easily overthrew the despotic reign of Abdul Hamid, must have filled their enemies at home with indignation against and contempt for them. Well may they have said: “Less than half a dozen years, but thousands of square miles of land and millions of peoples have been lost to the empire both in Europe and Africa; and if these fools will rule a little longer the whole empire will be lost.” So shall it be. They made their best friends abroad, their enemies by their wicked deeds. Their new friends abroad were anxious to help them in order to be helped by them. Who can doubt that the Young Turks, the present rulers of the Ottoman empire, longed for an opportunity to receive the approval of the fanatics at home and gladden the hearts of their new friends abroad?

The opportunity came. The European war broke out. Even before the war the Turkish rulers had planned a policy of unifying and Turkifying the Moslem State. Their experiences with the Balkan nations had taught a lesson that they would not soon forget. But they did not start their work at once when the war began. They had another scheme or use for the Armenians.

“Before declaring war upon Russia, the Government of the Young Turks which had long ago decided upon this course, sought to have the Armenians instigate a revolt among their co-nationalists in the Russian provinces of the Caucasus. This suggestion was presented to the Armenians at the very opening of the war by a deputation composed of Nadji Bey, Boukar-Eddin-Shakri Bey, and Hilmi Bey. Some Armenian notables were assembled in Erzerum to exchange views concerning the European war and its effects upon the interests of Armenia. The deputation from the government in Constantinople visited the assembly and revealed unreservedly the reason of their visit. It declared that Enver Pasha and his colleagues were ready to declare war upon Russia and expected from the Armenians invaluable assistance. The Armenians were requested to form volunteer legions that, with the Turkish propagandists, should cross the Russian frontier, and incite the population of the Caucasus to revolt. Nadji Bey was so sure of the success of the proposition that he had brought with him to Erzerum twenty-seven Persian, Turkish, and Circassian propagandists who with the assistance of Armenian volunteers would foment disaffection in the Caucasus.

“Nadji Bey spoke in a tone of perfect cordiality and confidence. He described in glowing terms the compensation that would accrue to the Armenians if their services, solicited by him, were forthcoming. He endeavored to persuade the Armenians that a revolution in the Caucasus was inevitable.[156] After having contributed to the victory, the Armenians would be granted autonomy, under the protection of Turkey, thus reuniting all their dispersed compatriots on both sides of the frontier. Enver Pasha’s delegates were ready to remake the map of the Caucasus by a single stroke of the pen. The Georgians and the Tartars were allotted their share of the territory, and the Armenians would receive Kars, the province of Erivan, Van, and Bitlis. But the Armenians categorically refused these attractive propositions and entrusted Nadji Bey with their advice to Enver Pasha not to become embroiled in the European catastrophe, as it would lead to the downfall of Turkey.

“‘This is treason,’ exclaimed Bouka-Eddin-Shakri Bey. ‘You refuse to succor the Empire, forgetting that you enjoy its hospitality.’

“Notwithstanding the violent objurgations, the Armenians stood firm in their refusal.

“However, these emissaries of the Young Turks still hoped to convert the Armenians to their views, and a few weeks later, on the eve of the declaration of war upon Russia, they convoked the assemblies of notables in all the vilayets, and once more presented their suggestions--this time considerably modified. They no longer demanded that the Armenians take the initiative of an uprising in the Caucasus, but merely endeavored to convince them of the imminence of a revolution and of the advisability of their joining in it. For the second time the Armenians remained imperturbable in their refusal.

“Finally war was declared between Russia and Turkey. Would the Armenians shirk performing their military duty? Not at all. They answered the call, reporting at the mobilization stations.”[157]

The Armenians’ reform movement in 1912-3, under the presidency of Boghos Nubar Pasha, who was appointed by the Catholicos, was a peaceful effort to solicit the signatories of Berlin Treaty (1878) to induce the Turkish government to put into execution the reforms guaranteed in that treaty for Armenia.

After the consent of all the Powers was obtained, then “the Russian draft [of reforms] was revised by the ambassadors of the Powers at Constantinople, accepted with modifications, by the Young Turkish Government, and actually promulgated by them on the 8th of February, 1914.”[158]

Could such a peaceful procedure have offered the Young Turks an excuse of provocation for their atrocities committed in the following year?

FOOTNOTES:

[153] October, 1908.

[154] On the 8th of Oct., 1908.

[155] The New International Year Book for the Year 1912, p. 734. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York.

[156] Expected by the _Holy War_ that was to be declared by Sheikh-ul-Islam; as it has been done since Turkey joined the Central Powers.

[157] The “Martyrdom of Armenia,” by Paul Perrin, in _The New Armenia_, May 15, 1916, New York.

[158] “The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16,” Documents presented to Viscount Grey by Viscount Bryce, p. 635, London.

XVIII

THE MASSACRES OF 1915-16

There were two things which induced the Young Turks to declare war on the Allies in the latter part of October, 1914. They were positive of a victory as the early events of the war and agents of the Teutonic alliance easily could, and did, persuade them. The assurance of conquests and would-be acquisition of territories, which would restore to the Young Turkish government its lost prestige both at home and abroad. But their dreams were not speedily realized, and probably never will be.

The real reasons, however, for the beginning of the massacres at this time were the opportune moment, the European war; the carrying out a former well-laid policy of a unified and Turkified State; the diversion of the attention of the Moslem populace from failures and mistakes of the Young Turks, and the congeniality of the work of plunder and murder which very few followers of Mohammed would refuse to enjoy. They delight to see Christians and Christianity trampled under their feet. Thus the Young Turks, the rulers of Turkey, gave the greatest pleasure to a large number of Mohammedans by assigning to them the work of annihilation of the oldest Christian nation in the empire.

The sufferings of the Armenians began right after the declaration of war--or rather simultaneously with it. All the males between the ages of twenty and forty-five, and soon those of eighteen to fifty, were called to arms. Some paid commutation in place of enrolment, and others who had passed the age of military training before the ratification of the new military service law of 1908, as were entitled to exemption, as long as they paid the annual commutation tax. Yet these also were drafted in violation of their rights. However, they were not left in the army very long, but were deprived of their arms by order of the government, and put into groups of laborers to work on the roads. A “gang of unscrupulous ruffians,” had control of the Turkish government, but whether they had not quite matured their plans, or whether they were in consultation with their foreign advisers, or whether they hesitated to put their plans into action, they waited until the spring.

The massacres began in the spring of 1915, but even before massacres immediately after the declaration of war, the Turkish government also proclaimed “a holy war”--_jehad_. In the fewest words, a holy war is this: Ever since the reign of Sultan Selim I,[159] the Sultans of Turkey claimed a lawful successorship to the Caliphs of Baghdad and the Sultans of Egypt. The Sultan of Turkey is the head of Islam and the defender thereof. Whenever, therefore, the Mohammedan faith is in danger, the Sultan, the pretended successor of Mohammed, theoretically has the power to call upon the faithful throughout the world to rise in arms against the enemies of their religion.

The Turkish government was induced by her allies not only to enter this terrible conflict, but also to proclaim this holy war. The object of the latter was to rouse the passions of the Mohammedans throughout the world against those powers which were fighting the Turco-Teutonic alliance, with the hope of creating disastrous revolts in British, French, and Russian possessions, where about 150,000,000 Mohammedan subjects were peacefully living. The following exultant announcement was made from Berlin by the German government, on November 20th, 1914:

“From all sections of Egypt come reports of enthusiastic manifestations in favor of a holy war. The Sheikh-ul-Islam has communicated with a majority of the Mohammedan princes of Asia and Africa, who declare they will assist Turkey in a war against England.”[160]

We are glad to say that, as is now well known, this project completely failed in those countries where it would have done the most harm, but it had its dire consequences in Persia. Immediately after their declaration of war on the Allies the Turks took the offensive on a large scale. One army invaded the Russian territory, and another crossed the Persian frontier and entered the province of Azerbaijan. In this province were many Syrians (Nestorians) and Armenians, who were living in villages and towns. These Syrian Christians--like the Armenians--have suffered many vicissitudes, including massacres by the hands of the Turks and Kurds. But the Turkish invasion and short occupation of this province in winter and early spring brought new horrors upon the Christian inhabitants both Armenians and Syrians.

The moment hostilities broke out, the Turco-Kurdish soldiery began to indulge itself in atrocities. The Persian province of Azerbaijan contains a large population of Syriac Christians, and the suffering of these people at the hands of the invading hordes are described with terrible detail in letters from German missionaries[161] resident among them, letters which were published on October 18 (1915), in the Dutch newspaper _de Neimve Rotterdamshe Courant_. From the contents of these letters we select the following:

“The latest news is that 4000 Syrians and one hundred Armenians have died of disease alone, at the missions, within the last few months. All villages in the surrounding districts, with two or three exceptions, have been plundered and burnt, 20,000 Christians have been slaughtered in Ourmia and its environs. Many churches have been destroyed and burnt, and also many houses in the town....”

And here is a description from another letter:

“In Hoftewan and Solast 850 corpses, without heads, have been recovered from the wells and cisterns alone. Why? _Because the commanding officer had put a price on every Christian head._ In Hoftewan alone more than 500 women and girls were delivered to the Kurds at Sandjbulak. One 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 away. The same in Babaru. Hundreds of women jumped into the deep river, when they saw how many of their sisters were violated by the bands of brigands, in broad daylight, in the middle of the road. So also at Miandoab in the Suldus district.”[162]

Dr. Sargis, an Armenian by nationality, a Persian by birth, and an American citizen by choice, was doing medical missionary work in Persia. He has recently returned by way of Russia. He stated, that in the city of Urumia alone, ten thousand copies of the proclamation of the “holy war” were received and distributed among the Mohammedans. Dr. Sargis further stated in an interview[163] as follows:

“Followers of Mohammed have been expecting a ‘holy war’ for ages. They have been taught to expect the coming of Mehdi, their Messiah, and the spread of Mohammed rule over the earth. Now they are preaching in their mosques that Emperor William of Germany is Mehdi.” He further stated that German soldiers foster this fanaticism, until the Mohammedan has the idea that the kaiser and all Germany have been converted to Islam. Officers of German army wear bands on their arms with the creed of Islam--‘There is only one God and Mohammed is His prophet.’ At Ispahan the German officers enter the mosque and say Mohammedan prayers. The massacres in Urumia began a year ago, after the withdrawal of the Russian troops. The Russians had been gone only five hours when the murder and plunder began. Of the 113 Christian villages in Persia, not one escaped.

“In Ada was an Armenian merchant, Havil by name.... Havil was shot down in the street, both legs broken and he lay helpless until he died. Death didn’t come soon enough, however, to prevent him seeing his eight-year-old daughter captured by the fanatic Kurds and outraged before his eyes. That happened on January 3, 1915.

“In the town of Kousi was a very old Christian church. The fanatics entered it, took the Bible from the pulpit, tore out its pages and carpeted the floor with them. Here they led hundreds of girls and women--many of whom never left the building.

“At Gulpashan, seventy-nine men were tied hand to hand and killed. Not one girl in the village escaped. The Turkish officers entered one home and carried off several girls, who were weeping around the body of their brother, a victim of the massacre.

“At a house in Urumia, where I was called to treat an army officer, I found a girl. She told me she had been brought there from a nearby Armenian village, which had been raided. Then days before the massacre she had been married, and she saw her husband killed before her eyes. She was taken to the city and held there by three officers. I got them to release her, but she died--she had suffered too much.

“A Turkish soldier killed a young Armenian at Garojaln and carried off his wife and two small children, a boy and a girl. In leaving the city, the soldiers had to cross a bridge spanning the river. The soldiers dropped the two children into the river, one on either side of the bridge, and led the mother away captive.

“There was a Catholic priest, Yahmaruvi, who had endeared himself to the people of the village. He acted as peacemaker in the quarrels between the Armenians and the Mohammedans. All Christians in the village were slaughtered but this priest. The soldiers came and told him if he became a priest of Islam they would let him live, because even the Mohammedans in the village loved him. They tried to get the old priest to repeat their creed. He started with them: ‘There is only one God--and Jesus Christ, His son, is my Saviour,’ the priest uttered at the end. They cut off his head....”

A doctor by name Shimmon was educated in this country and naturally became a citizen. Of him Dr. Sargis said: “They tried to get him to renounce Christianity. When he refused, they poured oil on his body and set fire to him.”

Dr. W. S. Vanneman, the head of the mission hospital at Tabris, Persia, wrote to the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, N. Y. City, under date of March 14, 1915:

“About ten days ago the Kurds in Salmas, with the permission of the Turkish troops, gathered all the Nestorian and Armenian men remaining there, it is reported, about eight hundred. Four hundred were sent to Khosrova and four hundred to Haft Dewan under the pretense of giving them bread. They were held a few days and then tortured and massacred. Many women and children were taken away and ill-treated. This happened a day or two before the advancing Russian army took Salmas.

“We are very anxious about Urumia. A letter dated March 1st from Dr. Shedd came through two days ago. He said things were getting worse. Gulpashan, which hitherto had not been disturbed, had been plundered and ruined. I think this was the only village which remained. Fifty-one of the most prominent men of this village were taken out and shot. The women and girls were violated. This was done by the Turkish soldiers.

“Forty men had been taken from the Roman Catholic mission in Urumia city, kept prisoners a few days, then shot.”

Under date of March 21, Doctor Vanneman wrote:

“We are more anxious than ever about Urumia. On March 17th, Turkish troops attacked our mission and the Roman Catholic mission and took five native Russian priests from our compound and treated them badly. We do not know yet if they were killed. Mr. Allen was also treated badly because he had sent out three messengers away from Urumia.

“Some native Christian preachers have been crucified and some burned....”

The testimonies of the German and American missionaries confirm and supplement one another, and show the fearful results of the holy war. For the Persian Armenians and Nestorians--Persia itself--had nothing to do with Turkey. But the object of the Young Turks and their allies was to arouse the Mohammedans of Persia--the only Mohammedan power besides Turkey--against Russia, and Turks and Tatars in Transcaucasia, and that thus they might spread the fire of the holy war. But they have signally failed in the main.

When the Turkish army had to retreat from Persia before the advancing Russians and fell back into Armenia proper in Turkish territory, they let loose the demons--the Turkish regular and Kurdish irregular troops upon the Armenian population. Their barbarities, outrages, mutilations, murders, the devastations of numerous Armenian villages, by the sword and fire, are beyond the possibility of description. The few that could escape came to Van and told the people of the horrors they witnessed and passed through.

The Armenians of Van knew that the same fate would soon come to them. What should they do? Be loyal, submissive, passive, be butchered by the Turkish soldiers and by their inveterate enemies, the Kurds? Or should they make an attempt of self-defense, and let it cost the Turks and Kurds something more than the mere time, labor and ammunition to massacre the Armenians of Van? And that even if they should be declared rebels against the lawful authorities by the Prussian and Turkish officials? They decided upon the latter. And they did not decide too soon either. For on the 20th of April, Jevdet Bey, the governor of Van, and the Turkish soldiers commenced an attack on the city. The Armenians armed themselves as best they could, and making such barricades and defenses as time and materials could permit, they stood a siege of twenty-seven days--only about 1500 defenders against 5000 assailants well equipped with artillery. The Turks and Kurds on hearing of a Russian force approaching left them and fled southward. On the 17th of May, the Russians occupied Van.

This is one of only two instances where the Armenians disappointed the Turkish government and her Teutonic and Kurdish allies, and deprived them of the pleasure of massacring the Christians. No wonder that in the face of such instances Count Ernst von Reventlow resented the American protest against Turkish massacres of the Armenians. We reproduce only one paragraph from Reventlow’s article:[164]

“Indeed, the Turkish empire has been long enough compelled to allow all powers who would destroy and rob her have their say in her affairs. To-day the time for this is past. It will be past for ever, so soon as the German empire takes up determinedly the standpoint that the question as to what it intends to do with the bloodthirsty Armenians is one that concerns her Turkish ally alone.”

Resuming our doleful narrative in this Section, we regret to say that the first occupation of Van by the Russians was not the last. For towards the end of July, the Turks, being strongly reinforced, took the offensive and succeeded in occupying Van. Although the Turkish offensive and occupation of Van lasted only a short time--about three weeks--yet within that time they exterminated all the Armenians behind their lines, and in the country through which they marched. The retiring Russians, however, contested stubbornly every mile of ground, and gained time for the Armenians to escape the country, while the Russians fought rear-guard actions and held back the Turks and Kurds from cutting the line of retreat of the Armenian refugees. The sufferings of those panic-stricken people were terrible. One of the German missionaries, in Persia, wrote:

“On the road, I found four little children. The mother sat on the ground, her back resting against a wall. The hollow-eyed children ran up to me, stretching out their hands and crying ‘Bread! Bread!’ When I came closer to the mother, I saw that she was dying.”

Here is a brief description of the whole scene:

“I wonder if it is possible to witness a more agonizing sight than the present one. Human beings are dying in hundreds from hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, and the means for relieving the distress are very scanty. There is absolutely no possibility of even buying bread. The first contingent of refugees has already reached this place (Igdir). Owing to congestion on the roads, the human tide had to be broken up into two channels; about 100,000 walked through the plain of Abagha, their rear being guarded by the Russian army under General N. and the Armenian regiments under Andrianig 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, who are pressing forward in order to cut the line of retreat of the Armenians.”

We will at present leave these suffering thousands in the hands of their sympathizing friends, the Russians, and the Russian Armenians, and return to Armenia to see the condition of those who could not flee the country.

The news of what was taking place behind the Turkish army lines reached the _Novaye Vryemya_ of Petrograd on July 22d.

“The Turkish atrocities in the district of Bitlis are indescribable. After having massacred the whole male population of this district, the Turks collected 9000 women and children from the surrounding villages, and drove them in upon Bitlis. Two days later they marched them out to the bank of the Tigris, shot them all, and threw the 9000 corpses into the river.

“On the Euphrates, the Turks have cut down more than 1000 Armenians, throwing their bodies into the river. At the same time, four battalions were ordered to march upon the valley of Moosh to finish with the 12,000 Armenians inhabiting this valley. According to the latest information, the massacre has already begun.... All the Armenians in the Diarbekir region will likewise be massacred.”

Here is another instance of suppressing the Armenian rebellion. The detailed news was published on September 4th, by the Armenian journal, _Gotchnag_ of New York:

“Incredible news comes in about the massacres at Bitlis. In one village 1000 Armenians--men, women, and children--have been crowded into a wooden house, and the house set on fire. In another large village of the district, only thirty-six people have escaped the massacre. In another, they roped together men and women by 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, related that the ex-vali of Van, Djevdet Bey, has had males between the ages of fifteen and forty massacred at Bitlis. He has had their families deported in the direction of Sert, but has kept with him all the prettiest girls. Bitlis is now occupied _by tens of thousands of Turkish and Kurdish mouhadjirs_ (refugees).”

The condition of affairs in northwestern and western Armenia and in the provinces of Asia Minor was not any better. It was, in fact, a great deal worse. Because there was no Russian army to protect them, or in case of danger, to take them into a friendly country, no matter with what terrible hardships they may get there. They were absolutely helpless and completely at the mercy of the ruthless cruelty of the Turkish officials and mobs.

In April, the central government, from Constantinople, sent orders to the local authorities in Armenia and Asia Minor to the effect that the Armenians having been found to be a great danger to the security of the state, they should be severely suppressed in advance in order that they might be made harmless, and the empire might be safe. Most of the local authorities at once understood what the orders meant, and were not slow to undertake the work. The orders were carried out in the following manner:

On an appointed day, the governor of a town or city, whichever it might happen to be, summoned all able bodied men of Armenian race to present themselves either in a government building or some such designated place. A sufficient number of police and gendarmes are on hand to see that this demand is obeyed by all. If any Armenian has the audacity to disobey, he is dragged there by force. Then these men were led into a lonely spot and were disposed of. The gendarmes or the police who did the work of execution returned into the town. If the number was too large to take them all at once, the process was repeated until all the work was done in the same manner.

Following is the description of one of scores of its kind:

“In the town of Agantz a list of those to be executed was sent to the local governor, and 2500 (men) were summoned to appear at the governor’s house and listen to the reading of a proclamation. The natives knew the meaning of the order, and many of them ignored it. They were later dragged to prison by gendarmes and held for execution.

“It is conservatively estimated that 2500 listed men were held in prison here. They were taken out in groups of fifty, led to a trench and there shot down. The fifty dead were tossed to one side, a fresh group of fifty led to the trench. This tremendous execution was continued until the entire 2500 men were massacred.”

One more instance:

“... One night towards the end of June (1915), suddenly, without any warning, the houses of most of all of the Armenians who still remained in the city were forcibly entered by the police and gendarmes. The men were arrested and held as prisoners in the soldiers’ barracks at one side of the city. Their whole number amounted to 1213.[165] Two more of our leading Armenian professors were arrested on this occasion....” These men “were told that they were to be sent away into exile at Mosul, in the deserts of Mesopotamia, six or seven hundred miles away.... These 1213 men, after being held for a few days, were bound together in small groups of five or six men each, and sent off at night in companies of from fifty to one hundred fifty under the escort of gendarmes. Some fifteen miles from the city they were set upon by the gendarmes and by bondsmen called _chettes_ and cruelly murdered with axes.... One of the gendarmes who helped drive away these 1213 men boasted to our French teacher that he had killed fifty Armenians with his own hands, and had obtained from them 150 Turkish Pounds. The chief of police at ---- stated that none of these 1213 men remained alive. Our Consular Agent visited the place of this slaughter early in August, and brought back with him Turkish ‘_Nufus tezkereses_,’ identification papers, taken from the bodies of the victims. I personally saw these papers. They were all besmeared with blood.”

There is no need to tell the same monotonous tale of most fiendish murders which took place all over Armenia and Asia Minor wherever the Armenians were found; and the local authorities with scrupulous exactness obeyed the behests of their superiors, the arch fiends at Constantinople. Some of our Prussian friends, in spite of all, still say: “If the Porte deems it necessary that the Armenian rebellions and other riotous proceedings be repressed with all available means, so that a repetition becomes impossible, such actions are not to be designated either as murders or as atrocities. They are simply justifiable and necessary measures....”

Woe to the men, women and children of the Armenian race, that have been judged and dealt with by the Prussian sense of justice! The Belgians in the West, the Armenians in the East were treated by the same Prussian sense of justice.

Here is another instance of the “bloodthirsty Armenian rebellions” whose suppression is “simply justifiable and necessary,” as Count Ernst von Reventlow says:

“To give one instance of the thorough and remorseless way in which the massacres were carried out, it may suffice to refer to the case of Trebizond, a case vouched for by the Italian Consul, who was present when the slaughter was carried out, his country not having then declared war against Turkey. Orders came from Constantinople that all the Armenian Christians in Trebizond were to be killed. Many of the Moslems tried to save their Christian neighbors, and offered them shelter in their houses, but the Turkish authorities were implacable. Obeying the orders which they had received, they hunted out all the Christians, gathered them together, and drove a great crowd of them down the streets of Trebizond, past the fortress, to the edge of the sea. There they were all put on board sailing boats, carried out some distance on the Black Sea, and there thrown overboard and drowned. Nearly the whole Armenian population of from 8000 to 10,000 were destroyed--some in this way, some by slaughter, some being sent to death elsewhere.”[166]

Allowing that, at the least there were 1,500,000 Armenians in the Turkish empire in the autumn of 1914, the government could draw out at least 100,000 soldiers--most probably she did draw twice as many. These soldiers could and gladly would render excellent service to the empire. Their loyalty has not been suspected, neither has their fidelity been in question. What a criminal folly to disarm them, what an unpardonable sin, and a suicidal act to massacre them. But that is what the Young Turks did. They are trying to get rid of the Christian population of Turkey by the sword and fire on the one hand, on the other hand, they were letting the Germans take charge and have control of the army and navy and make the Turkish government a German vassalage; and yet they say they are going to “have Turkey for the Turks.”

The following is from the pen of Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons, who tells us what the Armenian ex-soldiers were doing and how they were treated by the government which they were serving:

“In the autumn of 1914, the Turks began to mobilize Christians as well as Moslems for the army. For six months, in every part of Turkey they called upon the Armenians for military service. Exemption money was accepted for those who could pay. A few weeks later the exemption certificates were disregarded, and their holders enrolled. The younger classes of Armenians, who did not live too far from Constantinople, were placed, as in the Balkan wars, in the active army. The older ones, and all the Armenians enrolled in the more distant region, were utilized for road, railway, and fortification building. Wherever they were called, and to whatever task they were put, the Armenians did their duty and worked for the defense of Turkey. _They proved themselves brave soldiers and intelligent and industrious laborers._...

“... In order to prevent the possibility of trouble from Armenians mobilized for railway and road construction, they were divided into companies of from three to five hundred, and put to work at intervals of several miles. Regiments of the Turkish regular army were sent ‘to put down the Armenian revolution,’ and came suddenly upon the little groups of workers plying pickaxe, crowbar, and shovel. The ‘rebels’ were riddled with bullets before they knew what was happening. The few who managed to flee were followed by mounted men, and shot or sabred.

“Telegrams began to pour in upon Talaat Bey at Constantinople, announcing that here, there, and everywhere Armenian uprisings had been put down, and telegrams were returned, congratulating the local officials upon the success of their prompt measures. To neutral newspaper men at Constantinople, to neutral diplomats, who had heard vaguely of a recurrence of Armenian massacres, this telegraphic correspondence was shown as proof that an imminent danger had been averted. ‘We have not been cruel, but we admit having been severe,’ declared Talaat Bey. ‘This is war time.’”[167]

FOOTNOTES:

[159] See the footnote on p. 129.

[160] See _The North American_ (Phila.), Mar. 8, 1915.

[161] Members of the “Deutsch Orient-Mission.”

[162] Toynbee, “Armenian Atrocities,” pp. 85-86. Published by Hodder and Stoughton, London and New York.

[163] This interview was published in _The North American_, Phila., Feb. 14, 1916.

[164] Von Reventlow’s article was published in the _Deutsche Tages Zeitung_, reported in the Dailies. I quote from the _North American_, Oct. 15, 1915.

[165] The Armenian population of this city was 12,000, but all the males between 18 and 50 were drafted into the army and taken away before this.

[166] Toynbee, “Armenian Atrocities,” pp. 10-11. This quotation is from Lord Bryce’s report, published by Hodder and Stoughton.

[167] Gibbons, “The Blackest Page of Modern History,” pp. 17, 18, 21, 23, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1916.

XIX

THE DEPORTATIONS

The second act was far more diabolical and hellish than the first, because it was not an instant death by shooting or knocking on the head with an axe, or sabring, or throwing boat-loads of human beings into the sea. _It was death by starvation, by rape, by disease and by a slavery far worse than all._ By what process was this to be accomplished? By deportation.

By the help of the _sultan_, who marshaled his hosts against Heaven, of whom John Milton wrote centuries ago, the arch fiends at Constantinople hatched out this plan of deportation of the entire Armenian population to Mesopotamia, a distance of from 300 to 700 miles away from the Armenian communities. Orders came from the central government at Constantinople to the local authorities in the provinces of Asia Minor and Armenia. “These orders were explicit and detailed. No hamlet was too insignificant to be missed. The news was given by town criers that _every_ Armenian was to be ready to leave at a certain hour for an unknown destination. There were no exceptions for the aged, the ill, the women in pregnancy. Only rich merchants and bankers and good-looking women and girls were allowed to escape by professing Islam; and let it be said to their everlasting honor that few availed themselves of this means of escape.”

There were several reasons for the scheme of deportation: one of them was the helpless women, children, the ill and the aged men were still menacing the safety of the empire! Another, and the most fundamental reason was the government’s determination to get rid of the Armenians so as to get rid of the Armenian question once for all. Still another reason was that the homes of the Armenians were wanted in advance. The Moslem refugees from Macedonia must be settled in the provinces which were occupied by the Armenians. Another reason was to show how the association of the Turk with the highly cultured and civilized nation, the German, had mollified the brutal heart of the Turk, who did not, and would not massacre the defenseless women, children, the ill, the aged men--for such stories are “fabrications!”

We reproduce a few instances of these stories which the Turkish Ambassador--it may be the German too--declares are “fabrications, no women and children have been killed.”

“We are shocked at the cruelties perpetrated in these massacres. Trenchant pens have portrayed the horrors. Even some Germans have been found to denounce these massacres and to accuse the infamous ally of the Teutonic kaisers of the most terrible cruelties. Witness the following narrative which I quote from the November, 1915, issue of the _Allegemeine Missione Zeitschrift_, published in Berlin.

“‘A gendarme related to us, in such details as to make us shudder, how the Turks had maltreated a group of women and children, who were driven into exile. They slaughtered the Armenians without any hindrance. Each day ten or twelve men are hurled down into the ravines. They crush the skulls of those children who are too weak to walk.

“‘One day, early, we heard the procession of those doomed victims. Their misfortune was indescribable. They were in absolute silence--the young and old, even grandfathers advancing under such burdens as even their asses could hardly carry. All were to be chained together and then precipitated from the highest summit of a steep rock into the torrent of the Euphrates river. This froze our hearts. Our gendarme tells us that he had driven from Mama-Khatoun a similar group of people, composed of 3000 women and children, _who were exterminated_.

“‘On the 30th day of May, 674 Armenians were embarked in 13 sloops on the Tigris. Gendarmes were in each embarkation. These sloops departed towards Mosul. On the way the gendarmes threw all the unfortunates into the river, after having robbed them of their money and clothing. They kept the money and sold the clothing in the markets.

“‘An employee of the Bagdad railway related that the Armenians were imprisoned wholesale in the dungeons of Biredjik to be thrown into the Euphrates river at night. The corpses washed on to the river banks became a prey for dogs and vultures.’

“What law of retaliation could ever account for such abominable crimes? And moreover, what price must be exacted for the crimes of _Kultur_ in Belgium, France, Serbia and Armenia?”[168]

There was no possible excuse for such barbarities to be poured upon the Armenians. Had there been any excuse the German, American, and Swiss missionaries, and the consuls of the neutral nations who witnessed these atrocities would have pointed it out. In fact, the whole civilized world stood “with shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast” at the unparalleled savagery of the Turks, except those who were intoxicated with Prussian militarism, the advocates and defenders of the booty-loving and obscene Mohammedan fiends.

“It is hardly possible to imagine to oneself the implication of such a decree [of deportation]. These [Armenians] were not savages, like the Red Indians who retired before the White man across the American continent. They were not nomadic shepherds like their barbarous neighbors the Kurds. They were people living the same life as ourselves, townspeople established in the town for generations and the chief authors of its local prosperity. They were sedentary people, doctors and lawyers and teachers, business men and artisans and shopkeepers, and they had raised solid monuments to their intelligence and industry. Costly churches and well-appointed schools. Their women were as delicate, as refined, as unused to hardships and brutality as women in Europe or the United States. In fact, they were in the closest personal touch with Western civilization, for many of the Armenian centers upon which the crime was perpetrated had been served by the American missions and colleges for at least fifty years, and were familiar with the fine men and women who directed them.”[169]

The government’s determination to exterminate the Armenian race was not a sudden impulse. It was a deliberate scheme of long standing. After the overthrow of the Hamidian despotism, the Young Turks encouraged the Armenians to organize societies and even permitted them to possess firearms. Their diabolical purpose was not suspected by the trusting Armenians. But when war broke out, the Turks joined the Teutons in hopes to share the rich booty of the war. When this was not forthcoming, they bethought that the opportune moment had come to loot the Armenians, and carry out the plan of annihilation. They had not much difficulty in making out a case against these societies, saying that they were of a revolutionary character; and their possession of firearms was taken as a proof of the same.

Dr. Gibbons gives in his excellent little book, “The Blackest Page of Modern History,” the following statement which was made by the Turkish Consul General in New York: “‘However much to be deplored may be these harrowing events, in the last analysis we can but say the Armenians have only themselves to blame.’ Djelal Munif Bey went on to explain that the Armenians had been planning a revolution, and were killed by the Turkish soldiers only after they had been caught ‘red-handed with arms in their hands, resisting lawful authority.’”

In Adabazar 500 leading Armenians were arrested and imprisoned in the Armenian church. They had their daily tortures and beatings to induce them to implicate one another, and to deliver their arms. Whether they were all the members of a society or not it did not matter. For ten days these men have been tortured, and the whole population of the Armenians--some 20,000 or more--were terrorized and paralysed. Towards the end of this time, the head of the society who had been an exile suddenly returned. At the trial--or rather at the Inquisition--he boldly answered: “Why do you punish these men? If there is any fault it is mine, and yet I also am guiltless. _This society was organized with the permission of the Government. You allowed us to obtain firearms._”

The eye-witness further states that soon after this the whole Armenian population of Adabazar was “turned into the streets to wait their turn to go. There they waited, with their baggage, for days by the roadside near the station. As soon as they vacated their houses, refugees (Mohammedans) from Macedonia took possession of them.”

“The people who had any money went to Konia by freight cars, being allowed to take only a few possessions with them. They were told to leave their possessions in the churches and they would be safeguarded, but the same promise had been made in Sabandja, and the church had been looted almost before the people were out of the city; so nobody trusted this promise. The exiles were crowded on top of their possessions, sixty to eighty people in a car marked forty people.

“From Konia they were to go by foot or carriage to a desert place called Mosul (province) in Mesopotamia. Those who had no money must take the entire journey (about 1000 miles) by foot.”

Here is a portion of the description of an eye-witness:

“Not a single person with an Armenian name, whether rich or poor, old or young, sick or well, male or female, was to be left in the city. They were to have three days to prepare to go.... The promise of three days was not kept. The very next morning the local police with gendarmes well armed with Mauser rifles began to enter the Armenian houses and drive the women and children into the streets and lock the doors of their houses behind them and sealed them with the government’s seal, thus dispossessing them of all their worldly possessions. They then assigned four or five persons to each of the ox-carts which they had brought with them with which to send the people away. But the carts were not intended to carry the people. They had to walk beside them. The carts were for carrying a pillow and a single bed covering for each person. When they had gotten from 500 to 1000 persons ready in this manner they were set moving, a doleful procession, driven by gendarmes along the roads toward the east. Morning after morning, during the month of July (1915) we saw groups of this kind pass by the college compound, the women carrying their babies in their arms and leading their little children by the hand, without anything left in this world, starting on a hopeless journey of a thousand miles into the wilderness, to miserably die or to be captured by Turks. By the end of July, the city was emptied in this manner of its 12,000 Armenian population.”

* * * * *

“At the mountain village of Geben the women were at the wash-tub and were compelled to leave their wet clothes in the water and take the road barefooted 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 time to do so.”

“In Hadjin well-to-do people who had prepared food and bedding for the road, were obliged to leave it in the street, and afterwards suffered greatly from hunger.” “In one place the people had been given notice to depart on Wednesday; the carts appeared on Tuesday at 3.30 A.M., and the people were ordered to leave at once. ‘Some were dragged from their beds without even sufficient clothing.’”

The kind-hearted eye-witness suffered almost as much as the exiles. Here is a description:

“The weeping and wailing of the women and children was most heartrending. Some of these people were from wealthy and refined circles, some were accustomed to luxury and ease. There were clergymen, merchants, bankers, mechanics, tailors, and men from every walk of life. The whole Mohammedan population knew from the beginning that these people were to be their prey, and they were treated as animals.”

Here is one more from a different place:

“All the 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 deportation. The women and girls all wore the Turkish costumes, that their faces might not be exposed to the gaze of the drivers and gendarmes--a brutal lot of men brought in from other regions....

“The panic in the city was terrible.... The people were sure that the men were being killed and the women kidnapped. Many of the convicts in the prisons had been released, and the mountains around were full of bands of outlaws....

“Most of the Armenians in the district were absolutely hopeless. Many said it was worse than a massacre. No one knew what was coming, but all felt that it was the end. Even the pastors and leaders could offer no word of encouragement or hope.... Under the severe strain many individuals became demented, some of them permanently.”[170]

Thousands of boys and girls of assimilable age have been torn away from the bleeding hearts of their parents, and sold and distributed among the Mohammedans, and many thousands more have perished by disease, by exhaustion, by starvation, and by cruel murder.

The following description was written from Malatia:

“Boys under ten and girls under fourteen are accepted here as orphans (by the Mohammedans). More than 800, practically all from Sivas province, are here.... Many have become sick, and they are dying off pretty rapidly. It is evident that many will die on the way....”

Another report says that the _dervishes_, the fanatical Moslem devotees, met the caravans of the deported Armenians on their road and carried off children, shrieking with terror, to bring them up as Moslems in their savage fraternity. Here another: “Many of the boys appear to have been sent to another district, to be distributed among the farmers. The best looking of the older girls are kept in houses for the pleasure of members of the gang who seem to rule affairs here....”

The Armenian journal _Horizon_, of Tiflis, reported in its issue of Aug. 22d (old style), that:

“A telegram from Bukarest states that the Turks have sent from Anatolia (Asia Minor) four railway-vans full of Armenian orphans from the interior of the country, to distribute them among Moslem families.

“Some were sold into shame before the march began. ‘One Moslem reported that gendarmes had offered to sell him two girls for a medjikieh (about eighty cents).’ They sold the youngest and most handsome at every village where they passed the night; and these girls have been trafficked in hundreds through the brothels of the Ottoman Empire. Abundant news has come from Constantinople itself of their being sold for a few shillings in the open markets of the capital; and one piece of evidence in Lord Bryce’s possession comes from a girl no more than ten years old, who was carried with this object from a town of North Eastern Anatolia to the shores of Bosphorus. These were Christian women, as civilized and refined as the women of Western Europe, and they were enslaved into degradation.”[171]

It was estimated that the exiles from three viliayets alone numbered about 600,000.

“We believe there is imminent danger for the Sivas, Erzroom and Harpoot viliayets to be 600,000 will starve to death on the road. They took food for a few days, but did not dare take much money with them, as, if they did so, it is doubtful whether they would be allowed to keep it.”

We must now follow the exiles on the way to death and destruction. In the following case the officers seem to think it not worth their while to drive so few away; and they may have been very poor:

“Forty-five men and women were taken a short distance. The women were first outraged by the officers of the gendarmerie, and then turned over to the gendarmes to dispose of. According to this witness, a child was killed 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.

“The forced exodus of the last part of the Armenian population from a certain district took place on June 1st, 1915. All the villages as well as three-quarters of the town, had already been evacuated. An escort of fifteen gendarmes followed the third convoy, which included 4000 to 5000 persons. The prefect of the city had wished them a pleasant journey. But at a few hours’ distance from the town, the caravan was surrounded by bands of a brigand-tribe, and by a mob of Turkish peasants armed with guns, axes, and clubs. They first began plundering their victims, searching carefully even the very young children. The gendarmes sold to the Turkish peasants what they could not carry away with them. After they had taken even the food of these unhappy people, the massacre of the males began, including two priests, one of whom was ninety. In six or seven days all males above fifteen years of age had been murdered.

“It was the beginning of the end. People on horseback raised the veils of the women, and carried off the pretty ones.”

The following is a portion of a detailed description by an eye-witness, who was in the company on the march, and saw the third batch, above mentioned, of 5000 to melt out before they stopped in a halting place after thirty-two days:

“... The rest of the population was sent off in three batches; I was among the third batch.... Our party left on June 1st (old style), fifteen gendarmes going with us.... Very many women and girls were carried off to the mountains, among them my sister, whose one-year-old baby they threw away. A Turk picked it up and carried it off. I know not where. My mother walked 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 their husbands and sons. We also came across some old people and infants still alive, but in a pitiful condition....

“We were not allowed to sleep at night in the villages, but lay down outside. Under cover of the night indescribable deeds were committed by the gendarmes, brigands and villagers. Many of us [the company] died from hunger and strokes of apoplexy. Others were left by the roadside too feeble to go on.

“The worst and most unimaginable horrors were reserved for us at the banks of the (Western) Euphrates and the Erzindjan plain. The mutilated bodies of women, girls and little children made everybody shudder. The brigands were doing all sorts of awful deeds to the women and girls who were with us, whose cries went up to heaven. At the Euphrates, the brigands and gendarmes threw into the river all the remaining children under fifteen years old. Those who could swim were shot down as they struggled in the water.”

Miss Mary Louise Graffam secured the permission of the governor of Sivas to accompany her school girls on their way to exile--supposedly--to Mesopotamia, but actually to their destruction. After about ten days’ journey she was not permitted to go any further. At Malatia, where she had to give up her charge, she remained a few days; from there she wrote a letter to a friend in Constantinople. We reproduce a few excerpts from her letter.

“When we were ready to leave Sivas, the government gave forty-five ox-carts for the Protestant townspeople and eighty horses, but had none at all for our pupils and teachers; so we bought ten oxcarts, two horses, arabas (wagons), and five or six donkeys, and started out. In the company (of 2000) were all our teachers in the college, about twenty boys from the college, and about thirty of the girls’ school. It was a special favor to the Sivas people, who had not done anything revolutionary (?) that the Vali allowed the men who were not yet in prison[172] to go with their families.

“... We were so near Sivas (the first night) that the gendarmes protected us and no special harm was done; but the second night we began to see what was before us. The gendarmes would go ahead and have long conversations with the villagers, and then stand back and let them rob and trouble the people until we began to scream and then they would come and drive them away. _Yorgans_ (blankets) and rugs and all such things disappeared by the dozens and donkeys were sure to be lost. Many had brought cows, but from the first day those were carried off one by one until not a single one remained.

“We got accustomed to being robbed, but the third day a new fear took possession of us, and that was that the men were to be separated from us at Kangal.... At Kangal they said that a valley near there was full of corpses. Here also we began to see exiles from Tocat. The sight was one to strike horror to any heart. There were a company of old women who had been robbed of absolutely everything. At Tocat the government had first imprisoned the men, and from the prison had taken them on the road.[173] The preacher’s wife was in the company and told us the story. After the men were gone they arrested the old women and the older brides. There were very few young women or children. All the younger women and children were left in Tocat. Badvelli (Rev.) Avedis has seven children. One was with our schoolgirls and the other six remained in Tocat, without father or mother to look after them. For three days these Tocat people had been without food, and after that lived on the Sivas Company, who had not yet lost much.

“... The next day we heard that a special Kaimakam had come to Hassan Chalebe to separate the men.... But we encamped and ate our supper in peace, and even began to think that perhaps it was not so, when the mudir came around with gendarmes and began to collect the men, saying that the Kaimakam wanted to write their names and that they would be back soon.

“The night passed, only one man came back to tell the story of how every man was compelled to give up all his money, and that all were taken to prison. The next morning they collected the men who had escaped the night before and extorted forty-five lires....

“Broken-hearted, the women continued their journey. ... The mudir said the men had gone back to Sivas. The villagers whom we saw all declared that all those men were killed at once....

“As soon as the men left us the Turkish drivers began to rob the women, saying, ‘You are all going to be thrown into the Tokma Su, so you might as well give your things to us and then we will stay by you and try to protect you.’ Every Turkish woman that we met said the same thing. The worst were the gendarmes, who really did more or less bad things. One of the schoolgirls was carried off by the Kurds twice, but her companions made so much fuss that she was brought back. I was on the run all the time from one end of the company to the other....

“As we approached the bridge over the Takma Su, it was certainly a fearful sight. As far as the eye could see over the plain was this slow-moving line of ox-carts. For hours there was not a drop of water on the road and the sun poured down its very hottest. As we went on, we began to see the dead from yesterday’s company and the weak began to fall by the way. The Kurds working in the fields made attacks continually and we were half-distracted. I piled as many as I could on our wagons, our pupils, both boys and girls, worked like heroes. One girl took a baby from its dead mother and carried it until evening. Another carried a dying woman until she died. I counted forty-nine deaths, but there must have been many more. One naked body of a woman was covered with bruises. I saw the Kurds robbing the bodies of these not yet entirely dead....

“The hills on each side were white with Kurds who were throwing stones on the Armenians, who were slowly wending their way to the bridge. I ran ahead and stood on the bridge in the midst of a crowd of Kurds until I was used up.... After crossing the bridge, we found all the Sivas people who had left before us, waiting by the river, as well as companies from Samsoun (a city on the Black Sea), Amasia, and other places.

“My friends here (in Malatia) are very glad to have me with them, for they have a very difficult problem on their hands, and are nearly crazy with the horrors they have been through here. The mutessarif and other officials here and at Sivas have again and again read me orders from Constantinople to the effect that the lives of these exiles are to be protected, and from their actions I should judge that they must have received such orders;[174] but they certainly have murdered a great many in every city. Here there were great trenches dug by the soldiers (for the purpose beforehand) for drilling purposes. Now these trenches are all filled up, and our friends saw carts going back from the city by night. A man I know told me that when he was out to inspect some work he was having done, he saw a dead body which had evidently been pulled out of one of these trenches, probably by dogs.... The Beledieh Reiz here says that every male over ten years old is being murdered, that not one is to live, and no woman over fifteen.”[175]

Miss Graffam’s letter was dated Aug. 7, 1915, at Malatia; not a word has been heard from the company of 2000 exiles, whom she so heroically defended until her separation from them near Malatia. The author’s sister and brothers, and their families were in this company. The probability is that all have perished by this time, if not massacred soon after their guardian angel left them.

FOOTNOTES:

[168] _The New Armenia_, May 15, 1916, New York; the article _The Martyrdom of Armenia_, by Paul Perrin.

[169] Toynbee, “Armenian Atrocities,” pp. 30-1.

[170] A repetition of a case which 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 has happened? God has gone mad.” Toynbee, “Armenian Atrocities,” p. 38.

[171] Toynbee, “Armenian Atrocities,” pp. 39, 40.

[172] There were about 1500 or more of the Armenians in prison in Sivas, waiting to be massacred.

[173] The men at Tocat, like those in many other places, were taken on the road and killed. An Armenian soldier, serving in the Turkish army was captured by the British at the Dardanelles. This soldier stated, “How men of Tocat were tied together in groups of four and taken 100 at a time to the marshy districts for massacre.”

[174] These local officials receive two orders from the central government: the one to be shown to the neutrals, the other to deal with the Armenians. The latter order is to kill the Armenians in any manner they please.

[175] _The Missionary Herald_, Dec., 1915. Boston, Mass.

XX

CAMPS OF REFUGE

We have been looking only at the physical sufferings of these people. Terrible as they have been who could realize or imagine the spiritual, the mental agony of those refined souls, who have seen day by day the fiendish deeds more abominable than the tortures and massacres? “The spiritual torment could perhaps only be fathomed by actual experience.”

We could not think that in the second decade of the 20th century a small “gang of unscrupulous ruffians” could and did defy the laws of humanity and decency; and still be permitted to continue to practice such barbarities in the face of an outraged human conscience. Indeed, if these were not well established facts, we would not believe them.

There are two reasons why the Young Turks still continue their practice of barbarity and abominations: the first is that they are defended by the greatest military powers, the Teutonic arms; the second is the indifference of the neutral states. The United States was first “too proud to fight” for the suffering humanity. And again, “With the causes and issues of this war we have no concern.” Some American missionaries have died as the result of their ill-treatment by the Turks. American properties worth several millions were seized and occupied by the Turkish government and the missionaries compelled to leave the country. One of these missionaries writes:

“I have received the farewell kiss and parting embrace of men, cultured Christian gentlemen, some of whom held university degrees from our best American institutions in this country; men with whom I have co-operated, and at whose sides I have labored for ten years in the work of education in that land, while at their sides stood brutal gendarmes, sent there by the highest authorities of the Government to drive them with their wives and children away from their homes, from their work, and from all the associations which they held most dear, into exile or to death; some of them to a condition worse than either. We had no better friends in this world than those people. To part with them under such circumstances was harder than I can say, and yet but few tears were shed on either side. Our feelings were too deep for idle tears! I have often seen pictures of the early Christian martyrs crouching together in the arena of the Coliseum expecting any moment to be torn to pieces by the hungry lions which were being turned loose upon them, while the eager spectators were watching from their safe seats, and waiting to be amused by that spectacle. And I had supposed that such cruelties and such amusements were impossible in this twentieth Christian century; but I was mistaken. I have seen sixty-two Armenian women and girls between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, huddled together in the rooms of the principal of our American Girls’ School at ----, while outside were waiting men more cruel than beast, ready to carry them off; and who backed by the highest authorities of the Government, were demanding that we should deliver these defenseless girls into the hands of these brutal men to do with them what they would. I have supposed that there was no man in the world to-day who could be amused by such a spectacle as that. In this, too, I was mistaken; for when the wife of our American Ambassador at Constantinople made a personal appeal to Talaat Bey, the Minister of the Interior in the Turkish cabinet, the man who more than any one else has devised and executed this deportation of the Armenians, and who has boasted that he has been able to destroy more Armenians in thirty days than Abdul Hamid was able to destroy in thirty years--when she made an appeal to this Turkish Minister, begging him to stop this cruel persecution of Armenian women and girls, only answered, ‘All this amuses us.’”[176]

The absurdity of the Turkish excuses that the Armenians were preparing, or intending to revolt is plainly seen by the following instances: In places where the people knew the object of the government was to massacre them, they resisted the government and the authorities had no difficulty in subduing them. The Turks had indeed a better excuse for massacre and the people their choice of an immediate, instead of a lingering, death.

When the people of Shabin Karahussar, a town about 100 miles southwest of Trebizond, were ordered to prepare for deportation, they took up arms, and defended themselves against the Turkish troops from the middle of May to the end of June. Then the Turks, with more reinforcements and artillery, had no difficulty in overwhelming them. They massacred not only about 4000 people who had taken arms to defend themselves, but also the entire population of the country districts, “not excepting the bishop himself. Nothing could show better than this how little the Turkish government had to fear from the Armenians, and how eagerly it seized upon the quickest means to their extermination, as soon as an opportunity appeared.”

The reader will remember the Reubenian Dynasty in Cilicia which came to an end in 1375. From that time to the present many Armenians remained in Cilicia. The Armenians who lived in the Cilician mountains were a sort of semi-independent tribe. They were not rebellious, but they exerted their rights often by the force of arms. This year of crimes had included in its plans to crush this people also. The Turkish government “without waiting to summon them for deportation, at once attacked them nakedly with the sword.” It is, moreover, stated that “they were disarmed, by the promise that, if they submitted, their defenseless brethren in the lowland villages would be ransomed from destruction by their act. The Turkish promise was broken, of course, as soon as the Turkish object was secured; and taken at such a disadvantage, the heroic mountaineers inevitably succumbed.”

“The bloody curtain has fallen over Zeitoun, and the fighting stock of these brave mountaineers has been subdued in this memorable year of crime! As the faithful followers and remnants of the Reubenian dynasty, they had hitherto kept their homes intact 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 the hands of the enemy....”[177]

It was begun on the 8th of April and finished about the end of May, 1915. The Turks massacred some of the inhabitants.... And the rest, with the old men and women, were deported to Mesopotamia.

The fate of the people of Sassoun was not quite known for some time. But the Turks and Kurds have finally completely exterminated them also.

Both in Constantinople and in the districts nearby, the Armenians have been thinned out, and in some towns they have been cleared out to make room for the Mohammedan refugees from Thrace and Macedonia.

“The Turks are continuing their work of exterminating the Armenians. From Constantinople they have deported the Armenian men. Ten thousand deported men have already been massacred in the mountains of Ismid.

“Four districts have been cleared of Armenians: Bosnian Mouhadjirs (refugees) replace the Armenians thus exiled....

“More than 20,000 Armenians that have been forced to emigrate from a certain province, are being thrown into the deserts amid nomadic tribes, leaving their houses, gardens and tilled lands to the Turkish mouhadjirs....

“As soon as the Armenian refugees left their houses, mouhadjirs 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 must be about 20,000 to 25,000 in this town now, and the name of the town seems to have been changed to a Turkish one.”[178]

Four thousand and two hundred Armenians were almost miraculously saved in the following manner: When the orders came to about half a dozen villages near Antioch for them to prepare for deportation the inhabitants, knowing the purpose of the government, held a meeting and decided to resist the orders. One pastor dissented and with his flock of about sixty families was deported; nothing has been heard from that party since. The rest hastened to gather all available provisions, ammunition and arms and drove their herds and cattle into the mountain west of Antioch on the Mediterranean shore. Here they had the sea behind them for protection. On the land side, they protected every possible approach to the mountain, and with some modern weapons and old flintlocks, they were ready to defend themselves. They had some good swimmers on the shore watching for some friendly ship which they could petition for help. They also set up two large white flags, one with a red cross in the center, and the other with these words, “_Christians in distress--Rescue!_” They were surrounded on the land side by 3000 regular soldiers of then Turkish army, and about 15,000 Turkish mobs of Aleppo and Antioch slums. They had a very slim chance of escaping annihilation, and this chance was in their heroic defense. On the 53d day of their siege, when their food and ammunition was almost exhausted, the French cruiser _Guicher_ sighted the cross and drew near; the swimmers hastened and bore the message to it. Other ships were called by wireless, and the whole refugees were taken off and transported to Port Said, Egypt. They thus saved their lives by their bravery, and saved also the Turks from some more shame and sin.

The Young Turks’ plan to exterminate the Armenian race was cunningly complete from the beginning to the end. The three different stages or steps by which they hoped to finish the work are now clear. In the first stage, knowing that the able-bodied men would survive the horrors of deportation, or at least most of them would, so in order to hasten the end, they were massacred; in the second stage, they were sure that delicate women and children could not stand the horrors of deportation on foot over the rugged mountains and deep valleys under the burning sun, half naked, and without food and water, so they consigned the largest number of the Armenians to such a process of death and destruction. This procedure, moreover, would give to their representatives, whether German or Turkish, at the courts of the neutral powers, the right to say that the Turks are not killing the women and children. Yet they were not unmindful of the possibility of their disappointment by the survival of some even from this process of death. Thus we have the third stage for the unfortunate survivors. These survivors, mostly women and children, make up the “agricultural colonies.”

The annihilation of the Armenian race being the aim of the government, we must surely expect the selection of such places as will accomplish their purpose. We, unfortunately, do not fail in this expectation. One such called Sultanieh, in the province of Konia, is a veritable desert, south of _Tuz Gul_ (Salt Lake). At this place, “a thousand families of Armenian townspeople, assembled by weary marches from every quarter, were given a taste of the wilderness, a thousand families, and only fifty grown men among them to provide for the needs of this helpless flock of women, children and invalids flung thus suddenly upon their own resources, in an environment as abnormal to them as it would be to the middle-class population of any town in England or France.” Having established this “agricultural colony” on the waste, the government was content, and troubled itself about its colonies no more.

“But Sultanieh was by no means the worst of the charnel-house to which the remnant of the Armenian race was consigned.” The most of the refugees were sent to Aleppo (Halep), the seat of Northern Syria. The Armenians who were living in Asia Minor and Armenia were used to a temperate climate, but the climate in lower Mesopotamia and Syria is semi-tropical, and the places to which the survivors of the deportation have been consigned are considered “some of the most sultry regions on the face of the earth.” A day’s journey from Aleppo southeastward the traveler reaches a swampy region. “These swamps were allotted to the first comers; but they did not suffice for so great a company, and the later batches were forwarded five days’ journey, on to the town of Der-el-Zor, the capital of the next province down the course of the Euphrates, where the river takes its way towards the Persian Gulf through the scorching steppes of the Arabian amphitheater.

“This amphitheater has witnessed many ghastly dramas in its day, but none, perhaps, more ghastly than the tragedy that is being enacted in it now, when its torrid climate is being inflicted as a sentence of death upon the Armenians deported thither from their temperate homes in the north.”

There is one more thing to be noted, namely, that these survivors of the deportation have not only a torrid climate as “a sentence of death” to suffer and die thereby, but they have also a new set of tormentors, the Arabs, who are more wicked and fanatical than the Turks and Kurds, because they are, besides being Mohammed’s followers, akin to him in blood and race. Moreover, these poor refugees are not even left at Der-el-Zor. The latest information comes from there that the refugees have to move further southeast. “The misery among the people is not to be described. All are making things ready for the journey; all are breaking up the tents; Der-el-Zor is as destroyed, by the general upheaval. They say we will be sent to the bank of the river _Chebar_. I pray God that--like he did for Ezekiel--so now He make this place a blessing. Our joy will be to do His will.”

It may be sufficient to reproduce a few extracts from the reports of eye-witnesses of the scenes in the refugee camps. In regard to the condition of the refugees at Sultanieh, we have very little information, the reason for this having been thus stated: “A sum of money has been sent from Constantinople to the Catholikos of Cilicia who is now at Aleppo, witnessing the misery and agony of his flock. Here at least, authorities allow the distribution of succor to those unfortunates. At Sultanieh it has so far proved impossible to bring help within their reach, for the government refuses permission, in spite the efforts of the American embassy.”

“I have just returned, November 16, 1915, from a ride on horseback through Baghche Osmanie Plain, where thousands of exiles are lying upon the fields and streets, without any shelter, exposed to the depredations of all kinds of brigands. Last night, at about twelve o’clock, a little camp of from fifty to sixty persons was suddenly attacked. I found men and women badly wounded, with broken skulls, their bodies cut upon, or in a terrible condition from knife stabs. Fortunately, I was provided with linen, so that I could change their bloody clothing. Then I brought them to the nearest inn where they could be nursed. Many of them were so exhausted from the great loss of blood that they died.

“In another camp we found from thirty to forty thousand Armenians. I was able to distribute some bread among them. Desperate and half starved, they fell upon it; several times I was almost unseated from my horse. A great many dead were lying about unburied, and only through bribes could the gendarmes be persuaded to permit their burial. Generally the Armenians are not allowed to perform the last offices of love for their relatives. Bad epidemics of typhoid fever had broken out everywhere; a patient lay in almost every third tent.

“Nearly everything was transported on foot; men, women, and children carried their few belongings on their backs. I often saw them collapse under their burden, but the soldiers kept on driving them forward with their bayonets. I have dressed bleeding wounds of women that resulted from these bayonet thrusts. Many children lost their parents.... Three hours from Osmanie, two dying men were there for days without any food or even a drop of water.... They were as thin as skeletons.... Unburied women and children were lying in the ditches....

“I visited the camp of Islahié on the first of December, 1915. It had rained for three days and three nights.... As soon as the weather permitted, I set out on my way to the exiles’ camp. About 200 families had been left behind at Mamouret, being unable to proceed on account of misery and illness ... the rags of their beds did not have a single dry thread in them. Many women had their feet frozen--they were entirely black and ready to be amputated. The wailing and the groaning was heart-rending. Everywhere the dead, and the dying in their last agonies, lay about before the tents. Only by _baksheesh_ (bribes) could the soldiers be persuaded to bury them.

“The whole carriage was packed with bread; I just kept on distributing all the time. Three or four times there was an opportunity to buy some fresh bread. These thousands of loaves were a great help to us.

“The camp Islahié itself is the saddest thing I have ever seen. Right at the entrance a heap of dead bodies lay unburied. I counted thirty-five; and in another place twenty-two; right close by were the tents of those people who were down with bad dysentery. In one single day the burial commission buried as many as 580 dead. For weeks many camps have been daily supplied with bread. Of course, everything has to be done as clandestinely as possible....”[179]

An eye-witness at Aleppo says:

“... On August 2 (1915), about eight hundred middle-aged and old women, accompanied by children under the age of ten years, arrived afoot from Diyarbekir, after forty-five days en route. They were in the most pitiable condition imaginable. They report the taking of all the young women and girls by the Kurds, the pillaging even of the last bit of money and other belongings and scenes of starvation, or privation, and hardship of every description. I am informed that 4500 persons were sent from Sughurt to Ras-el-Ain, over 2000 from Mezereh to Diyarbekir, and that all the cities of Bitlis, Mardin, Mosul, Severeh, Malatia, Besneh, etc., have been depopulated of Armenians; the men and boys, and many of the women killed and the balance scattered throughout the country.... The Governor of Der-el-Zor, who is now at Aleppo, says there are 15,000 Armenians in his city. Children are frequently sold to prevent starvation, as the government furnished practically no subsistence.”

I quote the following from Toynbee:

“We have a detailed account of what is happening at Der-el-Zor, from a

## particularly trustworthy source--the testimony of Fraulein Beatrice

Rohner, a Swiss missionary from Basle. Fraulein Rohner has personally witnessed the sufferings of the Armenians at Der-el-Zor, and has published her description of them in the ‘_Sonnenaufgang_’ (Sunrise), the organ of the ‘Deutscher Hilfsbund für Christliches Liebeswerk in Orient’ (German League of Help for Work of Christian Charity in the East). Here are some extracts from her narrative:

“At Der-el-Zor, a large town in the desert, about six days’ drive from Aleppo, we saw a big khan, all the rooms, the roof and the verandahs of which were crowded with Armenians, mostly women and children, with a few old men. They had slept on their blankets wherever they could find any shade.... For these mountaineers the desert climate is terrible. On the next day I reached a large Armenian camp of goatskin tents, but most of the unfortunate people were sleeping out in the sun on the burning sands. The Turks had given them a day’s rest on account of the large number of sick. It was evident from their clothing that these people had been well-to-do; they were natives of Geben, another village near Zeitoun, and were led by their religious head. It was a daily occurrence for five or six of the children of these people to die by the wayside.

“On the next day I met another camp of these Zeitoun Armenians. There were the same indescribable sufferings, the same accounts of misery--‘why do they not kill us once for all?’ asked 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 we have been able to get together; they carry away by force our girls and outrage our women. If any of us are unable to walk, the convoy of _gendarmes_ beat us. Some of our women threw themselves down from the rocks into the Euphrates in order to save their honor--some of these with their infants in their arms.’”

The German missionaries, who have been witnessing these terrible cruelties, have made a protest to their foreign office. This protest was signed by the following persons: Director Huber, Dr. Niepage, Dr. Graetner, and M. Spieler, who constituted the faculty of the German High School at Aleppo, Turkey. A copy of this protest and a letter from Dr. Graetner were secured by the New York _Times_ and were published in its issue of September 20th, 1916. We quote the following extracts:

“We feel it our duty to call the attention of the foreign office to the fact that our school work, the formation of a basis of civilization and instilling of respect in the natives will be henceforward impossible if the German Government is not in a position to put an end to the brutalities inflicted here on the exiled wives and children of murdered Armenians. In face of the horrible scenes which take place daily near our school buildings, before our very eyes, our school work has sunk to a level which is an insult to all human sentiments....

“Girls, boys, and women, all practically naked, lie on the ground breathing their last sighs amid the dying and among the coffins put out ready for them. Forty to fifty people reduced to skeletons are all that is left of the 2000 to 3000 healthy peasant women driven down here from Upper Armenia. The good-looking ones are decimated by the vice of their gaolers, whilst the ugly ones are victimized by beatings, hunger, and thirst. Even those lying at the water’s edge are not allowed to drink. Europeans are prohibited from distributing bread among them. More than a hundred corpses are taken out daily from Aleppo. All this is taking place before the eyes of highly placed Turkish officials. Forty to fifty people reduced to skeletons are lying heaped up in a yard near our school. They are practically insane and have forgotten how to eat. If one offers them bread they push it indifferently aside. They utter low groans and await death. _Ta-a-lim el almon_ (the cult of the Germans) is responsible for this, the natives declare. It will always remain a terrible stain on Germany’s honor among the generations to come.

“... Perhaps the German people, too, are ignorant of these events. How would it be possible otherwise for the usually truth-loving German press to report the humane treatment of Armenians accused of high treason? But it may be that the German government’s hands are tied by reason of certain contracts.... Every cultured human being is competent to intervene, and it is, in fact, his sacred duty to do so. Our esteem among the generations to come is at stake. The more refined Turks and Arabs shake their heads sorrowfully when they see brutal soldiers bringing convoys through the town of women far advanced in pregnancy, whom they beat with cudgels, these poor wretches being hardly able to drag themselves along.”[180]

Dr. Edward Graetner’s letter was dated July 7, 1916, and was written from Basle, Switzerland, to a German theologian in a neutral country:

“I am going to tell you more about the Armenian episode, for this time the question was not one of the traditional massacres, but of nothing more or less than the complete extermination of the Armenians in Turkey. This fact Talaat Bey’s Turkish officials cynically admitted with some embarrassment to the German Consul. The government first made out that they only wanted to clear the war zone and to assign new dwellings to the emigrants.

“They began by enticing the most warlike of the mountaineers out of their rocky fastnesses. This they did with the help of the securities [promises] of the Turkish Empire, of the heads of their own churches, of the American missionaries and of one German consul.[181] Thereupon began expulsions from everywhere, even from districts to which the war will never be carried. How these were affected is shown from the fact that out of the 18,000 people driven out of Harpoot and Sivas only 350 reached Aleppo, and only eleven out of the 1900 from Erzerum. Once at Aleppo the poorest of these were by no means at the end of their troubles. Those who did not die here (the cemeteries are full) were driven by night to the Syrian steppes, toward the Zor on the Euphrates. Here a very small percentage drag out their existence, threatened by starvation. I state this as an eye-witness. I was there in October of last year and saw with my own eyes several Armenian corpses floating in the Euphrates and lying about the steppes.

“The Germans, with a number of laudable exceptions, witnessed these things quite unperturbed, holding out the following excuse: ‘We just need the Turks, you see!’ I know for a fact, moreover, that an employee of the German Cotton Association and one of the Bagdad railway were forbidden to help the Armenians. German officers have also raised a complaint against their consul for his sympathy with the Armenians, and a German teacher, although most capable, was not appointed to a school of the Turco-German Association, on account of his having an Armenian wife. They are afraid that the Turks might take offense at this. The Turks are less considerate. ‘The question is one of a Turkish internal affair, we must not mix ourselves up in it!’ This is what one constantly hears people say. Once it was a question, however, of persuading the Armenians to yield, they _did_ mix themselves up in it!

“The Armenians of Urfa, seeing the fate which had befallen their compatriots from other districts, refused to leave their city and offered resistance. Thereupon no less a person than Count Wolf von Walfskehl ordered the town to be bombarded, and after the surrender of 1000 Armenian men he had not the power to prevent their being massacred.”[182]

The poor refugees are on the move all the time, from privation to starvation, from pest-hole to pest-hole. We quote the following from two different quarters of the country which tell the same tale:

“The Turk, if he is now asked what he is doing with the Armenians, simply replies, he is deporting them. The town of Kessab has been completely emptied.... All had been deported to places where they are sure to die, even the Home was not exempt this time, the government ordering the deportation of the children to Aleppo. This was protested against but the protest amounted to little, and the children were finally taken on a four days’ wearisome journey over mountain and valley to Aleppo, one of our workers (Miss Louisa Stahl) accompanying them that far, and paying sufficient money to a native pastor to look after them while she returned to Kessab to talk over matters with the others.

“Some time afterwards it was learned that the dear pastor in whose hands the money was entrusted was not permitted by the authorities to have anything to do with the children, and they were transferred to the building in which they were housed to another building where they were sure to be infested with disease, and this so happened, and the majority of them [about 36 out of 39] succumbed to the privations and to death.”[183]

“The misery and hopelessness of the situation are such that many are reported to resort to suicide. In illustrating the methods employed, report is made of the gathering of a group of one hundred children whom they placed in care of an educated young widow from ----. Two weeks later these children were deported, and from two survivors found further down the caravan route it was learned that the rest had perished. The house-mother, crazed by this treatment of her charges, was among the deported who were moving on. Boatloads sent from ---- down the river, arrived at ----, ---- miles away, with three-fifths of the passengers missing. There appears, in short, a steady policy to exterminate these people, but to deny charge of massacre. Their destruction from so-called natural causes seems decided upon.”[184]

In conclusion, let us state a few facts: The extermination of two millions of innocent, “loyal to a fault,” Christian subjects of the Sultan of Turkey was planned at, and ordered from, Constantinople. This crime has been committed. The young Turks have proved themselves unfit to rule even under a constitution. The Turkish government has forfeited its right to exist as a government. She has been weighed and found wanting. The Young Turks would not have dared to commit this awful crime, if this horrible war had not been brought about. Even after the war broke out, they hesitated until they were dragged into the war. Then those who are responsible for this war, and those who dragged the Turkish government into the conflict, must share the crime of the Turk. Again, the governments which had the sole influence over the unspeakable Turk to stop him from his barbarities, but did not for fear of offending him, or for other consideration are accessories to his crime.

Again, in spite of the horrors of this World-War and the greatest calamity which ever fell upon the loyal and innocent Armenians, men, women, and children, there are some positive signs that the dawn of liberty is at hand. That soon will the morning light break upon the suffering humanity. There is the liberation of 175,000,000 Russians from the tyranny of autocracy. Here America’s inexhaustible sources of wealth and power, both material and moral, are also thrown against the Turco-Teutonic barbarism. That 100,000,000 peace-loving Americans finally have been forced by the enemies of mankind to declare by their leader and head, President Wilson: “We enter this War only where we are clearly forced into it, because there are no other means of defending our rights....

“It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into War--into the most terrible and disastrous of all Wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance.

“But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

“To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”

Within the last few months some changes have taken place which injures the cause of the Entente and will endanger the lives of many Christians.

The revolution in March (1917) in Russia was a great rejoicing for the lovers of freedom. But when some extreme Socialists claimed self-assumed authority as the deputies of the Socialistic Council of Soldiers and Workmen and seized the Provisional government and set up the Bolshevik reign by violence in November, they did not think that they were depriving themselves of the fruits of the revolution and democracy. And when they were intent to give peace to the war-worn nations of the world that they did neither think of their inability nor the Teutonic duplicity. And when their delegates met with the delegates of the Germanic Allies in peace conference in January (1918), then they, for the first time, learned that they had to submit to the victor’s terms or fight. But to fight was impossible. They had already demoralized and demobilized the Russian army. The German forces began their advance into Russia at once. The Bolshevik delegates, who had broken off the conference and refused to sign the treaty, hurried back and signed it in February.

Accordingly the Russian armies are vacating Turkish Armenia, which they had occupied since the summer of 1915. Russia has also to return to Turkey her former conquests in Armenia. Thus about 1,500,000 Russian Armenians and 300,000 Armenian refugees from Turkey are to be exposed to the Turco-Teutonic outrages and massacres. It is the most gloomy outlook. Yet God still reigns.

“Ye fearful Saints, fresh courage take; The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head.

“Judge not the Lord by feeble Sense, But trust Him for His Grace; Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

“Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan His work in vain; God is His own Interpreter, And He will make it plain.”

FOOTNOTES:

[176] “Don’t let me be told that one nation has no authority over another. Every nation, ay, every human being has authority in behalf of humanity and justice.”--Gladstone.

[177] Toynbee, “Armenian Atrocities,” pp. 71-2.

[178] Toynbee, “Armenian Atrocities,” pages 78-80.

See fuller accounts in “The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16. Documents presented to Viscount Grey by Viscount Bryce.” London.

[179] Report of Sister Paula Schafer, a Swiss missionary from Basle. I quote from _The New Armenia_, N. Y., June 1, 1916.

[180] This protest was under date October 8, 1915. These good men suffered for their protest. When Dr. Neipage returned to Germany, he was arrested by his Government and imprisoned for six months.--Author.

[181] See page 335. The Turkish Government promised the Zeitoun people their security from attack, and persuaded them to give up their arms, and used the influence of the Armenian clergy and foreign missionaries and a German consul.--Author.

[182] _The New Armenia_, Oct. 1, 1916. New York, reprinted.

[183] “God’s Dealing,” August, 1916. _The Christ’s Homepaper_, Philadelphia and Warminster, Pa.

[184] _The Missionary Herald_, September, 1916. The American Board’s monthly paper.

_Printed in the United States of America_

[Illustration: ASIA MINOR

Railroads Railroads Proposed Canals Capitals Boundaries of Countries

Size of type indicates relative importance of places]

Transcriber’s Notes

Errors in punctuation have been fixed.

In the table of contents, “Perisan Oppression” changed to “Persian Oppression”, “Rissian Armies in Armenia” changed to “Russian Armies in Armenia”, “Effect upon Armenian” changed to “Effect upon Armenia”, “Mohamedans” changed to “Mohammedans”

Page 31: “Morans Orienlatis” changed to “Morans Orientalis”

Page 51 and 52: “Nabopalassar” changed to “Nabopolassar”

Page 58: “called Apgarus” changed to “called Abgarus”

Page 60: “Melchezidek” changed to “Melchizidek”

Page 71: “the Armenia language” changed to “the Armenian language”

Page 75: “the Mamigomian” changed to “the Mamigonian”

Page 82: “Zoroastianism” changed to “Zoroastrianism”

Page 89: “to the pressent” changed to “to the present” “after Orthman or Osman” changed to “after Othman or Osman”

Page 91: “Seljinkian Turks” changed to “Seljukian Turks”

Page 92: “indiscrimimately” changed to “indiscriminately” “King Sennecherib” changed to “King Sennacherib”

Page 93: “Egyptian Calipths” changed to “Egyptian Caliphs” In the footnote, “Armenian langauge” changed to “Armenian language”

Page 103: “the Armenia church” changed to “the Armenian church”

Page 105: “Armedian bishops” changed to “Armenian bishops”

Page 117: “Afrer the death” changed to “After the death”

Page 127: “sequel or wars, famine,” changed to “sequel of wars, famine,” “of Azerbijan” changed to “of Azerbaijan”

Page 128: “to Adrianopole” changed to “to Adrianople”

Page 149: “possess a literture” changed to “possess a literature”

Page 166: “accordingly promulmated” changed to “accordingly promulgated”

Page 196: “from Alashgert” changed to “from Alashgerd”

Page 198: “complete, humuliating” changed to “complete, humiliating”

Page 205: “an dan eternal” changed to “and an eternal”

Page 207: “Mohammedansim minimizes” changed to “Mohammedanism minimizes”

Page 210: “Christion subjects” changed to “Christian subjects”

Page 229: In the footnote, “each sack containg” changed to “each sack containing”

Page 244: “esperially at that time” changed to “especially at that time”

Page 268: “moral eneregy” changed to “moral energy”

Page 287: “about Kassab” changed to “about Kessab” “assaulted and caried” changed to “assaulted to carried”

Page 291: “Bosnia and Herzehovnia” changed to “Bosnia and Herzegovnia”

Page 296: “in the Causasus” changed to “in the Caucasus”

Page 301: “is a decription” changed to “is a description”

Page 317: “following narative” changed to “following narrative”

Page 321: “who have been” changed to “who had been”

Page 323: “woman kidnaped” changed to “window kidnapped”

Page 332: “tortures and masmacres” changed to “tortures and massacres”