Armenian atrocities, the murder of a nation

*%rARMENIAN ATROCITIESTHE MURDER OF A NATIONARNOLDT^J.fc* _TOYNBEEOf /,* IN THE HOUSE OF LORDSifornia)nalityHODDHR & STOUQHTON,London. New York. Toronto.MCMXV.

WAYNE S. VUCINICMGEISa LIBRARY Q -

.•-'. ..-_* i' :« c.&

AMAPdisplaying*THE SCENE OFTHE ATROCITIE&

Evtry place mar this map, villi the exceptiondeportations, or m or both, between April and NThe nine places underlined were the destinations mat>•for death.* Dhitnotika, Malgara, and Keshan, ia Thrace, are too far

tided in square brackets, has been the scene of either*&*. . ."such of the deported Armenians as reached them, as waiting'appear oa this map, but they must be added to the list.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.Statement by Lord BrycePAG8.5I.—Armenia before the Massacres ... 17II.—The Plan op the Massacres ...HI.—The Road to DeathIV.—The Journey's EndV.—False ExcusesVI.—Murder OutrightYIL—The Toll of DeathVIII.The Attitude of Germany263956698393106

THE ARMENIANMASSACRES.ByLORD BRYCE.*As His Majesty's Government have, of course,been unable to obtain, except from one or twoquarters, such as the Consul at Tiflis quoted byLord Cromer, any official information with regardto what has been passing in Armenia and Asiatic-Turkey, I think it right to make public somefurther information which has reached me fromvarious sources—sources which I can trust,though for obvious reasons I cannot, by mentioningthem here, expose my informants todanger. The accounts come from different quarters,but they agree in essentials, and in fact confirmone another. The time is past when anyharm can be done by publicity ;and the fullerpublicity that is given to the events that havehappened the better it will be, because herein lies* The version here printed embodies Lord Bryce's owrrevision and enlargement of the official report of hitepeech delivered in the House of Lords on October 6tb1915.

!the only possible chance that exists of arrestingtlies" massacres, if they have not yet been com*pleted.I am grieved to say that such information Us hasreached mc from several quarters goes to show thatthe number of those who have perished in thevarious ways to which I shall refer is very targe.It lias been estimated at the figure of 800,000.Though hoping that figure to be tar beyond themark, \ cannot venture to pronounce it incredible,for there has beeu an unparalleled destruction oflife allover the country from the frontiers of Persiato the Sea of Marmora, only a very few of the citieson the Aegean Coast having so far escaped. Thisis so, because the proceedings taken have been socarefully premeditated and systo maticaUy carriedout with a ruthless efficiency previously unknownamong the Turks.a policy which, as far as cau1The massacres are the result oftaint. hasn entertained for some considerable time by thegang of unscrupulous adventurers who arc nowin possession of the Government of the TurkishKmpire. Tin-' ted to pul ir in practice untilthey thought the favourable moment had come, andthat moment seems to have arrived ab >ut the monthof April. That was the time when the-*.* orderswere issued, orders which cam.' down in every casefrom Constantinople, and which the officials found

7themselves obliged to carry out on pain ofdismissal.There was no Moslem passion against the ArmenianChristians. All was done by the will ofthe Government, and done not from any religiousfanaticism, but simply because they wished, forreasons purely political, to get rid of a non-Moslemelement which impaired the homogeneity of theEmpire, and constituted an element that might notalways submit to oppression. All that I havelearned confirms what has already been said elsewhere,that there is no reason to believe that inthis case Musulman fanaticism came into play atall. So far as can be made ont, though of coursethe baser natures have welcomed and used theopportunities for plunder which slaughter anddeportations afford, these massacres have beenviewed by the better sort of religions Moslemswith horror rather than with sympathy. It wouldbe too much to say that they have often attemptedto interfere, but at any rate they do hot seem tohave shown approval of the conduct of the TurkishGovernment.There is nothing in the precepts of Islam whichjustifies the slaughter which has been perpetrated. Iam told on good authority that high Moslem religiousauthorities condemned the massacres ordered byAbdul Hamid, and these are far more atrocious.

In some cases the Governors, being pious andhumane men, refused to execute the orders thathad reached them, and endeavoured to give whatprotection they could to the unfortunate Armenians.In two cases I have heard of the Governors beingimmediately dismissed for refusing to obey theorders. Others more pliant were substituted, andthe massacres were carried out.As I have said, the procedure was exceedinglysystematic. The whole Armenian population ofeach town or village was cleared out, by a house-tohousesearch. Every inmate was driven into thestreet.Some of the men were thrown into prison,where they were put to death, sometimes withtorture ; the rest of the men, with the women andchildren, were marched out of the town. Whenthey had got some little distance they wereseparated, the men being taken to some placeamong thehills where the soldiers, or the Kurdishtribes who were called in to help in the workof slaughter, despatched them by shooting orbayonetting. The women and children and oldmen were sent off under convoy of the lowestkind of soldiers—many of them just drawn fromgaols—to their distant destination, which wassometimes one of the unhealthy districts in thecentre of Asia Minor, but more frequently the largedesert in the province of Der el Zor, which lies east of

Aleppo, iii the direction of the Euphrates. They weredriven along by the soldiers day after day. ;ill onloot, beaten or left behind to perish if they couldnot keep up with the caravan : manyfell by theway, and many died of hunger. No provisionswere given them by the TurkishGovernment, andthey had already been robbed of everything thejpossessed. Not a i'rw of the women were strippednaked and made to travel in that condition beneathaborning sun. Some of the mothers went madand threw away their children, being unable tocarry them Further. The caravan route wasmarked by a line of corpses, and comparativelyfew seem to have arrived at the destinationsAvhich had been prescribed for them—chosen, nodoubt, because return was impossible and becausethere was little prospect that any would survivetheir hardships. E have had circumstantialaccounts of; these, deportations which bear internalevidence of being veracious, and Iwastold byan American friend who lias lately returnedfrom Constantinople that he had heard accountsat Constantinople, confirming fully those whichhad come to me, and that what had struckhim was the comparative calmness with whichthese atrocities were detailed by those who hadfirst-hand knowledge of them. Tilings which wefind scarcely credible excite little surprise inTurkey. Massacre was the ovv of the day

10in Eastern Ruinelia in 1876, and, in 1895-6, inAsiatic Turkey.When the Armenian population was driven fromits homes, many of the women were not killed, butreserved for a more humiliating fate. They weremostly seized by Turkish officers or civilianofficials, and consigned to their harems. Otherswere sold in the market, but only to a Moslempurchaser, for they were to be made Moslems byforce. Never again would they see parents orhusbands—these Christian women condemned at onestroke to slavery, shame and apostasy. The boysand girls were also very largely sold into slavery,at prices sometimes of only ten to twelve shillings,while other boys of tender age were delivered todervishes, to be carried off to a sort of dervishmonastery, and there forced to become Musulmans.To oive one instance of the thorough andremorseless way in which the massacres were carriedout, it may suffice to refer to the case of Trebizond,a case vouched for by the Italian Consul who waspresent when the slaughter was carried out, hiscountry not having then declared war againstTurkey. Orders came from Constantinople thatall the Armenian Christians in Trebizond were tobe killed. Many of the Moslems tried to save theirChristian neighbours, and offered them shelter intheir houses, but the Turkish authorities were

—11implacable. Obeying the orders which they hadreceived, they hunted out all the Christians,gathered them together, and drove a great crowdof them down the streets of Trebizond, past thefortress, to the edge of the sea. There they wereall put on board sailing boats, carried out somedistance on theBlack Sea, and there thrown overboardand drowned.Nearly the whole Armenianpopulation of from 8,000 to 10,000 were destroyedsome in this way, some by slaughter, some bybeing sent to death elsewhere. After that, anyother story becomes credible ;and I am sorry tosay that all the stories that I have received containsimilar elements ofcases by stories of shocking torture.horror, intensified in someBut the mostpitiable case is not that of those whose misery wasended by swift death, but of those unfortunatewomen who, after their husbands had been killedand their daughters violated, were driven out withtheir young children to perish in the desert—wherethey have no sustenance, and where they arethevictims of the wild Arab tribes around them. Itwould seem that three-fourths orfour-fifths of thewhole nation has been wiped out, and there is nocase in history, certainly not since the time ofTamerlane, in which any crime so hideous andupon so large a scale has been recorded.Let me add, because this is of some importance in

12viuw of the excuses which, as we understand, theGerman Government are putting forward, and whichtheir Ambassador in Washington is stated to havegiven, when he talked about " the suppression ofriots/' for the conduct of those who are their allies,that there is no ground for the suggestion thatthere had been any rising on the part of theArmenians. A certain number of Armenian volunteershave fought on the side of the Russians inthe Caucasian Army, but they came, as I havebeen informed, from the Armenian populationof Trans- Caucasia. It may be that some fewArmenians crossed the frontier in order to tightalongide their Armenian brethren in Trans -Caucasiafor Russia, but at any rate, the volunteer corpswhich rendered such brilliant service to theRussian Army in the first part of the war wascomposed of Russian Armenians living in theCaucasus.Wherever the Armenians, almost whollyunarmed as they were, have fought, they havefought in self-defence to defend their families andthemselves from the cruelty of the ruffians whoconstitute what is called the Government of thecountry. There is no excuse whatever upon anysuch ground as some German authorities andnewspapers allege, for the conduct of the TurkishGovernment.Their policy of slaughter and deportationhas been wanton and unprovoked. It

13appears to be simply an application of the maximonce enunciated by Sultan Abdul Hamid :" Theway to get rid of the Armenian question is toget rid of the Armenians " ;and the policy ofextermination has been carried out with far morethoroughness and with far more bloodthirstycompleteness by the present heads of the TurkishAdministration—they describe themselves as theCommittee of Union and Progress—than it was inthe time of Abdul Hamid.There are still, I believe, a few places in whichthe Armenians, driven into the mountains, aredefending themselves as best they can. About5,000 were taken off lately by French cruisers onthe coast of Syria, and have now been conveyed toEgypt, and they tell us that in the heights ofSassoon and in Northern Syria, possibly also inthe mountains of Cilicia, there are still a few bands,with very limited provision of arms and munitions,valiantly defending themselves as best they canagainst their enemies. The whole nation, therefore,is not yet extinct, so far as regards these refugeesin the mountains, and those who have escaped intoTrans- Caucasia ;and I am sure we are all heartilyagreed that every effort should be made that canbe made to send help to the unfortunate survivors,hundreds of whom are daily perishing by want and

14disease. It is all that we in England can now do;let us do it, and do it quickly.I have not so far been able to obtain anyauthentic information regarding the part said tohave been taken by German officials in directing orencouraging these massacres, and therefore itwouldnot be right to express any opinion on the subject.But it is perfectly clear that the only chance ofsaving the unfortunate remnants of this ancientChristian nation is to be found in an expressionof the public opinion of the world, especially thatof neutral nations, which may possibly exertsomeinfluence even upon the German Government andinduce them to take the only step by which themassacres can be arrested. They have hithertostood by with callous equanimity. Let them nowtell the Turkish Government that they are preparingfor themselves a well-earned retribution, andthat there are some things which the outragedopinion of the world will not tolerate.BRYCE.

)15THE EVIDENCE.Tin'/following statement isbased upon uuimpeaehabletestimonies. There are the narratives ofmissionaries— Germans as well as Swiss, Americansand other citizens of neutral countries. There arereports from consuls on the spot, including, again,the representatives of the German Empire. Thereare numerous private letters and letters publishedinthe Allied and the neutral press, which record theevidence of eye-witnesses as to what they have seen.And there are the scries of personal depositionswhich have already been published by a Committeeof distinguished citizens of the United States,The nmre closely these, independent pier

17I. ARMENIA BEFORE THEMASSACRES.The German War began by working horrorand desolation in unaccustomed places — peacefulBelgium and the industrial heart of France.Latterly it has also succeeded in aggravating thewounds of countries already stricken sore.Polandhas learnt to envy her condition before August,1914 ; the Balkan peoples have been robbed of theirlast hope of fraternity ;and now, on the Easternfringe of Germany's arena, the intermittent sufferingsof the Armenian race have culminated in anorganised, cold-blooded attempt on the part ofits Turkish rulers to exterminate it once and forall by methods of inconceivable barbarity andwickedness.The Armenians are perhaps the oldest establishedof the civilised races in Western Asia, and theyare certainly the most vigorous atthe present dayTheir home is the tangle of high mountains betweenthe Caspian, the Mediterranean, and theBlack Seas.Here the Armenian peasant has lived

18from time immemorial the hardworking life he wasleading till the eve of this ultimate catastrophe.Here a strong, civilised Armenian kingdom was thefirst state in the world to adopt Christianity as itsnational religion. Here Church and people havemaintained their tradition with extraordinaryvitality against wave upon wave of alien conquestfrom every quarter.For many centuries past, however, Armenia hasnot been co-extensive with the Armenian race ;forin the Eastern provinces of the Turkish Empirewe find the same phenomenon of racial intermixtureand disintegration as has been produced inthe Balkans by the operation of the Turkish regime.Under the malignant administration of the Moslemconqueror, the Kurds, also an ancient race, but onewhich has remained uncivilised, have spread outfrom their old seats over the Armenian's ancestralmountains. They prefer a wilderness for thepasturage of their sheep and goats, and lookaskance at the neat villages and well - tilledfields of the original inhabitants of the land.Thus the Armenian has lost the undivided possessionof his proper country ;but he has recompensedhimself by finding many new homes beyond itsborders. For the Armenian is not only an industriouspeasant, he has a talent for handicraft andintellectual pursuit?.The most harassed village in

19the mountains would never despair of its villageschool, and these schools were avenues to a widerworld. He has also that talent for commercewhich the Jew displays in Eastern Europe andthe Greek in the Levant, and he plays a similarrole himself, as the skilled workman and the manof business, in the interior of Asiatic Turkey.Everytown in Northern Syria and Anatolia had, eightmonths ago, its populous, prosperous Armenianquarter—the focus of local skill, intelligence andtrade, as well as of the town's commercial relationswith Constantinople and Europe. At Constantinopleitself, the Armenian population had risen tomore than 200,000, and there were nearly as manyin Tiflis, the capital of Russian Trans-Caucasia.Trans-Caucasia, in fact, with its orderly Christiangovernment and its promising economic development,had become a second home of the Armenianrace. The Katholikos, or head of the ArmenianChurch, resides in Russian territory, at Etchmiadzin,and there wereperhaps 750,000 Armenians onthe northern side of the Russo-Turkish frontier.Eight months ago, however, these represented aminority of the race, for about 1,200,000 stillremained under Turkish rule. Rather more thanhalf this majority was to be found in the originalArmenia, east of the upper Euphrates and northof the Tigris.The rest were scattered through all

20the towns between the Euphrates and Constantinople.Their numbers were especially strong inthe Adana district of Cilicia, a rich plain borderingon the north-east corner of the Mediterranean, whilein the mountain fastnesses above the plain the hilltowns of Zeitoun and Hadjin were flourishingcentres of Armenian life.The condition of these twelve hundred thousandpeople—about

21This old-established adjustment of the Armenianproblem was first assailed by Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid. His Balkan experience had taught himthe policy of keeping the races of his Empire inhand by setting" them to massacre one another.Applying it to his Eastern provinces, where hefeared that the intelligent and 'active Christianpopulation might seek liberty as the Bulgars hadsought it and obtained it at Russia's hands in1878, he redoubled exactions, introduced newoppressions, and ended by enlisting the services ofthe Kurdish tribesmen as " Hamidieh Cavalry."Official badges and modern rifles were servedout to the Kurds in their new capacity, andthey were initiated into their welcome duty.The results were the unprecedented Armenianmassacres under official direction, that horrifiedthe civilized world in 1895 and 1896, andevoked from Gladstone the last public speechof his old age. When Abd-ul-Hamid was overthrownin 1908 and the " Committee of Union andProgress " proclaimed constitutional governmentand equal civil rights for all Ottoman citizens,there seemed hope of better things ; but theOttoman Constitution was followed in less than ayear by the equally atrocious though less widespreadmassacres of Adana. Even that paroxysm

passed, but it left a chronic evil behind. Mr. NoelBuxton, who travelled in Turkish Armenia a fewmonths before the outbreak of the present war,reported that the Young Turks had recklesslyfollowed the Hamidian policy of arming the Kurds,and that a fresh disaster was possible at anymoment. Then came the war. Turkey entered iton the German side, and the crimes began whichwill be narrated in the following pages.The evidence on which the following account isbased is drawn from various quarters. Some of ithas appeared already in print. A smaller parthas been sent privately to Lord Bryce, who hasmany personal links with the Armenian people.It agrees completely with other material incorporatedin the Report (published in full inthe United States on October 4th. 1915) ofthe American Committee of Inquiry—a bodyof twenty-five members, including two exambassadorsto the Porte, and f'>\\\' directorsof American mission - work in the OttomanEmpire, as well as persons of such individualeminence as Cardinal Gibbons, Bishops Greerand Rhinelander, Dr. Charles W. Eliot (Ex-President of Harvard University), Mr. CharlesR. Crane, Mr. Stephen S. Wise and Mr. John R.

33Motfe.* The evidence is indeed abundant anddirect, and it is also appalling in the uniformitywith which it unfolds its otherwise scarcelycredible tale. Part of it is from the mouth ofneutral witnesses—European or American travellersand men of business who have returned from theinterior of Turkey since the horrible work began,or permanent residents sufficiently protected bytheir status to be able to communicate what theyhave seen on the >pot. Testimony of thisunequivocal character tonus the backbone of theAmerican Committee's statement ; but even inthese eases the evidence has to be presented, from•American Committee ox Armenian Atrocities.70, Fifth Avenue, New York,James L. Barton,! Samuel T. Duttox,Chairman.SecretaryCharles R. Crane,Treasurer.Cleveland H. Dodge,Frank Mason North.Charles W. Eliot.Harry V. Osborn.James Cardinal Gibbons. Rt. Rev. P. Rhinelander.Rt. Rev. David II. Greer. Karl Davis Robinson.Norman Hapgood.William W. Rockwell.William 1. Haven. Isaac N. Seligman.Maurice H. Harris.William Sloane.Arthur Curtis James. Edward Lincoln Smith.Frederick Lynch.Oscar S. Strans.H. Pereira Mend is. Stanley White.John R. jfclott Stephen S. V,j Secretary of the American Mission? Board.

—24motives of precaution, in an anonymous form, andin dealing with testimony from native Armeniansources the necessity for the strictest reticence i3even more apparent. The crime has been committedwithout pretext, but no excuse for continuingit in the cases of individuals who had exposed itshorrors, would come amiss to its authors andorganisers. Nevertheless, the witness of theArmenians to their own sufferings is as clear asthe evidence of their better protected friends.It is headed by the statement of the Katholikoshimself, transmitted from Russia to the ArmenianNational Defence Union in the U.S., and publishedon September 27th in theAmerican press;and his words are borne out by a confidentialletter which another high Armenian ecclesiastic,resident in this case in neutral territory, hasreceived from a prominent fellow - countrymanin the striken area. And then there are therefugees— the remnant of the nation that hasfound safety behind the Russian lines in theCaucasus, or made its way to Egypt across thefriendly Mediterranean. For instance, there werethe 4,200 Armenians—men, women and childrenfrom Selefkeh, the port of Antioch, whom theFrench cruiser squadron landed safely at Port Said atthe end of September.They had been seven weeksin the hills, fighting for life with antiquated guns

and scanty ammunition, and with their backsto thesea. Against Turkish regulars reinforced by allthe blackguards of the Aleppo slums, their chanceseemed desperate ; but they knew it was the onlychance they had, for the order had come to preparewithin a week for deportation, and the fate of alltheir deported kinsmen from Anatolia was beforetheir eyes. But this is to anticipate the sequenceof the narrative. The evidence in hand has beensufficiently indicated, and it will be better to setforth the whole series of crimes from theirbeginning.

26IITHE PLAN OF THE MASSACBES.The entrance of Turkey into the War lastAutumn did not immediately aggravate theArmenians' lot. Young Turk policy had extendedthe burden of military service to the Christian aswell as the Moslem population ;but that might beregarded in the light of a privilege, as a recognitionof the equality of all Ottoman citizens before the law.Moreover, many Armenians had paid commutationin lieu of enrolment. It has been said, and cannotbe emphasised too strongly, that the race wasindustrious, prosperous, devoted to the works ofpeace. It included a large proportion of highlyeducated men and not a few educated women, whohad been taught in the schools and universities ofEurope, or in the excellent colleges of the Americanmissions ;and it supplied Turkey with that classof thinkers and contrivers, teachers, traders andartificers, which gives a country its brain.* Thewar, again, was directed against Christian powers,and undertaken by those who had massacred theirbrethren at Adana only live years before. For the* In Russia many Armenians have achieved distinctionin war as well, for eyaniple Prince Bagration, Napoleon'sopponent in 1812, and Generals Mel'ikoH" and Lazareil inthe Russo-Turkish War of 18/7-8.

—27Armenians it was not a war of patriotism ; somany Armenian men remained quietly at home,and when those who were drafted were deprivedof their arms by order of the Government, andbrigaded into labour battalions to work on theroads, it is improbable that they resented thechange of duty. Thus the winter passed withlittle foreboding of the coming spring.But meanwhile the Government at Constantinople—ifGovernment is not too good a name forEnver, Talaat, and the restof that " Committee ofUnion and Progress" which Lord Brycehas justlydescribed as a " gang of unscrupulous ruffians,"meanwhile, this unprincipled and all - powerfulorganisation was working out its plans, and itbegan to put them into action in April.The scheme was nothing less than the exterminationof the whole Christian population withinthe Ottoman frontiers. For the war had temporarilyreleased the Ottoman Government fromthe control, slight as it was, which the Concertof Europe had been able to exert. The belligerentson one side were Turkey's allies and very goodfriends ; and Enver, looking to the future, reliedupon their promised victory to shield himself andhis accomplices from the vengeance of the Westernpowers and Russia, which had always stoodbetween the malignant hostility of the Ottoman

28Government and the helplessness of its Christiansubjects. The denunciation of the " Capitulations"broke down the legal barrier of foreign protection,behind which many Ottoman Christians hadfennel more or less effective shelter. Nothing remainedbut to use the opportunity and strike astroke that would never need repetition." Afterthis," said Talaat Bey, when he gave the finalsignal, " there will be no Armenian question forfi ffcyyears."The crime was concerted very systematically, forthere is evidence of identical procedure from overfifty places.They are too numerous to be detailedhere, but every one of them" is shewn on theaccompanying map, and they will be found toinclude every important town in Armenia properand in Eastern Anatolia, as well as Ismid andBre-nssa in the west, not to speak of a number ofplaces in Thrace. There is no object in multiplyingthe monotonous tale of horror, for the uniformdirections from Constantinople^ were carried outWith the exception of six small villages in the( iii.-fan hills.| " I could not bring myself to believe that it was byorder of the Central Government that the Armeniansdriven from their homes. It wag only at Constantinoplethat I learnt this fact, and I learnt also that thepressure brought to boar by the Embassies had had noeffect."— Extract from a letter (written by an ArmenianProtestant to an American citizen) which was publishedon September -1th, 1915, bv the Armenian paper" Go&ehnag " of New York.

29with remarkable exactitude by the local authorities.Only two cases are reported of officials whorefused to obey the Government's instructions.One was the local governor of Everek, in thedistrict of Kaisarieh, and he was at once replacedby a more pliable successor. On the other hand,the kaimakam of another place replied to theprotest of a German missionary :" If the Law andthe Sultan were to forbid it,I would carry out theplan in spite of all, and do as I.please."(American Committee's Report.)* In generalwhat happened was this.On a given day the streets of whatever town itmight be were occupied by the local gendarmeriewith fixedbayonets, and the Governor summonedall able-bodied men of Armenian race that hadbeen exempted from military draft to presentthemselves now on pain of death. " Able-bodied "received a liberal interpretation, for itincluded anymale between fifteen and seventy years of age, andthese were all marched out of the town by thegendarmes. They had not far to go, for thegendarmerie had been reinforced for the purpose fromthe gaols, and the brigands and Kurds at large werewaiting in the hills.They were waiting to murder* Hereafter referred to as A.O.R.

othe prisoners. The first seconded valley witnessedtheir wholesale massacre, and, acquitted of theirtask, the gendarmes marched back leisurely intotown.This was the first act. It precluded the pitifulpossibility of resistance to the second, whichwas of a more ingenious and far reaching kind.The women, old men and children who made upthe remainder of the Armenian population, werenow given immediate notice of deportation withina fixed term—a week perhaps, or ten days, butcommonly a week, and in no case more than afortnight. They were to be unrooted, wholehouseholds, from theirhomes, and driven off to anunknown destination, while their houses andproperty were to be transferred to Moslems, on aplan which will be described in the sequel.It is hardly possible to imagine to oneself theimplication of such a decree. These were notsavages, like the Red Indians who retired beforethe White Man across the American continent.They were not nomadic shepherds like theirbarbarous neighbours the Kurds. They werepeople living the same life as ourselves, townspeopleestablished in the town for generationsand the chief authors of its local prosperity.They were sedentary people, doctorsand lawyers and teachers, business men and

31ans and shopkeepers, and they had raised solidmonuments to their intelligence and industry,costly churches and well-appointed schools. Theirwomen were as delicate, as refined, as unused tohardship and brutality as women in Europe or theUnited States. In fact, they were in the clpersonal touch with Western civilisation,for manyof the Armenian centres upon which the crime wasperpetrated had been served by the Americanmissions and colleges for at least fifty years, andwere familiar with the fine men and women whodirectedthem.Communities like this, after being mutilate .1 bythe wholesale conscription or assassination of thehusbands and fathers, were now torn up by theroots and driven, under the forlorn leadership ofthe mothers and the old men, into an exile thatwas to terminate in a death ofunspeakable horror.There was just one possible loophole of escape,apostasy, but it did not do to bid for it too eagerly.It had been available in 1895, and the men of onetown on the Euphrates now sought for it: to averttheir doom.* But their desperate offer was refused ;and at another town in Anatolia it was onlyaccepted on the inhuman condition of surrenderingtheir children below the age of twelve years to* Hoping to return to Christianity in better 'lays.

'32the Government, to be educated in unknown" orphanages " in the Moslem faith.Of course these orphanages were quite hypotheticalinstitutions. There were dervish convents,however, which were real and terrible enough.The dervishes are communities of fanatical Moslemdevotees, many of whom lead a wandering life inthe interior of Anatolia-—a barbaric survival ofprimitive religion. They were allowed to taketheir choice of the young Armenian boys, and oneof Lord Bryce's informants describes how bands ofthem met the caravans of deported Armenians ontheir road, and carried offchildren, shrieking withterror, to bring them up as Moslems in their savagefraternity.In one place "a plan was formed to save thechildren by placing them in schools or orphanages,under thecare of a committee organised and supportedby the Greek Archbishop, of which the Valiwas president and the Archbishop vice-president,with three Mohammedan and three Christian members."(A.C.R.) But the plan was rescinded byorders from above ;and" many of the boys appear to have been sent toanother district, to be distributed among the farmers.The best looking of the older girls are kept in housesfor the pleasure of members of the gang who seem torule affairs here. I hear on good authority that amember of the ' Committee of Union and Progress

33here has ten of fche handsomest girls id a ii i le in thecentral part of tbo city, for the Oft -If andhis friends."(A.C.R.)The Armenian journal '• Horizon" of Tiflis,reported in its issue of Sept. 4th (Aug. 22nd oldstyle) that :—" A telegram from Bukaresc states thai the Turkshave sent from Anatolia four railway-vans full ofArmenian orphans from the interior of the country,to distribute them among the Moslem families.* 1Such was the fate marked outfor the Armenianchildren who were young enough lor assimilation ;but even such a sacrifice was to "reprieve" theparents who consented to it from immediate deathalone, and not from the lingering torment ofdeportation.Only at one place do we hear that the victimswere given the prospect of ransoming themselvescompletely by accepting Islam for their familiesand themselves. Here the witness states that" The offices of the lawyer- who recorded applicationswere crowded with people petitioning tobecome Mohammedans.Many did it for the sake oftheir women and children " (A.C.K.)But their escape was a convertswere marched out of the town like the rest, andwere never heard of again.The majority of the people were not suffered evento play with hopes of security, and the week

uof grace was occupied by heartrending scenes.At the last mentioned town " people made preparationfor carrying out the Government's orders byselling whatever household possessionsthey couldin the streets. Articles were sold at less than10 per cent, of their usual value, and Turks fromthe neighbouring villages filled the streets, huntingfor bargains " (A.C.R.) In this instance theGovernment punished any Moslems that actuallyseized articles by force ;but in general the authoritieswere not so meticulous. It must be repeatedthat the Armenians were people of property,property well earned by intelligent industry, andthe indigent Moslem of the slums had alwaysresented the prosperity which Allah had permittedto the subject infidel. Now the Moslem was tccome into his own.At a port on the Cilician coast" sewing machines sold for 1Jmedjidiehs(aboutfour shillings and ninepence), iron bedsteads for afew piastres," and at a hitherto flourishing porton the Black Sea we are showm a spectacle ofwholesale felony." The thousand Armenian houses in the town arebeing emptied of furniture by the police one afterthe other . . . ,and a crowd of Turkish womenand children follow the police about like a lot ofvultures, and seize anything they can lay their handson ; and when the more valuable things are carriedout of a house by the police, they rush in and take

35the balance. I see this performance every day withmy own eyes. I suppose it will take several weekgto empty all the houses, and then the Armenianshops and stores will be cleared out."(A.C.R.)A systematic eradication of a whole people, this,and designed to that end, for the German consultold the witness that " He did not believe theArmenians would be permitted to return to thecity in question, even after the end of the war."(A.C.R.)But the Armenians gained little by selling uptheir goods, for even the trifling sums they realisedwere more than they were permitted tocarry withthem. Their journey money was strictly limitedto a few shillings, and in fact it would only haveexposed them to pillage by their guards if theyhad attempted to carry more about their persons.Yet if they could not realise their property, therewas still less hope of transporting it with them.In many cases the notice was too short for sellingout or packing up at all, and this seems to havebeen especially the case in Cilicia." At the mountain village of Geben," for instance" the women were at the wash - tub, and werecompelled to leave their wet clothes in the water andtake the road barefuoted and half-clad, just as theywere. In some cases they were able to carry part oftheir scanty household furniture or implements ofagriculture, but for the most part they were neitherto carry anything nor to sell it, even where there wastime to do so." (A.C.R.)

36" In Hadjin well-to-do people, who Lad preparedfood and bedding for the road, were obliged to leaveit in the street, and afterwards suffered greatly fromhrmger,"(A.O30The exiles bad reason to be thankful if they couldtind conveyance for their own persons.Sometimesthe government announced that it would providean ox-cart for each family. But this was oftenonly another opportunity for mocker} 7 . In oneplace, where the people had been given notice todepart on Wednesday, the carts appeared on Tuesday;\ r 3.30 a.m., and the people were ordered to leaveatonce.' :Some were draped from their bedswithout even sufficient clothing." In other casesno provision was made at all.For example, at theaforementioned city on the Black Sea coast, theGovernor-General told the witness that " theArmenians were allowed to make arrangements forCarriages." " But nobody," says the witness," seemed to be making any arrangements. I knowof one wealthy merchant, however, who paid. £15(Turkish) for a carriage to take himself and hiswife . . . But about ten minutes drive Fromthe start, they were commanded by the gendarmesto leave the carriage, which was sent back to thecity." And it was always the same tale • for theowners of the vehicles were always local Moslems,who had no intention of accompanying the gruesomecaravan to its distant destination. After one day's

—37march, or two, when the victim's last pence hadbeen extorted in bribes, the drivers turned theiroxen about. Often the second batch of a convoy,as itstarted, saw the carts assigned to the first batchreturning empty to the town, and realised that theywould have to travel the greater part of theirimmense journey over the mountains on foot.*From the impression it made on the witnesses,the scene of departure must in any case have beenharrowing enough. From that town on the coastthe exiles were despatched in successivebatches ofabout 2,000 each."The weeping and wailing of the women andchildren was most heartrending. Some of thesepeople were from wealthy and refined circles, somewere accustomed to luxury and ease. There wereclergymen, merchants, bankers, lawyers, mechanics* For example, the following incident is related in aletter, printed by the New York paper " Gotchnag " onSeptember 4th, to which reference has been madealready :" When the Government announced that theArmenian population must remove from a certaininland town in Eastern Anatolia, an Americanmissionary, Miss X., obtained permission to accompanythe deported people. She bought a carriage,eight carts and six donkeys, for the use ofthe pupils and teachers of the missionary school ontheir journey. The Government had placed anox-cart at the disposal of each family, bat no oneknows exactly how far the unfortunate deportedfamilies have been able to ride, or at what momentthey have been compelled to go on foot."

.38tailors, and men from every walk of lifeThe whole Mohammedan population knew thatthesepeople were to be their prey from the beginning, and

39III.THE ROAD TO DEATH.In this agonising state of apprehension the bandsof Armenian women were driven forth on theirroad. There was a heroism about their exodus,for there was still a loophole of eseape, the samealternative of apostasy that had tempted theirhusbands and fathers.And in their case, at least,apostasy brought the certainty of life, because thecondition laid down was their immediate entranceinto the harem of a Turk. Life at the price ofhonour— most of them seem to have rejected it :and yet, if they had known all that lay beforethem, they might have judged it the better part.As itwas, they clutched at the desperate chance ofimmunity, and presented themselves for the march-— playing too unsuspectingly into their conductors'hands. For the gaol-bred gendarmes had no;tion of conducting the caravan -intact to itsdestination.Some were sold into shame before the marchbegan. " One Moslem reported that a gendarmehad offered to sell him two girls for a medjidieh(about three shillings and twopence)".the youngest and mostThey soldhandsome at every village

40where they passed the night ;and these girls havebeen trafficked in hundreds through the brothelsof the Ottoman Empire. Abundant news hascome from Constantinople itself of their beingsold for a few shillings in the open markets ofthe capital ;and one piece of evidence in LordBryce's possession comes from a girl no morethan ten years old, who was carried with thisobject from a town of North Eastern Anatolia tothe shores of the Bosphorus.These were Christianwomen, as civilised and refined as the women ofWestern Europe, and they were enslaved intodegradation. Yet they were more fortunate thantheir companions who were denied even this releasefrom their terrible journey ;and these \vere oldwomen, mothers offamilies, mothers actually withchild, who were herded on to meet the intolerablehardships which their journey held in store." Women with little children in their arms, or inthe last days of pregnancy, were driven along underthe whip like cattle. Three different cases cameunder my knowledge where the woman was deliveredon the road, and because her brutal driverhurried her along she died of hemorrhage. Somewomen became so completely worn out and helplessthat they left their infants beside the road."(A.C.R.)This latter fact is witnessed from severalquarters. One piece of evidence tells of a womanthrowing her dying child down a well, that

she might be spared the sight of its )ast agony.*Another woman, stifle I in a crowded rattle-truckon the Anatolian Railway, threw her baby onto theline." Six agonised mothers, passing through Koniebby this railway to an unknown destination, entrustedtheir little children to the Armenian families inthe city iu order to save them alive; but the localauthorities tore them away from the Armenians andplaced them in Moslem hands."This last incident comes from the confidentialletter to a high Armenian ecclesiastic which hasbeen mentioned above ;and testimony from theAmerican Committee's Report only heightens thehorror."An Armenian told me thai he had abandonedtwo children on the way because they could norwalk, and that he did not know whether they haddied of cold and hunger, whether a charitable soulhad taken care of them, or whether they had becomethe prey of wild beasts. Many children seem tohave been thus abandoned.thrown into a well."One seems to have beenThe same incident is recorded by a first-hand witnesswho had come to Constantinople from the interior, andwhose general description of the deportations (which talliesexactly with the personal narratives given here) has beenresumed by Prof. Hagopian in an article published onSeptember 1st. 101."), by the paper "Armenia" ofMarseilles. .

42This confirms the entirely independent testimonyto the same incident from another source,and there is evidence of equal weight for manyother incidents of equal horror." I saw a girl three and a half years old, wearingonly a shirt in rags. She had come on foot . . .She was terribly spare, and was shivering from cold,as were also all the innumerable children I saw onthat day."(A.C.R.)Here is a witness who saw one of thesecaravans on its road." They went slowly, most of them fainting fromwant of food. We saw a father walking with a oneday-oldbaby in his arms, and behind him themother walking as well as possible, pushed by thestick of the Turkish guard. It was not uncommonto see a woman fall down and then rise again underthe stick." (A.C.R.)"A young woman, whose husband had beenimprisoned, was carried away with her fifteen-daysoldbaby, with one donkey for all her luggage.Aft r one day and a half of travel, a soldier stoleherdonkey, and she had to go on foot, her baby in herarms."(A.C.R.)But the robbery of their goods was not theworst. These poor, worn-out, perishing womenwere robbed obscenely of their honour, for anywho had not brought a few shillings into the gendarmes'pockets by being sold to richer Moslemswere abandoned to the gendarmes' own morebrutallust.

43" At one place the commander of gendarmerieopenly told the men to whom he consigned a largecompany, that they were at liberty to do what theychosa with the women and girls.""The Armenians deported(xl.C.R.)from a certain town,"says another witness who saw them puss, "could notbe recognised as a result of their twelve days'march . . . Even in this deplorable state,rapes and violent acts are every day occurrences."(A.C.R.)Age was the only ground of exemption fromoutrage, and there were women of extremeage inthese caravans ;for neither age nor sickness gaveexemption from slow murder by deportation." A case worthy of notice was that of F.'s sister.Her husband had worked in our hospiUl as a soldiernursefor many months. She contracted typhusand was brought to our hospital . . . . A fewdays before the deportation, the husband was imprisonedand exiled without examination or fault.When the quarter in which they lived went, themother got out of bed in the hospital, and was puton an ox-cart to go with her children." (A.C.R.)Indeed, the sick and aged could be trusted to die onthe road of their own accord." The women believed that they were going toworse than death, and many carried poison in theirpockets to use if necessary. Some carried picks andshovels to bur y those they knew would die by thewayside." (A.C.R.)** The same incident is reported in a document transmittedto Lord Bryce. The names of all the partiesconcerned are given with exactitude in both acoounts.

44Sometimes their misery was ended unexpectedlysoon, when their tormentors gave? way prematurelyto their Inst for blood. At one small village thewhole tragedy was enacted in one scene.'*Forty-five men and women were taken a shortdistance from the village into the valley. Thewomen were first outraged by the officers of thegendarmerie, and then turned over to theto dispose of.gendarmesAccording to this witness, a child waskilled by having its brains beaten out on a rock.The men were all killed, and not a single personsurvived out of this group of forty-five." (A.C.R.)The forced exodus of the last part of the1,1Armenian population from a certain district tookplace on June 1st, 1915. All the villages, as wellas three-quarters of the town, had already beenevacuated. An escort of fifteen gendarmes followedthe third convoy, which included 4,000 to 5,000persons. The prefect of the city had wished thema pleasant journey. Bat at a few hours' distancefrom the town, the caravan was surrounded bybunds of a brigand-tribe, and by a mob of Turkishpeasants armed with guns, axes and clubs. They3rst began plundering their victims, searching care,fully even (be very young children. The gendarmessold to tin- Turkish peasants what they could notcarry away with them. After they had taken eventhe food of these unhappy people, the massacre ofthe males began, including two priests, one ofwhomwas ninety. In six or seven days all males abovefifteen years of age had been murdered. It was thebeginning of the end. People on hor^e-back raised

45the veils of the women, and curried off the prettyones."(A.C.R.)And here is the same story at first hand (A.C.U.),from a lady who actually experienced the horrorsof this murderous march.She tells how the crime began with the hangingof the Bishop and seven other notables, and thewholesale slaughter in a wood of about eighty men,after they had been imprisoned and flogged inprison. " The rest of the population was sent offin three batches ; I was among the third batch.My husband died eight years ago, leaving me andmy mother and my eight-year-old daughter extensive possessions, so that we were living in comfortSince mobilisation, an Ottoman commandant hasbeen living in my house free of rent. He told menot to go, but I felt I must share the fate of mypeople. I took three horses with me, loaded withprovisions. My daughter had some five-lira piecesround her neck, and I carried some twenty lirasan I four diamond ring] on my parson. Allelse that we had was left behind. Our party lefton June 1st (old style), fifteen gendarmes goingwith us."Then she describes, detail for detail, the surpriseattack on the road, the killing of the two priestsand of every male over fifteen years of age. Theirhorses, their valuables, their food—all were taken." Very many women and girls were carried off tothe mountains, among them my sister, whose oneyear-oldbaby they threw away. A Turk picked itup and carried it off, 1 know not where. My mother

walked till46she could walk no further, and droppedby the roadside, on a mountain top. We found onthe road many who had been in the previousbatches ; some women were among the killed, withtheir husbands and sons."We also come across someold people and their infants, still alive but in apitiful condition, having shouted their voices away."And here again the former witness exactlycorroborates the narrative." On the way," says this other testimony, " weconstantly met murdered men and youths, allcovered with blood. There were also women andgirls killed near their husbands or sons. On theheights of the mountains and in the depths of thevalleys numbers of old men and babies were lyingon the ground."They were on the track of the precedingconvoys and the same picture of death is givenby witnesses who followed the route of anothercaravan a short way from itsstarting point." Many persons were obliged to start off on footwithout funds and with what they could gather upfrom their homes and carry on their backs. Suchpersons naturally soon became so weak that theyfell behindand were bayoneted and thrown into theriver, and their bodies floated down to the sea, orlodged in the shallow river on rocks, where they- 'remained for ten or twelve days and putrefied.'Yer those were fortunate who found even sucha death, tor they escaped the increasing tormentswhich the survivors had to suffer.

47"We were not allowed to sleep at night in thevillages," says the Armenian lady, "bul lay downoutside. Under cover of the night ibabledeeds were committed by the gendarmes, brigandsand villagers. Many of us died from hnnger andstrokes of apoplexy. Others were lefl by the roadside,too feeble to go on." The parallel accountconfirms her once more in almost identical won Is,and adds that "the peoplo found themselves in thenecessity of eating grass."Yet even so, many failed to succumb, and thewarders had to thin the ranks by stillmeans.more drastic"The worst and most unimaginable horrors,"the lady continues, "were reserved for us at thebanks of the (Western) Euphrates (Kara Su) andthe Brzindjan plain. The mutilated bodies of women,girls audi lir.lt> children made everybody shudder.The brigands were doing all sort.- of awful deeds tothe women and girls that were with us, whose crieswent up to heaven. At the Euphrates, the Iand gendarmes threw into the river all the v< m liningchildren under fifteen years old. Those who couldswim were shot down as they struggled in the water."But the narrator was condemned to outlive thisspectacle" On the next stage of the journey, thefields and hill-sides were dotted with swollen andblackened corpses, which filled and fouled thwith their stench." It was not till the thirtysecondday of their march that they reached atemporary halting place, where the narrative comesto an end.

48What has been this woman's subsequent fatewedo not know, for the halting place was less thanhalf way to her final destination, and it is impossibleto conceive the suffering already crowdedinto that first month". The mere physical crueltyof it is appalling—a delicate lady driven thirtytwoclays' journey on foot through some of theroughest mountain-country in the world. Thespiritual torment could perhaps only be fathomedby actual experience. And this is only one narrativeout of scores, chosen here because it isdelivered with exactitude by the mouth of twowitnesses, not because it is in any way unique.On the contrary, the same horrors were beingenacted in hundreds of Anatolian towns and villagesand over thousands of miles of savage mountaintrails, enacted and repeated from the month ofApril till the present moment. And the narrativesare not open to doubt. Those gatheredtogether in the American Committee's Reportwere all recorded and endorsed by authoritativeauditors. And they are not vague denunciations,or highly coloured generalisations. There are, ofcourse, many general accounts of these atrocitiesin addition to these individual testimonies ; butthey, too, are remarkably free from vagueness andexaggeration, and when they are compared withthe first-hand evidence, they show agreement withiteven in minute details.

;49For instance there iaProfessor Hagopian's resume(published in the " Armenia" of Marseilles onSeptember 1st. 1915) of. the genera] impressionsgathered by a witness who had recently come fromthe interior of Anatolia to Constantinople. Hedescribes, soberly and exactly, the gangs ofprisoners being driven across the mountains, theblows of the gendarmes, the children born on theroad, the mothers and old men dying of exhaustion,even the incident of the woman throwingher baby into the well (see p. 41 above).The somewhat longer description, given in i}io,letter to a high Armenian ecclesiastic in neutralterritory, is so remarkable in its agreement thatcertain passages deserve to be quoted in illustration."In four provinces," says this letter, "the localauthorities gave facilities to those condemned todeportation— five or ten days' grace, permission toexecute a partial sale of their property, and theprivilege of hiring a cart between several familiesbut, at the end of several days, the carters leftthem on the road and returned to i^wn. Thecaravans tints formed used to meet on the morrow,or sometimes several days aftei' their start, withlands of brigands, or chc with Moslem peasants,who plundered them of everything. The handsfraternised with the gendarmes, and killed the fewmen or boys included in theearavans. They carriedoff' tli > women,girls and children, leaving only the

50old women, who were driven along by the gendarmeswith blows of the whip and died of hunger on theroacl. A. first-hand witness tells us how the womendeported from a certain province were left, afterseveral days, in the plain of Kharpont, where theyall died of starvation (fifty or sixty a day) : and theauthorities have merely sent a few people to burythem, so as not to endanger the health of the Moslempopulation ." The caravans of women and children are exposedin front of the Government buildings in every townor village where they pass, in order that the Moslemsmay take their choice." The caravan despatched from [the actual townfrom which thelady was deported whose narrativewe have quoted above] was thinned out in thisfashion, and the ivomcn and children who remainedover were thrown into the Euphrates at the jjlacecalled Kemakh-Boghazi, just outside Erzindjan."This passage is particularly important, becauseit relates events for which we already have theevidence of two quite independent, first-handwitnesses. Anyone who compares the italicisedsentences with the extracts quoted from theArmenian lady and her fellow-victim immediatelyabove, will see that the general report—the storyas it circulated through the interior of Anatoliaand travelled to Constantinople and Marseilles— isvery far from being exaggerated. It is less grue-

51some, less extreme, in its details, than the originaltestimony itself ; and this evident sobriety of thegeneral rumour, in a case where we can put it tothe test, must obviously strengthen our belief incases where the facts alleged are supported bysecondary evidence alone.This secondary evidence, however, is reallysuperfluous.The first-hand testimonies arc abundantenough, and convincing enough, to afford inthemselves a thorough exposition of the crime.They are concrete statements, fortifiedthroughoutby the names of well-known individuals who haveeither witnessed these atrocities or been theirvictims. For reasons of common prudence thesenames have to be withheld ; but anyone whoglances at the American Committee's Report willsee by the number of blanks, where names shouldbe, how direct and personal this evidence is.Moreover, the testimony comes from manyindependent quarters. From the town where theArmenian lady's journey wasbroken, we have thenarrative of a foreign resident, the citizen of aneutral state. It is a town on the EasternEuphrates (Murad Su), a meeting-place of routesfrom north to south, and very many convoys ofexiles passed this way."If," the resident writes, "it were simply a matterof beinsr obliged to leave here to go somewhere else.

52it would not be so bad. but everybody knows it isa case of going to one's death. If them wisany doubt about it, it has been removed by thearrival of a number of parties, aggregating severalthousand people, from Erzeroum and Erzindjan.I have visited their encampment a number oftimes and talked with some of the people. Theyare,almost without exception, ragged, filthy, hungryand ill. That is not surprising, in view of thefact that they have been on the road for nearlytwo months, with no change of clothing, no chanceto wash, no shelter, and little to eat. The Governmenthas been giving them some scanty rations hero. Iwatched them one time when their food was brought.Wild animals could not be worse. They rushed uponthe guards who carried the food and the guards beatthem back with clubs, hitting hard enough ro killthem sometimes. To watch them one could hardlybelieve that thes^ people were human beings." As one walks through the camp, mothers offertheir children and beg one to take them.In fact, theTurks have been taking their choice of these childrenand girls for slaves, or worse.In fact, they have evenhad their doctors there to examine the more likelygirls and thus secure the best ones." There are very few men among them, as most ofthem have been killed on the road.All tell the samestory of having been attacked and robbed by theKurds. Most of them were attacked over and overagain, and a great many of them, especiallythe men,were killed. Women and children Were also killed.Many died, of course, from sickness and exhaustion

53on tho way, and there have been deaths each day thatthey have been here. Several different parties havearrived and, after remaining a day or two, have beenpushed on with no apparent destination. Those whohave reached here are only a small portion, however,of thoso who started. By continuing to drive thesepeople on in this way it will be possible to dispose ofall of them in a comparatively short time."Among those with whom I have talked were threesisters. They had been educated at and spokeexcellent English. They said their family was therichest inand numbered twenty-five when theyleft, but there were now only fourteen survivors.The other eleven, including the husband of one ofthem and their old grandmother, had been butcheredbefore their eyes by the Kurds. The oldest malesurvivor of the family was eight years of age. Whenthey left , they had money, horse3 and personaleffects, but they had been robbed of everything,including even their clothing. They said some ofthem had been left absolutely naked, and others withonly a single garment, and when they reached avillage their gendarmes obtained clothes for themfrom some of the native women." Another girl with whom I talked is the daughterof the Protestant pastor of -. She said everymember of her family with her had been killed, andshe was left entirely alone. These and some othersare a few survivors of the better class of people whohave been exiled. They are being detained in anabandoned school-house just outside ofthe town andno one is allowed to enter it. They said they prac-

"tically were in prison,54although they were allowed togo to a spring just outside the building. It was thereI happened to see them. All the others are campedin a large open field with no protection at all fromthe sun."The condition of: these people indicate-; the fateof those who have left and are about to leave fromhere. I believe nothing has been heard from any ofthem as yet, and probably very little will be heard.The system that is being fallowed seems to be to havebands of Kurds awaiting them on the road to kill themen especially and incidentally some of the others.The entire movement seems to be the most thoroughlyorganized and effective massacre this country hasever seen."This is the verdict of an eye-witness who saw theOttoman Government's scheme in fall progress.He was witnessing in the twentieth century afterChrist the same horrors that hadbeen perpetratedin these regions six and eiffht centuries before theChristian era. When we read that the Assyrianor Babylonian Government " carried into captivity "such and such a broken people or tribe, we hardlyseize the meaning of the statement. Even whenwe see the process portrayed withgrim realism onthe concpterors bas-reliefs, it does not penetrateour imagination to the quick.But now we know.It has happened in our world, and the Assyrian'scrime was not so fiendish as the Turk's. "Organisedand effective.-that is what

a.:>inch a doportati m means, and that must alwaysiave been its implication. But the Assyrian at.ny rale gave the remnant a chance of life at theend of their journey. They received houses andlands, and often brought a new community tobirth in exile. The Turk was more consistent inhis cruelty. These people were to be deported totheir death, and nothing should reprieve them." I believe nothing has been heard from those whohave left from here, and probably very little willbe heard," says the witness. Unfortunately, hewas in error. Certainly most of those who hadbeen driven over the mountains from the far northmust have perished, as he surmised, on theirterrible journey. But there were others fromCilicia and Northern Syria who had a shorter roadto travel, and these did not succeed in dying bythe way. They were reserved for the last andmost hideous scene in the drama.

56ikkRJiAttlP. O. BOX 707UNIVERSITY. CALIFORNIAIV. THE JOURNEY'S END.The Young Turks' final denouement was notquite a novelty. They had rehearsed it in miniaturesome years before, when the " Committee ofUnion and Progress" had supplanted the Hamidianregime at Constantinople, and set itself to eliminatethe abuses of the city.The worst eyesore was thearmy of masterless dogs, which had been permittedby too tolerant generations to establish itself in thestreets, and exercise those functions of scavengerfor which an easy-going municipal administrationhad failed to provide by human agency. TheYoung Turks dealt promptly and effectively withthese undesirable denizens of their capital. Theycollected them on boats and marooned them ona desert island in the Sea of Marmora, where theanimals solved the problem of their future byperishing of starvation. When Enver and hisfriends were thinking out the problem of theArmenians last Spring, they did not forget thissuccessful precedent.The Armenians, in fact, (or such of them assurvived the process of deportation), were to beprovided for in the same fashion as the Stambouli

0/dogs, ami two places were selected by the Governmentfor their ultimate disposal. One o£ these wasSnltanieh, a tillage of -- the Konia district in thecentre of Anatolia, and the choice was scientificallymade : for Anatolia is a tabled and, with a wellwooded,well-watered periphery of mountaincountrytowards the sea, where the towns aresituated with their Armenian inhabitants, and acruel desert in its inland heart, where even theTurkman nomad can barely maintain his existence.At Sultanieh, a thousand families of Armeniantownspeople, assembled by weary marches fromevery quarter, were given a taste of the wilder]—a thousand families, and onty fifty grown menamong them,* to provide for the needs of thishelpless flock of women, children and invalidsflung thus suddenly upon their own resources, inan environment as abnormal to them as it wouldbe to the middle-class population of any town inEngland or France. Having established this"agricultural colony" on the waste, the Grovern-* This is vouched for by throe independent testimonies—a witness in the A.C.R. : the letter written (as in;evidence shows) by an Armenian Protestant to a citizenof the U.S., which was published in the Armenian paper'* (/otcJtiiftr/" oil September 4th, 1015 ; and a letter fromConstantinople, dated June 15th, 11*15, which will bequoted at greater length below.

58ment was content, and troubled itself about itscolonists no more.But Sultanieh was by no means the worst ofthe charnel-houses to which the remnant of theArmenian race was consigned. The greaternumber were sent on a longer journey to thesouth-east, and were concentrated at Aleppo, thecapital of Northern Syria, for dispersal among theArabian provinces beyond.Between Anatolia and Arabia, the northwesternhalf of the Ottoman Empire and itssouth-eastern adjunct, there is a violent climaticcontrast. The Anatolian highlands are physiologicallyakin to Europe, and the Armenians whodwell in them are not only Europeans in theircivilisation but are accustomed to an essentiallyEuropean climate—the same climate that prevailsin the Balkan Peninsula or Austria-Hungary.But when you descend the last tier of thesehighlands, or follow the Euphrates down its gorgesfrom the Armenian mountains into the Mesopotamianplains, you pass abruptly out of Europeinto country of a semi-tropical character. Youfind yourself in Northern Arabia, a vast amphitheatresloping gradually south-eastwards towardsthe Persian Gulf, and merging into some of themost sultry regions on the face of the earth.This amphitheatre has witnessed many ghastly

59dramas in its day, but none, perhaps, more ghastlythan the tragedy that is being enacted in it now,when its torrid climate is bein^ inflicted as asentence of death upon the Armenians deportedthither from their temperate homes in the north.Here isthe narrative of a resident at Aleppo whosaw them being herded through that city to theirdoom.The hideous rumour of their pilgrimage hadpreceded their arrival, and " atfirst," he says, " thesestories were not given much credence ; but as manyof the refugees are now arriving in Aleppo, no doubtany longer remains of the truth of the matter. OnAugust 2nd, about eight hundred middle-aged andold women, accompanied by childi"enunder the ageof ten years, arrived afoot from Diyarbekir, afterforty-five days en route, and in the most pitiablecondition imaginable. They report the taking of allthe young women and girls by the Kurds, thepillaging even of the last bit of money and otherbelongings, of starvation, of privation, and hardshipof every description. Their deplorable conditionbears out their statements in every detail." I am informed that 4,500 persons were sentfrom Sughurt to Ras-el-Ain, over 2,000 fromMezereh to Diyarbekir, and that all the cities ofBitlis, Mardin, Mosul, Severek, Malatia, Besneh,&c, have been depopulated of Armenians, the menand boys and many of the women killed, and thebalance scattered throughout the country. If thisis true, of which there is little doubt, even the3

60latter must naturally die of fatigue, hunger anddisease, The Governor of Dor-el-Zor, who is nowat Aleppo, says there are 15,000 Armenians in hiscity. Children are frequently sold to preventstarvation, as the Government furnishes practicallyuo subsistence."To he cast adrift to starve, like the pariahdogs of Constantinople !Thatwas the destinyfor which these Armenians had been deportedso many hundred agonising miles.Their penultimatestage at that city on the Murad Su (wequoted a description by an eye-witness above)must have seemed to many the culmination of theirmisery. Bat here in Aleppo they were sufferingsomething worse, and the worst of all was still tocome. We are introduced to it by the sinister nameof Der-el-Zor.Aleppo lies in an oasis of the desert,and the river which waters it buries itself inswamps about a day's journey to thesouth-east oftb.c city. These swamps were allotted to the firstcomers; but they did not suffice for .so great a.company, and the later batches were forwarded fivedays' journey further on, to the town of Der-el-Zor,the capital of the next province down the course ofthe Euphrates, where the river takes its wayrds the Persian Gulf through the scorchingpesof the Arabian amphitheatre.On these final marches the victims suffered achange of tormentors. The Kurds lingered in the

61hills, and the Bedawin Arabs took up their role." These poor victims of their oppressors' lust andhate might better have died by the bullet in theirmountain home than be dragged about the countryin this way. Many hundreds have died fromstarvation and abuse along the roadside, and nearlyall are dying of starvation, of thirst, of beingkidnapped by the Anazeh Arabs in the desertwhere they have been taken " —Arabs who themselvessuccumb to starvation in their nativewilderness, as another witness points out. And sothey came to Der-el-Zor.We have a detailed account of what is happeningat Der-el-Zor, from a particularly trustworthysource—the testimony of Friiulein Beatrice Kohner,a Swiss missionary from Basle.Friiulein Rohnerhas personally witnessed the sufferings of theArmenians at Der-el-Zor, and has published herdescription of them in the " Sonnenaufgang "(Sunrise),the organ of the " Deutscher Hilfsbundfur Christliches Liebeswerk im Orient " (GermanLeague of Help for Work of Christian Charity inthe East). Here are some extracts from hernarrative :" At Der-el-Zor, a large town in the desert, aboutsix days drive from Aleppo, we saw a big Khan, allthe rooms, the roof and the verandahs of which werecrowded with Armenians, composed mostly of wonieu

02anil children, with, a few old inon. They had slepton their blankets wherever they could find any shade." For those mountaineers the desert climate isterrible.On the next day I reached a large Armeniancamp of goat-skin tents, but most ofpeople were sleeping out inthe unfortunatethe sun on the burningBands. The Turks had given them a day's rest onaccount of the large number of sick.It was evidentfrom their clothing that these people had beenwell-to-do ; they were natives of Geben, anothervillage near Zeitoun, and were led by their religioushead.It was a daily occurrence for five or six of thechildren of these people to die by the wayside.Theywere just burying a young woman, the mother of alittle girl nine year3 of age, and they besought me totake this little girl with me."Those who have no experience of the desertcannot picture tothemselves the sufferings entailedby such a journey—a hilly desert without shademarching over rough and rugged rocks, unable tosatisfy one's scorching thirst from the muddy watersof the Euphrates, which winds its course along inclose proximity." On the next day I met another carnp of thejeZeitoun Armenians. There were the same indescribablesufferings, the same accounts of misery—* Whydo they not kill us once for all ? * 'rfSked they. Fordays we have no water to drink, and our children arecrying for water. At night the Arabs attack us ; theysteal our bedding, our clothes that we have been ableto get together ; they carry away by force our girls,and outrage our women. If anv of us are unable to

f>3walk, the convoy of gendarmes beat us. Some of owewomen threw themselves down from the rocks intothe Euphrates in order to save their honour—some ofthese with their infants in their arms."We read the same horrors in brief in an article(referred to above) which Professor Hagopiancontributed to the Journal "Armenia" of Marseilleson September 1st, 1915 :" These unhappy deported people (belonging ingreat part to Zeitoun) have been chiefly deposited intwo places—one section of them in a swampy region,which has hitherto remained uninhabited on accountof the deadly malaria ; while the remainder havebeen sent to a still more unhealthy place in thedirection of the Persian Gulf (i.e. Der-el-Zor) so badthat they have begged to be sent to the swamps ;their petition has not been granted."butYet there was nothing but death in the swamps." The malaria makes ravages among them, becauseof the complete lack of food and shelter. Howcruelly ironic to think that the Government protendsto be sending them there to found a colony : andthey have no ploughs, no seeds to sow, no bread, noabodes ; in fact they are sent with empty hands.''(A.C.R.)" When the refugees first came to Aleppo," thesame witness relates, " the Christian populationbought food and clothes for them ; but the Valirefused to allow them any communication with therefugees, pretending that they had all they wanted

64A few days later they could get the help theyneeded." In other words, the Government'sscheme was baffled by the local Christians'importunity— yet not for long." The Armenian population of Cilicia which hasbeen exiled to. the provinces of Aleppo, Der-el-Zor,and Damascus, will certainly die of hunger." According to our information, the Governmenthas refused to leave in ihe;r homes even theinsignificant Armenian colonies at Aleppo and Ourfa,who might otherwise have succoured their unhappybrethren who have been driven farther south ;andthe Katholikos of Cilicia, who is still at Aleppo, isbusy distributing thehim."succour which we are sendingThis is from the often quoted letter datedAugust 15th, 1915, and addressed to a highArmenian ecclesiastic on neutral territory. Itshows how the Armenian Katholikos of Cilicia, themost prominent representative of his nation inthe vicinity, exerted himself to bring succourwhen the local Christians had failed. And this isborne out by an earlier letterfrom Constantinople,dated June 15th, 1915, and published on August28th, by the Armenian paper " Gotchnag " ofNew York :" Amongst the thousand families deported to Sultanieh,there are scarcely fifty men. Most have madethe journey on foot, some of the old women and of

—the infants have died on the road, youug women withchild have had miscarriages, and have been left onthe mountains. Even at this moment, in their placeof exile, these deported people produce a dozenvictims daily, the toll of disease and hunger. AtAleppo it requires at the present £35 (Turkish) perdiem to supply the deported people with bread. Youcan imagine to yourself what must be their situationin the deserts where even rhe native araba arcfamished."A sum of money has been sent from Constantinopleto the Katholikos of Cilicia who is now atAleppo, witness of the misery ami agony of his flock.Here, at least, the authorities allow the distributionof succour to these unfortunates. At Sultanieh it hasso far proved impossible to bring help within theirreach, for the Government refuses permission, inspite of the efforts of the American Embassy. 11These efforts of foreign philanthropy were persistent,but unavailing-Another Armenian paper,the " Bahag" records, on September 9tib, that" A Commission of fi ve members has left Americafor Constantinople to help the Armenians in distress.The Mission is anxious to travel in the interior of thecountry to acquaint itself with the situation on theactual spot and take corresponding action; but theTurkish Government Las refused them permission."Thus the Young Turkish Government, whenthey had herded the remnant of the Armenians totheir "-.agricultural colonies," insured themselves

GGagainst any measures of relief that might at theeleventh hour have deprived their " Armenianproblem"' of its complete " solution."Such, in outline, is the story of what has happenedto the Armenian population which wasdwelling in peace and prosperity throughout thetowns and villages of the Ottoman Empire, onlyeight months ago. And we have confined ourselvesin the narrative to the " normal " course ofthe crime, to the scheme as it was organised bythe Government at Constantinople and carriedoutin general by their local subordinates. We havenot mentioned the extravagances of wickedness ;and yet the average of horror was surpassed inmany cases by the initiative of particularly fiendishgovernors or particularly brutal gendarmes. Tortures,for instance, of mediaeval cruelty werecommonly practised before their butchery upon theArmenian men, and the following statement froma foreign resident in an Anatolian town is supportedby many less detailed allusions :—" I was called to a house one day, where I saw asheet which originatedfrom the prison and whichwas being sent to the wash. I got to the bottom ofthe matter by the help of two very reliable personswho witnessed part of it themselves" The prisoner is put in a room. Gendarmesstanding in twos at bothsides and two at the end of

67the room administer, each in their turn, bastinadoesas long as they have enough force in them. In thetime of the Romans 40 strokes were administered atthe very most ; in this place, however, 200, 300, 500and even 800 strokes are administered. The footswells up, then bursts open, owing to the numerousblows. The prisoner is then carried back into thoprison and to bed by the rest of the prisoners. Thoprisoners who become unconscious after these blowsare revived by means of cold water, which is thrownon their heads." On the next day, or, more exactly, during thenight, as all ill-treatments are carried on at night in, as well as in,the whole bastinadoing isbeing carried on again in spite of swollen feet andwounds. I was then in , but in that prison therewere also 30 prisoners in number, and all had theirfeet in such a state that they began to burn and hadto be amputated, or were already taken off. A youngman was beaten to death in the space of live minutes.Apart from the bastinadoing, other methods wereemployed, too—such as putting hot irons on thechest." (A.C.R.)*But perhaps the most hideous variation on theofficial programme was perpetrated by the Governorof Trebizond :" A number of lighters have been loaded withpeople at different times and sent off toward . It* Another testimony, printed in the same report, declaresthat " the bastinado was used frequently, as well as firetorture (in some cases eyes are said to have been put out)."(A.C.R.)

68is generally believed that such persons were drov. tied.During the early days a large caique, or lighter, wasloaded with men supposed to be members of theArmenian committee and sent off toward . Twodays later a certain Russian subject and one of thosewho loft in the boat returned overland to badly,wounded about the head and so crazy lie could notmake himself understood." All he could say was ' Boom!Boom!'He wasarrested, by the authorities and taken to the MunicipalHospital, where he died the following day. ATurk said this boat was met riot far from byanother boat containing gendarmes, who proceeded tokill all the men and throw them overboard. Theythought they had killed them all, but this Russian,who was big and powerful, was only wounded andswam ashore unnoticed. A number of such caiqueshave left loaded with men. and usually theyreturn empty after a few hours/'This account is quoted from ;i deposition in theAmerican Committee's report, and the tale is corroboratedfrom innumerable quarters. It hastravelled through the length and breadth of theOttoman Empire, and indeed the evidence for itwas convincing enough. The same witness goeson to describe how "A number of bodies of womenand children have lately been thrown up by thesea upon the sandy beach below the walls of theItalian monastery on this coast, and were buried byGreek women in the sand where they were found."

6i>V. FALSE EXCUSES.All this horror, both the concerted crime and itslocal embellishments, was inflicted upon the Armenianswithout a shadow of provocation." We areat war," the Turkish Government will probablyreply ;" We are fighting for our existence. TheArmenians were hoping for the victory of ourenemies ;they were plotting to bring that victoryabout. They were traitors at large in a war-zone,and we were compelled to proceed against themwith military severity." But such excuses areentirely contradicted by the facts. These Armenianswere not inhabitants of a war-zone. Noneof the towns and villages from which they weresystematically deported to their death were anywherenear the seat of hostilities. They were allin the interior of Anatolia, equally far removedfrom the Caucasian frontier and from the Dardanelles.There was no possibility of theirco-operating with the armies of the Entente, and itwas equall} 7 impossible that they should attempt aninsurrection by themselves, for they were not acompact community.They were scattered in smallsettlements over a wide country, and were every

70where in a minority as compared with their Turkishneighbours. Civil and military power were safelyin Turkish hands, and the Armenians were particularlyunlikely to attempt a coup de main. Itmust be repented that these Armenian townsfolkwere essentially peaceable, industrious people, asunpractised in arms* and as unfamiliar with theidea of violence as the urban population in WesternEurope. The Ottoman Government cannot possiblydisguise its crime as a preventive measure, for theArmenians were so far from harbouring designsagainst it beforehand, that they actually foreboreresistance even after the Government had issuedtheir death-warrant, In fact, there are actuallyonly two cases recorded in which the deportationscheme encountered active opposition at all.There was the successful opposition in the Antiochdistrict, where the Armenian villagers took to thehills, and fought for seven weeks with their backsto the sea till they were almost miraculously rescuedby the French fleet, under circumstances alreadyrelate 1 above. And there was the desperate heroismof Shabin Kar.diissar, a town in the hinter land ofTrebizond, where -1,000 Armenians took up armsat the summons to deportation, and held out againstthe Turkish troops from the middle of May tothe* For years the Government had taken rigorous measuresto prevent thoni from possessing themselves of rifles.

7Jbeginning of July. Then the Turks brought upreinforcements* and artillery and overwhelmed thetown with case. " Karahissar," it is stated in theletter to the Armenian ecclesiastic, " was bombarded;and the whole population, of the country districtsas well as the town, has been massacred withoutpity, not excepting the bishop himself." Nothingcould show better than this how little the TurkishGovernment had to fear from the Armenians, andhow eagerly it seized upon the quickest means totheir extermination, as soon as an opportunityappeared.And this was the Government's procedure towardsthe helpless,unsuspecting Armenians in thetowns. When it had to deal with the less tiactabhpeasant communities in the hills, it gave upany pretence of concealing its intentions, andwithout waiting to summon them fordeoortation,at once attacked them nakedly with the sword.Such was the treatment of Zeitoun, an Armeniansettlement which for eight hundred years hadlived and prospered in virtual independence amongthe mountains that overlook the Cilician plain.The Zeitounlis were distinguished from the otherArmenians of Cilicia. by the possession of" arms,and they seem to have girded themselves betimesfor the approaching death-struggle. But theywere disarmed, it is said, by the promise that, if

72they submitted, their defenceless brethren in thelowland villages would be ransomed from destructionby their act. The Turkish promise wasbroken, of course, as soon as the Turkish objectwas secured ; and. taken at such a disadvantage,the heroic mountaineers inevitably succumbed." The bloody curtain has fallen over Zeitoun, andthe fighting stock of these brave mountaineers hasbeen subdued in this memorable year of crime I Asthe faithful followers and remnants of the Roupeniandynasty, they had hithertokept their home3 intactand had successfully withstood the Turkish inroads.They have at last been overcome by heavy Turkishforces, and the stronghold of Zeitoun is now in thohands of the enemy'." It appears that after the failure last winter of theproject.^ I Turkish plan of compaign against the SuezCanal, Djemal Pasha, the Commander of the SyrianArmy, led a large force of regulars against Zeitoua.The Zeitounlis entrenched themselves in their fastnessesand fought for two or three months against anenemy which outnumbered them greatly, besidesbeing by heavy artillery, hoping that reinforcementswould arrive in time for their support.But no help came and they fought to their last cartridge.It was towards the end of May that Zeitounwas taken by the Turks, who massacred all theinhabitants they found.A few hundred old womenare said to have been deported to Angora, and othersto the plains of Mesopotamia, where report says theyar". ejected to grave indignities " —indignities

Zeitoun,73with which we haw been acquainted already inFraulein Bonner's description of Dev-el-Zor. andwhich xhe writer just quoted would have called by astronger name, bad he been acquainted with berterrible narrative.This is the end of Zeitoun, as it is narrated inthe July issue of the London journal " ArcZeitoun lias perished, but further Eastward anotherpeasant community, Sassoun, has been holding theassassins desperately at bay. Sassoun is a federationof forty Armenian villages, situated in thehill country which separates the upper basin of theTigris from the gorge of the Murad Su. It haleda semi-independent, almost self-sufficing existencefor centuries, to the chagrin of the OttomanGovernment and the envy of its less prosperousneighbours the Kurds. At Sassoun A.bd-ul-Hamid ma-lea preliminary experiment in main1895, and in May. 1915. the Young Turkmarkeditifor destructi

"visited with massacre.74The villages of the plain haveall been ravaged. Rouben (one o£ the leaders in thedefence), is still holding out with his lion-heartedcompanions, a tiny but invincible band, against thesinister foe. But his days are numbered. To savehim one would havo to lose no time in putting himin possession of unlimited quantities of ammunition.'The Sassoimlis are men of resource.They haveeven learnt to manufacture ammunition from nativematerials.But they are being besieged by Turkishregular troops with heavy guns, and all the Kurdsare on the war path against them. We may hearany clay that Sassoun has fallen, and that 15,000more Armenians have been ruthlessly destroyed.That is how the Turks are dealing with the fewArmenians in a position to defend themselves.Yet the only sin ofSassoun and Zeitoun has beentheir invidious prosperity—a sin which has noconnection whatever with the Avar. In their caseas in the rest, the " war-zone " pretext utterlybreaks down, and there is only one instance inwhich it can be put forward with any show ofjustification—that of the Armenians resident atConstantinople itself or in its immediate neighbourhood.These Armenians are perhaps the mostorderly and industrious of any in the OttomanEmpire, yet as their situation might have enabledthem to work in collusion with the Allied forces atthe Dardanelles, we will examine their treatment

75for a moment, to .sec whether military considerationsmay, here at least, have been the real motivefor their deportation. There is ample evidence ofthe facts at onr disposal." At Adrianople, by order of the Government, allArmenian officials in administrative, public andfinancial institutions have been dismissed. Turkishsoldiers brought in from other districts are committingunheard-of atrocities. The Armenians arecontinually exposed to persecutions. About fiftyArmenians from tie city have been imprisoned orexiled. The Armenians are forbidden to go abroad,or even to travel about in the Province." The Armenians of Keshan have been deported.The Armenian boatmen ofSilivri have been throwninto prison on the charge of revichialling the Englishsubmarines."The Armenian church and convent at Dbimotikahave been confiscated by the Government. TheArmenians of this locality bave been given twoweeks' grace to emigrate elsewhere.For the deportationof the Armenians of Malgara the same twoweeks' grace has been given. Their houses will beoccupied by the Turks who have emigrated fromSerbia. The Armenians of Tchorlou have beendeported."This is quoted from a letter written from Constantinoplewhich was published on August 28thby the Armenian journal " Goichnag " of New

—76York, ami wo may follow the sequel in the " Letterto an Ecclesiastic'"* so often quoted before :••The scheme has just been put into execution inlli." very neighbourhood of Constantinople. Thebulk of the Armenians in the district of Ismid andProvince of Broussa have been forcibly removedto Mesopotamia, leaving their hearths and possessions.They have likewise removed the population of Adapazar,Ismid, Gegveh, Armacha, and the neighbourhood—infact of all the villages in the Ismiddistrict, except Bagtchedjik, which has been alloweda few days' reprieve. . . ." Now it is the turn of Constantinople, and thepopulation, which has been stricken with acutepanic, is in any case waiting from moment tomoment for the execution of its doom. The arrestsare innumerable, and those arrested are at onceremoved from the capital. Certainly most of themwill not survive. It is the retail shopkeepers, bornin the provinces but settled at Constantinople, thathave been removed up till now, including (six names'given as specimens). Efforts are being made to saveat least the Armenian population of Constantinoplei'vom this horrible extermination of the Armeniannation, in order that in the future we may have atleast some point d'appui for the Armenian cause inTurkey."This letter bears date August 15th, and musr,therefore, be more recent than one published in NewYork on August 28th, considering the time it takes forthe mail to travel from Constantinople to America.

—77But here, too, all efforts were vain. There hadbeen a preliminary assault upon the Armenians ofthe capital as early as June 15th, when twentysixof their most prominent representatives werehanged in public after summary court-martial/*Yet that had passed, and it would have been alight enough sacrifice to pay for the immunity of:the rest. But the Government was only bidingits time. On September^ th, " Gotchnag v reportedthat :—" In all the quarters of Constantinople they havebegun to draw up a register of Armenians, makingseparate lists of those who are immigrants fromArmenia and those who were born at Constantinople.It is supposed that they are going to deportthose that came from Armenia."After this, events followed quickly. OnSeptember 5th, the "Horizon " of Tiflis published atelegram from Bukarest, announcing that"The Turks are continuing their work of exterminatingthe Armenians. From Constantinople theyhave deported the Armenian men. Ten thousanddeported men have already been massacred in themountains ofIsmid."The official scheme once more in operation !After reading this, we are not surprised to learnfrom other sources that Armenian women and* Twenty of the names are published in the Julyissue of the journal " Ararat."

:child m Constantinople and Thrace havearrived to swell the " agricultural colony " in theAnatolian desert.Thus the Armenians of the suburban provincesbeen condemned in the end to the samehorrible late as their Anatolian brethren. " Armenianboatmen at Silivri may have revictualledBritish .submarine- I"—that is the excuse for it all.-the real motive. That is revealed inthe i: tal notification that "their houses willbe occupied by Turkish refugees from Serbia," andre inevitably reminded of Talaat Bey's boastthat ,:after this there will be no Armenian questionfor fiftyion"is, after all. the cue. " Asthe Armenian, the place where he was shall7 him no more, and the Turk shall inherit hisstance and his dwelling." When we re-readvidence in this light, we see the signs of such apolicy appeal g sjularity."Pout en cleared of Armeniplace the Armenia:.exiled. The Turks are in perfect delirium.'"•'More than Armeni :.-. that have been.:om a certain province, are be!thrown intribe#, leailens and til!ahadjirs. I' all

79unfortunate people have not even graves for their"As soon as the Armenian refugees left theirhouses, niouhadjirs from Thrace took possession ofthem. The former had been forbidden to takeanything with them, and they themselves saw alltheir goods pass into other hands. There niust beabout 20,000 to 25,000 Turks in this town now, andthe name of the town seems to have been changed toa Turkish one/'These three testimonies are taken from theAmerican Committee's Report ; and here is anextract from a letter, written from Athens anddated Jnly 8th, which describes the process ofeupplantation in still more incriminating detail :''Two missionaries of neutral nationality, withwhom I am personally acquainted, passed through.Athens yesterday. They just began to inform meby saying that the condition of the Armenians inCilicia was awful. The city of Dortyol. alter havingbeen evacuated of its Armenian population, has beenoccupied by Turkish families. The whole of theArmenian inhabitants have been sent away, turnedout oftheir homes, and are naturally suffering fromhunger. The exposure is something that cannotdescribed. Before evacuation, some nine leadingmerchants were hanged . . ." Zeiioun has met the same fate. There is not asingle Armenian left in Zeitoun, and all the h

soare occupied by Turkish people. My friends couldnot understand exactly what had happened to theZeitouniots,* but the fact is that special care hasbeen taken by the Turkish authorities that toomany of them should not live together. Attemptshave been made to make them Mohammedans, andit is known thatthe authorities attempted foTdistributeone, two, or three families to each Turkishvillage in the district of Marash."They have attempted to do the same thing toHad j in, but. somehow or other, only half the inhabitantshave left. Naturally the homes of thesehave been occupied by Turks."The Turks of Tarsos and Adana are showingthe same disposition as they did before the massacresof 1909." Missionaries from Beirout state that the same persecutionis in force against Christian Syrians."There could be no more damning pieces ofevidence than these, for they prove incontrovertiblythat the crime against the Armenian race wasdeliberate, carefully thought out, and highlyorganised in its execution. These " mouhadjirs "were Moslems from Europe, emigrants from lostOttoman provinces which had passed underChristian rule. They had been mustering sincethe Balkan War within the western fringe of thediminishedOttoman Empire, a drifting, unmarsh-*After reading FriiuleinRohner's evidence from Derel-Zor,we are better informed.

ailed horde And now .suddenly we find themdistributed through the Asiatic provinces, even usfar afield as ( ilicia, in groups nicely proportionedto the Armenian population in each locality, andready at a moment's notice to occupy theArmenians' places, as soon as the decree for theirdeportation had gone forth. "As soon as theArmenian refugees left their houses, mouhadjirsfrom Thrace took possession of them." There isno hitch here, no saving procrastination. Theorganisation is masterly, and conclusive in itsimplication. And no consideration was to exemptany portion of the race from the common doom.The Armenians who had been conscribed for theOttoman army and were actually serving" in itsranks, might at least have been protected by theuniform they wore. Instead, their service merelyorganised them for the slaughter. We havementioned how they were disarmed and put tolabour upon the communications behind theCaucasian front. Here is the final chapter in theirstory."The Armenian soldiers, too, naveundergone thesame fate. To begin with, all have been disarmed,;md are at work constructing roads.We know froma trustworthy source that the Armenian soldiers ofthe province of Erzeroum, at work on the Erzeroum-Erzindjan road, have all been massacred. TheArmenian soldiers of the province of Diyarbekirhave all been massacred on the Diyarbekir-Ourfa and

82Diyarbekir-Kharpout roads. However, from Kharpout1,800 young Armenians were despatched as soldiersto Diyarbekir to work there. All were massacred inthe neighbourhood of Arghana. "We have no newafrom the other districts, but the same fate hasassuredly been inflicted upon them."This is an extract from the letter addressed to ahigh Armenian ecclesiastic, and it is supported bythe independent and direct testimony of a Moslemsoldier in one of the labour-battalions in question,who had been on fatigue-duty burying hismassacred Christian comrades. (A.C.R.)Thus the Ottoman Government sacrificed evenmilitary advantage to the complete execution of itsArmenian scheme ; and the deed is perhaps themeanest, though far from the most wicked, of allthat it has perpetrated. Yet this, too, hasbeen done without a shadow of excuse, tosubmissive labourers in peaceful districts, separatedby impassable mountains from the seat of war."When we turn to what has happened in the realwar-zone, we are confronted with atrocities sohideous that they could never be palliated by themost vital military necessity.

83VI. MURDER OUTRIGHT.Turkey's eastern war-zone ran through the homecountryof the Armenian race. For we have alreadyexplained that the Armenians murdered by deportationwere not in general the people of Armeniaproper, but for the most part old-establishedsettlements scattered through the towns of Anatoliaand Cilicia towards the west. In Armenia properthe Armenians were not confined to the towns ;the peasantry in the open country was Armenianas well. In fact, somewhat more than halfthe Armenians of the Ottoman Empire werestill concentrated, before the outbreak of war,in these eastern inarches ; so that the regiondefined by the upper courses of the Euphrates andTigris on the west and south, and by the Russianand Persian frontiers on the north and east, wasoccupied by a comparatively homogeneous Armenianpopulation, except for the settlements of intrusiveKurds. Here was the historical centre of thenation, its most famous cities, its finest monumentsof architecture and art ;and here, precisely, theRussian and Ottoman battle lines have swayed toand fro for nearly a year—a year of disaster for theArmenian race.

—84In brief, the course of the campaign has been usfollows. In the early winter, almost immediatelyafter they had intervened in the war, the Turkslook the offensive on a large scale across theRussian frontier, and sent another army eastwardto invade the Persian province of Azerbaijan ; bothmovements broke down, and before the springof 1915 their forces had been driven out ofTrans-Caucasia again and compelled to evacuateAzerbaijan, after a transitory occupation of itscapital Tabriz. When the Russians began to crossthe frontier in their turm theOttoman authoritiesin the border-province of Van let loose the Turkishtroops and Kurdish irregulars on the Armenianpopulation. In the countryside the Armenianswere overwhelmed, but in the town ofVan itself,when they had seen some of their leading menmurdered, and massacre overshadowing the rest,they took up arms, expelled the murderers, andstood a siege of 27 days—1,500 defenders against5,000 assailants equipped with artillery—till theywere triumphantly relieved by the advancingRussians on May 17th, Thereby, the easternshore of Lake Van was cleared of the enemy—thebasin of Lake Van is the very heart of Armeniaand in the early summer months the Russianforces pushed slowly round the lake towards thewest. But about the end of July, the Turksreceived heavy reinforcements, and, resuming the

85offensive, succeeded in reoccupying Van. Againafter three weeks they were ejected from theirpositions, and now the line runs approximatelywhere it ran in June—right across the basin of Van,with the lake itself dividing the combatants.Oncemore the Russians seem to be slowly forgingahead, clearing the country of Turk and Kurd.But the geographical conditions are difficult, andthe enemy is superior in numbers. The Russiansmay complete the liberation of -Armenia in time ;but meanwhile the worst catastrophes have occurred,and the peasantry that was anxiously awaitingtheir arrival has either been annihilated by massacreor scattered abroad in exile and destitution.The Turco- Kurdish soldiery began to indulgeitself in atrocities the moment hostilities broke out.The Persian province of Azerbaijan contains a largepopulation ofSyriac Christians, and the sufferingsof these people at the hands of the invading hordesare described with terrible detail in letters fromGerman missionaries* resident among them, letterswhich were published on October 18th in the Dutchnewspaper" de Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Coura7it."i* Members of the " Deutsche Orient-Mission."f The "Courant " is the leading journal of Holland,and it is by no means inclined to give undue prominenceto facts of ill-savour to Germany or her allies ; for it i3one of the few Dutch papers that have been privilegedby the German Administration to sell copies in Belgium.

——8iFrom the contents of these letters we select thefollowing :"The latest" news is that £,000 Syrians and 100Armenians have died of disease alone, at the missions,within the last five months. All villages in thesurrounding district, with tv, o or three exceptionshave heen plundered and burnt, 20,000 Christianshave b:en slaughtered in Ourmia and its environsMany churches have been destroyed and burnt, andalso many houses in the town . . .."And here is a description (rum another letter :" In Haftewan and Salmast 850 corpses, "withoutheads, have been recovered from the wells andcisterns alone. Why ? Because the commandingofficer had put a price on every Christian head. InHaftewan alone more than 500 women and girlswere delivered to the Kurds at Sandjhulak. Onecan imagine the fateof these unfortunate creatures.In Diliman crowds of Christians were thrown intoprison and compelled to accept Islam. The menwere circumcised. Gulpardjin, the richest villagein the Ourmia province, has been razed to the ground.The men were slain, the good-looking women andgirls carried away. The same in Babaru. Hundredsof women jumped into the deep river, when theysaw how many of their sisters were violated by thehands of brigands, in broad daylight, in the middleof the road. So also at Miandoab in the Suldusdistrict."These atrocities on foreign ground are horribleenough, but they are altogether dwarfed in scale

:*7by what the Turks have been doing more recentlyin their own territory. Their renewed offensivelast July was accompanied by the complete exterminationof the Armenian peasantry in the districtsimmediately behind their lines, as well asover thecountry they traversed in their advance.The first news of this reached the ' :Vryemya " of Petrograd on July 22nd.Nov" The Turkish atrocities in the district of Bitlisare indescribable. After having massacred thewhole male population of this district, the Turkscollected 9,000 women and children from the surroundingvillages, and drove them in upon Bitlis.Two days later they marched them out to the bankof the Tigris, shot them all, and threw the 9corpses into the river."On the Euphrates, the Turks have out downmore than 1,000 Armenians, throwing their bodiesinto the river. At the same time, four battalionswere ordered to march upan the valley of Moush,to finish, with the 12,000 Armenians inhabiting thisvalley. According to the latest information, themassacre has already begun. The Armenians areresisting, but through lack of cartridges they willall be exterminated by the Turks. All theArmenians in the Diyarbekir region will likewisebe massacred."At Moushj at any rate, it was not long beforethe ghastly rumour was confirmed. On August20th the journal t;Horizon''' of Tinis, reported that" The Turks have massacred the whole malepopulation in the plain of Moush. Only 5,000

88people have succeeded in escaping and findingrefuge at Sassoun, where the insurgent Armeniansare still holding out."Yet these vaguer narratives were notso terribleas the more detailed account which found its way amonth later to America, and was published onSeptember 4th, by the Armenian journal" Gotchnag " of New York :"Incredible news comes in about the massacresat Bitlis. In one village 1,000 Armenians —men, women and children—have been crowded intoa wooden house, and the house set on fire. Inanother large village of the district, only 36people have escaped the massacre. In another,they roped together men and women by dozens,and threw them into the Lake of Van. A youngArmenian of Bitlis, who was in the army, and who,after being disarmed and employed on road-making,succeeded in escaping and reaching Van, relatesthat the ex-vali of Van, Djevat Bey, has had allmales between the ages of fifteen and fortymassacred at Bitlis. He has had their familiesdeported in the direction ofSert, but has kept withhim all the prettiest girls. Bitlis is now filledby tens of thousands of Turkish and Kurdishmouhadjirs.^The tragedy of the Armenians in the war- zonewas thus of a different complexion from theirtragedy in the cities of Anatolia.There was morebarbaric crudity here in the manner of their

8'Jdestruction, and we miss the fiendish ingenuity ofthe deportations. Yet where Enver slew histhousands, Djevat was slaying his tens of thousands ;for he was aiming at nothing less than the extinctionof the Armenia!! population in the homelandof the race.Yet he did uot altogether succeed.'The retiringRussians contested stubbornly every mile of ground,and won respite for a certain proportion of thenon-combatants to evacuate their threatened homesm time. On that panic-journey through themountains the sufferings of these refugees wereterrible, and there are incidents that rival theagony of their brethren who were being herdedover those other mountains of Anatolia hundreds' ;of miles away, under the lash of the Turkishgendarmes. On the road," writes one of theGerman missionaries in Azerbaijan, " Ifound fourlittle children. The mother sat on the ground, herback resting against a wall. The hollow-eyedchildren ran up to me, stretching out their handsand crying Bread ; '! Dread ! When I camecloser to the mother, \ saw that she wasdying...."'Ami here is a description of the whole scene,from a resident in Trans-Caucasia, who went to thefrontier-village of [gdir to arrange for the reception

;90of the refugees, and watched the harrowingprocession passing by :" I wonder if it is possible to witness a moreagonising sight than the present one. Humanbeings are dying in hundreds from hunger, thirstand exhaustion, and the means for relieving thedistress are very scanty. There is absolutely nopossibility of even buying bread. The first contingentof refugees has already reached this place. Owing tocongestion on the roads, the human tide had to bebroken up into two channels : about 100,000 walkedthrough the plain 01 Abagha, their rear being guardedby the Russian army under General N. and theArmenian regiments under Andranig and Deroanother 50,000 from the city of Van were divertedinto Persia, their rear being defended by the mountedregiments of Keri and Hamazasp.Bloody rear-guardactions are being fought to stem the Turks and Kurds,wh o are pressing forward in order to cut the line ofretr eat of the Armenians."As dreadful a spectacle, to the eye, as that whichother witnesses were beholding at Aleppo or at thecrossing of the Murad Su ; and yet what a differencebetween the two !Those fainting exiles fromthe Anatolian and Cilician towns were being drivenby remorseless enemies to a lingering death.peasantsTheseof Van were stumbling forward towardslife and safety, cheered by the knowledge that thesoldiers of a friendly nation were fighting, anddying, to shield their escape. Yet they had still

':91much* tosuffer whan they reached their destinatiabout the first week in August, 1915."All measures which were humauly possible towelcome this seething mass of humanity had beentaken at Etchmiadzin, but the strain was beyondanticipation.'The Fraternal Aid ' Committee, underthe presidency of the Katholikos, and the MedicalCorps were fully represented ; while the NationalBureau of Tiflis, and the Armenian Committees ofMoscow, Bakou and other places, as well as varioussocieties and unions, had sent men and womenworkers. All these tended the sick, the exhausted,the motherless children, and yet with all this fraternalaid tendered by the Russian Armenians, the supplyfell far short of the need. Cholera, dysentery andepotted feversoon showed themselves in a virulentform ; while the scarcity of commodities in theCaucasus and local difficulties curtailed the measureof succour that could be given."The picture is heart-rending, but it is not thesame picture as " Der-el-Zor," and the bringers ofsuccour are gradually beginning to cope with theneed." About 20,000 orphan children have already beencared for ; improvised hospitals have been opened inmany localities; hygienic measures have beenadopted to stamp out the epidemics through whichthe figure of mortality reached 200 a clay early inSeptember. Trainloads of flour, sugar, tea, drugs,clothing and other commodities have been offered byArmenians throughout Russia. Prof. Kishkin, theplenipotentiary of the Federation of Russian Zemstvos,

92who was sent to Etchmiadzin to enquire into thecondition of these refugees, describes the situation aslamentable, and has asked for £50,000 for immediateneeds. 1 '*Yet from one point of \ iew tliis break-down o£assistance is a factor of hope, for it lias happenedbecause the stream of refugees lias been so great.X less than 250,000 Armenians from Turkey havepassed alive across the Russian frontier— a largecompany compared to the little band of 5,000 thathas found its way to Port Said. This quarter of amillion of homeless, starving, disease-stricken peopleis the one hope and stay of the Armenian race. Ifthey can be saved alive, the vitality of Armenia willhave survived the hideous attempt of the expiringTurk to blot her out for ever from the r.>]l ofnations. "j"* Quoted from the September number of the journal•• .1/ arat " of London.t The ik Armenian Refugees (Lord Mayor's) Fund " hasbeen organised to despatch assistance from Great Britain,and there is really no limit to the amount of moneyrequired. Subscriptions may be forwarded to theHon. Secretary of the Fund at %, Victoria Street,London. S.W.

93VII. THE TOLL OF DEATH.A quarter of a million of the Armenians inTurkey have escaped. But how many have beendestroyed ?The Young Turks and their api dogisi ain Germany and elsewhere willprobably press thatquestion, for there is no other line o£ apology forthem to adopt. In face of the evidence of whichwe have presented a few specimens in these pages,they will hardly have the face to deny altogetherthat this crime has been committed.But they willsubmit that it has been perpetrated only in anexceptional way, and on a comparatively modestscale.That would be as shameless a lie as if theyattempted nakedly to deny it.Numerical statisticsare of course very difficult to obtain, for a criminalalways writhes under scrutiny, and inview of thecriminal temper of the Turks, the witnesses havehad to make their observations in a.i unassumingWay, so as to give the murderers no indication thatnote of their actions was being taken. And vetthe few figures we have speak volumes.For one thing, we know that the batches of deportedArmenians averaged between 2,000 and 5,000

94souls— this we have from many eye-witnesses whosaw ihem pass. And many towns provided more than(•Me batch—a witness in the American Committee'sreporl tells us, i'or example, that the third convoydespatched from a certain town included betwean4.000 and 5,000 persons. When we rememberth itthere are over 50 towns and villages, known tous by name, from which theArmenian inhabitantshave thus been herded away, we can make ageneral estimate of the totalnumber condemned todeportation throughout the length and breadth ofAnatolia, Cilicia and Armenia proper.Here are some actual figures compiled on June20th, by a witness in Cilicia." The deportation began some six weeks ago with180 families from Zeifcoun ; since which time all theinhabitants of that place and its neighbouring villageshave been deported ; also most of the Christians inAlbistan, and many from Hadjin, Sis, Kars Pazar,Hassan Beyli and Dort Yol. The numbers involvedare approximately, to date, 26,500. Of these, about5,000 have been sent to the Konia region, 5,500 are inAleppo and surrounding towns and villages, andthe remainder are in Der-el-Zor, Rakka, and variousplaces in Mesopotamia, even as far as the neighbourhoodof Bagdad. The process is still goingon, and there is no telling how far it may be carried.The orders already issued will bring the number in

95(hi,-, region up^ to 32,000, and there have been asnone exiled from Ainfcab, and \

;96same localities, who were driven towards thedesert by different routes, and so escaped thisparticular witness's observation. And these are1far from beingthe final figures.The witness himselfadds a postcript to say that 2,100 more havearrived since his list was made up, and thedeportations, as we have said, have been carried outcontinuously ever since.These figures may show how many started onthe journey ; but what proportion reached theirnominal destination ? We have some figures onthis head likewise from a letter dated August 1 6th,1915, and written from the interior of Anatolia :" In haste and in secret, profiting by an opportunity,I hasten to convey to you the cry of agonywhich goes up from the survivors of the terriblecrisis through which we are passing at this moment. . . . An inquiry has proved that out of athousand who started, scarcely 100 have reached theplace from which I am writing. Out of the 600 to beaccounted for, 380 men and boys above 1L years ofage, as well as 85 women, have been massacred ordrowned outside the town walls by the gendarmes whoconducted them ; 120 young women and girls and10 boys have been kidnapped, so that among all thesedeported people one does not see a single pretty face.Among the survivors, 60 per cent, are sick ; they areshortly to be forwarded to another specified locality,where certain death awaits them ; it is impossible todescribe the ferocity to which they have been exposed

97they have been travelling for from three to fivemonths ;they have been pillaged two—three—fiveseventimes ; they have even had their underclothesransacked ; so far from providing them with food,they even forbid them to drink water when they arepassing by a stream three-quarters of the young;women and girls have been kidnapped ;the rest havebeen compelled to spend the night with the gendarmeswho arc conducting them. Hundreds havedied of theseof refinements of atrocity sodisgusting that one cannotbear their recital.' 1outrages, and the survivors have to tellThe same hideous crime in all its details, withcold statistics to leaven the tale of agony !Thewriter remarks that it is " no hyperbole to say thatthere is not a single Armenian left in Armenia, andthere will soon be none left in Cilieia either." Allhad been taken, and, of these. 60 per cent, hadperished before they arrive! at their ultimate goal.And another set of statistic- completely bears outthat estimate. We know that nearly 1,00 peoplewere deported from a certain district on the KaraSu, and here isan analysis of their " experiences."••From one village 212 individuals set out, ofKhom 128 (60. per cent.) reached Aleppo alive.56 men and 11 women were killed on the road,3 girls and 9 boys were sold or kidnapped, and5 people were missing.From the same place another party of ti'.'o peoplewere deported. 821 (46 per cent.) reached A.leppo,

0820G men and 57 women were killed en route. 70girls and young women, and 19 boys, were sold.23 were missing.From another village a party of 128 was deported,of whom 32 (25 per cent.) reached Aleppo alive.21 men and 12 women were killed en route. 29girls and young women and 13 boys were sold ;and18 were missing."This document bears date July 19th. 1915, andis signed by the head of a college, who is acitizen of a neutral country, and is in a position toknow the facts.Such are the concordant estimates of two independentwitnesses ;and anyone who reads theirnarrative, or the other narratives from which wehave quoted above, cannot fail to conclude for himselfthat the percentage of survivors must have beenextraordinarily low. Whatever the exact statisticsin each case, certainly nothing but a remnant evciarrivedat Sultanieh or Der-el-Zor. The va^tmajority always perished by the way. Yet wehave it on the clear authority of a witness in theA.C.R., that the German Consul at Aleppo—andsurely this gentleman would not be guilty ofexaggeration — has estimated the number ofArmenians that arrived there, at no less than30,000. Unfortunately we are not told the dateto which this figure applies : but even if it were

09the final figure for the most recent date attainable,it would prove destruction of life on a scale whichnot even a German consul, inured to the statisticsof Belgium, could treat as exceptional in characteror inconsiderable in extent.\ et even if the statistics were more abundantand more eloquent still, they might fail to conveyto our imagination the actuality of what hashappened. A nation blotted out ! It is easy tosay it with the lips, more difficult to realise whatit means, for it is something totally beyond ourexperience. Perhaps nothing brings it home morecrushingly than the record which we have of onelittle community of sensitive, refined Armenianpeople, and of the terrible fates by which theywere individually overtaken. They were themembers of an educational establishment in acertain Anatolian town, which was endowed anddirected by a society of foreign missionaries ; andthe following summary is taken directly from aletter which was written by the President of theCollege after the blow had fallen." I shall try to banish from my mind for the timethe sense of great personal sorrow because of losinghundreds of my friends here, and also my sense ofutter defeat in being so unable to stop the awfultragedy or even mitigate to any degree its severity,and compel myself to give you concise^ some of

the eoki faces of the past months as they relatethemselves to the College. I do so with the hopethat the possession of these concrete facts may helpyou to do something there for the handful ofdependents still left to us here."(i) Constituency : Approximately two-thirds of thegirl pupils and six-sevenths of the hoys have beentaken away to death, exile or Moslem homes."(ii) Professors: Four gone, three left, as follows :"Professor A., served College 35 years. Professorof Turkish and History. Besides previous troublearrested May 1st without charge, hair of head,moustache and beard prilled out in vain effort tosecure damaging confessions.Starved and hung byarms for a day and a night and severely beatenseveral times. Taken out towards Diyarbekir abouJune 20th and murdered in generalroad.massacre on the"Professor' B., served College 33 years, studied atAnn Arbor. Professor of Mathematics, arrestedabout June 5th and shored Professor A.'sroad.fate on the"Professor C, taken to witness a man beaten almostto death, became mentally deranged. Started withhis family about July 5th into exile under guard andmurdered beyond the first big town on the road.(Principal of Preparatory Department, studied atPrinceton.)Served the College 20 years."Professor D.. served College 16 years, studied atEdinburgh, Professor of Mental and Moral Science.Awested with Professor A. and suffered same fcorturi s,

LOIalso had three finger nails pulled out by the roots^killed in same massacre." Professor E., served College 2~> years, arrestedMay 1st, not tortured but sick in prison. Sent toRed Crescent Hospital and after paying large bribesis now free, in -." Professor F., served the College for over 15 years,studied in Stuttgart and Berlin, Professor of Music,escaped arrest and torture, and thus far escaped exileand death because offavour with the Kaim-makamsecured by personal services rendered."Professor G., served the College about 15 years,studied at Cornell and Yale (M.S.), Professor ofBiology, arrested about June 5th, beaten about thehands, body and head with a stick by theKaim-makam himself, who. when tired, called onall who loved religion and the nation to continuethe beating ; after a period of insensibility in a darkcloset, taken to the Red Crescent Hospital with abroken finger and serious bruises. Now free, in" (iii) Instructors, Male."Four reported killed on the road in variousmassacres, whose average term of service is eightyears. Three not heard from, probably killed onthe road, average term of eervice in the College fouryears."Two sick inMissionary Hospital.free." One in ."One engaged in cabinet work for the Kaim-mak m,

102" One owner of house occupied by the Kaim-makam,free." (iv) Instructors, Female."One reported killed in Chunkoosh, served theCollege over twenty years." One reported taken to a Turkish harem." Three not beard from." Fonr started out as exiles." Ten free." Of the Armenian people as a whole we may putan estimate that three-fourths are gone, and thisthree-fourths includes the leaders in every walk oflife, merchants, professional men, preachers, bishopsand government officials ...." I have said enough. Our hearts are sick withthe sights and stories of abject terror and suffering.The extermination of the race seems to be theobjective, and the means employed are more fiendishthan could be concocted locally. The orders arefrom head-quarters, and any reprieve must bethe .same source"fromThere were colleges like this, well staffed andwell attended, in all the larger Anatolian towns.The atmosphere within their walls was every bitas refined, as cultured, as civilised as the atmosphereof our schools and colleges in WesternEurope. Their humanising influence w T as one ofthe most beneficent factors in the Ottoman Empire.And this influence has been systematically rooted

.—103iap, and brutally destroyed, by the indiscriminatedispersion and massacre of both pupils and professors.The flower of the nation has perished in companywith the innumerable mass of undistinguishedvictims ; and the leaders of the Armenian Churchhave drawn on themselves the especial malice oftiie persecutor, by their courageous efforts on behalfof their Hocks. On Sept. 22nd the paper"Armenia" of Marseilles reproduced from the'•Hayasdan " of Sofia the following list ofecclesiastical victims up to that date :" The metropolitan of Dijarbekir, Tchilghadianburnt "alive.The bishop ofIsmid, Hdvagimian—imprisoned.The superior of the seminary at Armacha— imprisoned.*The metropolitans ofarrest.Broussaand Kaisariyeh, underT,he metropolitan of Sivas, [Calemkiarian— assassinated.The metropolitan of Tokat; Kasbarian — imprisoned.The metropolitan of Shabin-Karahissar, Torikian—hanged* The letter to the Armenian ecclesiastic in neutralterritory states thai he has been deponed with his clergyand seminarists.

—104The metropolitan of Samsoua, Hamazasb—imprisoned.The metropolitan of Trebizond, Tourian—underarresThe metropolitan of Kemakh, Humayak—imprisoned.The metropolitan of Kharpout, Khorenian—assassinated.!The metropolitan of Tchar-Sandjak, Nalbandianhanged.The metropolitan! of Aleppo and Bitlis—imprisoned.The metropolitan of Erzeroum, Bishop Saadetian— assassinated."" From another source", says the "Armenia," " welearn that the metropolitan of Baibourt, the ArchimandriteAnania Hazarabedian, has been hanged incompany with eight Armenian notables." JIt is an amazing list, yet it is wholly consistentwith the programme of the OttomanGovernment.The Armenian Church has bsen the bulwark of theArmenian race, and the race is marked down for* As stated by ' Gotclmag " on ;Sept. 4th.t Corroborated by the letter to the Armenian ecclesiasticin neutral territory.% Corroborated by the letter to the Armenian Ecclesiastic.

105extermination. Talaat Bey meant what he said,and the Young Turks have given a sardonic touchof completeness to their work by murdering thetwo Armenian representatives in their muchadvertised"Ottoman Parliament". The letter tothe Armenian ecclesiastic in neutral territory iaformeus that "MM. Zohrab and Vartkes, theArmenian deputies, who had been sent on theirway to Diyarbekir for trial by court-martial, werekilled the other day near Aleppo before reachingtheir destination." Ahd-ul-Hamid would smileagain if he heard.

106VIII.THE ATTITUDE OFGERMANY." The orders are from head-quarters," writes oneof the witnesses quoted in the last chapter, " andany reprieve must be from the same source."Butwhere are these " head-quarters " ? For it is vitallyimportant to penetrate to them, if the remnant ofthe Armenians that are lingering in agony atSultanieh and Der-el-Zor, are still to be rescuedfrom their doom. We have traced the crime backto Enver and his gang at Constantinople, but thatis not enough. By participating in the war,Turkey contracted herself into the apprenticeshipof Germany, and abandoned her freedom of actionto Germany's lead. What is the attitude ofTurkey's patron towards the organised murder ofthe Armenian race ? And what action has beentaken in the matter by the corps of Germanofficials on Ottoman territory ?" According to the testimony of the refugees fromSyria, several German consuls have directed orencouraged the massacres of the Armenians. Specialmention is made of Herr Rossler. consul at Aleppo,*who has gone to Aintab to direct the massacres in* '•The man who contrived the plot against unfortunateZeitoun."

107person, and the notorious Baron Oppenheim, whoinitiated the idea of deporting to Ourfa the womenand children belonging by nationality to the Allies,though he knew well enough that these unfortunateswould be unable to avoid witnessing there Hiebarbarous acts committed by the troops in the verystreets of the town, which are literally drenched inblood."That is a sinister rumour, but of course it is notevidence of a conclusive order. Tt is merely acablegram from Cairo which was published towardsthe end of September in the Paris press. We findthe same suspicion, however, reappearing in the" Gotchnag " of New York on September 4th :"A foreign correspondent reports that provincialgovernors who show lack of vigour in executingthe order to deport the Armenians, are taken totask by the German officials. The latter participatein the execution of the deportation scheme, andredouble its rigours. The correspondent declares,on the basis of such evidence as this, that this planofexterminating the Armenians his been conceivedby the Germans, and that it has been put intoexecution on their advice."Everyone will see that these testimonies are notof the same value as those on which our narrativeof the crime itself is based. The active participationof German officials is not sufficientlyproven ; and even if further evidence should convictHerr Rossler and Baron Oppenheim beyond

108any doubt, we should still have no warrant foraccepting the inference of u (lotrluvujs " correspondentas to the general complicity of all Germanofficials in Anatolia. It is, on the whole, unlikelythat the German authorities initiated the crime.The Turks do not need tempters. But when thathas been said, all that can be submitted in theirdefence has been exhausted ; and if faint praiseis damning, they assuredly stand condemned.For it is clear that, whoever commanded theatrocities, the Germans never made a motion tocountermand them, when they could have beenstopped at the start by a single word. It is noexaggeration to say that they could have beenstopped absolutely, for it is obvious that, byentering the war, Turkey placed herself entirelyin Germany's power. She is dependent on Germanyfor munitions of war and leadership in battle,for the preservation of her existence at the presentand for its continuance in the future, shouldGermany succeed in preserving it now. TheGerman Government had but to pronounce theveto, and it would have been obeyed ; and thecentral authorities at Berlin could have ensured itsbeing obeyed through their local agents on thespot. For ever since 1895, Germany has beenassiduously extending the network of her consular

£09service over all the Asiatic provinces of theOttoman Empire. In every administrative centrethroughout those districts where massacres and deportationshave occurred— in Anatolia, CUicia, andArmenia /'roper— there is a German consid; and tiieprestige of these consuls is unbounded. They arethe agents of a friendly power, the only power thatoffers Turkey her friendship with no moral conditionsattached ;and a friend, moreover, that isTurkey's puissant protector and ally, the invincibleconqueror, to the Turk's docile imagination, ofa hostile world in arms against the pair. It isimpossible to doubt that those German consulscould have saved the Armenian nation, if they hadtaken steps to do so, or to suppose that theGerman Government was not informed of whatwas happening in good time.The consuls did not take any action, and weknow the reason why. They were instructed from" headquarters " to hold their hand." Last July the United States Government invitedthe co-operation of the German Government in aneffort to end the outrages which have resulted inwholesale and systematic murder of fully one halfof the million and a quarter Armenians living underTurkish control" No reply ever was received from Germany to theinvitation to co-operate in this work."

110This statement was published by the New York" Merahi " on October

IllThat is a quotation from the previous!} citedletter written from Athens on July 8th. 1915. Itis only a rumour, of course, andHerr Wangenheim*might have contradicted it had he wished to do so ;but he would hardly have found it worth hiswhile, in view of the pronouncements hazardedby his more conspicuous colleague ai Washington,Count BernstorfTs first inspiration was to denythe crime altogether. "The alleged atrocitiescommitted in the Ottoman Empire appeal- to bepure inventions," he declared. Armenia is moreremote than Belgium, and what happens thereis apt to be veiled in corresponding obscurity.But in this ease the light has broken through, andLas driven Count Bernstorff to revise his posture.After further conference with his principals inEurope he" submitted to the United States Government a reportof the German Consul General at Trebizond admittingand defending a massacre of Armenians on theground that the Armenians were disloyal to theTurkish Government and secretly were aiding andabetting Russia."There is no doubt about these "demarches" ofthe Ambassador at Washington.They have struckthe attention of the nation to which he isHe has died in the meantime.

112accredited, and are writtenlarge over the editorialcolumns ofthe American press.*And then there is the Imperial Chancellor himself.When the first year of the German war, andthe fourth month of the Armenian atrocities, hadcompleted their parallel cycle, and he addressed theReichstag in review of the situation, he tookoccasion to congratulate his countrymen on " theirmarvellous regeneration of Turkey." Could anyendorsement of Enver's " solution " be moreunqualified ?Having satisfied ourselves thus as to the attitudeof German "Official Circles," we will now letsome individual Germans express theiropinion fora moment through the mouthpiece of their press."The Armenian," writes the "FrankfurterZeitung" on October 9th, "enjoys, through hishigher intellect and superior commercial ability, aconstant business advantage in trade, tax-farming,banking, and ( ommission-agency over the heavyfootedTurk, and so accumulates money in hiapocket, while the Turk grows poor.That is why theArmenian is the best-hated man in the East—inmany cases not unjustly, though a generalisationwould De unfair. It is easily understandable, how-* The quotation from the New York " Herald " is takenat random from several dozen leading articles of identicalpurport in as many other journals.

lisever, that the uneducated populacein Anatolia, wiihhalf-educated officials, fanatical Moslem ecclesiastics,and hot-headed chauvinists at their head, should fallvictims to Buch a generalisation, and destroy theinnocent with the guilty"The difficulties that confront the Turkish Governmentin the Armenian question, must not be underestimated.There is the lack of good communicationsin Anatolia, the niter absence of all initiative inthe lesser grades of officialdom, the fury of the•populace••But in spite of these difficulties the TurJGovernment must gather the reins into its hands.The publie opinion of Germany is firmly. . . .convinced that the Allied Government, after displayingto the world so magnificently its externalstrength, will now give proof of in internal strengthas well."The " Frankfurter " is a liberally-minded paper,and we ffive it all honour for its sentiments and itsS3admonitions. But ;\uy one who 1ms read thesepages will perceive that, whether half- wilfully ornot, it has drawn for itself an entirely erroneouspicture of the situation. " The Lesser officials' lackof initiative"'— that would be a reasonable mitigationif the crime were an outburst of fanaticismfrom below :butit tells the other way if the* That there has been no general outburst of this kindis not the fault of Germany, whose professors haverecklessly been preaching the Pan-Islamic Jihad (HolyWar), with all its implications of hatred and passion.

114crime has been organised from above. And arethe communications of Anatolia so bad ? Theydid well enough for the Turkish mouhadjirs. Andeven if roads and railways are scarce, telegraphsare not. Every big town is in telegraphiccommunication with Constantinople. Along thesevery wires Enver and Talaat radiated theirperemptory signal to their automaton-like subordinates;and Herr Wangenheim (if von Jagowhad given the word) might have issued as manytelegraphic counter-orders to his energetic Germanconsuls, whose initiative in their own spheres(whatever may be the case with their local Turkishcompeers) has certainly never been called inquestion.No, if the " Frankfurter Zeitung " representspublic opinion in Germany, then the Germanpeople is simply ignorant of the facts. Yet thereare some publicists, at any rate, who are betterinformed." If the Porte considers it necessary that Armenianinsurrections and other goings on should be crushedby every means available, so as to exclude allpossibility of their repetition, then that is no 'murder'and no 'atrocity,' but simply measures of a justifiableand necessary kind."Thus writes Ccunfc Ernst von Reventlow in the" Deutscher Tageszeitwig" and he has formulated

115against his country a charge of complicity in thecrime which we might have hesitated to bringagainst her ourselves." Germany cannot intervene in the internalaffairs of her ally." That is how the conclusionwas expressed by the German Ambassador atConstantinople. But we can hardly leave it atthat. Is Germany's motive in complicity reallyno more than a disinterested consideration for thesensibilities of her Turkish partner ?' ;TheArmenian," as we have quoted from the " FrankfurterZeitung " "is the best hated man in theEast on account of his higherintellect and superiorcommercial ability." Well,' now the Armenian,with all his talents, has been removed, and hereis the consequence, as it is set forth by a witnessin the American Committee's Report:—" The results (of the crime) are that, as 90 per cent,of the commerce of the interior is in the hands of theArmenians, the country is facing ruin. The greatbulk of business being done on credit, hundreds ofprominent business men other than Armenians arefacing bankruptcy. There will not be left in theplaces evacuated a single tanner, moulder, blacksmith,tailor, carpenter, clay-worker, weaver,shoemaker, jeweller, pharmacist, doctor, lawyer orany ofthe professional men or tradesmen, with veryfew exceptions, and the country will be left in apractically helpless afcatft."(A 0.h\)

116Who profits ? Certainly not the Turk, howevermuch it may gratify his envy. The Armenians,as we have emphasised again and again, were theonly native element in the Ottoman Empire witha European training and a European character.They alone, by this " higher intellect and superiorbusiness ability,"were capable of regenerating theEmpire from within, and raising it to the level ofan organised, civilized, modern state. As it is,that possibility has been destroyed for ever, andthe country has been " left in a practically helplesscondition." Who profits ? Not the Armenian, notthe Turk.The Armenians, had they been spared,were destined to occupy a very desirable " placethe sun," to their own profit and to the benefit oftheir Turkish neighbours. Are the Germans tobe their heirs and executors, and is that the" Regeneration of Turkey," to which the ImperialChancellor alluded so paradoxically in August,1915 ?This brings us face to- face with a questionwhich we have been approaching very gradually,without the possibility of drawing back.inBut wehasten to add that the question is still an openone. Even at this eleventh hour, Germany mayprovide us with an answer that we shouldwelcome all the more because of the very faintnessof our hope, if she willonly stretch forth her hand

117and save the Armenians that remain, from thedoom of the murdered majority.But whatever Germany does, she must do itquickly, not only in order to snatch the lastvictims from the jaws of death, but because thejudgment of hummity refuses to tarry, and isalready going forth over alllands." This shameful and. terrible page of modernhistory which is unfolding in distant Armenia isnothing but an echo and anextension of the mainstory, the central narrative, which must describa theGerman incursion into Belgium fourteen months ago.That was the determining act, that was the signal toTurk and Kurd" To-day the world looks neither with surprisa norwith incredulity at the terrible history that come3 tous from the remoter regions of Asia Minor" This thing that Germany has done in the worldis not a mere injury to written law. That is but aminor detail. .What she has done is to bring us allback in the Twentieth Century to the condition ofthedark ages."*That is the indictment.cease to deserve it.Let Germany* From the New York "Tribune" of October 8th, 1915

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