CHAPTER I
In April, 1915, the Ottoman Government Began to Put into Execution throughout Turkey a Systematic and Carefully-prepared Plan to Exterminate the Armenian Race. In Six Months Nearly a Million Armenians have been Killed. The Number of the Victims and the Manner of their Destruction are without Parallel in Modern History.
In April, 1915, the Ottoman Government Began to Put into Execution throughout Turkey a Systematic and Carefully-prepared Plan to Exterminate the Armenian Race. In Six Months Nearly a Million Armenians have been Killed. The Number of the Victims and the Manner of their Destruction are without Parallel in Modern History.
In April, 1915, the Ottoman Government Began to Put into Execution throughout Turkey a Systematic and Carefully-prepared Plan to Exterminate the Armenian Race. In Six Months Nearly a Million Armenians have been Killed. The Number of the Victims and the Manner of their Destruction are without Parallel in Modern History.
IN the autumn of 1914, the Turks began to mobilize Christians as well as Moslems for the army. For six months, in every part of Turkey, theycalled upon the Armenians for military service. Exemption money was accepted from those who could pay. A few weeks later the exemption certificates were disregarded, and their holders enrolled. The younger classes of Armenians, who did not live too far from Constantinople, were placed, as in the Balkan wars, in the active army. The older ones, and all the Armenians enrolled in the more distant regions, were utilized for road, railway, and fortification building. Wherever they were called, and to whatever task they were put, the Armenians did their duty, and worked for the defence of Turkey. They proved themselves brave soldiers and intelligent and industrious labourers.
In April, 1915, orders were sent out from Constantinople to the local authoritiesin Asia Minor to take whatever measures were deemed best to paralyse in advance an attempt at rebellion on the part of the Armenians. The orders impressed upon the local authorities that the Armenians were an extreme danger to the safety of the empire, and suggested that national defence demanded imperativelyanticipatoryseverity in order that the Armenians might be rendered harmless.
In some places, the local authorities replied that they had observed no suspicious activity on the part of the Armenians and reminded the Government that the Armenians were harmless because they possessed no arms and because the most vigorous masculine element had already been taken for the army. There are some Turks who have a sense of pityand a sense of shame! But the majority of the Turkish officials responded with alacrity to the hint from Constantinople, and those who did not were very soon replaced.
A new era of Armenian massacres began.
At first, in order that the task might be accomplished with the least possible risk, the virile masculine Armenian population still left in the cities and villages was summoned to assemble at a convenient place, generally outside the town, and gendarmes and police saw to it that the summons was obeyed. None was overlooked. When they had rounded up the Armenian men, they butchered them. This method of procedure was generally feasible in small places. In larger cities, it was not always possible to fulfil theorders from Constantinople so simply and promptly. The Armenian notables were assassinated in the streets or in their homes. If it was an interior city, the men were sent off under guard to “another town.” In a few hours the guard would return without their prisoners. If it was a coast city, the Armenians were taken away in boats outside the harbour to “another port.” The boats returned astonishingly soon without the passengers.
Then, in order to prevent the possibility of trouble from Armenians mobilized for railway and road construction, they were divided in companies of from three hundred to five hundred and put to work at intervals of several miles. Regiments of the Turkish regular army were sent “to put down the Armenian revolution,”and came suddenly upon the little groups of workers plying pickaxe, crowbar, and shovel. The “rebels” were riddled with bullets before they knew what was happening. The few who managed to flee were followed by mounted men, and shot or sabred.
Telegrams began to pour in upon Talaat bey at Constantinople, announcing that here, there, and everywhere Armenian uprisings had been put down, and telegrams were returned, congratulating the local officials upon the success of their prompt measures. To neutral newspaper men at Constantinople, to neutral diplomats, who had heard vaguely of a recurrence of Armenian massacres, this telegraphic correspondence was shown as proof that an imminent danger had been averted. “We have not been cruel,but we admit having been severe,” declared Talaat bey. “This is war time.”
Having thus rid themselves of the active manhood of the Armenian race, the Turkish Government still felt uneasy. The old men and boys, the women and children, were an element of danger to the Ottoman Empire. The Armenians must be rooted out of Turkey. But how accomplish this in such a way that the Turkish Ambassador at Washington and the German newspapers might be able to say, as they have said and are still saying, “All those who have been killed were of that rebellious element caught red-handed or while otherwise committing traitorous acts against the Turkish Government, andnot women and children, as some of thesefabricatedreports would have the Americans believe?” Talaatbey was ready with his plan. Deportation—a regrettable measure, a military necessity—but perfectly humane.
From May until October the Ottoman Government pursued methodically a plan of extermination far more hellish than the worst possible massacre. Orders for deportation of the entire Armenian population to Mesopotamia were despatched to every province of Asia Minor. These orders were explicit and detailed. No hamlet was too insignificant to be missed. The news was given by town criers thateveryArmenian was to be ready to leave at a certain hour for an unknown destination. There were no exceptions for the aged, the ill, the women in pregnancy. Only rich merchants and bankers and good-looking women and girls were allowed to escape by professing Islâm,and let it be said to their everlasting honour that few availed themselves of this means of escape. The time given varied from two days to six hours. No household goods, no animals, no extra clothing could be taken along. Food supply and bedding was limited to what a person could carry. And they had to goon footunder the burning sun through parched valleys and over snow-covered mountain passes, a journey of from three to eight weeks.
When they passed through Christian villages where the deportation order had not yet been received, the travellers were not allowed to receive food or ministrations of any sort. The sick and the aged and the wee children fell by the roadside, and did not rise again. Women in childbirth were urged along by bayonetsand whips until the moment of deliverance came, and were left to bleed to death. The likely girls were seized for harems, or raped day after day by the guards until death came as a merciful release. Those who could committed suicide. Mothers went crazy, and threw their children into the river to end their sufferings. Hundreds of thousands of women and children died of hunger, of thirst, of exposure, of shame.
The pitiful caravans thinned out, first daily, and later hourly. Death became the one thing to be longed for: for how can hope live, how can strength remain, even to the fittest, in a journey that has no end? And if they turned to right or left from that road to hell, they were shot or speared. Kurds and mounted peasants hunted down thosewho succeeded in escaping the roadside guards.
They are still putting down the Armenian revolution out there in Asia Minor. I had just written the above paragraph when an English woman whom I have known for many years came to my home. She left Adana, in Cilicia, only a month ago. Her story is the same as that of a hundred others. I have the identical facts, one eye-witness testimony corroborating the other, from American, English, German, and Swiss sources. This English woman said to me, “The deportation is still going on. From the interior along the Bagdad Railway they are still being sent through Adana on the journey of death. As far as the railway exists, it is being used to hurry the work of extermination faster than the caravans from theregions where there are no railways. Oh! if they would only massacre them, and be done with it, as in the Hamidian days! I stood there at the Adana railway station, and from the carriages the women would hold up their children, and cry for water. They had got beyond a desire for bread. Only water! There was a pump. I went down on my knees to beg the Turkish guard to let me give them a drink. But the train moved on, and the last I heard was the cry of those lost souls. That was not once. It was almost every day the same thing. Did Lord Bryce say eight hundred thousand? Well, it must be a million now. Could you conceive of human beings allowing wild animals to die a death like that?”
But the Turkish Ambassador in Washington declares that these stories are “fabrications,” and that “no women and children have been killed.”