CHAPTER IV

The German Government could have Prevented this Effort at Exterminating the Armenian Race, but has Chosen not to Do so. There is Grave Reason to Believe the German Government has Welcomed, if not Encouraged, the Disappearance of the Armenians from Asia Minor, for the Furtherance of German Political and Commercial Designs on the Ottoman Empire.

A PATRIOTIC German woman wrote from Marash on June 4, 1915, to theSonnenaufgang, organ of theDeutscher Hülfsbund für christlichesLiebeswerk im Orient: “Oh, if we could write all that we are seeing!” German missionaries in Asia Minor have been fully as horror-stricken, fully as sympathetic, and fully as indignant as the missionaries of other nations. And I have no doubt that there are millions of Germans to-day, who,if they were allowed to know the truth, would protest bitterly to their Government against the extermination of the Armenian nation, and petition their Government, in the name of God, to do something to prevent Germany from being stigmatized in history as partner in the awful crimes that are being committed in the Ottoman Empire.

It has been shown that there never has been, and that there is not now, reason for Moslem fanaticism against the Armenian race. Of their own initiative, withoutthe direct command and incitement of the authorities and without the help of the soldiery and gendarmery, Turks have never massacred Armenians. Since, then, this effort to exterminate the Armenian race, made everywhere in Asiatic Turkey at the same moment, has been due to a systematic scheme, organized and directed from Constantinople, we must seek the responsibility among the officials of the Turkish Government at Constantinople. The deliberate, minutely-planned Armenian massacres and deportations, carried on without interruption from April to November, 1915, must have been conceived by someone, ordered by someone, and perpetrated for some purpose.

Conceived by whom? Ordered by whom? Perpetrated for what purpose?

The conception is not new.It has beenexplained above that the Armenians drew upon themselves the distrust and the hatred of the Young Turks because they took the Young Turks seriously, and believed that the Constitution was to be a real constitution. The Adana massacre was the first effort on the part of those who usurped Abdul Hamid’s policy and methods when they usurped his authority, to destroy the Armenians. Back in those days I heard more than one prominent Young Turk give hearty assent to thebon motthat was then going the rounds, “The only way to get rid of the Armenian question is to get rid of the Armenians!” To finish the work begun at Adana has been a political ideal for six years. The opportunity for realization came. It was seized immediately.

When the attack of the Allies against theDardanelles was begun, it was common knowledge at Constantinople that the death-warrant of the Armenian race, long ago signed and put aside in the pigeon-holes of the Sublime Porte and the Seraskerat, would be brought out and put into execution.Is it possible to believe that the German Embassy was ignorant of this, and that Talaat bey gave the orders without having informed Baron von Wangenheim? Is it possible that the German Government at Berlin did not know of the plan, even if their representative at Constantinople failed to inform them? Here are the facts.

The extermination of a million and a half innocent, loyal to a fault, Christian subjects of the Sultan of Turkey was planned at, and ordered from, Constantinople.

At Constantinople, the one man whose word, supported by his Government, would have prevented the orders from going out, was the German Ambassador.

Although hemaynot have known during the first week or two, the German Ambassador was pled with,long before it was too late, to use the influence of Germany to put a stop to what was to prove the blackest page of modern history.

Since Germany refused to intervene before the extermination of the Armenians started, is she not accessory before the fact to the murder by sword, by starvation and thirst, by exposure, by beating, by rape, of nearly a million human beings, whose fault was that they were “in the way,” and whose vulnerability and defencelessness lay in the sole fact that they were Christians?

Since Germany has persisted in refusing to intervene during the process of extermination, is she notparticeps criminis?

Ambassador von Wangenheim declared to Ambassador Morgenthau at Constantinople that Germany could not, upon request of the United States, intervene in the internal affairs of Turkey. Ambassador von Bernstorff at Washington, when he saw what a painful impression the newspaper accounts of the Armenian atrocities were producing on the American public, at first denied that there had been massacres, and, later, when it was impossible to maintain his denial in face of established facts, declared that what had happened in Turkey was a perfectly justifiable suppression of Armenian rebellions.

In one large city of Asiatic Turkey, anAmerican missionary, a man whom I know personally and whose word can be trusted implicitly, saw a German officer directing the artillery fire of the Turks upon the Armenian civilian population. In two other places, at least, German consuls defended the Ottoman policy both of massacre and of deportation.

On the broader and more general moral ground of responsibility as brother’s keeper, the German,who alone of all European nations have had, and still have the power to stop these massacres, stand condemned. It is going to be difficult for their writers, who have been foremost in extolling the Armenian race, its virtues, and its contributions to civilization, to defend to the satisfaction of posterity the inertia of the German Government in theface of the extermination of the Armenian nation.

That they kept quiet, and refused to act, when they alone could have saved the Armenians from destruction, is the first count in the case against the Germans. It is serious. The second count is sinister.

When we try to find the purpose behind the Armenian massacres, we are confronted with what is, under the circumstances, an eloquent accusation against the German Government and the German people.The Germans, and the Germans alone, will benefit by the extermination of the Armenians.I have pointed out above how the Armenians are the essential factor, the guarantee indeed, of Turkish economic and political independence in Asia Minor. By the same token, they appear to be a stumbling-block to Germandomination. The Armenians, largely educated in French and American schools, speak French and English. Through their commercial relations with western Europe and America, with England most of all, they have naturally been “in the way” of the German commercial travellers. As the one commercial and agricultural element in the interior of Asia Minor, capable of holding its own against a penetration of European colonists, the Armenians are “in the way” of the schemes for the Germanization of Anatolia. It was not for the Bagdad Railway alone, but also for all that the Bagdad Railway implied, that Kaiser Wilhelm II. fraternized with Abdul Hamid, after the massacres of Armenians in 1895 and 1896.

I have not the slightest desire to beunfair to Germans as individuals, or to insinuate what cannot reasonably be proved to be in the German mind. Enlightened nations, however, are certainly responsible for the acts of their Governments. The Germans have assumed the responsibility for many terrible things in this war. They may hope, when passions have died down and both sides are known, to clear themselves of some charges. But there is no hope in regard to the charge of allowing the extermination of the Armenians—a crime by which they alone could hope to benefit.

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