XI.THE TOWN OF X.
We are better informed as to what happened in this town than in regard to any other place where the Ottoman Government’s design against the Armenians was put into execution. The documents relating to it, contained in this section, are so full of personal detail that it has been necessary, in consideration for the safety of those concerned, to conceal the town’s identity, though in this case, as in others, it is almost impossible to disguise it effectively to anyone acquainted with Asiatic Turkey.
The people of X. were a very typical Armenian urban community, and the story of their destruction represents, in its main features, what happened to innumerable other Armenian communities throughout the Ottoman Empire. The only peculiar feature at X. was the extent to which forcible conversion was attempted by the local authorities. It may also be noted that here, as at Trebizond, there was no intention of forwarding the exiles to their nominal destination. The convoys were butchereden masseas soon as they reached the next town on the road.
86. X.: NARRATIVE OF THE PRINCIPAL OF THE COLLEGE AT X., COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
The trouble for the Armenians began, as for all other nationalities, with the collection of soldiers. The Government swept off all men possible for military service. Hundreds of the bread-winners marched away, leaving their wives and children without means of support. In many cases, the last bit of money was given to fit out the departing soldier, leaving the family in a pitifully destitute condition. A number of Armenians were quite well off and paid their military exemption fee. A much larger number escaped in one way and another, so there were more Armenians than Turks left in the city after the soldiers had gone. This made the Government suspicious and fearful. The discovery of Armenian plots against the Government in other places added to this feeling.
The special Armenian troubles began in the beginning of May. In the middle of the night, about twenty of the leading men of the national Armenian political parties were gathered up and sent to where they have been imprisoned ever since. In June the Government began looking for weapons. Some of the Armenians were seized, and, by torture, the confession was extracted that a large number of arms were in the hands of different Armenians. A second inquisition began. The bastinado was used frequently, as well as fire torture (in some cases eyes are said to have been put out). Many guns were delivered up, but not all. The people were afraid that, if they gave up their arms, they would be massacred as in 1895. Arms had been brought in after the declaration of the Constitution with the permission of the Government, and were for self-defence only. The torture continued, and under its influence one fact after another leaked out. Under the nervous strain and physical suffering, many things were said which had no foundation in fact. Those inflicting the torture would tell the victim what they expected him to confess, and then beat him until he did it. The college mechanic had constructed an iron “shot” for the athletic games, and was beaten terribly in an effort to fasten the making of bombs on to the college. Some bombs were discovered in the Armenian cemetery, which aroused the fury of the Turks to white heat. It should be said that it is very probable that these bombs had been buried there in the days of Abd-ul-Hamid.
On Saturday, the 26th June, about 1 p.m., the gendarmes went through the town gathering up all the Armenian men they could find—old and young, rich and poor, sick and well. In some cases houses were broken into, and sick men dragged from their beds. They were imprisoned in the barracks, and during the next few days were sent off towards Y. in batches of from thirty to one hundred and fifty. They were sent on foot, and many were robbed of shoes and other articles of clothing. Some werein chains. The first batch reached Y. and sent word from various places. (It is said that this was a scheme of the Government in order to encourage the rest. None of the rest have been heard from. Various reports have been circulated, the only one generally accepted being that they were killed. One Greek driver reported seeing the mound under which they were buried. Another man, in touch with the Government, in answer to a direct question, admitted that the men had been killed.)
Through the intervention of a Turk, the college was able to free those of its teachers already taken, and obtain a stay of proceedings against all its teachers and employees, by the payment of the sum of 275 Turkish liras. Later, this same Turk said that he believed that he could obtain the permanent exemption of the entire college group by the payment of a further sum of 300 liras. The money was promised, but after some negotiations, which showed that no definite assurance of exemption would be forthcoming, the matter was dropped.
Following the sending of the batches of Armenians in the direction of Y., criers went through the streets of the town announcing that all male Armenians between the ages of fifteen and seventy were to report at the barracks. The announcement further stated that their refusal to obey would result in their being killed and their houses being burned. The Armenian priests went from house to house, advising the people to obey this announcement. Those reporting at the barracks were sent away in batches, the result being that within a few days practically all the Armenian men were removed from the city.
On the 3rd or 4th July, the order was issued that the women and children should be ready to leave on the following Wednesday. The people were informed that one ox-cart was to be provided by the Government for each house, and that they could carry only one day’s food supply, a few piastres, and a small bundle of clothing. The people made preparation for carrying out these orders by selling whatever household possessions they could in the streets. Articles were sold at less than 10 per cent. of their usual value, and Turks from the neighbouring villages filled the streets, hunting for bargains. In some places these Turks took articles by force, but the Government punished all such cases when detected.
On the 5th July, before the order for the expulsion of the women was carried out, one of our staff went to the Government to protest against the execution of this order in the name of humanity. He was told that this order did not originate with the local officials, but that the orders had come from those higher up not to leave a single Armenian in the city. The commandant, however, promised to leave the college to the last, and gave permission for all people connected with the American institutions to move into the college compound. This they did, and at one timeover three hundred Armenians were living on the college premises.
The population had been ordered to be ready to start on Wednesday. But on Tuesday, about 3.30 a.m., the ox-carts appeared at the doors of the first district to be removed, and the people were ordered to start at once. Some were dragged from their beds without even sufficient clothing. All the morning the ox-carts creaked out of the town, laden with women and children and, here and there, a man who had escaped the previous deportations. The women and girls all wore the Turkish costume, that their faces might not be exposed to the gaze of drivers and gendarmes—a brutal lot of men brought in from other regions. In many cases the husbands and brothers of these same women were away in the army, fighting for the Turkish Government.
The panic in the city was terrible. The people felt that the Government was determined to exterminate the Armenian race, and they were powerless to resist. The people were sure that the men were being killed and the women kidnapped. Many of the convicts in the prison had been released, and the mountains round X. were full of bands of outlaws. It was feared that the women and children were taken some distance from the city and left to the mercy of these men. However that may be, there are provable cases of the kidnapping of attractive young girls by the Turkish officials of X. One Moslem reported that a gendarme had offered to sell him two girls for a medjidia.[106]The women believed that they were going to worse than death, and many carried poison in their pockets to use if necessary. Some carried picks and shovels to bury those they knew would die by the wayside. During this reign of terror, notice was given that escape was easy—that anyone who accepted Islam would be allowed to remain safely at home. The offices of the lawyers who recorded applications were crowded with people petitioning to become Mohammedans. Many did it for the sake of their women and children, feeling that it would be a matter of only a few weeks before relief would come.
This deportation continued at intervals for about two weeks. It is estimated that, out of about 12,000 Armenians in X., only a few hundred were left. Even those who offered to accept Islam were sent away. At the time of writing, no definite word has been heard any of these batches. (One Greek driver reported that, at a little village a few hours from X., the few men were separated from the women, beaten and chained, and sent on in a separate batch. A Turkish driver reported seeing the convoy two days journey from X. The people were so covered with dust that features were scarcely distinguishable.) Even if the lives of these exiles are being protected, it is a question how many will be able to endure the hardships of the journey over the hot,dusty hills, with no protection from the sun, with poor food and little water, and the ever-present fear of death, or some worse fate.
Most of the Armenians in the X. district were absolutely hopeless. Many said that it was worse than a massacre. No one knew what was coming, but all felt that it was the end. Even the pastors and leaders could offer no word of encouragement or hope. Many began to doubt even the existence of God. Under the severe strain many individuals became demented, some of them permanently. There were also some examples of the greatest heroism and faith, and some started out on the journey courageously and calmly, saying in farewell: “Pray for us. We shall not see you again in this world, but sometime we shall meet again.”
106. About 3s.2d.
106. About 3s.2d.
87. X.: ADDRESS DELIVERED IN AMERICA, 13th DECEMBER, 1915, BY A PROFESSOR FROM THE COLLEGE AT X.; COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
On the 1st June of this year (1915), the town in Asiatic Turkey from which I come had a population of 25,000, half of which was Armenian and the other half Turkish. When I left X. on the 18th August, the 12,000 Armenians, who comprised the Armenian half of the city’s population, had either been driven into exile or done to death. What happened to the Armenians of X. is but a specimen of what has happened to these poor people in every other city of Asia Minor and Armenia.
Over fifty years ago, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions established a mission station at X., which during the intervening years had grown into an important religious, educational and medical centre. We had there a boys’ college with 425 students, nearly all of whom were boarders, who came from all parts of Asia Minor, from the Balkan States and from Russia. We also had a girls’ boarding school with 276 pupils enrolled. Besides these we had a large hospital, which had recently been newly equipped at great expense. Here the American physician and the Armenian nurses, in addition to the ordinary large work of the hospital, were caring for sick soldiers of the Ottoman Army under the auspices of the American Red Cross Society. About half the constituency of these three institutions was Armenian. More than half the teachers and professors in the schools and nearly all the nurses of the hospital belonged to that same race, which all through the Christian centuries has been the vanguard of Christian civilisation on the frontiers of Christendom against the heathen and Mohammedan hosts of Asia, and which has been the first to respond to and co-operate with modern missionary effort in the Near East.
Now there remains not a single Armenian teacher or pupil in our mission college at X., out of the more than 200 who were there before the war began. All have been sent away by the order of the highest Government authorities, into exile or to death. With unspeakable brutality, the innocent young women teachers and pupils of the girls’ school, who were remaining in the school for the summer vacation on account of the difficulties of travelling to their homes, were carried off by the Turkish gendarmes under Government orders; but with equal heroism and courage the American principal of the girls’ school rescued 41 of them from death, or a condition worse than that, after nearly a month’s pursuit over rough and dangerous roads.
With insensate cruelty and wickedness, the young women nurses of the hospital, who were risking their lives in nursing soldiers of the Turkish Army sick with the deadly typhus fever, were driven away by the gendarmesjustjustlike the rest of their unfortunate sisters. The American physician in charge of ourhospital begged the Turkish officers in charge of the deportation to spare the nurses who were serving their own soldiers. These officers declared that they were ordered by their superiors to make no exceptions whatsoever; but, because the doctor begged so hard, four out of the dozen nurses would be allowed to remain temporarily and continue their work of mercy. That left the doctor to perform the heart-rending task of selecting those who should go and those who should remain. It was like casting pearls before swine when he made them draw lots to decide their fate. Some of the best and most experienced nurses drew lots to go. One who held a diploma from one of the leading London hospitals, who was a pioneer in the nurses’ profession in Asia Minor, and who was known as the Florence Nightingale of Armenia, was taken away with the young women of the girls’ school. She was not rescued with the 41 fortunate ones. Though great in soul, she was lame and not comely in form, and on this account she has probably been allowed to perish by the way instead of being reserved for a life of shame.
It is now my purpose to show you, as best I can, by narrating facts out of my recent experience at X. in connection with these events, how the work of this great mission station in Asia Minor, a work in which I have been engaged as a missionary for ten years, a work in which hundreds of our American people have a deep and personal interest, and in which they have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars of their hard-earned money and the life work of a score of devoted missionaries, was suddenly and brutally interrupted by the Turkish Government on the 10th and 12th August of this year. You will see, incidentally, how this work of destruction illustrates the deep laid and carefully executed plans of the Turkish Government for the assassination and annihilation of the Armenian people. You will see how that Government scorned and flouted all the efforts of the missionaries and of the diplomatic representatives of our Government to save the lives and the honour of innocent women and girls. You will also see how it is possible for Christian men and women to bear faithful witness to their faith in this twentieth Christian century in a persecution not less in intensity, and greater in magnitude, than any that was ever inflicted on the early Christian martyrs by the most cruel of the pagan Roman emperors. It may astonish you to hear it, but it is true nevertheless, that there are living in the world to-day men who are the equals of Nero in cruelty.
On my way from X. to Constantinople,[107]I saw at least 50,000 people, three-fourths of whom were women and children, who had been torn from their homes and all their earthly possessions, and driven into the fields along the railway line without any shelter or any adequate means of subsistence, hungry, sick and perishing, awaiting the conveniences of the railway traffic to becrowded like sheep into the goods trucks, to be carried away eastward to die in the deserts, if they did not perish or disappear in Turkish harems on the way. I saw hundreds of mothers whose hearts were being broken by the cries of their hungry children, whom they had no hope of being able to succour or to save. The officials of the German railway were co-operating with the corrupt officials of the Turkish Government to extort all the money they could from this doleful throng. The 50,000 whom I saw represented but a brief section of the procession which has been passing along that way for months.[108]A very moderate estimate of the number of people who have perished in this way places the figure at 500,000; and still they go on!
I have received the farewell kiss and parting embrace of men, cultured Christian gentlemen, some of whom held university degrees from our best American institutions in this country, men with whom I have co-operated and at whose side I have laboured for ten years in the work of education in that land, while at their side stood brutal gendarmes, sent there by the highest authorities of the Government to drive them away with their wives and children from their homes, from their work, and from all the associations which they held most dear, into exile or to death, and some of them to a condition worse than either. We had no better friends in this world than those people were. To part with them under such circumstances was harder than I can say, and yet but few tears were shed on either side. Our feelings were too deep for idle tears! I have often seen pictures of the early Christian martyrs crouching together in the arena of the Coliseum, expecting at any moment to be torn in pieces by the hungry lions which were being turned loose upon them, while the eager spectators were watching from their safe seats, and waiting to be amused by that spectacle. And I had supposed that such cruelties and such amusements were impossible in this twentieth Christian century. But I was mistaken. I have seen 62 Armenian women and girls, between the ages of 15 and 25, huddled together in the rooms of the principal of our American girls’ school at X., while outside were waiting men more cruel than beasts, ready to carry them off; and these men were demanding, backed by the highest authorities of the Government, that we should deliver these defenceless girls into their brutal hands, for them to do with them what they would. I had supposed that there was no man in the world to-day who could be amused by such a spectacle as that. In this, too, I was mistaken, for when the wife of our American Ambassador at Constantinople made a personal appeal to Talaat Bey, the Minister of the Interior in the Turkish Cabinet—the man who more than anyone else has devised and executed this deportation of the Armenians, and who has boasted that he has been able to destroymore Armenians in 30 days than Abd-ul-Hamid was able to destroy in 30 years—when she made an appeal to this Turkish Minister, begging him to stop this cruel persecution of Armenian women and girls, the only answer she got from him was: “All this amuses us!”
I will now narrate some of the more important events leading up to this climax.
We were surprised on the morning of the last Wednesday in April to learn that the professor of Armenian in our college had been arrested during the previous night along with a number[109]of the other leading Armenians of the city. We found upon inquiry that all these men were or had been members of one or the other of the Armenian nationalist societies, the Hunchakists or the Dashnakists[110]. These societies had a legal existence under the Turkish Government. They had up till quite recently been on good terms with the Government of the Young Turks. They co-operated with the party of Union and Progress in overthrowing the tyranny of Abd-ul-Hamid in 1908. They desired to co-operate with the Turks in establishing an enlightened constitutional Government in Turkey. But recently, when the policy of destroying the Armenians was determined upon, it seems that the Government thought it advisable to hit the leading members of the Armenian nationalist societies first. A number of the prominent members of these societies were hanged in Constantinople. Those arrested in our city were held in prison for a few days. Then they were sent to the capital of the province, where they were tortured and exposed to the contagion of typhus fever. Within six weeks of their arrest, their families received notice through the Government officials that not any of them remained alive. The wife of our professor was a cultured young woman, who had taught for years in our girls’ school. She was left a widow with one child, a little girl. She remained alone in her home, but not for long; for, some weeks after, when all the people were deported from her quarter of the city, she was carried away along with the rest. I saw her, dressed in the costume of a Turkish woman, leading her little girl by the hand as she passed by our college gate on the morning she was driven out, with hundreds of other women and children, on to the roads, to be captured or to die.
During the month of May, the Government was active in enlisting into the Army the Armenian young men whom they had not already enrolled. The majority of them were already serving under the colours, having been called out in the early months of the war. Some of our Armenian students had already been advanced to the position of officers in the Turkish Army because of their superior education and intelligence. Those who remained were now being called out and sent away. Some, who couldafford it, paid the exemption tax of £44 (Turkish—about £40 sterling), and remained at home. Those who went with these last contingents, as a rule, were not allowed to bear arms, but were forced to do menial labour, such as building roads and carrying baggage, most of the horses and donkeys which had been requisitioned from the poor people in the early months of the war having died from rough usage or neglect.
In the month of June the Government repeatedly published an edict, by criers in the streets, ordering all the people to give up their weapons of every kind to the police. It was not at all strange that the Armenians should possess some weapons. It was the custom of the country, because of the insecurity of life and property there, for all who could afford it to possess some means of self-defence. It was obvious that this order was intended only for the Armenians, as they alone were compelled to obey it, whereas their Mohammedan neighbours, who possessed at least as many weapons as they did, were not compelled to obey it. This fact aroused the suspicions of the Armenians, because they remembered that on previous occasions, when the Turks contemplated a massacre of Armenians, they began by disarming them. Many Armenians hesitated on this account to give up their arms, and none of them would have done so if they had suspected what plans the Turks had in store for them. However, the Government took special pains on this occasion to reassure the Armenians, promising them protection and security if they would give up their arms. They were told that they could prove their loyalty only by obeying the order, and they were threatened with the severest punishment if they should refuse. In spite of many misgivings, most of the Armenians gave up their arms; and some of them, to prove their loyalty, actually assisted the Government in disarming their own people. Only a very few held out against the order and hid their weapons in their houses or in their gardens. Persons suspected of doing this were arrested and taken to the Government Building, where they were subjected to the cruellest forms of torture. Usually they were bound and bastinadoed until they became unconscious. Boiling water was often poured on the soles of the feet, to increase the pain of the bastinadoing. The victim was usually ordered to confess that he was guilty of conspiracy against the Government. Often he was ordered to implicate others; and to escape the terrible pain of the torture they would say almost anything they were told to say. These declarations made under torture were used as evidence against others. At least two men of our city died under this torture. Two of our own employees were subjected to it, the one a gate-keeper and the other a blacksmith, who did general repair work about our premises. I saw two gendarmes leading this man out of our front gate one afternoon in June. They took him to the Government Building. There they bound him, and four brutal men stuffed his mouth withfilth and beat him with rods all over the body until he became unconscious. As soon as he regained consciousness, they repeated the process. Apparently their intention was to kill him by torture, and they would have done so if it had not been for the timely intervention of a friendly gendarme, a Circassian, who had been in our employment and who knew the Armenian who was being tortured. He intervened and rescued the man from his tormentors, and carried him home on his own back after it was dark enough to escape observation. He was saved, but not for long. When he had recovered, a month after[111], he was carried away, with his wife and two small children, in the general deportation. We learned afterwards that the occasion for this man’s torture was that he was seen casting a 16-pound shot, which we had ordered him to make for our college field-day sports this year. The man who saw him reported to the police that he had been making bombs!
After having weakened the Armenians to the extent of having sent most of the young men into the Army, and of having terrorised the rest, one night, toward the end of June,[112]suddenly, without any warning, the houses of almost all the Armenians who still remained in the city were forcibly entered by the police and gendarmes. The men were arrested and held as prisoners in the soldiers’ barracks at one side of the city. The whole number amounted to 1,213. Two more of our leading Armenian professors were arrested on this occasion.[113]After being held a few days, a very few, by paying very large sums of money[114]as bribes to the officials, were allowed to become Mohammedans, and were let out, to be sent away in a few days in the opposite direction to the rest. The rest were told that they were to be sent away into exile to Mosul, in the deserts of Mesopotamia, six or seven hundred miles away.
Now the Government did not intend that any of these men should reach that destination. Its purpose was extermination, not simply deportation. While they were still held in the barracks, the commander of gendarmerie, who had the business of their deportation in charge, called at the mission compound, and talked freely about the deportation of the Armenians in the presence of all the American men in our station. He said that not one out of a thousand would ever reach Mosul, and that if any of them did arrive there they could not survive, because of the hostility of the nomads in those regions, and because of the impossibility of gaining a livelihood there when deprived of all their resources, as these Armenians had been. “Orada Christiyanliq olmaz” was the Turkish expression which he used, which means: “Over there Christianity is impossible.” The Government’s purpose was to get rid of Christianity in the OttomanEmpire by getting rid of the Christians. The mayor of our city told our American Consular Agent[115]that the Government intended first to get rid of the Armenians, and then of the Greeks, and finally of the foreigners, and so to have Turkey for the Turks. Enver Pasha said the same thing to our Ambassador. These 1,213 men of whom I spoke, after being held for a few days, were bound together in small batches of five or six men each and sent off at night, in companies of from 50 to 150, under the escort of gendarmes. Some 15 miles from the city[116]they were set upon by the gendarmes and by bandits calledchettis, and cruelly murdered with axes. Thesechettiswere criminals who had been turned loose from the prisons of Constantinople and the cities of the interior, and set upon the roads for the express purpose of preying upon the Armenians, as they were being driven along the roads. One of the gendarmes who helped to drive these 1,213 men away, boasted to our French teacher that he had killed 50 Armenians with his own hands, and had obtained from their persons £150 Turkish. The chief of the police at X. stated that none of these 1,213 men remained alive. Our Consular Agent visited the scene of this slaughter in August,[117]and brought back with him Turkish “nufus teskeriés,” or identification papers, taken from the bodies of the victims. I personally saw these papers. They were all besmeared with blood.[118]
The motive which the Government claimed for all these cruelties was military necessity. They said that the Armenians were a disloyal element in the population, which it was necessary to weaken in order that they might not hit them in the back while they were engaged in war with the foreign foe. This was only a pretext. The real motive was a compound of religious fanaticism, jealousy, greed for loot and bestial lust. This was evident from what followed. If their motive had been to weaken the Armenians in order to protect themselves from attack, they had succeeded in doing this in a most thorough manner. The Armenians were now quite helpless. All the strong men had been sent into the Army, or killed, or sent into exile. All that now remained were the women and children and old men. But when the Government had reduced the Armenians to this helpless state, they decided to exterminate the rest. Criers were sent through the streets[119]announcing to the people that all the Armenians were to be deported. Not a single person with an Armenian name, whether rich or poor, old or young, sick or well, male or female, was to be left in the city. They were to have three days to prepare to go.
This announcement produced great consternation among the people. They came in great numbers to the mission compound, begging us to advise them what to do, bringing their money, jewels and other valuables and asking us to keep them for them. Some of them offered to give us their children, knowing that it would be impossible to keep them alive on that terrible journey. The promise of three days was not kept. The very next morning, the local police with gendarmes well armed with Mauser rifles began to enter the Armenian houses, drive the women and children into the streets, and lock the doors of their homes behind them and seal them with the Government’s seal, thus dispossessing them of all their worldly possessions. They then assigned four or five persons to each of the ox-carts which they had brought with them to send the people away with. The carts were not intended to carry the people. They had to walk beside them. The carts were for carrying a pillow and a single bed-covering for each person. When they had gotten from five hundred to a thousand persons ready in this manner, they were set moving, a doleful procession, driven by gendarmes along the roads toward the east. Morning after morning, during the month of July, we saw groups of this kind pass by the college compound, the women carrying their babies in their arms and leading their little children by the hand, without anything left in this world, starting on a hopeless journey of a thousand miles into the wilderness, to die miserably or to be captured by Turks. By the end of July the city had been emptied in this manner of its 12,000 Armenian inhabitants. Only the Armenians in the mission compound remained. Fearing for their safety, we had tried to get into communication withConstantinople. All our telegrams for this purpose were intercepted by the Government. When we complained to the Governor that he was cutting us off from communication with our Ambassador, he frankly informed us that we would not be allowed to communicate with our Ambassador. This had a sinister meaning to us. It was a threat not only against the Armenians in our compound, but also against us. The Governor had declared consistently from the beginning that he would deport all the Armenians in our compound as soon as it suited his convenience. All channels of communication having failed, we sent off to Constantinople one of our Greek tutors, and following him one of our English tutors, to carry information of our situation to our Ambassador in Constantinople. They reported the Governor’s threats to Mr. Morgenthau. He promptly visited Talaat Bey, the Minister of the Interior, and Enver Pasha, the Minister of War, and obtained from both these men their unqualified assurance that they would send orders to the local authorities at X. ordering them to exempt the Armenians in our schools and hospital from the general deportation. He sent repeated telegrams to this effect to our Consular Agent, whom he had ordered to come to X. to look after our interests. In this matter these ministers seem to have told a direct lie to our Ambassador, or else their subordinate officers refused to obey their orders, in which case the country would have been in a state of anarchy. But there was no sign of any anarchy in all these transactions and dealings with the Armenians. There were no mob outbreaks. Everything seemed to be under perfect control and to be carried through with military precision. When our Consular Agent showed the telegram from our Ambassador to the local Governor, he stated that he had received the exact contrary orders, and that furthermore he knew that he would not receive any other orders. Our Consular Agent, desiring to make a full report on the situation to the Ambassador, left for his post at L. on the 9th August.
The next morning, the 10th August, there appeared at the front gate of our mission compound the chief of the police of the city, with the local police force and a company of gendarmes and ox-carts. They demanded that we should admit them to the compound and should order the Armenians in our premises to come out and get ready to leave. The President of the college reminded them of the assurances we had received from Constantinople, and said that we could not allow them to enter our premises with our consent. If they wished to enter, they would have to use force and accept the responsibility therefor. They replied that if we dared to resist their authority in any way, we would be hanged just like any Ottoman subject. The Capitulations had now all been abolished, and we no longer had any rights or special privileges. They hesitated, however, to use force for a time, and sent one of their number to the Governor, asking for instructions. We also sent our doctor at the same time to do what he could in our behalf.They met in the Governor’s office. The policeman reported to the Governor that the Americans were resisting their authority. The Governor gave orders to enter the premises by force and take out all the Armenians. They gathered up a squad of some 25 more gendarmes, and returned and entered the compound by force. They drove their ox-carts in and unyoked their oxen. It was a group of nomads coming to destroy a more civilised community. The gendarmes entered the college buildings and our own American residences, and drove out at the end of their rifles all the Armenians they could find. Our professors with their families were taking refuge in our houses. In the college buildings were the Armenian servants and employees connected with the institutions. They drove out all these, with our own personal servants, some of them young Armenian women, and assigned them to ox-carts just as they had done to the people of the city in the days before. They collected 71 people on our college premises in this way. When they were ready to go, we took our last sad farewell of these people with whom we had worked for years, and among whom were some of the best friends we had in the world. They had no adequate food supply. We reminded the Governor of their needs, and he promised to detain them over-night at the Armenian monastery two miles out of the city, in order that a food supply might be got ready. The college bakery was kept busy over-night baking hard tack. Early in the morning a wagon-load was taken to the monastery, but it was found that the Governor had not kept his word. The professors and their families had been hurried on as fast as possible. They had not been allowed to stop at the monastery. They had been driven on without food. We have never heard anything about that party from our college compound from that day to this, except from some of the gendarmes who took them away. They said that the men had been separated from the women out on the road, taken to one side and killed. The women had been sent on, to be disposed of as those who went before had been.
Two days after, on the 12th August, the chief of the police, with the local police force and a few gendarmes, came to the mission compound again and demanded the young women of the girls’ school. The whole forenoon was spent by the missionaries in arguing with the police, and in trying to prevent them from taking the young women away. The Principal at one time thought it would be better to have them all shot in the school garden than to give them into the hands of those brutal men. When further resistance proved useless, the girls were prepared for the journey with food, clothing and money. Their American principal[120]tried to get permission to go with them. This was denied at first. Afterwards she was allowed to go as far as Y., the first day’s journey. Fourteen wagons bore away the 62 young women from the school compound at two o’clock in the afternoonof the 12th August. Some beastly looking gendarmes were escorting them. At the edge of the city the procession was halted. While they waited, the Governor sent for the President of the college to come out and witness what was done, in order, as he said, that he might see that no undue pressure was brought to bear upon these young women to change their faith. The police asked each of the young women whether they would deny their faith and become Mohammedans, to save themselves from that terrible journey. All 62 refused. Two miles out on the road the same thing was repeated. All refused again. The first night they reached Y., and were kept in a field by the city over-night. The next morning the American principal furnished them with an extra supply of food and money, and then the Governor of Y. ordered her to leave the girls and return home. She arrived back at X. on the evening of the 13th August very sad, expecting never to see any of her girls again. After four days she was granted permission to visit the Governor of the Province at Z., hoping she might be able to persuade him to order the return of her girls. She caught up with the party just this side of Z. She found that 21 of the 62 girls had been carried away and lost—41 still remained. These she was allowed to take to the compound of the American school in Z.[121]While they were waiting there, she succeeded in persuading the Governor to allow her to take the 41 remaining girls back to X. The party arrived back there on the 6th September, after nearly a month’s absence on the road. Thus these brutal men were cheated out of some of their choicest prey. These 41 girls were all that were left of the city’s 12,000 Armenian inhabitants who had not been exiled or killed or compelled to turn Mohammedan. What happened at X. is but a specimen of what happened to every other town in Asia Minor.[122]
Now the question arises—What do we think about all this, and how do we feel? We all know what we think and how we feel. But the more practical question—What are we going to do about it?—is more difficult to answer. Most of these people are beyond our help. But small groups such as I have described still remain in some of our mission stations, which are accessible to help through our Board. Many have escaped to Russia, where they are accessible to help through the Armenian Relief Committee. These poor people deserve our help.
The Preliminary Report by the same author contains certain passages not included in the preceding Address, which give additional information and are therefore appended here.
(a) The nervous strain and mental agony which our people had to endure during the month of July was terrible. They were hanging suspended between the hope that the American Ambassador would be able to do something for them and the fear that they might at any time have to suffer the terrible fate of those that had gone on before them. This dread of what might befall his wife and daughter made one of our professors temporarily insane. All were tormented with the terrible temptation to save themselves by denying their faith. They reasoned with themselves that they could profess Islam with the mental reservation that, as soon as the storm was over, they would again outwardly profess their loyalty to their true faith. About fifty members of the Protestant church and congregation yielded to this temptation, as did also a larger number of the Gregorians. Merely declaring their wish to become Mohammedans by no means insured their safety. Only the rich and powerful, and those few whom the Governor thought he could use to advantage, were accepted upon the payment of large sums of money. He was said, on good authority, to have enriched himself by £20,000 (Turkish) in this way. Many who professed Islam and paid money were deported, but usually in the opposite direction and with the understanding that they might return to their homes after a time. Some of these new recruits to Islam seemed to have their characters completely undermined. In order to show their loyalty to their new faith, they assisted the persecutors of their own people. One of our students, the son of the richest man in the city, who became a Mohammedan, stood at our gate on the day that the professors and students were deported and actually informed the gendarmes that one of the young men who had been his fellow student was missing. They went back and found him.
(b) On the 11th August, a Turkish doctor, who was the medical instructor for the Vilayet of Z., called on us and stated that he did not approve of the deportation of women and children, and that he would try to save three Armenian girls by taking them with him to Constantinople. One of the teachers of the girls’ school, a nurse from the hospital and a pupil of the girls’ school, whose home was in Constantinople, ventured to accept his offer. They prepared themselves for the journey by dressing themselves in Turkish women’s costumes, so as not to attract any attention along the road. On the first night of their journey, this doctor tried to force these three young women to become Mohammedans and enter the houses of his friends. He persisted in his arguments through the whole of the first night, but they stood firm, and then he declared that he would send them back to X., and givethem into the possession of the Turkish officials there who desired them. The next morning he sent them back under the charge of his servant. On the road back to X. they met the convoy carrying away the girls from the girls’ school, and made themselves known by crying out to Miss A., who went to their assistance, and learned what had befallen them during the night. They begged Miss A. to get their release, in order that they might go off into exile with the rest of the girls and teachers; and the young men who had them in charge delivered them over into Miss A.’s charge, she signing a receipt that she had received them. They declared that even exile and the terrible things that might befall them by the way seemed like heaven to them after the experiences they had gone through the previous night. I tried for a month to get permission to bring the teacher in this party with us to America before she was carried away, but even the efforts of the American Ambassador on her behalf were unavailing.
The following passage is taken from the letter (dated 1st/14th October, 1915, and written by an acquaintance who interviewed the author of the preceding Address at Athens) which has been quoted already in a preceding footnote.
Two families accepted Mohammedanism at the beginning. One was the family of Professor B. with his three grown-up daughters, who were immediately required to marry Turks; the other was the family of Mr. C., a notable of the town. Both families were Protestants. The authorities allowed D.’s family to remain at X., as they wanted D. to take photographs of the bombs and guns found in the possession of the “rebels”—all such guns and bombs having been specially placed by the authorities to be photographed. D. found life unbearable as a Christian and also accepted Mohammedanism after some time. Professors E. and F., both of whose mothers are Germans, from the German colony of M., near Y., were rescued by the German colonists, and remained with them up to the time my friend (the author of the preceding Address) left X. The Kaimakam of X. said that they had only escaped for the moment, and that he would get at them, too, in the end.
Two Turks of X. were hanged for sheltering or offering to shelter some Armenian friends of theirs.