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LNEOUS NO. 31 (1916).
THE
TREATMENT OF ARMENIANS
in the Ottoman Empire
1915-16 Documents presented to
VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs By Viscount Bryce With a preface by
VISCOUNT BRYCE
L O N D O N :
PRINTED UXDER riTK AUTITORITY OF HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE By SIR JOSEPH CAUSTON and SONS, Limited, 9, Eastcheap. E.G.
To be purchased, either directly or through any Bookseller, from WYMAN AND SONS. Limited, 29, Breams Buildings, Fetter Lane, E.C and 54, St. Mary Street, Cardiff ; or H.xM. STATIONERY OFFICE (Scottish Branch), 23, Forth Street. Edinburgh ; or E. PONSONBY, Limited, 116. Grafton Street, Dublin; or from the Agencies in the British Colonies and Dependencies, the United States of America and other Foreign Countries of T. FISHER UNWIN. Limited, London. W.C.
191G.
Price Two Shillings
GUIDE TO THE READER
THIS volume has been made, as far as possible, an exhaustive collection of evidence. It therefore necessarily contains much that is only of slight interest to the ordinary reader, and many of the documents are duplicate accounts, from independent sources, of identical events, which, while of the highest value from the evidential point of view, are superfluous to those who wish merely to form a general idea of what occurred.
It has therefore seemed advisable, in the reader's interest, to single out forty or fifty of the most important documents (about one in three of the whole series), and direct his attention, in the first place, to these. They are detailed, with an indica- tion of their contents, in the following list : —
Doc. 9. Letter conveyed out of Turkey in the sole of a refugee's shoe.
1 2. News in German missionary journals suppressed by the German Censor.
„ 15. Siege of Van : an American lady who went through it. „ 18. Van : a German Missionary's letter.
Sassoun : the last stand of the Armenian mountaineers.
The massacres at Moush : a German eye-witness. Moush : a victim of the massacre?.
How the missionaries saved 1 7,000 refugees at Urmia : a diary.
How the Nestorian Patriarch fought for his people : letter from his sister.
The flight from Urmia : story of a pastor's wife. Scenes on the refugees' road.
Erzeroum : notes from an American who stayed there till the Russians came in.
Baibourt : the horrors of deportation, described by an exiled lady.
Erzindjan : the passing of the exiles, described by two Danish Sisters in the German Red Cross,
A Turkish " Government Orphanage " : experiences of another Danish Red Cross Nurse.
A town on the exile route.
The sufferings of an exile-gang.
The fate of a Christian College : report by the College Principal.
Doc. 72. Trebizond : wholesale drowning at sea.
„ 73. Trebizond : interview with the former Italian Consul-Generai.
„ 78. Exiles on the march : letter from an American lady who accompanied them.
„ 82. Adventures of an Armenian peasant who defied the deportation decree.
87. " Cleaning out " a town : testimony of a foreign Professor. „ 88. The same town : narrative of a foreign lady.
„ 89. The rescue of deported school-girls, by the same lady.
„ 96. The butchery at Angora : the same witness.
„ 102. Adapazar : the bastinado in the Church,
„ 104. A railway journey during the deportations, by a foreign doctor.
„ 108. Afiun Kara Hissar : a brave Armenian doctor's wife.
„ 114. On the Baghdad Railway : a lady's diary.
„ 117. The concentration camps: two Swiss ladies.
Doc. 118. Journey from Smyrna to Damascus and back, by a foreign traveller.
„ 121. Cilicia : emptying the hill villages.
122. Zeitoun : the Protestant Pastor.
„ 123. Zeitounlis in exile : diary of a foreigner in the Plains.
„ 1 26. What happened to a mountain town : statement by a foreign resident.
„ 1 30. Jibal Mousa : five villages which held the Turks at bay, and were rescued by the French Fleet.
„ 133. What happened at Ourfa.,
„ 137. Births on the road : the fate of the babies and the mothers.
„ 139. Reports from Aleppo.
„ 141. Collecting the dead at Aleppo.
„ 143. Damascus: arrival of the exiles.
„ 144. On the banks of the Euphrates : death by starvation.
„ 1 45. Der-el-Zor, the exile station in the desert : by a German traveller.
For Official Use.
MISCELLANEOUS NO. 31 (1910).
THE
in the Ottoman Empire
1915-16 Documents presented to
VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs By Viscount Bryee With a preface by
VISCOUNT BRYCE
LONDON:
PRINTED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE By SIR JOSEPH CAUSTON and SONS, Limited. 9. Eastcheap. E.G.
To be purchased, either directly or through any Bookseller, from WYiMAN AND SONS, Limited, 29, Breams Buildings, Fetter Lane, E.C., and 54, St. Mary Street. Cardiff ; or H.M. STATIONERY OFFICE (Scottish Branch), 23, Forth Street. Edinburgh ; or E. PONSONBY, Limited, 116, Grafton Street, Dublin: or from the Agencies in the British Colonies and Dependencies, the United States of America and other Foreign Countries of T. FISHER UNWIN, Limited, London. W.C.
1916.
Pnce Two Shillings
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
The titles are italicised in the case of documents which relate merely to the condition of refugees in Egypt and Caucasia, and not to the events in Turkey and N.W. Persia of which these refugees had been the victims.
PAGE
Map of Districts affected ... Frontispiece
Correspondence between Viscount Grey of Fallodon and Viscount
Bryce xv.
Preface by Viscount Bryce ... ... ... ... ... ... xxi .
Letter from Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Uni- versity, to Viscount Bryce ... ... ... xxix.
Letter from Prof. Gilbert Murray, Regius Professor of Greek in the
University of Oxford, to Viscount Bryce xxxi.
Letter from Mr. Moorfield Storey, ex-President of the American Bar
Association, to Viscount Bryce xxxii.
Letter from Four German Missionaries to the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs at Berlin xxxiii.
Memorandum by the Editor of the Documents xxxv.
L — General Descriptions 1
1. Despatch from Mr. Henry Wood, Correspondent of the American " United Press " at Constantinople ; pub- lished in the American Press, 14th August, 1915 ... 2
2. Despatch, dated lltli June, 1915, from an especially well-informed neutral source at Constantinople ; com- municated by the American Committee for Armenian
and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... ... ... 4
3. Extract from a letter, dated Arabkir, 25th June /8th July, 1915, communicated by the American Committee
for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 5
4. Letter from an authoritative source, dated Constanti- nople, 15 /28th June, 1915 ; published in the New York journal " Gotchnag," 28th August, 1915 6
5. Letter from the same source, dated Constantinople, 12 /25th July, 1915 ; published in the New York journal
" Gotchnag," 28th August, 1915 8
6. Letter from the same source, dated Constantinople, 13 /26th July, 1915, and addressed to a distinguished Armenian resident beyond the Ottoman frontier ... 9
7. Letter from the same source, dated Constantinople, 2nd /15th August, 1915, and addressed to the same Armenian resident beyond the Ottoman frontier ... 12
8. Extracts from a letter, dated Athens, 8th /21st July, 1915, from an Armenian formerly resident in Turkey to
a prominent Armenian in Western Europe 17
9. Letter, dated 3rd /16th August, 1915, conveyed beyond the Ottoman frontier by an Armenian refugee from Cilicia in the sole of her shoe 20
10. Letter from Mr. N., a foreign resident at Constantinople, dated 27th August, 1915 ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief .. 22 (B345) 33760 & 90. A I
iv.
Contents.
1 1 . Memorandum dated 15 /28th October, 1915, from a well- informed source at Bukarest, relating to the extermina- tion of the Armenians in Turkey ... ... ... 23
12. Information regarding events in Armenia, published in the " Sonnenaufgang " (organ of the "German League for the Promotion of Christian Charitable Work in the East "), October, 1915 ; and in the " Allgemeine Mis- sions-Zeitschrift," November, 1915 ... ... ... 25
13. Statement made by a foreign resident at Constantinople to a Swiss gentleman at Geneva ; communicated by the latter 28
14. Cablegram, dated 4th May, 1916, transmitted through the State Department at Washington to the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, from the Committee's representatives in Turkey ... ... ... 29
II. — Vilayet of Van 31
15. The American Mission at Van : Narrative printed privately in the United States by Miss Grace Higley Knapp (1915) 32
16. Van : Letter dated Van, 7th June, 1915, from Mr. Y. K. Rushdouni ; published in the " Manchester Guardian,"
2nd August, 1915 48
17. Van : Narrative by Mr. Y. K. Rushdouni, published serially in the Armenian journal " Gotchnag," of
New York 52
18. Van after the Turkish retreat : Letter from Herr Sporri, of the German Mission at Van, published in the German journal " Sonnenaufgang," October, 1915 71
19. Van after the massacres : Narrative of Mr. A. S. Safrastian, dated Van, 2nd December, 1915, and published in the Armenian journal " Ararat," of London, January, 1916 72
20. Van : Interview with a refugee, Mrs. Gazarian, pub- lished in the " Pioneer Press," of St, Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A 76
III. — Vilayet of Bitlis 79
21. The North-Eastern Vilayets : Statement communicated by the Refugee Roupen, of Sassoun, to the Armenian Community at Moscow ; published in the Russian Press, and subsequently reprinted in the " Gazette de Lau- sanne," 13th February, 1916 80
22. Bitlis, Moush and Sassoun : Record of an interview with Roupen, of Sassoun, by Mr. A. S. Safrastian, dated Tifiis, 6th November, 1915 83
23. Moush : Statement by a German eye-witness of occur- rences at Moush ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... 88
24. Moush District : Narrative of a deported woman, related by her to Mr. Vartkes, of Moush, recorded by him on the 25th July, 1915, and published subsequently
in the Armenian journal " Van-Tosp "... ... ... 92
25. Moush : R6sum6 of information furnished by refugees in the Caucasus and published in the Caucasian Press, especially in the Armenian journal " Mschak " ; compiled by Mr. G. H. Paelian, and communicated by him to the Armenian journal " Ararat," of London, March. 1916 94
Contents.
V.
26. Bitlis : Letter dated 14th October, 1915, from a foreign resident at Bitlis to a German official ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 96
IV. — Azerbaijan and Hakkiari 99
27. Urmia : Statement by the Rev. William A. Shedd, D.D., of the American (Presbyterian) Mission Station at Urmia ; communicated by the Board of Foreign Missions
of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ... ... 100
28. First Exodus from Urmia, January, 1915 : Report, dated 1st March, 1915, from the Rev. Robert M. Labaree, of the American Mission Station at Urmia, to the Hon. F. Willoughby Smith, U.S. Consul at Tifiis ; communicated by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ... ... ... 105
29. Azerbaijan, behind the Russian front : Extracts from a series of letters by the Rev. Robert M. Labaree ; communicated by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ... ... ... 110
30. Tabriz : Letter dated Tabriz, 17th March, 1915, from the Rev. F. N. Jessup ; communicated by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the
U.S. A 113
31. Urmia during tlie Turco-Kurdish occupation : Diary of a Missionary, edited by Miss Mary Schauffler Piatt, and published by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ... ... ... 119
32. Urmia after its evacuation by the Turks and Kurds : Letter dated Urmia, 20th May, 1915, from Mrs. J. P. Cochran to friends in the United States ; communicated by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. A 151
33. Urmia : Letter, dated Urmia, 25th May, 1915, from the Rev. Y. M. Nisan to the Rev. F. N. Heazell, Organising Secretary of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission 156
34. Urmia : Narrative of Dr. Jacob Sargis, recorded in a despatch, dated Petrograd, 12th February, 1916, from the correspondent at Petrograd of the American "Associated Press" ... ... ... ... ... 158
35. Urmia: Extracts from the Annual Report (for the year 1915) presented by the Medical Department at Urmia to the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. A 161
36. Urmia, Salmas and Hakkiari : Statement by Mr. Paul Shimmon, published in the Armenian j ournal " Ararat,"
of London, November, 1915 ... ... ... ... 164
37. Hakkiari : Statement by Mr. Paul Shimmon, published in the " Churchman " newspaper, and subsequently issued as a pamphlet ; communicated by Mrs. D. S. Margoliouth, of Oxford 169
38. Refugees from the Hakkiari District : Series of extracts from letters by mem.bers of the American Mission Station at Urmia ; communicated by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A, „ , 172
vi.
Contents.
39. Refugees from Hakkiari : Letter dated 26th September / 9th October, 1915, from a relative of Mar Shimun, the Patriarch ; communicated by the Rev. F. N. Heazell... 175
40. Refugees from Hakkiari : Letter, dated Diliman, 1st /14th April, 1916, from Surma, the sister of Mar Shimun. to Mrs. D. S. Margoliouth, of Oxford 177
4L The Nestorians of the Bohtan District : Letter, dated Salmas, 6th March, 1916, from the Rev. E.W. McDowell, of the Urmia Mission Station, reporting information brought by a young man (with whom Mr. McDowell was previously acquainted) who had escaped the massacre ; communicated by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. A 180
42. Second Exodus from Urmia : Letter dated Tabriz, 20th August, 1915, from Mr. Hugo A. Miiller (Treasurer of the American Mission Station at Urmia) ; com- municated by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ... ... ... 182
43. Second Exodus from Urmia : Narrative of a Nestorian victim, the wife of the Rev. David Jacob, of Urmia, published in the Armenian journal " Ararat," of London, January, 1916 ... ... ... ... ... 184
44. Urmia District : Report on the distribution of relief, covering the period 1st June to 31st December, 1915 ;
* communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 187
45. Azerbaijan : Statement, dated Tiflis, 22nd February, 1916, by Mr. M. Philips Price, War Correspondent for various British and American newspapers on the Caucasian Front ; cornmunicated to Aneurin Williams, Esq., M.P., and published in the Armenian journal
" Ararat," of London. March, 1916 191
v.. — The Refugees in the Caucasus ... ... ... ... 193
46. The Flight to the Caucasus : Despatches to the Armenian journal "Horizon," of Tiflis, from Mr. Sampson Aroutiounian, President of the Armenian National Committee of Tiflis. who went in person to meet the Refugees .. . ... ... ... ... ... 194
47. The Flight to the Caucasus : Despatch from the special correspondent of the Armenian journal " Arev," of Bakou , 197
48. Memorandum on the condition of Armenian Refugees in the Caucasus and Orphans at Van ; compiled in the British Foreign Office from information, dated 9th Decem- ber, 1915, which was furnished by Mr. Stevens, British Consul at Batoum ... ... ... ... ... ... 199
49. Memorandum on the condition of Armenian Refugees in the Caucasus ; compiled in the British Foreign Office from information, dated 29th December, 1915, which was furnished by Mr. Stevens, British Consul at Batoum . . . 203
50. Report on the activity of Armenian Refugee Relief Organisations in the Caucasus and Turkish Armenia: enclosed inadespatch {No. I.), dated Batoum, 3rd January, 1916, from Mr. Consul Stevens to the British Foreign Office 208
.5 ' . Refugees in the Caucasus : Letter dated Erivan, 29th December, \9\S, from the Rev. S. G. Wilson to Dv. Samuel T. Dutton, Secretary of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 216
Contents.
vii.
PAGE
52. Repatriation of Refugees : Letter, dated Erivan {?), March, 1916, from the Rev. S. G. Wilson ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... 219
VI. — Vilayet of Erzeroum 221
53. Erzeroum : Record of an Interview between the Rev. H. J. Buxton and the Rev. Robert Stapleton, a missionary of the American Board, resident at Erzeroum from before the outbreak of war until after the capture
of the city by the Russians ... ... ... ... 222
54. Erzeroum : Report, dated 25th September, 1915, drawn up by the American Consul-General at Trebizond, after his return from a visit to Erzeroum ; communi- cated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Rehef 228
55. Erzeroum : Abstract of a Report by Mr. B. H. Khou- nountz, representative of the " All-Russian Urban Union," on a visit to Erzeroum after the Russian occupation ; published in the Armenian journal
" Horizon," of Tiflis, 25th February, 1916 231
56. Erzeroum : Abstract of a Report by Dr. Y. Minassian, who accompanied Mr. Khounountz to Erzeroum as representative of the Caucasian Section of the " AU- Russian Urban Union " ; published in the Armenian journal " Mschak," of Tiflis, 8th March, 1916 233
57. Erzeroum : Statement by Mr. A. S. Safrastian, dated Tiflis, 15th March, 1916 236
58. Erzeroum : Statement by the Kurd Ali-Aghazade Faro, published in the Armenian journal "Mschak,"
19th December, 1915 241
59. Baibourt : Narrative of an Armenian lady deported in the third convoy ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... 242
60. Baibourt : Statement, reproduced from the Armenian journal " Horizon," of Tiflis, in the Armenian journal
" Gotchnag," of New York, 18th March, 1916 244
61. Baibourt, Keghi, and Erzindjan : Letter, dated Er- zeroum, 25th May /7th June, 1915 ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 245
62. Erzindjan : Statement by two Red Cross Nurses of Danish Nationality, formerly in the service of the German MiUtary Mission at Erzeroum ; communicated
by a Swiss gentleman of Geneva ... ... ... ... 246
63. Kamakh and Erzeroum : Statement published in the
New York journal "Gotchnag," 4th September, 1915... 255
VII. — Vilayet of Mamouret-ul-Aziz ... 257
64. H. : Statement made by Miss DA., a Danish lady in the service of the German Red Cross at H., to Mr. DB., at Basle, and communicated by Mr. DB. to Lord Bryce ... 258
65. H. : Report, dated 11th July, 1915, from a foreign resident at H. ; communicated by the American Com- mittee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... 262
66. H. : Memorandum forwarded by a foreign resident at H. (the author of the preceding report) ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 265
viii.
Conients.
67. H. : Narrative of an Armenian Refugee from H. ; communicated to Lord Bryce by the correspondent of
the London " Times " at Bukarest ... ... ... 268
68. Mamouret-ul-Aziz : Narrative of an Armenian lady deported from C. (a place half-an-hour's distance from H.), describing her journey from C. to Ras-ul-Ain ; written after her escape from Turkey, and dated Alexandria, 2nd November, 1915 ; published in the Armenian journal " Gotchnag," of New York, 8th January, 1916 271
69. H. : Statement by the Principal of the College, dated 19th July, 1915 ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 278
70. H. : Statement by the Principal of the College, dated 19th July, 1915, relating to the deportation of Armenians from villages in the neighbourhood of H. ; communi- cated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 281
71. H. : Letter, dated 10th November, 1915, from the Principal of the College at H. to Mr. N. at Constanti- nople; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 282
VIII. — Vilayet of Trebizond, and Sandjak of Shabin Kara-
HissAR 285
72. Trebizond : Report from a foreign resident at Trebi- zond ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 286
73. Trebizond : Extracts from an interview with Comm. G. Gorrini, late Italian Consul-General at Trebizond ; published in the journal " II Messaggero," of Rome,
25th August, 1915 290
74. Trebizond : Narrative of the Montenegrin Kavass of the local branch of the Ottoman Bank ; published in the Armenian journal " Arev," of Alexandria, 2nd October, 1915 293
75. Kerasond (Kiresoun), Trebizond and Shabin Kara-Hissar : Evidence collected by an Armenian gentleman from eye-witnesses now in Roumania; communicated by the correspondent of the London " Times " at Bukarest ... 294
76. Trebizond and Erzeroum : Despatch from the corres- pondent of the London " Times " at Bukarest, dated Bukarest, 18th May, and published on the 22nd May,
1916 299
IX. — Sivas : The City and Parts of the Vilayet 301
77. Sivas : Letter from a foreign resident at Sivas, dated 13th July, 1915 ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... 302
78. Sivas : Letter written from Malatia by Miss Mary L. Graffam, Principal of the Girls' High School at Sivas, to a correspondent at Constantinople ; reprinted from
the Boston " Missionary Herald," December, 1915 ... 305
79. Extracts from a letter, dated Massachusetts, 29th August, 1915, from another foreign resident at Sivas to
Mr, G. H. Paelian 309
30. Sivas : Narrative of a naturalised Ottoman subject, dated New Yor}*; City. 10th March, 1916; communi- ca^^(i by th\e ^n\eyican Coimuittee for A.riT\enian and Syri?:" Kf^'liet " .... su
Contents.
ix
81. Sivas : The Adventures of Murad ; narrated by " S.H.S." in the journal "The New Armenia," of New York, 1st March. 1916 317
82. Sivas : Record of an Interview given by the Refugee Murad to Mr. A. S. Safrastian at Tiflis 320
X. — Sandjak of Kaisaria 327
83. Kaisaria : Statement by a traveller from Kaisaria, published in the Armenian journal " Balkanian Mamoul, ' ' of Roustchouk ... ... ... ... ... 328
84. Everek : Statement published in the Armenian journal
" Gotchnag," of New York, 28th August, 1915 ... 329
85. K. : Letter from a foreign resident at K., dated 16th November, 1915 ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 330
XI. — The Town of X. 331
86. X. : Narrative of the Principal of the College at X. ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 332
87. X. : Address delivered in America, 13th December, 1915, by a professor from the College at X. ; communi- cated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... ... ... 336
88. X. : Statement by Miss AA., a foreign traveller in Turkey ; communicated by the American Committee
for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 349
S9. Narrative of Miss AA., a foreign traveller in Asiatic Turkey, describing a journey from X. to Z., 10th August to 6th September, 1915 ; communicated by the Ameri- can Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief . . . 356
90. X. : Report from Mr. AL., a foreign resident at L., in Asiatic Turkey, dated 26tli August, 1915 ; communi- cated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... ... ... 364
91. X. (?) : Narrative of a foreign resident of German nationality ; communicated by the American Com- mittee for x\rmenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... 367
92. X. : Letter, dated New York City, 30th December. 1915, from Professor QQ., of the College at X., to an Armenian Professor resident beyond the Ottoman frontier . . . 369
93. X. : Narrative of a journey from X. to Constantinople, by Professor QQ., of the College at X. ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief " ... 373
94. X. : Narrative of Miss CC, communicated by her to a Swiss gentleman at Geneva during her passage through Switzerland in December, 1915 ... ... ... ... 378
XII. ^ — The City of Angoka ... ... ... ... ... ... 381
95. Angora : Statement by a traveller, not of Armenian nationality, who passed tlirough Angora in August, 1915 382
96. Angora : Extract from the narrative (Doc. 88) of Miss AA., a foreign traveller in Asiatic Turkey ; com- municated by the Am.'^rican Committee for Armenian
and Svna,n Relief , 385
X.
Contents.
97. Aiifyora: Extract from a letter dated 16th September, 1915; appended to the Memorandum (Doc. 11), dated 15 /28th October, 1915, from a well-informed source at Bukarest 388
XIII. — Thrace, Constantinople, Broussa and Ismid ... 389
98. The Metropolitan Districts : Information published in
the Armenian journal " Gotchnag," of New York ... 390
99. Constantinople : Letter, dated Constantinople, 13 /26th October, 1915, from an Armenian inhabitant; published in the Armenian journal " Balkanian Mamoul," of Roustchouk 392
100. Adrianople : Despatch from the correspondent of the London "Times" at Bukarest, dated 18th December
and published on the 21st December, 1915 394
101. Broussa : Report by a foreign visitor to the city, dated 24th September, 1915 ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 395
102. Adapazar : Statement, dated 24th September, 1915, by a foreign resident in Turkey ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief... 398
103. Adapazar : Fuller statement by the author of the preceding document ; published in the journal " The
New Armenia," of New York, 15th May, 1916 400
XIV. — The Anatolian Railway 407
104. The Anatolian Railway : Narrative of a journey, during the deportation of the Armenians, by a physician of foreign nationality, who had been resident in Turkey for ten years ; communicated by the American Com- mittee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... 409
105. Eski Shehr : Letter from an Armenian victim, published in the Armenian journal " Horizon," of Tifiis, 30th October /12th November, 1915 414
106. Afiun Kara Hissar : Letter dated Afiun Kara Hissar, 10th /23rd September, 1915 ; published in the Armenian journal "Horizon," of Tifiis, 30th October /12th November, 1915 416
107. Afiun Kara Hissar : Resume of a letter, dated Afiun Kara Hissar, 2nd /15th October, 1915 ; appended to the Memorandum (Doc. 11), dated 15/28th October, 1915,
from a well-informed source at Bukarest ... ... 417
108. Afiun Kara Hissar : Letter, dated Massachusetts, 22nd November, 1915, from an American traveller ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 418
109. Q. : Report from Dr. D., dated Q., 8th September, 1915 ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 421
110. Q. : Report from Dr. E.. dated Q.. 3rd September, 1915 ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 426
111. Q. : Letter from Dr. E., dated 27th October, 1915; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 431
112. Q. : Letter, dated Q., 25th November, 1915, from l3r. E. to Mr. N. at Constantinople ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 433
Coiiients.
xi.
PAGE
113. Konia : Resume of a letter, dated Konia, 2nd /15th October, 1915 ; appended to the Memorandum (Doc. 11), dated 15th /28th October, 1915. from a well-informed source at Bukarest ... ... ... ... ... 437
114. Baghdad Railway : Diary of a foreign resident in the town of B., on a section of the line; edited by William Walter Rockwell, Esq., Ph.D., and published by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (1916) 438
115. AE., a town on the Railway : Series of Reports from a foreign resident at AE., communicated by the Ameri- can Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... 450
116. The Taurus and Amanus passes: Extracts from a Letter, dated Aleppo, 5th November, 1915, from Dr.L., a foreign resident in Turkey, to Mr. N. at Constanti- nople ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 454
117. The Amanus passes : Statements by two Swiss residents in Turkey ; communicated by the American Committee
for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 455
118. Smyrna — Aleppo — Damascus — Aleppo — Smyrna : Itinerary of a foreign traveller in Asiatic Turkey ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 459
XV. — CiLiciA (Vilayet of Adana and Sandjak of Marash) ... 465
119. Cilicia : Address (with enclosure), dated 3rd July, 1915, from the Armenian Colony in Egypt to His Excellency Lieutenant- General Sir J. G. Maxwell, Commander-in- Chief of His Britannic Majesty's Forces in Egypt ... 468
120. Cilicia : Letter, dated 20th June, 1915, from Dr. L., a foreign resident in Turkey ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief... 472
121. BM. : Letter from a foreign eye-witness, dated 6th July, 1915, on board a steamship ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief... 474
122. Zeitoun : Antecedents of the deportation, recorded by the Rev. Stephen Trowbridge, Secretary of the Cairo Committee of the American Red Cross, from an oral statement by the Rev. Dikran Andreasian, Pastor of the Armenian Protestant Church at Zeitoun ... ... 479
123. Exiles from Zeitoun : Diary of a foreign resident in the town of B. on the Cilician plain ; communicated by
a Swiss gentleman of Geneva ... ... ... ... 482
124. Exiles from Zeitoun : Further statement by the author of the preceding document ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief... 487
125. Exiles from Zeitoun : Letter, dated Konia, 17th July, 1915, from a foreign resident at Konia to Mr. N. at Constantinople ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... 490
126. AF. : Statement, dated 16th December, 1915, by a foreign resident at AF. ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... 492
127. AF. : Record of individual cases, drawn up by the author of the preceding statement, and dated 17th December, 1915 500
xii.
Contents.
128. Adana : Statement, dated 3rd December, 1915, by a foreign resident at Adana ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief... 502
129. Adana : Statement, dated 9th May, 1916, by Miss Y., a foreign resident at Adana, recording her experiences there from September, 1914, to September, 1915 ... 505
XVI. JiBAL MOUSA 511
130. Jibal Mousa : The defence of the mountain and the rescue of its defenders by the French Fleet ; narrative of an eye-witness, the Rev. Dikran Andreasian, Pastor .
of the Armenian Protestant Church at Zeitoun ... 512
131. Jibal Mousa : Report, dated Egypt, 28th September, 1915, on the Armenian Refugees rescued and trans- ported to Port Said by the cruisers of the French Fleet ; drawn up by Mgr. Thorgom, Bishop of the Gregorian Community in Egypt ... ... ... ... ... 521
132. Jihal Mousa : Another report on the Refugees at Port Said, drawn up by Mr. Tovmas K. Mugger dichian, formerly Dragoman of the British Consulate at Diyarbekir 525
XVII. — The Towns of Ourfa and AC 527
133. Ourfa : Letter, dated Ourfa, 14th June, 1915, from Mr. K. ; communicated by the American Committee
for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 528
134. Ourfa : Extract from a letter by Mr. Tovmas K. Muggerdichian ; published in the Armenian j ournal
" Gotchnag," of New York, 1st April, 1916 530
135. Ourfa : Interview with Mrs. J. Vance Young, an eye- witness of the events at Ourfa ; published in the "Egyptian Gazette," 28th September /1 1th October, and reproduced in the Armenian journal " Houssaper,"
of Cairo, 30th September /13th October, 1915 531
136. Ourfa : Postscript to a memorandum (Doc. 141) by a foreign witness from Aleppo ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief... 532
137. AC. : Statement by Miss A., a foreign resident at AC, written subsequently to her departure from Turkey in September, 1915 ; communicated by the Rev. I. N. Camp, of Cairo 533
138. AC. : Letters from an Armenian inhabitant, describing the deportation of Armenians from Cilicia ; communi- cated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... ... ... 544
XVIII. — Vilayet of Aleppo 545
139. Aleppo : Series of Reports from a foreign resident at Aleppo ; communicated by the American Committee
for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 547
140. Aleppo: Memorandum, dated Aleppo, 18th June /1st July, 1915 ; communicated by the American Committee
for Armenian and Syrian Relief ... ... ... ... 551
141. Aleppo: Memorandum by a foreign witness from Aleppo ; communicated by the American Committee
for Armenian and Syrian Relief 552
142. Aleppo : Message, dated 17th February, 1916, from Fraiilein O. ; published in the German journal '* Son- nenaufgang." April, 1916 555
Contents,
xiii.
PAOB
XTX. — Vilayet of Damascus and Sandjak of Der-el-Zor ... 557
143. Damascus : Report from a foreign resident at Damascus, dated 20th September, but containing information up to the 3rd October, 1915; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief... 558
144. Exiles on the Euphrates : Record, dated Erzeroum, June, 1915, by M. Henry Barby, of an interview with Dr. H. Toroyan, an Armenian physician formerly in the service of the Ottoman Army ; published in " Le Journal," of Paris, 13th July, 1916 562
145. Der-el-Zor : Letter, dated 12th July, 1915, from Schwester L. Mohring, a German missionary, describing her journey from Baghdad to the passes of Amanus ; published in the German journal " Sonnenaufgang," September, 1915 ... ... ... ... ... ... 566
XX. — Documents received while going to press ... ... 571
146. Despatch from Mr. Henry Wood (Doc. 1) : Fuller version, obtained through the courtesy of the representa- tive of the American " United Press " in London ... 572
147. Urmia, Salmas, and Hakkiari : Fuller statement by Mr. Paul Shimmon, edited, as a pamphlet, by the Rev. F. N. Heazell, Organising Secretary of the Arch- bishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission 577
148. First exodus from Urmia : Narrative of Mr. J. D. Barnard, of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission ; published in the " Assyrian Mission Quarterly Paper," April, 1915 587
149. Erzeroum : Letter, dated 21st March, 1916, from the Rev. Robert S. Stapleton to the Hon. F. Willoughby Smith, U.S. Consul at Tifiis ; communicated by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief... 589
A Summary of Armenian History up to and including the year 1915 591
I. — The European War and Armenia 593
II. — An Outline of Armenian History 596
III. — Dispersion and Distribution of the Armenian Nation ... 607
IV. — The. Armenian People and the Ottoman Government ... 617 v.— The Deportations of 1915 : Antecedents ... 627
VL— The Deportations of 1915 : Procedure 637
Annexe A 654
Annexe B - 657
Annexe C 659
Annexe D 661
Annexe E 662
Annexe F 664
Index of Places referred to in the Documents 669
150. Message, dated 22nd July, 1916, from Mr. N., of Con- stantinople ; communicated by the American Com- mittee for Armenian and Syrian Relief 684
CORRESPONDENCE
BETWEEN
VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
AND
VISCOUNT BRYCE.
xvi.
LETTER FROM VISCOUNT BRYCE TO VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
July 1st, 1916.
My dear Sir Edward,
In the autumn of 1915 accounts of massacres and depor- tations of the Christian population of Asiatic Turkey began to reach Western Europe and the United States. Few and imperfect at first — for every effort was made by the Turkish Government to prevent them from passing out of the country — these accounts increased in number and fullness of detail, till in the beginning of 1916 it became possible to obtain a fairly accurate knowledge of what had happened. It then struck me that, in the interest of historic truth, as well as with a view to the questions that must arise when the war ends, it had become necessary to try to complete these accounts, and test them by further evidence, so as to compile a general narrative of the events and estimate their significance. As materials were wanting or scanty in respect of some localities, I wrote to ail the persons I could think of likely to possess or to be able to procure trustworthy data, begging them to favour me with such data. I addressed myself in particular to friends in the United States, a country which has long had intimate relations with the Eastern Christians and to which many of those Christians have in recent years emigrated. Similar requests were made to Switzerland, also a neutral country, many of whose people have taken a hvely interest in the welfare of the Armenians. When the responses from these quarters showed that sufiicient materials for a history — provisional, no doubt, but trustworthy as far as the present data went — could be obtained, I had the good fortune to secure the co-operation of a young historian of high academic distinction, Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee, late Fellow of Balhol College, Oxford. He undertook to examine and put together the pieces of evidence collected, arranging them in order and adding such observations, historical and geographical, as seemed needed to explain them. The materials so arranged by Mr. Toynbee, followed by such observa- tions as aforesaid, I now transmit to you. They are, of course, of unequal value, for while most of them are narratives by eye- witnesses, some few report, at second hand what was told by eye-witnesses. In a short introduction prefixed, I have tried to estimate their value, and so need only say here that nothing has been admitted the substantial truth of which seems open to reasonable doubt. Facts only have been dealt with ; questions of future pohcy have been carefully avoided.
xvii.
It is evidently desirable not only that ascertained facts should be put on record for the sake of future historians, while the events are still fresh in living memory, but also that the public opinion of the belhgerent nations — and, I may add, of neutral peoples also — should be enabled by a knowledge of what has happened in Asia Minor and Armenia to exercise its judgment on the course proper to be followed when, at the end of the present war, a political re-settlement of the Nearer East has to be undertaken.
I am,
Yours sincerely,
Bryce.
B
XVlll.
LETTER FROM VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, TO VISCOUNT BRYCE.
Foreign Office,
August 23rd, 1916.
My dear Bryce,
I liave to thank you for sending me the collection of documents on the Armenian Massacres which has been so ably put together b}^ Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee.
It is a terrible mass of evidence ; but I feel that it ought to be published and widely studied by all who have the broad interests of humanity at heart. It will be valuable, not only for the immediate information of public opinion as to the conduct of the Turkish Government towards this defenceless people, but also as a mine of information for historians in the future, and for the other purposes suggested in your letter.
Yours sincerely,
Grey of Fallodon.
Documents presented to
VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON
Secretary of State for Foreign Aifairs By Viscount Bryce
With a preface by
VISCOUNT BRYCE.
B2
PREFACE BY VISCOUNT BRYCE.
In the summer of 1915 accounts, few and scanty at first, but increasing in volume later, began to find their way out of Asiatic Turkey as to the events that were happening there. These accounts described what seemed to be an effort to ex- terminate a whole nation, mthout distinction of age or sex, whose misfortune it was to be the subjects of a Government devoid of scruples and of pity, and the poHcy they disclosed was one \vithout precedent even in the blood-stained annals of the East. It then became the obvious duty of those who reaUsed the gravity of these events to try to collect and put together all the data available for the purpose of presenting a fuU and authentic record of what had occurred. This has been done in the present volume. It contains all the evidence that could be obtained up till July 1916 as to the massacres and deportations of the Armenian and other Eastern Christians dwelHng in Asia Minor, Armenia and that north-western corner of Persia which was invaded by the Turkish troops. It is presented primarily as a contribution to history, but partly also for the purpose of enabhng the civilised nations of Europe to comprehend the problems which will arise at the end of this war, when it will become necessary to provide for the future government of what are now the Turkish dominions. The compilation has been made in the spirit proper to an historical enquiry, that is to say, nothing has been omitted which could throw light on the facts, whatever the pohtical bearing of the accounts might be. In such an enquiry, no racial or reUgious sj^mpathies, no prejudices, not even the natural horror raised by crimes, ought to distract the mind of the enquirer from the duty of trying to ascertain the real facts.
As will be seen from the analysis which follows, the evidence here collected comes from various sources.
A large, perhaps the largest, part has been drawn from neutral mtnesses who were hving in or passing through Asiatic Turkey while these events were happening, and had opportunities of observing them.
Another part comes from natives of the country, nearly aU Christians, who succeeded, despite the stringency of the Turkish censorship, in getting letters into neutral countries, or who themselves escaped into Greece, or Russia, or Egypt and were there able to write down what they had seen.
A third but much smaller part comes from subjects of the now belhgerent Powers (mostly Germans) who were in Turkey when these events were happening, and subsequently pubHshed in their own countries accounts based on their personal knowledge.
In presenting this evidence it has been necessary in very many cases to withhold the names of the witnesses, because to pubhsh their names would be to expose such of them as are stiU within
xxii.
Preface by Viscount Bryce.
the Turkish dominions, or the relations and friends of these persons, to the ruthless vengeance of the gang who now rule those dominions in the name of the unfortunate Sultan. Even in the case of those neutral witnesses w^ho are safe in their own countries, a similar precaution must be observed, because many of them, or their friends and associates, have property in Turke}^ which would at once, despite their neutral character, be seized b}^ the Turkish Government. These difficulties, in- evitable in the nature of the case, are of course only temporary. The names of the great majority of the witnesses are known to the editor of this book and to myself*, and also to several other persons|, and they can be made public as soon as it is certain that no harm Avill result to these witnesses or to their friends. That certainty evidently cannot be attained till the war is over and the rule of the savage gang already referred to has come to an end.
The question now arises — What is the value of this evidence ? Though the names of many of the witnesses cannot be given, I may say that most of them, and nearly all of those who belong to neutral or belhgerent countries, are persons entitled to confidence in respect of their character and standing, and are, moreover, persons who have no conceivable motive for inventing or per- verting facts, because they are (with extremely few exceptions) either neutrals with no national or personal or pecuniary interests involved, or else German subjects. Were I free to mention names, the trustworthiness of these neutrals and Germans would at once be recognised.
Let us, however, look at the evidence itself.
(i) Nearly all of it comes from eye-witnesses, some of whom Avrote it down themselves, while others gave it to persons who \vrote it out at the time from the statements given to them orallj^ Nearly all of it, moreover, was written immediately after the events described, when the witnesses' recollection was still fresh and clear.
(ii) The main facts rest upon evidence coming from different and independent sources. When the same fact is stated by witnesses who had no communication with one another, and in many cases did not even speak the same language, the pre- sumption in favour of its trutH becomes strong.
Take, for instance, the evidence (Section VIII.) regarding the particularly terrible events at Trebizond. We have a statement from the Italian Consul-General (Doc. 73), from the Kavass of the local branch of the Ottoman Bank, a Montenegrin under Italian protection (Doc. 74), and from an Armenian girl whose family Hved in the neighbourhood of the Itafian Consulate, and who was brought out of Turkey by the ItaHan Consul-General as his maid- servant. The testimony of these three witnesses exactly tallies, not only as to the pubHc crimes committed in the city before they left it, but also as to their personal relations with one another (for they each mention the others expHcitly in their several
* Memorandum by the Editor, page xli. t Memorandum by the Editor, page xl.
Preface by Viscount Bryce.
xxiii.
statements). Yet they were in no touch whatever with one another when thei r respective testimonies were given . The Consul- General gave his at Rome, in an interview with an ItaHan journahst ; the Kavass gave his in an interview with an Armenian gentleman in Egypt ; and the girl hers in Roumania to a com- patriot resident in that country. The three statements had certainly never been collated till they came, by different channels, into the hands of the editor of this book. In addition to this, there is a statement from another foreign resident at Trebizond (Doc. 72), which reached us through America.
Or take the case of the convoys of exiles deported from the Vilayet of Erzeroum, and, in particular, from the towns of Erzeroum and Baibourt. We have a second-hand account of their fate in Doc. 2, a despatch from a well-informed source at Constantinople ; we have a first-hand account, which completely bears out the former, from a lady who was herself deported in the third convoy of exiles (Doc. 59) ; we have the narrative of two Danish nurses in the service of the German Red Cross at Erzindjan, who witnessed the passage of the Baibourt exiles through that place (Doc. 62) ; and finally there are three witnesses from the town of H., several days' journey further along the exiles' route, who refer independently to the arrival of convoys from Erzeroum and the neighbourhood. One of these latter witnesses is a (third) Danish Red Cross nurse (Doc. 64), one a neutral resident at H. of different nationahty, and one an Armenian inhabitant of the town.
These are two typical instances in which broad groups of events are independently and consistently recorded, but there are innumerable instances of the same kind in the case of particular occurrences. The hanging of the Armenian Bishop of Baibourt, for example, is mentioned, at second-hand, in Doc. 7 (written at Constantinople) and Doc. 12 (a selection of evidence published in Germany) ; but it is also witnessed to by the author of Doc. 59, an actual resident at Baibourt who was present there at the time of the murder. Again, the disappearance of the Bishop of Erzeroum on the road to exile is not only recorded in Doc. 11, a memorandum from a competent source at Bukarest, but is confirmed, in Docs. 57 and 76, by testimony obtained from eye-witnesses on the spot after the Russian occupation of Erzeroum had left them free to speak out.
(iii) Facts of the same, or of a very similar, nature occurring in different places, are deposed to by different and independent witnesses. As there is every reason to beheve — and indeed it is hardly denied — that the massacres and deportations were carried out under general orders proceeding from Constantinople, the fact that persons who knew only what was happening in one locality record circumstances there broadly resembhng those which occurred in another locahty goes to show the general correctness of both sets of accounts.
Thus, the two Danish Red Cross nurses (Doc. 62) state that they twice witnessed the massacre, in cold blood, of gangs of
xxiv.
Preface by Viscount Bryce.
unarmed Armenian soldiers employed on navvy work, along the road from Erzindjan to Sivas. In Doc. 7 (written at Con- stantinople) we find a statement that other gangs of unarmed Armenian soldiers were similarly murdered on the roads between Ourfa and Diyarbeldr, and Diyarbekir and Harpout ; t and the massacre on this latter section of road is confirmed by a' German lady resident, at the time, at Harpout (Doc. 23).
Again, there is frequent mention of roads being fined, or fittered, with the corpses of Armenian exiles who had died of exhaustion or been murdered on the way. If these aUusions were merely made in general terms, they might conceivably be explained away as ampfifications of some isolated case, or even as rhetorical embelfishments of the exiles' story without founda- tion in fact. But when we find such statements made with regard to particular stretches of road in widely different locafities, and often by more than one witness with regard to a given stretch, we are led to infer that this wholesale mortafity by the wayside was in very deed a frequent concomitant of the Deportations, and an inevitable consequence of the method on which the general scheme of Dej^ortation was organised from headquarters. We hear in Doc. 7, for instance, of corpses on the road from Malatia to Sivas, on the testimony of a Moslem traveller ; we hear of them on the road from Diyarbekir to Ourfa in Doc. 12 (a German cavaLry'captain), and on the road from Ourfa to Aleppo in Doc. 9 (an Armenian witness), in Doc. 135 (an interned Englishwoman), and also in Doc. 64 (a Danish Red Cross nurse). The latter gives the detail of the corpses being mangled by wild beasts, a detail also mentioned by the German authors of Docs. 12 and 23. Similar testimony from German officers regarding the road between Baghdad and Aleppo is reported independently in Docs. 108 and 121.
(iv) The volume of this concurrent evidence from different quarters is so large as to establish the main facts beyond all question. Errors of detail in some instances may be allowed for. Exaggeration may, in the case of native witnesses, who were more fikely to be excited, be also, now and then, allowed for. But the general character of the events stands out, resting on foundations too broad to be shaken, and even details comparatively unim- portant in themselves are often remarkably corroborated from different quarters. The fact that the Zeitounfi exiles at Sultania were for some time prevented by the local Turkish authorities from receiving relief is attested in Doc. 4 (Constantinople) and Doc. 123 (the town of B. in Cilicia), as well as in Doc. 125 from Konia. The maficious trick by which the exiles from Shar were deflected from a good road to a bad, in order that they might be compelled to abandon their carts, is recorded independently in Docs. 12 and 126.
(v) In particular it is to be noted that many of the most shocking and horrible accounts are those for which there is the most abundant testimony from the most trustworthy neutral
Preface by Viscount Bryce.
XXV.
witnesses. None of the worst cruelties rest on native evidence alone. If all that class of evidence were entirely struck out, the general effect would be much the same, though some of the minor details would be wanting. One may, indeed, say that an examination of the neutral evidence tends to confirm the native evidence as^a whole by^showing that there is in it less of exaggeration than might have been expected.
Docs. 7 and 9, for instance, both of which are native reports at second-hand, refer in somewhat rhetorical terms to the corpses of murdered Armenians washed down by the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. Yet their words are more than justified by many concrete and independent pieces of evidence. The descrip- tion in Doc. 12 (German material) of how barge-loads of Armenians were drowned in the Tigris below Diyarbekir, renders more fully credible the accounts of how the Armenians of Trebizond were drowned wholesale in the Black Sea. Doc. 12 also contains the statement, from a German employee of the Baghdad Railway, that the Armenian exiles who reached Biredjik were drowned in batches every night in the Euphrates ; and similar horrors are reported from almost everj^ section of the Euphrates' course. Docs. 56, 57, 59 and 62 describe how the convoys of exiles from the Vilayet of Erzeroum were cast into the Kara Su (western branch of the Euphrates) at the gorge called Kamakh Boghaz, and were then either shot in the water or left to drown. The author of Doc. 59 was present at such a scene, though she was herself spared, and the information in Docs. 56 and 57 was obtained direct from a lady who was actually cast in, but managed to struggle to the bank and escape. The authors of Doc. 62 received their informa- tion from a gendarme who had been attached to a convoy and had himself participated in the massacre. Doc. 24 records the experiences of an Armenian woman deported from Moush, who was driven with her fellow-exiles into the Mourad Su (eastern branch of the Euphrates), but also managed to escape, though the rest were drowned. Doc. 66 describes corpses floating in the river in the neighbourhood of Kiakhta, and Doc. 137 the drowning of exiles in the tributaries of the Euphrates between Harpout and Aleppo. These are evidently instances of a regular practice, and when we find the exiles from Trebizond and Kerasond being disposed of in the same fashion in a comparatively distant part of the Turkish Empire, we are almost compelled to infer that the drowning of the exiles en masse was a definite part of the general scheme drawn out by the Young Turk leaders at Constantinople.
Perhaps the most terrible feature of all was the suffering of the women with child, who were made to march with the convoys and gave birth to their babies on the road. This is alluded to in Doc. 12, from a German source, at second-hand, but in Docs. 129 and 137 we have the testimony of neutral witnesses who actually succoured these victims, so far as the extremity of their phght and the brutality of their escort made
xxvi.
Preface by Viscount Bryce.
succour possible. It should be mentioned that in Doc. 68 an Armenian exile testifies to the kindness of an individual Turkish gendarme to one of her fellow -victims who was in these straits.
(vi) The vast scale of these massacres and the pitiless cruelty with which the deportations were carried out may seem to some readers to throw doubt on the authenticity of the narratives. Can human beings (it may be asked) have perpetrated such crimes on innocent women and children ? But a recollection of previous massacres will show that such crimes are part of the long settled and often repeated policy of Turkish rulers. In Chios, nearly a century ago, the Turks slaughtered almost the whole Greek popu- lation of the island. In European Turkey in 1876 many thousands of Bulgarians were killed on the suspicion of an intended rising, and the outrages committed on women were, on a smaller scale, as bad as those here recorded. In 1895 and 1896 more than a hundred thousand Armenian Christians were put to death by Abd-ul-Hamid, many thousands of whom died as martyrs to their Christian faith, by abjuring which they could have saved their hves. All these massacres are registered not only in the ordinary press records of current history but in the reports of British diplomatic and consular officials written at the time. They are as certain as anything else that has happened in our day. There is, therefore, no antecedent improbability to be overcome before the accounts here given can be accepted. All that happened in 1915 is in the regular Une of Turkish policy. The only differ- ences are in the scale of the present crimes, and in the fact that the hngering sufferings of deportations in which the deaths were as numerous as in the massacres, and fell with special severity upon the women, have in this latest instance been added.
The evidence is cumulative. Each part of it supports the rest because each part is independent of the others. The main facts are the same, and reveal the same plans and intentions at work. Even the varieties are instructive because they show those diversities of temper and feeling which appear in human nature everywhere.
The Turkish officials are usually heartless and callous. But here and there we see one of a finer temper, who refuses to carry out the orders given him and is sometimes dismissed for his refusal. The Moslem rabble is usually pitiless. It pillages the houses and robs the persons of the hapless exiles. But now and then there appear pious and compassionate Moslems who try to save the Hves or alleviate the miseries of their Christian neigh- bours. We have a vivid picture of human Hfe, where wickedness in high places dehberately lets loose the passions of racial or reUgious hatred, as well as the commoner passion of rapacity, yet cannot extinguish those better feelings which show as points of light in the gloom.
It is, however, for the reader to form his own judgment on these documents as he peruses them. They do not, and by the nature of the case cannot, constitute what is called judicial
Preface by Viscount Bryce.
xxvii .
evidence, such as a Court of Justice obtains when it puts witnesses on oath and subjects them to cross-examination. But by far the larger part (almost all, indeed, of what is here published) does constitute historical evidence of the best kind, inasmuch as the statements come from those who saw the events they describe and recorded them in writing immediately afterwards. They corroborate one another, the narratives given by different observers showing a substantial agreement, which becomes conclusive when we find the sahent facts repeated with no more variations in detail than the various opportunities of the inde- pendent observers made natural. The gravest facts are those for which the evidence is most complete, and it all tallies fatally with that which twenty years ago estabhshed the guilt of Abd- ul-Hamid for the deeds that have made his name infamous. In this case there are, moreover, what was wanting then, admis- sions which add weight to the testimony here presented, I mean the admissions of the Turkish Government and of their German apologists.* The attempts made to find excuses for wholesale slaughter and for the removal of a whole people from its homes leave no room for doubt as to the slaughter and the removal. The main facts are established by the confession of the criminals themselves. What the evidence here presented does is to show in detail how these things were effected, what cruelties accom- panied them, and how inexcusable they were. The disproval of the paUiations which the Turks have put forward is as complete as the proof of the atrocities themselves.
In order to test the soundness of my own conclusions as to the value of the evidence, I have submitted it to the judgment of three friends, men for whose opinion everyone who knows them will have the highest respect — a distinguished historian, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher (Vice Chancellor of the University of Sheffield) ; a distinguished scholar, Mr. Gilbert Murray (Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford) ; and a distinguished American lawyer of long experience and high authority, Mr. Moorfield Storey, of Boston, Mass. — men accustomed in their respective walks of life to examine and appraise evidence ; and I append the letters which convey their several views.
This preface is intended to deal only with the credibility of the evidence here presented, so I will refrain from comment on
* For instance, the conversation of a German officer reported in Doc. 108, p. 420. For the general attitude of the Turks and Geimans towards the treatment of the Armenians, see " Historical Summary," chapter V,
On the 11th January, 1916, Herr von Stumm, Chief of the Political Department of the German Foreign Office, gave the following answer in the Reichstag to a question from Dr. Liebknecht :
"It is known to the Imperial Chancellor that revolutionary demon- strations, organised by our enemies, have taken place in Armenia, and that they have caused the Turkish Government to expel the Armenian population of certain districts and to allot to them new dwelling-places. An exchange of views about the reaction of these measures upon the population is now taking place. Further information cannot be given."
xxviii.
Preface by Viscount Bryce.
the facts. A single observation, or rather a single question, may, however, be permitted from one who has closely followed the history of the Turldsh East for more than forty years. European travellers have often commended the honesty and the kindliness of the Turkish peasantry, and our soldiers have said that they are fair fighters. Against them I have nothing to say, and ^^dll even add that I have known individual Turkish officials who impressed me as men of honesty and good-will. But the record of the rulers of Turkey for the last two or three centuries, from the Sultan on his throne down to the district Mutessarif, is, taken as a whole, an almost unbroken record of corruption, of injustice, of an oppression which often rises into hideous cruelty. The Young Turks, when they deposed Abd-ul-Hamid, came forward as the apostles of freedom, promising equal rights and equal treatment to all Ottoman subjects. The facts here recorded show how that promise was kept. Can any one still continue to hope that the evils of such a government are curable ? Or does the evidence contained in this volume furnish the most terrible and convincing proof that it can no longer be permitted to rule over subjects of a different faith ?
BRYCE.
Letter from Mr. H. A. L. Fisher.
xxix.
LETTER FROM MR. H. A. L. FISHER, VICE-CHANCELLOR OF SHEFFIELD UNIVERSITY, TO VISCOUNT BRYCE.
The University, Sheffield,
August 2nd, 1916.
My dear Lord Bryce,
The evidence here collected with respect to the sufferings of the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire during the present war will carry conviction wherever and whenever it is studied by honest enquirers. It bears upon the face of it all the marks of credibiHty. In the first place, the transactions were recorded soon after they took place and while the memory of them was stiU fresh and poignant. Then the greater part of the story rests upon the word of eye-witnesses, and the remainder upon the evidence of persons who had special opportunities for obtaining correct information. It is true that some of the witnesses are Armenians, whose testimony, if otherwise uncon- firmed, might be regarded as liable to be over-coloured or dis- torted, but the Armenian evidence does not stand alone. It is corroborated by reports received from Americans, Danes, Swiss, Germans, ItaUans and other foreigners. Again, this foreign testimony comes for the most part from men and women whose calHng alone entitles them to be heard with respect, that is to say, from witnesses who may' fairly be expected to exceed the average level of character andUntelligence and to view the transactions which they record with as much detachment as^is compatible' with human feeling. Indeed, the foreign witnesses who happened to be spectators of the deportation, dispersion, and massacre of the Armenian nation, do not strike me as being, in any one case, blind and indiscriminate haters of the Turk. They are prompt to notice facts which strike them as creditable to individual members of the Moslem community.
I am also impressed with the cumulative effect of the evidence. Whoever speaks, and from whatever quarter in the wide region covered by these reports the voice may proceed, the story is one and the same. There are no discrepancies or contradictions of importance, but, on the contrary, countless scattered pieces of mutual corroboration. There is no contrariety as to the broad fact that the Armenian population has been uprooted from its homes, dispersed, and, to a large though not exactly calculable extent, exterminated in consequence of general orders issued from Constantinople. It is clear that a catastrophe, conceived upon a scale quite unparalleled in modern history, has been contrived for the Armenian inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire. It is found that the original responsibility rests with the Ottoman Government at Constantinople, whose policy was actively seconded by the members of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Provinces. And in view of the fact that the representations
xxx.
Letter from Mr. H. A. L. Fisher.
of the Austrian Ambassador with the Porte were e£Pectual in procuring a partial measure of exemption for the Armenian Catholics, we are led to surmise that the unspeakable horrors which this volume records might have been mitigated, if not wholly checked, had active and energetic remonstrances been from the first moment addressed to the Ottoman Government by the two Powers who had acquired a predominant influence in Constantinople. The evidence, on the contrary, tends to suggest that these two Powers were, in a general way, favourable to the pohcy of deportation.
Yours sincerely,
HerbertJ^ Fisher,
Letter from Professor Gilbert Murray.
xxxi.
LETTER FROM PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY,
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, TO VISCOUNT BRYCE.
82, Woodstock Road, Oxford,
June 21th, 1916.
Dear Lord Bryce,
I have spent some time studying the documents you are about to pubhsh relative to the deportations and massacres of Armenians in the Turkish Empire during the spring and summer of 1915. I know, of course, how carefully a historian should scrutinize the evidence for events so starthng in character, reported to have occurred in regions so far removed from the eyes of civilized Europe. I reahze that in times of persecution passions run high, that oriental races tend to use hyperboHcal language, and that the victims of oppression cannot be expected to speak with strict fairness of their oppressors. But the evidence of these letters and reports will bear any scrutiny and overpower any scepticism. Their genuineness is established beyond question, though obviously you are right in withholding certain of the names of persons and places. The statements of the Armenian refugees themselves are fully confirmed by residents of American, Scan- dinavian and even of German nationahty ; and the undesigned agreement between so many credible witnesses from widely separate districts puts all the main lines of the story beyond the possibility of doubt.
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Gilbert Murray,
xxxii.
Letter from Mr. Moovfield Storey.
LETTER FROM MR. MOORFIELD STOREY,
EX-PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION, TO VISCOUNT BRYCE.
735, Exchange Building, Boston, U.S.,
1th August, 1916.
My dear Sir,
I have examined considerable portions of the volume which contains the statements regarding the treatment of the Armenians by the Turks, in order to determine the value of these statements as evidence.
I have no doubt that, while there may be inaccuracies of detail, these statements estabhsh without any question the essential facts. It must be borne in mind that in such a case the evidence of eye-witnesses is not easily obtained ; the victims, with few exceptions, are dead ; the perpetrators will not confess ; any casual spectators cannot be reached, and in most cases are either in sympathy with what was done or afraid to speak. There are no tribunals before which witnesses can be summoned and compelled to testify, and a rigid censorship is maintained by the authorities responsible for the crimes, which prevents the truth from coming out freely, and no investigation by impartial persons wall be permitted.
Such statements as you print are the best evidence which, in the circumstances, it is possible to obtain. They come from persons holding positions which give weight to their words, and from other persons with, no motive to falsify, and it is impossible that such a body of concurring evidence should have been manu- factured. Moreover, it is confirmed by evidence from German sources which has with difficulty escaped the rigid censorship maintained by the German authorities — a censorship which is in itself a confession, since there is no reason why the Germans should not give full currency to such evidence unless the authori- ties felt themselves in some way responsible for what it discloses.
In my opinion, the evidence which you print is as rehable as that upon which rests our behef in many of the universally admitted facts of history, and I think it estabhshes beyond any reasonable doubt the deliberate purpose of the Turldsh authorities practically to exterminate the Armenians, and their responsibihty for the hideous atrocities which have been perpetrated upon that unhappy people.
Yours truly,
Moorfield Storey.
Letter from Four German Missionaries.
xxxiii.
LETTER, DATED ALEPPO, 8th OCTOBER, 1915, FROM FOUR MEMBERS OF THE GERMAN MISSIONS STAFF IN TURKEY TO THE IMPERIAL GERMAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT BERLIN.*
We think it our duty to draw the attention of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the fact that our school work will be deprived, for the future, of its moral basis and will lose all authority in the eyes of the natives, if it is really beyond the power of the German Government to mitigate the brutality of the treatment which the exiled women and children of the massacred Armenians are receiving.
In face of the scenes of horror which are being unfolded daily before our eyes in the neighbourhood of our school, our educational activity becomes a mockery of humanity. How can we make our pupils listen to the Tales of the Seven Dwarfs, how can we teach them conjugations and declensions, when, in the compounds next door to our school, death is carrying off their starving com- patriots— when there are girls and women and children, practically naked, some lying on the ground, others stretched between the dead or the coffins made ready for them beforehand, and breathing their last breath !
Out of 2,000 to 3,000 peasant women from the Armenian Plateau who were brought here in good health, only forty or fifty skeletons are left. The prettier ones are the victims of their gaolers' lust ; the plain ones succumb to blows, hunger and thirst (they lie by the water's edge, but are not allowed to quench their thirst). The Europeans are forbidden to distribute bread to the starving. Every day more than a hundred corpses are carried out of Aleppo.
All this happens under the eyes of high Turkish officials. There are forty or fifty emaciated phantoms crowded into the compound opposite our school. They are women out of their mind ; they have forgotten how to eat ; when one offers them bread, they throw it aside with indifference. They only groan and wait for death.
'* See," say the natives : " Taahm el Aim an (the teaching of the Germans)."
The German scutcheon is in danger of being smirched for ever in the memory of the Near Eastern peoples. There are natives of Aleppo, more enlightened than the rest, who say : " The Germans do not want these horrors. Perhaps the German nation does not know about them. If it did, how could the German Press, which is attached to the truth, talk about the humanity of the treatment accorded to the Armenians who are guilty of
* A copy of this letter was communicated to the Berner Tagwacht by Dr. Forel, a Swiss gentleman, and reproduced in the Journal de Genhe, 17th August, 1916. It was signed by four persons — Dr. Grater (of Swiss nationality). Dr. Niepage (of German nationahty), and two others whose names have been withheld^by^Dr. Forel. — Editor.
xxxiv.
Letter from Four German Missionaries.
High Treason ? Perhaps, too, the German Government has its hands tied by some contract defining the powers of the [German and Turkish] States in regard to one another's affairs ? "
No, when it is a question of giving over thousands of women and children to death by starvation, the words " Opportunism " and " definition of powers " lose their meaning. Every civihsed human being is " empowered " in this case to interfere, and it is his bounden duty to do so. Our prestige in the East is the thing at stake. There are even Turks and Arabs who have remained human, and who shake their heads in sorrow when they see, in the exile convoys that pass through the town, how the brutal soldiers shower blows on women with child who can march no farther.
We may expect further and still more dreadful hecatombs after the order published by Djemal Pasha. (The engineers of the Baghdad Railway are forbidden, by this order, to photograph the Armenian convoys ; any plates they have already used for this must be given up within twenty-four hours, under penalty of prosecution before the Council of War.) It is a proof that the responsible authorities fear the fight, but have no intention of putting an end to scenes which are a disgrace to humanity.
\fWe know that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already, from other sources, received detailed descriptions of what is happening here. But as no change has occurred in the system of the deportations, we feel ourselves under a double obfigation to make this report, all the more because the fact of our fiving abroad enables us to see more clearly the immense danger by which the German name is threatened here.
Memorandum by the Editor.
xxxr.
MEMORANDUM BY THE EDITOR.
As far as their contents are concerned, the documents collected in this volume explain themselves, and if any reader wishes for an outline of the events they describe, as a guide to their detail, he will find it in the " Historical Summary " at the end of the book, especially in Section V. In this preliminary memorandum the Editor has simply to state the sources, character and value of the documents, and to explain the system on which they have been edited.
The sources of the documents are very varied. Some of them were communicated to the Editor directly by the writers them- selves, or, in the case of private letters, by the persons to whom the letters were addressed. Several of those relating to the distribu- tion of rehef in Russian Caucasia have been placed in his hands by the courtesy of the British Foreign Office. Others, again, he owes to the courtesy of individuals, including Lord Bryce, who has superintended the work throughout, and given most generously of his time and thought towards making it as accurate and complete as possible ; several members of the American Committee . for Armenian and Syrian Relief* ; the Rev. G. T. Scott, Assistant Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ; M. Arshag Tchobanian ; Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons ; Dr. Wilham Walter Rockwell, of the Union Theological Seminary of New York ; the Rev. Stephen Trowbridge, Secretary of the American Red Cross Committee at Cairo ; the Rev. I. N. Camp, a missionary in the service of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, at present stationed at Cairo ; Aneurin WilUams, Esq., M.P. ; the Rev. Harold Buxton, Treasurer of the Armenian
♦ AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF. 70, Fifth Avenue, New York.
Including work of the Armenian ReHef, the Persian War Relief, and
the Syrian-Palestine Relief Committees. James L. Barton. Samuel T. Dutton. Walter H. Mallory.
Chairman. Secretary. Field Secretary.
Charles R. Crane, Treasurer. Arthur J. Brown. John Moffat.
Edwin M. Bulkley. John R. Mott.
John B. Calvert. Frank Mason North.
John D. Crimmins. Harry V. Osborne.
Cleveland H. Dodge. George A. Plimpton.
Charies W. Ehot. Rt. Rev. P. Rhinelander.
William T. Ellis. Karl Davis Robinson.
James Cardinal Gibbons. William W. Rockwell.
Rt. Rev. David H. Greer. George T. Scott.
Norman Hapgood. Isaac N. Seligman.
Maurice H. Harris. William Sloane.
William I. Haven. Edward Lincoln Smith.
Hamilton Holt. James M. Speers.
Arthur Curtiss James. Oscar M. Straus.
Frederick Lynch. Stanley White.
Chas. S. MacFarland. Talcott Williams.
H. Pereira Mendes. Stephen S. Wise.
02
xxxvi.
Memorandum by the Editor.
Refugees (Lord Mayor's) Fund ; Mr. J. D. Bourchier, cor- respondent of the London Times newspaper in the Balkans ; Mrs. D. S. MargoUouth, of Oxford ; the Rev. F. N. Heazell, Organising Secretary of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian IMission ; Mr. G. H. Paehan, an American citizen resident in London ; Mr. A. S. Safrastian, of Tiflis ; and Mr. H. N. Mosdit- chian, of London. Another source of material has been the Press. Despatches, letters and statements have been reprinted in this volume from the columns of English, American, Swiss, French, Russian, Italian and also German newspapers, and from Armenian journals published at Tiflis, London and New York. The editors of Ararat, Gotchnag and the New Armenia have shown the Editor of this volume every possible kindness, and have courteously presented him with free copies of their current issues.
The documents are all rendered here in English, but they reached the Editor's hands in various languages — not only English but French, Italian, German and Armenian. The translations from the French, German and ItaUan have been made by the Editor with the assistance of his wife. For the translation of documents from the Armenian he is indebted to Mr. Paelian, who has devoted a large part of his scanty leisure to doing the Editor this most valuable service. But for Mr. Paelian's promptness and good will, the work might have been considerably delayed.
The character of the documents varies with the writers. Some of the witnesses are native Armenian or Nestorian inhabitants of the Near East, who were either victims of the atrocities themselves or were intimately connected with others who played a direct part in the scenes described. A majority of the witnesses, how- ever, are foreign residents in the Ottoman Empire or the Persian Province of Azerbaijan, and nearly all these, again, are citizens of neutral countries, either European or American — missionaries, teachers, doctors. Red Cross nurses or officials. A few witnesses (and these are the weightiest of all) are subjects of states allied to Turkey in the present war.
The value of the documents of course depends upon the witnesses' standing and character, and upon the opportunities they possessed of knowing the facts. The Editor is certain in his own mind that all the documents pubhshed here are genuine statements of the truth, and he presents them in this assurance. Errors will, doubtless, be here and there discovered, but he believes that any errors there may be have been made in good faith, and that they will prove to touch only points of detail, which do not affect the truth of the whole. At the same time he realises that, considered as legal evidence before a court, the documents differ considerably in probative value. From this legal point of view, they can be tabulated in several classes : —
(a) Evidence pubhshed by the editor of a German journal in Germany, and suppressed by the Imperial German Censorship (Doc. 12). This evidence is, of course, above any suspicion of prejudice against the Turks,
Memorandumlpy the Editor.
XXX vii.
(6) Documents written by German eye-witnesses of the events they describe (Docs. 18, 23, 91, 145), or by neutral eye-witnesses resident in Turkey in the service of German missionary or philanthropic institutions, or of the German Red Cross (Docs. 62, 64, 117, 142). This evidence is equally above suspicion of partiaHty against the Turks or in favour of the Armenians.
(c) Documents written by other neutral eye-witnesses, principally American and Swiss, who have no con- nection, either pubHc or private, with the Turco- German AlHance or with the Entente, and who are presumably without bias towards either party. Docu- ments of such authorship constitute the bulk of the material in this volume, and practically all of them are written at first hand. There are no apparent grounds for not reposing full confidence in them.
(d) Documents written by Armenian or Nestorian natives of the regions concerned. This native evidence may be thought to have somewhat less cogency than the rest, as the witnesses have suffered personally from the horrors they describe, and are open to stronger in- fluences of prejudice and emotion than foreign observers. Errors of detail are more Hkely to occur here, especially as regards estimates of numbers. The Editor wishes to repeat, however, that, after comparing the different statements of these native witnesses with one another, and with the documents in the three preceding classes, he is convinced of the substantial accuracy of all the evidence, of whatever class, that is presented in this volume.
The total body of evidence is large, as the considerable bulk of the volume shows, and this is the more satisfactory because the Ottoman Government has taken every possible precaution to prevent any knowledge of its proceedings from reaching the outer world. Private postal and telegraphic communications were suspended between Constantinople and the provinces, and between one province and another. There was a stringent censorship of outgoing mails, even the consuls of neutral countries were for- bidden to telegraph in cypher, and travellers leaving Turkey were searched and divested of every scrap of paper, whether written upon or blank, in their possession. A quotation from a letter, written by the author of one of our documents* just after she had safely passed beyond the Ottoman frontier, wiU give some idea of the severity of this official embargo upon news of every sort :
" As I was coming out from under the hands of the censor, I was asked to write to you, teUing you something of the real situation in our part of the world. In my opinion the censorship now is worse than it was in the olden days, for now they have such highly trained mjen. One of our censors had a five years' training
* Doc. 121.
Mimorandum by th$ Mdiif,
in the New York Post^Office. If ourjetters soem to tell you little, please remember^that there are the Btrictest^orders^against the censor's passing anything on politics, war^or even poverty. Any sentences that even touch on these subjects are either out out or marked or blotted out with ink. A German lady even wrote to a friend of hers in Germany, teUing her of poverty in BM. and asking her to send rehef funds. She purposely mentioned no causes for this poverty, but only said there was such a condition. The only parts of the letter that reached her friend were the opening and closing sentences. The knife had claimed the rest. So, as Mrs. E. said : ' Please tell our friends in America that when we write about concerts and field meets and such things, that does not show that the country is safe or that work is as usual. We write about that simply because there is nothing else about which we are allowed to write.' **
Nearly all our evidence, therefore, comes from residents in Turkey who witnessed, hke this lady, the events that occurred in some particular district or districts, and subsequently left Turkey for some other country, where they could record what they had seen without endangering their fives. Yet, even on neutral ground, these witnesses are not beyond the reach of Turkish resentment. Many of them are anxious to take up their work again in Turkey at the earfiest opportunity, and nearly aU of them still have interests in the country, or fellow-workers, or friends, who are so many gages in the Ottoman Government's hands. That Government is known to have agents in Europe, and possibly in America as well, whose business it is to inform against anyone who exposes its misdeeds ; and the Young Turkish gang, by whom the Ottoman Government is controUed, have no shame and no scruple about wreaking vengeance by any and every means upon accusers whose indictments they are wholly unable to answer before the judgment seat of the civilised world. It is, therefore, absolutely essential to withhoM in many cases the names of the witnesses themselvi^s. and of people, or even of places, mentioned in their testimony. In fact, some of the documents have only been communicated to the Editor on this express condition — for instance, the document enclosed with the letter quoted a few fines above. " May T ask you,; however," continues this very letter, " not to publish my name^or that of any missionary from BM., not even the name of BM. itself or any of the places which I shall mention, as the censorship is so strict and terrible now that the mention of names brings us under suspicion at once. May I instance ? Dr. E. and Dr. L. havd been under such suspicion or ill-will that they have not been able to get a simple family letter through to members of their family in America for months, and the whole station of AC. is under sufficient suspicion to prevent most of the letteva they write to you and Mr. N. from reaching their destination. The reason, we feel quite certain, is a report on Moslem work which was sent to you."
Memorandum by the Editor.
xxxix.
And the same considerations are urged even more emphatically by Miss A., the author of Doc. 137, who is our chief witness for the occurrences at AG. itself : —
For the sake of the people left in Turkey, and^especially my orphan children, I hope nothing will be published as from me. If any word of it should get into Turkey, it might have very serious consequences for them.
" Although very few magazines or papers were allowed into the interior, yet occasional] y we saw one. In the coast towns, pieces are being cut from the papers, and sold at high prices to Turks. I left my post iust because I thought my presence there might make it hard for those under my charge ; but if anything that I am supposed to have told gets back into Turkey, I fear the whole of my commum'ty may have to suffer. I do not think that those outside Turkey fully realise what danger there is, even in letters, to those left in. the country. The local authorities seemed to be always on the watch for something to find as a cause of complaint against both missionaries and Armenians.
" The poor refugees that we saw in BF. as we passed through begged us to help them, but, when we got to BJ., the missionaries there said they had been forbidden to give aid. One woman had been taken to the Government Building because she had been found helping some poor famihes in her own district that she had been viiiting for years. There were many sick at BF,, and the pastor and others sent post-cards, begging us to send help quickly. One man asked me to lend him some money, saying I could get it back from his brother in America. It was the danger to him that made me hesitate. The money was finally sent, but one feared to think what it might be an excuse for. And so over all the country.
" All the time when people were in great need, the question was in one's mind : ' Will rehef endanger their fives V New rules were constantly being sprung upon us. A person would write a letter, but before it reached its destination it would be ' against the regulations.'
" AU money in banks and all property belonging to the exiles was confiscated by the Government. The people who were de- ported from AC. did not know it, but when they had used up all that they had taken with them, they would write to us. It was in this way that we found out that they had neither money nor property left ; but we were powerless to let them know what the difficulty was, so they would write again and again.
" Ail the time, we felt we were in a trap. The most courageous Armenians dared not come to see me, nor could I go to their homes. We had to meet at some pubfic building if they wanted to see me about anything.
" No one fiving in freedom can understand what it feels Uk© to be in Turkey these days."
xl.
Memorandum by the Editor.
In face of this, the reader will see for himself that the publica- tion' of names, under present circumstances, would often be a grave and perilous breach of trust, and the Editor has, therefore, (though only where absolutely necessary, and without making any change whatever affecting the substance of the documents), substituted arbitrary symbols for the names of persons and places in the text, in the manner shown in the preceding quotation. A complete key to these symbols has been prepared and com- municated, in confidence, to the British Foreign Office, Lord Bryce, Dr. Barton, and the Rev. G. T. Scott ; and this key will be published as soon as circumstances permit, or, in other words, as soon as the dangers which would threaten the persons referred to have ceased to exist.
The Ottoman Government and its alhes, whose good name is almost as seriously compromised as the Ottoman name by the facts, may be expected to make what capital they can out of the precautions imposed by their own treatment of their Christian subjects, and to impugn the genuineness of the docu- ments that have been edited in the way here described. That was the course they adopted in the case of the evidence relating to the conduct of the German Army in Belgium, which was pubUshed with the same, equally necessary, reservations. The Editor can best forestall such disingenuous criticism by stating clearly the principles on which this suppression of names has been made : (a) Names of persons are not pubhshed in this volume unless they have already appeared pubhcly, in the same connection, in print, or unless the person in question is clearly beyond the reach of Turkish revenge. (6) Names of places are pubhshed wherever possible. They are only withheld when they would be certain to reveal the identity of persons mentioned in con- nection with them, (c) All names withheld are represented in the text by capital letters of the alphabet or combinations of capital letters. These letters are not the initials of the names in question, but were assigned in an arbitrary order, as the various documents happened to come into the Editor's hands. {d) The name of a place is always represented by the same symbol throughout the volume, e.g., "X." stands for the same place, whether it occurs in Section I. or Section XI. (e) In the case of the names of people the same symbol only stands for the same person within a single section, e.g., " Miss A." stands for the same person, in whatever document it occurs in Section XVII. ; but in the documents of Section XI. " Miss A." represents some- one different.
The Editor wishes to state, once more, that these documents in which names are represented by symbols are not a whit less valid, as evidence, than the documents in which no such substitutions
Memorandum by the Editor.
xli.
have had to be made. If the reader desires confirmation of this, the Editor would refer him to the gentlemen mentioned above, who have been placed in possession of the confidential key.
There are other documents, however, where the names have, on similar grounds, been withheld from the Editor himself, either by the authors of the documents or by those through whose hands the Editor obtained them, or where the ultimate source of the testimony is for some reason obscure. The Editor has been careful to indicate these cases as conspicuously as possible. Where there is any name, either of a place or of a person, unknown
to him in the text, he has represented it by a blank ( ).
Where the name of the author of the document is unknown to him, he has stated this in a footnote to the title by which the document is headed.*
The Editor is, of course, aware that these documents which he only possesses in a defective form cannot be presented as evidence in the strict sense by himself, and can plausibly be repudiated by the parties whose crimes they describe. He is the more content to admit this legal objection to them because they merely confirm what is estabhshed by the other evidence independently of them. They constitute no more than twenty - two out of the 150 documents in the whole collection, and, if they are passed over, the picture presented by the far larger mass of documents that cannot be impugned remains perfectly precise and complete. The Editor has chosen to pubhsh them, in their natural order, with the rest, because he has no more doubt about their genuineness than about the genuineness of the others — and with good reason, for, out of the twenty-two documents in question, not less then eleven have been communicated to him by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Rehef — citizens of high standing in a neutral country and gentlemen of unimpeachable good faith. He repeats, however, that these Twenty-two documents are in no way essential to the presentation of the case as a whole.
The documents are arranged in groups, in a geographical order, which is adjusted as far as possible to the general chrono- logical order in which the different regions were affected by the Ottoman Government's scheme. The first group or section con- tains documents that do not confine themselves to any one region, but give general descriptions of events occurring throughout the Ottoman Empire. These documents are for the most part earher in date than those relating to particular districts, and are there- fore placed at the beginning. The second section opens the geographical series with the documents relating to Van, the north- easternmost province of the Ottoman Empire in the direction of the Caucasus and Azerbaijan. The third section deals with Bitlis, the province adjoining Van on the west, which suffered next in
* In other words, wherever the title of a document is given without such a footnote, that means that the Editor is in possession of the author's name, even if the name is not pubUshed but represented by a symbol {e.g., " Dr. L."), or by such periphrases as " A foreign resident," &c.
xlii.
Memorandum by the Editor.
order ; the fourth with Azerbaijan, the Persian province on the eastern side of Van, which suffered during the Turkish offensive in the winter of 1914-5 ; the tifth with Russian Trans-Caucasia, where the refugees from Van and Azerbaijan sought refuge in August, 1915. The succeeding sections foUow one another in geographical order from east to^west, beginning with Erzeroum, the border province adjoining ^Van on the north-west along the Russo- Turkish frontier. Erzeroum constitutes the sixth section, Mamouret-ul-Aziz the seventh, Trebizond the eighth, Sivas the ninth, Kaisaria the tenth, the town of X. the eleventh, Angora the twelfth, Constantinople and the adjacent districts the thirteenth. From this point the sections run in reverse order from north-west to south-east, following the track of the Baghdad Railway. The fourteenth section deals with places along this route between (but excluding) Adapazar and Aleppo ; the fifteenth deals with CiHcia, the region through which the Baghdad Railway passes half-way along its course, and this is the only case in which the chronological and geographical arrangements seriously conflict, for the Cihcians were the first to suffer — they were already being deported twelve days before fighting broke out at Van. The sixteenth section is Jibal Mousa, a group of villages adjoining Ghcia on the south ; the seventeenth the Armenian colonies at Ourfa and AC, two cities on the Mesopotamian fringe ; the eighteenth Aleppo, upon which nearly all the convoys of exiles converged ; and the nineteenth Damascus and Der-el-Zor, the two districts where the greater part of the survivors were finally deposited. A twentieth section has also been added for docu- ments received while the volume was in the press.
Wherever a date is given without further indication, it may be assumed to be in " New Style." Where two alternative dates are given (e.g.y 26th September /9th October), the first is " Old Style " and the second New." Dates are never given in '* Old Style " alone. Where sums of money are given in Turkish or Persian units, the EngHsh equivalent is usually added in brackets. Sums given in doUars have always been translated into EngHsh pounds sterhng.
The names of places have not been spelt on any consistent system, there being no recognised system in general use. The Editor has merely endeavoured to standardise the speUing of each particular name wherever it occurs.
An index of all places referred to by name in the documents that are in the Editor's possession, whether the name has been withheld in the text or not, has been compiled for him most accurately by Miss Margaret Toynbee, to whom he is grateful for this important addition to the usefulness of the book. This index is printed at the end of the volume. The map which accompanies it has been compiled by the Editor himseff from various sources, chiefly from Kiepert's excellent sheets of Asia Minor, in the Map Room of the Royal Geographical Society, where he has received most kind and valuable assistance from the staff.
I. GENERAL DESCRIPTIONS.
The Ottoman Government did its utmost to prevent the news of what it was doing to the Armenians from leaking through to the outer world. A stringent censorship was established at all the frontiers, private communication was severed between Constantinople and the provinces, and the provinces themselves were isolated from one another. Nearly all our information has been obtained from witnesses who succeeded in making their way out of Turkey after the massacres and deportations had occurred, and who wrote down their experiences after reaching America or Europe. The evidence of these witnesses is first-hand, but it is mostly confined to the particular region in which each witness happened to reside, and it has therefore been grouped in this collection province by province, in geographical order. We possess, however, certain general accounts which reached Europe and America at an earlier date, for the most part, than the individual narratives, and they are printed here in advance of the rest — partly for the chronological reason, and partly because they give a broad survey of what happened, which may impress the general features upon the reader before he approaches the detailed testimony of the sections that follow.
In contrast to the bulk of our evidence, the majority of these preliminary documents give their information at second-hand ; but practically every statement they make is more than borne out in detail by the first-hand witnesses, and this is particularly the case with the more startling and appalling of the facts they record.
The most interesting document in this section is No, 12, which was compiled from German sources, published in a German journal, and immediately suppressed by the German Censorship.
nth AUGUST, 1915.
1. DESPATCH* FROM MR. HENRY WOOD, CORRESPONDENT OP THE AMERICAN " UNITED PRESS " AT CONSTANTINOPLE ; PUBLISHED Ji IN THE AMERICAN PRESS, 14th AUGUST, 1915.
So critical is the situation that Ambassador Morgenthau, who alone is fighting to prevent wholesale slaughter, has felt obUged to ask the co-operation of the Ambassadors of Turkey's two Alhes. They have been successful to the extent of securing definite promises from the leading members of the Young Turk Government that no orders will be given for massacres. The critical moment for the Armenians, however, will come, it is feared, when the Turks may meet with serious reverses in the Dardanelles or when the Armenians themselves, who not only are in open revolt but are actually in possession of Van and several other important towns, may meet with fresh successes. It is this uprising of the Armenians who are seeking to estabHsh an independent government that the Turks declare is alone responsible for the terrible measures now being taken against themf. In the meantime, the position of the Armenians and the system of deportation, dispersion, and extermination that is being carried out against them beggars all description.
Although the present renewal of the Armenian atrocities has been under way for three months, it is only just now that reports creeping into Constantinople from the remotest points of the interior show that absolutely no portion of the Armenian population has been spared. It now appears that the order for the present cruelties was issued in the early part of May, and was at once put into execution with all the extreme genius of the -Turkish poHce system — the one department of government for which the Turks have ever shown the greatest aptitude, both in organisation and administration. At that time sealed orders were sent to the poUce of the entire Empire. These were to be opened on a specified date that would ensure the orders being in the hands of every department at the moment they were to be opened. Once opened, they provided for a simultaneous descent at practically the same moment on the Armenian popu- lation of the entire Empire.
At Broussa, in Asiatic Turkey, the city which it is expected the Turks will select for their capital in the event of Constanti- nople falUng, I investigated personally the manner in which these orders were carried out J. From eye-witnesses in other towns from the interior I found that the execution of them was everywhere identical. At midnight, the police authorities swooped down on the homes of all Armenians whose names had been put on the proscribed Hst sent out from Constantinople. The men were at once placed under arrest, and then the houses were searched for papers which might impHcate them either in the present revolutionary movement of the Armenians on the frontier
* For full text see page 572. f See " Historical Summary," Chapter V. J Compaje Doc. 101.
[1]
Mr. HENRY WOOD'S DESPATCH,
3
or in plots against the Government which the Turks declare exist. In this search, carpets were torn from the floors, draperies stripped from the walls, and even the children turned out of their beds and cradles in order that the mattresses and coverings might be searched.
Following this search, the men were then carried away, and at once there began the carrpng out of the system of deportation and dispersion which has been the cruellest feature of the present anti- Armenian wave. The younger men for the most part were at once drafted into the Army. On the authority of men whose names would be known in both America and Europe if I dared mention them, I am told that hundreds if not thousands of these were sent at once to the front ranks at the Dardanelles, where death in a very short space of time is almost a certainty. The older men were then deported into the interior, while the women and children, when not carried off in an opposite direction, were left to shift for themselves as best they could. The terrible feature of this deportation up to date is that it has been carried out on such a basis as to render it practically impossible in thousands of cases that these famihes can ever again be reunited. Not only wives and husbands, brothers and sisters, but even mothers and their Httle children have been dispersed in such a manner as to preclude practically all hope that they will ever see each other again.
In defence of these terrible measures which have been taken, the Turks at Constantinople declare that no one but the Ar- menians themselves is to blame. They state that when the present attack began on the Dardanelles, the Armenians were notified that if they took advantage of the moment when the Turks were concentrating every energy for the maintenance of the Empire, to rise in rebellion, they would be dealt with without quarter. This warning, however, the Armenians failed to heed. They not only rose in rebellion, occupying a number of important towns, including Van, but extended important help to the Russians in the latter' s campaign in the Caucasus.*
While this is the Turkish side of the situation, there is also another side which I shall give on the authority of men who have passed practically their entire Uves in Turkey and whose names, if I dared mention them, would be recognised in both Europe and America as competent authority.' According to these men, the decision has gone out from the Young Turk party that the Armenian population of Turkey must be set back fifty years. This has been decided upon as necessary in order to ensure the supremacy of the Turkish race in the Ottoman Empire, which is one of the basic principles of the Young Turk party. The situation, I am told, is absolutely analogous to that which preceded the Armenian massacres under Abd-ul-Hamid. So far, * however, the Young Turks have confined themselves to the new system of deportation, dispersion and separation of families. * For the real facts see Section II. [1]
4 11th JUNE, 1915, WELL-INFORMED NEUTRAL SOURCE.
2. DESPATCH, DATED 11th JUNE, 1915, FROM AN ESPECIALLY WELL INFORMED NEUTRAL SOURCE AT CONSTANTINOPLE ; COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
A week before anything was done to Baibourt, the villages a11 round had been emptied of their Armenian inhabitants. The forced exodus from Baibourt took place on the 1st June*. All the villages, as well as three-fourths of the town, had already been evacuated. The third convoy included from 4,000 to 5,000 people. Within six or seven days from the start, all males down to below fifteen years of age had been murdered.
Persecutions, accompanied by horrible torture, have taken place in the Armenian village of Baghtchedjik or Bardizag (2,000 families), in Ovadjik (600 families), in Arslanbeg (600 families), in Dongol (65 families), in Sabandja (1,000 families), in Ismid, etc. The inhabitants of Kurt-Belene (6,000 to 7,000 families) have been expelled. '
In Arabkir the Armenian population has been converted to Islam, after^2,000 males had been killed.
See Doc. 59.
8th JULY, 1915, LETTER FROM ARABKIR.
S
3. EXTRACT FROM A LETTER*, DATED ARABKIR, 25th JUNE/ 8th JULY, 1915, COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
The Armenian population has been converted to Islam ; it was a means of escaping from the forced migration. Orthodox Turks are given the wives of absent husbands or their daughters. We have been told that, according to an order from the Padishah, everybody must embracejlslamf.
• Name of author withheld. f See Doc. 82» page 324.
[3]
6
28th JUNE. 1915*
4. LETTER FROM AN AUTHORITATIVE SOURCE, DATED CON- STANTINOPLE, 15th 28th JUNE, 1915 ; PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK JOURNAL " GOTCHNAG," 28th AUGUST, 1915.
In America you have probably not yet heard of the terrible crisis through which the Armenians of Turkey are passing at this moment. The severe censorship to which all communications between Constantinople and the provinces are subjected, and the absolute embargo on travelling under which the Armenians have been placed, have resulted in depriving us, even in Constantinople, of all but the scantiest information regarding the' whole provincial area. And yet what we know already is sufficient to give you some idea.
In every part of Turkey the Armenian population is in a more or less serious pUght, in suspense between life and death. Apart from the distress produced by the illegal requisitions, the paralysis of industry, the ravages of the typhus, and the mobilisation of the men — first of those from 20 to 45, and then of those from 18 to 50 years of age — -thousands of Armenians have been suffering during the last two months in prison or in exile.
At the beginning of the month of April, immediately after the events at Van, the Government issued an order requisitioning Armenian houses, schools, and episcopal residences, even in the most obscure corners of the provinces, and making the possession of arms, which were allowed until now, or of books and images, which were freely sold in public, a pretext for imprisonments and convictions. The effect of this order has been such that in the prisons of Kaisaria alone there are, at the present moment, more than 500 Armenians in custody, without reckoning those who, by a mere administrative act and without any charge being brought against them, have been deported into districts inhabited entirely by Mohammedans.
However, even this state of things is mild enough in comparison with the condition of affairs in CiUcia and the provinces bordering on the Caucasus. The Turkish Government is now putting into execution its plan of dispersing the Armenian population of the Armenian provinces, taking advantage of the preoccupation of all the European Powers, and of the indifference of Germany and Austria. They began to execute this plan about four months ago, starting with Cilicia*, where the entire Armenian population of Zeitoun, Dort Yol and the neighbourhood, and a considerable part of the population of Marash and Hassan-Beyli, have been removed from their homes by brute force and without warning.
Some of the exiles, about 1,000 families, have been sent to the Sultania district of the Vilayet of Koniaf. The majority, how- ever, have been dispersed among the villages of the province of Zor, beyond Aleppo, and through the districts in the immediate neighbourhood of Aleppo itself — Moumbidj, Bab, Ma'ara, Idhb, etc. This compulsory emigration is still in progress. The same
* See Section XV. f See Docs. 123 and 125.
[4]
AUTHORITATIVE SOURCE AT CONSTANTINOPLE
7
fate is in prospect for Adana, Mersina, Hadjin, Sis, etc. As can be seen from the despatches and letters which arrive from these districts, all these people are being deported without the possibihty of taking anything with them, and this into districts with a cUmate to which they are absolutely unaccustomed. There, without shelter, naked and famished, they are abandoned to their fate, and have to subsist on the morsel of bread which the Government sees good to throw to them, a Government which is incapable of providing even its own troops with bread.
The least details of this compulsory emigration that reach us at Constantinople, reduce one to tears at their recital. Among those 1,000 famiUes deported to Sultania there are less than fifty men. The majority made the journey on foot ; the old people and the young children died by the wayside, and young women with child miscarried and were abandoned on the mountains. Even now that they have reached their place of exile, these deported Armenians pay a toll of about ten victims a day in deaths from sickness and famine. At Aleppo they need at present £35 (Turkish) a day to provide the exiles with broad. You can imagine what their situation must be in the deserts, where the native Arabs themselves are near starvation.
A sum of money has been sent from Constantinople to the Kathohkos of CiHcia, who is at the present moment at Aleppo, witnessing the misery and agony of his flock. At Aleppo, at any rate, the authorities permit the distribution of rehef to these unfortunate people ; at Sultania, on the other hand, it has so far been impossible to bring any rehef within their reach, because the Government refuses permission, in spite of the efforts of the American Embassy.
The same state of affairs now prevails at Erzeroum, BitUs, Sairt, etc. According to absolutely trustworthy information which we have received, they have begun, during the last two or three weeks, to deport the Armenians of Erzeroum and the neighbourhood towards Derdjan ; the rest have been given several days' grace. From Biths and Sairt we have just had despatches forwarded to us, imploring rehef. From Moush we have no news, but the same state of affairs must certainly prevail there also*. At Khnyssf there has been a massacre, but we do not yet know how serious it was. In the neighbourhood of Sivas several villages, Govdoun among others, have been burnt. . . .
* See Section III.
[4]
t See Doc. 53.
D
8
25th and 26th JULY, 1915.
5. LETTER FROM THE SAME SOURCE, DATED CONSTANTINOPLE, 12 /25th JULY, 1915 ; PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK JOURNAL " GOTCHNAG," 28th AUGUST, 1915.
Since my last letter, our nation's* position has unhappily become more serious, inasmuch as it is now not merely the Armenians of Cihcia who have been deported, but the Armenians of all the native Armenian provinces. From Samsoun and Kaisaria on the one hand to Edessa on the other, about a miUion and a half people are at this moment on their way to the deserts of Mesopotamia, to be planted in the midst of Arab and Kurdish populations. These people cannot take with them anything but the barest necessities, because of the impossibihty of transport and the insecurity of the roads ; so that very few of them indeed wiU succeed in reaching the spot marked out for their exile, while, if immediate relief is not sent them, they ^^dll die of hunger. . . .
16
AUTHORITATIVE SOURCE AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
9
6. LETTER FROM THE SAME SOURCE, DATED CONSTANTINOPLE, 13 /26th JULY, 1915, AND ADDRESSED TO A DISTINGUISHED ARMENIAN RESIDENT BEYOND THE OTTOMAN FRONTIER.
Since the 25th May last, events have followed hard upon one another, and the misery of our nation is now at its zenith.
Apart from a few rumours about the situation of the Armenians at Erzeroum, we had heard of nothing, till recently, except the deportation of the inhabitants of several towns and villages in Cilicia. Now we know from an unimpeachable source that the Armenians of all the towns and all the villages of Cilicia have been deported en masse to the desert regions south of Aleppo.
From the 1st May onwards, the population of the city of Erzeroum, and shortly afterwards the population of the whole province, was collected at Samsoun and embarked on ship- board. The populations of Kaisaria, Diyarbekir, Ourfa, Trebi- zond, Sivas, Harpout and the district of Van have been deported to the deserts of Mesopotamia, from the southern outskirts of Aleppo as far as Mosul and Baghdad. " Armenia without the Armenians " — that is the Ottoman Government's project. The Moslems are already being allowed to take possession of the lands and houses abandoned by the Armenians.
The exiles are forbidden to take anything with them. For that matter, in the districts under military occupation there is nothing left to take, as the military authorities have exerted themselves to carry off, for their own use, everything that they could lay hands on.
The exiles wiU have to traverse on foot a distance that involves one or two months' marching and sometimes even more, before they reach the particular corner of the desert assigned to them for their habitation, and destined to become their tomb. We hear, in fact, that the course of their route and the stream of the Euphrates are littered with the corpses of exiles, while those who survive are doomed to certain death, since they will find in the desert neither house, nor work, nor food.
It is simply a scheme for exterminating the Armenian nation wholesale, without any fuss. It is just another form of massacre, and a more horrible form.
Remember that all the men between the ages of 20 and 46 are at the front. Those between 45 and 60 are working for the military transport service. As for those who had paid the statutory tax for exemption from mihtary service, they have either been exiled or imprisoned on one pretext or another. The result is that there is no one left to deport but the old men, the women and the children. These poor creatures have to travel through regions which, even in times of peace, were reputed dangerous, and where there was a serious risk of being robbed. Now that the Turkish brigands, as weU as the gendarmes and civil
[6]
10
26th JULY. 1915.
officials, enjoy the most absolute licence, the exiles will inevitably be robbed on the road, and their women and girls dishonoured and abducted.
We are hearing also from various places of conversions to Islam. It seems that the people have no other alternative for saving their hves.
The courts martial are working everywhere at full pressure.
You must have heard through the newspapers of the hanging of 20 Huntchakists at Constantinople. The verdict given against them is not based on any of the estabhshed laws of the Empire. The same day twelve Armenians were hanged at Kaisaria, on the charge of having obeyed instructions received from the secret conference held at Bukarest by the Huntchakists and Droshakists. Besides these hangings, 32 persons have been sentenced at Kaisaria to terms of hard labour, ranging from ten to fifteen years. Most of them are honest merchants who are in no sort of relation with the political parties. Twelve Armenians have also been hanged in Cihcia. Condemnations have become dail}^ occurrences. The discovery of arms, books and pictures is enough to condemn an Armenian to several years' imprisonment.
Besides this many people have succumbed under the rod. Thirteen Armenians have been kiUed in this way at Diyarbekir, and six at Kaisaria. Thirteen others have been killed on their way to Shabin Kara-Hissar and Sivas. The priests of the viUage of Kourk with their companions have suffered the same fate on the road between Sou-Shehr and Sivas, although they had their hands pinioned and w^ere defenceless.
I will spare you the recital of other outrages which have occurred sporadically aU over the country, under the cloak of searches for arms and for revolutionary agents. Not a single house has been left unsearched, not even the episcopal residences, the churches or the schools. Hundreds of women, girls, and even quite young children are groaning in prison. Churches and con- vents have been piUaged, desecrated and destroyed. Even the Bishops are not spared. Mgr. Barkev Danielian (Bishop of Broussa), Mgr. Kevork Tourian (Bishop of Trebizond), Mgr. Khosrov Behrikian (Bishop of Kaisaria), Mgr. Vaghinadj Torikian (Bishop of Shabin Kara-Hissar), and Mgr. Kevork Nalbandian (Bishop of Tchar-Sandjak) have been arrested and handed over to the courts martial. Father Muggerditch, locum- tenens of the Bishop of Diyarbekir, has died of blows received in prison. We have no news of the other bishops, but I imagine that the greater part of them are in prison.
We are so cut off from the world that we might be in a fortress. We have no means of correspondence, neither post nor telegraph.
The villages in the neighbourhood of Van and Bitlis have been plundered, and their inhabitants put to the sword. At the beginning of this month, there was a pitiless massacre of all the inhabitants of Kara-Hissar with the exception of a few children
[63
AUTHORITATIVE SOURCE AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
11
who are said to have escaped by a miracle. Unhappily we learn the details of all these occurrences too late, and even then only with the utmost difficulty.
So you see that the Armenians in Turkey have only a few more days to live, and if the Armenians abroad do not succeed in enlisting the sympathy of the neutrals on our behalf, there will be extraordinarily few Armenians left a few months hence, out of the million and a half that there were in Turkey before the war. The annihilation of the Armenian nation will then be inevitable.
12
15th AUGUST, 1915.
7. LETTER FROM THE SAME SOURCE, DATED CONSTANTINOPLE, 2 15th AUGUST, 1915, AND ADDRESSED TO THE SAME ARMENIAN RESIDENT BEYOND THE OTTOMAN FRONTIER.
Since I wrote my last letter (of which you have acknowledged the receipt), we have been able to obtain more precise information from the provinces of the interior. The information with which we present you herewith is derived from the following witnesses : an Armenian lady forcibly converted to Islam, and brought by an unforeseen chance to Constantinople ; a girl from Zila, between nine and ten years old, who was abducted by a Turkish officer and has reached Constantinople ; a Turkish traveller from Harpout ; foreign travellers from Erzindjan, and so on. In fine, this information is derived either from ej^e-witnesses or from actual victims of the crimes.
It is now estabhshed that there is not an Armenian left in the provinces of Erzeroum, Trebizond, Sivas, Harpout, BitUs and Diyarbekir. About a milhon of the Armenian inhabitants of these provinces have been deported from their homes and sent southwards into exile. These deportations have been carried out very systematically by the local authorities since the beginning of April last. First of all, in every village and every town, the population was disarmed by the gendarmerie, and by criminals released for this purpose from prison. On the pretext of dis- arming the Armenians, these criminals committed assassinations and inflicted hideous tortures. Next, they imprisoned the Armenians en masse, on the pretext that they had found in their possession arms, books, a pohtical organisation, and so on — at a pinch, wealth or any kind of social standing was pretext enough. After that, they began the deportation. And first, on the pretext of sending them into exile, they evicted such men as had not been imprisoned, or such as had been set at hberty through lack of any charge against them ; then they massacred them — not one of these escaped slaughter. Before they started, they were examined officially by the authorities, and any money or valuables in their possession were confiscated. They were usually shackled — either separately, or in gangs of five to ten. The remainder — old men, women, and children — were treated as waifs in the province of Harpout, and placed at the disposal of the Moslem population. The highest official, as weU as the most simple peasant, chose out the woman or girl who caught his fancy, and took her to wife, converting her by force to Islam. As for the children, the Moslems took as many of them as they wanted, and then the remnant of the Armenians were marched away, famished and destitute of provisions, to fall victims to hunger, unless that were anticipatediby the savagery of the brigand- bands. In the province of Diyarbekir there was an outright massacre, especially at Mardin, and the population was subjected to all the afore-mentioned atrocities.
[7]
AUTHORITATIVE SOURCE AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
13
In the provinces of Erzeroum, Bitlis, Sivas and Diyarbeklr, the local authorities gave certain facilities to the Armenians condemned to deportation : five to ten days' grace, authorisation to effect a partial sale of their goods, and permission to hire a cart, in the case of some famiUes. But after the first few days of their journey, the carters abandoned them on the road and returned home. These convoys were waylaid the day after the start, or sometimes several days after, by bands of brigands or by Moslem peasants who spoiled them of all they had. The brigands fraternised with the gendarmes and slaughtered the few grown men or youths who were included in the convoys. Thoy carried off the women, girls and children, leaving only the old women, who were driven along by the gendarmes under blows of the lash and died of hunger by the roadside. An eye-witness reports to us that the women deported from the province of Erzeroum were abandoned, some days ago, on the plain of Harpout, where they have all died of hunger (50 or 60 a day).
The only step taken by the authorities was to send people to bury them, in order to safeguard the health of the Moslem population.
The httle girl from Zila tells us that when the Armenians of Marsovan, Amasia and Tokat reached Sari-Kishila (between Kaisaria and Sivas), the children of both sexes were torn from their mothers before the very windows of the Government Build- ing, and were locked up in certain other buildings, while the convoy was forced to continue its march. After that, they gave notice in the neighbouring villages that anyone might come and take his choice. She and her companion (Newart of Amasia) were carried off and brought to Constantinople by a Turkish officer. The convoys of women and children were placed on view in front of the Government Building at each town or village where they passed, to give the Moslems an opportunity of taking their choice.
The convoy which started from Baibourt was thinned out in this way, and the women and children who survived were thrown into the Euphrates on the outskirts of Erzindjan, at a place called Kamakh-Boghazi.* Mademoiselle Flora A. Wedel Yarles- berg, a Norwegian lady of good family who was a nurse in a German Red Cross hospital, and another nurse who was her colleague, were so revolted by these barbarities and by other experiences of equal horror, that they tendered their resignations, returned to Constantinople, and called personally at several Embassies to denounce these hideous crimes.
The same barbarities have been committed everywhere, and by this time travellers find nothing but thousands of Armenian corpses along all the roads in these provinces. A Moslem traveller on his way from Malatia to Sivas, a nine hours' journey, passed nothing but corpses of men and women. All the male Armenians of Malatia had been taken there and massacred ; the women and
* See Doc9. 59, 60, 61, 62. The witnesses at Erzindjan were not Norwegians but Danes — Editor.
[7]
14
15th AUGUST, 1916-
children have all been converted to Islam. No Armenian can travel in these parts, for every Moslem, and especially the brigands and gendarmes, considers it his duty now to kill them at sight. Recently Messieurs Zohrab and Vartkes, two Armenian members of the Ottoman Parliament, who had been sent off to Diyarbekir to be tried by the Council of War, were killed, before they got there, at a short distance from Aleppo. In these provinces one can only travel incognito under a Moslem name. As for the women's fate, we have already spoken of it above, and it seems unnecessary to go into further particulars about their honour, when one sees the utter disregard there is for their life.
The Armenian soldiers, too, have suffered the same fate. They were also all disarmed and put to constructing roads.* We have certain knowledge that the Armenian soldiers of the province of Erzeroum, who were at work on the road from Erzeroum to Erzindjan, have all been massacred. The Armenian soldiers of the province of Diyarbekir have all been massacred on the Diyar- bekir-Ourfa road, and the Diyarbekir-Harpout road. From Harpout alone, 1,800 young Armenians were enrolled and sent off to w^ork at Diyarbekir ; all were massacred in the neighbour- hood of Arghana. We have no news from the other districts, but they have assuredly sufiPered the same fate there also.
In certain towns, the Armenians who had been consigned to oblivion in the prisons have been hanged in batches. During the past month alone, several dozen Armenians have been hanged in Kaisaria. In many places the Armenian inhabitants, to save their lives, have tried to become Mohammedans, but this time such overtures have not been readily accepted, as they were at the time of the other great massacres. At Sivas, the would-be converts to Islam were offered the following terms : they must hand over all children under twelve years of age to the Govern- ment, which would undertake to place them in orphanages ; and they must consent, for their own part, to leave their homes and settle wherever the Government directed.
At Harpout, they would not accept the conversion of the men ; in the case of the women, they made their conversion con- ditional in each instance upon the presence of a Moslem willing to take the convert in marriage. Many Armenian women pre- ferred to throw themselves into the Euphrates with their infants, or committed suicide in their homes. The Euphrates and Tigris have become the sepulchre of thousands of Armenians.
All Armenians converted in the Black Sea towns— Trebizond, Samsoun, Kerasond, etc. — have been sent to the interior, and settled in towns inhabited exclusively by Moslems. The town of Shabin-Karahissar resisted the disarming and deportation, and was thereupon bombarded. The whole population of the town and the surrounding country, from the Bishop downwards, was pitilessly massacred.
* See Docs. 23 and 62,
AUTHORITATIVE SOURCE AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
15
In short, from Samsoun on the one hand to Seghert* and Diyarbekir on the other, there is now not a single Armenian left. The majority have been massacred, part have been carried off, and a very small part have been converted to Islam.
History has never recorded, never hinted at, such a hecatomb. We are driven to believe that under the reign of Sultan Abd-ul- Hamid we were exceedingly fortunate.
We have just learnedthefateof some of the provincial bishops. Mgr. Anania Hazarabedian, Bishop of Baibourt, has been hanged without any confirmation of the sentence by the Central Govern- mentt. Mgr. Bosak Der-Khoremian. Bishop of Harpout, started on his road to exile in May, and had barely left the outskirts of the town when he was cruelly murdered. But we have still no news of the Bishops of Seghert, Bitlis, Moush, Keghi, Palou, Erzindjan, Kamakh, Tokat, Gurin, Samsoun and Trebizond, or for a month past of the Bishops of Si^as and Erzeroum. It is super- fluous to speak of the martyred priests When the people were deported, the churches were pillaged and turned into mosques, stables, or what not. Besides that, they have begun to sell at Constantinople the sacred objects and other properties of the Armenian churches, just as the Turks have begun to bring to Constantinople the children of the unhappy Armenian mothers.
It appears that the massacres have been less cruel in Cilicia, or at least we have no news yet of the worst. The population, which has been deported to the provinces of Aleppo and Der-el- Zor and to Damascus, will certainly perish of hunger. We have just heard that the Government has refused to leave in peace even the insignificant Armenian colonies at Aleppo and Ourfa, who might have assisted their unhappy brethren on their south- ward road ; and the Katholikos of Cilicia, who still remains at Aleppo, is busy distributing the relief we are forwarding to him.
We thought at first that the Government's plan was to settle the Armenian question once and for all by clearing out the Armenians of the six Armenian provinces and removing the Armenian population of Cilicia, to forestall another danger in the future. Unhappily their plan was wider in scope and more thorough in intention. It consisted in the extermination of the whole Armenian population throughout the whole of Turkey. The result is that, in those seven provinces where the Government was pledged to introduce reforms, there is not one per cent, of the Armenian population left alive. So far, we do not know whether a single Armenian has reached Mosul or its neighbour- hood. And this plan has now been put' into execution even in the suburbs of Constantinople. The majority of the Armenians in the district of Ismid and in the province of Broussa have been forcibly deported to Mesopotamia, leaving behind them their homes and their property. In detail, the population of Adapazar, Ismid, Gegve, Armaaha and the neighbourhood has been removed —
♦ Sairt (?)
t See Doc. 59.
16
15th August, 1915, Authoritative Source at Constantinople.
in fact, the population of all the villages in the Ismid district (except Baghtchedjik, which has been granted several days' grace). The Principal of the Seminary at Armasha has also been removed with his colleagues in orders and his seminarists*. They have had to leave everything behind, and been able to take nothing with them on their journey. Six weeping mothers confided their little ones to the Armenians of Konia, in order to save their hves, but the local authorities tore them away from their Armenian guardians, and handed them over to Moslems.
So now it is Constantinople's turn. In any case, the popula- tion has fallen into a panic, and is waiting from one moment to another for the execution of its doom. The arrests are innumerable, and those arrested are immediately removed from the capital. The majority will assuredly perish. It is the retail merchants of provincial birth, but resident in Constantinople, who are so far being deported — among them Marouke, Ipranossian Garabed, Kherbekian of Erzeroum, Atamian Karekin, Krikorian Sempad of Biths, etc. We are making great efforts to save at any rate the Armenians of Constantinople from this horrible extermination of the race, in order that, hereafter, we may have at least one rallying point for the Armenian cause in Turkey.
Is there anything further to add to this report ? The whole Armenian population of Turkey has been condemned to death, and this decree is being put into execution energetically in every corner of the Empire, under the eyes of the European Powers ; while, so far, neither Germany nor Austria has succeeded in checking the action of their ally and removing the stain of these barbarities, which also attaches to them. All our efforts have been without result. Our hope is set upon the Armenians abroad.
* See Doc. 99. [7]
21st JULY, 1915. LETTER FROM ATHENS.
17
8. EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER, DATED ATHENS, 8th /21st JULY, 1915, FROM AN ARMENIAN FORMERLY RESIDENT IN TURKEY TO A PROMINENT ARMENIAN IN WESTERN EUROPE.
Events have been taking place in Turkey of which I imagine that you have no first-ha,nd or reliable information, on account
of the strict censorship and scarcity of travellers And as
I have been able to obtain reliable information, I have thought it my duty as an Armenian to submit it to your Excellency.
Mr. A., who was a missionary teacher at the town of B. in Cilicia for four years, and with whom I am acquainted personally (and I have good reason to beheve in every word he says), arrived in this city only yesterday, coming from AE. in company with Miss B., the daughter of the Director of Mr. A.'s college, with whom I am also acquainted personally.
They just began to inform me by saying that the condition of the Armenians in Cilicia was awful. The town of Dort Yol, after having been cleared of its Armenian population, has been peacefully occupied by Turkish families, and not by the miHtary authorities. The whole of the Armenian inhabitants have been sent away — turned out of their homes — and are naturally suffering from hunger. The exposure is something that cannot be described. Before evacuation, some nine leading merchants were hanged, on the accusation that they were in communication with the British fleet and were spying for the Allied Forces*.
Zeitoun has met the same fate. There is not a single Armenian left in Zeitoun, and all the houses are occupied by Turkish people. My friends could not understand what exactly had happened to the Zeitounlis, but the fact is that special care has been taken by the Turkish authorities that too many of them should not be left together. Attempts have been made to make them Moham- medans, and it is known that the authorities attempted to distribute one, two, or three families to each Turkish village in the district of Mar ash.
They have attempted to do the same thing to Hadjin, but, somehow or other, only half the inhabitants have left, whose homes have naturally been occupied by the Turks.
The Turks of Tarsus and Adana are showing the same dis- position as they did before the massacres of 1909.
Missionaries from Beirout state that the same persecution is being carried out against Christian Syrians.
Br. C, for many years a missionary in Smyrna, and latterly in AD., was exiled to Angora. He states that there were thirty Armenians exiled with him from AD. on the simple charge that they had either themselves been Huntchakists or had friends belonging to the said Party. Extortion of money, robbery and insults are usual, and conditions in general are worse than at any period in the time of Hamid. Dr. C. has been' in Turkey for 35 years and knows Turkish.
* See Doc. 123. [8]
18
21st JULY, 1915.
At Kaisaria they hanged eight Armenians. About the same time they hanged twenty-six at Constantinople, and this im- mediately after the note of the Powers threatening to hold Turkish officials responsible for massacres of Armenians. Imprisonment and exile are common things, and the Reverend Missionary finished by saying that I ought to be glad I was out of it."
Dr. C, coming from Constantinople, gave me the further information that massacres had been going on round BitHs for some time. And then, from correspondents at Bitlis, his in- formants had had new^s that whole villages were embracing Mohammedanism in order to escape tortures, because the object of the massacres was not simply to kill, but to torture.
A resident at Mardin had telegraphed by code to Constanti- nople informing his correspondent there that the same conditions existed at Mardin as during 1895.
The American Ambassador at Constantinople, after asking the Turkish Government to stop the massacres, went to the German Ambassador. But Herr Wangenheim said he could not interfere in any way with Turkej^'s internal affairs ! ! !
All these informants do not hide their belief, based on what they have actually seen, that German poUcy is at the back of the movement for a clean Mohammedan " Turkey for the Turks."
I will give your Excellency another coincident piece of evidence. In May, 1914, I travelled with Dr. Niazim Bey, who is the spirit of the Union and Progress Party, when he was on the mission of estabhshing a boycott — nominally against the Greeks only, though it proved to be against the Armenians as weU. The Doctor said that the work of the Turkish Govern- ment was very compUcated, and he laid all the fault of it on the ancestors of the modern Turks, who, in spite of their being victorious and defying all Europe, nay all the world, had not been far-sighted enough to cleanse aU the country they ruled of the Christian element, but had yielded to their chivalrous feelings and allowed the Christians to live. Had they done this bit of cleaning up at a time when nobody could protest, there would have been an easy task now for the heads of the Govern- ment in governing, and so on.
The Russian retreat has intoxicated the Turks. They think they have their chance now, and evidence shows that their almighty aUy Germany encourages them in their effort at house cleaning. The note of the Alhed Powers'^is no deter- rent, even if the Turkish officials were not sure of final victory, because they feel that, if they lose, Turkey is not the place to offer them a happy shelter, and, with the money they are making now, the officials responsible can hide themselves in a country where they cannot be found or cannot be extradited. And^some of the 'bolder spirits, Uke Talaat and Enver, have openly said that they do not expect to live if defeated, even without the threat of the AUiea to bring them to account.
[SI
LETTER FROM ATHENS.
19
The Armenians in Turkey have not been able to conceal'their feelings, and when I myself was in Constantinople, prudent man though I am, I was unable to conceal my feelings myself, or at least so effectively as not to be perceived by the Turks.
As early as September last, the Turkish comic paper Karagoz had written one day that " If the Armenians were cheerful, there was certainly news of victory for the Alhes ; if not, it had been the reverse." But if, in spite of the Armenians conceahng their feelings, the Turks had definitely adopted the policy — as no doubt they had — of exterminating the Christians in Turkey, then we have at least the satisfaction that we have hurt them with the display of what we felt.
I beheve that the Germans did not want to exterminate the Armenians unless the latter proved of mihtary danger in the present game ; but I imagine the Armenians have incurred the Germans' displeasure in this regard.
That Germany, or the Germans in Turkey, are for the above reason encouraging the Turks in their attempt at extermination, is proved by the fact that wholesale massacres and deportations have been specific to regions of which the inhabitants might be of especial help to an invading army. For instance, Dort Yol and Zeitoun would be of excellent help had the Allies made a landing at Pay as. Bitlis is next door to Van ; the Russian army is getting towards BitHs, and naturally the Armenians of Bitlis would be of great value to them, as indeed the Armenians of Van have been already.
Take the case of Erzeroum, again a frontier town, which, besides individual hangings, has been the scene of wholesale massacres ; while towns far away from the theatre of war, such as Angora, Broussa, Konia, Constantinople, etc., although not exempted from persecution, have still not been subjected to wholesale massacres and deportations.
[8]
20
16ih AUGUST, 1915.
9. LETTER, DATED 3rd 16th AUGUST, 1915, CONVEYED BEYOND THE OTTOMAN FRONTIER BY AN ARMENIAN REFUGEE FROM CILICIA IN THE SOLE OF HER SHOE*.
In haste and in secret I seize this opportunity of bringing to your ears the cry of agony which goes out from the survivors of the terrible crisis through which we are passing at this moment. They are exterminating our nation, mowing it doAMi. Perhaps this will be the last cry from Ai'menia that you Vsi\\ hear ; we have no longer any fear of death, we see it close at hand, this death of the whole people. We are waifs who cry for the lives of our brothers. These hnes cannot describe our misery ; it would need volumes of reports to do justice to that.
(1.) At the present moment there are at more than
10,000 deported widows and childi-en (among the latter one sees no boys above eleven years of age). They had been on the road for from three to live months ; they have been plundered several times over, and have marched along naked and starving ; the Government gave them on one single occasion a morsel of bread — a few have had it twice. It is said that the number of these deported ^vidows will reach 60,000 ; they are so exhausted that they cannot stand upright ; the majority have great sores on their feet, through having had to march barefoot.
(2). An enquiry has proved that, out of 1,000 people who
started, scarcely 400 reached . Out of the 600 to be accounted
for, 380 men and boys above eleven years of age, and 85 women, had been massacred or drowned, out of sight of the towns, by the gendarmes who conducted them ; 120 young women and girls and 40 boj'S had been carried off, with the result that one does not see a single pretty face among the survivors.
(3.) Out of these survivors, 60 per cent, are sick ; they are
to be sent in the immediate future to , where certain death
awaits them ; one cannot describe the ferocious treatment to which they are exposed ; they had been on the road for from three to five months ; they had been plundered two, three, five, seven times ; their underclothes even had been ransacked ; so far from being given ami:hiQg to eat, they had even been prevented from drinking while they were passing a stream. Three-quarters of the young women and girls were abducted ; the remainder were forced to He with the gendarmes who conducted them. Thousands died under these outrages, and the survivors have stories to tell of refinements of outrage so disgusting that they pollute one's ears.
(4.) The massacres have been most violent in the eastern provinces, and the population has been deported wholesale towards the Hauran Desert, Gereg and Mosul, where the victims are doomed to a death from natural causes more infallible than massacre. When one remembers that these people were leading a comfortable European life, one is forced to conclude that
♦The author of the letter has been identified by an Armenian resident abroad who recognised his hand-writing. — Editor.
[9]
LETTER FROM CILICIA.
21
they will never be able to survive in an alien and inhospitable climate, even if the knife and the bullet do not previously do their work.
My friends, I have not time to tell you more ; one may say with truth that not a single Armenian is left in Armenia ; soon there wiQ be none left in Cilicia either. The Armenian, robbed of his hfe, his goods, his honour, conveys to you his last cry for help — help to save the lives of the survivors ! Money to buy them bread ! There is a rumour here that the Government will allow the women and the children under seventeen years of age to leave the country. How are they to do it ? Where are they to go ? What ship is to take them ? Who will provide the funds ? From moment to moment we are waiting for reUef, to stave off the death of the Nation. Be quick, never mind how ; send us money, we have no means of communication !
Send, through the agency of the American Government, money, money, money ; the bearer of this letter deserves every reward ; she will tell you all the details. Zohrab, Vartkes Dagha- varian and their five companions have been murdered by the gendarmes at Sheitan-Dere, between Ourfa and Diyarbekir, where thousands of headless corpses make the passers-by shudder ; the Euphrates bears down its stream thousands of corpses of men and women ; photographs of this have been taken by Euro- peans. Fifteen thousand ZeitounUs have been deported to Der- el-Zor, where they are suffering the worst atrocities. Thousands of babies at the breast have been thrown into rivers or abandoned by the wayside by their mothers. The urgent need is money ! Make that clear to the Armenian colony ia America. Money ! Money !
One thousand six hundred Armenians have had their throats cut in the prisons at Diyarbekir. The Arashnort was mutilated, drenched with alcohol, and burnt ahve in the prison yard, in the middle of a carousing crowd of gendarmes, who even accompanied the scene with music. The massacres at Beniani, Adiaman and Selefka have been carried out diaboUcally ; there is not a single man left above the age of thirteen years ; the girls' have been outraged mercilessly ; we have seen their mutilated corpses tied together in batches of four, eight or ten, and cast into the Euphrates. The majority had been mutilated in an iudescribable manner.
The above facts have been gathered from official sources and eye-witnesses.
The American Consul is able to arrange for the despatch of funds. We are unable to realise any of our property, either national or private, because it has all been confiscated by the Government. The Government has even confiscated the con- vents, the churches and the schools. Black famine reigns in this town ; we have 15,000 deported Armenians here, who are being sent on in batches to Arabia. The whole of Armenia is being cleared out.
I sign this letter with my blood !
[9]
22 27th AUGUST, 1915. LETTER FROM CONSTANTINOPLE
10. LETTER FROM MR. N., A FOREIGN RESIDENT AT CON- STANTINOPLE, DATED 27th AUGUST, 1916 ; COMMUNICATED BY THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF.
The Armenians of Bardizag have generally speaking been deported. A promise secured by Mr. Morgenthau that Pro- testants should be exempted from deportation has kept the people at Nicomedia (Isnik) for nearty a week. They are camped in the open near the Railway Station, exposed to the weather and to the insults of the populace, apparently to be deported a few days later on. Whether we shall succeed in saving the Protestants remains to be seen. Deportation has taken place general^ throughout all the region contiguous to Nicomedia, Adapazar, Konia, Marsovan, Sivas, Harpout, Diyarbekir and to some parts of the American Central Mission. Many people have already lost their lives, and others, as for instance those in this city, have lost hope as to their final security. I shall enclose a few letters which will give an idea of the situation throughout the land.
Prof. QQ.* has just arrived from X. He has been four weeks on the journey, having been delayed considerably at S. He states that the Armenians have left, having been deported from X, and the vicinity. Mr. Morgenthau endeavoured to save the Mission entourage at X. from deportation ; the promises securing this, however, were not fulfilled. Even the hundred girls and young women held in the College Compound could not be saved from this dreadful fate. To the bold stand made by the Mission people, on behalf of their pupils and teachers, the Kaimakam him- self opposed his personal authority, threatening to hang anyone who attempted to prevent the carrying out of his orders for the deportation of the people. These orders, here as elsewhere, seemed to respect neither age nor condition. . . .
The movement against the Armenians has now well-nigh covered the entire country. Many prominent Armenians have lost their fives ; hardly a family has escaped experiencing to some extent the severity of this blow. It looks as if the patronage from this community for the American schools has been quite cut off. Teachers and pupils afike have been sent into exile, or have suffered death or have been carried off to Turkish communities or harems. There is an ugly rumour that the turn of the Greeks will come next. Should Greece move, this will probably be realised. . . .
Author of Docs. 56 and 57. [10]
28th OCTOBER, 1915. MEMORANDUM FROM BUKAREST.
23
11. MEMORANDUM DATED 15 /28th OCTOBER, 1915, FROM A WELL- INFORMED SOURCE AT BUKAREST, RELATING TO THE EXTERMINATION OF THE ARMENIANS IN TURKEY.
1 . At Vezir Kopril (district of Marsovan) all Armenian women and girls from 7 to 40 years of age have been sold at auction. Women were also presented to the buyers without payment.
2. At Kaisaria more than 500 Armenian famiHes were forced to embrace Islam. A father asked his son in Constantinople to follow his example, " in order to prevent worse consequences for his parents."
3. All Armenian judicial officials in the provinces have been discharged. All Turkish officials who have shown special zeal in the extermination of the Armenians have been promoted. Thus Zeki Bey, Kaimakam of Develou (Kaisaria), the man who directed in person the terrible tortures of the Armenian prisoners and was responsible for the death of most of them, has been made mektoubdji of the Vilayet of Constantinople.
4. The Young Turk Government has published, as an excuse or perhaps as a means of exciting greater hatred against the Armenians, a book entitled The Armenian Separatist Movement^ which is as ridiculous as it is criminal. The reader finds in it not only copies of entirely fictitious pubHcations, but actually pictures of enormous depots of arms and munitions purporting to be Armenian.
5. In Konia, and everywhere else, the wives of the Armenian soldiers who have not been deported have been taken as servants or concubines into Turkish families.
6. In Mar ash more than three hundred Armenians have been executed by Court Martial, besides the numerous victims murdered in the course of the deportations. At Panderma many important Armenians have been condemned to death by the Court Martial. The vicar Barkev Vartabed has been condemned to five years' penal servitude. The Archbishop of Erzeroum, His Grace Sempad, who, mth the VaU's authorisation, was returning to Constantinople, was murdered at Erzindjan by the brigands in the service of the Union and Progress Committee. The bishops of Trebizond, Kaisaria, Moush, Bitlis, Sairt, and Erzindjan have all been murdered by order of the Young Turk Government. According to reports from travellers, all the Armenian population of Trebizond has been massacred without exception. Almost the whole male population in Sivas, Erzeroum, Harpout, Bitlis, Baibourt, Khnyss, Diyarbekir, etc., has been exterminated. At Tchingiler, a small village in the district of Ismid, 300 men have been murdered because they did not obey the order to leave their houses. The people deported from Rodosto, Malgara and Tchorlu, who have been deprived of all their possessions in accordance with the new "temporary law '* of the 13/26th September, have been separated from their iamilies and sent on foot from Ismid to Konia on the arbitrary
[111
24 28th OCTOBER, 1915. MEMORANDUM FROM BUKAREST.
order of the notorious Ibrahim, dictator of the Ismid district. Thousands of poor Armenians expelled from Constantinople are made to march on foot from Ismid to Konia and still further, after they have delivered up everything they possess to the gendarmes, including their shoes. Those who can afford to travel by rail are also fleeced by the gendarmes, who not only demand the price of the ticket from Constantinople to their destinations, but extract the whole of their money by selling them food at exorbitant prices. They demand payment even for unlocking the door of the water-closet.
7. German travellers from Aleppo describe the misery of the deported Armenians as terrible. All along the route they saw corpses of Armenians who had died of hunger.
The Arab deputies from Bagdad and Syria report that the misery in the deserts of Hauran is indescribable : —
"The railway discharges into the mountains vast numbers of Armenians, who are abandoned there without bread or water. In the towns and villages, the Arabs try to bring them some relief ; but generally the Armenians are abandoned at five or six hours' distance from their homes. We saw on the way numbers of women and old men and children dying of hunger, who did not know where to look for help."
Some Armenians are leading a Ufe of misery among the Arabs, forty or forty-five hours' journey from Bagdad. Every day numbers of them die of hunger. The Government gives them no food. Moreover, fresh troops have been sent to Bagdad, and these will be a new scourge to the unfortunate exiles.
8. Three Special Commissions have been sent through the provinces to liquidate the abandoned goods and estates of the Armenians, in conformity with the new "temporary law" of the 13/26th September^ 1915.
" Sonnenaufgang" and " Allgemeinc Missions-Zeitschrift." 25
12. INFORMATION REGARDING EVENTS IN ARMENIA, PUBLISHED IN THE "SONNENAUFGANG" (ORGAN OF THE "GERMAN LEAGUE FOR THE PROMOTION OF CHRISTIAN CHARITABLE WORK IN THE EAST OCTOBER, 1915 ; AND IN THE " ALLGEMEINE MISSIONS-ZEITSCHRIFT," NOVEMBER, 1915.
This testimony is especially significant because it comes from a German source, and because the German Censor made a strenuous attempt to suppress it.
The same issue of the " Sonnenaufgang " contains the following editorial note : —
" In our preceding issue we published an account by one of our sisters (Schwester Mohring) of her experiences on a journey, but we have to abstain from giving to the public the new details that are reaching us in abundance. It costs us much to do so, as our friends will understand ; but the political situation of our country demands it."
In the case of the " Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift,'^ the Censor was not content with putting pressure on the editor. On the lOth November, he forbade the reproduction of the present article in the German press, and did his best to confiscate the whole current issue of the magazine. Copies of both publications, however, found their way across the frontier.
Both the incriminating articles are drawn from common sources, but the extracts they make from them do not entirely coincide, so that, by putting them together, a fuller version of these sources can be compiled.
In the text printed below, the unbracJceted paragraphs are those which appear both in the " Sonnenaufgang " and in the " Allge- meine Missions-Zeitschrift " ; while paragraphs included in angular brackets (<>) appear only in the ''Sonnenaufgang,!' and those in square brackets ([ ]) only in the Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift"
Between the 10th and the 30th May, 1,200 of the most prominent Armenians and other Christians, without distinction of confei^>sion, were arrested in the Vilayets of Diyarbekir and Mamouret-ul-Aziz.
<It is said that they were to be taken to Mosul, but nothing more has been heard of them.>
[On the 30th May, 674 of them were embarked on thirteen Tigris barges, under the pretext that they were to be taken to Mosul. The VaH's aide-de-camp, assisted by fifty gendarmes, was in charge of the convoy. Half the gendarmes started off on the barges, while the other half rode along the bank. A short time after the start the prisoners were stripped of all their money (about £6,000 Turkish) and then of their clothes ; after that they were thrown into the river. The gendarmes on the bank were ordered to let none of them escape. The clothes of these victims were sold in the market of Diyarbekir.]
[12] E2
26
" SONNENA UFGANG " AND
<About the same time 700 young Armenian men were con- scribed, and were then set to build the Karabaghtche-Habashi road. There is no news of these 700 men either.
It is said that in Diyarbekir five or six priests were stripped naked one day, smeared with tar, and dragged through the street s.>
In the Vilayet of Aleppo they have evicted the inhabitants of Hadjin, Shar, Albustan, Goksoun, Tasholouk, Zeitoun, all the villages of Alabash, Geben, Shivilgi, Furnus and the surrounding villages, Fundadjak, Hassan-Beyh, Harni, LappashH, Dort Yol and others.
[Thej^ have marched them off in convoys into the desert on the pretext of settling them there. In the village of Tel- Ar men (along the line of the Bagdad Railway, near Mosul) and in the neighbouring villages about 5,000 people were massacred, leaving only a few women and children. The people were thrown ahve down wells or into the fire. They pretend that the Armenians are to be employed in colonising land situated at a distance of from twenty -four to thirty kilometres from the Bagdad Railway. But as it is only the women and children who are sent into exile, since all the men, with the exception of the very old, are at the war, this means nothing less than the wholesale murder of the famihes, since they have neither the labour nor the capital for clearing the country.]
A German met a Christian soldier of his acquaintance, who was on furlough from Jerusalem. The man was wandering up and down along the banks of the Euphrates searching for his wife and children, who were supposed to have been transferred to that neighbourhood. Such unfortunates are often to be met with in Aleppo, because they believe that there they will learn something more definite about the whereabouts of their relations. It has often happened that when a member of a family has been absent, he discovers on his return that all his family are gone — evicted from their homes.
[For a whole month corpses were observed floating down the River Euphrates nearly every day, often in batches of from two to six corpses bound together. The male corpses are in many cases hideously mutilated (sexual organs cut off, and so on), the female corpses are ripped open. The Turkish military authority in control of the Euphrates, the Kaimakam of Djerablous, refuses to allow the burial of these corpses, on the ground that he finds it impossible to establish whether they belong to Moslems or to Christians. He adds that no one has given him any orders on the subject. The corpses stranded on the bank are devoured by dogs and vultures. To this fact there are many German eye- witnesses. An employee of the Bagdad Railway has brought the information that the prisons at Biredjik are filled regularly every day and emptied every night — into the Euphrates. Between Diyarbekir and Ourfa a German cavalry captain saw innumerable corpses lying unburied all along the road.]
[12]
" ALLGEMEINE MISSIONS-ZEITSCHRIFT/
27
<The following telegram was sent to Aleppo from Arabkir : — We have accepted the True ReHgion. Now we are all right." The inhabitants of a village near Anderoum went over to Islam and had to hold to it. At Had j in six famiUes wanted to become Mohammedans. They received the verdict : " Nothing under one hundred famiUes will be accepted."
Aleppo and Ourfa are the assemblage -places for the convoys of exiles. There were about 5,000 of them in Aleppo during June and July, while during the whole period from April to July many more than 50,000 must have passed through the city. The girls were abducted almost without exception by the soldiers and their Arab hangers-on. One father, on the verge of despair, besought me to take with me at least his fifteen-year-old daughter, as he could no longer protect her from the persecutions inflicted upon her. The children left behind by the Armenians on their journey are past counting.
Women whose pains came upon them on the way had to continue their journey without respite. A woman bore twins in the neighbourhood of Aintab ; next morning she had to go on again. She very soon had to leave the children under a bush, and a Uttle while after she collapsed herseK. Another, whose pains came upon her during the march, was compelled to go on at once and fell down dead almost immediately. There were several more incidents of the same kind between Marash and Aleppo*.
The villagers of Shar were permitted to carry all their house- hold effects with them. On the road they were suddenly told : " An order has come for us to leave the high road and travel across the mountains." Everything — waggons, oxen and be- longings— had to be left behind on the road, and then they went on over the mountains on foot. This year the heat has been ex- ceptionally severe, and many women and children naturally succumbed to it even in these early stages of their journey.
There are about 30,000 exiles of whom we have no news at all, as they have arrived neither at Aleppo nor at Ourfa.>
♦ " We have just picked up fifteen babies. Three are already dead. They were terribly thin and ailing when we found them. Ah ! If we could only write all that we see." — Extract from a letter dated Marash, 4th June, 1915, published in " Sonnenaufgang," September, 1915.
[12]
28
SPRING. 7916.
13. STATEMENT MADE BY A FOREIGN RESIDENT AT CON STANTINOPLE TO A SWISS GENTLEMAN AT GENEVA; COMMUNICATED BY THE LATTER.
When I left Turkey early in March (1916), the Armenian situation was as follows : —
In general deportations had ceased, but local interference with Armenians continued. Quite often Armenians who had remained in the villages or cities between the Taurus Mountains and Constantinople have been sent from one locality to another within the province, or even to localities in other provinces.
Arrests of Armenians in the Capital continue with considerable frequency. Those arrested were usually sent to some interior province, often to be killed or to be left to die from ill-treatment or lack of food.
Extortion of money and supplies from Armenians, and dis- criminations against them in the distribution of bread and other food supplies, continue out of all proportion to these practices as apphed to other Ottoman subjects.
The suffering of all Armenians, and especially of those in exile, is very great, and many are dying from lack of proper food and from disease. Anti- Armenian feeling among Moslems is in- creasing.
Early in January of this year, trustworthy reports from Aleppo gave 492,000 as the number of deported Armenians who were at that time in the regions of Mosul, Der-el-Zor, Aleppo and Damascus*. Most of these are women and children and old men, practically all of whom are in great need of food and other necessities of Hfe. Without physicians and medicine, disease is reaping a rich harvest from these exiles.
The Turkish Minister of the Interior has stated that about 800,000 Armenians have been deported, and that about 300,000 of these people have been killed or have perished from other causes. Other estimates place the number of deported at 1,200,000, and the number who have perished from all causes at 600,000.
* See Doc. 139. d. [13i
4th MAY, 1916. AMERICAN RELIEF COMMITTEE.
29
14. CABLEGRAM, DATED 4th MAY. 1916. TRANSMITTED THROUGH THE STATE DEPARTMENT AT WASHINGTON TO THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR ARMENIAN AND SYRIAN RELIEF, FROM THE COMMITTEE'S REPRESENTATIVES IN TURKEY.
Aleppo,
Relief work here supports 1,350 orphans, who are only a portion of the destitute children now in the city. It has also furnished food to famihes in nine destitute centres, including Hama, Rakka, EaUis and Damascus. £1,500 (Turkish) monthly are being used at Aleppo for orphans ; £600 (Turkish) are being used for the poor of Aleppo ; £2,245 (Turkish) are being used in the destitute centres. This is considered to be a minimum alloca- tion, and ten times the amount would not meet the full needs. The work is being overseen by the German and American Consuls. So insufficient are the funds that many exiles in the destitute places have only grass to eat, and they are djdng of starvation by hundreds. £1,000 (Turkish) are required each week for the Aleppo centre.
Marash,
Ten thousand Armenians are threatened with deportation, and all are in a most needy condition. Attempted industrial assistance for Moslems and Christians was stopped by Govern- ment. Christians are not allowed to do any business, and the price of food is very high. Export from Agno to Marash has been forbidden, and many people are dying of starvation. £1,600 (Turkish) are needed here monthly.
Aintab,
Forty-five hundred Armenians remain here, two-thirds of whom are on reHef lists. Four hundred refugee women and children in city and neighbourhood require £1,000 (Turkish) each month.
Tarsus.
This being a station on the route taken by the exiles from the region north of Tarsus, the roads are always full of people in miserable condition. According to Government estimates, 92,000 exiles have passed through Tarsus, while, according to other reports, the number is much larger. Typhus is very prevalent. The needs here require £500 (Turkish) a month.
Adana.
The situation here in general resembles that at Agno, with the special feature that many children need to be saved and fed. £500 (Turkish) monthly are needed.
Sivas,
In addition to the local Christian population remaining here, 25,000 destitute refugees, including women and children from coast cities, have been added. All need help. Monthly require* ments amount to £600 (Turkish).
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J6 4th MAY, 1916. AMERICAN RELIEF COMMITTEE.
Konia.
Two thousand orphans. £1,500 (Turkish) monthly required for the needs of this city and neighbouring places.
Harpout.
This place asks for £400 (Turkish) monthly.
Marsovan and Kaisaria.
£500 (Turkish) monthly are needed.
Smyrna.
There has been much sickness here and there is a scarcity of food. £400 (Turkish) monthly are needed.
Broussa.
£200 (Turkish) monthly are being used here.
II.
VILAYET OF VAN.
The Vilayet of Van had a higher percentage of Armenians in its population than any other province of the Ottoman Empire ; it was also the border province of the north-eastern frontier y towards Russian and Persian territory ^ and as such was the earliest to be exposed to invasion after the breakdown of the Turkish offensive against the Caucasus in the winter of 1914-1915.
The documents contained in this section give a detailed and perfectly self -consistent account, from five independent sources^ of those events at Van which led to the first open breach between the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the Turks, and which gave the Government a pretext for extending the scheme of deportation already operative in Cilicia to the whole Armenian population under its jurisdiction.
The evidence makes it clear that there was no unprovoked insurrection of the Armenians at Van, as the Ottoman Government asserts in its official apologia. The Armenians only took up arms in self-defence, and the entire responsibility for the outbreak rests with Djevdet Bey, the local governor — whether he was acting on his own initiative or was simply carrying out instructions from Con- stantinople,
32
VAN.
15. THE AMERICAN MISSION AT VAN : NARRATIVE PRINTED PRIVATELY IN THE UNITED STATES BY MISS GRACE HIGLEY KNAPP (1915).
The first part of this narrative, down to and including the sub- section headed " Deliverance/' has been transcribed almost word for word by 3Iiss Knapp from a letter she wrote at Van, on the 2Uh May, 1915, to Dr. Barton, and has, therefore, all the value of contemporary evidence.
The period of the (first) Russian occupation of Van is also covered by two further letters from Miss Knapp to Dr. Barton — a long one written piece-meal on the lUh, 20th and 22nd June, and a second dated 2Qth July. These contain much more detail than the three corresponding sub-sections of her narrative, but the detail is principally devoted to personal matters and to the care of the Moslem refugees. As neither subject was strictly relevant to the purpose of the present collection, it seemed better to reprint the narrative rather than the letters in the case of these sections also.
There is also a letter (published in the Eleventh Report of the Women's Armenian Relief Fund) from Miss Louie Bond to Mrs. Orpin, written on the 21th July, almost the eve of the evacuation ; but this, too, is practically entirely devoted to personal matters.
For the period of the retreat there are no contemporary letters, but only an undated memorandum by Miss Knapp, which agrees word for word with the latter part of her present narrative, from the beginning of the section headed " Flight " to the end.
The Setting of the Draima and the Actors Therein.
Van was one of the most beautiful cities of Asiatic Turkey — a city of gardens and vineyards, situated on Lake Van in the centre of a plateau bordered by magnificent mountains. The walled city, containing the shops and most of^,the public^buildings, was dominated by Castle Rock, a huge rock rising sheer from the plain, crowned with ancient battlements and fortifications, and bearing on its lakeward face famous cuneiform inscriptions. The Gardens, so-called because nearly every house had its garden or vineyard, extended over four miles eastward from the waUed city and were about two miles in width.
The inhabitants numbered fifty thousand, three-fifths of whom were Armenians, two-fifths Turks. The Armenians were pro- gressive and ambitious, and because of their numerical strength and the proximity of Russia the revolutionary partyi^grew to be a force to be reckoned with. Three of its noted leaders were Vremyan, member of the Ottoman Parhament ; Ishkhan, the one most skilled in mihtary tactics ; and Aram, of whom there will be much to say later. The Governor often consulted with these men and seemed to be on the most friendly terms with them.
The American Mission Compound was on the south-eastern border of the middle third of the Gardens, on a slight rise of ground that made its buildings somewhat conspicuous. These
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MISS KNAPP.
33
buildings were a church building, two large new school buildings, two small ones, a lace school, a hospital, dispensary and four missionary residences. South-east, and quite near, was a broad plain. Here was the largest Turkish barracks of the large garrison, between which and the American premises nothing intervened. North and nearer, but with streets and houses between, was another large barracks, and farther north, within rifle range, was Toprak-Kala Hill, surmounted by a small barracks dubbed by the Americans the " Pepper Box." Five minutes' walk to the east of us was the German Orphanage managed by Herr Sporri, his wife and daughter (of Swiss extraction) and three single ladies.
The American force in 1914-1915 consisted of the veteran missionary, Mrs. G. C. Raynolds (Dr. Raynolds had been in America a year and a half collecting funds for our Van college, and had been prevented from returning by the outbreak of war) ; Dr. Clarence D. Ussher, in charge of the hospital and medical work ; Mrs. Ussher, in charge of a philanthropic lace industry ; Mr. and Mrs. Ernest A. Yarrow, in charge of the Boys' School and general work ; Miss Gertrude Rogers, principal of the Girls' School ; Miss Caroline SilUman, in charge of the primary depart- ment, and two Armenian and one Turkish kindergarten ; Miss Elizabeth Ussher, in charge of the musical department ; Miss Louise Bond, the EngHsh superintendent of the hospital ; and Miss Grisel McLaren, our touring missionary. Dr. Ussher and Mr. Yarrow had each four children ; I was a visitor from Biths.
Between the Devil and the Deep Sea.
During the mobiHzation of the fall and winter the Armenians had been ruthlessly plundered under the name of requisitioning ; rich men were ruined and the poor stripped. Armenian soldiers in the Turkish army were neglected, half starved, set to digging trenches and doing the menial work ; but, worst of all, they were deprived of their arms and thus left at the mercy of their fanatical, age-long enemies, their Moslem fellow-soldiers. Small wonder that those who could find a loophole of escape or could pay for exemption from miUtary duty did so ; many of those who could do neither simply would not give themselves up. We felt that a day of reckoning would soon come — a coUision between these opposing forces or a holy war. But the revolutionists conducted themselves with remarkable restraint and prudence ; controlled their hot-headed youth ; patrolled the streets to prevent skirmishes ; and bade the villagers endure in silence — better a village or two burned unavenged than that any attempt at reprisals should furnish an excuse for massacre.
For some time after Djevdet Bey, a brother-in-law of Enver Pasha, minister of war, became Governor General of Van Vilayet, he was absent from the city fighting at the border. When he returned in the early spring, everyone felt there would soon be " Bomething doing." There was. He demanded from the
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VAN.
Armenians 3,000 soldiers. So anxious were they to keep the peace that they promised to accede to this demand. But at this juncture trouble broke out between Armenians and Turks in the Shadakh region, and Djevdet Bey requested Ishkhan to go there as peace commissioner, accompanied by three other notable revolutionists. On their way there he had all four treacherously murdered. This was Friday, the 16th April. He then summoned Vremyan to him under the pretence of consulting with this leader, arrested him and sent him off to Constantinople.
The revolutionists now felt that they could not trust Djevdet Bey, the Vali, in any way and that therefore they could not give him the 3,000 men. They told him they would give 400 and pay by degrees the exemption tax for the rest. He would not accept the compromise. The Armenians begged Dr. Ussher and IVIr. Yarrow to see Djevdet Bey and try to mollify him. The Vah was obdurate. He " must be obeyed. " He would put down this " rebellion " at all costs. He would first punish Shadakh, then attend to Van, but if the rebels fired one shot meanwhile he would put to death every man, woman and child of the Christians.
The fact cannot be too strongly emphasized that there was no " rebelhon." As already pointed out, the revolutionists meant to keep the peace if it lay in their power to do so. But for some time past a fine of Turkish entrenchments had been secretly drawn round the Armenian quarter of the Gardens. The revolutionists, determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible, prepared a defensive Hne of entrenchments.
Djevdet Bey said he wished to send a guard of fifty soldiers to the American premises. This guard must be accepted or a written statement given him by the Americans to the effect that it had been offered and refused, so that he should be absolved from all responsibihty for our safety. He wished for an im- mediate answer, but at last consented to wait till Sunday noon.
Our Armenian friends, most of them, agreed that the guard must be accepted. But the revolutionists declared that such a force in so central a location menaced the safety of the Armenian forces and that they would never permit it to reach our premises ahve. We might have a guard of five. But Djevdet Bey would give us fifty or none. Truly we w^ere between the devil and the deep sea, for, if both revolutionists and Vah kept their word, we should be the occasion for the outbreak of trouble^ if the guard were sent ; if it were not sent, we should have no official assurance of safety for the thousands who were already preparing to take refuge on our premises. We should be blamed for an unhappy outcome either way. On Monday, when Dr. Ussher saw the Vali again, he seemed to be wavering and asked if he should send the guard. Dr. Ussher left the decision with him, but added that the sending of such a force might precipitate trouble. It was never sent.
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MISS KNAPP.
35
Meanwhile Djevdet Bey had asked Miss McLaren and Sch wester Martha, who had been nursing in the Turkish military hospital all winter, to continue their work there, and they had consented.
War ! " Ishim Yok, Keifim Tchok."
On Tuesday, the 20th April, at 6 a.m., some Turkish soldiers tried to seize one of a band of village women on their way to the city. She fled. Two Armenian soldiers came up and asked the Turks what they were doing. The Turkish soldiers fired on the Armenians, killing them. Thereupon the Turkish entrenchments opened fire. The siege had begun. There was a steady rifle firing all day, and from the walled city, now cut off from com- munication with the Gardens, was heard a continuous cannonading from Castle Rock upon the houses below. In the evening, houses were seen burning in every direction.
All the Armenians in the Gardens — nearly 30,000, as the Armenian population of the walled city is small — were now gathered into a district about a mile square, protected by eighty " teerks " (manned and barricaded houses) besides walls and trenches. The Armenian force consisted of 1,500 trained riflemen possessing only about 300 rifles. Their supply of ammunition was not great, so they were very sparing of it ; used pistols only, when they could, and employed all sorts of devices to draw the fire of the enemy and waste their ammunition. They began to make bullets and cartridges, turning out 2,000 a day ; also gun- powder, and after awhile they made three mortars for throwing bombs. The supply of material for the manufacture of these things was limited, and methods and implements were crude and primitive, but they were very happy and hopeful and exultant over their ability to keep the enemy at bay. Some of the rules for their men were : Keep clean; do not drink ; tell the truth ; do not curse the religion of the enemy. They sent a manifesto to the Turks to the effect that their quarrel was with one man and not with their Turkish neighbours. Valis might come and go, but the two races must continue to live together, and they hoped that after Djevdet went there might be peaceful and friendly relations between them. The Turks answered in the same spirit, saying that they were forced to fight. Indeed, a protest against this war was signed by many prominent Turks, but Djevdet would pay no attention to it.
The Armenians took and burned (the inmates, however, escaping) the barracks north of our premises, but apart from this they did not attempt the offensive to any extent — their numbers were too few. They were fighting for their homes, their very lives, and our sympathies could not but be wholly on their side, though we strove to keep our actions neutral. We allowed no armed men to enter the premises, and their leader, Aram, in order to help us to preserve the neutrality of our premises, forbade the bringing of wounded soldiers to our hospital, though Dr. Ussher treated them at their own temporary hospital. But
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VAN.
Djevdet Bey wrote to Dr. Ussher on the 23rd that armed men had been seen entering our premises and that the rebels had prepared entrenchments near us. If, at the time of attack, one shot were fired from these entrenchments, he would be " regretfully com- pelled " to turn his cannon upon our premises and completely destroy them. We might know this for a surety. We answered that we were preserving the neutrahty of our premises by every means in our power. By no law could we be held responsible for the actions of individuals or organisations outside our premises.
Our correspondence with the Vali was carried on through our official representative, Signor Sbordone, the Italian consular agent, aind our postman was an old woman bearing a flag of truce. On her second journey she fell into a ditch and, rising without her white flag, was instantly shot dead by Turkish soldiers. Another was found, but she was wounded while sitting at the door of her shack on our premises. Then Aram said that he would permit no further correspondence until the VaH should answer a letter of Sbordone's, in which the latter had told Djevdet that he had no right to expect the Armenians to surrender now, since the cam- paign had taken on the character of a massacre.
Djevdet would permit no communication with Miss McLaren at the Turkish hospital, and would answer no question of ours concerning her welfare, though after two weeks he wrote to Herr Sporri that she and Schwester Martha were weU and comfortable. Dr. Ussher had known the Vali as a boy and had always been on the most friendly terms with him, but in a letter to the Austrian banker who had taken refuge on the German premises, the Vali wrote that one of his officers had taken some Russian prisoners and cannon and that he would cause them to parade in front of His Majesty Dr. Ussher 's fortifications, so that he, who with the rebels was always awaiting the Russians, should see them and be content." This letter ended with the words : " Ishim yok, keifim tchok " ("I have no work and much fun.") While he was having no work and much fun, his soldiers and their wild allies, the Kurds, were sweeping the countryside, massacring men, women, and children and burning their homes. Babies were shot in their mothers' arms, small children were horribly mutilated, women were stripped and beaten. The villages were not prepared for attack ; many made no resistance ; others resisted until their ammunition gave out. On Sunday, the 25th, the first band of village refugees came to the city. At early dawn we heard them knocking, knocking, knocking at our gate. Dr. Ussher went out in dressing gown and slippers to hear their pitiful tale and send the wounded to the hospital, where he worked over them all day.
The Mission's First-aid to the Injured. Six thousand people from the Gardens had early removed to our premises with all their worldly possessions, filling church and school buildings and every room that could possibly be spared in the missionary residences. One woman said to Miss Silliman ;
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MISS KNAPP.
37
** What would we do without this place ? This is the third massacre during which I have taken refuge here." A large proportion of these people had to be fed, as they had been so poor that they had bought daily from the ovens what bread they had money for, and now that resource was cut off. Housing, sanita- tion, government, food, relation with the revolutionist forces, were problems that required great tact and executive abihty. The Armenians were not able to cope with these problems unaided. They turned to the missionaries for help.
Mr. Yarrow has a splendid gift for organisation. He soon had everything in smoothly running order, with everyone hard at work at what he was best fitted to do. A regular city government for the whole city of thirty thousand inhabitants was organised with mayor, judges, and poHce — the town had never been so well poHced before. Committees were formed to deal with every possible contingency. Grain was sold or contributed to the common fund by those who possessed it, most of whom manifested a generous and self-sacrificing spirit ; one man gave all the wheat he possessed except a month's supply for his family. The use of a public oven was secured, bread tickets issued, a soup kitchen opened, and daily rations were given out to those on our premises and those outside who needed food. Miss Rogers and Miss Silliman secured a daily supply of milk, and made some of their school-girls boil it and distribute it to babies who needed it, until 190 were being thus fed. The Boy Scouts, whom thirteen- year-old Neville Ussher had helped organize in the fall, now did yeoman's service in protecting the buildings against the dangers of fire, keeping the premises clean, carrying wounded on stretchers, reporting the sick, and, during the fourth week, distributing milk and eggs to babies and sick outside the premises.
Our hospital, which had a normal capacity of fifty beds, was made to accommodate one hundred and sixty-seven, beds being borrowed and placed on the floor in every available space. Such of the wounded as could walk or be brought to the hospital came regularly to have their wounds dressed. Many compUcated operations were required to repair the mutilations inflicted by an unimaginable brutahty and love of torture. Dr. Ussher, as the only physician and surgeon in the besieged city, had not only the care of the patients in his hospital, the treatment of the wounded refugees and of the wounded Armenian soldiers, but his dispensary and out-patients increased to an appaUing number. Among the refugees exposure and privation brought in their train scores of cases of pneutoonia and dysentery, and an epidemic of measles raged among the children. Miss SilHman took charge of a measles annex. Miss Rogers and Miss Ussher helped in the hospital, where Miss Bond and her Armenian nurses were worked to the Umit of their strength, and after a while Mrs. Ussher, aided by Miss Rogers, opened an overflow hospital in an Armenian school-house, cleared of refugees for the purpose. Here it was a
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VAN.
struggle to get beds, utensils, helpers, even food enough for the patients. Indeed all this extra medical and surgical work was hampered by insufficient medical and surgical supplies, for the annual shipment had been stalled at Alexandretta.
Dark Days.
At the end of two weeks the people in the walled city managed to send us word that they were holding their own and had taken some of the government buildings, though they were only a hand- ful of fighters and were cannonaded day and night. About 16,000 cannon balls or shrapnel were fired upon them. The old- fashioned balls sunk into the three-feet thick walls of sun-dried brick without doing much harm. In time, of course, the walls would fall in, but they were the walls of upper stories. People took refuge in the lower stories, so only three persons lost their fives from this cause. Some of the " teerks " in the Gardens were also cannonaded without much damage being done. It seemed the enemy was reserving his heavier cannon and his shrapnel till the last. Three cannon balls fell on our premises the first week, one of them on a porch of the Usshers' house. Thirteen persons were wounded by bullets on the premises, one fatally. Our premises were so centrally located that the bullets of the Turks kept whizzing through, entered several rooms, broke the tiles on the roofs, and peppered the outside of the walls. We became so used to the pop-pop-pop of rifles and booming of cannon that we paid fittle attention to them in the daytime, but the fierce fusil- lades at night were rather nerve-racking.
A man escaping from Ardjish related the fate of that town, second in size and importance to Van in the vilayet. The kaima- kam had called the men of all the guilds together on the 19th April, and, as he had always been friendly to the Armenians, they trusted him. When they had all gathered, he had them moAvn down by his soldiers.
Many of the village refugees had stopped short of the city at the little village of Shushantz, on a mountain side near the city. Here Aram bade them remain. On the 8th May we saw the place in flames, and Varak Monastery near by, with its priceless ancient manuscripts, also went up in smoke. These villagers now flocked into the city. Djevdet seemed to have altered his tactics. He had women and children driven in by hundreds to help starve the city out. Owing to the mobilisation of the previous fall, the supply of wheat in the Gardens had been very much less than usual to begin with, and now that 10,000 refugees were being given a daily ration, though a ration barely sufficient to sustain life, this supply was rapidly approaching its limit. The ammunition was also giving out. Djevdet could bring in plenty of men and ammunition from other cities. Unless help came from Russia, it was impossible for the city to hold out much longer against Jiim, and the hope of such help seemed very faint.
MISS KNAPP.
39
We had no communication with the outside world ; a telegram we had prepared to send to our embassy before the siege never left the city ; the revolutionists were constantly sending out appeals for help to the Russo -Armenian volunteers on the border, but no word or sign of their reaching their destination was received by us. At the very last, when the Turks should come to close quarters, we knew that all the population of the besieged city would crowd into our premises as a last hope. But, enraged as Djevdet was by this unexpected and prolonged resistance, was it to be hoped that he could be persuaded to spare the lives of one of these men, women and children ? We believed not. He might offer the Americans personal safety if we would leave the premises, but this, of course, we would not do ; we would share the fate of our people. And it seemed not at all improbable that he would not even offer us safety, believing, as he seemed to believe, that we were aiding and upholding the " rebels."
Those were dark days indeed. Our little American circle came together two evenings in the week to discuss the problems constantly arising. We would joke and laugh over some aspects of our situation, but as we listened to the volley firing only two blocks away, we knew that at any hour the heroic but weakening defence might be overpowered ; knew that then hell would be let loose in the crowded city and our crowded compound ; knew that we should mtness unspeakable atrocities perpetrated on the per- sons of those we loved, and probably suffer them in our own persons. And we would sing :
'* Peace, perfect peace ; the future all unknown ! Jesus we know and He is on the throne," and pray to the God who was able to deliver us out of the very mouth of the lion.
On Saturday forenoon a rift seemed to appear in the clouds, for many ships were seen on the lake, saiKng away from Van, and we heard that they contained Turkish women and children. We became a " city all gone up to the housetops," wondering and surmising. Once before such a flight had taken place, when the Russians had advanced as far as Sarai. They had retreated, however, and the Turkish families had returned.
That afternoon the sky darkened again. Cannon at the Big Barracks on the plain began to fire in our direction. At first we could not believe that the shots were aimed at our flag, but no doubt was permitted us on that point. Seven shells fell on the premises, one on the roof of Mss Rogers' and Miss Silliman's house, making a big hole in it ; two others did the same thing on the boys'-school and girls'-school roofs. On Sunday morning the bombardment began again. Twenty-six shells fell on the premises before noon.
When the heavy firing began Dr. Ussher was visiting patients outside and Mrs. Ussher was also away from home at her overflow hospital, so I ran over from our own hospital to take their children
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VAN.
to the safest part of the house, a narrow hall on the first floor. There we listened to the shrieking of the shrapnel and awaited the bursting of each shell. A deafening explosion shook the house. I ran up to my room to find it so full of dust and smoke that I could not see a foot before me. A shell had come through the three-feet-thick outside wall, burst, scattering its contained bullets, and its cap had passed through a partition wall into the next room and broken a door opposite. A shell entered a room in Mrs. Raynold's house, killing a httle Armenian girl. Ten more shells fell in the afternoon. Djevdet was fulfilling his threat of bombarding our premises, and this proved to us that we could hope for no mercy at his hands when he should take the city.*
Deliverance.
In this darkest hour of all came dehverance. A lull followed the cannonading. Then at sunset a letter came from the occupants of the only Armenian house within the Turkish lines which had been spared (this because Djevdet had Hved in it when a boy) which gave the information that the Turks had left the city. The barracks on the summit and at the foot of Toprak-Kala were found to contain so small a guard that it was easily overpowered, and these buildings were burned amidst the wildest excitement. So with all the Turkish " teerks," which were visited in turn. The Big Barracks was next seen to disgorge its garrison, a large company of horsemen who rode away over the hills, and that building, too, was burned after midnight. Large stores of wheat and ammunition were found. It all reminded one of the seventh chapter of II. Kings.
The whole city was awake, singing and rejoicing all night. In the morning its inhabitants could go whither they would un- afraid. And now came the first check to our rejoicing. Mss McLaren was gone ! She and Schwester Martha had been sent with the patients of the Turkish hospital four days before to Biths.
Mr. Yarrow went to the hospital. He found there twenty- five wounded soldiers too sick to travel, left there without food or water for five days. He found unburied dead. He stayed all day in the horrible place, that his presence might protect the terrified creatures until he could secure their removal to our hospital.
* The shelling of the mission buildings is also described by Mr. Yarrow, in an interview published in the New York " Times," 6th October, 1915, the day after his arrival in America : —
" For twenty -seven days 1,500 determined Armenians held Van against 5,000 Turks and Kurds, and for the last three days they were shelled with shrapnel from a howitzer brought up by a Turkish company headed by a German officer. I myself saw him directing the fire of the gun.
" Two days before the Russians came to Van, the Turks dehberately fired at the mission buildings. They stood out prominently and could no^t be mistaken, and also flew five American flags and one Red Cross flag as a protection. The firing was so accurate that the shots cut the signal hal- yards and brought the flags to the ground."
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MISS KNAPP.
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On Wednesday, the 19th May, the Russians and Russo- Armenian volunteers came into the city. It had been the know- ledge of their approach that had caused the Turks to flee. Some hard fighting had to be done in the villages, however, before Djevdet and his reinforcements were driven out of the province. Troops poured into the city from Russia and Persia and passed on towards Bitlis.
Aram was made temporary governor of the province, and, for the first time for centuries, Armenians were given a chance to govern themselves. Business revived. People began to rebuild their burned houses and shops. We re-opened our mission schools, except the school in the walled city, the school-house there having been burned.
The Tables Turned.
Not all the Turks had fled from the city. Some old men and women and children had stayed behind, many of them in hiding. The Armenian soldiers, unlike Turks, were not making war on such. There was only one place where the captives could be safe from the rabble, however. In their dilemma the Armenians turned, as usual, to the American missionaries. And so it came to pass that hardly had the six thousand Armenian refugees left our premises when the care of a thousand Turkish refugees was thrust upon us, some of them from villages the Russo- Armenian volunteers were " cleaning out."
It was with the greatest difficulty that food could be procured for these people. The city had an army to feed now. Wheat — the stores left by the Turks — was obtainable, but no flour, and the use of a mill was not available for some time. The missionaries had no help in a task so distasteful to the Armenians except that of two or three of the teachers of the school in the waUed city, who now had no other work. Mr. Yarrow was obhged to drop most of his other duties and spend practically all his time working for our proteges. Mrs. Yarrow, Miss Rogers and Miss SiUiman administered medicines and tried to give every one of the poor creatures a bath. Mrs. Ussher had bedding made, and secured and personally dispensed milk to the children and sick, spending several hours daily among them.
The wild Cossacks considered the Turkish women legitimate prey, and though the Russian General gave us a small guard, there was seldom a night during the first two or three weeks in which Dr. Ussher and Mr. Yarrow did not have to drive ofl marauders who had climbed over the walls of the compound and eluded the guard.
The effect on its followers of the religion of Islam was never more strongly contrasted with Christianity. While the Armenian refugees had been mutually helpful and seK-sacrificing, these Moslems showed themselves absolutely selfish, caUous and in- different to each other's suffering. Where the Armenians had
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VAN.
been cheery and hopeful, and had clung to life with wonderful vitality, the Moslems, with no faith in God and no hope of a future life, bereft now of hope in this Hfe, died like flies of the prevaihng dysentery from lack of stamina and the will to Uve.
The situation became intolerable. The missionaries begged the Russian General to send these people out to villages, mth a guard sufficient for safety and flocks to maintain them until they could begin to get their Uving from the soil. He was too much occupied with other matters to attend to us.
After six weeks of this, Countess Alexandra Tolstoi (daughter of the famous novehst) came to Van and took off our hands the care of our " guests," though they remained on our premises. 8he was a young woman, simple, sensible, and lovable. We gave lier a surprise party on her birthdaj^ carrying her the traditional cake v^dth candles and crowning her with flowers, and she declared she had never had a birthday so dehghtfully celebrated in all her life. She worked hard for her charges. When her funds gave out and no more were forthcoming and her Russian helpers fell ill, she succeeded where we had failed and induced the General to send the Turks out into the country with provision for their safety and sustenance.
The Pestilence that Walketh in Darkness.
Our Turkish refugees cost us a fearful price.
The last day of June Mrs. Ussher took her children, who had whooping cough; out of the pestilential atmosphere of the city to Artamid, the summer home on Lake Van, nine miles away. Dr. Ussher went there for the week-end, desperately in need of a little rest. On Saturday night they both became very ill. Upon hearing of this I went down to take care of them. On Monday Mr. and Mrs. Yarrow also fell ill. Ten days yet remained till the time set for closing the hospital for the summer, but Miss Bond set her nurses to the task of sending the patients away and went over to nurse the Yarrows. This left me without help for five days. Then, for four days more, two Armenian nurses cared for the sick ones at night and an untrained man nurse helped me during the daytime. Miss Rogers had come down on Thursday, the day after commencement, for the cure of what she beUeved to be an attack of malaria. On Friday she too fell ill. Fortunately, there was at last a really good Russian physician in town, and he was most faithful in his attendance. The sickness proved to be typhus. Later we learned that at about the same time Miss SiUiman, who had left for America on her furlough on the 15th June, accompanied by Neville Ussher, had been ill at Tiflis with what we now know was a mild form of the same disease. Dr. Ussher might have contracted it from his outside patients, but the others undoubtedly contracted it from the Turkish refugees.
Mrs. Yarrow was dangerously ill, but passed her crisis safely and first of all. ]\Iiss Bond then came to Artamid, though Mr. Yarrow was still very ill, feeling that the Usshers needed her more
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on account of their distance from the doctor. Miss Ussher took charge of the Yarrow children up in Van ; Mrs. Raynolds managed the business a£fairs of the mission.
Mrs. Ussher had a very severe form of the disease, and her deUcate frame, worn out with the overwork and terrible strain of the months past, could make no resistance. On the 14th July she entered into the Hfe eternal.
We dared not let the sick ones suspect what had happened. Dr. Ussher was too ill at the time and for more than two weeks longer to be told of his terrible loss. For three months preceding his illness he had been the only physician in Van, and the strain of over-work and sleeplessness told severely now. After he had passed his typhus crisis, his Hfe was in danger for a week longer from the pneumonia which had been a compHcation from the first. Then followed another not infrequent complication of typhus, an abscess in the parotid gland which caused long-con- tinued weakness and suffering, at one time threatened hfe and reason, and has had serious consequences which may prove permanent. IVIr. Yarrow was so ill that his hfe was quite despaired of. It was by a veritable miracle that he was restored to us.
Flight.
Meanwhile the Russian army had been slowly advancing westward. It had not been uniformly successful as we had ex- pected it to be. Indeed, the Russians seemed to fight sluggishly and unenthusiastically. The Russo-Armenian volunteers, who were always sent ahead of the main army, did the heavy fighting. By the last week of July the Russians had not yet takerf Bitlis, only ninety miles distant from Van. Suddenly the Turldsh army began to advance towards Van, and the Russian army to retreat.
On Friday, the 30th July, General NicolaiefF ordered all the Armenians of the Van province, also the Americans and other foreigners, to flee for their lives. By Saturday night the city was nearly emptied of Armenians and quite emptied of conveyances. Nearly aU our teachers, nurses, employees had left. It was every man for himself and no one to help us secure carriages or horses for our own flight. We at Artamid, with a sick man to provide for, would have had great difficulty in getting up to the city in time, had not Mrs. Yarrow risen from her sick-bed to go to the General and beg him to send us ambulances. These reached us after midnight.
There was little question in our minds as to our own flight. Our experience during the siege had shown us that the fact of our being. Americans would not protect us from the Turks. Had not our two men, Mr. Yarrow and Dr. Ussher, been absolutely helpless we might have debated the matter. As it was, we women could not assume the responsibiUty of staying and keeping them there, and even if we had stayed we could have found no means to live in a deserted city.
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We were fifteen Americans and had ten Armenian dependents — women and children — to provide for. The head nurse of the hospital, Garabed, plucky and loyal little fellow that he was, had sent on his mother and wife and had remained behind to help us get out of the country. Dr. Ussher's man-cook, having ])een vv'ith us at Artamid when the panic began, had been unable to secure conveyance for his sick wife. We greatly needed his help on the journey, but this involved our providing for a third sick person. We had three horses, an American grocer's delivery cart, really not strong enough for heavy work on rough and mountainous roads, and a small cart that would seat three. Our two other carts were not usable.
We begged the General to give us ambulances. He absolutely refused — he had none to spare. But, he added, he was to be replaced in a day or two by General Trokin ; we could appeal to him when he came ; the danger was not immediate. Somewhat reassured and not knowing how we could manage without help from the Russians, we made no effort to leave that day. But the next day, Monday, we heard that the volunteers who were trying to keep the road open to Russia would not be able to do so much longer — there was no time to lose. We set to work.
One of our teachers who had not succeeded in getting away before Monday morning, kindly took a small bag of clothing on his ox-cart for each of us. We spread the quilts and blankets we should need on the way on the bottom of the dehvery cart, intending to lay our three sick people on these. Garabed, who had never driven a team in his hfe, must drive two of our horses in this carf . Mrs. Raynolds would drive the third horse harnessed to the small cart, and take the babies and what food there was possibly room for ; no provisions could be bought on the way. The rest of us must walk, though Mrs. Yarrow and Miss Rogers were newly risen from a sick bed and the children were all under twelve. We put loads on the cows we must take with us for the sake of the babies and the patients. But the cows were refractory ; they kicked off the loads and ran wildly about the yard, tails up, heads down, whereupon the single horse broke loose and " also ran," smashing the small cart.
At this moment, the " psychological moment," two doctors of the Russian Red Cross rode into our yard. Seeing our plight they turned and rode out again. They returned a Uttle later and on their own responsibility promised to take us with the Red Cross caravan. Thank the Lord !
We now put our loads on the delivery cart ; put the wheels of the smashed cart on the body of a wheelless cart, and now that we might take a little more with us than food and bedding, packed in bags what we felt to be absolutely necessary. What we left behind we should never see again ; we felt certain that the Russian soldiers before they left would loot our houses md perhaps burn them to forestall the Turks.
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The Red Cross provided us with two ambulances with horses and drivers, and a stretcher carried between two horses for Dr. Ussher. He was usually taken into one of their sick tents when we camped at night ; most of the rest of us slept on the ground in the open.
We left on Tuesday, the 3rd August. The Russians appeared to have received news that made them very uneasy, and, indeed, General Trokin himself left Van that very afternoon, as we learned later. The next day at sundown we heard the firing between the Kurds and the volunteers who were so gallantly trying to keep them at bay, to keep the road to Russia open as long as possible. It sounded startlingly near. We travelled till two a.m. that night in order to reach Bergri, where we should be, not safe, but beyond the Hne along which the Turks would try to intercept travellers. We were just in time. General Trokin's party, that had left Van only a few hours later than we, were unable to reach Bergri, and had to return and get out by the longer route through Persia. Had we with our slower rate of travel been obhged to do this, we might not have been able to get out at all.
The Arrow that Flieth by Day.
That afternoon — Thursday afternoon — we forded a wide and deep river, then entered a narrow valley, from the mountains commanding which Kurds suddenly began to fire down on the Red Cross caravan and the thousands of foot travellers. One man in an ambulance was killed, others wounded. The drivers of ambulances and Utters whipped up their horses to a mad gallop. It was a race for Hfe. The sight of those gasping, terror-stricken thousands was one never to be forgotten. The teacher who had taken our bags of clothing threw everything off his ox-cart in order to escape with his Ufe. The Armenians on our long wagon threw off much of the luggage to lighten it, and thus we lost most of what we had brought with us.
Once out of the valley we were comparatively safe. We met a force of volunteers and "Cossacks who entered the valley to engage with the Kurds. Mrs.^Raynolds had^been riding in the small cart. After the danger was'over, while getting out of the cart, she fell and broke her leg below^the knee. The Red Cross physicians set it at once, but she suffered greatly during the remainder of the journey over the rough roads, though lying at full length in one of our ambulances. She was quite helpless. Mr. Yarrow lay, too, in his ambulance, which he was unable to leave day or night during the journey, except when he was carried into a Red Cross tent on Sunday.
On Friday all but the four helpless ones and the babies walked over Mt. Taparez. On Saturday we again climbed on foot a high mountain, from sundown till three o'clock the next morning. The caravan rested on Sunday at a Red Cross camp near the top of TchingH Mt. at the foot of Mt. Ararat. Here Dr. Ussher had two
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severe operations on his face without anaesthetics. On Monday at sunset we reached Igdir. Dr. Ussher was taken to a mihtary hospital for officers, and the military sent him on to Tiflis on Thursday. We could not secure carriages until Wednesday morning to take us to the railway station at Etchmiadzin. We arrived in Tiflis the next morning.
Safe ! — But Sorrowing.
Most of us had lost nearly everything but the clothes we stood in, and these we had worn day and night during the ten days' journey. Small wonder that the first hotel we went to had " no rooms." Mr. Smith, the American Consul, was most kind and did everything he could for us. He secured a room in a private hospital for Mrs. Raynolds and a bed in the city hospital for Dr. Ussher.
Dr. Ussher was again brought to death's door by very severe dysentery contracted on the road. He had become a nervous and physical wreck and in appearance the ghost of himself.
Dysentery was epidemic among the scores of thousands of refugees from Van Province who had crowded into Transcaucasia. The very air seemed poisoned ; our children were all ill, and it seemed to us that they would not get well until we could leave Tiflis.
Mrs. Raynolds' broken bone refused to knit. She seemed also to be suffering from a collapse of her whole system. She would lie there patient, indifferent to what was going on about her, sunk in memories of the past, perhaps — who can say ?
On the 24th August we were astounded at receiving a telegram from Dr. Raynolds. We had not heard of his leaving America and here he was at Petrograd ! It seems he had started for Van as soon as he had heard of the Russian occupation, in company with Mr. Henry White, who was to teach in our college. At Petrograd he learned from the ambassador that the Van missionaries were in Tiflis, but of the reason therefor he had heard