ARMENIAN MASSACRES. Shortly after the oubreak of the war Turkish so-called "patriotic" societies began to send threatening letters to the Armenian press in Constantinople. Bands of Turk ish "nationalists" were at this time go ing nightly through the Armenian quar ter of Constantinople making threats of death upon the doors of houses, churches and schools. Shortly after the Young Turk Government made a definite at tempt to win the Armenians over to the side of the Central Powers, whose cause they had espoused; but one leading au thority at least believes that even then their ultimate destruction had been de termined upon—was indeed a foregone conclusion with so good a pretext as the outbreak of a general war. The Young Turks started their oppression of the Ar menians of Turkey by "requisitioning" their property recklessly, and by send ing exclusive battalions to the most ex posed French and British fronts. The Turks now felt that they had a free course. The restraining hand of Europe was no longer upon them. Indeed they had the countenance of Germany, whom they believed to be invincible. The Ar menians as a people were in many cases armed and the government's first step was to make them defenseless. The program they decided upon was to mur der all the Armenian soldiery every where at one blow—at the same time to decoy and murder the Armenian lead ers—and finally to fall on the popula tion. In less than a year the program had been carried out to the eternal shame of the Ottoman Government and the hor ror of civilization. The Armenians of Turkey to the number of about a million, old and young, rich and poor, and of both sexes, had been collectively drowned, burned, bayonetted, starved, bastinadoed or otherwise tortured to death, or else deported on foot penniless and without food, to the burning Arabian deserts.
Lord Bryce in his report to the House of Lords, Oct. 6, 1915, said: "The whole Armenian population of each town or village was cleaned out by a house-to house search. Every inmate was driven into the street. Some of the men were thrown into prison, where they were put to death, sometimes with torture; the rest of the men with the women and children were marched out of the town. When they had got some little distance they were separated, the men being taken to some place among the hills where the soldiers, or the Kurdish tribes who were called to help in the work of slaughter, despatched them by shooting or bayonet ing; the women or children, and old men were sent off under convoy of the lowest kind of soldiers — many of them just drawn from gaols, to their distant desti nation which was sometimes one of the unhealthy districts in the center of Asia Minor, but more frequently the large desert in the province of Der-El-Lor, which lies east of Aleppo, in the direc tion of Euphrates. They were driven along by the soldiers day after day, all on foot, beaten or left behind to perish if they could not keep up with the cara van; many fell by the way, and many died of hunger. No provisions were given them by the Turkish Government, and they had already been robbed of every thing they possessed. Not a few of the women were stripped naked and made to travel in that condition beneath a burn ing sun. Some of the mothers went mad, and threw away their children, being unable to carry them further. The cara van route was marked by a line of corpses, and comparatively few seem to have arrived at their destination— chosen, no doubt, because return was im possible and because there was little prospect that any would survive their hardships." Before the deportations be gan, many Armenian women were seized by Turkish officers and officials for their harems. Others were sold in the slave market to Moslem purchasers only. Boys
and girls in large numbers were also sold as slaves, sometimes for as low as two or three dollars. Other boys were delivered to the dervishes to be made Mussulmans. Some idea of the thorough and remorseless fashion of carrying out the massacres may be obtained from the instance of Trebizond. Here the Ar menian residents were hunted out from house to house and driven in a great crowd down the streets to the sea. Here they were all put aboard sailing-boats, carried out into deep water and thrown overboard and drowned. Almost the en tire population of Trebizond, numbering nearly 10,000 souls, was wiped out. Ab solutely fiendish methods were employed on occasion. At Kouroukhan, in the search for arms, one man was shod like a horse, and another done to death by placing a red-hot iron crown on his head. The treatment of the women was un speakable. At Sivas, the terminus of the Anatolian railway to Erzerum, the sol diers like famished wolves consumed everything they found, and they out raged every woman they saw. In the last week of June and early in July the massacres began on a large scale throughout the province. All the male adult population were led away from their women and herded together into camps or prisons, and then massacred in small batches in some neighboring val ley. At Mattepe, an hour's ride east of Sivas, 20 Armenian officials in the Gov ernment service were hacked to pieces. At Hubash, east of Sivas, 3,800 Arme nians of the neighborhood were pole-axed, bayonetted, or stoned in blood-curdling circumstances. At Cotni, a village con taining 120 Armenian families, bands of criminals just released from prison glo ried in the exploit of having killed every male above twelve, and outraged every female above the same age. The women of Malatia were stripped naked, and amil the jibes and jeers of the rabble were led on their way into the Mesopo tamian desert. Many of these unfortu nate women actually went mad; others employed painful means to end their lives. Throughout the province of Sivas 150,000 Armenians were killed or de ported—the latter being equivalent to massacre, as hardly any escaped death by starvation.
From May to October of 1915, the Turkish Government steadily pursued its program of extermination. A general order for deportation of every Armenian to Mesopotamia was sent to every prov ince in Asia Minor, and no exceptions were made for the aged, the ill or even women in pregnancy. Only the rich and the best-looking women and girls were allowed the opportunity to accept Islam ism—and very few of them did so.
The time given to depart was two to six hours, and nothing but food and bed ding was to be taken along, and only so much as each person could carry. The journey consumed from three to eight weeks, and very few survived it.
When they passed through Christian villages where the deportation order had not yet been received, the travelers were not allowed to receive food or ministra tions of any sort. The sick and the aged and the children fell by the roadside and did not rise again.
In the neighborhood of two hundred thousand of the Armenian population managed to escape to the Caucasian bor ders and took refuge under the standard of Russia.
Lord Bryce estimated that four-fifths of the entire nation had been wiped out, and added, "there is no case in history, certainly not since the time of Tamer lane, in which any crime so hideous and upon so large a scale has been recorded. The Armenian atrocities have been called 'the blackest page of modern history.'" A final report of the Armenian and Syrian Relief Committee, published at the close of the year 1915, showed thou sands dying in the concentration camps along the Euphrates chiefly of starva tion.