Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam

by Augustus Warner Williams; M. Smbat Gabrielean

SASSOUN.

Sassoun is a mountainous province in the southern portion of the Armenian plateau, west of Lake Van. It is inhabited exclusively by Armenians and Kurds, the former race being in majority. There is, however, no intermingling of the races; the Armenian villages are grouped in the center of the province, and the Kurdish are scattered all around.

Despite continuous spoliation by Kurd and Turk, the Armenians managed to get along tolerably. But Turk and Kurd became more and more exacting, the Kurd being instructed by the Turk. The Kurds would be satisfied with the traditional tribute, but the Turkish authorities incited them to demand more, to plunder and to kill.

The Armenians of Sassoun were fully aware of the hostile intention of the Government, but they did not imagine it to be one of utter extermination.

The Porte had prepared its plans. Sassoun was doomed.

The Kurds were to come in much greater number, the Government was to furnish them provisions and ammunition, and the regular army was to second them in case of need.

The plan was to destroy first Shenig, Semal, Guelliegoozan, Aliantz, etc., and then to proceed towards Dalvorig.

The Kurds, notwithstanding their immense number, proved to be unequal to the task. The Armenians held their own and the Kurds got worsted.

After two weeks fight between Kurd and Armenian, the regular army entered into active campaign.

Mountain pieces began to thunder. The Armenians, having nearly exhausted their ammunition, took to flight.

Kurd and Turk pursued them and massacred men, women and children. The houses were searched and then put on fire.

The scene of the massacre was most horrible. The enemies took a special delight in butchering the Dalvorig people.

An immense crowd of Kurd and Turk soldiery fell upon the Dalvorig village, busy to search the houses, to find out hidden furniture, and then to put fire to the village.

A native of the Dalvorig village, succeeded in hiding from the searching soldiers, and when, twelve days after the destruction of his home, the army went away, he came out of his hiding place and looked among the corpses for his own dead. He found and buried his father, two nephews and his aunt. The bodies were swollen enormously in the sun, and the stench was something awful in all the surroundings. He witnessed many acts of military cruelties which are not proper to be reported.

In June, 1893, four young Armenians and their wives, living only two miles from the city of Van, where the Governor and a large military force reside, were picking herbs on the hillside. They carefully kept together and intended to return before night. They were observed by a band of passing Kurds, who in broad daylight fell upon the defenseless party, butchered the young men, and, as to the brides, it is needless to relate further. The villagers going out the next day found the four bodies, not simply dead, but slashed and disfigured almost beyond recognition. They resolved to make a desperate effort to let their wrongs at least be known.

Hastily yoking up four rude ox carts they placed on each the naked remains of one of the victims, with his distracted widow sitting by the side, shorn of her hair in token of dishonor. This gruesome procession soon reached the outskirts of the city, where it was met by soldiers sent to turn it back. The unarmed villagers offered no resistance, but declared their readiness to perish if not heard. The soldiers shrank from extreme measures that might cause trouble among the thirty-thousand Armenians of Van, who rapidly gathered about the scene. The Turkish bayonets retreated before the bared breasts of the villagers. With ever-increasing numbers, but without tumult, the procession passed before the doors of the British and Russian vice-consulates, of the Persian consul-general, the chief of police and other high officials, till it paused before the great palace of the Governor.

At this point Bahri Pasha, the Governor, stuck his head out of the second story window and said: ‘I see it. Too bad! Take them away and bury them. I will do what is necessary.’ Within two days some Kurds were brought in, among whom were several who were positively identified by the women; but, upon their denying the crime, they were immediately released, and escaped.

In 1893, the impoverished Armenians stripped of everything worth possessing, decided to resist further robberies. Early in the spring of that year, the Kurds came with demands more exorbitant than ever, the chiefs being escorted by a great number of armed men, but they were driven back by the brave villagers. When this became known to the Ottoman authorities, some of the more zealous of them applied for a large body of regular troops. The Turkish Government affected to believe that the secret political agitation which had been going on among the Armenians for some time had at length produced a serious revolt, and that it was necessary to quell it at once in energetic and relentless fashion.

Great Mosque and Interior of Urfah.

Orders were accordingly sent to Zekki Pasha, the Mushir commanding the troops at Erzinghian, to proceed to Sassoun with a sufficient force and suppress the disturbances. The precise terms of the instructions to this energetic Pasha never transpired and were never known to any one outside the Turkish official world. Whatever they were the Pasha evidently understood that he was literally to annihilate those who had resisted the authority of the local officials, and he executed what he supposed to be the wishes of his superiors with a barbarity towards both men and women, which deserves the reprobation of the civilized world. The Turkish soldiers hesitated to carry out such atrocious orders against defenceless women and men who offered no resistance, and they did not obey until threatened with condign punishment for disobedience. The protests of the Mutessarif, the civil Governor of the district, were disregarded.

The fixed hour of fate arrived.

In August 1894, Kurdish and Turkish troops came to Sassoun. Among them the famous Hamidieh troops, the specially organized Kurdish cavalry named after the Sultan, the name significant of the purpose for which they were organized.

Zekki Pasha who commanded on that infamous occasion was afterwards decorated by the Sultan as were four Kurdish chiefs who had been specially savage and merciless during the progress of the carnage, while the Civil Governor of the district who so humanely protested was summarily removed from his post.

The Kurds were newly armed with Martini rifles. Zekki Pasha, who had come from Erzingan, read the Sultan’s order for the attack, and then urged the soldiers to loyal obedience to their Imperial master. On the last day of August, the anniversary of Abdul Hamid’s accession to the throne, the soldiers were specially urged to distinguish themselves in making it the day of greatest slaughter. On that day the commander wore the edict of the Sultan on his breast. Kurds began the butchery by attacking the sleeping villagers at night and slaying men, women and children. For twenty-three days this horrible work of slaughter lasted. Some of the Kurds afterward boasted of killing a hundred Christians apiece. At one village, Galogozan, many young men were tied hand and foot, laid in a row, covered with brushwood and burned alive. Others were seized and hacked to death piecemeal. At another village, a priest and several leading men were captured and promised release if they would tell where others had fled; and, after telling, all but the priest were killed. A chain was put around his neck and pulled from opposite sides until he was several times choked and revived, after which bayonets were planted upright and he was raised in the air and dropped upon them. The men of one village, when fleeing, took the women and children, some five hundred in number, and placed them in a ravine where soldiers found them and butchered them. Little children were cut in two and mutilated. Women were subjected to fearful agonies, ending in death. A newly wedded couple fled to a hilltop; soldiers followed and offered them their lives if they would accept Islam, but they preferred to die bravely professing Christ. On Mount Andoke, south of Moush, about a thousand persons sought refuge. The Kurds attacked them, but for days were repulsed. Then Turkish soldiers directed the fire of their cannon on them. Finally the ammunition of the fugitives was exhausted, and the troops succeeded in reaching the summit unopposed and butchered them to a man. In the Talvoreeg district, several thousand Armenians were left in a small plain. When surrounded by Turks and Kurds they appealed to heaven for deliverance, but were quickly dispatched with rifles, bayonets and swords. The plain was a veritable shamble.

No accurate estimate of the number slain in the first massacre could be made. Forty villages were totally destroyed and the loss of life from ten to fifteen thousand. Efforts were made to conceal the real extent of the carnage, but the “blood-bath of Sassoun” has passed into history and cannot be forgotten.

At Bitlis there was a Kurdish raid on Armenian cattle, resulting in a fight in which two Kurds were killed.

The friends of the Kurds took the corpses to Moush and declared that the Armenians had overrun the land and were killing and plundering right and left. This furnished a pretext for a massing of the troops.

On the admissions of Turkish soldiers, some of whom tearfully protested that they merely obeyed orders, six thousand people were killed. No compassion was shown to age or sex. In one place three or four hundred women, after having been forced repeatedly to submit to the soldiery, were hacked to pieces with swords and bayonets. In another place two hundred women begged at the commander’s feet for mercy. The commander, after ordering that they be outraged, had them all despatched with the sword. Similar scenes were enacted in other places.

In one case sixty young brides and maidens were driven into a church, and after being violated were butchered until their blood flowed from the doors.

A large company, headed by a priest, knelt near the church begging for compassion, averring that they had nothing to do with the culprits who killed the Kurds. It was in vain; all were killed.

Several attractive women were told that they might live if they would recant their faith. They replied: “Why should we deny Christ? We have no more reason to do so than had these,” pointing to the mangled bodies of their husbands and brothers, “Kill us, too.” This was done.

A priest was taken to the roof of his church and hacked to pieces; young men were placed among wood saturated with kerosene and set on fire. After the massacre, and when the terrified survivors had fled, there was a general looting by the Hamidieh Kurds. They stripped the houses bare, then piled the dead into them and fired the whole, intending as far as possible to cover up the evidences of their dreadful crime.

The rivulets were choked with corpses; the streams ran red with human blood, the mountain gorges and rocky caves were crowded with the dead and dying; among the black ruins of once prosperous villages lay half-burned infants on their mothers’ mangled bodies: pits were dug at night by the wretches destined to fill them; many of whom were flung in while but slightly wounded, and underneath a mountain of clammy corpses struggled vainly with death and with the dead who shut them out of life and light forever.

The following letter from an Armenian native of Sassoun added another page to the tale of woe:—

“At last we have escaped from the barbarity and atrocity of the Turks, and have arrived at Athens. Our escape from Sassoun was almost miraculous, and it is possible that the cannon and knives of the Turkish soldiers are still doing their bloody work there. Everybody knows that the orders for the massacre were given by direct counsellors of the Sultan.

“There is hardly a man left alive in Sassoun, and pleading women and little children, all together, old and young, have been sacrificed by the swords of the Turkish soldiers. They besieged the village from the last of April until the first of August, and during all these weeks we fed on vegetables and the roots of grasses.

“The first few weeks were bitterly cold, and existence was terrible. All outside communication was cut off. The Turks suspected that other villages would give us food, and so they plundered the neighboring villages. The villagers resisted and hundreds of them were killed. Of the three hundred and twenty-five houses which made up the village of Varteniss only thirty-five were left standing.

“When the news of this massacre reached Sassoun our people were excited beyond all thought of personal safety, and we attacked the soldiers and succeeded in killing twelve of them. Then more ammunition and soldiers were sent there, and a devilish work was begun.

“The Chiefs of the tribes of the Kurds, with Celo Bey and his staff, together with the regular soldiers, came to the village of Samal. Many of the inhabitants, after suffering atrocious cruelties, were put to death. They brought the minister of the village from his house, and after putting the sacred chalice into his hands, bound him to a donkey and then shot him and the animal together. In all, the number killed in the village was forty-five.

“This deviltry was by no means the worse perpetrated. The greatest horror was at the village of Gely Guse. Celo Bey and his men entered the village before daybreak, and while the inhabitants were peacefully sleeping in their homes set fire to the whole village, and not one escaped. The village of Shenig met with almost a similar fate, all the people of prominence being killed.

“The tribe of Kurds known as Gebran, headed by the Chief Ebo and accompanied by Turkish soldiers, entered the village of Konk. There they gathered all the women in the church. After defiling them in the most revolting manner, they slew them. The soldiers spent the night in the village in revelry and debauchery.

“Two other tribes, those of Pakran and Khisan, came against the village of Alpak. They collected all the herds and flocks, and drove them off. Then they returned and burned the whole village.

“We who have escaped thank God for our safety and are prayerfully exchanging the helpful sympathy of the civilized world.”

Another letter from a Sassoun fugitive, gave the saddening story of the experience of one family. It is typical of the experience of thousands of others. He wrote:

“Our family was composed of ten members, and were natives of Semal, a village in Sassoun. We fought the Kurds to protect our lives and property; but when the Turkish soldiers united with the Kurds, we fled. I was with my father. He could not run away because he was very weak, having eaten nothing for many days. I entered, with the rest of my family, into a thick forest. The soldiers overtook my father and struck him with their swords, disemboweling him; they filled his body with gunpowder and set fire to him. Afterwards I went with others and gathered up what remained of my poor father and buried him.

“With the rest of my family I remained forty days in the forests, subsisting on herbs and roots until the soldiers were recalled, and there was nobody to pursue us. We came down to Moush, and the government sent us to Khibian, a village in the Moush plain, where we remained in a dilapidated hut with very little to eat. All of us became sick from hunger and cold: two girls and one boy died, and the rest, six members of our family, are now wandering from village to village, naked and hungry.”

Neither age nor sex were spared. A final refusal to deny Christ and accept Islam sealed the fate of the Armenian. Women torn from their homes and outraged, and hundreds of young girls forcibly carried off, fiendishly used and wantonly slain, and other horrors unnamable and unfit to print, were some of the methods employed with the Sultan’s permission, in upholding the glory of Islam.

The following narrative, was also obtained from Armenian sources: “Andakh was besieged in August. Gorgo, with his followers, strengthened their position and defended it heroically for six days, generally fighting with stones and daggers. The women often took the places of these who had been killed. The position becoming untenable, Gorgo left the women to defend it, and took his troops out to forage for food and ammunition. The women maintained the defence twenty-four hours, then yielded to greater numbers after being surrounded on all sides. Their condition was terrible. Many carried babies on their backs, while the elder children stood beside them. The women saw that they never could fight their way through the ranks of the enemy. Gorgo’s wife stepped on a high rock and cried, ‘Sisters, you must choose between two things: Either fall into the hands of the Turks and forget your husbands, homes, and your holy religion to adopt Islam, and to be violated, or you must follow my example.’ Thereupon, holding her young child in her arms, she dashed herself into the abyss. Others followed her, falling without cry or groan. The children followed their mothers, and the ravine was soon filled with corpses. Those who jumped last were not hurt, as their companions’ bodies were piled high. About fifty women and one hundred children were taken prisoners. The women bore their tortures silently, and refused to betray Gorgo and his brave followers. Gorgo’s wife was named Schakhe.”

The following accounts gave in realistic language, some of the sufferings of the native Christians, who met death bravely rather than purchase life by denying their Saviour.

A man from Central Dalvorig, said: His family numbered twelve; of these six had been killed. His wife, a son six years of age, and a little girl, a brother, a daughter five years old, and son aged ten. These children tried to flee, but being greatly reduced by hunger, were unable to escape from the soldiers pursuing them. A brother, Shemo, survived, and with his wife and children found refuge in a monastery. He saw a group of three brothers, while hidden behind some trees, surprised by soldiers and brutally murdered. They were boys about three, seven, and ten years of age. Their anguished mother, from Hodwink, utterly powerless to rescue her children, witnessed the awful deed from her place of concealment, and after the soldiers had gone, went and buried them. The same writer repeatedly heard women say, “We will be a sacrifice for our nation, but we cannot deny our faith.”

A man from Galigozan said that he had an uncle and three cousins killed in the massacre—all were shot and one was mutilated with the sword. Another nephew, thirty-five years of age, was burned in a house from which he could not escape. His wife and two children remained for five weeks in the covert afforded by the rocks and holes of a mountain side. On seeing soldiers approach one day, a man nearly strangled his little daughter, four years of age, to suppress her cries for food. She died a few days afterward from the effects of his treatment. The niece was betrothed to a young man from Semel who, with three others from the same house, came to Galigozan when the soldier called to surrender, promising safety. But on appearing there the whole company were told that they must either embrace Islam or meet instant death. The four men above referred to with forty others, were there pitilessly slaughtered, and thrown into the pit which had been dug.

From Spughawk, a village near Dalvorig, a man gave an account of the fate of his family. A Kurdish Sheik with fifteen hundred followers came and the terrified people fled to the mountain. In the attempt to escape many were killed. Afterwards soldiers came and with the Kurds surrounded the village, plundered and burned it. Its fine church built of hewn stone laid in lime and having an arched roof, was razed to the ground. This man’s brother Arakil was shot and then pierced with twelve bayonet wounds. His nephew was killed with the bayonet and a niece who was about to be married was decapitated.

A woman and her two sons (thirty and seven years of age), were discovered by soldiers. They first attacked the woman, inflicting dangerous, though as it proved, not fatal wounds, and then killed her two sons. After the departure of the soldiers the mother with one hand, (the fingers of the other had been mangled), scraped shallow holes in the ground using sharp stones and then dragging the bodies of her sons thither, covered them with earth and stones. One man said that his family consisted of twelve persons. His brother was one of the chief men of the place, conspicuous at all times for his ability and courage. The soldiers had heard of this man and were anxious to find him. Finally they discovered his hiding place and attacked him fiercely saying: “At last we have found you, infidel!” With cursing and dreadful language they literally hacked him to pieces, his son, and his brother’s wife hidden among rocks near by, paralyzed with terror, saw the awful deed. His son Sarkis was afterward slain, as also his nephews.

A woman from Dalvorig said: “Of the twelve in my family, three were killed in the massacre, my husband (forty years), daughter (ten years), and Hukhit, my infant son. A brother-in-law was taken captive, and after suffering much from cruel treatment, died in Moush prison. When we saw the smoke of the burning villages we hastily fled. We had buried our most valuable household goods some days previous, but the Kurds found and carried off everything. While concealed among the rocks and thickets we heard the sound of trumpets, and fearing lest we should be hunted down by the soldiery, about one hundred refugees got together and we then decided to go to the Hinatsee tribe of Kurds; (they were the aghas of our province), and implore their protection. We set out early in the morning and soon met five Kurds who said to us: ‘Come to the camp, to the surrender; there is peace.’ Thus saying, one of them seized a mule, the only animal we had with us, and rode away to betray us as it afterward proved. We followed the four Kurds till we came near a river. Then we saw two large companies of Kurds approaching us, one some distance below us, the other on the opposite side of the river. These soon surrounded us. They were led by a mollah, one of the followers of the noted Sheikh of Zeelon. They drove us into a ravine. One of our company attempted to escape, but was instantly cut down with the sword. The Kurds gave us the alternative of accepting the Moslem faith or death. With one accord we all said, ‘We cannot deny our Christ.’ Immediately they seized the men, there were only eleven in our company, bound their arms with cords, and then took from us women and children all clothing worth removing. Many were left with a single garment. One aged woman near us was left stark naked. After this the mollah sent a letter to the Turkish camp, which was about half an hour distant from Dalvorig village, inquiring as to what should be done with us. I heard them talk about the letter. Soon after this I heard the Kurds plotting to take the young women and send the others away to the mountains.

“They did not unite in this plan, and as the darkness came on they counted us and set a watch and lay down to rest on the ground about the ravine. The next day towards noon they decided to take us to the Turkish camp and ordered us to set out. Our husbands and brothers who had been bound the night before were in a pitiable condition,—their arms and hands badly swollen. Shortly after this the Kinds dispersed and we made our escape to the mountains. One day while hiding among the rocks I saw my husband, and son-in-law, Kevork, bound by cords and cruelly murdered. My husband was cut limb from limb—literally hacked to pieces. Too terrified to move I stood gazing at the awful sight, when suddenly five Kurds sprang upon me. They did not harm me but wanted my child. I threw myself upon the ground to shield him, but they drugged me to one side and stabbed him with a dagger. (Her twelve-year old daughter was not far away. She was greatly terrified, having witnessed the murder of her father and brother.) I ran to her and tried to pull her along as we fled, but she soon stopped and exclaiming, ‘mother, I am dying,’ fell dead at my feet. I did not dare to linger and fled over the rocks until I found my other children, one of whom was the wife of Kevork, my son-in-law, who had just been murdered. The next day we turned back to bury the body of my daughter. We did not dare to go further then, as there were many soldiers and Kurds around. Twenty days later I returned and buried the remains of my husband and son-in-law. While I was hiding among the rocks I saw soldiers barbarously kill a woman, removing the yet unborn child and thrusting it through with a bayonet.”

What she saw and endured during those weary days of wandering would fill many pages. At length all the surviving members of the family reached Shadald, a district near Moush.

One woman’s husband disappeared at the time of the massacre. She, with her husband, brother, and his son, were hiding in the mountains when soldiers murdered her brother-in-law, and his son-in-law, and his son in a most brutal manner. She was very near them, hidden behind some rocks, but they did not discover her, and the next day she joined a company of seven villagers, two women, three girls, and two boys, with whom she remained hiding among rocks and thickets. They were soon discovered by Kurds. Two soldiers took her away from her companions and told her she must adopt the Mohammedan faith, and that if she refused they would take her life then and there. She finally replied, “if you wish to kill me I am helpless, but I cannot commit the awful sin of denying Christ.” They took her with them for several miles, sometimes persuading, sometimes threatening her, till they were met by a company of Kurds, among whom was a woman who begged the soldiers to let the young woman go. This they did.

A woman from Somal said: “I am a member of a priest’s family; my husband was his brother’s son; I went with the family to surrender at Galigozan; the priest, my husband, and his two brothers were all cruelly murdered and thrown into the death-pit at Galigozan which the soldiers had dug. We were separated from our husbands and brothers, and soldiers took us to a church about half an hour away from the camp. There we were kept all night. In the morning soldiers came to us and said: ‘Come to camp and give your word that you will accept Islam.’ We cried out, ‘Never! We cannot do that great sin.’ They replied, ‘If you do not, we will do to you as we did to your husbands and sons last night.’ This was the first intimation we had of the awful massacre that had taken place the night before.”

Such are some of the causes that impelled these people to appeal to the Christian world for protection and redress. The incidents mentioned were only a few among thousands of similar experiences, which showed how loyally the Christian peasants of Armenia laid down their lives rather than betray their Master by accepting the faith of Islam.

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[1] The above description is taken literally from a report of the British Vice-Consul of Erzeroum. Copies are in possession of the diplomatic representatives of the Powers at Constantinople. The scene occurred in the village of Semal before the massacres, during the normal condition of things. [↑]

CHAPTER XII.

THE REIGN OF TERROR—TREBIZOND AND ERZEROUM.

The Mohammedan populace in all the large cities of Asia Minor were deliberately inflamed against the Armenians by lying rumors of intended attacks on the mosques. Soon there was an outbreak at Constantinople in which nearly two hundred Armenians were killed by the “Softas” (Moslem students), and by the police.

This was followed by a terrific outburst of fanaticism all over the Sultan’s dominions, the Kurdish Hamidieh were brought into requisition, and such scenes of massacre ensued as have not been paralleled since the days of Tamerlane.

Through all the vilayets of Armenia ran the red tide of blood. In Trebizond, Erzeroum, Erzinghan and hundreds of other cities and villages the Christians were crushed like grapes during the vintage. In this work of destruction the Kurds may have been the leaders, but the Turkish soldiers and civilians did their full share.

For a week prior to the outbreak on October 8, there was great excitement in Trebizond, and the consuls called in a body upon the Vali, and urged him to arrest those who were exciting the populace to deeds of violence. Matters apparently quieted down for a few days, when, suddenly, like a clap of thunder in a clear sky, the assault began. Unsuspecting people walking along the streets were shot ruthlessly down. Men standing or sitting quietly at their shop doors were instantly dropped with a bullet through their heads or hearts. The aim was deadly, and there were no wounded men. Some were slashed with swords until life was extinct. They passed through the quarters where only old men, women and children remained, killing the men and large boys, generally permitting the women and younger children to live. For five hours this horrid work of inhuman butchery went on; the cracking of musketry, sometimes like a volley from a platoon of soldiers, but more often single shots from near and distant points, the crashing in of doors, and the thud, thud of sword blows resounded on the ear. Then the sound of musketry died away, and the work of looting began. Every shop of an Armenian in the market was gutted, and the victors in this cowardly and brutal war glutted themselves with the spoils. For hours bales of broadcloth, cotton goods, and every conceivable kind of merchandise passed along without molestation to the houses of the spoilers. The intention evidently was to impoverish, and as near as possible, to blot out the Armenians of this town. So far as appearances went the police and soldiers distinctly aided in this savage work. They mingled with the armed men and, so far as could be seen, made not the least effort to check them. To any found with arms no quarter was given, but large numbers were shot down without any demand to surrender. One poor fellow when called on to surrender thought he was called on to give up his religion, and when he refused he was hacked to pieces in the presence of his wife and children. Not one of the perpetrators of these outrages was arrested or disarmed, but all moved about with the utmost freedom to accomplish their nefarious purposes. On the other hand many of the Armenians were thrown into prison.

Passage Boat on the Arras.

The frantic mob, seething and surging in the streets of the cities, swept down upon the defenceless Armenians, plundered their shops, gutted their houses, then joked and jested with the terrified victims, as cats play with mice. As rapid whirling motion produces apparent rest, so the wild frenzy of those fierce fanatic crowds resulted in a condition of seeming calmness, composure, and gentleness which, taken in connection with the unutterable brutality of their acts, was of a nature to freeze men’s blood with horror. In many cases they almost caressed their victims, and actually encouraged them to hope, while preparing the instruments of slaughter.

The French mob during the Terror were men—nay, angels of mercy—compared with these Turks. Those were not insensible to compassion; in these every instinct of humanity seemed atrophied or dead. On the first day of the massacre, an Armenian was coming out of a baker’s shop, where he had been purchasing bread for his sick wife and family, when he was surprised by the raging crowd. Fascinated with terror, he stood still, was seized, and dashed to the ground. He pleaded piteously for mercy and pardon, and they quietly promised it; and so grim and dry was the humor of this crowd that the trembling wretch took their promise seriously and offered them his heartfelt thanks. In truth they were only joking. When they were ready to be serious they tied the man’s feet together, and taunted him, but at first with the assumed gentleness that might well be mistaken for the harbinger of mercy. Then they cut off one of his hands, slapped his face with the bloody wrist, and placed it between his quivering lips. Soon afterwards they chopped off the other hand and inquired whether he would like pen and paper to write to his wife. Others requested him to make the sign of the cross with his stumps or his feet while he still possessed them, while others desired him to shout louder so that his God might hear his cries for help. One of the most active members of the crowd then stepped forward and tore the man’s ears from his head, after which he put them between the man’s lips and then flung them in his face.

“That effendi’s mouth deserves to be punished for refusing such a choice morsel,” exclaimed a voice in the crowd, whereupon somebody stepped forward, knocked out some of his teeth and proceeded to cut out his tongue. “He will never blaspheme again,” a pious Moslem jocosely remarked. Thereupon a dagger was placed under one of his eyes which was scooped clean out of its socket. The hideous contortions of the man’s discolored face, the quick convulsions of his quivering body and the sight of the ebbing blood turning the dry dust to gory mud, literally intoxicated these furious fanatics, who having gouged out the other eye and chopped off his feet hit upon some other excruciating tortures before cutting his throat and sending his soul to “damnation” as they expressed it. These other ingenious, pain-sharpening devices, however, were such as do not lend themselves to descriptions.

More than one thousand people perished in Trebizond under similar tortures who were not more mercifully shot down at once—while many Armenian women were murdered or kidnapped, and most of the Armenian houses were burned to the ground; the survivors of the massacres being driven to the hills and woods to suffer slow starvation.

Equally sad was the fate of the Christians of Baiburt whose tragic taking off was related in a letter addressed by the survivors to the Armenian Patriarch at Constantinople. After giving a partial list of the slain, the writers stated: “When the massacres and plundering began, on account of the prevailing terror and insecurity, the people were compelled to close all the churches, shops and schools, and take refuge in the houses. Letters were sent from our Prelate to the commandant of the Fourth Army Corps at Erzeroum, and to the Armenian Prelate at Erzeroum asking assistance; but all our prayers remained unanswered. After the massacres the Turks advised us indirectly that the order was secretly given from the Imperial Palace and was irrevocable!

“The frantic Turkish mob, assisted by regular troops suddenly fell upon the innocent and unarmed Armenians. The bloody work began at four o’clock A. M., and lasted until late in the evening. Besides murdering our people, the mob plundered and fired the Armenian dwellings and stores, taking care that the Greeks should not be molested. On that frightful day the Armenian community was almost annihilated.

“Strong men, youths and women, and even babies in the cradles and unborn children were butchered with most awful savagery. Infants were stuck on bayonets and exposed to the agonized view of their helpless and frantic mothers. Young brides and girls were subjected to a fate far worse than death. No resistance was possible on the part of the Armenians. All the native teachers with a single exception were murdered with most cruel tortures. Baiburt became a slaughter house. Torrents of blood began to flow. The streets and bazaars were filled with dead bodies. On the following day the Turks did all in their power to conceal the bodies of those who had been pierced by bayonets. Similar scenes were enacted in all the surrounding villages.

“Mourning and lamentation prevail throughout Armenia. The churches are closed; no more can the sound of worshippers be heard. The pealing of the bells is silent. We have no more teachers to teach the remnant of Armenians who still live. Rich and poor alike have perished, and the survivors are in the direst indigence. No bread, no covering for their nakedness; they are shivering in the cold. Baiburt, until lately so generous to help others, is now helpless, and in need of moral and material assistance. Unless such assistance is soon received, nobody can live.

“After the massacres the government began to arrest the remaining Armenians who had escaped the slaughter. We hear that in the prisons the tortures have reached an extreme point of frightful cruelty. Thus the survivors of the massacre are now dying daily. Every moment we have the horrors of death.”

Turkish duplicity was fertile in its resources. Many documents were forwarded to the Grand Vizier at Constantinople from scenes of massacres, purporting to be signed by Armenian nobles, the signatures having been obtained by intimidation. One of the most remarkable was from Bitlis, and bore the signatures of thirty-one Armenian nobles. It proceeds to state that “some of our co-religionists have been deceived by instigators coming from certain parts, and have been the cause of deplorable events and have committed crimes contrary to the wishes of his Imperial Majesty, and against the government of his Imperial Majesty—a government to be whose subject had been for six hundred years a title of glory to us, and through whose benevolence we were enjoying religious liberty and a self-government, the like of which cannot be found under any administration. This being so there remains no hope for us but the mercy of our august sovereign, who deigns to accept all classes of his subjects with a benevolence worthy of the greatest of monarchs.

“On the other hand, everlasting happiness for us consists in preserving our national existence in the shadow of the imperial government. We dare to commend ourselves to the humanity and benevolence of our sovereign, who is an object of admiration for the whole world, and we implore his pardon, taking refuge in that heavenly power bestowed upon him for the pardon of criminals.”

Such is an example of similar documents that were drawn up by local Turkish officials, in fulsome praise of the Porte’s humanity, and which the leading Armenians were compelled to sign, under threats of imprisonment and torture. These spurious testimonials, like the manufactured reports of outrages by Armenians, were designed to influence public opinion in Turkey’s favor.

Even the Porte, accustomed to distort facts, found itself no longer able to conceal from the world the pitiable condition of the Armenians.

In Erzeroum, where a large tract of country, from the lofty mountains of Devi Boyen to the Black Sea shore was laid waste and completely purged of Armenians, similar scenes were enacted. The vilayet of Van, the town of Hassankaleh, and numerous other places were deluged with blood, and polluted with unbridled lust. A man in Erzeroum, hearing the tumult, and fearing for his children, who were playing in the street, went out to seek and save them. He was borne down upon by the mob. He pleaded for his life, protesting that he had always lived in peace with his Moslem neighbors, and sincerely loved them. The statement may have represented a fact, or it may have been but a plea for pity. The ringleader, however, told him that that was the proper spirit, and would be condignly rewarded. The man was then stripped, and a chunk of his flesh cut out of his body, and jestingly offered for sale: “Good fresh meat, and dirt cheap,” exclaimed some of the crowd. “Who’ll buy fine dogs’ meat?” echoed the amused bystanders. The writhing wretch uttered piercing screams as some of the mob, who had just come from rifling the shops, opened a bottle, and poured vinegar or some acid into the gaping wound. He called on God and man to end his agonies. But they had only begun. Soon, afterwards, two little boys came up, the elder crying, “Hairik, Hairik, (Father, father,) save me! See what they’ve done to me!” and pointed to his head, from which the blood was streaming over his handsome face, and down his neck. The younger brother—a child of about three—was playing with a wooden toy. The agonizing man was silent for a second and then, glancing at these, his children, made a frantic but vain effort to snatch a dagger from a Turk by his side. This was the signal for the renewal of his torments. The bleeding boy was finally dashed with violence against the dying father, who began to lose strength and consciousness, and the two were then pounded to death where they lay. The younger child sat near, dabbling his wooden toy in the blood of his father and brother, and looking up, now through smiles at the prettily-dressed Kurds, and now through tears at the dust-begrimed thing that had lately been his father. A slash of a sabre wound up his short experience of God’s world, and the crowd turned its attention to others.

In Erzeroum about seven hundred houses and about fifteen thousand shops were plundered. The number of killed was never known, for there were many strangers in the city. The condition of the people was about as bad as that of the Sassoun people after the massacre. Between two thousand and three thousand people were destitute of fuel, bedding and food, and the majority had only the clothes they had on their backs.

The Government made a show of distributing the plunder collected from the barracks to the rightful owners, but the attempt was farcical.

The Turks declared that the Armenians made an attack on the Government House, and so the affair begun. This declaration was absolutely without foundation. There was no attack even contemplated by Armenians. The first man shot was an aged priest, who was at the Government House to present a complaint to the Governor. He had been robbed in his own house in the village of the Tivnig, and only got off with his life by giving a note for $500 for five days. He was an inoffensive old man, and would be the last man in the world to offer an attack. The attack was made by Moslems after leaving the mosques after the noon hour of prayer, and it was simultaneous all over the city.

A letter from Erzeroum said: “It is almost impossible for me to describe that which I have seen and heard. In Gurum everything which hellish ingenuity can devise has been done by the Turkish soldiers and Bashi-bazouks. All the Armenian villages are in ashes, and the smoke which is rising from the ruined houses gives the appearance of a volcanic eruption. Along the road between Trebizond and Erzeroum, at every step, mutilated bodies are lying. We are unable to leave our homes to bury the dead; unable to sleep. The whole city has taken on the aspect of a wild desert strewn with corpses. Hundreds of thousands of families are compelled to wander in rags, begging for their living. The same fate has befallen a few of the Europeans.”

The Erzeroum massacre started at the office of the Vali in the government building. An Armenian priest of Tevnik was in the building endeavoring to gain an audience with the Vali, when he was shot down by Turkish murderers. Then followed a horrible saturnalia of carnage, during which over one thousand Christians were slaughtered. After the butchery, the dead victims were dragged by the neck and heels into the cemetery and cast into a long, deep trench, not unlike the death pit of Geliguzan—the murdered fathers, mothers and sweet, innocent babes, all calm and peaceful in the sleep of death, flung down like carrion. Nothing more horrible or more pathetic could be imagined than that scene at the cemetery two days after the massacre. The spaces between the poor dead bodies were filled with the skulls and thigh-bones that had been taken by the sacrilegious Moslems from the old, upturned graves and then all were covered up together out of sight. The survivors dared not even express their grief.

Not less shocking was the news that came from Kaisarieh in that part of Asiatic Turkey known as Cappadocia, where a frightful massacre of Christians took place, accompanied by the outraging of women and the looting of the shops and houses. This was done in obedience to orders from Constantinople. Over one thousand were killed and the fury of the Kurds, not satiated with slaughter, vented itself in the mutilation of the inanimate bodies.

An extract from a paper on “The condition of Armenia” by E. J. Dillon will fitly close this chapter.

“The stories told of these Koordish Hamidieh officers in general, and of one of them, named Mostigo, in particular, seemed so wildly improbable, that I was at great pains to verify them. Learning that this particular Fra Diavolo had been arrested and was carefully guarded as a dangerous criminal in the prison of Erzeroum, where he would probably be hanged, I determined to obtain, if possible, an interview with him, and learn the truth from his own lips. My first attempt ended in failure; Mostigo being a desperate murderer, who had once before escaped from jail, was subjected to special restrictions, and if I had carried out my original plan of visiting him in disguise, the probability is that I should not have returned alive. After about three weeks’ tedious and roundabout negotiations, I succeeded in gaining the gaoler’s ear, having first replenished his purse. I next won over the brigand himself, and the upshot of my endeavors was an arrangement that Mostigo was to be allowed to leave the prison secretly, and at night, to spend six hours in my room, and then to be re-conducted to his dungeon.

“When the appointed day arrived the gaoler repudiated his part of the contract, on the ground that Mostigo, aware that his life was forfeited, would probably give the prison a wide berth if allowed to leave its precincts. After some further negotiations, however, I agreed to give two hostages for his return, one of them a brother Koord, whose life the brigand’s notions of honor would not allow him to sacrifice for the chance of saving his own. At last he came to me one evening, walking over the roofs, lest the police permanently stationed at my door should espy him. I kept him all night, showed him to two of the most respectable Europeans in Erzeroum, and, lest any doubt should be thrown on my story, had myself photographed with him next morning.

The tale unfolded by that Koordish noble constitutes a most admirable commentary upon Turkish régime in Armenia. This is not the place to give it in full. One or two short extracts must suffice.

“‘Now, Mostigo, I desire to hear from your own lips and to write down some of your wonderful deeds. I want to make them known to the “hat-wearers.”’ (Europeans).

“‘Even so. Announce them to the Twelve Powers.’ (The whole universe).

“There were evidently no misgivings about moral consequences; no fears of judicial punishment. And yet retribution was at hand; Mostigo was said to be doomed to death. Desirous of clearing up this point, I went on:

“‘I am sorry to find that you are living in prison. Have you been long there?’

“‘I, too, am sorry. Five months, but it seems an age.’

“‘These Armenians are to blame, I suppose?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘You wiped out too many of them, carried off their women, burned their villages and made it generally hot for them, I am told.’

“(Scornfully). ‘That has nothing to do with my imprisonment. I shall not be punished for plundering Armenians. We all do that. I seldom killed, except when they resisted. But the Armenians betrayed me and I was caught. That’s what I mean. But if I be hanged it will be for attacking and robbing the Turkish post and violating the wife of a Turkish Colonel who is now here in Erzeroum. But not for Armenians! Who are they that I should suffer for them?’

After he had narrated several adventures of his, in the course of which he dishonored Christian woman, killed Armenian villagers, robbed the post and escaped from prison, he went on to say:

“‘We did great deeds after that: deeds that would astonish the Twelve Powers to hear told. We attacked villages, killed people who would have killed us, gutted houses, taking money, carpets, sheep and women, and robbed travelers.... Daring and great were our deeds, and the mouths of men were full of them.’

“Having heard the story of many of these ‘great deeds,’ in some of which fifty persons met their death, I asked:

“‘Do the Armenians ever offer you resistance when you take their cattle and their women?’

“‘Not often. They cannot. They have no arms, and they know that even if they could kill a few of us it would do them no good, for other Koords would come and take vengeance; but when we kill them no one’s eyes grow large with rage. The Turks hate them, and we do not. We only want money and spoil, and some Koords also want their lands, but the Turks want their lives. A few months ago I attacked the Armenian village of Kara Kipriu and drove off all the sheep in the place. I did not leave one behind. The villagers, in despair, did follow us that time and fire some shots at us, but it was nothing to speak of. We drove the sheep towards Erzeroum to sell them there. But on the way we had a fight near the Armenian village of Sheme. The peasants knew we had lifted the sheep from their own people, and they attacked us. We were only five Koords and they were many—the whole village was up against us. Two of my men—rayahs[1] only—were killed. We killed fifteen Armenians. They succeeded in capturing forty of the sheep. The remainder we held and sold in Erzeroum.’

“‘Did you kill many Armenians generally?’

“‘Yes. We did not wish to do so. We only want booty, not lives. Lives are of no use to us. But we had to drive bullets through people at times to keep them quiet; that is, if they resisted.’

“‘Did you often use your daggers?’

“‘No; generally our rifles. We must live. In autumn we manage to get as much corn as we need for the winter, and money besides. We have cattle, but we take no care of it. We give it to the Armenians to look after and feed.’

“‘But if they refuse?’

“‘Well, we burn their hay, their corn, their houses, and we drive off their sheep, so they do not refuse. We take back our cattle in spring, and the Armenians must return the same number that they received.’

“‘But if the cattle disease should carry them off?’

“‘That is the Armenians’ affair. They must return us what we gave them, or an equal number. And they know it. We cannot bear the loss. Why should not they? Nearly all our sheep come from them.’

“After having listened to scores of stories of his expeditions, murders, rapes, &c., &c., I again asked: ‘Can you tell me some more of your daring deeds, Mostigo, for the ears of the Twelve Powers?’ to which I received this characteristic reply:

“‘Once the wolf was asked: Tell us something about the sheep you devoured? and he said: I ate thousands of sheep, which of them are you talking about? Even so it is with my deeds. If I spoke and you wrote for two days, much would still remain untold.’

“This brigand is a Koord, and the name of the Koords is legion. Ex uno disce omnes. And yet the Koords have shown themselves to be the most humane of all the persecutors of the Armenians. Needing money, this man robbed; desirous of pleasure he dishonored women and girls; defending his booty, he killed men and women, and during it all he felt absolutely certain of impunity, so long as his victims were Armenians. Is there no law then? one is tempted to ask. There is, and a very good law for that corner of the globe were it only administered; for the moment he robbed the Imperial post and dishonored a Turkish woman, he was found worthy of death.

“Laws, reforms and constitutions therefore, were they drawn up by the wisest and most experienced legislators and statesmen of the world, will not be worth the paper they are written on so long as the Turks are allowed to administer them without control.”

* * * “Justice in all its aspects is rigorously denied to the Armenian. The mere fact that he dares to invoke it as plaintiff or prosecutor against a Koord or a Turk is always sufficient to metamorphose him into a defendant or a criminal, generally into both, whereupon he is invariably thrown into prison. In such cases the prison is intended to be no more than the halfway-house between relative comfort and absolute misery, the inmates being destined to be stripped of all they possess and then turned adrift. But what the prison really is cannot be made sufficiently clear in words. If the old English Star Chamber, the Spanish Inquisition, a Chinese opium den, the ward of a yellow fever hospital, and a nook in the lowest depths of Dante’s Hell be conceived as blended and merged into one, the resulting picture will somewhat resemble a bad Turkish prison. Filth, stench, disease, deformity, pain in forms and degrees inconceivable in Europe, constitute the physical characteristics: the psychological include the blank despair that is final, fiendish, fierce malignity, hellish delight in human suffering, stoic self-sacrifice in the cultivation of loathsome vices, stark madness raging in the moral nature only—the whole incarnated in grotesque beings whose resemblance to man is a living blasphemy against the Deity. In these noisome dungeons, cries of exquisite suffering and shouts of unnatural delight continually commingle; ribald songs are sung to the accompaniment of heartrending groans; meanwhile the breath is passing away from bodies which had long before been soulless, and are unwept save by the clammy walls whereon the vapor of unimagined agonies and foul disease condenses into big drops and runs down in driblets to the reeking ground. Truly it is a horrid nightmare quickened into life.”

---

[1] The Koords are divided into Torens or nobles, who lead in war time, and possess and enjoy in peace; and Rayahs, who sacrifice their lives for their lords in all raids and feuds, and are wholly dependent on them at all times. A rayah’s life may be taken by a toren with almost the same impunity as a Christian’s. [↑]

CHAPTER XIII.

THE REIGN OF TERROR—VAN AND MOUSH.

Much earnest and faithful missionary work had been done in the cities and towns of the various Armenian provinces, before the storm of desolation swept over them. Evangelistic, educational and medical lines had been followed and now the missionaries, who had been laboring in a land where crops had failed and where the inhabitants were leaving their homes to escape starvation, were to face massacre, pillage and horrors, such as the world had not beheld for centuries. No words of praise are adequate to tell the story of the devotion which kept them at their posts, or of the succor they extended to the victims of the Sultan’s hate.

A vivid picture of the desolation that everywhere prevailed, was given by one who was engaged in the work of distributing relief money in July, 1895.

Arresting the Murderers of Armenians.

“Semal and Shenig are situated in a continuous, moderately wide valley, with a little reach of rolling land between the encircling mountains where about half the hill fields are growing green with a sort of millet that matures in a few weeks and which the sufferers were persuaded to come and sow, with oxen loaned by the poor, but generous villagers of the Moush plain. These few fields and few people at work upon them, were all there was to relieve the sad desolation which reigned over all. Buildings, once the homes of happy and prosperous countrymen, now presented only ruined walls with not a chip to show they had ever roofs to cover them, save a few, of which a little corner was rudely covered last fall, so that the wretched owners could find imperfect shelter during last winter. The torch of the incendiary soldiers had consumed every vestige of wood from all these scattered homes. The church at the central hamlet, where Der Hohannes (whose eyes were bored out and his throat pierced, while yet alive, by the cruel soldiers), used to officiate, being of stone, was not consumed, being the only roofed building in all the valley, after that flood of carnage had swept past. Near this church we pitched our tent, and began to study the situation.

“Beneath our eye, in these two villages, had already gathered over one thousand people, whom it was our work to try and set upon their feet again, so that they could start once more on the uphill road towards prosperity. Could a community be conceived of more completely prostrated? The sheep and cattle, which composed their wealth, in the hands of Kurds, as also their few simple household belongings, cooking vessels, clothing, bedding, etc., and whatever money they may have managed to hoard. Those who fled with their lives found themselves nearly as destitute of all that makes life comfortable as the day they were born.

English liberality has already spent five thousand dollars, and the authorities gave reluctant consent to our coming up to distribute it. We located here at Semal, while the Turkish committee has its headquarters at Shenig, half an hour distant. It was evident that the thing to be first accomplished was the erection of houses, and only a few weeks remained in which it would be accomplished, so we set about persuading the people to begin preparing their walls for the timbers the government had promised them.

“Of the survivors of the massacre (of 1894), five thousand have already gathered to try and reëstablish their old homes, while possibly another eleven hundred may still be scattered over the world. It is impossible as yet to give the exact number of the slaughtered, but it will probably be not far from 4,000. We feel that unless a different status from the present can be secured to distribute anything to these people beyond daily food, is simply to run the risk of its falling into the hands of the Kurds. We have distributed a good many tools, with which the people are gathering hay, in hope of having some animal to eat it during the winter. We should be glad to furnish them with tools for laying up the walls of their houses, and even pay the wages of masons to come and help them. It is all we can do now to prevent the people from fleeing again to the plain, when all their crops would go for naught.”

Near Harpoot eleven villages were compelled to accept Mohammedanism, and also near Van the entire population of two villages were forced to change their religion. Eight villages near Van were entirely depopulated. Most of the inhabitants were killed, and those who survived escaped to the snow-covered mountains, where they wandered with their children, naked and starving. The men who were forced to accept Mohammedanism were compelled to take their own sisters-in-law, whose husbands have been killed, to wife—a practice most horrible to the Christians, who hated polygamy. They were also compelled to plunder and kill their Armenian brethren to show that their conversion to Mohammedanism was genuine. The young maidens of these villages were carried into the Pasha’s harem. The Kurds attacked the same villages over and over to make their work of destruction complete, and yet the Sultan ordered his ambassador in Washington to deny that there were any forcible conversions to Islam.

All accounts received of the hardships endured by the Armenians were distressing in the extreme. Many of the refugees, weakened by want and exposure, were dying. Fully one thousand Armenian families in the province of Van alone were in want of food. A majority of these families lived on roots and herbs, the few fortunate ones had bread made of clover seed, linseed or flax, mixed with grass and roots. In the district of Moks, three-fourths of the villagers left their homes and were in danger of starving. In Shadakh, two-thirds of the population were homeless wanderers. Beggars swarmed in the streets of Van, but so general was the poverty that little help could be afforded. So widespread was the want that many declared, in bitterness of heart, “there is no food in all the length and breadth of Armenia”—which was long ago the Garden of Eden. Many poor were fed daily at the American mission in Van.

America and Armenia both owe more than words can ever express to the energy, devotion and abundant generosity that sent Mr. W. W. Howard, in 1895, to investigate the situation in Armenia. In a later chapter the story of the great relief work will be told, meanwhile Mr. Howard will tell his story. “I have just returned from the interior of the devastated region of Armenia and the English language is impotent to produce a true picture of the actual condition of that distressed country, and a just regard for the conventionalities of civilized speech will not permit that the whole truth be told. The refined Christian mind can understand wickedness and iniquity up to a certain point, but beyond that point, it either refuses to believe, or it is incapable of receiving additional impressions.

“There are in Armenia at the present moment at least two hundred thousand persons fighting a death fight with famine! In the one province of Van, which is the center of Armenia, there are fully one hundred thousand persons, out of a total Armenian population of one hundred and forty-five thousand, in actual want of food.

“Many have already died of starvation, and thousands of villagers are barely keeping soul and body together by eating roots and herbs and sort of bread made of clover seed, flax or linseed meal, mixed with edible grass. I have brought to peaceful, prosperous America specimen loaves of this hunger-bread. Starving villagers, reduced to the verge of despair, are crowding into the cities to beg for food and work. Three thousand unwilling beggars walk the streets of the city of Van, like spectres of famine, asking bread from door to door, who six months ago were comparatively prosperous. Others, too proud to beg, but in as desperate condition, crouch in their ruined homes, waiting for a merciful death to end their sufferings.

“These are not hallucinations on my part, but are things which I myself have lately seen with my own eyes. Unless these wretched people receive immediate help, they will perish of starvation. They must have food and clothing or they cannot possibly survive the winter. They are now living on roots and herbs and edible grass, together with this terrible hunger-bread, the mere odor of which is enough to make a strong man shudder; but when winter begins, in October, the supply of edible grass and roots and herbs will be cut off. What will become of them then?

“The Armenians have no wheat, and no money with which to buy food. The Kurds and the Turks have taken everything, and the Armenians have nothing.

“The Armenians planted only half a crop this year, owing to the persecutions and exactions which beset them on all sides. In the early summer, when the young grain was green, the Kurds pastured their buffalos and their cattle in the growing wheat. Much of the crop was thus destroyed. Later, when that which remained of the wheat was ready for the harvest, the Kurds came down, cut off the heads of the ripened grain, and left the worthless stubble for the Armenians to live upon during the long and bitter winter. Even a persecuted Armenian cannot hope to maintain his family on wheat straw.

“Now, we have this condition at the present moment in Armenia: The crop planted this year was entirely inadequate to the needs of the population, and when the Kurds got through pasturing their cattle in the growing fields they harvested the ripened grain for their own use, leaving only dry grass for the Armenians. The systematic persecutions of the people, the exactions of the tax-gatherers, and the repeated robberies by the Kurds have left the Armenians absolutely penniless and foodless. Utterly unable to maintain life in their nearly ruined and wasted villages, the country people are wandering about from place to place, and crowding into the cities. There is no work for them to be had, and no chance of earning enough to keep starvation at bay.

“It is for the youngest Christian nation on earth to say whether the oldest shall perish and be no more, and whether the followers of Mohammed shall be the sole inhabitants of that land which, in the beginning of all things, was the Garden of Eden. If we turn a deaf ear now to the supplications of the starving thousands of fellow-Christians in Eastern Turkey, the coming of spring will see the troublous Armenian question forever at rest. There will be no more Armenian question, for there may be no more Armenians.

“If, on the contrary, the practical Christians of our own land desire to assist in preserving this ancient Christian race in the land in which it took descent from the grandson of Noah, the way is clear. A little help extended now, will not only save the lives of those who are dropping dead of hunger from day to day, but will provide work during the coming winter.

“I have necessarily been brief, and have dwelt entirely upon the starvation in Armenia, because it is the most urgent feature of the situation. I have not touched upon the Sassoun massacre, because as the Grand Vizier of Turkey truthfully says, ‘that is an old story.’ The victims of Sassoun were in many respects more fortunate than their fellows, for they had at least the privilege of dying quickly. They escaped persecution, torture, and starvation. There are very many hopeless creatures in Armenia to-day who would welcome a second Sassoun as an easy release from the burden and shame of living.

“As to the cause of the persecution which has brought two hundred thousand human beings to the actual brink of starvation, there can be but one explanation. The Armenians are Christians. Should they become Mohammedans their troubles would vanish, and return no more. It is for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that they are persecuted unto death.”

A resident of Moush confirmed all that has been stated regarding the widespread suffering and destitution. He said:

“After the departure of the Kurdish tribes, which had perpetrated the massacres of Sassoun, the survivors left their hiding-places. One group of these people settled themselves on the plateaux, in the defiles, and in the forests of Sassoun, whilst the greater part emigrated to Moush, whence they were soon scattered among the Armenian villages of the plain. The Armenians sheltered and fed these emigrants as long as they had the means; but being themselves doubly tried by the want which reigns on all sides, and for the past two years and more, in the country, they soon found it impossible for them to supply the needs of these emigrants. The latter were obliged to move away to the mountains, where they are finding their food from herbs and leaves, or else to beg in the villages, where they are hardly finding a morsel of bread.”

The Kurds took advantage of the sufferings of the people of Sassoun to carry on a trade in white people. A young Armenian woman of Sassoun, was sold as a slave by these nomads. Another was sold to an inhabitant of the village of Hadji-Osman-Bey, and taken to Diarbekir. A little boy and little girl were bought for one hundred and thirty piastres of a Kurd named Mehmed; this amount included besides, the price of a donkey. There were other instances also of the same character.

The following letter from the Duke of Westminster to the editor of an American paper, afforded new evidence of the widespread destitution in Armenia:

“Sir:—There is an additional distressing phase connected with the sufferings of the Armenians consequent on the losses they have sustained at the hands of the Turks, which calls for consideration and assistance from those who are ever ready to relieve distress in whatever part of the world. Vice-Consul Shipley reports from Moush, that ‘there is great distress, amounting in a great number of cases to abject destitution, among the fugitives from Sassoun, of which he and his colleagues have had many opportunities of convincing themselves from personal observation.’ Mr. Hallward, Her Majesty’s Vice-Consul at Van, testifies that the need for relief is unquestioned; that there is an enormous amount of destitution, and that there will certainly be more before next winter.

“This applies, we are assured, to the province of Bitlis, and to a large extent to Erzeroum, where there are survivors of the Sassoun massacre—mostly women and children who have no one to provide for them—scattered about. A year ago these people were comparatively prosperous and comfortable, but are now barefoot and in rags, begging their daily bread from those who are not much better off than themselves.

“Consul Graves forwards a private letter describing the deplorable condition of the people at Talvorig:—‘There are about eight hundred and fifty of these houseless wanderers now living in the woods and mountains, in caves and hollow trees, half naked, and some, indeed, entirely without covering for their nakedness. Bread they have not tasted for months, and curdled milk they only dream of, living, as they do, upon greens and the leaves of trees. There are two varieties of greens which are preferred, but these are disappearing, as they wither at this season. Living on such food, they become sickly; their skin has turned yellow, their strength is gone, their bodies are swollen, and fever is rife among them.’

“In addition to these, there are thousands of refugees who, compelled by poverty and danger to abandon their village homes, have flocked into the towns where they hope to find personal safety and charity to keep them alive.

“The Committee of the Armenian Relief Fund has already remitted £3,000 to Sir Philip Currie, Her Majesty’s Ambassador at Constantinople, for the distribution of food and clothing in the distressed districts, and further aid is very urgently required.

“Westminster.”
Grosvenor House, London, W., Sept. 20th, 1895.

Probably the best known and most experienced of all the Americans who have served in the missionary field in Asia Minor is Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D. the venerable founder of Roberts College, Constantinople. Dr. Hamlin, has a lifelong acquaintance with the Armenian question in its various phases, and is a strong champion of the right of this oldest Christian nation on earth to be permitted to live and worship in the faith of their fathers. Conversing on the subject, Dr. Hamlin said:

“The condition of affairs in that country has not been exaggerated in the printed reports. I have lately finished reading the MS. of some two hundred letters from missionaries, a very large part of them dealing with the oppressions and sufferings of the Armenians, which were of a most frightful character. The poor creatures must have help before the winter opens in earnest, or they will perish. An Armenian winter is usually very severe, the snow lying on the ground from four to six feet in depth and the cold being intense.

“The whole civilized Christian world must help these people—they must be saved from death and assisted over the winter. They can look in no other direction for help, for there is no sympathy and assistance to be had from Turkey. Indeed, the policy of the Sultan’s government is apparently dictated by a desire to efface the Armenian people altogether—at least those of them who will not accept Mohammed. When you talk sympathizingly about these people, a Turk will say in surprise: ‘Why do you speak in behalf of such worthless trash and try to save them? They can save themselves—all they need do is to accept Islam and then they are safe and out of trouble.’

“And so,” continued Dr. Hamlin, “A Turk regards it as strange that an Armenian should refuse to purchase his life at the cost of his faith; but there are some among them who take a different view. Some of the Turkish soldiers who shared in the terrible atrocities lately perpetrated on the Armenian Christians have been stricken by remorse afterward. One soldier, who had borne his part in several horrible butcheries of women and children, was so troubled that he could not sleep. He had visions of his victims that ultimately drove him insane.”

Dr. Hamlin spoke in the highest terms of Miss Kimball and her relief work, in conjunction with the other missionaries at Van. “No one knew the needs of the suffering people better, or was better qualified to deal with the present very trying situation. It is the duty of the Christians of America to help them as far as we can help them. The Turks will embarrass the work if they can; they wish these people to die. In the whole region of Sassoun—comprised of about one hundred villages—forty or fifty villages have been annihilated.” A letter from Mr. Cole, a missionary who is employed in relief work, stated that he visited a village of one hundred and seventy-five houses, every one of which had been destroyed. The Turks would not even permit him to erect a shanty as a defence against the weather, lest some Armenian should get the use of it. They wished these people to die out of cold or starvation.

England, whose official support of Turkey made it in large measure responsible for the wrongs and sufferings of the Armenians, now moved for reform in that unfortunate country. At the same time, the English people were helping the Armenians by contributions. On the occasion of opening a bazaar held at Chester, for the benefit of the Armenian sufferers, Mrs. Gladstone gave expression to the popular sentiment prevailing in England regarding Armenia’s condition in these terms: “No words of mine are needed to describe the frightful need of help. You are all aware of the terrible details. I plead to-day in behalf of the poor sufferers—that we may be instrumental in allaying their sufferings. As my husband says, we cannot dictate to the government as to the time, but we pray that the Powers may soon take action to end Armenia’s woes.”

But while this most blessed work of caring for these hunger-stricken, homeless and wretched Armenians was going on, the storm burst upon them in all its fury. The appetite of the Moslem had merely been whetted, not satiated.

Following the massacres in Trebizond and Erzeroum all the villages about them were almost depopulated, the orders for the slaughter of the Christians, as the Moslem troops admit, having come from Constantinople. At Sivas the massacre was terrible, and a like horror occurred at Marash. The ungovernable fury of the Turks spared neither age or sex, and the brutalities practiced upon women and children could not be described. Bodies of little children, dead and mutilated, were found in the fields after the slaughter had ended. Large numbers of the victims of these atrocities died the death of martyrs. They fell in the Moslem war for the extermination of the religion of Jesus in Asia Minor.

At Diarbekir, where the victims were numbered by thousands, there was abundant evidence that the massacre was premeditated. It was claimed that the Armenians had attacked a Moslem mosque, whereas the facts, as afterwards disclosed, showed the Kurds and Turks to have been the sole and intentional aggressors. The massacre began on Friday, and continued on Saturday and Sunday with insatiable ferocity.

Meanwhile, the story of what was taking place in the villages and hamlets of the different districts had not reached the public ear. When it came, it disclosed a tale of suffering and savagism that had scarcely a parallel. Many hundreds of villages were literally swept out of existence. The story of one is the story of all: the Kurds, directed from higher sources, swooping down, rounding up the cattle, slaying the strong men, outraging and abducting the women, and killing even the children, concluded the satanic work by burning everything that would consume. In many places the Kurdish troops came equipped with empty sacks strapped to their saddles for the purpose of carrying off the plunder. The Kurdish chiefs openly declared that they were ordered to slay the Christians and take the plunder for their pay.

Rev. John Wright, another missionary, wrote: “In one instance, the Kurds, after compelling a family to provide food for their horses and themselves, smothered a babe which was asleep in the cradle, cut it in pieces and roasted it before the fire on their weapons, and then made the mother eat the flesh. In another case, when the Kurds had killed an Armenian, they joined hands and danced about the corpse, singing a song of triumph. They then cut up the corpse, boiled it, and forced the Armenians residing there to eat the flesh. Flocks were driven off, grain burned, and houses razed to the ground and burned. Many women died from fright, and the children also died from fright or exposure to the cold. We found that nearly half the members of the families we met had perished during the flight. They had great difficulty in securing food to eat. All of them had substantially the same harrowing tale to tell. About ten thousand refugees are estimated to have passed through the district of Khoi.”

Eight of the villages near Van were totally depopulated and all their people slain or rendered fugitives, except the young women who were seized and taken to Kurdish harems. In the Van provinces nearly two hundred villages were partially destroyed.

During the last weeks in December, 1895, the carnival of slaughter continued with tireless energy and terrible ferocity by the Turks and Kurds. From every side came reports of atrocities by Turks, Kurds, and Circassians—villages swept by fire, the men massacred, the women either slain or reserved for a fate worse than death. Thousands of women were carried away captive to become inmates of some vile Moslem harem. An illustration of the Turkish method of extermination was found in the case of the village of Hoh, in the Sandjak district. At first the aghas (or local magistrates) promised to protect the Christians, but when they saw villages burning in every direction they refused to keep their word. All the Christians were told that, under the pain of death, they must accept Islam. They were assembled at the Mosque, and there eighty young men were picked out and led outside the village—for slaughter. Eight escaped, sixty-two were killed, and ten wounded. The young women of the village were taken to Turkish harems, and the survivors of the Christian population were scattered among other villages.

In every district there was the same tragic story of massacre, outrage, pillage, and abduction; monasteries sacked, and Christian pastors and people butchered. In many villages the Armenian priests were among the number who laid down their lives as a testimony to the faith. In almost every village the strong men and youths were killed, and in nearly every case they met death with the fortitude of true martyrs. Many were killed with horrible tortures, because of their refusal to deny Christ. Among those who so perished were the Armenian pastors at Khizan, Halakeny, and Koh.

Although in official communications the atrocities were denied by the Turkish government, the statements issued by the Porte were nowhere credited. Denials of the massacres of Trebizond and Erzeroum were circulated, despite the statements of American and European Consular officials, missionaries, and Armenian survivors, supplemented by the photographs of the piles of dead in the streets and cemeteries. A number of Armenian citizens were arrested by the authorities after the Trebizond massacre, on the pretext that they caused the riot, and six of them were condemned to death.

In January, 1896, the Mesopotamian Christians of Mardin were suddenly attacked by a large body of Kurds, the town being surrounded. News had already been received of the burning of many villages and the massacre of thousands of peaceful peasants, but the Mardin attack came like a thunderbolt. Many hundreds were butchered in a few hours. A number of native ministers of the Gospel were slain.

The town was a scene of terror and desolation; groups of weeping mothers and crying children sheltered themselves in the houses, while all around, and even upon the floors were the telltale pools of blood that showed where the martyrs fell under the Kurdish swords. Dead bodies, clotted with blood that had flowed from great gaping wounds, lay everywhere in sight. There were other horrors that added to the terror—the attacks on the native women and girls, who were subjected to nameless abuse.

The massacres at Mardin and Gemerek resulted in leaving the survivors in those once populous villages in a condition that threatened to exterminate them by starvation. The help which was cabled to them from the relief fund was welcomed with a gratitude that can hardly be expressed in words. With the horror of their recent woes still unrelieved, the aid seemed as if heaven-sent. Erzeroum was still full of wounded, and rows upon rows of blackened ruins alone showed where its homes once stood. There were many hundreds homeless. Harpoot, too, had a large number exposed to hunger and cold. At Diarbekir the destitution was probably worst of all, for both in the city and villages, the slaughter was relentless, and the survivors had nothing to expect but death by slow degrees—their little ones perishing of hunger and cold beside them. At Erzinjian, where many martyrs fell, the remaining Christians were scattered around, hiding where they could, like hunted wild beasts.

After these massacres most piteous appeals were received in this country from relatives in the stricken towns and villages. A letter sent by a poor mother from Gurun to a relative here, said:

“We have only to say that I and my child are living. No male population has been left in our town. They have killed my father. I took the child with me and sought refuge in the church. Our cousin also has been killed. Of our three families, only one family has partly a shelter, but we have not even a piece of a blanket to cover our nakedness! We have nothing to eat. The government is giving a small piece of bread for each living person. No physician has been left. Our child has not a book to study from or to read. Everything has been destroyed. They have plundered even the goods which were concealed in the ground. There is no life for us here. In our three families, there is not a lamp to give light. For God’s sake send help or else we will die of starvation.”

Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan.

A letter from a young man in the same town to an Armenian in New York, said:

“You have no doubt heard of the terrible events that have taken place in our town. They have not left anything in our house. They killed your brother and sister. They have burned our stable and woodhouse and our winter house. We are in terrible distress. We have no bedding, no clothes. We have not even the means to procure a piece of dry bread. Rich and poor are all alike, and our generous neighbors are not any better off than ourselves, so that they cannot help us. No merchant or broker has been left.”

A few extracts from another report of Mr. W. W. Howard, sent from Urumia in December, 1895, will fitly close this chapter of woe and destitution.

“The American mission work at Van has been suspended, and all the schools closed. The closing of the schools, however, has not been confined to the American mission, but has extended to every school in the city, of whatever race or creed. All the shops have likewise been closed, both Armenian and Turkish. Even the Turkish shops in the bazaar proper have been shut, so great is the fear of massacre. The Turkish Government ordered the Armenian merchants to open their shops, and the Armenians obeyed, but when the shops were opened they were entirely empty, the goods having been removed to the merchants’ houses. The merchants then sat in their empty stores with nothing to sell.

“With the money already sent to her, Miss Kimball has done a large work in the supplying of bread for the starving, and she is now at work on a soup kitchen. Her plan of relief is to furnish work to such of the poor as are able to work. Business in Van and the province of Van has been dead for months. Nothing is being bought or sold except the simplest articles of food that will sustain life. Miss Kimball is, therefore, distributing these articles of clothing free to the wretched village refugees who are flocking to Van in rags and nakedness.

“In raiding the villages the Hamidieh cavalry not only destroyed the houses, drove off the sheep and cattle and removed every portable piece of property, but actually stripped the villagers of the clothes on their backs. The unfortunate peasants, men, women and children, were thrust out into the wilderness of snow-covered mountains without clothes to cover them or food to eat. How many of these poor creatures left bloody tracks on snow and ice; how many dropped by the wayside to go down to death in a shroud of snow and a tomb of ice no man may know. The snow will not give up its dead for long months to come.

“Are the Christian people of America willing that this thing shall continue?”

CHAPTER XIV.

THE REIGN OF TERROR—HARPOOT AND ZEITOUN.

The Harpoot massacre was another butchery carried out under orders. Sixty Christians fled to a church in the vain hope that its walls would furnish them a shelter against those who were crying for the blood of Armenians. They were permitted for a time to believe themselves secure, but suddenly the church was surrounded by a great number of Kurds. The doors were then blown in, and the Christians thought that they would be massacred within the sacred structure. They were not. Their captors took them one at a time outside the church, and there, heedless of the cries for mercy from women and children, killed them, either by shooting or stabbing them. The first victim was the Protestant pastor of the church, who, as he was dragged out, bade the others, if they had to die, to die as Christians. He met his death like a martyr. Some of the refugees, in a very agony of terror, offered to abjure their faith and accept Islamism, thinking thus to save their lives. The offers availed them nothing, for their insatiable enemies, after accepting them, dragged the converts out and killed them one by one. The Armenian Church was turned into a mosque, and the Protestant Church into a stable.

An eyewitness who saw the Christian quarter in flames and the houses of the American mission burning, said that he came on to Malatia (the ancient Melitene), and found not a house in the Christian quarter standing. In a khan there were about twenty wounded men, the sole survivors of a caravan of two hundred who had been traveling to Harpoot from Northern Syria and whose members had nearly all been slain by the Kurdish bands. There were one hundred and fifty bodies lying in the road. At Marash, the same witness, days after the massacre, counted eighty-seven dead Armenians in one spot, and there were hundreds of bodies strewn around in the near neighborhood. In the villages on the plains near Harpoot, each containing from fifty to one thousand houses, the evidences of slaughter were sickeningly abundant. The Kurdish butchers had slain fully half the population. The door of a house would be burst open, a volley fired upon the shuddering inmates, while those who rushed out were caught and killed in the fields. Then the houses were plundered, fired and left blazing. This was the fate of thousands of Christian homes.

Several thousand Armenian Christians fell in the city of Harpoot under Kurdish and Turkish swords. In the Province of Harpoot were hundreds of small towns and villages, few of which escaped the terrible fate of slaughter and desolation that befell over two thousand other towns and villages throughout the country.

Harpoot is one of the principal stations of the Eastern Turkey Mission, and is the seat of Euphrates College, a group of buildings, eight of which were badly wrecked during the riots. This institution had about five hundred and sixty-four pupils in all its departments, and was exerting a powerful influence for good throughout Eastern Turkey.

It was estimated that the loss would not be less than $88,000. At Marash, the destruction of mission buildings was more complete. The Central Turkey Girls’ College and the Theological Seminary were both wrecked. There were in the former institution (which was organized in 1884), about thirty-five students. Both buildings were located a little distance outside of Marash.

In February, 1896, the United States Minister, Mr. Terrell, demanded an indemnity of $100,000 for the burning and pillaging of the American missions at Marash and Harpoot. He also asked for the immediate granting of firmans for the rebuilding of them.

Rev. Grigos Hachadoovian, the pastor of the Second Congregational Church in Harpoot, when the Turkish soldiers commenced shooting all over the city, took his wife and children and went to church, where about sixty of his congregation joined him. Naturally good and earnest Christians as they were, they lifted their voices up to heaven for help. While in prayer the Turks rushed in and demanded of the minister to become a Mohammedan then and there, with his congregation. He refused promptly. The Turks removed the pulpit, made a butchering platform, cut off the head of the minister and actually cut him to pieces before his congregation. Mind you on the platform from which he had preached Christ for twenty years. This horrible spectacle had no effect upon the devout Christian Armenians, as they all refused to denounce Christ and pray to Mohammed, and all were killed in the church to the last man, woman and child. What do you think of that picture, Christian people of America? That is the Mohammedanism some people would like to have introduced into our county.

Letters received from persons engaged in relief work among the Armenians, gave the following carefully prepared statistics concerning the recent massacres by the Turks under the tolerance of Christian powers in the year of our Lord, 1895–6. These statistics were given in detail for the several villages in Harpoot province.

“Killed, thirty thousand six hundred and one; burned to death, one thousand four hundred and thirty-six; preachers and priests killed, fifty-one; died from starvation, two thousand four hundred and sixty-one; died unprotected in the fields, four thousand three hundred and forty; died from fear, six hundred and sixty; wounded, eight thousand; houses burned, twenty-eight thousand five hundred and forty-two; forcible conversions, fifteen thousand and sixty-six; women and girls abducted, five thousand five hundred and forty-six: forcible marriages, one thousand five hundred and fifty-one; churches burned, two hundred and twenty-seven; destitute and starving, ninety-four thousand seven hundred and fifty.” The account does not add the number of English and American cannon with the cobwebs left over their mouths. The Turks said that they killed too few the last time, and would kill more in the next massacre.

When the Kurds were expelled from Diarbekir and the gates closed against them, they turned their attention to the villages. These, one after another, were taken, plundered, and in many instances, burned—massacre being generally in proportion to the degree of resistance made by the villagers. A district about ninety miles long and fifty broad, east of Diarbekir, and up to the boarders of Syert, in the vilayet of Bitlis, was swept by this hurricane of destruction, wherever Christian villages nestled among the billows of this rolling country. The first intimation that the wave of wanton wreckage was moving southward was given in the attack upon Tel-Ermin. This Armenian town of two hundred houses and sixty shops, five hours west of Mardin, was taken, plundered and burned. The next day Gorli, a Syrian village south of Mardin, and only two hours away, shared the same fate. About the same time the village of Abrahamiyeh fell into the hands of the Kurds and only Monsoruyeh, twenty miles north of the city remained intact. This they tried to capture, but were driven back. Serious attempts were made by the Kurds to enter the city in the hope that they would be aided from within. In this they were disappointed and obliged to draw off with severe loss. The Kurds persistently asserted that a firman for the slaughter of Christians had been given, but that the Christians of Mardin had bribed the government to conceal it and defend them. When the Kurds realized that the government and city garrison were a unit for the common defence, they drew off and the tide of attack swept further east taking Nisibin, and some twenty Christian villages in its way. Thousands of refugees collected near Mardin. In the village of Kulleth, three hundred refugees from the Diarbekir plain were begging food and clothing. The entire Christian population remaining in Syert was stripped of everything.

Fully three thousand Armenians were massacred at Arabkir, and the widows and orphans of those killed were left in terrible distress from cold and hunger.

The Armenians of Sivas and Cæsarea were in daily fear of massacre, and soon their fears were terribly realized, for the Kurds and Turks thoroughly performed their inhuman work of butchery and plunder, the former taking the booty as their pay, according to the permission granted from Constantinople.

In the district between Gemerek and Cæsarea twenty-seven Armenian villages were pillaged and burned. The thirteen villages this side of Gemerek, and five or six hours distant, such as Burhan, Dendil, Tekmen, etc., were also pillaged and ruined. Burhan was ravaged five times and Tekmen seven times. The raiders carried plunder from Dendil for three days continuously; they carried away even the old mats and wooden spoons from the houses. No clothing, no bedding, no utensils, and no food was left to the survivors in those villages. The people lived on herbs gathered from the hillsides, and cooked in the petroleum tins which the raiders had brought along full of petroleum to fire the houses with. In the district of Tounnouz the Armenian villages, especially Hantavos, Kazmakara and Patsin were pillaged and destroyed, the male inhabitants were butchered, and the young women were carried off. Some of the villages were so utterly destroyed that now there is no sign that such places existed.

At Gemerek the Turks joined the Armenians and drove away the raiders, who however carried away one thousand sheep and cattle and about one hundred horse loads of wheat and flour from the neighboring mills.

The reader can understand the ferocity of the attack upon the Christians in this city from the fact that the wife of a captain in the Turkish army watched the horrors from her window. She was so affected by what she saw that she has since that event become insane.

Another terrible massacre occurred in Palu, a district not far from Harpoot. An Armenian lady of Palu, writing to her son in New York, thus told the story:

“You are my comfort in God. My only joy is that you are safe; but we are in great distress. My hands are trembling; I cannot write from hunger. The Turks have burned forty-one villages, destroying everything. They take the beautiful women to their homes and use them badly. They kill the old men, and the old women and children are entirely naked. Their bed is now the snow. They go begging at Turkish doors for a piece of bread, and instead of bread they get mulberry and husks. After six days of plundering and burning those villages, our enemies returned to the city. Ten thousand Kurds with the Mohammedans of the city, attacked the houses and killed one thousand seven hundred and thirty-two grown-up men and many children and women who would not accept Mohammedism.

“They took all the articles which were useful and broke everything they had no use for. They tore up every place in the hope of finding something valuable.”

A letter received from an Armenian resident on the seacoast of Cilicia, said:

“The government has taken away all the arms from the Armenians of Chok Marsovan, who were armed to protect themselves against fifteen thousand Bashi-Bazouks, who were marching on them. Since then the Turks have reduced to ashes the villages of Engerli and Ojakli, which contained respectively three hundred and two hundred and fifty houses. They have plundered seventy-five houses in the Armenian village of Najarli. They set on fire the houses in the presence of the regular soldiers. Now all the villagers are reduced to the utmost distress. More than one hundred farms have been plundered, and many people butchered in the houses and in the gardens.”

Every account from survivors of the massacres who succeeded in reaching places of safety, disclosed some new and revolting trait of Moslem ferocity and hatred against Christianity. A veritable crusade of Mohammedan fanaticism ruled the hour. Whole villages and towns, and whole Christian quarters in cities were driven like helpless sheep into the Moslem fold.

Aintab, a city of forty-five thousand inhabitants had its baptism of blood. The massacre and pillage began in the markets and in those parts of the city where Christian houses offered easy points of attack, crowds rushed in every direction while pistol and gun shots with cries of fear, anger and defiance made an exhibition of the most fearful tumult and confusion.

After the Kurds and Turkish soldiers of Harpoot had plundered and burned nearly all of the Christian houses in the missionary quarter of the city, including eight of the mission buildings which were then in flames, when massacre was rife and the air was rent with the cry of the wounded and dying, nearly five hundred Christian refugees with the missionaries, driven from place to place by fire and bullet, found themselves in the large, new stone building of Euphrates College. The Turkish officers, seeing that in order to reach the refugees they must withdraw the Americans whom they feared to kill, attempted to induce the missionaries to come out from the building “that they might be the better protected.” Dr. Barnum (a missionary for thirty-nine years) replied, “You can protect us here better than anywhere else; we shall remain and if you burn the building we will die with these Christians.” They were all spared. Certainly the age of heroism is not past.

The city of Oorfa is one of the most ancient in the world. It is the Edessa of the time of Christ where Abgar reigned as King (see Chapter I.)—the Ur of Chaldea, where the patriarch Abraham was born.

It was one of the great heathen cities to which the disciples went immediately after Pentecost and where they were most gladly received. In this city, on October 27th, 1895, began an awful slaughter, which continued for two days. When the massacre was yet proceeding, a Muezzin ascended to the steeple of the Armenian church and began to call the faithful to prayer. During the two days’ disturbance three thousand Christians were slaughtered by a single Hamidieh regiment and a force of Bedouins and all their property was either looted or destroyed. Among other horrors, one hundred and fifty wounded Armenians were thrown down a well and petroleum having been poured over them the whole mass of human beings were set on fire and perished in most awful agony.

For two months, the Christian population of Oorfa experienced all the vicissitudes of a veritable “Reign of Terror.” During all this time the Christians ventured beyond the precincts of their own homes only at the risk of their lives. Nor were they secure even in their homes. For six or seven weeks the soldiers of the government went from house to house almost daily, and after forcing an entrance, offered the inmates the option of becoming Moslems, or being killed on the spot.

When the general onslaught began on December 29th, the Christians sought the refuge of their churches and every other possible place which they hoped might shelter them from the fury of their fiendish assailants. Many took refuge in wells, some under manure heaps, while others had their friends cover them under piles of charcoal. For some of these their shelters proved to be a living grave. Two hundred and forty-six persons took refuge in the home of the American Missionary, Miss Shattuck.

During the six weeks immediately following the first massacre, this devoted missionary heroine was obliged to keep all but constant vigil, and was unable through all this time to undress even once, and retire to her room for a night’s rest. Any rest or sleep obtained was on a lounge and for but short intervals, while others kept watch.

This church was built entirely of stone and may be said to be absolutely fire-proof. It was to this edifice from fifteen hundred to two thousand of the people fled when the general massacre began, and the story of what took place within its walls on that awful day will never be fully known. These nearly two thousand victims were at the mercy of the merciless soldiers and the worse than merciless mob. The soldiers were first to enter, but they soon allowed the promiscuous rabble to follow and share with them in the carnival of debauchery and blood. The fiendish fanaticism of these Moslems had its climax in setting fire to the victims of their wild fury. There being no wood finishing on the inside of the church, and little or no inflammable furnishings, one can only conjecture how they succeeded in transforming this multitude of human sacrifices into the great mass of bones and ashes to which they were all reduced by the following morning. For two or three days afterward a number of hammals (Turkish porters), were engaged in carrying the bones and charred remains of these victims from the church to a place close in the rear of the American mission premises, where they were dumped over a portion of the old wall of the city.

Apart altogether from those killed and burned in the church, the bodies of over one thousand five hundred by actual count were dragged, usually by the legs, and in considerable numbers at a time, by animals, to a large trench dug for the purpose on the outskirts of the city. There they lie in one, irregular mass, awaiting the day when all wrongs shall be righted.

As many as three hundred bodies were taken from one of the large cistern wells some days after the massacre, while another furnished over fifty and yet another about thirty. Scarcely a single Gregorian or Protestant home escaped the general pillage and bloodshed and the total number of victims in this last massacre in Oorfa must now be put down at four thousand.

Read this farewell which seemed to come out from the tombs of the dead:

Some days before the massacre at Oorfa the Armenians were warned that it was impending, but the officials prevented them from leaving the town. During the suspense the Gregorian clergy compiled a letter which they sent secretly to Aintab, whence it was forwarded to Europe. The Arch Priest Stephen and four other priests were subsequently slain before the altar while celebrating the Eucharist. The letter contained messages to the Sultan and to the Gregorian’s Moslem fellow-countrymen, and reproached their European brethren for standing by, watching the bloody work. It also contained the following:

“To the Christians of the United States of America we say farewell. We have been strenuously opposed to your mission work among us, but these bloody days have shown that some of our Protestant brethren have been staunch defenders of our honor and our faith. You, at least, know that our crime, in the eyes of the Turk, has been that we adopted the civilization you commended to us. Behold now the missions and schools which you planted among us, at the cost of many millions of dollars and hundreds of precious lives! They are in ruins, and the Turk is planning to rid himself of the missionaries and teachers by leaving them nobody among whom to labor.”

Zeitoun has the glory of being the only town that successfully resisted the Turkish troops and secured for itself an honorable capitulation.

Peace having been secured through the Consuls of the various Powers, it was believed that the terms of the amnesty granted by the Porte would honestly be fulfilled.

It would not have been a very easy thing to hush up another massacre, and if one had occurred it might at last have aroused the Powers that (ought to) be to some decisive action.

The town of Zeitoun lies several hours’ journey over the mountains, to the north of Marash. Secluded in a deep valley, it is well protected on all four of the roads leading into it and could be defended against very great odds if there were a small force at each narrow pass.

The Zeitounlis had early determined to make a stand for their lives and had succeeded in capturing the barracks, which are situated just at the edge of the town, after an attack of sixty hours and taking prisoners nearly six hundred Turkish soldiers, and then they proceeded to garrison and provision the town for a siege.

In one of the battles which took place at Hot Springs, some five miles east of the city, the Zeitounlis made a stand at a stone bridge which there spans a rushing torrent. But after holding it bravely for awhile they slowly retreated up a steep hill until almost the entire Turkish army had crossed the bridge, when suddenly the bridge was blown up and the Zeitounlis turning, hurled down from the hills above great rocks and poured upon them a most destructive fire. Hemmed in as they were the loss was very great. The Turkish account was that fire burst out from the air or from the ground and destroyed the army. Seven distinct attacks were made in which the losses as sent through official sources to the Porte were placed at ten thousand men.

On February 9th, 1896, the Porte communicated to the embassies of the Powers its reply to the proposals of the Zeitounlis for conditions of surrender. The Porte promised a satisfactory settlement, and on the 13th the terms were announced. Terrible distress and illness prevailed in the city as the consequence of the siege. Thousands died of cold and starvation.

How the Turk began on the first day of 1896 to keep the oft repeated promises made to the Powers of Europe, was best told in the following account of the massacre at Birijik (province of Aleppo).

“The assault on the Christian houses commenced at about nine o’clock in the morning, and continued until nightfall. The soldiers were aided by the Moslems of the city in the terrible work. The object at first seemed to be mainly plunder, but, after the plunder had been secured, the soldiers seemed to make a systematic search for men, to kill those who were unwilling to accept Mohammedanism. The cruelty used to force men to become Moslems was terrible. In one case the soldiers found some twenty people, men, women and children, who had taken refuge in a sort of cave. They dragged them out, and killed all the men and boys because they would not become Moslems.

“After cutting down one old man who had thus refused they put live coals upon his body, and, as he was writhing in torture, they held a Bible before him and asked him mockingly to read them some of the promises in which he had trusted. Others were thrown into the river while still alive, after having been cruelly wounded. The wounded and children of this party were loaded up like goods upon the backs of porters and carried off to the houses of Mussulmans.

“Christian girls were eagerly sought after, and much quarreling occurred over the question of their division among their captors. Every Christian house, except two claimed to be owned by Turks, was plundered. Ninety-six men were killed, or about half of the adult Christian men. The others became Mussulmans to save their lives, so that there was not a single Christian left in Birijik. The Armenian Church was made into a mosque and the Protestant Church into a Medresse Seminary.”

Refugees and Policemen at an Armenian Church.

Massacres went on actively in Armenia for over sixteen months, dating from the terrible slaughter at Sassoun in August and September, 1894. A low estimate of those either killed, or in a state of actual starvation, was half the agricultural population of seven vilayets—two hundred and seventy-five thousand, according to Turkish statistics, two-thirds of the starving being women and children. The government completed its work in the vilayets by reducing the population and the remaining property under the forms of martial law, and by forcing the Armenians to declare themselves Mohammedans. Many died for their faith, but the greater number still held out, dying by inches.

Turkish estimates, which, as can be readily understood, did not magnify the massacres, gave the following as the net result of the sanguinary work up to the middle of December:

Armenian population in larger towns	177,700
Armenian population in villages	538,500
Number killed in towns (estimated)	20,000
Number of Armenian villages (about)	3,300
Villages destroyed	2,500
Number killed in villages, no data, but probably,	60,000
Number reduced to starvation in towns	75,000
Number reduced to starvation in villages	366,600

CHAPTER XV.

RELIEF WORK IN ARMENIA.

In presenting an account of the relief work done in Armenia, the order in time has been observed in a very great degree in order that as the distress and misery increased the reader might see that greater efforts were made to relieve the terrible condition of the starving thousands.

March 15, 1896, Hon. John Wanamaker who was then in the East, sent this cablegram to the Relief Committee of Philadelphia. “I am convinced that the necessity is appalling. Needs for relief extremely urgent.”

The spring of 1894 saw the gaunt spectre of poverty stalking through this devoted land. It trod on the beautiful valleys and they lost their verdure and their harvests withered. Poverty became hunger and cheeks grew thin and death’s pallor looked out from hollow eyes. Hunger became starvation and the keenest form of suffering became the portion of thousands of once prosperous and happy Armenians.

The Rev. Mr. Macallum, a missionary at Erzeroum said of the situation in and about that city in April 1894:

“The famine continues to increase in severity. Spring is opening up late. Very many of the farmers have no grain to sow; we wish we had enough money on hand to supply the Protestants of Khanoos with seed, but I am sorry to say that what has come to us is now exhausted, or practically so. We are feeding about seven hundred people a day in this city, who otherwise would have nothing to eat. Besides this, we have sent sufficient out to the country districts to keep life and courage in several hundred more.”

Over $2,000 had been sent to Mr. Macallum up to the middle of May but though spring had arrived and the agony of the cold was over, there was no work to be found, and over one-third of the sixty thousand inhabitants of Erzeroum had nothing to eat except the bread of charity. In the Passen and Khanoos district near by a similar famine was prevailing, and but for the help sent to them many of the people would have died of starvation.

Writing to the friends who had sent him aid Mr. Macallum said: “You may rest assured that there are hundreds of poor starving people who bless you and the givers night and day. We have sought to help only those who are most needy, and the testimony of all is that the help we have administered has saved many from a terrible death. ‘You have redeemed us.’ ‘You have bought our children’s blood.’ ‘May the Lord reward you a thousandfold for all you have done!’ These and other like expressions we hear every day. Some of those who get bread from us regard it as sacred, and eat it as they take the sacrament in church. We are giving bread regularly to over a thousand people a day in the city, Protestants, Greeks, Catholics, and Gregorians. We have given £50 to the governor here for the Turkish poor. This gift was comparatively small, but more gratitude was expressed by the Turkish authorities than by the Gregorians, to whom we had given the most.”

The summer of 1894 instead of bringing relief, brought increased burdens from the frequent raids of the wild Kurds, who during that single year drove out of the districts of Boolanyk and Moush alone more than ten thousand head of cattle and sheep. The result was the utter disappearance of wealth and the rapid spread of misery so intense, so hopeless, so distressing in its moral and physical effects as to have inspired some of its victims with that wild courage which is akin to despair.

To the depredations of the Kurds, were added the cruel extortions of the Zaptiehs, or official tax-gatherers. There was absolutely no redress for Christians who suffered in property, life or limb at the hands of Mohammedans.

The taxes levied upon Armenians were exorbitant; the bribes that invariably accompanied them, and were imposed by the Zaptiehs, swelled to any proportions, and assumed the most repugnant forms, while the methods employed to collect both constituted by themselves sufficient justification for the sweeping away of Ottoman rule in Armenia.

To give a fair instance of the different rates of taxation for Christians and Mohammedans in towns it will suffice to point out that in Erzeroum, where there are eight thousand Mohammedan houses, the Moslems paid only three hundred and ninety-five thousand piastres, whereas the Christians, whose houses number but two thousand, paid four hundred and thirty thousand piastres.

The barbarities and the enormities and savagery of the Sassoun massacres left those districts in a most deplorable condition. After decimating the population, the Kurds burned and utterly destroyed many villages and drove off all their cattle and sheep and left the plains as if swept by cyclone and wrecked by earthquake.

The fugitives returning after the Kurdish fiends had returned into the mountains had neither the means nor the opportunity to cultivate the soil which their forefathers had possessed for many generations. Their homes were wrecked, their farms destroyed, and their implements and cattle seized by the bandit mountaineers, and they themselves were compelled to seek such shelter as the woods and caves afforded.

It was the Medical Missionary at Van, Dr. Grace W. Kimball whose heart was so smitten with anguish at the sight of such suffering that she determined to let the world know what the horrors of Sassoun really were. In the smitten districts at least five thousand were living in the mountains and faring little better than the wild beasts.

They were sustaining life on roots and berries and were almost naked—many wholly so. It is not surprising that this terrible privation should have bred disease, and, when she wrote, fever and other physical troubles were carrying the wretched people off in large numbers. She described the condition of the women and little children as miserable beyond anything she had ever heard of.

This brave Christian woman did not spend the time in lamenting the wretchedness of the people among whom she labored, but set about to find out some practical way of helping them. Food, clothing, and shelter were the three prime necessities. She gathered the adults in about one hundred of the fugitive families, and soon had them employed at making cotton cloth—an industry with which they were already familiar. She supplied the material, and paid the workers for their labor, expending in this way about $100 weekly, which was applied to the relief of the families. By this excellent method, she gave the needed help to many of the sufferers without pauperizing them, and she earned the warmest love and gratitude of the Armenians.

But the market for the product of this labor was soon supplied and the resources of the missionaries were soon exhausted. It was then that she wrote in the anguish of her soul to this country and this was the origin of The Christian Herald Relief Fund which collected and sent many thousand dollars to the centers of massacres and suffering.

Early in October, 1895, Mr. W. W. Howard the commissioner sent by The Christian Herald of New York to relieve the persecuted and hunger smitten peasants of Armenia, set forth on his errand of mercy. In retaliation for his articles on the terrible suffering in Armenia and its cause, the Turkish government resolved to prevent Mr. Howard from entering its dominions. Refused permission to pass through Anatolia he was compelled to go through Russia and Persia, and eventually was prevented by the Turkish officials from crossing the frontier opposite Van, a notification of the order for his exclusion being sent to Mr. Terrell, the American minister at Constantinople, who cabled the fact to this country.

This, however, did not impede the work of the distribution of the relief fund as the money was sent to W. W. Peet, Constantinople, to be distributed by Rev. H. O. Dwight “with special reference to sufferers in the neighborhood of Van.”

The whole country was in fearful peril and Van itself practically in a state of siege, the trees along the streets having been leveled to permit the placing of cannon in position to command the Armenian quarter. A most various phase of the condition was wholesale exile. Thousands of Armenian villagers, unable to endure privation longer, or to see their wives and children starve left their ruined homes and bare fields and poured into the neighboring cities, unsheltered and hungry.

Meanwhile the good work that the missionaries were doing at Van and Bitlis led the Duke of Westminster, Chairman of the British Committee of Relief, and Sir Philip Currie, the British Ambassador at Constantinople, to designate Messrs. Raynolds and Cole as almoners of their bounty as they were of the gifts from America.

When these gentlemen first reached the desolated region they were greatly hindered in caring for the poor by petty officials, but later on and in view of representations made by the embassies, the opposition ceased, at least outwardly. Men were set at work rebuilding houses and food was distributed to the most needy. It was estimated that $40,000 would be needed to feed upwards of five thousand persons until the next harvest, and a call was sent for further aid from Europe and America. Finally the bitter hate of the Turkish officials prevailed and the distribution of supplies was stopped and Messrs. Cole and Raynolds compelled to return to their homes.

There were one hundred thousand persons in the two hundred towns and villages in one district alone, who were actually starving, and the story of one was the story of all sections. No one not in the actual midst of it could have any comprehension of the extent of the desolation and of the degree of the suffering. Daily rations of bread, amounting to two cents for adults and one cent for children, were delivered to more than one thousand six hundred in one city. Over four thousand suits consisting of shirt and drawers, were made and distributed, three hundred mattresses and four hundred quilts were given. Many were glad of a piece of bagging to put over them. Poor Armenia! Drenched with the blood of her children, her hills and valleys resounding with their shrieks and sighs and moans, she stood the oldest Christian nation in the world—asking for the smallest of small coins to preserve lives that might yet be given the crown of martyrdom—a spectacle for the world.

In the first outburst of righteous indignation that blazed out from all Europe, it seemed as if the Infidel Turkish Government condemned unanimously by the verdict of all nations for its crimes against God and humanity, would soon be swept out of Europe and that even its possessions in Asia Minor would be torn from its grasp and partitioned among civilized races.

Lord Salisbury, the British Premier, at a public dinner, made an address which plainly intimated that the patience of Europe was exhausted, and that the Sultan’s folly had sealed the doom of his own government, if not of the Ottoman Empire. Lord Salisbury recognized in the present condition of Turkey, the result of its offences against God. He said:

“Above all treaties, all combinations of the Powers, in the nature of things, is Providence. God, if you please to put it so, has determined that persistent and constant misgovernment must lead the government which follows it to its doom. The Sultan is not exempt any more than any other potentate from the law that injustice will bring the highest one on earth to ruin.”

These words sounded as if the Prime Minister really meant to do something to permanently better the condition of Christian Armenia, but in the light of after events it seemed that Lord Salisbury, after considerable reflection, concluded to let the Lord settle the account with Turkey without England’s intervention.

There was one man in Constantinople who played a mighty part in the life and death struggle between Christianity and Islam—Mattheos Ismirlian, the Armenian Patriarch, but great as was his influence, he was powerless to relieve the increasing mass of suffering and misery in all the provinces.

The story of Zeitoun, of its long and brave defence and of its final capitulation has been already told, but the distress which prevailed there was simply awful.

The five European Consuls who went to Zeitoun to negotiate for the submission of the Armenian insurgents telegraphed to their respective embassies that indescribable distress prevailed among the eight thousand refugees at that place. The sick, the dying and the dead were heaped together in all kinds of astonishing places where a little extra warmth was to be hoped for. Bitter cold prevailed and the women and girls were devoid of necessary clothing.

Although the inhabitants of Zeitoun gave up their arms, the refugees shrank from quitting the town through lack of confidence in the Turks. Only too well founded were their fears, as, a little while after this disarming, sixteen Zeitounlis were proceeding under the escort of one gendarme to Albistan to buy wheat or barley; they were suddenly fallen upon and nine of them were massacred.

It was an awful crime against humanity, the stupidest folly to put faith in the promises of the Turk where the welfare of a Christian was at stake.

Fifteen Armenian families were murdered by Kurds in the district of Tchabakeiour, Bitlis, because, having embraced Islamism, they returned to Christianity. The authorities declined to recognize them as Mohammedans, and are said even to have advised them to remain Christians. This exasperated the Kurds, who decided to exterminate them.

At many points the lives of our missionaries were in peril but United States Minister Terrell warned the Sultan that his Government would be held responsible “If even a hair upon the head of an American should be touched:” and to enforce that word—a good straightforward, understandable word, there were three American warships cruising in Turkish waters.

There is not the slightest doubt but that if the fleets of the Great Powers had passed the Dardanelles in November, 1894, and demanded that the outrages against the Armenians should cease, or their guns would fire on Stamboul, silence would have fallen like that of death upon the fierce soldiers and fiercer Kurds, in Armenia. But the word was not spoken, and before God and in the sight of Christendom the blood of the slain is upon them.

From every quarter of the afflicted country appeals came pouring in, saying that the suffering was beyond all description and starvation imminent. “Aid must be sent quickly if lives were to be saved.” The survivors of the Erzingan massacre appealed to the Patriarch at Constantinople to lay their sore need before the world, and to “send aid quickly, quickly, quickly.” But these were only a few; similar appeals, heart-moving in their terrible earnestness, kept coming in from a score of districts where continued massacres made the trembling survivors almost wish for death, that they might be spared the pain of witnessing further horrors.

Noble work was done by American missionaries everywhere in Armenia. Nearly all were engaged in aiding the distressed families, and it was that fact alone that caused the Turkish officials to demand their withdrawal, in order that the homeless and destitute Armenians might be left to die.

Conspicuous among the relief work accomplished was that done at Van under the direction of Dr. Grace W. Kimball. All who care for the amelioration of destitution and suffering, cannot fail to see in the following letter, the practical wisdom which characterized her work. October 15, 1895, Dr. Kimball wrote:

“The plan of this work is to aid without pauperizing, and to utilize a part of the great number of workers who are idle and starving because there is no work to be had. A large proportion of the people of both city and villages are conversant with the various processes in the manufacture of coarse cotton and woolen fabrics. This suggested a simple solution of the work problem. Small sums of money had, as early as June, come to us for our distressed people. And on the strength of this money and the increasingly urgent demands for help, a very simple beginning was made. A bag of wool was bought, weighed out into pound portions, and whenever a woman came begging for help or work, her case was investigated, her name registered, and she was given wool to card and spin. On return of the thread it was weighed and examined as to quality: the woman was paid at a rate that, it was estimated, would supply her with bread, and she was given another lot of wool. The giving of two or three lots of wool in this way was enough to bring down on us a crowd, and speedily we found a large business flooding in upon us—one demanding good organization and a corps of distributors. Cotton was added to our supplies, and all the processes and tricks of the two trades were quickly investigated, and every attempt was made to put the enterprise on a sound business basis. We were able to select at once those whom our hearts had ached to help to gain a living, and a good corps of helpers was soon organized. Men to keep the door—and it often took three men to do this against the clamoring crowd—men to receive and weigh the wool, cotton and thread; men for the various demands of the Central Bureau.

“For the first two months the work was accommodated in our house, in the rooms used as a dispensary, and we were in a state of siege from morning to night. The long lower hall was devoted to a row of cotton-carders, the twang of whose primitive cards and the dust of whose work, filled the house from early morning till dark, while a crowd of wretched men and women was never absent. The accumulation of thread brought the necessity for weavers, and all the processes of weaving had to be studied. The demand was met at once by weavers who were out of work and in dire poverty. The thread was given them by weight, and the woven goods received by weight; and they in turn were paid with due regard to the needs of their families. Then to the children and to some who were too weak and sick to do the heavier work, yarn was given to be knitted into socks.

“Shortly, we found ourselves in possession of a good stock of cotton cloth, woolen goods for the loose trousers worn here, and huge piles of coarse socks. And the question what to do with them came to the front. The suggestion was made that this work might help and be helped by the Sassoun Relief work, by our supplying materials for distribution there. The proposition was submitted to Messrs. Raynolds and Cole and gladly accepted by them, and this arrangement has been the means whereby our Bureau could double its efficiency, thanks to having an assured market for all its produce, without affecting the same industries here, which on the contrary it should help. Our goods are done up in bales, loaded on donkeys or ox-carts, and carried down to the lake harbor. They are received by the miserable little sailboats that ply the lake, and taken—with prayers for insurance—to the opposite side of Van Lake, a distance of some sixty miles. Thence they are transported by horses or carts to Moush, the headquarters of the Sassoun Commission. The journey takes from ten days to two or three weeks. In this way we have already sent some two thousand pairs of socks, and fourteen hundred webs of cloth. The total number of workers (up to October 15) was as follows:

Spinners of cotton and wool	373
Weavers of cotton goods	49
Weavers ,, of ,, woolen goods	22
Weavers ,, of ,, carpets	5
Carders	9
Spindle Fillers	9
Sizers	4
Weighers, Door-tenders, etc.	5
Total	476

“The average of wages per capita for the week was seven piastres, or about thirty cents. The intense poverty of the people is shown by the fact that these wages, small as they are, exceed from one-third to one-half the regular rates for the same work. On the other hand the demands grow more and more urgent—desperate, I might well say. So importunate are the crowds that I often have to call a man to pass me out of the office after my work is done. They beg and weep and catch at my clothes and will not let me go. And it is maddening to see such misery, and yet be obliged to turn a deaf ear to so much of it. We help, through our four hundred and seventy six workers, some two thousand souls, and this is not in itself, a small thing. But when it is compared with the vast number of helpless poor about us, it accentuates our appeal to our more fortunate fellow Christians for larger help.

“The gratitude of these people is touching in the extreme. Would that I could send to each one who has given to this work the blessings and the prayers and the gratitude that are bestowed on them daily. And yet the cry goes up for more help. Winter cold and rains are upon us. Thousands have but the thinnest and most ragged clothing, no shoes or stockings, many no beds, and most no fuel or other winter provisions. Thousands never taste anything but coarse, dry bread for weeks and months at a time—and little enough of that—while, especially in the villages, hundreds have not even that, and are on the verge of starvation. I doubt not that many will have actually starved before these words are read in America.

“It is a national tragedy we are witnessing, and we know not what the end will be. It is also and especially an historical struggle between Islam and Christianity. Christianity is for the present sadly worsted, and it remains for Christian Europe, England and America to decide which shall ultimately be victorious. All that Armenian Christians can do is to die martyrs to the Faith, and that they have done, are doing, and will continue to do daily, until help come—help which reaches not merely Embassies and the Capital, but which penetrates to the remote villages and mountain fastnesses where the worshippers of the Cross are to-day at the pitiless mercy of the fanatical Kurd and Turk.

“In closing this incomplete report of our mutual work, let me again assure all our helpers and coöperators, of the deep appreciation of their aid and sympathy that is felt, not only by those who receive their gifts, but by the entire Armenian people. And let me also remind whomsoever may feel impelled to send us aid that he is not only aiding a starving people, but is also helping to maintain Christianity against its most virulent foes.”

Early in the following December, Dr. Kimball again wrote: “The bakery which we opened is taxed to its utmost capacity and beyond, so that we have been giving orders on another bakery as a temporary thing, and are having a new bakery fitted up, to be ready in two or three days. We are now feeding about one thousand five hundred people daily, and are distributing clothing to these people and hundreds of other villagers who are in greatest need. We have laid in one thousand five hundred bushels of wheat and a considerable amount of wood at very advantageous prices.

“Just here, the man in charge of the bakeries comes and reports that the Governor is giving out orders for bread to the villagers. This Governor is a good man, and we do not doubt his good intentions. But as the treasury is entirely empty, we do not anticipate any very material assistance from Turkish sources. However little it may be, it will doubtless be noised abroad, especially in English papers, as a proof of the tender feelings the Government entertains for its Christian subjects. The hand that smote will not long comfort. Please assure all contributors and helpers in this work of Armenian relief, of the deepest gratitude of the poor people, and of the hearty thanks of us who are witnesses of their misery. * * *”

A Prayer for Revenge.

The following is a summary of relief work at Van up to January 1st, 1895: Number of employees of Industrial Bureau nine hundred and eighty-one, representing over nine hundred and fifty families, or about four thousand seven hundred and fifty persons. Of these four are overseers, nine master-workmen, six hundred and fifty eight spinners of cotton and wool, one hundred and fifteen weavers of cotton, thirty-seven weavers of woolen goods, and the remainder, carpet weavers, carders, spindle-fillers, sizers, knitters and sewers of clothing. The manufactures are coarse cotton cloth, woolen goods, carpets; a kind of heavy jacket worn by the villagers; socks, ready-made clothing and bedding. The product from July to November was largely sold to the Sassoun Relief Commission, though small quantities were distributed here, chiefly among refugees. The supply is not nearly equal to the demand.

In the Baking Department free bread is given regularly to four hundred and fifteen families or about two thousand five hundred persons. About one thousand five hundred persons have received rations for from a week to a month, while waiting to return to their villages. The allowance per capita is one and a half pounds a day. Free bread is being given to the extent of three thousand pounds a day.

At this time, in Harpoot there was still much unrelieved suffering. In the city the missionaries were giving one thousand five hundred rations of bread daily. The ladies distributed one thousand two hundred shirts and drawers, sixty pairs of stockings, one hundred and forty six mattresses, and two hundred quilts. These garments were manufactured by the destitute women, with regular wages of three or four cents a day. At Aintab the missionaries with the relief moneys were feeding three thousand two hundred and twenty-six persons, at Erzeroum two thousand five hundred, at Erzingan one thousand, and also large numbers at Palu, Diarbekir, Oorfa, Arabkir, Malatia, Marash, Hadjin, Cæsarea, and Sivas.

By Christmas, 1895, generous responses came from all over the land, though by no means large enough to equal the necessities of the starving thousands scattered throughout the cities and towns and villages of Anatolia.

This work of relief was conducted under extraordinary conditions, the Turkish Government hampering and opposing it at every point and making it clear to all the missionaries that the deliberate intent was to allow the Armenians to die of cold and hunger.

Abdul Hamid decreed that the Christians should be exterminated; those who had survived the massacres at Moush, Sassoun, Dalvorig, Trebizond, Erzeroum and Harpoot, would die quietly if let alone. They were mere Christian dogs—all of them, and deserved to perish for the glory of Allah and his prophet. And when the missionaries, faithful to their duty, and at the risk of their own lives, continued to extend succor to the starving ones, their mission buildings were burned down, their converts slain and they themselves compelled to seek a place of shelter.

Early in December, 1895, Miss Clara Barton, of Washington, President of the Red Cross Society, was requested to undertake relief work in Armenia, and as Turkey belonged to the Red Cross Association, it was thought that no obstacles would be placed in her way by the Sultan. Miss Barton quickly responded and prepared to take the field in person with a corps of trained workers, sailing from New York, January 22, 1896. Upon her arrival at Constantinople the fullest permission was given for the entrance into Armenia of the Red Cross party and an apparently active and generous effort was made towards making their endeavors, journeys, etc., as safe and easy as possible. Miss Barton took with her many letters of great influence addressed to the Turkish authorities and other persons in close contact with them, but in spite of this and the reiterated promise of the Turkish Foreign Minister to permit the distributors of relief to go to Anatolia, the necessary irades were withheld by the Sultan and for some time Miss Barton’s work was limited to Constantinople. It was during this period that the Porte permanently prohibited several leading American newspapers from entering Turkey.

Early in April, 1896, as the result of the incessant pressure brought to bear upon the Porte by Mr. J. W. Riddle, United States Chargé d’affaires, and Sir Philip Currie, British Ambassador, Tewfik Pasha, the Turkish Foreign Minister, gave assent to the demand that all relief afforded to the suffering Armenians by the agents of the Red Cross Society should be distributed unconditionally, with the exception of one provision, namely, that one member of the Turkish Relief Commission should be present.

Miss Barton at once despatched one caravan with goods to Marash and followed it with another including eight physicians and apothecaries with medical supplies. At Marash, the destitution and misery were past human imagination. Cold, famine, smallpox and typhoid fever had carried off four thousand people and twelve thousand refugees were in need of food, clothing and bedding. There was not a yard of cotton cloth in the place and no doctors. At Aintab, Oorfa, Harpoot and Zeitoun the needs were almost as great, and to each of these points, goods and medical supplies were despatched and distributed by trustworthy American residents and Miss Barton’s Red Cross agents.

Upwards of $70,000 were sent by cable from America to the missionaries in Armenia, through the American Board of Foreign Missions. Not one dollar of this amount was lost or failed to reach its proper field. In many instances the money was given out in the form of bread and clothing to the starving refugees in Asia, within forty-eight hours of the time of cabling it from New York. This fact should go far towards disarming the severe criticisms sometimes heard regarding the business management of missionary enterprises.

Massacre of Armenians at Erzeroum.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CURSE OF ISLAM.

Dr. M. S. Gabriel.

In Europe and America there is very little, if any, exact knowledge of what Mohammedanism means and who the Turks are. The Christian subjects of Turkey alone have the unfortunate opportunity of knowing well both the Turk and his religion. And of all the Christian subjects of the Porte the Armenians have the profoundest understanding in this matter. In the case of the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Christian, Turkish oppression has more or less been alleviated by the sympathy and protection of some one or the other of European Powers, while the Armenians, related to none of the great nations by close ties of either church or race, are absolutely friendless and have known the virulence of Moslem hatred in its utmost intensity.

This remark, I hope, will caution those of my readers who, having heard of the “tolerant spirit” of Islam and “the benign rule” of the Sultan, might think my description of them to be rather exaggerated.

Of “the benign rule” of the Ottomans and the spirit of Islam I can speak from personal and intimate acquaintance. There can be no curse for a Christian nation as great as that of bearing the yoke of Moslem tyranny. Armenia has many times during her long national life seen foreign rule or supremacy, that, for instance, of the Romans, but not without some consoling advantage. The British, called the true Romans of modern times, carry some blessing to the countries they conquer or rule, although they conquer or rule in the commercial interests of their own. They are like butterflies which fly from flower to flower in order to suck the honey, but, in so doing, they transfer to them the fertilizing pollen attached to their wings.

What have the Turks brought into the Greek and Armenian centers of civilization in the Orient? Any commerce, or industry, or literature, or art, or science? No, not a bit. They have come, sword in hand, bringing with them new vices and novel methods of torture. Since they established their rule in the East, Italy, in the West, had her literary Renaissance, Germany her religious Reformation, France her great Revolution, each contributing to the cause of general civilization, and all Europe and America appear to-day gloriously transfigured, thanks to modern science and industry and art, while Turkey remains where she was five centuries ago. The task of the Turk has been not to enter himself and not to allow his Christian subjects to enter into the path of progress. Whatever progress has been realized by the Armenians has been despite the systematic opposition of the Turkish government. They have smuggled, so to say, European elements of civilization into Armenia. But Armenian experience proved that it is vain, it is even dangerous, for Christians under Moslem rule to try to progress, to multiply schools and churches and colleges, to educate the children, to send the young men to the Universities of Europe and America, to be economical and industrious, to grow rich and to be influential or merely to be born beautiful under the Turkish flag. The destruction of Armenia, after the general massacres of October and November last, is going on by starvation and exposure and sickness. Armenian progress is buried by Islam in the heaps of slaughtered bodies and under the ashes that cover her ruined and deserted villages.

Why is the Turk so fiercely opposed to progress? Why does he so bitterly hate the progressive Armenians? Because, in the first place, he is Turkish; and because, in the second place, he is Mohammedan.

The Turk is not a member of the best human race—the Indo-European or Arian, like the Armenians. The Turk does not belong even to the next best of races, the Semitic, like the Jews and the Arabs. He is a branch of the Mongolian race, and, as such, incapable of assimilating complex ideas and higher forms of civilization.

The mental inferiority of the Turk unfortunately matched with a religion of a very low order, has made of him what he is, worse than savages.

There is much to say of the inferiority of Islam, but I shall confine myself to showing that the moral law of Islam is essentially immoral.

This may seem to some too bold an assertion. Let us see. According to the Koran, the woman must be veiled lest any man look at her and lust after her. She is not to talk with any man other than her nearest relatives. A Moslem must not drink wine or liquor at all, in order that he may not drink too much. There should be no liberty of Press, nor of speech, nor of association, lest any seditious utterance or movement be the outcome. In a word, man must be watched from above, governed, repressed, in order that he may not have any occasion to sin. He is not to be left free, he is not to govern himself, but remain under tutelage, like a child. The consequence is that the Moslem is condemned to perpetual infancy as a moral creature; his individuality, his will power remain undeveloped.

Compare that with the moral law of Christianity. Christianity is the fight of man’s deeper, true nature against his animal or lower nature. It is a healthful exercise by which his soul grows in grace and strength and will power, building up a Christlike character, that is the ideal of his life. The more he fights, the greater and surer becomes the supremacy of his higher nature over the lower.

Just the reverse of this is the spiritual course of a Moslem. He does not aspire at all at purity or moral freedom, but, on the contrary, he believes that by certain acts he can so please Allah and become his friend as to get the privilege of indulging in things forbidden to the common “faithful.” I know this to be the belief among the learned Moslems. It has its ground in the Koran itself—in the fact that Mohammed the “Prophet” was granted such privileges. “O Prophet!” says the Koranic oracle, “we have allowed thee thy wives, unto whom thou hast given their dower, and also the slaves which thy right hand possesseth, of the booty which God hath granted thee; and the daughters of thy uncle, and the daughters of thy aunts, both on thy father’s side and on thy mother’s side, who have fled with thee from Mecca, and any other believing woman, if she give herself unto the prophet; in case the prophet desireth to take her to wife. This is a peculiar privilege granted unto thee, above the rest of the true believers. (Koran, Chapter XXXIII.) Another privilege, necessitated by the above, is thus declared: “Thou mayest postpone the turn of such of thy wives as thou shalt please, in being called to thy bed; and thou mayest take unto thee her whom thou shalt please ..., and it shall be no crime in thee.” A further affirmation of the peculiar privilege: “O Prophet, why holdest thou that to be prohibited which God hath allowed thee, seeking to please thy wives?” (Chapter LXVI.)

Gratification of senses in this world under certain regulations, and unlimited gratification of senses in the paradise, with plenty of wine, without any danger of “headache,” enjoying “wives free from impurity,” and “fair damsels with large black eyes” result of “a peculiar creation” ... remaining “virgins” though “beloved by their husbands.” (Chapter LVI.) Such is the ideal of the Moslem for the present life and the future.

This is not mere theory. To be fully convinced of this, a Christian must live among the Turks, see their homes, attend to their festivals, visit their schools, watch their prayers, and become acquainted with their priests and princes.

Did I say their “homes?” The Turk has no home in the European sense of the term, nor wife, nor schools, nor government. His prayers are gymnastics of lips and limbs. His charity is a mere show—as are his prayers, and often an act of cruelty. His school is a place where the spark of Tartaric intelligence is put out under the fuel of Koranic verses. His courts are stores where justice is sold by auction. His Government is an organized brigandage and his diplomacy, falsehood and shameless hypocrisy.

Outsiders may think that the Turks will make some progress. No, there is no hope. As long as the Turks are faithful to the teachings of their sacred law, the only form of their Government will be absolute monarchy, their only instrument the sword, and their ideal sensualism.

For the present life the Turks have for centuries secured an abundance of sensual gratification, thanks to the sword, the great instrument recommended to them by their religion. Reserving for their pious selves the sword, they have left all other instruments to the “unbelievers.” They have devoted themselves to the higher vocations of the State as soldiers, priests, judges, governors, and ministers, and if those careers are not easily open to any one, another noble profession, that of brigandage, is embraced, and in all cases, they have had plenty of income, gardens, palaces and wives. They have left to the Armenians all the low, hard or undignified work—to till the soil, to build houses and roads, bridges and palaces, to make shoes, clothes, rugs and carpets and all the rest.

Thus the Turks led an existence full of pleasure, pride and luxury, and they degenerated; while agriculture, commerce and industry which they despised made the Armenians comparatively prosperous, and the Christian faith which the Turks hated, rendered the Armenian family great and healthy, and the Armenian community stronger, having greater solidarity. In brief, Armenia appeared to the Turk like a little Europe rising in the very bosom of the Ottoman Empire. Already in 1876 the Turkish newspapers of Constantinople were publishing editorials with regard to the alarming increase of the Armenians and the decrease of the Turks. The Sultan, Abdul-Hamid, who aimed, and still is aiming, to be a very great Padishah, devoted himself to the task of readjusting the balance in favor of the Turks. His Khalific intelligence had nothing to do with causes. He never troubled himself with the complicated question why the Turks were not increasing, why a rich Moslem with three wives had no children, while a simple Christian artisan with one wife had three or four or half a dozen. To Hamid’s mind the problem was very simple. Are the Armenians getting rich? he will plunder them. Have they organized educational, religious or other benevolent associations? he will scatter them. Have they bishops, professors and other leaders of high education; and are they increasing in numbers? he will by exile and wholesale massacres get rid of them. If anywhere any of them should venture to resist plunderers or defend the honor of their wives and daughters or kill any of his imperial brigands in self-defense, he will regard and declare them to Europe as rebels and treat them and the rest of their nation as such. His satanic accounts were quite well made up. Some Armenians did, from sheer exasperation and desperation, resist their foul aggressors. Hamid was glad. He ordered the annihilation of Sassoun in 1894. Successful in that, he, in 1895, by the kind permission of Christian Europe and America, proceeded to destroy the Armenian nation and extirpate the Armenian Church by wholesale massacres and forced conversions to Islam.

The sword, even in the hands of the Turks, had never been used with such ferocity. The Turks surpassed themselves in these late massacres. They displayed to the world the bottom of their infernal foulness. Unable to use their sword against Europe, which has grown far too powerful for them, they used it to cut down the Armenian Europe in its bud. And the consciousness of their impotence against the Great Powers intensified their cruelty and hatred with regard to the defenseless and unarmed Armenians.

But all these frightful deeds of the Moslems do not surprise us. It is but natural that “a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.” There is perfect harmony between these happenings and the Mohammedan faith. The surprise, the shock we experience when we think that the “Christian” Emperors of Russia, of United Germany, of Austria-Hungary, and the “Christian” Empress of Great Britain and India, and the “Christian” Presidents of the United States and of France could prevent the massacres, and did not. They looked on. They are all, in various degrees, the accomplices of the criminal Turk. Is it to be supposed, logically, that while Hamid is acting in accordance with his religious belief and the example of the “Prophet,” certain Christian princes have no sincere faith in Christ and his Gospel of love? May the exhibition of Islamic barbarity and blindness open the eyes of the “Christians” to see the heavenly holiness of Christ! May the curse of Islam which has fallen upon Armenia as a deadly pestilence arouse the torpid conscience of Christendom to a full appreciation of its sacred Book, its Christian homes, its free institutions and its religious liberty!

Burying the Bodies after the Massacre at Erzeroum.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE GREATEST CRIME OF THE CENTURY.

That the Powers of Europe, having their fleets lying at anchor in the Mediterranean and the Black Seas within a day’s sail of Constantinople, should stand by and permit the Sultan to slaughter the helpless Armenians by the tens of thousands is the greatest crime of the century.

The mutual jealousies and distrusts and diverse ambitions of the Powers of Europe have been as fatal and as horrible in result as the cruel wrath of a Nero, when for the first time he smote the early Christians with the clenched fist of the Roman Empire. Would that some hand could strip off the blood-soaked, dagger-pierced garments of nearly a hundred thousand martyred dead, and lay them at the feet of the nations who were consenting unto their death. Far be it from us to attempt to divide, or measure, or weigh out the guilt that lies with common shame upon them all; but that the burden rests with unequal weight upon the Powers a brief recital of some of the facts of history will show.

In little more than three hundred (322) days the Russian Army had swept from the Danube, through Bulgaria, over the passes of the Balkans across the plains of Adrianople, breaking and scattering the power of the Turkish armies until in February, 1878, nearly one hundred thousand victorious troops encamped before the gates of Constantinople which lay defeated and helpless at the feet of the conquering Czar.

General Grant said that for Russia not to enter Constantinople at that conjuncture was the greatest mistake a nation ever made. Could he have foreseen the misrule of the coming years culminating in the recent awful massacres, he would have called the failure a crime and not a blunder.

But Alexander had not entered upon the war for the sake of conquest, but to punish Turkey for her crimes against the Bulgarians and to deliver them from her power. Hence the terms of the treaty of San Stefano were specially in the interest of the subject Christian races that were under the rule of the Sublime Porte.

The treaty established the independence and boundaries of Montenegro, Servia and Roumania. It constituted Bulgaria an autonomous principality with a Christian government, a national militia, with fixed tribute; its boundaries carefully defined, included over sixty-five thousand square miles with a population of nearly four million Christian people. The Ottoman army was to be withdrawn and the irregular forces, the Bashi-Bazouks and the Circassians were to be absolutely excluded from it. The Russian army of occupation was to consist of fifty thousand men to remain until the new government should be firmly established (for the term approximately of two years.) All Danubian fortresses were to be razed and Bessarabia restored to Russia. Kars, Batoum, Ardahan, Bayazet and certain surrounding territory to be ceded to Russia, and Armenia to be guaranteed protection against Kurds and Circassians, and besides this territory, a war indemnity of a paltry $250,000,000. This is all that Russia claimed for herself at the close of a victorious campaign that had cost her $600,000,000 and the loss of nearly one hundred thousand men. This was the sacrifice she had offered to free her Bulgarian fellow Christians from the power of the Turk. Russia was the master of the situation and had well earned the right to dictate her own terms when the Sultan sued for peace.

Already the British Government had declared that they would not permit any power to interfere with the freedom of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, and that they should protect Constantinople from becoming the prize of conquest. The Parliament had been convened in January (17th) 1878, and in the Queen’s speech there was this sentence: “I can not conceal from myself that should hostilities be unfortunately prolonged some unexpected occurrence may render it incumbent on me to adopt measures of precaution. Such measures could not be effectually taken without adequate preparation and I trust to the liberality of my Parliament to supply the means which may be required for that purpose.”

In the debate that followed the Marquis of Salisbury said, “If you will not trust the government provide yourselves a government you will trust.”

The danger flag was waved ominously bearing the insignia of the Russian bear. On February 8th, the House voted a war credit of an additional $30,000,000, and on the same day five British war vessels were ordered to Constantinople. Troops were ordered to Malta from India, and Disraeli, the Premier, significantly declared “that in a righteous cause England would commence a fight that would not end till right was done.”

On March 17th, the ratifications of the treaty between Russia and Turkey were exchanged at St. Petersburg. Now note the situation. Russia has but three or four towns and the fortress of Kars on the frontiers of Armenia, and the seaport of Batoum, from which to compel the Porte to protect the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians. But there is a Bulgaria freed from Turkish despotism. Four millions of Christians are given the privilege of self government while still tributary to the Porte. The frontier of Russia is restored as it was before the treaty of Paris by the addition of Bessarabia. This is the only political advantage to compensate for the expenditure of blood and treasure in the liberation of Bulgaria. What does England want? What does she mean to fight for? How is she injured? The Dardanelles are opened for the free passage of merchant vessels both in peace and war. What right has she to interfere now that the treaty has been signed?

Yet on March 28th, the Disraeli government announces that the first class of the Army reserve numbering thirteen thousand, and the militia reserve of about twenty-five thousand men were to be called out. This determination led to the resignation of Lord Derby as Foreign Secretary and the Marquis of Salisbury was appointed in his place. On April 1st, Salisbury addressed a circular to the Powers, and after giving Russia’s refusal to consent to England’s demand (by what right?) relative to placing the treaty as a whole before the Congress—which Germany was endeavoring to secure to avoid another war—he goes on to complain of the terms imposed by Russia on Turkey: and the violation of the treaty of Paris, etc. Prince Gortchakoff in his reply among other questions asks Lord Salisbury how he would reconcile these treaties with the benevolent ends to which the united action of Europe had always been directed and the attainment of which one learns with pleasure the English government desires, namely, good government, peace and liberty for the oppressed populations.

A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum.

Having allowed Russia single handed to chastise the Turks for the massacre of the Bulgarians—and we think that any one can see that she had done it with neatness and despatch, and had delivered four million Christians from the cursed rule of Islam, England now comes forward and demands that the treaty of San Stefano shall be broken and a new one made. We may well exclaim “Cui bono?” In whose interest? For the greater security of the Christians in Bulgaria? For larger liberty and protection to the Armenians from Kurds and Circassians, or the protection of the Balkan populations from Circassians and Bashi-Bazouks?

No indeed! Noble, Christian England in her sympathy for the suffering Bulgarians wanted a Congress called to give back into the hands of the Turk, Bashi-Bazouk and Circassian more than three million Christians and forty thousand square miles of territory which might have formed the home of a strong, progressive Christian nation under the terms of the San Stefano treaty.

Having thus purposed to give back these millions into the jaws of the wolf, she yet desired to pose as the chief guardian of Armenia, and said to Turkey now give me Cyprus and I will protect you against Russia, and we can let Kurds and Circassians alone for awhile.

Thus while urging a Congress of the Powers, already on June 4th, 1878, England had secured the Island of Cyprus, and alone Christian England had agreed to defend by force of arms the integrity and the independence of the Turkish Dominions.

On June 13th, the Congress was called, Prince Bismarck occupying the presidential chair. Beaconsfield and Salisbury and the Ambassador at Berlin representing England, Russia, Austria, France, Italy and Turkey also having their respective representatives.

At the twentieth and last meeting held July 13th, the treaty of Berlin was signed. Thus by the conduct and the persistence of the English government alone was the calling of the Congress made necessary or possible, and by the spirit of England was the Congress dominated, and its final deliverances controlled. At the behest of England were millions of Bulgarians and Armenians handed over again to the tender mercies of the wicked Turk, and Russia was robbed of the glory of her victories.

An international crime like this must cry to Heaven for vengeance and the most powerful and enlightened nation that insisted on it and forced it through is also the most guilty. On their return to England Beaconsfield and Salisbury received an ovation, and the Queen conferred the Order of the Garter on these two Lords who had delivered the lives and welfare of millions of Christians back into the hands of the unspeakable Turk.

That England’s attitude has not been too strongly emphasized, read this quotation from Lord Salisbury’s summing up of the situation in 1879:

“The Sultan’s dominions he informed the Powers have been provided with a defensible frontier far removed from his capital. * * Rich and extensive provinces have been restored to his rule, at the same time that careful provision against future misgovernment has been made which will, it may be hoped assure their loyalty, and prevent the recurrence of calamities which have brought the Ottoman Power to the verge of ruin. Arrangements of a different kind, having the same end in view, have provided for the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan security for the present, and hope of prosperity and stability in the future. Whether use will be made of this, probably the last opportunity which has thus been obtained for Turkey by the interposition of the Powers of Europe, of England in particular, (note this phrase) or whether it is to be thrown away, will depend upon the sincerity with which Turkish statesmen now address themselves to the duties of good government and the task of reform.”

One would suppose from the terms of the treaties that the Bulgarian war had been undertaken for the sole and express purpose of establishing and assuring the integrity and independence of Turkey, the entrenchment of the Bashi-Bazouks in Bulgaria and for protecting the fierce wolves that dwell in the mountains of Kurdestan from the helpless lambs that infest the valleys of Armenia. In Russia the Berlin Treaty called out the most indignant disapprobation. It was said to be “a colossal absurdity, a blundering failure, an impudent outrage.” The nation had been robbed of all reward for the sacrifices she had made in the name of humanity: and before the people Alexander had been humiliated. He saw the incompleteness of his work, felt his inability to deal with the forces that were at that time massed against him and felt bitterly the reproach of the army and of those who had suffered the loss of kindred and friends in a useless and expensive war. Russian diplomacy at Berlin was felt to be more disastrous than the war, while the nation had been decked with a fool’s cap and bells and their honor trampled under foot.

England had taken on her hands a most difficult task, viz: To be the Protector of the Armenians, while at the same time she wore the belt as champion defender of Turkey against all comers. The Protector of the Christians, and the Christian Champion of Islam!!