No doubt it was better to save Catholics and Protestants than none at all, but the very idea of any distinction being thought of, under such fateful circumstances, is obviously contrary to the spirit of Christianity, and the passages referring to it make sad reading to a Christian.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Visitors to the San Francisco Exhibition will have seen and admired the work of the Armenian sculptor Haik Partigian, whose exhibits, I am told by one who saw them, were among the best, if not the best, of all the exhibits in the Sculpture Section. Russia's great marine painter Aivazovsky was an Armenian. The recently instituted Society of Armenian Artists is holding its first exhibition in Tiflis at the time of writing.
[22] It was reported in the Tiflis papers, after the above was written, that Mr. Mantashian, the Baku oil king, has made a further donation of £60,000 for agricultural improvements, and offered thirty thoroughbreds to improve the breed of horses in Armenia.
[23] Some of the most distressing and disgraceful cases of Turkish bestiality appeared in Doctor (Major) Aspland's report on the hospital at Van, which was under his charge as representative of the Lord Mayor's Armenian Relief Fund. Describing some of the individual cases brought to him for treatment, Dr. Aspland says—
"Here is a young woman leaving hospital to-day, who was raped by eight Kurds. She has suffered for months, and even now, in spite of operations, will be crippled for the rest of her life. Here is a small girl aged five, similarly treated by Turks, and is now lying in plaster of Paris in order to recover from injury to the hip joint."—(Ararat, October 1916, p. 172.)
[24] Compare this with the diary of a Turkish officer, reported in the Russkaia Viedomosti (p. 75).