“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.