This dual determination made the ensuing period one of intense activities, varied, yet not conflicting. Things happened pell-mell, but are more coherent if grouped topically rather than chronologically.
The Armenian outrages were constantly in my mind, and I wrote for the Red Cross Magazine an article on the Turkish massacres concluding:
I wonder if four hundred million Christians, in full control of all the governments of Europe and America, are again going to condone these offenses by the Turkish Government! Will they, like Germany, take the bloody hand of the Turk, forgive him and decorate him, as Kaiser Wilhelm has done, with the highest orders? Will the outrageous terrorizing—the cruel torturing—the driving of women into the harems—the debauchery of innocent girls—the sale of many of them at eighty cents each—the murdering of hundreds of thousands and the deportation to and starvation in the desert of other hundreds of thousands—the destruction of hundreds of villages and cities—will the wilful execution of this whole devilish scheme to annihilate the Armenian, Greek, and Syrian Christians of Turkey—will all this go unpunished? Will the Turks be permitted, aye, even encouraged by our cowardice in not striking back, to continue to treat all Christians in their power as “unbelieving dogs”? Or will definite steps be promptly taken to rescue permanently the remnants of these fine, old, civilized, Christian peoples from the fangs of the Turk?
That was a tragic story, but it had its lighter phase. Following a common custom, the editors of the Red Cross Magazine printed on the front cover of their publication my name and the title of the article. The juxtaposition was unfortunate and startling:
“Henry Morgenthau—The Greatest Horror in History!”
“That’s pretty rough,” wrote the New York Sun. “We always realized fully that the former Ambassador to Turkey was not a handsome man, but the Red Cross Magazine really has gone too far.”
The Jewish question interested me quite as deeply, and on December 12, 1917, I published in the New York Times a carefully considered statement.
This was the fruit of my thirty months’ experience with the problem of the Jews in Turkey and of my observations at first hand of their status and projects in Palestine, and was in line with my purpose to do more than alleviate the present sufferings of the Jews. Because this statement is important in its bearing upon my chapter on Zionism, I am reproducing it here in full. As my present opinion on Zionism is the outgrowth of years of sympathetic reflection, continuous observation, and conscientious personal study of the facts, I should like to emphasize the date of this publication, and thus indicate the progress of my views toward their settled conviction regarding Zionism:
To the Editor of the New York Times:
The fall of Jerusalem, its recapture by Christian forces after twelve centuries of almost uninterrupted Mohammedan rule, is surely an event of the greatest significance to us all. American Christians, and indeed Christians everywhere, will rejoice that the Holy Land, so well known to them through both the Old and New Testaments, has been restored to the civilized world.