“Certainly,” he answered; “all of us Jews are proud of what you have done and we would hate to see your career end disastrously.”
“Then you go back to the German Embassy,” I said, “and tell Wangenheim what I say—to go ahead and have me recalled. If I am to suffer martyrdom, I can think of no better cause in which to be sacrificed. In fact, I would welcome it, for I can think of no greater honour than to be recalled because I, a Jew, have been exerting all my powers to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Christians.”
Dr. Nossig hurriedly left my office and I have never seen him since. When next I met Enver I told him that there were rumours that the Ottoman Government was about to ask for my recall. He was very emphatic in denouncing the whole story as a falsehood. “We would not be guilty of making such a ridiculous mistake,” he said. So there was not the slightest doubt that this attempt to intimidate me had been hatched at the German Embassy.
Wangenheim returned to Constantinople in early October. I was shocked at the changes that had taken place in the man. As I wrote in my diary, “he looked the perfect picture of Wotan.” His face was almost constantly twitching; he wore a black cover over his right eye, and he seemed unusually nervous and depressed. He told me that he had obtained little rest; that he had been obliged to spend most of his time in Berlin attending to business. A few days after his return I met him on my way to Haskeuy; he said that he was going to the American Embassy and together we walked back to it. I had been recently told by Talaat that he intended to deport all the Armenians who were left in Turkey and this statement had induced me to make a final plea to the one man in Constantinople who had the power to end the horrors. I took Wangenheim up to the second floor of the Embassy, where we could be entirely alone and uninterrupted, and there, for more than an hour, sitting together over the tea table, we had our last conversation on this subject.
“Berlin telegraphs me,” he said, “that your Secretary of State tells them that you say that more Armenians than ever have been massacred since Bulgaria has come in on our side.”
“No, I did not cable that,” I replied. “I admit that I have sent a large amount of information to Washington. I have sent copies of every report and every statement to the State Department. They are safely lodged there, and whatever happens to me, the evidence is complete, and the American people are not dependent on my oral report for their information. But this particular statement you make is not quite accurate. I merely informed Mr. Lansing that any influence Bulgaria might exert to stop the massacres has been lost, now that she has become Turkey’s ally.”
We again discussed the deportations.
“Germany is not responsible for this,” Wangenheim said.
“You can assert that to the end of time,” I replied “but nobody will believe it. The world will always hold Germany responsible; the guilt of these crimes will be your inheritance forever. I know that you have filed a paper protest. But what does that amount to? You know better than I do that such a protest will have no effect. I do not claim that Germany is responsible for these massacres in the sense that she instigated them. But she is responsible in the sense that she had the power to stop them and did not use it. And it is not only America and your present enemies that will hold you responsible. The German people will some day call your government to account. You are a Christian people and the time will come when Germans will realize that you have let a Mohammedan people destroy another Christian nation. How foolish is your protest that I am sending information to my State Department. Do you suppose that you can keep secret such hellish atrocities as these? Don’t get such a silly, ostrich-like thought as that—don’t think that by ignoring them yourselves, you can get the rest of the world to do so. Crimes like these cry to heaven. Do you think I could know about things like this and not report them to my government? And don’t forget that German missionaries, as well as American, are sending me information about the Armenians.”
“All that you say may be true,” replied the German Ambassador, “but the big problem that confronts us is to win this war. Turkey has settled with her foreign enemies; she has done that at the Dardanelles and at Gallipoli. She is now trying to settle her internal affairs. They still greatly fear that the Capitulations will again be forced upon them. Before they are again put under this restraint, they intend to have their internal problems in such shape that there will be little chance of any interference from foreign nations. Talaat has told me that he is determined to complete this task before peace is declared. In the future they don’t intend that the Russians shall be in a position to say that they have a right to intervene about Armenian matters because there are a large number of Armenians in Russia who are affected by the troubles of their co-religionists in Turkey. Giers used to be doing this all the time and the Turks do not intend that any ambassador from Russia or from any other country shall have such an opportunity in the future. The Armenians anyway are a very poor lot. You come in contact in Constantinople with Armenians of the educated classes, and you get your impressions about them from these men, but all the Armenians are not of that type. Yet I admit that they have been treated terribly. I sent a man to make investigations and he reported that the worst outrages have not been committed by Turkish officials but by brigands.”