“Why don’t you give this money to us?” he said, with a grin.
“What money?” I asked.
“Here is a cablegram for you from America, sending you a lot of money for the Armenians. You ought not to use it that way; give it to us Turks, we need it as badly as they do.”
“I have not received any such cablegram,” I replied.
“Oh no, but you will,” he answered. “I always get all your cablegrams first, you know. After I have finished reading them I send them around to you.”
This statement was the literal truth. Every morning all the open cablegrams received in Constantinople were forwarded to Talaat, who read them all before consenting to their being forwarded to their destination. Even the cablegrams of the Ambassadors were apparently not exempt, though, of course, the ciphered messages were not interfered with. Ordinarily I might have protested against this infringement of my rights, but Talaat’s engaging frankness in pilfering my correspondence, and in even waving my own cablegrams in my face, gave me an excellent opening to introduce the forbidden subject.
I thought I would be a little tactful, and so began by suggesting that the Central Government was probably not to blame for the massacres.
But on this occasion, as on many others, Talaat was evasive and non-committal, and showed much hostility to the interest which the American people were manifesting in the Armenians. He explained his policy on the ground that the Armenians were in constant correspondence with the Russians. The definite impression which these conversations left upon me was that Talaat was the most implacable enemy of this persecuted race. “He gave me the impression,” such is the entry which I find in my diary on August 3rd, “that Talaat is the one who desires to crush the poor Armenians.” He told me that the Union and Progress Committee had carefully considered the matter in all its details, and that the policy which was being pursued was that which they had officially adopted. He said that I must not get the idea that the deportations had been decided upon hastily; in reality they were the result of prolonged and careful deliberation. To my repeated appeals that he should show mercy to these people he sometimes responded seriously, sometimes angrily, and sometimes flippantly.
“Some day,” he once said, “I will come and discuss the whole Armenian subject with you,” and then he added in a low tone in Turkish, “But that day will never come.”
“Why are you interested in the Armenians, anyway?” he said on another occasion. “You are a Jew; these people are Christians. The Mohammedans and the Jews always get on harmoniously. We are treating the Jews here all right. What have you to complain of? Why can’t you let us do with these Christians as we please?”