“No, I did not say 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 for ever. 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 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 themselves some day call you to account. You are a Christian people, and the time will come when Germans will realise 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 things like these atrocities secret? Don’t get such a foolish, 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 be forced upon them again. If they should again be 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.”
Wangenheim again suggested that the Armenians be taken to the United States, and once more I gave him the reasons why this would be impossible.
“Never mind all these considerations,” I said. “Let us disregard everything—military necessity, State policy, and all else—and let us look upon this simply as a human problem. Remember that most of the people who are being treated in this way are old men, old women, and helpless children. Why can’t you, as a human being, see that these people are permitted to live?”
“At the present stage of internal affairs in Turkey,” Wangenheim replied, “I shall not intervene.”
I saw that it was useless to discuss the matter further. He was a man who was devoid of sympathy and human pity, and I turned from him in disgust. Wangenheim rose to leave. As he did so he gave a gasp, and his legs suddenly shot from under him. I jumped and caught him just as he was falling. For a minute he seemed utterly dazed; he looked at me in a bewildered way, then suddenly collected himself and regained his poise. I took the Ambassador by the arm, piloted him downstairs and put him into his auto. By this time he had apparently recovered from his dizzy spell and he reached home safely. Two days afterward, while sitting at his dinner-table, he had a stroke of apoplexy; he was carried upstairs to his bed, but never regained consciousness. On October 24th I was officially informed that Wangenheim was dead. And this, my last recollection of Wangenheim, is that of the Ambassador as he sat in my office in the American Embassy, absolutely refusing to exert any influence to prevent the massacre of a nation. He was the one man who could have stopped these crimes, and his Government the one Government, but, as Wangenheim told me many times, “our one aim is to win this war.”
A few days afterward official Turkey and the diplomatic force paid their last tribute to this finished embodiment of the Prussian system. Wangenheim was buried in the Park of the Summer Embassy at Therapia, by the side of his comrade Col. Leipzig. No resting-place could have been more appropriate, for this had been the scene of his diplomatic successes, and if was from here that, a little more than two years before, he had directed by wireless the Goeben and the Breslau, safely brought them into Constantinople, made it inevitable that Turkey should join forces with Germany, and paved the way for all the triumphs and all the horrors that had necessarily followed that event.