[169] Toynbee, “Armenian Atrocities,” pp. 30-1.
[170] A repetition of a case which is reported from the massacres of 1909 when a woman who had seen her child burnt alive in the village church, answered her would-be comforters: “Don’t you see what has happened? God has gone mad.” Toynbee, “Armenian Atrocities,” p. 38.
[171] Toynbee, “Armenian Atrocities,” pp. 39, 40.
[172] There were about 1500 or more of the Armenians in prison in Sivas, waiting to be massacred.
[173] The men at Tocat, like those in many other places, were taken on the road and killed. An Armenian soldier, serving in the Turkish army was captured by the British at the Dardanelles. This soldier stated, “How men of Tocat were tied together in groups of four and taken 100 at a time to the marshy districts for massacre.”
[174] These local officials receive two orders from the central government: the one to be shown to the neutrals, the other to deal with the Armenians. The latter order is to kill the Armenians in any manner they please.
[175] The Missionary Herald, Dec., 1915. Boston, Mass.
XX
CAMPS OF REFUGE
We have been looking only at the physical sufferings of these people. Terrible as they have been who could realize or imagine the spiritual, the mental agony of those refined souls, who have seen day by day the fiendish deeds more abominable than the tortures and massacres? “The spiritual torment could perhaps only be fathomed by actual experience.”
We could not think that in the second decade of the 20th century a small “gang of unscrupulous ruffians” could and did defy the laws of humanity and decency; and still be permitted to continue to practice such barbarities in the face of an outraged human conscience. Indeed, if these were not well established facts, we would not believe them.