“At Der-el-Zor, a large town in the desert, about six days’ drive from Aleppo, we saw a big khan, all the rooms, the roof and the verandahs of which were crowded with Armenians, mostly women and children, with a few old men. They had slept on their blankets wherever they could find any shade.... For these mountaineers the desert climate is terrible. On the next day I reached a large Armenian camp of goatskin tents, but most of the unfortunate people were sleeping out in the sun on the burning sands. The Turks had given them a day’s rest on account of the large number of sick. It was evident from their clothing that these people had been well-to-do; they were natives of Geben, another village near Zeitoun, and were led by their religious head. It was a daily occurrence for five or six of the children of these people to die by the wayside.
“On the next day I met another camp of these Zeitoun Armenians. There were the same indescribable sufferings, the same accounts of misery—‘why do they not kill us once for all?’ asked they. ‘For days we have no water to drink, and our children are crying for water. At night the Arabs attack us; they steal our bedding; our clothes that we have been able to get together; they carry away by force our girls and outrage our women. If any of us are unable to walk, the convoy of gendarmes beat us. Some of our women threw themselves down from the rocks into the Euphrates in order to save their honor—some of these with their infants in their arms.’”
The German missionaries, who have been witnessing these terrible cruelties, have made a protest to their foreign office. This protest was signed by the following persons: Director Huber, Dr. Niepage, Dr. Graetner, and M. Spieler, who constituted the faculty of the German High School at Aleppo, Turkey. A copy of this protest and a letter from Dr. Graetner were secured by the New York Times and were published in its issue of September 20th, 1916. We quote the following extracts:
“We feel it our duty to call the attention of the foreign office to the fact that our school work, the formation of a basis of civilization and instilling of respect in the natives will be henceforward impossible if the German Government is not in a position to put an end to the brutalities inflicted here on the exiled wives and children of murdered Armenians. In face of the horrible scenes which take place daily near our school buildings, before our very eyes, our school work has sunk to a level which is an insult to all human sentiments....
“Girls, boys, and women, all practically naked, lie on the ground breathing their last sighs amid the dying and among the coffins put out ready for them. Forty to fifty people reduced to skeletons are all that is left of the 2000 to 3000 healthy peasant women driven down here from Upper Armenia. The good-looking ones are decimated by the vice of their gaolers, whilst the ugly ones are victimized by beatings, hunger, and thirst. Even those lying at the water’s edge are not allowed to drink. Europeans are prohibited from distributing bread among them. More than a hundred corpses are taken out daily from Aleppo. All this is taking place before the eyes of highly placed Turkish officials. Forty to fifty people reduced to skeletons are lying heaped up in a yard near our school. They are practically insane and have forgotten how to eat. If one offers them bread they push it indifferently aside. They utter low groans and await death. Ta-a-lim el almon (the cult of the Germans) is responsible for this, the natives declare. It will always remain a terrible stain on Germany’s honor among the generations to come.
“... Perhaps the German people, too, are ignorant of these events. How would it be possible otherwise for the usually truth-loving German press to report the humane treatment of Armenians accused of high treason? But it may be that the German government’s hands are tied by reason of certain contracts.... Every cultured human being is competent to intervene, and it is, in fact, his sacred duty to do so. Our esteem among the generations to come is at stake. The more refined Turks and Arabs shake their heads sorrowfully when they see brutal soldiers bringing convoys through the town of women far advanced in pregnancy, whom they beat with cudgels, these poor wretches being hardly able to drag themselves along.”[180]
Dr. Edward Graetner’s letter was dated July 7, 1916, and was written from Basle, Switzerland, to a German theologian in a neutral country:
“I am going to tell you more about the Armenian episode, for this time the question was not one of the traditional massacres, but of nothing more or less than the complete extermination of the Armenians in Turkey. This fact Talaat Bey’s Turkish officials cynically admitted with some embarrassment to the German Consul. The government first made out that they only wanted to clear the war zone and to assign new dwellings to the emigrants.
“They began by enticing the most warlike of the mountaineers out of their rocky fastnesses. This they did with the help of the securities [promises] of the Turkish Empire, of the heads of their own churches, of the American missionaries and of one German consul.[181] Thereupon began expulsions from everywhere, even from districts to which the war will never be carried. How these were affected is shown from the fact that out of the 18,000 people driven out of Harpoot and Sivas only 350 reached Aleppo, and only eleven out of the 1900 from Erzerum. Once at Aleppo the poorest of these were by no means at the end of their troubles. Those who did not die here (the cemeteries are full) were driven by night to the Syrian steppes, toward the Zor on the Euphrates. Here a very small percentage drag out their existence, threatened by starvation. I state this as an eye-witness. I was there in October of last year and saw with my own eyes several Armenian corpses floating in the Euphrates and lying about the steppes.
“The Germans, with a number of laudable exceptions, witnessed these things quite unperturbed, holding out the following excuse: ‘We just need the Turks, you see!’ I know for a fact, moreover, that an employee of the German Cotton Association and one of the Bagdad railway were forbidden to help the Armenians. German officers have also raised a complaint against their consul for his sympathy with the Armenians, and a German teacher, although most capable, was not appointed to a school of the Turco-German Association, on account of his having an Armenian wife. They are afraid that the Turks might take offense at this. The Turks are less considerate. ‘The question is one of a Turkish internal affair, we must not mix ourselves up in it!’ This is what one constantly hears people say. Once it was a question, however, of persuading the Armenians to yield, they did mix themselves up in it!