Now there remains not a single Armenian teacher or pupil in our mission college at X., out of the more than 200 who were there before the war began. All have been sent away by the order of the highest Government authorities, into exile or to death. With unspeakable brutality, the innocent young women teachers and pupils of the girls’ school, who were remaining in the school for the summer vacation on account of the difficulties of travelling to their homes, were carried off by the Turkish gendarmes under Government orders; but with equal heroism and courage the American principal of the girls’ school rescued 41 of them from death, or a condition worse than that, after nearly a month’s pursuit over rough and dangerous roads.
With insensate cruelty and wickedness, the young women nurses of the hospital, who were risking their lives in nursing soldiers of the Turkish Army sick with the deadly typhus fever, were driven away by the gendarmes just[just] like the rest of their unfortunate sisters. The American physician in charge of our hospital begged the Turkish officers in charge of the deportation to spare the nurses who were serving their own soldiers. These officers declared that they were ordered by their superiors to make no exceptions whatsoever; but, because the doctor begged so hard, four out of the dozen nurses would be allowed to remain temporarily and continue their work of mercy. That left the doctor to perform the heart-rending task of selecting those who should go and those who should remain. It was like casting pearls before swine when he made them draw lots to decide their fate. Some of the best and most experienced nurses drew lots to go. One who held a diploma from one of the leading London hospitals, who was a pioneer in the nurses’ profession in Asia Minor, and who was known as the Florence Nightingale of Armenia, was taken away with the young women of the girls’ school. She was not rescued with the 41 fortunate ones. Though great in soul, she was lame and not comely in form, and on this account she has probably been allowed to perish by the way instead of being reserved for a life of shame.
It is now my purpose to show you, as best I can, by narrating facts out of my recent experience at X. in connection with these events, how the work of this great mission station in Asia Minor, a work in which I have been engaged as a missionary for ten years, a work in which hundreds of our American people have a deep and personal interest, and in which they have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars of their hard-earned money and the life work of a score of devoted missionaries, was suddenly and brutally interrupted by the Turkish Government on the 10th and 12th August of this year. You will see, incidentally, how this work of destruction illustrates the deep laid and carefully executed plans of the Turkish Government for the assassination and annihilation of the Armenian people. You will see how that Government scorned and flouted all the efforts of the missionaries and of the diplomatic representatives of our Government to save the lives and the honour of innocent women and girls. You will also see how it is possible for Christian men and women to bear faithful witness to their faith in this twentieth Christian century in a persecution not less in intensity, and greater in magnitude, than any that was ever inflicted on the early Christian martyrs by the most cruel of the pagan Roman emperors. It may astonish you to hear it, but it is true nevertheless, that there are living in the world to-day men who are the equals of Nero in cruelty.
On my way from X. to Constantinople,[[107]] I saw at least 50,000 people, three-fourths of whom were women and children, who had been torn from their homes and all their earthly possessions, and driven into the fields along the railway line without any shelter or any adequate means of subsistence, hungry, sick and perishing, awaiting the conveniences of the railway traffic to be crowded like sheep into the goods trucks, to be carried away eastward to die in the deserts, if they did not perish or disappear in Turkish harems on the way. I saw hundreds of mothers whose hearts were being broken by the cries of their hungry children, whom they had no hope of being able to succour or to save. The officials of the German railway were co-operating with the corrupt officials of the Turkish Government to extort all the money they could from this doleful throng. The 50,000 whom I saw represented but a brief section of the procession which has been passing along that way for months.[[108]] A very moderate estimate of the number of people who have perished in this way places the figure at 500,000; and still they go on!
I have received the farewell kiss and parting embrace of men, cultured Christian gentlemen, some of whom held university degrees from our best American institutions in this country, men with whom I have co-operated and at whose side I have laboured for ten years in the work of education in that land, while at their side stood brutal gendarmes, sent there by the highest authorities of the Government to drive them away with their wives and children from their homes, from their work, and from all the associations which they held most dear, into exile or to death, and some of them to a condition worse than either. We had no better friends in this world than those people were. To part with them under such circumstances was harder than I can say, and yet but few tears were shed on either side. Our feelings were too deep for idle tears! I have often seen pictures of the early Christian martyrs crouching together in the arena of the Coliseum, expecting at any moment to be torn in pieces by the hungry lions which were being turned loose upon them, while the eager spectators were watching from their safe seats, and waiting to be amused by that spectacle. And I had supposed that such cruelties and such amusements were impossible in this twentieth Christian century. But I was mistaken. I have seen 62 Armenian women and girls, between the ages of 15 and 25, huddled together in the rooms of the principal of our American girls’ school at X., while outside were waiting men more cruel than beasts, ready to carry them off; and these men were demanding, backed by the highest authorities of the Government, that we should deliver these defenceless girls into their brutal hands, for them to do with them what they would. I had supposed that there was no man in the world to-day who could be amused by such a spectacle as that. In this, too, I was mistaken, for when the wife of our American Ambassador at Constantinople made a personal appeal to Talaat Bey, the Minister of the Interior in the Turkish Cabinet—the man who more than anyone else has devised and executed this deportation of the Armenians, and who has boasted that he has been able to destroy more Armenians in 30 days than Abd-ul-Hamid was able to destroy in 30 years—when she made an appeal to this Turkish Minister, begging him to stop this cruel persecution of Armenian women and girls, the only answer she got from him was: “All this amuses us!”
I will now narrate some of the more important events leading up to this climax.
We were surprised on the morning of the last Wednesday in April to learn that the professor of Armenian in our college had been arrested during the previous night along with a number[[109]] of the other leading Armenians of the city. We found upon inquiry that all these men were or had been members of one or the other of the Armenian nationalist societies, the Hunchakists or the Dashnakists[[110]]. These societies had a legal existence under the Turkish Government. They had up till quite recently been on good terms with the Government of the Young Turks. They co-operated with the party of Union and Progress in overthrowing the tyranny of Abd-ul-Hamid in 1908. They desired to co-operate with the Turks in establishing an enlightened constitutional Government in Turkey. But recently, when the policy of destroying the Armenians was determined upon, it seems that the Government thought it advisable to hit the leading members of the Armenian nationalist societies first. A number of the prominent members of these societies were hanged in Constantinople. Those arrested in our city were held in prison for a few days. Then they were sent to the capital of the province, where they were tortured and exposed to the contagion of typhus fever. Within six weeks of their arrest, their families received notice through the Government officials that not any of them remained alive. The wife of our professor was a cultured young woman, who had taught for years in our girls’ school. She was left a widow with one child, a little girl. She remained alone in her home, but not for long; for, some weeks after, when all the people were deported from her quarter of the city, she was carried away along with the rest. I saw her, dressed in the costume of a Turkish woman, leading her little girl by the hand as she passed by our college gate on the morning she was driven out, with hundreds of other women and children, on to the roads, to be captured or to die.
During the month of May, the Government was active in enlisting into the Army the Armenian young men whom they had not already enrolled. The majority of them were already serving under the colours, having been called out in the early months of the war. Some of our Armenian students had already been advanced to the position of officers in the Turkish Army because of their superior education and intelligence. Those who remained were now being called out and sent away. Some, who could afford it, paid the exemption tax of £44 (Turkish—about £40 sterling), and remained at home. Those who went with these last contingents, as a rule, were not allowed to bear arms, but were forced to do menial labour, such as building roads and carrying baggage, most of the horses and donkeys which had been requisitioned from the poor people in the early months of the war having died from rough usage or neglect.
In the month of June the Government repeatedly published an edict, by criers in the streets, ordering all the people to give up their weapons of every kind to the police. It was not at all strange that the Armenians should possess some weapons. It was the custom of the country, because of the insecurity of life and property there, for all who could afford it to possess some means of self-defence. It was obvious that this order was intended only for the Armenians, as they alone were compelled to obey it, whereas their Mohammedan neighbours, who possessed at least as many weapons as they did, were not compelled to obey it. This fact aroused the suspicions of the Armenians, because they remembered that on previous occasions, when the Turks contemplated a massacre of Armenians, they began by disarming them. Many Armenians hesitated on this account to give up their arms, and none of them would have done so if they had suspected what plans the Turks had in store for them. However, the Government took special pains on this occasion to reassure the Armenians, promising them protection and security if they would give up their arms. They were told that they could prove their loyalty only by obeying the order, and they were threatened with the severest punishment if they should refuse. In spite of many misgivings, most of the Armenians gave up their arms; and some of them, to prove their loyalty, actually assisted the Government in disarming their own people. Only a very few held out against the order and hid their weapons in their houses or in their gardens. Persons suspected of doing this were arrested and taken to the Government Building, where they were subjected to the cruellest forms of torture. Usually they were bound and bastinadoed until they became unconscious. Boiling water was often poured on the soles of the feet, to increase the pain of the bastinadoing. The victim was usually ordered to confess that he was guilty of conspiracy against the Government. Often he was ordered to implicate others; and to escape the terrible pain of the torture they would say almost anything they were told to say. These declarations made under torture were used as evidence against others. At least two men of our city died under this torture. Two of our own employees were subjected to it, the one a gate-keeper and the other a blacksmith, who did general repair work about our premises. I saw two gendarmes leading this man out of our front gate one afternoon in June. They took him to the Government Building. There they bound him, and four brutal men stuffed his mouth with filth and beat him with rods all over the body until he became unconscious. As soon as he regained consciousness, they repeated the process. Apparently their intention was to kill him by torture, and they would have done so if it had not been for the timely intervention of a friendly gendarme, a Circassian, who had been in our employment and who knew the Armenian who was being tortured. He intervened and rescued the man from his tormentors, and carried him home on his own back after it was dark enough to escape observation. He was saved, but not for long. When he had recovered, a month after[[111]], he was carried away, with his wife and two small children, in the general deportation. We learned afterwards that the occasion for this man’s torture was that he was seen casting a 16-pound shot, which we had ordered him to make for our college field-day sports this year. The man who saw him reported to the police that he had been making bombs!
After having weakened the Armenians to the extent of having sent most of the young men into the Army, and of having terrorised the rest, one night, toward the end of June,[[112]] suddenly, without any warning, the houses of almost all the Armenians who still remained in the city were forcibly entered by the police and gendarmes. The men were arrested and held as prisoners in the soldiers’ barracks at one side of the city. The whole number amounted to 1,213. Two more of our leading Armenian professors were arrested on this occasion.[[113]] After being held a few days, a very few, by paying very large sums of money[[114]] as bribes to the officials, were allowed to become Mohammedans, and were let out, to be sent away in a few days in the opposite direction to the rest. The rest were told that they were to be sent away into exile to Mosul, in the deserts of Mesopotamia, six or seven hundred miles away.