ANN/Groong -- Daily Newspaper Reporting of The Armenian Genocide: Could Th

[Armenian News Network <groong-request@usc.edu>]

DAILY NEWSPAPER REPORTING OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE:
COULD THEY ALL BE WRONG?

Armenian News Network / Groong
April 23, 2008

By Katia M. Peltekian


In a world where there were no radios, televisions or the internet,  
the only source of information for events occurring around the world  
was the newspaper.  At the time, the news did not travel fast, but it  
did eventually reach the four corners of the world.

Throughout the world, papers filled their pages with news from the  
Ottoman Empire. Towards the end of the 19th century, when European  
countries as well as the United States were on friendly terms with  
Turkey, thousands of reports about the on-going massacres and  
mistreatment of the Armenians were printed on the pages of such well- 
known newspapers in the English language as The Times (of London),  
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The  
Toronto Star, The Montreal Gazette, etc.  These newspapers included  
reports by correspondents, travelers, and consuls or ambassadors of  
different countries based in the different regions of the Ottoman  
Empire. But the more detailed reports came from the missionaries who  
witnessed the plight of the Armenians and tried to help the orphans  
and the survivors as best they could.

It is to be noted that the Western press covered the Hamidian  
massacres much more extensively than the massacres of World War One  
period since many of the western countries broke diplomatic relations  
with Turkey when the Great War broke out. Not only diplomats left the  
Empire but for safety reasons their citizens left also. On the other  
hand, as a neutral country, the USA kept its ambassador, consuls and  
missionaries in Turkey for the first three years of the War. As the  
number and frequency of the reports in the British press dropped, for  
example, those in the American press were on the rise until America  
joined the War on the side of the Allies in April 1917.


THE SOURCES

A careful examination of various newspapers in the English language  
will show that the sources for information originated from what could  
be labeled as the best kind of evidence: eyewitnesses as well as  
victims themselves. Most of the news originated from the war zone and  
its vicinity where refugees were welcomed; the reports included the  
eyewitness accounts of missionaries, consuls, survivors and refugees.  
Other sources emerged from world capitals such as London, Paris,  
Berlin, Washington and, more importantly, from Constantinople where  
correspondents and diplomatic missions of neutral or allied countries  
resided.

Thus most of the information about the ongoing massacres in the  
different regions of the Ottoman Empire came from diplomatic  
missions, religious missions, physicians, teachers and travelers.  
These sources were often referred to as sources of `unquestioned  
veracity, integrity and authority'; in many instances, the reports  
came from an eyewitness whose `reliability cannot be questioned', or  
from `well-known Americans who are cognizant of the actual situation  
in Turkey' who `produce absolutely trustworthy evidence and  
authenticated data.'

The United States maintained a neutral position during the first  
three years of the Great War. It had an ambassador residing in  
Constantinople, and consuls and vice-consuls well-spread around the  
Ottoman Empire. In addition, the American missionaries were placed  
throughout the area where they could observe events or record  
eyewitness testimonies directly from survivors and victims. Since the  
missionaries were in daily contact with the people, they were able to  
provide credible testimony on the treatment of the Armenians during  
the deportations and about the mass murders.

The British and the Commonwealth countries, on the other hand,  
depended on the British ex-residents of Turkey who left their homes  
as the war broke out. Also correspondents traveling with the Russian  
army on the Caucasus front reported the scenes of atrocities as the  
Russians liberated the Armenian cities of Erzurum, Bitlis and Trebizond.

In many instances the British, Canadian and the American newspapers  
relied also on reports written by the foreign press or were released  
by foreign missionaries and diplomats. For example, the Italian  
consul of Trebizond Signor Giacomo Gorrini stated in a special cable  
dispatch to a Canadian newspaper in August 1915 the following:

    The decree, which was published on June 24, ordered the massacre of  
    Armenians, and forms the blackest page in Ottoman history ... The  
    result of the proclamation was carnage on a big and bloody scale ... I  
    saw thousands of innocent women and children placed on boats which  
    were capsized in the Black Sea. Thousands of young Armenian women  
    were forcibly converted to Mohammedism ... I shall never forget the  
    scenes of horror I witnessed from June 21 to July 23, when I left.'

Another source of information came from the Germans themselves,  
Turkey's allies during the Great War. In October 1915, The Los  
Angeles Times published a translated version of what a German  
official had declared in German newspapers:

    If Turkey considers necessary that the Armenian uprising and other  
    intrigues be suppressed with all means ... that does not constitute  
    massacres nor atrocities, but simply a measure of a justified and  
    necessary character ... `

Occasionally, there also appeared the Turkish `version' of the events  
that occurred in the Eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire, denying  
all the reports that diplomats and missionaries wrote. However, there  
was a Turkish statesman who denounced the atrocities committed by the  
Turkish authorities. According to a statement Cherif Pasha sent to  
The New York Times in October 1915

    ... the Young Turks, or the Committee of Union and Progress, ... for  
    years plotted the extermination of the Armenian people.

The answer of the Turkish Consul General in New York Djelal Bey to  
the same newspaper came as such:

    ... There may have been cases where inoffensive people shared the  
    fate of the offender ... Unfortunately, in times of war, such  
    discrimination is utterly impossible... However much to be deplored may  
    be these harrowing events in the last analysis, we can but say that  
    the Armenians have only themselves to blame.

In 1916, The Times of London (Great Britain) printed an interview  
with Talaat Bey, the Turkish Minister of Interior. The source was a  
newspaper from Germany - an ally of Turkey. Talaat was quoted  
confessing the following:

    The removal of the Armenians from the eastern Vilayets of Turkey  
    became in consequence a military, national and historical necessity ...  
    The removal of the western group to Deyr-Zor was unfortunately  
    entrusted to an incapable official and serious `excesses' followed ...  
    We have been blamed for not making a distinction between the innocent  
    and the guilty. It was impossible; the innocent of today might become  
    the guilty of tomorrow.





THE WORD `GENOCIDE'

The word Genocide was not coined until the 1940s; however, other  
terms and phrases were used to describe the way the Armenians were  
treated in Ottoman Turkey not only by the Turkish and Kurdish  
population but by the Turkish authorities also.

Some of these terms in the American and British press correspond  
partly or wholly to the definition of Genocide: `organized and  
systematic massacre,'  `a systematic authorized and desperate effort  
on the part of the rulers of Turkey to wipe out the Armenians,' and  
`a war of extermination on Armenians,'  `annihilation of the whole  
people,' or `the gradual destruction of the Armenians.'

Although successive Turkish governments have denied that the Ottoman  
government had any intention to wipe out the Armenians, the reports   
coming out of Turkey confirmed that the `police massacre Armenians on  
orders of authorities,'  that the Armenians were `exiled under  
conditions that mean slow extermination,'  that the Armenians were  
`being exterminated as a result of an absolutely premeditated policy  
elaborately pursued by the gang now in control of Turkey,' or that  
`the massacres are the result of a deliberate plan of the Turkish  
Government to get rid of the Armenian question.'

Many similar descriptions do in fact confirm that the Turkish  
authorities planned and executed the extermination of the Armenian  
population.


PERIOD BEFORE THE GREAT WAR

One reason Turkey and Turkish historians now give for the wholesale  
massacre of Armenians is that there was a war and just as Turks were  
killed, so were the Armenians. Of course, they also claim that many  
Armenians were punished because they were traitors and joined the  
Russian army fighting against Turkey. However, there is no  
explanation for the massacres that occurred prior to the Great War.  
During the Sultan Hamid era, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were  
killed in cold blood in such cities as Zeitoun, Sassoun, Ourfa,  
Erzurum and Van in the 1890s.

At the time, the newspapers of the western world, which were on good  
terms with Turkey, printed thousands of reports describing the  
deplorable situation of the Armenians under Turkish rule. A small  
sampling of the headlines from the 19th century papers outlines the  
condition of the Armenians under Turkish rule:

. Fresh Turkish Outrages: 700 Christians reported to have been  
  massacred at Erzeroum. (The New York Times - Sept. 27, 1876)
. The Erzeroum Massacre: Armenians slaughtered and the British  
  Consulate stoned. (The New York Times - July 26, 1890)
. Dungeons for Christians: Nearly 2,000 Armenians immured in Turkish  
  prisons.  (The Washington Post - April 10, 1893)
. The Armenians: Innocent Christians executed by the Ottoman  
  Authorities. (The Los Angeles Times - Aug. 4, 1893)
. Armenians murdered in Turkey: Hundreds of bodies thrown into the  
  harbor of Constantinople. (Chicago Daily Tribune - Oct. 20, 1893)
. Massacre of Armenians: Horrible tales of butchery perpetrated by  
  Turks - Thousands were killed. (The Halifax Herald - Nov. 20, 1894)
. Massacre of the Armenians: Turkish troops made a solitude and called  
  it peace in Sassoun. (The New York Times - Nov 27, 1894)
. Disturbed Armenia: Massacres Confirmed. (The Times - Dec. 4, 1894)
  He Tells of the Sacking of Hadjin: Another story of the Armenian  
  massacre from an eye-witness. (Chicago Daily Tribune - Dec. 8, 1894)
. Horrible Massacres: Treacherous Turkish troops murder 360 Armenians  
  of all ages and both sexes. (The Halifax Herald - Feb 28, 1895)
. Eight Thousand Butchered: The horrors of the Armenian massacres only  
  just beginning to be realized by     the World. (The New York Times -  
  March 25, 1895)
. Turkish Atrocities: Pitiful stories of pillage, burning, torture and  
  murder. (The Halifax Herald - June 13, 1895)
. The Trebizond Massacre. (The Sunday Times - Oct. 27, 1895)
. The Massacres in Erzurum. (The Times - Nov. 16, 1895)
. Plunder and Outrage: Armenian villages for a distance of 200 miles  
  are looted and burned and their inhabitants killed or put to flight.  
  (The Los Angeles Times - Jan. 1, 1896)
. 100,000 Massacred in Armenia and 250,000 Christians rendered  
  homeless. (The Halifax Herald - Jan. 3, 1896)
. Two Thousand Dead: The awful sweep of the ravenous Turk. (The Los  
  Angeles Times - Feb. 12, 1896)
. At Mercy of the Turks: Graphic picture of the suffering of the  
  Armenians - Massacres the result of definite plan devised by the  
. Sultan and his advisers to annihilate the `Hated Christians' (Chicago  
  Daily Tribune - Feb. 22, 1896)
. Armenians Killed at Oorfa: 8,000 victims said to have been murdered.  
  (The New York Times - May 19, 1896)
. The Armenian Outrages: How the Christians were murdered by the cruel  
  Turks - Stories of horror which are unequaled - Mothers killed in the  
  presence of their husbands and children. (The New York Times - June  
  1, 1896)
. Fresh Disturbances in Van: Renewal of the Armenian massacres - 400  
  people killed. (The Washington Post - June 25, 1896)
. Deportation of the Armenians - (The New York Times - Sept. 7, 1896)
. Armenians Slain by the Hundreds: British Ambassador Currie makes a  
  protest. (The Halifax Herald - March 27, 1897)
. The Tokat Massacre. (The Times - May 6, 1897)
  Wholesale Massacre: Secret Extermination. (The Halifax Herald - July  
  13, 1897).


And the massacres did not stop there. At different intervals of time,  
massacres of the Armenian population also took place during the first  
years of the 20th century.

The following selective excerpts from different newspapers illustrate  
the situation of the Armenians between 1900 and 1914. The Armenians  
were exposed to not only massacres but also dislocation. They were  
disarmed, dispersed, pillaged, outraged and murdered in cold blood  
during peaceful times. The worst was in 1909 when the Turks and Kurds  
descended on the Armenians of the Vilayet of Adana and wiped out an  
estimated number of 30,000 in the towns and villages of the district.  
At the time, there was no Great War. The Armenians were not simply  
casualties of war. Their extermination was a premeditated plan set by  
the Turkish authorities.


Chicago Daily Tribune - Oct. 21, 1900.
According to a dispatch to a French newspaper, `frightful massacres  
of Armenians have just occurred in the district of Diarbekir.' The  
report asserts that for five days, the Turkish population of the city  
killed and outraged the Armenians as the Turkish troops watched. In  
addition, eight villages were entirely destroyed and burned and the  
residents were left homeless.

The New York Times - Aug. 30, 1901.
A reference is made to an article in the London-based newspaper The  
Daily Mail and written by Ali Nouri Bey, ex-Turkish Consul at  
Rotterdam with the heading that confirms the Porte intends to  
exterminate the Armenian race by a regular system. According to Ali  
Nouri Bey, the massacres that had recently restarted are `part of a  
regular system of extermination. The number of Armenians killed will  
depend upon the outcry raised in Europe and the pressure brought to  
bear upon the Sultan. The same horrible process will be repeated year  
by year until all are killed.'

On September 20, 1901, the same paper reports briefly about The  
Armenian Troubles: It is believed that the Turks mean to exterminate  
the Mountaineers in Sassoun Vilayet.

The Washington Post - May 14, 1904.
Titled Sassoun Armenians practically exterminated by the Turks, an  
official dispatch received from Constantinople by the French Foreign  
Office confirms `the reports that Turkish troops have burned villages  
throughout the Sassoun district of Armenia, killing the  
inhabitants.'  Together with the British and Russian Ambassadors, the  
French Ambassador M. Constans sent consuls to the Erzeroum area to  
try and stop further massacres from occurring. `However, the official  
advices indicate that the work of exterminating the Armenians  
occupying the mountainous district of Sassoun is practically  
accomplished.'

Chicago Daily Tribune - May 29, 1904.
The headline reads Turks said to have destroyed forty-three villages  
and massacred the inhabitants. The news from Paris reports: `Deputy  
De Pressense (Socialist) has received a telegram from Baku saying the  
Turkish forces operating against the Armenians consisted of 12,000  
regulars and 10,000 Kurds, ... and that forty-three villages were  
burned and their inhabitants killed. The male Armenians are said to  
have made a desperate resistance on the summit of Mount Antok.'

The Washington Post - July 13, 1906.
The massacres have reached the city of Van. `Alarming news has been  
received [in Tiflis] of horrible ravages by Turkish troops across the  
border, in Turkish Armenia. Soldiers who were collecting taxes are  
said to have indulged in frightful outrages. The population of the  
city of Van is represented to have been nearly destroyed by the  
Turkish troops, who pulled down houses, assaulted the women, and  
acted generally like wild beasts ...'

The New York Times - Oct. 18, 1908.
This brief news comes from Berlin confirming that the Turkish troops  
committed many atrocities. According to a dispatch published by the  
German newspaper Berliner Tageblatt, `Armenians in Viran-Shehr have  
been massacred by Turkish troops. The women and children have been  
subjected to fearful treatment. The troops were sent to Viran-Shehr  
to overawe the mutinous townspeople, two-thirds of whom are  
Armenians, and they at once began to murder and plunder. They are  
said to have completely overrun the city.'

The New York Times - April 25, 1909.
The large title affirms 30,000 Killed in Massacres: Conservative  
Estimate of Victims of Turkish Fanaticism in Adana Vilayet. The news  
from Beirut describes the following: `At the town of Adana more than  
100 girls are missing. It is known that twenty-one native pastors  
have been killed. Fears are entertained that other American  
missionaries than those whose deaths have been reported, have been  
murdered. There are 15,000 refugees in Adana and Tarsus and 5,000 at  
Mersina.' The article also reports the following about different  
districts.

`In Hadjin, an American lady missionary Miss Lambert has been killed  
in the streets two days after she sent an appeal to Constantinople.'

`Dortyol is holding out.'

`Antioch is quiet, there being no Armenians left in that town.'

`The Armenian village of Kessab has been burned and many persons  
killed there. The women and children of Kessab are fugitives in the  
surrounding mountains, exposed to hunger and mob violence.'

The New York Times - April 28, 1909.
The Rev. Herbert Adams Gibbons of Hartford, Connecticut, a missionary  
of the American Board of Foreign Missions stationed in Adana and  
Tarsus writes a long report in which he describes the massacres as he  
witnessed them.

`The entire Vilayet of Adana has been visited during the last five  
days with a terrible massacre of Armenians, the worst ever known in  
the history of the district.'

The report continues: `Adana was a hell. The bazaars were looted and  
set on fire. There was continuous and unceasing shooting and killing  
in every part of the town, and fires raged in many quarters. Moslems  
from the neighborhood began pouring into the city and notwithstanding  
our protests, the Vali distributed arms to these men, alleging that  
they were Turkish reserves.'

`Adana is in a pitiable condition. The town has been pillaged and  
destroyed, and there are thousands of homeless people here without  
means of livelihood ... The corpses lie scattered through the streets.  
Friday, when I went out, I had to pick my way between the dead to  
avoid stepping on them. Saturday morning I counted a dozen cartloads  
of Armenian bodies in one-half an hour being carried to the river and  
thrown into the water...'

`The condition of the refugees is most pitiable and heartrending. Not  
only are there orphans and widows beyond number, but a great many,  
even the babies, are suffering from severe wounds.'

The report by Rev. Gibbons also gives details on how the problems  
started between the Turks and the Armenians and how the British  
Consul and his wife personally helped the wounded and the refugees.

Christian Science Monitor - Aug 21, 1913.
Turks Resume Persecution of the Armenians is the headline in this  
journal which publishes information that was placed in its  
possession. It prints the following by the journal's informant who  
`is the most unimpeachable source.' The article says:

`News also comes, our informant continues, from Diarbekir to the  
effect that Turks and Kurds are openly arming on a great scale with  
the connivance of the authorities; whereas the Christians have even  
their pocket revolvers taken away whenever the police can find them ...'

`In spite of categorical assurances given by the Porte to the  
Patriarchate that no Moslem emigrants from Macedonia and Thrace would  
be sent to Armenia, the first contingent of Turks has already reached  
Diarbekir. It is stated authoritatively that about 1000 of such  
families are to be quartered in the district of Tidje, Diarbekir,  
where the Armenian element predominates ...'

`The public debt department of the district has computed the loss  
suffered by the Armenians of Tchengiler (in Vilayet of Brusa) at  
#6000. This means that about 4000 Armenian peasants have been reduced  
to the brink of starvation for a whole year. This fact, out of many,  
is sufficient to demonstrate the policy adopted by the Turks to bring  
about the economic ruin of the Armenian element.'


THE WORLD WAR ONE PERIOD

And the Great War broke out in mid-1914. The Young Turks continued  
their policy of exterminating the Armenians and other minorities  
under the guise of war casualties.

When the war broke out and Turkey joined Germany and Austria,  
diplomats, correspondents and residents of those countries at war  
with Turkey left the Ottoman Empire. Although prior to the Great War  
the British sources, for example, had provided extensive reports  
about the conditions under which the Armenians lived, once the war  
broke out, the American diplomats and missionaries became the  
eyewitnesses to the wholesale massacres that took place in Armenian  
towns and villages.

The following handful of excerpts from the thousands of news reports  
printed in the British, American and Canadian press describe the  
horrible massacres and deportations which the Turkish authorities  
undertook.

The Times - Jan. 13, 1915.
The news received in Tiflis describes the frightful conditions in  
Azerbaijan as Turkey invades the region. The entire Armenian  
population in Tabriz is escaping towards the Caucasus as `the  
massacre of Armenians in the region of Bashkala, between Van and  
Urumia Lakes, continues.'

The Times - Feb. 23, 1915.
The details of the horrors perpetrated by the Turks during the  
occupation of Ardanuch are now available. According to a Tiflis  
correspondent, the Turks first `confined themselves to pillage, and  
slew only 15 civilians, but after December 30, when the news of our  
[Russian] occupation of Ardahan was received, the local Mussulmans  
threw off the mask, and the same evening organized a systematic  
massacre.. One hundred and fifty Armenians were led out into the  
street and shot, or had their throats cut ...'

The Washington Post - Feb. 28, 1915.
The details of further massacres are revealed: `Two hundred and fifty  
men were massacred at Tambot and their women carried into slavery.  
The Turks did not even permit internment of the bodies, but left them  
to be devoured by dogs.'

The New York Times - March 20, 1915
According to a report received by the Red Cross Fund in London, the  
`whole plain of Alashgerd is virtually covered with the bodies of  
men, women, and children.' The organizers of the Red Cross Fund say  
there are 120,000 destitute Armenians now in the Caucasus.

The Washington Post - April 25, 1915.
 From Tabriz comes the following news: `Hundreds of Armenians in the  
Vilayet of Van have been massacred by Turkish troops, according to  
refugees who arrived here today. All the towns near Lake Van have  
been sacked, the Turkish police killing all the Christians who  
escaped the first attack on the troops...'

Toronto Daily Star - April 26, 1915.
In a Canadian Press dispatch from Tiflis, terrible tales of Armenian  
slaughter have been reported. According to the Associated Press, 800  
villagers of Urfa and 720 in Salmas were massacred. The report  
continues: `Three weeks had failed to obliterate the signs of the  
slaughter. Pools of blood still marked the execution places in  
Haltevan. The caps of 36 victims lay where a mud wall had been  
toppled over them...'

The Washington Post - April 26, 1915
According to American missions in Persia, many refugees were arriving  
at Julfa in deplorable conditions: `Maddened women threw their  
children into the Araxes River or into pools in order to end their  
sufferings from cold and hunger. The mud and the cold and the  
shelterless nights, during which the garments of the refugees were  
frozen knee high, continued for three weeks, until the people were  
slowly dispersed by rail.'

The New York Times - April 29, 1915
In a letter sent to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, Dr.  
W.S. Vanneman, head of the Mission Hospital at Tabriz and the  
chairman of the relief committee appointed by the American Consul,  
writes the following: `About ten days ago the Kurds in Salmas, with  
the permission of the Turkish troops, gathered all the Nestorian and  
Armenian men remaining there, it is reported about 800. Four hundred  
were sent to Khosrova and 400 to Haft Dewan under the pretense of  
giving them bread. They were held a few days and then all of them  
were tortured and massacred. Many of the women and children were  
taken away and maltreated...'

The Washington Post - May 16, 1915.
The headline reads Kill 10,000 Christians: Turkish Regulars, with  
Artillery, Bombard Armenians. Van is again attacked. According to  
American missionary Robert M. Larabee and other aid agents, `this  
Armenian city in Asiatic Turkey was bombarded by 900 Turkish regular  
troops who had with them three pieces of artillery. Armenians  
numbering 860 assembled in the village of Saragunis to oppose the  
murderous bands of Kurds threatening that place, but the Kurds were  
aided by Turkish regulars, and after a long struggle the detachment  
of Armenians were all wiped out with the exception of eight men, who  
ultimately found shelter in the monastery of St. Tatius...'

The Times - May 24, 1915.
This London based newspaper has received the following from the Press  
Bureau. `His Majesty's Government, in common with the Governments of  
France and Russia, make the following public declaration: For about  
the last month the Kurds and the Turkish population of Armenia have  
been engaged in massacring Armenians, with the connivance and often  
the help of the Ottoman authorities. Such massacres took place about  
the middle of April at Erzerum, Dertchan, Egin, Bitlis, Sassoun,  
Moush, Zeitun, and in all Cilicia. The inhabitants of about 100  
villagers near Van were all assassinated, and in the town itself the  
Armenian quarter is besieged by Kurds. At the same time the Ottoman  
Government at Constantinople is raging against the inoffensive  
Armenian population. In the face of these fresh crimes, committed by  
Turkey, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte  
that they will hold all the members of the Ottoman Government, as  
well as such of their agents as are implicated, personally  
responsible for such massacres.'

The Montreal Daily Star - July 23, 1915.
Francis Lavelle Murray of the International News reports from  
Petrograd: `After looting and burning homes of Christians in Bitlis,  
and torturing or killing many of the residents of that city, the  
Turks gathered 9,000 men, women and children from the nearby villages  
and drove them more than thirty miles to the banks of the Tigris,  
where all were shot. Their bodies were then thrown into the river...'

The Los Angeles Times - July 25, 1915.
A report by an Associated Press foreign correspondent is titled Wells  
Filled With The Dead - Every Woman and Child in Heresan is Killed.  
The correspondent had been riding with general Antranik and the  
Russian army. At Heresan, he found `60 Armenian men, all that are  
known to remain alive and free in a population of 500... Half a dozen  
wells were crammed with the bodies of those who had not been carried  
away...'

The Montreal Daily Star - Aug. 3, 1915.
The United Press correspondent Henry Wood writes: `Atrocities that  
rival the outrages of Abdul Hamid are being inflicted on the  
2,000,000 Armenians in Turkey by the Young Turks Government. Official  
circles in Turkey are using every possible means to prevent the news  
from reaching the outside world ...'

`Thousands of Armenians have been deported from their homes in Asia  
Minor, their property confiscated and their families broken up. Young  
Armenians have been hurriedly drafted into the army and rushed to  
Gallipoli Penninsula to meet a quick end in the trenches of the  
Dardanelles. Wives, mothers and young children have been left  
helpless in the streets or transported to strange cities and  
abandoned to the mercies of the Mussulman population...'

`The order for the present cruelties was issued early in may and  
executed with all the extreme genius of the Turkish police system. At  
Broussa, in Asiatic Turkey, the city which it is expected the Turks  
will select for their capital if Constantinople falls, I investigated  
personally the manner in which the decree was carried out. From  
eyewitnesses from other towns of the interior, I found that the  
procedure in nearly every instance was the same...'

`... the Constantinople police arrested the alleged leaders of  an  
Armenian society who were charged with plotting the establishment of  
an independent Armenia. Nineteen of these men were convicted by a  
court-martial and hanged in front of the Ministry of War...'

`Twenty thousand Turks from Thrace were taken to Zeitoun and  
established in houses that for generations belonged to the Armenians,  
while the former owners were scattered to the extreme ends of the  
Empire. One portion being sent to the sandy deserts of the head of  
the Persian Gulf and the other to malarial marshes in the interior.  
Eyewitnesses from the interior, coming to Constantinople describe the  
processions of these ragged, miserable Armenians as they poured off  
to Zeitoun, herded by soldiers in groups ranging from fifty to  
several hundred. Old men who could not maintain the pace were beaten  
by the soldiers until they died in their tracks. Children dropped out  
of the wayside to perish. Mothers unable any longer to nourish their  
babies, dropped them in wells as they passed, preferring to end their  
sufferings...'

The Turkish government accused the Armenians of rebellion. It charged  
the Armenians of extending important aid to the Russian army as it  
entered Van. And at the same time, the authorities expressed `regret  
that it was found necessary to punish large numbers of Armenians, but  
declare[d] they found it impossible to search among two million men  
small group of offenders.'

The Washington Post - Aug. 4, 1915.
9,000 Women and Children Slain by Turks on Banks of the Tigris reads  
the headline. It reports how the `Turks, after massacring all the  
males of the population in the region of Bitlis,... assembled 9,000  
women and children and drove them to the banks of the Tigris where  
they shot them and threw the bodies into the river.'

The New York Times - Aug. 18, 1915.
In London, British parliamentarian Aneurin Williams presents a report  
which confirms the news that the Armenians of Cilicia have been  
deported into the Syrian Desert. He continues: `We learn, besides,  
that the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles,  
and those who survive are doomed to certain death, since they will  
find neither house, work, nor food in the desert. It is a plan to  
exterminate the whole Armenian people...'

The report continues describing the arrests and execution of men  
accused of `meeting secretly' in such places as Caesarea and Sivas.  
It adds, `Hundreds of women and young girls and even children groan  
in prisons. Churches and convents have been pillaged, defiled, and  
destroyed. The villages around Van and Bitlis have been pillaged and  
the inhabitants put to the sword. At the beginning of this month all  
the inhabitants of Karahissar were pitilessly massacred, with the  
exception of a few children.'

The Washington Post - Sept. 3, 1915.
Edgar A. Mowrer reports from Rome that the Armenian population of  
Istanbul has been reduced from 60,000 to 30,000 under cover of  
deportation. However, `the Turks indulged in murder, rapine and  
atrocities of all descriptions.'

The Montreal Daily Star - Sept. 16, 1915.
In a special cable from Constantinople by the United Press, `The  
Turks have resumed the methodical extermination of Armenians in all  
the provinces of the Empire. Frightful scenes are being enacted  
according to reports brought here. Women are being outraged or sold  
into slavery, males are being massacred, and whole communities driven  
off into the desert countries...'

The cable also quotes from Le Tanine, the official organ of the Young  
Turk Party. The editorial reads: `Turkey will not be safe until the  
Armenians either are exterminated or forced to accept the Mohammedan  
religion.'

The Times - Sept. 22, 1915.
5,000 Armenians rescued by French Cruisers. The following official  
communication is issued by the French Ministry of Marine: `Pursued by  
the Turks, about 5,000 Armenians, nearly 3,000 of whom were women and  
children or old people, took refuge towards the end of July in the  
massif of Djebel Moussa, to the north of the Bay of Antioch. There  
they had succeeded in keeping off their aggressors until the  
beginning of September, but then their provisions and munitions began  
to fail and they seemed certain to fall into the hands of the Turks,  
when they succeeded in signaling to a French cruiser the dangerous  
position in which they were. The cruisers of the French squadron  
immediately went to their assistance and succeeded in assuring the  
escape of the 5,000 Armenians, who were conveyed by our warships to  
port Said, where they were heartily welcomed. They have been  
accommodated in a temporary camp.'

Chicago Daily Tribune - Sept. 24, 1915.
The paper quotes from British refugees who arrived at Alexandria and  
brought terrible tales of sufferings. These refugees witnessed the  
massacres of August 19 in Urfa. `The Turks systematically murdered  
the men and turned the women and children out into the desert where  
thousands perished of starvation ...'

The New York Times - Sept. 24, 1915.
Charles R. Crane, the Director of Roberts College, and James Burton,  
foreign Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign  
Missions, visited the State Department and conferred with the  
officials regarding the slaughter of Armenians by the Turks and  
Kurds. The article continues: `The records of the State Department  
are replete with detailed reports from American Consular officers in  
Asia Minor, which give harrowing tales of the treatment of the  
Armenian Christians by the Turks and the Kurds. These reports have  
not been made public. They indicate that the Turk has undertaken a  
war of extermination on Armenians, especially those of the Gregorian  
Church, to which about 90 per cent of the Armenians belong. The  
Turkish Government originally ordered the deportation of all  
Armenians, but, some time ago, after representations had been made by  
Ambassador Morgenthau, the Ottoman Government gave assurances that  
the order would be modified so as not to embrace Catholic and  
Protestant Armenians....'

The Times - Sept. 30, 1915
The headline reads Wholesale Murder in Armenia: Exterminating a Race.  
Reports confirming the current atrocities perpetrated against the  
Armenians are confirmed. According to the correspondent in Cairo, the  
attack on the Armenians began after Enver Pasha returned from the  
Caucasus front and was infuriated that the Armenians had assisted the  
Russians. Thus, Talaat Bey took the opportunity to retaliate on the  
unarmed Armenians of Asia Minor and ordered their expulsion.  The  
reporter continues:

`One instance, in which leading Armenians were concerned, shows the  
fate awaiting even those who obey the order. Vartkes Effendi and  
Zohrab Effendi, two prominent members of Parliament, Aghnuni, one of  
the chief Dashnakists, Haladjian Effendi and Pastermadjian Effendi,  
ex-minister of Public Works and Agriculture, were put in carriages at  
Urfa for conveyance to Diarbekir, and then were murdered en route,  
the escort reporting that the murders were the work of brigands...'

`... The present atrocities are not confined to a definite area. From  
Samsun and Trebizond, from Ordu and Aintab, from Marash and Erzerum  
come the same tales of atrocities - of men shot down in cold blood,  
crucified, mutilated, or dragged off for labour battalions, of  
children carried off and forcibly converted to Islam, of women  
violated and enslaved in the interior, shot down, or sent off with  
their children to the desert west of Mosul ... or to Deir esZor ... to  
die miserably. Many of these unfortunates did not reach their  
destination, because the escort so overdrove the victims that many  
fell out, and, as flogging and kicking were unavailing, they were  
left to perish by the roadside, their corpses distinctly defining the  
route followed. Many were tied back to back in pairs and thrown into  
rivers alive ...'

The Washington Post - Oct. 4, 1915.
An American committee makes public the report it has prepared after  
careful and extensive investigation of the evidence on the atrocities  
inflicted on the Armenians. The committee was made up of Charles R.  
Crane, Samuel T. Dutton, Cleveland H. Dodge, Arthur C. James, Stephen  
S. Wise, Frank Mason North, John R. Mott, Stanley White, James L.  
Barton, William Sloane, William I Haven, George A. Plimpton, Carl  
Davis Robinson, Frederick lynch, Norman Hapgood, Edward Lincold  
Smith, Bishop David H. Greer, William W. Rockwell, Oscar S. Straus  
and others.

According to this report, `more than 800,000 Armenians have been  
driven from their towns and cities into deserts where life is  
unsupportable, and where it is known thousands would die...'

`In many cases the men [of military age] were bound tightly together  
with ropes or chains. Women with little children in their arms, or in  
the last days of pregnancy, were driven along under the whip like  
cattle. Some women so completely worn out and hopeless that they left  
their infants beside the road ...'

The report continued describing how the Armenian prisoners were  
treated where the men received 200, 300, or even 800 bastinadoes  
(beating with a stick). The prisoners `all had their feet in such a  
state that they had to be amputated. A young man was beaten to death  
within the space of five minutes. Apart from the bastinadoing other  
methods were employed, too, such as putting hot irons on the chest ...'

`The worst and most unimaginable horrors were reserved for us at the  
banks of the Euphrates and in the Erzingian plain. The mutilated  
bodies of women, girls and little children made everyone shudder. The  
bandsmen were doing all sorts of awful deeds to the women and girls  
that were with us, whose cries went up to heaven. At the Euphrates,  
the bandsmen and gendarmes threw into the river all the remaining  
children under 15 years old ...'

`On the way we constantly met murdered men and youth, all covered  
with blood. There were also women and girls killed near their  
husbands or sons. On the heights of the mountains and in the depths  
of the valleys numbers of old men and babies were lying on the ground  
dead. The poor people found themselves in the necessity of eating  
grass ...'

Toronto Daily Star - Oct. 9, 1915.
Dr. A.H. Abbott of the University of Toronto has received a letter  
from a Canadian missionary Rev. E.O. Eshoo in which the latter  
describes the atrocities he has witnessed. The letter says that  
`Twelve thousand people in the city of Urumia alone were massacred  
outright, have since died of ill-treatment or starvation, or being  
taken as harem slaves.' Mr. Eshoo's two sons are safe. But his mother  
died of shock. `After hiding as a refugee for a week in the hay under  
a barn with her daughter, she was set upon, robbed and beaten by  
Kurds while on the road to Russian territory, and died a few days  
later.' Eshoo's aunt was killed in bed, her head and breast being  
crushed with stones. His uncle and nephew were both killed and one of  
them was literally skinned alive ...

Eshoo further describes that `the Turks and Kurds were not mere  
outlaws and raiders. They were part of the Turkish army, the first  
lot being a detachment of 5,000 men under regular Turkish officers.'  
He tells of one case of how a child was roasted alive in front of his  
parents who were given the choice of either converting to Islam or  
eating the flesh of their child.

Chicago Daily Tribune - Oct. 13, 1915.
The news has reached the US State Department from Ambassador  
Morgenthau that the massacre of Armenians in Asiatic Turkey were  
renewed with vigor. Apparently the American government had warned  
Turkey that further atrocities against the Armenians would `alienate  
the sympathy of the American people.' But no warnings were given by  
the US government that diplomatic ties would be severed if these  
atrocities continued.

The paper continues: `Earlier representations were met with two  
concessions promising that those Armenians who wished to leave the  
country would be permitted to do so unharmed and further that  
Protestant Armenians would be spared. Information recently reaching  
this country, however, indicates that these conditions have not been  
strictly adhered to. From one quarter it was asserted that `they were  
rescinded the next day.''

The Times - Oct. 26, 1915.
Addressing a large meeting in Manchester, Lord James Bryce made the  
following statements:

`A large number of the young women were driven from their houses,  
somehow even stripped of their own clothes, taken into the street,  
and paraded before the Turkish officials, civil and military, who  
picked out those they wished to send to their harems, while others  
were publicly sold to anyone who would buy them - sold into a life of  
prostitution.'

`The children shared a similar fate. The elder ones were mostly  
killed. The younger ones were put into the market, and were sold at  
prices which ran from 8s to 14 shillings, and sold only to Moslems on  
the condition that they were brought up as Mohamedans. The whole  
thing ... had come from the Government, so that there should be nothing  
but Moslems in the Turkish Empire ...'

Chicago Daily Tribune - Nov. 4, 1915.
An American resident of Chicago, Mrs. Samuel Byloz recently arrived  
back home from Marsovan, Turkey, where she was visiting when the war  
broke out. She relates the following: `When the war began more than a  
year ago the Turkish military authorities confiscated all brass and  
copper owned by Armenians, even tearing the hardware from the  
churches. This was followed by systematic pillage until the Armenians  
were destitute. Last August murder and rapine began. I was at  
Marsovan, a city of 12,000 located 75 miles west of the Black Sea  
port of Samsoun, and the seat of the largest Armenian college, early  
last August. I had been trying vigorously to secure a safe conduct  
from the country but had been unsuccessful. On Aug. 5 a general  
massacre of all Armenians in the city was declared by the priests  
[i.e. sheikhs] in the mosques, and the next day the soldiers began  
their work. I gained the protection of American Consul Petro of  
Samsoun, who chanced to be in Marsovan. For three days the soldiers  
stabbed and burned. The babies were thrown into the baths, and some  
of the streets were littered with dead bodies. Young girls were  
assaulted and older women killed. Then orders came to deport those  
still living. Deport! the word is a farce. With practically nothing  
to eat or wear, my countrymen were taken far into the AntiTaurus  
Mountains and abandoned.' She then recounts how she secured a passage  
to Bulgaria with the help of the American consul.

The Sunday Times - Nov. 14, 1915.
The paper gives excerpts of a book written by Arnold J. Toynbee. The  
book in its entirety was going to be released the following day on  
Nov. 15. Dealing with the outrages against the women, Toynbee states:  
`Abundant news has come from Constantinople itself of their being  
sold for a few shillings in the open markets of the capital; and one  
piece of evidence in Lord Bryce's possession comes from a girl no  
more than ten years old, who was carried with this object from a town  
of North-Eastern Anatolia to the shores of the Bosphorus. These were  
Christian women, as civilised and refined as the women of Western  
Europe, and they were enslaved into degradation ...'

The report continues with the following description recounted by a  
lady: `The worst and most unimaginable horrors were reserved for us  
at the banks of the (Western) Euphrates (Kara Su) and the Erzinjan  
Plain. The mutilated bodies of women, girls, and little children made  
everybody shudder. The brigands were doing all sorts of awful deeds  
to the women and girls that were with us, whose cries went up to  
heaven. At the Euphrates the brigands and gendarmes threw into the  
river all the remaining children under fifteen years old. Those who  
could swim were shot down as they struggled in the water ...'

The New York Times - Nov. 27, 1915.
 From London comes a report by Viscount Bryce, who made public the  
details of further Armenian massacres. He describes the Armenians'  
Heroic Stand in Mountains.

`The surviving warriors found themselves surrounded at close quarters  
by 30,000 Turks and Kurds. Then followed one of those desperate,  
heroic struggles for life which have always been the pride of the  
mountaineers. Men, women, and children fought with knives, scythes,  
and stones, and anything else they could handle. They rolled blocks  
of stone down the steep slopes, killing many of their enemies. In the  
frightful hand-to-hand combats women were seen thrusting their knives  
into the throats of the Turks. When every warrior had fallen, several  
of the younger women who were in danger of falling into the hands of  
the Turks threw themselves from the rocks, some of them with infants  
in their arms ...'

Another excerpt from Bryce's report describes the burning of women  
and children: `The ghastly scenes which followed may seem incredible,  
yet these reports have been confirmed beyond all doubt. The shortest  
means employed for disposing of the women and children in the various  
camps was by burning. Fire was set to the large wooden sheds in  
Alijan, Mograkom, Khasjogh, and other Armenian villages, and these  
absolutely helpless women and children were roasted to death ... The  
odor of burning flesh [according to witnesses] permeated the air for  
many days ...'

Christian Science Monitor - Dec. 17, 1915.
The paper reports that the Turkish government will not permit any  
investigation of the condition of those Armenians who escaped the  
massacres. The paper asserts that this is the most significant news  
coming out of the Turkish capital and it comes from an  
`unquestionable' source: Henry Mongenthau, the Ambassador of the  
United Stated in Constantinople, who has sent the report to the State  
Department asking for funds to help the remnants of the Armenian people.

The paper gives details of the report by Mr. Morgenthau and the  
circumstances that had permitted this letter from reaching  
Washington. The paper then continues: `It seems unquestionable that  
everything which the United States can do to assist the people of  
Armenia has been already done. For the moment what assistance is  
possible seems to be reduced to financial aid. We are afraid that if  
anything further were attempted, at this particular juncture, only a  
remnant of the Armenian remnant would be left to cumber the earth.  
The fate of these people is unthinkably terrible. They are penned in  
the midst of an armed camp of religious fanatics, whose highest  
conception of right is to offer them the Koran or the sword ... What  
hope there would be for the Armenians inside the Ottoman gates, as it  
were, with an allied army outside those gates, may easily be  
imagined. Possibly the only remaining thing that could be done for  
their protection would be to make it perfectly clear to the Sublime  
Porte that its individual members would be held, in such  
circumstances, absolutely responsible for whatever occurred.'

The Washington Post - Dec. 21, 1915.
The paper quotes from a statement by Count Ernest Von Reventlow, a  
German naval expert, who was an advocate of the Turkish atrocities  
perpetrated against the Armenians. He states: `It is high time  
Germans comprehended the real meaning of Armenian atrocity affairs.  
They should finally understand that it is not our affair to feel or  
even express sympathy with Armenian revolutionaries and usurers, who  
form a great and malignant danger for our brave, tried and true  
Turkish allies and who are the tool of our mortal enemies - Great  
Britain and Russia. If the Turks did not defend themselves  
energetically and thoroughly against the Armenian danger whenever it  
arises, they would be doing their allies as well as themselves a bad  
service. Therefore we Germans must consider the handling of the  
Armenian question as an internal affair of the Turks.'

The Times - Jan. 4, 1916.
A young missionary of the American Board of Foreign Missions (Boston)  
writes from Egypt, where she recently arrived from Beirut. Other than  
describing outrages committed against Armenian refugees from Kharput,  
the young lady accounts the following: `In Marash an orphanage had to  
be given up to the Turks, who turned it over to men. Its occupants  
were girls and young women made orphans by the massacres of 1909 and  
preceding years. Many of them were cultured young women. The  
condition of those not yet dead is worse than death itself. In a  
German orphanage in Marash there were more than 1,000 girls. The  
order for expatriation came, and, in order that she might shield a  
few of the older girls, the headmistress kept them under her  
protection. Soon there came a telegram from the German Consul at  
Aleppo, saying, `You have hidden some girls. You have no business to  
do such a thing. Give them up.' The girls had to be given up, and  
were taken away to suffer the inevitable at the hands of their  
Turkish masters. This so angered the headmistress that she went to  
Constantinople to protest to the German Ambassador.' Although she  
tried hard to meet with the Ambassador, she failed and was told  
`curtly' that it was none of her business.

The Washington Post - Feb. 6, 1916.
More details of the atrocities perpetrated against the Armenians is  
reported by a young American woman who, after arriving in Cairo, gave  
an account of what she witnessed and went through herself. Although  
the official report submitted to the Board of Missions included all  
the names of people and places, she had asked that these names not be  
made public. The Post prints excerpts of her report: `At Aleppo she  
(the missionary) saw the remnants of 5,000 exiles who had started  
from ---.  When they started they were of all ages and both sexes.  
They went toward Aleppo down the Euphrates. When they came to  
crossings of the rivers that flow into the Euphrates all the able- 
bodied men were drowned and their bodies left in the water. Farther  
on all the survivors, now only old men, women and children, were  
entirely stripped of their clothing ... Of the 5,000 that started only  
213 were left ...'

The Halifax Herald - March 15, 1916.
The terrifying tale of the Armenian massacres by a German mission is  
reported by this Canadian newspaper.  The mission's report states:  
`Turkish soldiers who witnessed scenes of indescribable horror and  
fanatical savagery told our investigators they saw hundreds of  
terrified Armenian women slain outright as they pleaded for mercy on  
their knees.'

`To save their babies from excruciating tortures, many of the women,  
driven to desperation, flung their infants to drown in the rivers  
Tigris and Euphrates, as the ravening hordes of religious intoxicated  
Turks bore down on their homesteads, killing as they came.  
Investigators asked the soldiers, `You mean to tell us you pitilessly  
shot down women and children?' The soldiers replied, `We had no  
choice; we only obeyed orders ...' '

The Washington Post - May 7, 1916.
Richard Hill, a local representative of the American Committee for  
Armenian and Syrian relief, reports that 15,000 Armenians were killed  
by Turks at Mamakhatun prior to the evacuation of Erzurum. According  
to Hill, `the whole of the province has been cleared of Armenians  
with the exception of those few who hid in the city. At the same time  
15,000 were sent away from villages nearby. These were taken as far  
as Mamakhatun, where they were killed. Other groups have been sent  
off at different times, many of them, too, no doubt, sharing the same  
fate as those from Erzurum, although some hope is entertained that  
many of them may still be found alive in the region of Aleppo.'

The Sunday Times - May 14, 1916.
The news this time comes from Trebizond where the children were the  
target for the atrocities. In Trebizond and its environs, the  
Armenians were all massacred or drowned by the Turks. The report  
continues saying: `It is unanimously declared that the atrocities  
committed on the Armenians at Trebizond surpassed all the Turkish  
cruelties towards the Armenians in other places. The expulsion of the  
Armenians in Trebizond began in July 1915, and to begin with several  
hundreds of young and influential Armenians were arrested on charges  
of treason and of aiding the Russians. They were embarked on boats,  
and drowned in the sea.'

`Other persons who were arrested were dispatched, men and women  
separately, to the village of Djivizlik, near Trebizond, where the  
women were violated and then killed, and the children bayoneted. The  
Turks also amused themselves with firing practice, taking the heads  
of the little children as targets. The survivors were sent to Erzurum.'

The Washington Post - Aug. 6, 1916.
A report comes from Paris in a special cable to the paper. It gives  
estimates that the Armenian population prior to 1915 was two and a  
half million, and then calculates that only some half a million were  
left. The report puts the blame on the Young Turk government. `The  
whole of the responsibility for the massacres rests with the Young  
Turk government and it is these young Turks who, under the eye of  
their accomplices, the German authorities in Constantinople,  
conceived and ordered the massacres and it is they who urged the  
savage Kurds to carry out the murders also, wherever possible, the  
Mussulmans, by means of arousing their fanaticism.'

The Halifax Herald - Aug. 9, 1916.
The details of the desperate condition of deported Armenians in the  
deserts of Northern Arabia and the lower Euphrates are made public by  
the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. According to  
eyewitnesses, the Armenians were seen `eating grass, herbs and  
locusts, and in desperation dead animals and human bodies are  
reported to have been eaten.'

The New York Times - Aug. 21, 1916.
After returning from a three-month relief work in the devastated  
villages in the Ottoman Empire, Rev. Harold Buxton, Secretary of the  
Armenian Refugee Fund, gives details that confirm the previous  
reports about the atrocities committed against the Armenians,  
especially those reports which Viscount Bryce had presented to the  
British House of Lords.

Rev. Buxton states: `I don't think there has been any exaggeration as  
to the losses as published in England. The Armenian race numbered  
over 4,000,000 of whom 2,000,000 were Turkish Armenians and of these  
perhaps 1,000,000 have been deported and 500,000 massacred. Only  
200,000 escaped into the mountains, and so across to Russian soil.  
There are some hundreds of thousands in concentration camps between  
Aleppo and Mosul and in the neighboring regions of Mesopotamia, where  
Turkey continues to be supreme over their fate.'

The Times - Aug. 24, 1916.
According to Turkish and German sources, some 12,000 Armenian  
workers, including women and children, were collected in the vicinity  
of the Bozanti Tunnel through the Taurus Mountains to work under  
German supervision. Later the more intellectual and active among them  
were massacred with `utmost brutality.' The women were separated from  
the men and `suddenly ordered to move on in their emigration. This is  
the euphemistic term now employed by Turkish newspapers in referring  
to the gradual destruction of the Armenians. The Governor of Adana,  
brother-in-law of Enver Pasha, is entrusted with this task.'

The Washington Post - Oct. 15, 1916.
Letters have reached the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian  
Relief describing the `heart-rending' picture of the remnants of the  
Armenians and other Christians who were driven from their homes to  
die of disease, hunger, and torture.

The first message comes from Der Zor, September 3, and reads in part:  
`Tell our missionaries that their college children, young men and  
girls are dying of hunger. To look at them breaks one's heart. But I  
am not thinking of myself, but of the crowds of children outside that  
are crying for bread, of the many pure young girls who, driven by  
hunger and loneliness at home, seek refuge at the hearths of Arabian  
men, to whom they are sold for bread; the women, mothers, who are  
wandering about in despair to find bread for the little ones; the  
young people, who, weakened by hunger, appear like old people,  
prematurely aged.'

The letter continues: `We must daily buy back at least three or four  
young girls, else they will be completely lost.'

`The people kill and eat the street dogs ... I saw a woman, who from  
the street ate the clotted blood of an animal ... `

The Times - Nov. 24, 1916.
According to Reuter news agency in Baku, the Turks have massacred  
some 5,000 to 6,000 Armenians in Sivas in Anatolia.

The Times - Jan. 1, 1917
The paper prints a report about how the Armenians were exterminated  
described by Moslem eyewitnesses who had former official standing.  
One of these eyewitnesses relates the following: `I saw in the  
suburbs of Mush large numbers of dead bodies of Armenian men, women  
and children lying in the fields. Some had been shot, some stabbed,  
and nearly all horribly mutilated. The women were mostly naked. In  
the same month I saw about 500 women, girls, and children, guarded by  
gendarmes in a camp outside Bitlis. The gendarme said that these  
people were being deported, but that the orders were to let the  
`shotas,' or bands of Kurds, Turkish gendarmes, and criminals, deal  
with them on the way. The bands had been organized by the Government  
for the purpose of massacring the Armenians. At Bitlis I saw a number  
of Armenian bodies floating in the water. Some had been washed up on  
the banks. The smell was terrible and the water undrinkable ...'

The second Moslem eyewitness stated the following: `In April 1915, an  
order came from Constantinople to Erzurum, where I was quartered that  
the Armenians inhabiting frontier towns and villages should be  
deported into the interior. I saw large convoys of Armenians go  
through Erzurum. In May I was transferred to Trebizond. In July an  
order came that all the Armenians of that vilayet should also be  
deported to the interior. As I was a member of the Court-martial, I  
knew that deportation meant massacre. Besides the deportation order,  
an Imperial Iradeh commanded that all deserters, when caught, should  
be shot without trial. A secret order, however, said `Armenians'  
instead of `deserters.' A `fetva' from the Sheikh-ul-Islam  
accompanied the Iradeh, saying that the Armenians had shed Moslem  
blood, and it was lawful to kill them. I heard that all Armenian men  
were being massacred on their way into the interior. They were lined  
up on the edge of ditches, prepared beforehand, shot, and thrown into  
the ditches. The women and children were attacked by organized bands,  
called `Shotas,' plundered, outraged, and murdered. The children, of  
whom the government had taken charge, were also massacred ...'

The Halifax Herald - Feb. 22, 1917.
According to the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief,  
one third of the Armenian race has been massacred by the Turks and  
one half of the survivors are left homeless and dying in exile. The  
message from famous English writer John Massfield says in part: `Far  
away as she is from the main conflict, Armenia has suffered more in  
this war than any devastated land in Europe. She is like a victim met  
by troops on the march and beaten and stabbed and left to die. There  
is nothing in her misery to make a headline or a battle cry. It is  
just dumb suffering, lying by the road.'

Note:
The United States of America formally declared war on Germany and its  
allies on April 6, 1917.

The Washington Post - May 28, 1917
Henry Morgenthau, the former American Ambassador to Turkey, speaks at  
a Presbyterian church in New York describing the barbarities which  
the Turks practiced on their Christian subjects taking advantage of  
the war.

Mr. Morgenthau stated: `While the attention of the world was absorbed  
in other things, the Turks felt that the time had come to strike.  
Political considerations prevented Germany and Austria from  
interfering with the outrages committed. Turks justify their conduct  
and the wholesale deportations on the ground of fear that the  
Armenians might revolt. As a matter of fact, they did not revolt in a  
single instance.'

The report continues: `Mr. Morgenthau, who is giving a large amount  
of his time to the Armenian-Syrian Relief Committee, described the  
attempt of the Turks to annihilate the Armenian race. He mentioned  
the methods of extermination employed as follows: Requisitions,  
without payment, resulting in economic ruin; confiscation, forced  
exorbitant contributions and taxes; searches in Armenian houses for  
arms, but in reality, for purposes of pillage; beating to death;  
torture beyond imagination and too obscene to be related; forced  
conversions to Mohamedanism; massacres and deportations.'

The Halifax Herald - Oct. 2, 1917.
Rev. George E. White, president of Anatolia college recently returned  
to Canada. He described the following: `The slaughter with axes of  
all the Armenian faculty members of Anatolia College, Marsovan ...  
together with twelve hundred others, by Turkish peasants, whose pay  
for the work was the privilege of stripping the clothing of their  
victims' bodies ... The massacres were committed at night by order of  
the Turkish government, the Armenians being sent out in lots of one  
hundred and two hundred to their doom, and their bodies rolled into  
prepared burial trenches.'

Christian Science Monitor - Nov. 5, 1917
The report's headline states Turks Massacre Great Numbers of  
Armenians: Out of the 300,000 who left City of Sivas, only 5000  
arrived at Destination.

`From Trebizond to Kermanshah, in Turkey, practically all the  
Armenians and Assyrians have been either deported or massacred, the  
deported population being sent to Mesopotamia, the destination the  
Turks had chosen, according to a statement made by E.W. MacCallum,  
chairman of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief's  
Caucasus Branch, whose headquarters were in Tiflis.'

MacCallum is quoted saying: `Out of the 300,000 Armenians who started  
from the city of Sivas, moved by Turkish force, only 5000 arrived at  
their destination. The other 295,000 were either massacred or, in the  
cases of women and girls, taken by the Turks and Kurds for their  
harems or some other hiding places.'

He continued: `The Armenians of Trebizond were taken in boats, on the  
pretense of conveying them to another port on the Black Sea, where  
they were all thrown overboard, the boats coming back empty in a few  
hours from a trip which takes days to make. Children were put in  
sacks and then the sacks were sewn up and thrown into the sea. This  
is not a story concocted for a purpose. We have the testimony of the  
American and Italian consuls of Trebizond to confirm it ...'

The New York Times - March 4, 1918.
A special cable to the paper reads: `The Copenhagen correspondent of  
the Exchange Telegraph Company says that information has been  
received there that Turkish soldiers have committed new massacres in  
the district of Armenia which has been deserted by the Russians.'

The Times - March 8, 1918
Reports have reached London that all Armenian males were put to the  
sword. `At Samsun, on the Black Sea, every Armenian male - man, boy,  
or baby - has been put to the sword, while similar atrocities are  
being perpetrated in towns and village.'

The Times - May 25, 1918.
Armenians saved by Arabs, reads the title. As the Arabs of the Hedjaz  
joined the British forces, many Armenians who were deported by the  
Turks were rescued. On the receipt of this news, Boghos Nubar Pasha  
sent the following telegram to Emir Feisal, the Commander of the  
Northern Meccan Army and a son of the King of Hedjaz:

`To the noble-born Emir Feisal. - We have just learned of the rescue  
of our unfortunate fellow-countrymen through the efforts of your  
gallant troops in Southern Syria. May God bless and prosper the  
progress of your arms. The chivalrous act of the noble Moslems who  
fight under your banners adds fresh luster to the annals of the Arab  
race. Every Armenian throughout the world is today an ally of the  
Arab movement: the praises of your clemency and the justice of your  
cause shall be known wherever we can make our voices heard.'

To this telegram, the King of the Hedjaz sent the following reply:

`Your kind message to Feisal, of which I have heard, is a proof of  
good will and affection. We pray God to make us worthy of your kind  
thoughts. Feisal in assisting the oppressed has only performed one of  
the first duties of our religion and of Arabs' faith. I say with  
confidence and pride that the Armenian race and other races in  
similar plight are regarded by us as partners in our fortunes in weal  
and woe. We ask God before everything to give us strength to enable  
us to do them helpful service by which to prove to the world the true  
feelings of Islam, whose watchword is freedom. May God preserve you  
in health and bring desires to a successful attainment by His help  
and favour.'


THE POST-WAR PERIOD

The Great War ended with the signing of the armistice on November 11,  
1918. Yet the massacres of the Armenians and other Christian  
minorities in Turkey continued. Reports coming out of Constantinople  
confirmed that Mustapha Kemal and his nationalists continued what  
their predecessors had started. They were determined to end the  
`minority question' by wiping out the minority.

The New York Times - Nov. 25, 1918.
According to a dispatch by the Associated Press, Enver Pasha's  
brother Nouffi Pasha resumes the massacres. `Attacks on the Armenians  
have been resumed in the district of Erzbeidjan [Azerbaijan], on the  
border of the Caucasus, by Turkish troops under the leadership of  
Nouffi Pasha, brother of Enver Pasha, former Minister of War. Nouffi  
Pasha declares that he is outside the authority of the present  
Constantinople Government, and that he has been delegated by the  
Moslems of the district to suppress the revolt of the Armenians.'

Christian Science Monitor - Dec. 28, 1918.
Reports reaching Washington, DC, claim that the Turkish Government  
has decided to court-martial all those who were responsible for the  
Armenian massacres. However, most of them have fled the country with  
Enver and Jemal Pashas.

Toronto Daily Star - Jan. 29, 1919.
Turks again slay 20,000 Armenians, this time in Baku and the  
surrounding regions. `Large bodies of Turkish troops are reported to  
have joined Tartar bands and are attacking Armenian villages. It is  
feared that still another chapter of atrocities will be added to the  
Turkish record before the allies are able to relieve the beleaguered  
Armenian towns.'

Toronto Daily Star - Feb. 11, 1919.
Canadian missionary Rev. L.W. Pierce and his wife reach Toronto from  
Turkey and tell of horrible tales that they have witnessed and  
experienced. `For 150 miles we traveled through a lane of dead  
Armenians. Men, women and children lay by the roadside decapitated,  
and otherwise mutilated. Some were sitting up as in life, but when we  
drew near, we found they had sat down on the roadside and died from  
the ravages of typhus ...'

`One man had his brains knocked out before us as we went, a babe in  
arms was dragged from its mother's breast and thrown into a boiling  
caldron. Other children were caught by the heels and swung around ...  
and thrown far into the river ...'

The Halifax Herald - April 18, 1919.
The headline says Starving Women and Children Are Turned Loose By the  
Turks: Thousands are wandering about the country utterly destitute,  
some crazed from hunger and exposure. According to dispatches from  
Constantinople, these women and children were being released from  
Turkish harems in Asia Minor. One of the dispatches says: `Under  
normal conditions this would be glad news indeed, but with members of  
their families killed or deported in most instances and the remaining  
people reduced to the severest poverty, it will be impossible for the  
Armenians themselves to find shelter, clothing and food for hundreds  
of thousands of children and tens of thousands of women thus thrust  
upon them suddenly.'

  The New York Times - April 19, 1919.
The murder of the Armenians is continuing. John H. Finley,  
Commissioner for the Red Cross for Palestine, who has just returned  
from a trip to the Near East states the following: `Throughout Asia  
Minor, beyond the points to which the British and French troops have  
advanced, the Armenians are still being persecuted by the Turks. The  
fact that the armistice has been signed makes no difference. In one  
way or another, by individuals and by groups, Armenians are being  
killed. I know of one case where 100 Armenians were slaughtered, and  
another where forty were shot down - all of this since the armistice  
was signed.

The Washington Post - July 30, 1919.
In Berlin, the German paper Tageblatt prints extracts from a book  
based upon diplomatic documents which the Foreign Ministry had  
commissioned John Lepsius to write. `The writer shows that the  
Turkish Committee of Union and Progress deliberately decided to  
realize national ideas by assimilating or destroying the Armenians,  
who in Turkey number about 1,850,000. He described the arrest and  
massacre of 600 Armenian leaders in April 1915, and how the previous  
so-called `Armenian rising' was provoked as a pretext for Young  
Turks' schemes.'

The Halifax Herald - Sept. 18, 1919.
`The Turks have resumed their attacks upon the Armenians, and the  
very existence of the nation is in danger.'

Christian Science Monitor - Feb 16, 1920.
Reports confirming the fresh massacre of Armenians reach London. Rev.  
Charles Boxton, the representative of the Lord Mayor's Armenian  
refugee fund, writes from Constantinople `confirming the massacre of  
1500 Armenians at the end of January, near Marash, in Cilicia, by  
Nationalist bands.

Chicago Daily Tribune - Feb 17, 1920.
A brief report reads the following: `Seven thousand Armenians have  
been massacred in Cilicia in a new attack by Mustapha Kemal's Turkish  
and Kurdish troops, which is still in progress.'

Toronto Daily Star - April 21, 1920.
The headline says Turks Still Slaying Helpless Armenians. Edgar A.  
Mowrer, a correspondent, writes the following: `The Turkish  
Nationalists in Cilicia are continuing to massacre Armenians ...'

The New York Times - June 12, 1920
The headline is explains the grave situation: Armenia Faces Butchers  
Anarmed: Only aid from Allies or America can save her, says Sir  
Philip Gibbs. The Subtitle continues: Turks Vow Extermination - `The  
West may make Armenia free,' they say; `We will make it a desert.'

Christian Science Monitor - Oct 25, 1921
The Constantinople correspondent of the paper writes: `Mustapha Kemal  
Pasha, remaining faithful to favorite Turkish methods, is now  
systematically carrying on the destructive processes of deportation,  
looting and massacre. Numerous reports reaching the Armenian and  
Greek Patriarchates in Constantinople reveal the tremendous  
destructive work done by the Kemalists. To escape future  
responsibilities, Mustapha Kemal has organized various lawless bands  
to strike the Christians ...'


The papers continued reporting about new massacres perpetrated  
against the Armenians, Greeks and other Christian minorities. In  
fact, the next large-scale massacre was in Smyrna in September of  
1922 when the Turks under Mustapha Kemal massacred the Armenian and  
Greek population of that city, and destroyed it completely, leaving  
60,000 homeless. Although it had been almost 4 years since the end of  
the War, Turks continued implementing their plans to exterminate the  
Christian population under the watchful eyes of the western world.

The Halifax Herald - Sept. 16, 1922.
Smyrna is burning. Sixty thousand Armenians and Greeks are left  
homeless. Apparently, `the Kemalists deliberately set the city on  
fire in order to evacuate the entire Christian population, thereby  
relieving the Turks altogether of the problem of minorities in  
Anatolia ...'

The Los Angeles Times - Sept. 16, 1922
The horrors in Smyrna describe the `savagery of the Turks.' Both the  
Greek and Armenian citizens in that district are being massacred as a  
great number of them `were shot in masses on Turkish galleys.' The  
Associated Press cable also mentions that the Greek metropolitan was  
executed and the Armenian archbishop killed. `The details of the  
savages of the Turks passes all imagination. An American woman is  
said to have seen the bodies of women who had been killed by sword  
thrusts through their bodies.'

The Halifax Herald - Sept. 18, 1922.
Smyrna: Vast Sepulchre of Human Ashes reads the headline. `Only the  
shattered walls of 25,000 homes and the charred bodies of countless  
victims remain to tell the story of death and destruction unexampled  
in modern history ... Every building in the Armenian quarter has been  
burned, with the dead lying about ... `


Following these atrocities, in December of 1922, the League of  
Nations tried to find a solution for the minorities living in Turkey.  
There was a plan drawn by the victorious powers for an independent  
Armenia. However, during the Lausanne meeting, Ismet Pasha, head of  
the Turkish delegation, adamantly refused to even discuss the  
`Armenian question,' claiming that any discussion of the minorities  
in Turkey would mean interference in Turkey's internal affairs by the  
League of Nations. He even declared that `the Armenians brought the  
massacres on themselves.'

Lord Curzon, the head of the British delegation at Lausanne, demanded  
that Ismet Pasha explain what he meant by his accusations against the  
League of Nations. But what is more interesting in Lord Curzon's  
speech, reported by the majority of the press, is his defense of the  
Armenian people. He found it difficult to understand Ismet Pasha's  
statements that Turkey had given fair treatment to the minorities  
`with the fact that of the three million Armenians formerly resident  
in Anatolia, only 130,000 remained.'

He then raised the following questions: `Did they kill themselves or  
did they voluntarily leave Anatolia? Why were the French troops  
leaving Anatolia followed by 80,000 Armenians, who deserted  
everything they had? Why are there hundreds of thousands of these  
miserable Armenians scattered over the neighboring countries? Why do  
they stay there if all they have to do is to return to Turkey and be  
embraced by the Turkish government? Why is the Armenian question one  
of the greatest scandals of the world?'

Lord Curzon continued: `It is easy for the Turks to offer to live  
peacefully with a minority that has been reduced to a miserable  
handful, but the eyes of the world are upon the Armenians and Turkey  
and the world will not be content that the remnant of these wretched  
people be left without protection other than what Turkey may be  
pleased to accord.'

Unfortunately for the persecuted people, these same powers -  
especially Great Britain and the United States of America - easily  
forgot those wretched Armenians. Their governments now dishonor their  
own past statesmen, diplomats and even citizens, whose only aim was  
to help humanity, by refusing to recognize the Armenian Genocide, and  
letting Turkey get away with the most atrocious crime of humanity,  
the `greatest scandal.' It is this impunity that has encouraged other  
nations to commit similar crimes against humanity. And the ones to be  
blamed more are those who claim to be defenders of humanity yet  
conveniently forget who the perpetrators of those crimes are. After  
all, those who deny a crime - a crime amply recorded in their own  
governmental archives - can only be called accomplices in the crime.

Although successive Turkish governments and Turkish historians have  
denied and continue to deny that there ever was genocide, or that the  
authorities had planned the extermination of the Armenians, the above  
sample of extracts from thousands of accounts reported by  
eyewitnesses, diplomats and missionaries confirm the opposite. The  
Turkish governments before, during and after World War One were  
responsible for the ongoing massacres perpetrated against the  
Armenians and the other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire.

And although successive Turkish governments have claimed that the  
Armenians were only casualties of the War, just as the Turks were,  
the above reports only confirm the opposite: that even in peaceful  
times, the Armenian population was massacred in cold blood with the  
intention of wiping them out completely.

Could all those who had reported the cruelties be wrong? Were all the  
American missionaries who witnessed, investigated and reported the  
massacres wrong? Was the American Ambassador to Turkey, Mr. Henry  
Morgenthau, together with his consuls stationed in the different  
parts of Turkey, lying or making up stories? Were the British,  
French, Italian, German, Russian and other diplomats all wrong? Or  
were all the correspondents who reported from the scenes of the  
crimes all imagining the bloodshed? Of course, we shouldn't forget  
the hundreds of international scholars who have since proven that  
what happened to the Armenians at the hands of the Turks is Genocide.

Could all of them be wrong and Turkey, the perpetrator of the  
Genocide, be right?



Sources:

All New York Times reports were taken from Richard D. Kloian's  
compilation The Armenian Genocide: News Accounts from the American  
Press:1915-1922. Published by Heritage Publishing, California.

The news items from The Halifax Herald were taken from Katia  
Peltekian's compilation The Heralding of the Armenian Genocide:  
Reports in the Halifax Herald 1894 - 1922. Published in Halifax,  
Canada, 2000.