CHAPTER CXXXIII.

THE EXTERMINATION OF THE ARMENIANS.

THE ARMENIANS AND THEIR R ELATIO NS WITH THE TURKS-THE SIX VILAYETS-DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRy-ARMENIAN CHARACTER-FoRMER TURKISH ATRO CITIES-THE YOUNG TURKS AND THEIR POLICy- MILITARY R EVERSES AND ARMENIAN PERSECUTIONS- THE SCHEME OF DISARMAMENT - T URKISH TORTURES-THE " PAN-TURANIAN IDEA" MADE IN GERMANY-" DEPORTATION"­ HISTORY OF THE ATROCITIES IN 191 5--ZEITOUN-CILICIA-VAN-URMIA-DJEVDET BEY'S MASSACRES-HEROISM OF AMERICAN MISSIONARIES-SASSOUN-THE HORRORS OF FLIGHT­ TREATMENT OF ARMENIAN WOMEN-ExTENT OF THE ATRO CITIES- DELIBERATE POLICY OF Ex­ TERMI ATION-GERMAN RESPONSIBILITY.

T the b eginning of the year 1915 nation has indeed been practised in the Near there were upwards of two million East since the days of the earliest Oriental A Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. empires. Sargon and N ebuchadnezzar and By the end of the year, two-thirds of D arius set the precedent which was followed t hem had either been massacred in their native by the Young Turks, but the latter had means towns and v illages or uprooted from their at their command which their predecessors h omes, while of those "deported" (as the never possessed. There was a uniformity, an latter process was officially styled) less than efficiency, a thoroughness in their work which 50 per cent. ever reached their allotted destina­ b etrayed the Prussian connexion. The depor­ tions. The rest p erished by outrage or exhaus­ tation of the Armenians in 1915 was organi7.,ed tion on the way, and even those who r eached from the Ministries of the Interior and of War their journey's end died off r apidly after their at Constantinople by telegraph and telephone; arrival, through famine, exposure and disease. the exiles were in many cases conveyed by rail ; " D eportation," in fact, was simply a method the recalcitrants were overawed or shot down of gradual massacre, more effectual in dealing by quick-firing mountain batteries and machine­ with numbers, and, above all, more cruel to guns (the artillery being actually directed, in cer­ the individual, than instant massacre by tain instances, by German officers) ; and all these bullet or bayonet . m oiern appliances added immeasurably to the vVh en one r eads the story of these atrocities horror of the crime. The scenes in the crowded (and there is abundant testimony from neutral cattle-trucks and at the junctions and r ail-heads eye-witnesses who escap ed from Turkey and of the Anatolian and Baghdad lines were almost made depositions about the scenes they saw), more terrible than those on the mountain-tracks one almost imagines oneself back in the eighth and in the gorges of the Euphrates. centur y B.C., hearing tidings of how the children of Israel were" carried into captivity" by the To explain this frenzy of frightfulness which Assyrians. This method of destroying a swept over the N ear East in the year 1915, we Vol. VIII.- Part 101. 353 354 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR.

REFUGEES IN CAMP AT PORT SAID. must describe very briefly who the Armenians N ew York and California, and, wherever they were and what were their relations with the settled, they made their way and made them­ Turks. selves at home. The vast majority of the The Armenians were one of the scattered, sub­ nation, however, was still to be fOlmd within merged nationalities of the N ear E ast. They the frontiers of the Turkish and Russian were a Christian nation, held together by their Empires. national church, * with its Bible and liturgy The original home of the Armeman race, in the native language, but there has been no and the seat of the ancient Armenian kingdom, united kingdom of Armenia since 387 A.D. The is a plateau of upland pastures, buttressed with Katholikos or ecclesiastical primate of All the huge mountain barriers and intersected by the Armenians, who resides at the Monastery of deep ravines of rivers, which interposes itself Etchmiadzin in Russian Caucasia, is the only between the Caspian, the Black Sea, the surviving representative of this ancient Ar­ Mediterranean, and the Persian Gulf, and menian State. Not even a fragment of the feeds the waters that flow into all four. This Armenian nation has enjoyed political inde­ plateau is intersect ed, from n orth-west to pendence since 1375, when the refugee prin­ south-east, by the Russo-Turkish frontier cipality of Lesser Armenia in the Cilician hills, established in 1878, and the great advance of which had been a stalwart ally of the Crusaders the Grand Duke's armies in the early months and had taken to itself a French dynasty of of 1916 brought practically the whole of it kings, succumbed to the surrounding Moham­ within the Russian lines. But in 1915 the medan Powers. During all the intervening Armenian population in Turkey was not centuries the Armenian p~ople has been subject . confined to the plateau. The provinces which to foreign, and for the most part unfriendly, were considered specifically Armenian and rulers; yet, like the Jews, they seem actually which were known to Near East.ern diplomatists to have found a stimulus in adversity. By as the "Six Vilayets," ext ended west of the the year 1915, they had spread themselve" over Euphrates far into the Anatolian P eninsula; the world, from Calcutta and Singapore to Cilicia-the r egion facing Cyprus at the n orth­ east ern corner of the Mediterranean, which * Called the "Gregorian Church" after St. Gregory had been the seat of that last Armenian prin­ the Illuminator, who converted Armenia to Christianity towards the end of t h e third century A.D. cipali ty which fell in 1375-was still sown thick THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 355 with Armenian towns and villages; and there numerically to no more than 10 per cent. of the was a very strong Armenian element in population of the Ottoman Empire-2,000,000 the neighbourhood of Constantinople~about out of 20,000,000 in all; but their social and 150,000 Armenians in the population of the economic importance was far in excess of their city itself, and perhaps almost as many again numbers. They were a keen-witted, business­ in the Asiatic districts along the eastern and like people, gifted with a remarkable energy, southern coasts of the Sea of Marmora. The Armenians were thus very widely distributed in Turkey, but, as has b een said, they were a scatter ed and submerged race. No territory was in their exclusi~e possession. Even their native plateau was tenanted in part by the Kurdish shepherd tribes, who pastured their flocks on the alps and down-lands, confining the Armenian cultivators to the valleys and plains. In the towns and countryside of the Anatolian P eninsula they were mingled with the Turkish townsfolk and peasantry. They shared Constantinople with all the nations of the N ear ~as t. It was only in' the mountains of Cilicia and in the basin of Lake Van~the north-easternmost province of Turkey towards the Russian and P ersian frontiers-that there was anything like a pure, homogeneous Ar­ menian population. Thus, in 1915, the Armenians amounted

LANDING REFUGEES FROM A FRENCH CRUISER. Smaller picture: A French sailor carrying a small Armenian. 356 THE TLZVIES HISTORY OF THE WAR.

and with an industry which made the most of short by the breaking away of one Christian what their energy achieved. They had in­ nationality after another. The process culmiJ herited an ancient and deep-rooted civilization, nated in the Balkan War of 1912, which almost and they had been invigorated during the last ejected the Turks from Europe, and left their century by missionary influences from the former Christian subjects on the European YVest. The coming of the Jesuit and American continent organized in independent national missionaries to Armenia, and the counter­ States. The war of 1912 practically confined movements of Armenian emigrants to Venice the problem of the subject nationalities to the and Lemberg, Marseilles and London and New single problem of the Armenians. York, brought the Armenian people into Unlike their fellow-subjects in Europe, thE' living contact with Western Europe, and raised Armenians had never played for political inde­ them in ,civilization altogether above their pendence. When Turkey was beaten by Russia Moslem neighbours and fellow-citizens. in 1878 and many Balkan populations obtained The res'uIt was that, by 1915, the Armenians their freedom from Turkish rule, the Armenians had risen to extreme social and economic import­ merely asked for a reform of administration in ance in Turkey. In all parts of the Empire, the six north-eastern proyinces of Turkey in except the Arabic provinces of the south-east, Asia (thereafter known as the" Si..'\' Vilayets " ), they had taken on themselves the hmctions of a and they limited themselves to the same demand middle or professional class. The big import when Turkey was prostrate once more in 1913. merchants and wholesale dealers at Constanti­ This moderate policy was dictated by obvious nople were recruited from their ranks; they national interests. Scattered as they were were the bankers and shop-keepers of the pro­ through the length and breadth of Asiatic vincial cities; and skilled work, whether of Turkey, the whole Empire was their potential brain or hand, was so entirely dependent on economic heritage, while no part of it was Armenian practitioners, that it literally came to sufficiently their own in population to make of a standstill when the Armenian population of it a politically independent Armenian State. any given locality was massacred or carried into They had therefore everything to gain from the exile. " Now that the Armenians are gone," maintenance of Turkish integrity, if only the write several witnesses from different centres, injustice of their present status in Turkey were in almost identical words, " there are no doctors, reformed; and the Turks, in turn, had every chemists, lawyers, smiths, potters, tanners, interest (if they were wise enough to see it) in weavers left in this place "-and so on, through giving the Armenians r easonable civil rights and the whole catalogue of trades. So far as the a free hand in the economic sphere; for the Ottoman Empire kept abreast with the intellec­ Armenians were the only native element which tual and technical progress of the modern world, could regenerate the country and keep it in line it did so through the enterprise and intelligence with modern developments from within. If of its Armenian citizens. the Armenians were hindered from doing this, But the position which the Armenians had it was clear to any observer that it would b e won for themselves in the country by their done by some covetous and high-handed Power natural capacities did not at all correspond to from outside, and this is precisely what hap­ the position assigned to them under the tradi­ pened. By eliminating the Armenians in 1915, tional constitution of the Ottoman State. The the Turks merely opened a wider door to the Ottoman State, like the Hapsburg and Hohen­ German interloper. zollern States with which it entered into alliance, is based on the antithesis of democracy-on the Ever since 1878, the year in which Turkey forcible domination of one race, or rather one had to cede to .Russia the north-eastern part caste, over a subject population, and in Turkey of the Armenian platea:u and the Ottoman this domination took on ~n even cruder form Armeniaits first asked for administrative than in Central Europe. The Moslem con­ reforms, the Armenian p eople had been singled querors were a chosen people; the conquered out by the Ottoman Government for r epr ession. Christians were "Rayah"-cattle-w ho were The Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid (1876-1908) con­ hardly regarded as integral members of the ceived the idea of re-arming the Kurdish tribes State. But such extreme injustice had pro­ (who had been disarmed with infinite pains by voked rebellion, and in the course of the nine­ his predecessor Mahmud, fifty years before ), teenth century the Ottoman Empire was cut and giving them carte blanche, as "Hamidia" THE DEFENCE OF VAN : ARMEN IAl'iS IN THE TRENCHES. 357 101-2 358 THE TIl\IIES HISTORY OF THE TVA R.

(Irregular Gendarmerie), to r ob the goods an d figure is dwarfed by the st a tistics of 1915) and rape the women of their defenceless Armenian the Armenian p opulation in Turkey was further n eighbours. This policy provoked an Armenian thinned by the accelerat ed current of emigra­ r evolutionary nlOvem ent, and within five years tion. of the arming of the Kurds r acial feeling was Abd-ul-H amid's work in 1894-6 was crownr.d so envenomed on both sides that Abd-ul-Hamid and complet ed in 1915 by t he Young Turks, was able to organize a series of Armenia n and yet, when the Y oung Turkish R evolution­ m assacres (1894- 6) in t h e chief Armenian cen tres ::1ries overthrew the Sultan in 1908, the Ar­ of the Empire, c"ulminating in an open butchery m enian s imagined (and not without j ustifica­ in the street s of Const antinople. The Powers tion) that a b etter day h ad dawned. The were paralyzed by mutual jealousy, and wer Y OLUlg TLU'ks had dTLUlk in all the p olitical as little able to stop the slaughter in 1894- 6 ideas of vVestern ELU'op e. They preach ed th e as they had b een to impose the a dministra tive " Liberty, Equality and Fra ternity " of t he r eforms stipulated at B erlin in 1878. In these Fren ch R evolution; they set up a p arliam en­ massacres about 100,000 p eople p erish ed (t he' t ar y constit ut ion , and t he Armenian r evolu­ tionary societies joyfully tran sformed t h en'l- . selves into p arliam en tary p ar t ies. But there was another asp ect of the YOLUlg Turkish programme. There was an "equality b efore the law," for instan ce, which principally declared itself in the exten sion t o Christian citizens of compulsory military ser vice, which formerly h ad b een obligatory on Moslem s alone. And ther e was a doctrine of " Ott omanization " (tha t is, of assimilating all other p eoples in the Empire to t h e d ominant Turkish r ace), which q1.1.i ckly drove the Armenian m embers of p arlia ­ m ent to the opposition b en ches, where they v oted side by side with the Arab s against su ch the compulsor y use of

YOUTH AND AGE. A wedding in the refugees' camp. Circle picture: The oldest refugee in c:tmp. THE TIMES HIS TORY OIl THE TrAR. 359

RECRE AT ION S IN CAMP. Children at play after school hours. the Turkish language in all secondary schools. r eform scheme for the "Six Vilayets." It The Y Olmg Turks, in fact, had imbibed the seerned that the breach might still be averted, chauvinism as well as the liber alism of their and the liberal tendency prevail; but all hope ' Vest-European ensamples. To the religious was lost when the Y01.mg Turkish Government fanaticism of the Old Turk they h ad added the deliberately involved the country in the new-fangled fan aticism of language and r ace, European vVar. and it was simply a question which of their two incompatible ideals would ultima t ely prevail. The Y01.mg Turks entered the war from The years 1908 to 1914 were the critical period. thoroughly Prussian motives. Their object In the summer of 1908 the Young Turkish '"vas to r estore Young Turkish prestige-their r'egime began with a veritable Golden Age; international prestige by t erritorial conquests but in six weeks t hat had passed, and, under at the exp ense of Russia and Persia and Great the influence of failures and misfortunes, Britain which would eclipse the territorial chauvinism steadily gained the upper hand, losses of the Balkan War, and their prestige at while the power of the party b ecame con cen ­ horne by a drastic process of Ottomanization trated in the hands of a gang of unscrupulous a~ld the solution of other problems which had adventurers. Within a year of the con stitu­ not yielded to negotiation and parliamentary tion came the new outbreak of massacre procedure. In fact, the Gordian knot in at Adana, but the Armenians were not alien at ed which they had entangled them selves during even by that. It was represented at t he their half -dozen years of power was to be time as a device of Abd-ul-Hamid 's -adherents hacked through by the sword. Their first bid for discrediting the new Tcgime, and the -;:vas for military success, but when the offen­ actu al guilt of the Young Turks them­ sives la1.Ulched successively on th Caucasian, selves was not disclosed till later on. In Persian and Egyptian fronts had successively 1912, when the Balkan vVar broke out and the com e to grief, they threw them selves all the Armenians were called upon, under the new more savagely into the project of Ottomaniza­ law, to-serve the Ottoman State in arms, they tion at hom e, which meant, in effect, the acquitted themselves so well in doing battle ext ermination of the Armenian race. for the common fatherland of Armenian and An almost exact correspondence can be Turk, that they extorted the commendation traced in the Y o1.mg Turkish Government's of their Turkish officers. In 1913 the YOlmg policy between their reverses at the front and Turks accepted (with modifications) the new their persecution of t.hA Armenians in the $ h":"'J':"/'- '<,I... a""...,.~ '4.(,.-.,. ~ /~...;., f-. I-£: j"';'~ t.4.;!CtA.-;U .-..... f.c S'~.R~ ../rYti.f<~~~: . );;'<;t ..c~~ ~ 4...--.. 7' . ~,~ c.-••-;,..;..v;. 4f::"c.<-4?:i;;. . Yu~ ~ .... ~~ ',,< .'!"C·,,,, U '=-""r <>.L. ~ ~ • ~ ~""';"..L!<~ &'-...4' ':I"':"1I~ 4 n1"", e-i'.u"""", 4h..... ".. . -Z4 ~~ .~r; -I''?'"'' ~~~Ay ~ ~"""''''" -4L~ ?~ , hf"'i'A""U"t:i...c)~ . ,~ (,J'• • ' Ae t;. ~ ~Jo< .v t. ~~ nt.. .,... j;.1k,d -t-r ~ ~...... - ~, .L ~~ • lo 'i, """') '!A":t-r- .:?~~..-?~ ,.o(-....;::) "?;.~~ J-e,~ . ~ a..~e ~ +.- Cd. ~71,'t:'...... ;,;::;", i(;. Cv.-:"'~ '1 ~.v~ 0(. - Jf~~ ,.'!If,

THE RUSSIAN ARMIES IN ARMENIA. The Russians bringing up ammunition and guns through the snowdrifts for the forces attacking the Turks before Erzerum. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 361

interior. The sufferings of the Armenians conquer the territory it was so complacently began mdeed with the declaration of war, for partitioning on the map; and they doubted all male Ottoman citizens between the ages of still more whether it would fulfil its engage­ twenty and forty-five, and soon b etween those m ents if it were r eally to gain such an over­ of eighteen and fifty, were mobilized without whelming success; they could not forget that distinction of r eligion or privilege, and Ar­ the Turks had treated them as aliens and menians who had passed the age of training almost as outlaws in the past, and the appeal before the r atification of the new military for an Armeno-Turkish entente was crossed service law of 1908, and wer e therefore legally in 1914 by the shadow of the Adana massacres exempt so long as they paid their annual and the massacr es of Abd-ul-Hamid. The commutation-tax, were thus called up III Armenians affirmed their intention of doing violation of their rights. There was also a their duty as Ottoman subjects, but declined wholesale r equisitioning of private property the proposal that they should do more, and for military use, which hit the Armenians here matters rested for the moment, while more heavily than other sections of the com­ everybody's attention was concentrated upon munity, becau se they were the principal m er­ the winter offensive. chants and . dealers and shopkeepers of the The course of these military operations has country. already b ee.n described in detail. * The main But all these measures were prima facie enveloping movement in Caucasia, which looked military rather than political in intention, so promising in the last week of D ecember, 1914, and might be ascribed to the pressure of war turned to disaster in the first days of January, .as plausibly as to the discrlluination of the 1915; the subsidiary advance further east, Governmen t. Y ol.mg Turkish circles were in which had brought most of the Persian province an optimistic mood, and they hoped that the of Azerbaijan under Turkish occupation, ebbed confidently expected successes at the front again in the course of the same month in con­ would solve all their problems for them at one formity with events in the principal theatre; stroke. When the Young Turkish Govern­ in February Djemal Pasha's much-advertised ment declared war on the Allies in the latter expedition against Egypt ridiculously missed part of October, 1914, the" Dashnaktzoutian fire. The Turkish offensive was over and done Party" -the chief Armenian parliamentary with. The Turkish armies had fallen back group in the Ottoman Empire- happened to ignominiously upon their own frontiers, with the be holding it. annual party convention at prospect of facing a counter-invasion in the Erzerum, and the Young Turks sent emis­ coming spring. Under these circumstances the saries to lay proposals before this congress. swollen hopes of the Young Turkish Government They proposed that the Armenians, as a nation, gave way to a feverish pessilnism, and the should make common cause with the Ottoman Armenian nation was the inevitable scapegoat Government in prosecuting the war. They of their renewed disappointment and their suggested that the Dashnaktzoutian leaders irreparably damaged prestige. should raise bands of Armenian volunteers to Several factors combined to sharpen their fear join in the coming invasion of Russian Cau­ and hate. The danger of invasion was much casia; and, as a reward, they sk etched a pro­ more imminent on the Russian front than on ject for breaking up a large zone of Russian the others. The next campaign in this quarter territory into autonomous national states was almost certain to be fought on Ottoman under Ottoman suzerainty. The most sub­ territory-on the Ottoman portion of the Arme­ stantial of these protectorates was to be the nian plateau with its strong Armenian popula­ Armenian one, and the Young Turkish emis­ tion, which had been hopelessly alienated from saries even hinted at the possibility of incor­ the Ottoman Government by the previous policy porating with it part, at least, of the Ottoman of the Young Turks themselves, and was likely provinces of Bitlis and Van-all this on con­ to give a cordial reception to the invaders. The dition that the Armenians cooperated with friendly feeling towards Russia which was them h eart and soul in the war. These ambi­ cherished by the Armenian nation as a whole tious overtures were m et by the Dashnaktzou­ had indeed been brought home to the Turks tian Conference with a decided refusal. They in the course of the winter campaign. The had no quarrel with . Russia; they doubted * See Vo!. Ill., Chapter LI., and Vo!. IV., Chapter the power of the Turkish Government to LXXIII. 362 THE TI]JE8 HISTORY OF THE W AB.

MOSUL. Russian Armenians had done of their own accord Pasha, at the Ministry of War, l.mdertook to what the Ottoman Armenians had refused , when d eal with the Armenian soldiers. In the very appealed to, to do. They had raised bands of month of February, 1915, he had praised the vohmteers for their Government's service, and conduct of the Armenian troops in an interview had contributed valiantly to the discomfiture with the Gregorian Bishop of Konia, and had of the Turkish armies at Ardahan and Sari­ even allowed the Bishop to ·· communicate his kamish. Of course the Turks had no proper words, fortified with his signature, to the ground for resentment in this. These Armenian Armenian and the Turkish Press. Yet within vollli"J.t<3ers were lawful Russian subjects, doing a few weeks of this the order came from the battle for the State to which their allegiance was War Ministry that all Armenians in the Army legally due. If the Ottoman Armenians had were to be disanned. They were drafted out of not been moved to do likewise, that was a serious the service battalions and re-formed into labour r8fiection on the behaviour of Turkey towards battalions, to work behind the front at throwing her Armenian subjects as compared with the up fortifications and building roads. At the behaviour of Russia. But the Young Turks San'l6 tL.-"l18, under instructions from the Ministry were in no condition to consider the cold truth. of .. ,the Interior, the provincial administrative Their armies had been disastrously beaten; authorities set abo,ut disarming the Armenian there had been Armenians in the enemy's civil population. The Armenians had, in fact, ranks, some of whom had come all the way from possessed themselves individually of a certain N ew York in their eagerness to beat the Turks. number of arms since the year 1908-and this Well, they would take their revenge on · those by the p ermission and even advice of the other Armenians who still remained in their Young Turks themselves; for in their earlier power. It was in this spirit that, at some time and better days the Y01.mg Turks had been during the course of Febrw\ry, 19l5, the Young genuinely desirous of restoring individual liberty Turks made -llP their minds to strike at the and creating an equilibrimn b etween the' diffe­ Armenians with all their might. rent races of the Empire, and as it was beyond their power ,to undo Abd-ul-Hamid's work by But before a comprehensive scheme could disarming the Kurds, they attempted to restore be set on foot the Armenians. must be rendered the balance by sanctioning the acquisition of powerless to resist, and so the first step taken arms by the Armenians. The private bearing was to deprive them of their arms. Enver of arms for personal defenee was an established THE TIMES HiS TORY OF THE WAR. 363 privilege of t.he Ottoma.n Moslem, and the render their arms, for they realized tha t by Young Turks were only carrying out their doing so they would place themselves entirely avowed principles in ext ending the privileges as in the Government's h ands, and they remem­ well as t.he duties of the Moslem to his Christian bered that the m assacres of 1908 and 1894- 6 fellow-citizen s. Now, h owever, this liberal had been preceded by a precisely similar policy was arbitrarily reversed. It was declared demand. But the clergy and the political that the young Armenians of military age had leau el's (6;spta.:ially the leaders of the Dashnakt­ been taken for ·the Army in a lesser proportion zoutian P arty , who had once worked with the than the Turks, and that., in t.he critical military YOlmg Turks in the Ottoman Parliament situation of the moment, their presence in the realized v ery strongly t.he importance of avoid­ interior with arms at their command was a ing a breach and of giving the Government no m en ace to the security of the state'. Violent pretext for putting the Armenians in the wrong. measures were enj oined by the Central Govern­ Generally a m eeting of the local Armenian ment to m eet the alleged emergency. In ev ery n otables was conven ed to d ecide what action town a nUITlber of Arm.enian luen, amounting should b e taken in view of the Govermnent's' in the larger places to ros many as four or fi ve d ecree. One n eutral witness (a Danish sister hlIDdred, were suddenly arr ested and thrown serving with the German R ed Cross in a certain into prison. It was announced by the local Asiatic town) d escribes how, when the Armenian governor of wh atever place it might be that a meeting was unable to arrive at a d ecision, it certa in number of rifles w er e believed to b e in was r esolved to invite the Turkish notables of t h e pnvate possession of t h e Armenians of the the place to hold a joint conference with the district, and t h at t h at nunl.ber must be d elivered Armeniarrs. In this case the Armenians were into the h ands of the authorities b y a certain induced to d eliver up their weapons by a d ate. If they were n ot forthcoming, the guarantee, on the part of their Turkish n eigh­ severest punishment would fall upon the host­ bours, that they, personally, would see to it ages in prison, in the first instan ce, and, in a that no harm came to them through taking this secondary d egree, upon the Armenian com­ st ep. Possibly these local Turks were l3incere munity as a whole. in their undertaking, but, in the instance in The Armenians were very lIDwilling t.o sur- question , the Governor had the arms photo-

A CORNER OF THE TOWN OF VAN, Showing the Castle Rock in the distance. 364 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. graphed as soon as they were brought in, and set forth in the sequel. In this instance the sent the photograph to Constantinople, sub­ local governor and the central authoritIes were mitting it as proof of an inuninent Armenian obviously in collusion_ There were certain rebellion, and asking what action the Govern­ cases, it is true, in which the local administrators ment desired him to take_ The Government refused to carry out the atrocious instructions t elegraph ed back that it gave him a free hand, from Constantinople- su ch honourable officials a11.d there followed in that place a succession of were prornptly relieved of their posts and re­ atrocities on the standard pc.ttern that will be placed by more pliant tools- and there were instances of well-intentioned but weak-minded governors who were overborne by the h ead of the local branch of the Committee of Union and Progress (as at Trebizond) or even by a junior official in their own entourage (as, in a certain degree, at Kharput)_ But in the majority of cases there 'vas evidently · a complete under­ standing b etween the central and the local authorities. On the question of policy they saw eye to eye, and an excellent t elegraph system kept them very effectively in touch. Apparent disagreements or discrepancies can nearly always be traced to a prudent mtention of concealing the origins of the crin1.e and obscuring the lutimate responsibility for it. The Armenians, as has b een said, were unwilling in the first instance to surrender their arms, but, as soon as they had decided to do so, they were painfully anxious to obtain arms to surrender. Even since they r eceived permission to bear arms in 1908, they had not possessed themselves of sufficient to go round,

DINNER IN CAMP. Refugees preparing a meal. Smaller picture : Carrying dioner to the cam). THE TIMES HLSTORY ' OF THE TiVAR. 365

FOOD FOR THE REFUGEES. Carrying bread and stores to the store-house. Circle picture: Serving out dinner. and the local authorities were now demanding an arbitrary and excessive total. In many places horrible tortures were inflicted upon the hostages in prison. They were bastinadoed till their feet were reduced to a pulp (the process is described in detail in the deposition of a German missionary); their hair was plucked out; their nails were torn out by the roots. A bhicksmith employed by an American college in a certain place was almost beaten to death on the charge of having "constructed a bearing arms and of procuring new ones in bomb "-the bomb in question was a s olid place of those they sold to the Armenians at iron shot which he had been forging for the such handsome profit. These Turkish weapons competition of "putting the weight" at the were solemnly handed over to the authorities forthcoming college sports. In the same and photographed by them with the rest. place a real bomb was unearthed by the A series of these photographs were collected gendarmerie in the Armenian burial ground; in an album by the Ottoman Government and but it was so rusty with age that it obviously published by them as a justification for all dated from the Hamidian regime before 1908, the crimes against their Armenian subjects when the Young Turks, like the Dashnakists, which they previously or subsequently com­ were themselves outlaws addicted to revolu­ mitted. This tragi-comical procedure would be tionary methods. Yet the discovery of this almost incredible, were it not described ex­ bomb was made a pretext for aggravating the plicitly by trustworthy American witnesses persecution. After experiencing these tor­ from more than one locality. tures the victims made frantic efforts to obtain for delivery the number of arms required By the beginning of the spring of 1915 thiSl of them. 'They bought them from any Ar­ governmental campaign of torture and cajolery meman Inend who was lucky enough to possess had done its work, and the Armenians through­ a surplus; they even bought them, naturally out Turkey were effectively disarmed. The at exorbitant prices, ,from their Turkish Govermnent could now proceed without l.ID­ neighbours, who still retained the privilege of easiness to the execution of its ulterior scheme, 101-3 Cl.:> 0;, General view of the camp. Refugees in camp. 0;

Sheiks in camp. Each man controls twenty-five tents. The Camp Police Force. IN THE ARMENIAN REFUGEE CAMP Ai PORT SAID. THE . TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 367 which it had thought out long beforehand, and lecture,. behind closed doors, to high official for which it had already made extensive circles at Berlin, and he treated it afterwards preparations. The Young Turks proposed to in published articles. deport all the Armenian communities in the The immensity of the idea appealed to the Empire from their homes. The scheme, as we crude nationalism of the Young Turkish remarked at the outset, was traditional in the doctrinaires, and its possibilities were seized N ear East, but the Young Turks might not upon by the Young Turkish politicians. Not have r emembered it had they not been re­ the least ingenious part of Dr. Rohrbach's minded of it by Dr. Rohrbach of Berlin, the scheme was the provision he intended to make Central European expert in the geography of for the Armenians when he had evicted them racial ascendancy and racial repression. Dr. from their native habitations. He proposed to Rohrbach had made a special study of Turkey deport them southward and settle them along ·ever since William n. had brought that the projected course of the Baghdad Railway, ,country within the Prussian purview. In the where it traverses the vast Mesopotamian .course of contemplating the ethnological map steppes and descends to the alluvial lands of ,of the Near E ast, ' he had noticed that the Irak. These regions are potentially the richest­ Armenians, established on their central plateau in the Turkish Empire, but they had lain .and stretching down from it to the Black Sea, neglected for a thousand years. The purpose .on the one hand, at Trebizond, and the Mediter­ of the Baghdad Railway was to open up their ranean, on the other, in Cilicia, somewhat wealth, but the mere laying down of metals .awkwardly severed the Osmanli Turks in the cannot revive a country without the coopera­ heart of the Anatolian P eninsula from the tion of skilled and industrious hands. If, .other Turkish -speaking populations in N orth­ argued Dr. Rohrbach, the most promising Western Persia and Russian Caucasia. If only human element in the Ottoman Empire were this Armenian barrage could be displaced, Dr. brought into contact with the most promising Rohrbach would be able to make a m ap in land, the Empire would be strengthened which Germany's Osmanli allies formed a economically, the dividends of the German .continuous bloc with their Turkish kinsmen shareholders in the Baghdad Railway would be ·in Azerbaijan and the basin of the River assured, and a number of delicate political Aras. These latter were already in contact problems would come to a desirable solution­ with still larger Turkish populations in the all to the advantage of German World-Power. Russian Empire, stretching away into Central This scheme. for winnowing out the racial Asia and up the course of the V olga as far as elements of the Near East was doubtless pr~. ­ Kazan; while in the other directiqn the pounded by Dr. Rohrbach in all good faith~ Osmanlis qf Anatolia were directly in touch there is something characteristically German in with the Bulgars (a tribe reputed of Tatar the conception-but it took on a very different .origin) and through the Bulgars (if one counted complexion in the hands of Enver Pasha and ·on the forcible extinction of little Slavonic Talaat Bey. These Young Turkish militants Serbia) with the "Ugro-Finnic" Magyars of had learnt from their confederates of the German Hungary- Germany's direct neighbours and General Staff the uses of th~ G~rman professor .closest allies. This scheme was christened the a'3 a "hunlan screen" for the masking of Pan-Turanian idea, on the theoretical ground " Frightfulness." Deportation, they decided, that all the races in question spoke non-Indo­ t: hould be the word, and they adopted Dr. European languages of a " Turanian " character Rohrbach's valuable suggestion that the exiled which were remotely allied to ' one another, Armenians should be replaced by Moslem .and ought therefore to cultivate a common refugees from the European provinces lost in :sentiment and pract,ise political cooperation. the Balkan vVar of 1912. But ,they did not 'The project was more plausible on the map trouble themselves with the second chapter of than in reality, but any movement tending to his scheme. Probably they wer~ better ac­ .detach Bulgaria from Russia and attract quainted than Dr. Rohrbach with what lay .Russia's Turkish-speaking subjects towards between the exiles and their nominal goal-the -the Ottoman Empire was worth promoting rough, interminable mountain-tracks, the gorges from the German point of view, and Dr. of the Euphrates, the waterless stretches of the Rohrbach preached it vigorously. He is said desert, the temper of the gendarmerie and the to have expounded it first in a confidential Kurds. Once the Armenians were on the road; 368 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR.

the ministries at Constantinople need trouble the provinces of the Empire. A ferocious cen ·· themselves about them no more; their doom sorship suspended communication with the would work itself out without their further outer world, n ot so much by excision as by intervention, and Enver and Talaat could affect terrorism., for the remotest allusion to political a decent regret that justice had been carried to or military events was visited with arrest and an excess. " The sad events that have occurred imprisonment upon the writer, and even upon in Armenia," T alaat confided to a sympathetic the recipient, of the letter. Constantinople was correspondent of the B erline1' T ageblatt, a year isolated from the provinces, and the provinces after t he deportations had been put in train, from each other. No Armenian might travel, "have prevented my sleeping well at night. or send a letter, or telegraph across the provin­ We have been reproached for making no distinc­ cial boundaries. The foreboding arou 'ed by tion between the innocent Armenians and the t he calling in of arms was increased by the con­ guilty; but that was utterly impossible, con­ tinued retention of the hostages in prison after sidering that those who were innocent to-day the arms h ad been delivered up. These hos tages were n ot, for the most part, the yOlmg men who were alleged to be a danger to the State­ t he majority of these young men '''' re already in the labour battalions. They were the elderly m en-merchants, ecclesiastics and professors­ and the Armenians realized that they had been deprived of their leaders at the moment of n ational crisis. Meanwhile, the Goyernment's disposition s were swiftly and secret.ly going forward. The Mos~em refugees froni Europe­ or Mouhadjirs, as they are called in Turkish­ who h ad been stranded for the past two years on the western fringes of the Empire, along the lEgean and Marmora coasts, were collected and dispatched by the railway towards the east; the gendarmerie was reinforced by bad characters and by discredited men whose zeal was to re­ trieve their reputation-and this not only in. the lower but in the higher ranks, for the chief director of the deportation at Adapazar , which was carried out with peculiar brutality, was a probationer of this class; and irregular bandl::! of "chettis " -partly recruited from . crimin als THE KHAN ' OF KO TCH ELI, released from prison and partly from outlaws Who was reported to be connected with the at large, with whom the Government made its massacres around Lake U rmia. truce in return for their collaboration in its might be guilty to-morrow," The ringleaders crimes-were commissioned to' assist the gen ­ at Constantinople took full advantage of the darmerie in its task. By April all was ready, cover afforded by Dr. Rohrbach's ingenuity, but and the first convoy of exiles was led away, on their subordinates in the provinces were le::s April 8, from the town of Zeitoun. discreet. " If you deport the Armenians under these conditions," protested an American resi­ Zeitoun was a mountain-community ill dent in Turkey to a lo<{al governor, " they will Cilicia, which had valiantly maintained its none of them reach their destination." " What autonomy under Ottoman overlordship since do you imagine we are deporting them for? " the fall of the last Armenian principality in the official bluntly replied. 1375. During the massacres of 1894-6, Zeitoun So the process of ext ermination was methodi­ had b een besieged by a Turkish army, an d its. cally put in train, and as soon as the disarming extermination was part of ~Abd-ul - Hamid 's was over the deportation began. An atmo­ plan. But it resisted stoutly for six months, sphere of horror, which breathes through all the and finally made t erms with the Government eve-witnesses' acconnts, had settled down over on the mediation of the Powers. r etaining the THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 369

-"" . ,.".-.... " ..,.~ ...., ...... ' ..

THE RUSSIANS IN ARMENIA. A Cossack Camp on the plateau of Kargabazar. ancient charter of liberties which exempted they and the p13insmen would be left in peace. it from receiving a Turkish garrison and from And the elders of Zeitoun themselves, like the furnishing a contingent of its own to the Armenian leaders throughout the Empire, were Turkish ~A.rmy. Zeitoun stands in an almost determined to go almost any lengths in order impregnable position among the hills, and as . to k : ep the peace. So the terms were accepted, soon as they heard the news of the calling in and the Turkish troops began to arrive. of arms, the Zeitounlis put themselves in The soldiers were given good quarters and a posture of defence; but they did not act upon friendly reception, and n o provocation succeeded their first inlpulse. The Ottoman authorities in deflecting the Armenian leaders from their intimated to them, ,~hrough the Gr egorian policy. There was a ferocious search for arms, Katholikos of Cilicia, that, if they resisted, in which the bastinado was applied with reprisals would be made upon their defenceless sh ocking cruelty; Haidar Pasha, the Governor kinsmen in the plain; while, if they accepted of Marash, arrived on the scen e and went off a garrison and surrendered their arms, both again with a batch of Armenian notables under 370 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE liVAR. arrest; Fakhri Pasha, with three Germ.an they were in a miterab;e condition-ragged officers in his train, came up from Aleppo to and hlmgry (for they had had no time to pre~ inspect proceedings; the young m en of pare food or clothing for the journey), ami Zmtoun, In spite of their clear privilege, exhausted by their descent from the mountains were rigorously conscribed and dratted away. on foot. Old n"len and women we:'e falling by At last 25 of these conscripts (25 yOlmg the wayside; there were children almost naked men out of 15,000 Armenians in Zeitoun and shivering with the cold; the gend3.rmes were and the surrounding villages) v,'ere stung driving them along under the lash; the Moslem into th9.t resistance which the Turks in­ population was apathetic, and made no attempt tended to provoke. They deserted and to mitigate their lot, and the local Armenians· entrenched thsmselves in a neighbouring monas­ ·were hinder ed from doing so by the malevolence tery; the Turkish troops in Zeitoun-who of the authorities. From the Cilician plain now amounted to about 5,000 men, with they were forwarded along the Baghdad artillery-attacked the position; they were Railway in either direction. Half of them were r epulsed with loss, and the recalcitrants de­ sent north-westward across Taurus to a­ camped in the night. This was on April 7, desolate place called Sultani3., in the heart of an CL the next day, April 8, the first wholesale the great central salt desert of Anatolia. deportation was carried into effect. The They arrived there d~stitute -with no food or Zeitounlis were marched away towards the shelter, and no able-bodied men in their­ south; the Mouhadjirs concentrated in r eadi­ company to remedy the situation by their n ess were hurried into their place; and the labour and wits; many of them were the nam.e of Zeitolm was changed to Suleimanlu. families of men taken for the Army, who had a The exiles from Zeitoun "Were seen by m.any claim on the Government for support; but witnesses along the course of their route. the Government not only omitted to hous) and There was a Swiss teacher in a town on the feed and clothe them, but actually prohibited Cilician plain, who saw company after company any relief from being sent them by the Ar~ of them pass through. Even at this stage m enian commlmity in the Konia Province.

ERZERUM. Armenian traders. THE TL~lE8 HISTORY OF THE WAR. . 371

ERZERUM. Set on fire by the retreating Turks. , '" orn out as they wer e, and transferred with D er-el-Zor and Aleppo she met one convoy after such abruptness from their own t emper at e another on the march. The track ran across mOlmtains t o an unaccust om ed and lmhealt hy a rock y , barren plateau, scored with ravine3 climate, t hey died off in dozens every day. and r eflecting the heat from every angle. The L a t er , m ore adequate provision was m ade for exiles wer e par ched with thirst, and the t hem on the repr ntations of an Albanian Euphra t es, winding away in a muddy ribbon officer appointed t o the district, who was several miles to their left, was too distant to r evolted by wha t he fOlmd, and finally they afford them drink. One old man seized on an were all driven b ack again along the sam e weary empty bottle dropped by one of Schwest er r oad to join their fellow-townsm en in t he Mohring's party a t the midday m eal, ran to deserts of t he south-east. These other Zei­ fill it with t epid, discoloured water, and returned tounli convoys, wh o had b een sent from the with t ears in his eyes to thank them for the . beginning in a sou t h-east erly direction, b egan gift. This was the Y olmg Turks' version of t o p ass through Aleppo on April 19, and wer e Dr. Rohrbach's project for colonizing the forwarded from ther e to D er-el-Zor, the capital neighbourhood of the Baghdad Railway. SuI­ of a province down the course of the Euphrates, tania was officially styled an "agricultural six days' journey by carriage from Aleppo colony"; in r eality, both Sultania and Der-el­ itself. Zor were vast mortuaries, where those who This last and n1.ost dreadful st age in th \ reached them alive were to die by sure degrees Zeitounlis' journey has been described, in a and leave their bones. The Zeitounlis whom German mission ary journal, by Schwest er Schwest er Mohring saw had ah'eady b een Mohring, a German mi ~sionary, who, in the many weeks on this road to d eath, and they spring of 1915, was t raversing this road in the were only the vanguard of the vast nrocession opposite direction on her way to Aleppo from that flowed towards D er-el-Zor from the north Baghdad. She first en countered the exiles at and north-west during the ensuing .months of D er-el-Zor itself; the town was crowded with the year 1915. them , and they were lying about in the open, or dragging them selves along in the vain search for The d eportation of Zeitoun was followed at some untenanted p at ch of shade to shelter once by the deportation, without exception, of them from the intolerable heat. Between the surrounding mountain towns and villages; 372 THE TIMES HIS'l'ORY OF THE WAR. but tIle process in Cilicia was in general distinctly Cilician plain, the fanatics of the Union ~n d milder than the m ethods practised in the pro­ Progress Committee who were urging the vinces of the north and north-east, which must Goverrmlent to begin an outright massacre were shortly be described. In these civilized Cilician still opposed by the resp ectable section of the highlands, Christian and Moslem lived together Moslem community who wished to ·live with on friendly terms, and the orders sprtmg upon their Armenian fellow-citizens in peace and good ­ t hem by the authorities caused almost equal will. But before the month of April was out, consternation to them both. An American events had occurred on the north-ea tern lady, ,,-ho was present in one of these hill-towns frontier which changed the situation immeasur­ throughout the proceeding3, describes how a ably for the worse and accelerated the progress Kurdish chief, who was in the habit of coming of the crime through t.he length and breadth of into town at intervals for market, wept when the Ottoman Empire. he heard that his best Armenian friend was to be It has been m entioned that, n ext to Cilicia, the principal centre of the Armenian populatio.n in Turkey was the province of Van. The city of Van itself, which is the capital of the province and lies close to the eastern shore of the great inland lake of the same name, is full of the memories of Armenian history. Its striking citadel-rock, which rises abruptly from the plain, is carved with the clmeiform inscriptions of the Urartu (Ararat) kings, who ruled there before the Armenian language was spoken in the land, and fought on equ al terms with the Assyrians. In the Middle Ages Van was the seat of inde­ pendent Armenian princes, and battlemented medieval walls crown the citadel's summit . while the" -Walled City " c~ng s close to the foot of the rock. This" vValled City "-a maze of tall, huddled houses with blank ';\'alls facing the street, and narrow tortuous alleys and bazaars­ is still the business quarter of Van, where Christian and Moslem, Armenian and Turk and Kurd, swarm and jostle and make their bargains ; but in the course of the nineteenth century, when Sultan Mahmud had chastized the Kurds and Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid had not yet undone IN AN ARMENIAN TRENCH AT VAN. his work, the city spread out eastwards into the deported, and declared that he would never open plain. N ew residential quarters-some again visit a place where such wickedness was Turkish, some Armenian, and some t enanted by done. The principal Moslem ecclesiastic of the both nationalities-grew up along the high town undertook to look after the property a:nd roads leading out of the town, scatter ed groups interests of the leading Armenian Protestant of houses set in spacious gardens, well watered during his absence (for the authorities always and planted with trees. This was the" Garden maintained the fiction that the deportation was City," or the" Vineyards" (Aikecdan), as it was only temporary, and that,the exiles would re­ called by the Armenians themselves, and every turn); the Moslem inhabitants of two n eigh­ morning the Turkish and Armenian busin ess­ bouring villages defied the gendarmes, and m en of Van came, riding or on foot, from their would not let their Armenian neighbours go, suburban houses and passed through the battle­ only yielding to pressure after they had shielded mented gate of the "Walled City" to do their them for three months. In these mountain work ben eath the shadow of the citadel, and districts the Government's decree fell upon r..11 passed out again every evening to their garden a.like as an inexplicable act of wickedness, a homes. They were a peaceful, prosperous com­ ruinous calamity; in the big towns of the munity; the only jarring features were the 'l 'HE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 373

RUSSIAN TROOPS ADVANCING IN THE CAUCASUS. {)ttoman glms on the citadel and t h e Ottoman published by her in the United States before the barracks in th e plain-solid building3 planted end of the year, and is practically a reprint of ,on 'everal eminences on the outskirts of the private letters v;rritten by her from Van at the - Garden City, and h oldlng it lmder their com­ time, is our chief, and completely trustworthy, ma,nd. In the m id ,t of the Armenian quarters source of information for the events that in the Gardens stood t he building.s of the occurred. ilu1.1.erican Protestant lVI i. sion, with their staff of In Van, as a border district, the tension was An1.erican missionaries, doctors, teachers and greater from the beginning than in Cilicia or their families "vho worked among the Armenians the r egions farther west. The province was and were likewise on friendly terms with the placed in a state of siege from the moment Governn1.ent authorities. These missionaries Germany declared war on Russia in August, were present at Van through all the terrible 1914, and when, two months later, Turkey events of 1915. They endured the siege, they intervened in the war herself, the r egistration fell victims to the typhus, and the survivors took of conscripts and the requisitioning of supplies part in the awful retreat. The narrative of one were conducted her e with special strictness., of them, Miss Gr ace Higley Knapp, which was Y et her e, as in other places, the Armenians 374 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 37& did everything to maintain good r elations shelter lying outside without covering in the with their Moslem neighbours; and the authori­ frozen slush. Yet these suffered less than ties, on their part, at first adopted a conciliatory those who had not the heart to go, for Djevdet attitude towards the local Dashnaktzoutian and Halil, as they advanced, had raised the leaders (several of whom were men'lbers of the Kurdish tribes of the hills, who hated the Ottoman Parliament), consulting them about Christian plainsmen and longed for plunder. the maintenance of public order, and making Some N estorian villages were overwhelmed them their intermediaries in their dealings before the people had time to flee, the men with the Armenian community. At the en:l massacred, the women carried off; the re­ of December, 1914, the Ottoman forces con­ mainder crowded for refuge within the walL3- centrated at Van began to move across the of Urmia town. At Urmia there was a medicd frontier into the Persian Province of Azer­ mission station of the American Presbyterian baijan, which had been 1.mder Russian military Church-a little colony of American men, occupation since the disorders consequent upon women and children, perhaps a score in all, the Persian R evolution of 1906. The western who in this crisis performe:l one of the most part of Azerbaijan consists of the basin of Lake heroic achievements of the war. The town of Urmia, a region of the S3.me physiographical Urmia is a conglomeration of yards or com­ character as the basin of Van; and the country pounds, set wall to wall, and communicating b etween Lake Urmia and the frontier is in­ separately with the street. The Americans habited by the N estorians, an ancient Christian immediately hired about 20 compounds nationality who differ in language and doctrine adjoining theirs, broke passages through the from .the Armenians, but have always been party-walls, blocked up their street entrances, their neighbours and have suffered the same and left no way in or out of their enlarged vicissitudes of fate. The Urmia district was domain except the single gateway into their invaded by the Ottoman forces at two points. original compound, above which floated the The Governor of Van himself-a brother-in­ Stars and Stripes. No less than 17,000 law of Enver Pasha, Djevdet Bey by name, refugees poured into this asylum, and the whose father had been Governor before him­ Americans at once undertook their keep, advanced upon Salm3.s at the north-western m a:~ing contracts with the Moslem bakers of the end of the lake, and Ha.lil Bey, also a con­ town, and buying, transporting and distributing nexion of the same family, descended upon the half a ton of bread a day. They paid the cost town of Urmia farther south. The Russians out of the money left in their k eeping by the had only left weak forces in Azerbaijan, and richer N estorians who had fled , which they had had concentrated their main strength in the accepted only on the understanding that they decisive theatre of operations to the north­ might borrow it for this purpose, and they west; they r etr eated rapidly as the Turks trusted to the generosity of their countrymen advanced, Salmas and Urmia fell into the in­ in America to refund the loan. When these vaders' hands, and, sweeping round the southern funds ran low, the bakers, who were hostile to end of the lake, they momentarily occupierl the Christians and feared that, if the Russians Tabriz. * returned, any debts outstanding to them The treatment of the N estorians by the would not be repaid, re!used· to deliver on invading soldiery was of bad augury for credit; but the Americans took steps to their Armenian fellow Christians of Van, on organize another supply, and caj oled the bakers the other side of the frontier. Many thousands into a compromise. of them, foreboding what was to come, had The conditions in the crowded compounds fl ed northwards in the wake of the retiring were indescribable. Every cranny of the Russian army, making for Djoulfa, on the church, the school-rooms and the adjoining Russo-Persian frontier. It was an awful houses was choked with human beings, and one [ilgrimage-seven days' struggle through mo­ woman, who had been sitting for days at a rasses of mud, in bitter cold; children separated school-room d esk, leaning her baby against a from their parents, old men and women dying post, declared that hers, · by comparison, by the way, and babies being born; every was "a very good place." The missionaries hovel crammed with refugees in the villages performed miracles in keeping the water supply along the route, and those who could find no l.mdefiled and taking such sanitary measures * See Val. IU., Chapter LI. as were po~sible, but many were sick before 376 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. they arrived, an epidemic of typhus broke tiny hand was thinned as grievously by the out, and several dozen dead were carried typhus as if they had been on duty in the fire­ out every day, the death-rate increasing with zone at the front, they brought out the majority every added week of congestion; while such of the ~ efugees alive. Meanwhile, the com­ terror reigned beyond the rnission walls that pOlUlds at Urmia were cut off entirely from all preferred to face the plague within rather news of the outer world, but, though they did than the Tmks and Kmds without. The not know it, the tide had already turned. The Americans succumbed to the typhus one by battles of Ardahan and Sarikamish were one-there is a two-rnonths gap in the diary decisive for the whole Russo-Turkish front. of the lady who has r ecorded these extra­ B efore January, 1915, was out, the Russians h ad ordinary events, dm'ing which she sickened re-entered T abriz, had driven Djevdet Bey out and recovered frOIn the disease. The N estorian of Salmas, and were pressing once more upon t eachers and Bible-women who nmsed them the northern and eastern frontier s of Van. went down with it, the native doctors went down, and the rnen they had taught to organiz3 The Armenians of Van were r elieved to hear the- sanitation and the distribution of bread­ of their Governor's approaching r etmn, for but still they carried on. They k ept on good the heavy fighting beyond the frontier had t erms with the P ersian civil governor (who, r eacted on the internal situation in a sinister indeed, was as impotent under the Turkish as way. H alf elated by hope and half exasper ated under the Russian administration), with the by susp ense, the Moslem population had been , Tmkish military command, and with the showing a dangerous t emp er towards their - Kurdish chiefs, who were licensed by the Turks Armenian neighbours, especially in the outlying to do much as they pleased. Various alarming districts, and the Vice-Governor had flouted the incidents were tided over, and all this time Dashnaktzoutian leaders when they proffered they held Praise Meetings and Communion him advice. Djevdet, on the other hand, had Services, married those who were to be married, written then1. complimentary lett ers announcing and said the proper offices over the dead. his victories and declaring his appreciation of Engulfed as they were among their panic­ the D ashnakists' service in k eepivg the peace s tricken and nerveless proteJe:3. their comage at home. Everyone hoped that he would heal never gave way, and after 20 weeks of this the breach; but his last deed before evacuating unparalleled stress, during which their own Salmas was the massacre of all the Armenian

THE ANCIENT MONASTERY OF VOSTAN. Showing Lake Van in distance. THE TIMES HIS TORY OF THE WAR. 377

ARMENIANS AT THE TURCO-PERSIAN FRONTIER.

and N estorian males in the place and a design but they found him impossible to deal with. against the women which was only frustrated The Russians wer e pushing on, and Djevdet 's by the prompt arrival of the Russian troops. nerves were on · edge. He could only bluster H e had b een turned savage by his military that he would first reduce Shadakh to obedience discomfiture, and now vented his rage upon the and then deal chastisement to Van. The first Armenians under his rule. As far as it is symptom of rebellion would be his signal, and possible to fix the guilt of what followed upon he would leave not one Armenian house in one m an, the blood of the Armenians is upon Van standing, except the house where his Djevdet's head. Soon after his return to Van, father the Governor had lived. The Armenians there was a serious Moslem outbreak in the found that he wa:; drawing a cordon round the Shadakh district, towards the south of the Garden City, and dominating it by military Province, and Djevdet requested I shkhan, one works ; a council of notables was held, ana it of the Dashnakist leaders in the city of Van, was r esolved to place themselves in readiness to go and m ediate between the parties. I shkhan for the worst that might occur. On April 20, consented, trusting to the Governor's former 1915, the catastrophe came. At six o'clock good will; but hA was murdered with his in the morning some Armenian peasant women companions on his journey through the moun­ on their way into town were molested by a tains, almost avowedly at Djevdet's instigation. picket of Turkish soldiers; two young Ar-· About the same time the gendarmerie massacred menians intervened, and were shot by the the young men of an outlying village where Turks; at the first sound of firing Djevdet. they had been sent to gather in the arms, and loosed his artillery upon the Garden City, and the young men of another village, hearing the the fighting had begun. There were about news, fell upon another gendarmerie patrol that thirty thousand Armenians in the besieged came up against them. A fanatical Moslem area, two or three thousand of whom were rabble set out from Bitlis, the capital of the armed fighting men. This community had to next province, and marched on Van along the be defended, provisioned and administered in southern shore of the lake, and the Armenians one moment, but the Armenians displayed of the city met them in a narrow place and drove remarkable powers of emergency organization. them back. Meanwhile, the American mis­ A provisional government was appointed, sionaries, at the Armenians' desire, approached with committees of defence, supplies and relief. Djevdet and attempted to bring hiin to r eason, A line of loopholed houses, barricades and "378 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR.

trenches was made and held, and the defenders the Armenians sallied out from their lines were assigned to the different sectors or to the and set it on fire. Indeed, deliver ance was -central reserve. The population was fmnished close at hand, for, on the news of the siege, a with bread-tickets and put on rations, and Russian r elief column, ~ea d e d by a strong provision was made for the r efugees who were contingent of Russian-Armenian volunteers, .allowed by Djevdet to flock in from the villages had started to m arch on Van by way of B ayazid . in the hope that they W0111d hasten the starving­ It was the knowledge of their coming tha t h ad -out of the town. Rifle ammunition was turned roused Djevdet to deliver his last and most -out in considerable quantities, and, w1.der the furious cannonade, but while the Turkish .direction of an Armenian professor, they townspeople had been fl eeing across the L ake, .actually constructed three cannon. Hospitals, Djevdet had b een withdrawing his troops -doctors and orderlies wer e found for the R ed southward over the hills, and on May 21, 191 5, 'Cross, and they organized a brass band, thirty-one days after the b eginning of the which always betook itself to the hottest part siege, the Russo-Armenian forces entered Va n

heart of the besieged quarter, and Djevdet Bey, collision between Armenian J and Turk, un­ :some days before he launched his attack, had provoked though it had been on the Armenians' proposed to instal there a guard of fifty Turkish part, were visited upon the whole Armenian 'soldiers. Their presence would, of course, have population of the Ottoman Empire by the paralysed the defence, and the Armenians Young Turkish Government with unparalleled -declared that they would oppose their entrance, ferocity. but the Americans had managed to dissuade Djevdet from his purpose, and, when the siege This general extermination of the Armenian began, they maintained their neutrality scru­ people was carried through in different fashion pulously throughout. They even refrained in the different regions. From Van southward from doing Red Cross work for the Armenian and south-west, the country threaten ed by the wounded, and devoted themselves to the r elief immediate Russian advance was cleared of its -of the civil population, working at it night and Christian population by outright massacre on day, for this task alone was ahnost beyond the spot. In the r egion north-west of Van, -coping with. The fire of the assailants was on extending to the Black Sea, which was close the whole ineffective. The Turco-German to the battlefields of Ardahan and Sarilm mish, .artillery had no Armenian guns to oppose it, but where the Russians were not yet across the .and poured a rain of shells upon the Armenian frontier, the m ethod of deportation was nomin­ .quarter in the " 'Walled City" at the foot of ally employed, but the exiles wer e murdered the Castle Rock, upon the Garden City lines" wholesale at the first convenient spot on their .and finally upon the American buildings them­ road. And, lastly, the Armenian population :selves, in defiance of the American flag. But in the west of Anatolia, and in the immediate the shells produced little effect on the Inassive neighbourhood of Const antinople, was genuinely walls of sun-dried brick into which they sank. deported by rail along the Anat oli J,n and lt seemed impossible, how~ver, that the B aghdad lines. It will be b est to deal with improvised defence should hold out much these thr3e r egions separat ely, in succession. longer, when suddenly, in the second week of Djevdet B ey began the south-east ern mas · 'May, a flotilla of sailing-vessels was seen sacres on his r etreat. Passing southwards from "bearing away from the eastern shore of the Van into the Bohtan valley, he joined forces Lake. The Turkish population was in retreat, with Halil, who was likewise retreating from .and soon it was announced that one of the Urmia, and fell upon the Armenians of Sairt, barracks in the plain had been evacuated; near the confluence of the Bohta n aud the Serving out blankets.

The flag that attracted the French Fleet and saved tl:e Armenians.

Red Cross stores at the camp. THE ARMENIAN REFUGEE CAMP AT PORT SAID. 379 380 THE TINIES HISTORY OF THE lVAR.

COSSACKS ADVANCING

Tigris. This was before the end of May, and lation of Moush (the m en h ad received no Djevdet hastened on to Bitlis, the capital of quarter) were removed to concentrat ion camps the next province to his own, occupied it before prepared in the hills, and there the wom en the Russians could reaCh it from Van, and were burnt alive, while the soldiers threw their massacred the Armenians here also on June 25. babies after them into the fl am es, calling out From Bitlis he descended upon the plain of mockingly: "Here are your lions ! " It is Moush. Moush lies north of Bitlis-a depres­ added that soldiers subsequently t ak en prisoner sion in the heart of the Armenian plateau, by the Russians confessed to their presence walled off from Lake Van by the N imrud at these scenes, and declared themselves Dagh volcano, and draining away into the halmted by the impression of horror and the valley of the Eastern (Murad) Euphrates. smell of the burning fl esh. The fate 'of the The town of Moush is surrounded by a girdle villages was different. We know it from the of lowland villages, inhabited by a peaceful, narrative of a woman who staggered, with her defenceless Armenian peasantry, and there baby, into the town of Tchem esh-Getzak in was here much work for Djevdet Bey to do. the Dersim country, on the northern side of How he did it is described by a German mis­ the Eastern Euphrates. When the men had sionary in charge of an Armenian orphanage, been killed, the Turks rounded up the village who was present at Moush during all that women and children, and drove them north­ occurred. The people were told that they west. They came to. the Eastern Euphrates were going to be deported en masse, and were and were joined by the exiles from a dozen given several days to register themselves at other villages on the farther bank, Then they the Government Building; but before the proceeded westwards along the bank of the days were out Djevdet's artillery opened fire river. O.ne day, on the march, they were upon the town, and his soldiery was let loose about to rest and break their fast when sud­ upon the villages of the plain. ,In the first denly they saw the Kurds descending upon week of July 20,000 reWorcements reached them from the hills, and the next thing the Djevdet from Kharput, and, after desperate woman knew she was in the water with her street fighting, Moush was taken by storm. baby in her arms, while her companions were Roupen of Sassoun, an Armenian leader from drowning round 'her or being picked off by the a neighbourmg part of the Bitlis province bullets of the Kurds. She was a strong who subsequently escaped to the Russian swimmer, and she managed to gain the opposite lines, narrates tllat the non-combatant popu hank with her baby and escape. Her story THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 381

THROUGH THE SNOW. was taken down by the man at Tchemesh-Getzak Moush; most of t.he Sassounli leaders, with who ~h e ltered her from her pursuers; but the the exception of RO\lpen, were killed by the baby died of exhaustion, and she herself was explosion of a single shell, and the fighting men hunted down and killed. retired higher and higher into the mountains, The fresh troops that had made an end of covering the retreat of the non-combatants Moush were now hurried southward to clear and the flocks. By the beginning of August the district of Sassoun-the mountain block they were surrounded in their last stronghold, that. lies between the plain of Moush and the the heights of Antok in the north-eastern valley of the Tigns at Diarbekr. Sassoun extremity of Sassoun, almost overhanging th3 was a free federation of forty Armenian moun­ plain of Moush, and here, on August 5, they t.ain villages, which. like Zeit01m in Cilicia: made their final stand. Men, women and had preserved. their autonomy from t.ime children fought with de:: peration, rollmg down immemorial, and led the same seif-sl.lfficient, boulders upon the Turks and K urds, grappling cantonal. life that the Scottish Highlanders led with them hand to hand, and throwing them­ b efore 1745, laboriously terracing their moun­ selves over the precipice when they could hold tain slopes and pasturing their f heep and goats them back no more. But the enemy gained among the rocks. Sass01m, in its independence the" sl..unmit, and Roupen himself was practically ami proRperity, was an eyesore to the Young the only survivor who escaped to tell the fate Turkish nationalists as well as to the local of Bitlis, Moush and Sassoun. South-eastward Kurdish tribes. The Sass01.Ullis had been ' of Van, again, in the Hakkiari district round attacked and massacred by Abd-ul-Hamid's the head-waters of the G~eater Zab, there were orders in 1894-5, and in the spring of 1915, at a munber of little Nestorian tribes who had the Young Turks' instigation, their Kurdish preserved. their independence, like the Arme­ neighbours assaulted them again. The out­ nians of Sassoun, against the surrounding lying villages in the lowlands towards Diar­ Kurds. These, too,. were attacked in June, b ekr were overrun in the latter part of May, and some of them were annihilated, while but their inhabitants made good their escape others fought their way out across the Persian into the. hills, and the hillmen held their frontier, r eached the advancing Russian lines, ground. During the whole of June the Kurds and took refuge, in a destitute condition, with biled to make any impression against them, their hardly less sorely stricken brethren in even when Ottoman cavalry came to their aid. the Salmas district. But now the infantry and guns arrived from But the crowning blow was the Turkish re· 382 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR.

occupation of Van. By the end of July the people that remained and burnt the houses to Turkish reinforcements had mOlmted up to the ground, r esolved that Van should lie as 40,000 m en; they took the offensive along the desolate as Bitlis, Moush and Sassoun. And southern shore of the lake, and on the last day of they succeeded in their purpose. The Russians the month the Russian commander d ecided to drove thern out again b efore the end of the same evacuate the city. It was a cruel end to the ten month, and the Grand Dulm's great advance weeks of national self-government that the in the late winter of 1915- 16 ca~ri e d the fronb Arm.enians of Van had enjoyed. The whole forward to Bitlis and well away j 0 the south­ civil population retreated with the troops, and west; but the ruin was so complete that the there are t errible descriptions of their flight, both work of repatriation proceeded very slowly . from the American missionaries who took part in it and from the Russian Armenians of the vVhile massacre undisguised was b eing Caucasus, who can~e to r eceive the r efugees p erpetrated in the south-east, massacre under at the frontier. This journey over the bare the cloak of deportation h ad been organized mountains in the h eat of summer was as in scores of Armenian towns and villages intolerable as the Nestorians' winter journey towards the north. The detailed evidence had been from Urmia to Djoulfa. They were from the different centres would cover several spurred on by the fear of b eing intercepted hundred printed pages, for there were n eutral by the enemy, and though the Cossacks and witnesses at almost every centre of importance the Volunteers fought heroic r earguard actions who wrote accounts of the even ts at which to win them time, the straggling end of the they were present. But it is possible to give procession was cut off by the Kurds in a a general outline of the process, b ecause it mOlmtain defile beyond the north-eastern proceeded on a common plan, drawn up by corner of the lake. Agonizing incidents were the YOl..mg Turkish Government at Constan­ witnessed by those on the road- a mother tinople and carried out simultan eously, . l..mder laying down her dead child by the wayside their directions, by the local authorities, wit h and hurrying on; another mother shaking unimportant, though often hideou s, variations. off a child who could walk no farther and was The process generally b egan , in whatever clinging to her skirts, because she had already centre it might b e, with a sudden summons two smaller children in h er arms, and could to all male Armenians still at large to present carry no more; a man gazing silently at a themselves at the Government Building by broken-down cart, overloaded with his house­ a given hour. Sometimes the SUlnmons was hold goods and with his wife and children, who conveyed by an official pr oclamation affixed were too weak to walk-knowing that the to the walls, announcing the scheme of de­ cart would carry them no farther, and that to portation and the Govermnent's alleged tarry was death. The little children were the reasons for ordering it, with assurances to the most pitiable of all. Many of them had b ecom e victims of the Govermnent's b en evolent in­ separated from their parents at the start, tentions in their r egard; sometimes the town­ and most of these had perished early on the crier proclaimed it in the str eets; sometimes road; but others were lying exhausted in the the summon s was by bugle -call. ·When the men mountains, and parties of horsemen went out were collected, they were str aightway marched from Igdir, the first village in Russian t erritory, out of the town. They had had no oppor­ to bring them in. A witness describes the tunity to make preparations for the journey, unbearable poignancy of an improvised orphan­ to wind up their affairs or to bid farewell to age in the town of Etchmiadzin- a great room their families, and they were butcher ed at the with hundreds of babies, naked, hl..mgry and first lonely place on the road. The men of motherless, lying on the bare floor, and the Kerasond were butch ered , like the villagers of sound of faint wailing filling his ears. But Moush, by b eing thrown into a stream at the these orphanages in Caucasia were happier midday halt and shot down in the water. At places than the so-called orphanages instituted Trebizond they drove them on board sailing­ by the Ottoman Government, which must be vessels in batches- n ot only the m en, in this described later on. case, but the women and children, by anticipa­ The people of Van did right to choose the tion, as well-took them. out into the Black horrors of flight, for when the Turkish troops Sea, cast them overboard, and clubbed or shot re-entered the city they massacred all the them as they drowned . At Angora, the THE TIMES HISTORY OF' THE WAR. 383

OUTSIDE A CHURCH IN ARMENIA. Armenians, with their priest, who fled to their place of worship for refuge.

Moslem butchers and leather-workers were selves unwilling to waste rifle-ammunition on sent out in advance, with their axes and Arnlenian carcases. Near Angora, l\l[arsovan, knives, to the village of Asi Yozgad on the and other p laces, long, n ewly -filled trenches eastern road, and h ewed their Armenian were pointed out to n eutral travell ers as the fellow-townsmen in pieces by batches, as they sepulchres of the Armenian s disposed of in arrived, the authorities here d eclaring them- this way. V\Then the men who were at large 384 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE TV AR. h d,d been thus expeditiously slaughtued, the their way from Erzindjan to Sivas, actually Jnen who had been in prison, now Inany months, witnessed two such scenes of slaughter. since the time of the inquisit.ion for arms, were 'When the men had been disposed of in these led out in batches and dealt with in the same various" ways, it was the women's turn. In fashion, though more at leisure than the rest. some places, as at Kerasond and Trebizond, An insignificant nwnber of skilled artisan s they were marched off and dro'wned or cut were spared, with whose work the Goyernmer.t down, like their sons and husbands and brothers, could not dispen se. There were cases of this at but the llsual procedure was to offer them a Kharput and Erzerum; but at Erzerum, at any choico-hetween conversion to Islam or depor­ rate, these exempted individuals were taken out tation, and conversion was not the easy alter­ and slaughtered, with their families, as soon native it might seem. It could only b e ratiiied as the task on which they were engaged was by immediate entrance into a Moslem man's completed, and "vhile the civil authoritIes, h arem, and by the surrender of any children the under the direction of the ' Ministry of the woman might h ave h ad by her former, and now Interior, were doing their part in this exter­ murdered, Armenian husband, to b e brought up mination, the Ministry of 'iV ar was effecting in a " Govermnent orphanage" in the Mohalu­ the slaughter of the unarmed Armenian con­ medan Faith. No such institutions had pre­ scripts in the labour battalions behind the viously been known in the Ottoman Empire, and front. These defenceless Armenian servants. no one now knew what devilry might b e cloaked of the Government were massacred en masse. under this new device. At Trebizond there One of their Turkish comrades testified to was an attempt to set up an unofficial orphanage baving been on fatigue duty, burying his tmder the joint presidency of the Governor Armeruan comrades wh om he h a d first worked and the Greek Archbishop, but that was wit h, and then shot d own, by order of his frustrated by the local Committee of Union military superiors, and two D anish hospital and Progress. In some cases the children were nurses, who had been dismissed from the abandoned to the Dervishes, communities of service of the German Red Cross at Erzindja n orgiastic religious votaries who lead a semi­ for assisting the Armenian exiles, and were on monastic life, and there is a description of the

RUSSIAN SHARPSHOOTERS In the Armenian mountain-peaks. THE TLHES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 385

A CARAVAN OF ARMENIANS. A party of refugees, consisting of 37 families, was murdered on this spot.

Armenian boys shrieking with t.error as they batches of less than a hundred at a time. but were handed over to their wild guardianb. in another town, where the authorities had The fat.e of some orphans was more terrible freely encouraged conversion to fill their own still. There was another Danish nurse in pockets, and many had availed themselves of a different locality (we have quoted her t esti­ this supposed avenue of escape, it was subse­ mony on another point above), who was invited quently decreed that converts should be by the local Governor to inspect his n ew deported like the rest. In this town, when the " Orphanage" after the adult Armellians of his day for deportation came, women were sec~ district had been deported. The Danish lady cursing the Governor in the streets for having found about seven hundred Armenian children made them sell their souls in vain, and gabbling in a good building, apparently with plenty to eat ~he Moslem prayers they had learnt to prove and with an adequate staff of Armenian women their claim to the privileges of Islam. There in attendance. She went away reassured, but was the same shifty dealing in the case of the wh en she cam e back, a few days later , she found Catholic and Protestant Armenian communi­ the orphans gone. There was a lake by the ties. These were closely connected with foreign roadside, six hours' journey from the town, nations friendly or even allied to Turkey; and t.hey had been taken thither and drowned the Austro-Hungarian and American Ambas­ by night. Subsequently three hundred more sadors made special representations at Con­ children were collect ed in the "Orphanage," stantinople on their behalf, and the Central and their fate, the Danish lady believed, was Government published an injunction exempting the same. them from the doom of their Gregorian kins­ These were the implications, for an Armenian m en. There were cases, certainly, where this widow and mother in 1915, of conversion to edict took effect. The Catholics, for instance, I slam, and this alternative of conversion was from the village of 1stanos, n ear Angora, were rendered more cruel still by the extreme lati­ sent back to their homes after they had started tude which, 09- questions of religion, was on their exile, and it is said that the Catholics allowed to the local authorities' caprice. In of Angora itself were overtaken by a horseman most places no male converts were accepted; with a reprieve, when they were on the point in others, they n~ight apostatise, with their of being hewn in pieces at Asi Y ozgad. But families, on payment of enormous bribes; III these latter, at any rate, were merely sent on one centre converts were not admitted m into exile instead- the substitution of a

THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 387 lingering for a violent death-and in one and beat them down to nominal prices. Cher­ Anatolian town, though the local American ished possessions like sewing machines sold for residents t elegraphed to the Ministry at Con­ a few p ence in the streets; and often, before stantinople on behalf of their Protestant they left, the exiles saw the other property Armenian clients, and received a t elegram in which they had not been allowed to sell and answer confrrming their reprieve, the local which h ad been taken by the Government in authorities stated that they h ad b een given no trust-houses and fields and fruit-trees-given official instructions to this effect, and deported over into the possession of the newly-come the Protestants all the sam e-another instance Moslem mouhadjirs_ At Trebizond the gen­ of that collusion between the Central Govern­ darmerie began to seal the houses and ware­ ment and their provincial subordinates by house the goods, but they were followed round which they h oped t o exterminate the Armenian by a Moslem rabble, which rushed in after them n ation without abandoning their affectation of and pillaged most of the movable property with decen cy towards the outer world. Thus, to be their connivance_ In some towns the Armenian a Protestant or a Catholic or a convert to I slam quarters were burnt to the ground. was little protection to any Armenian in actual Such was the last sight the Arrnenian exiles fact, and the second alternative of deportation had of their homes, on the day they started on was sooner or later imposed upon the vast their march. They were dispatched in convoys majority. vaTying in size from four or five hlmdred indi­ The deportation of the women , In fact, viduals to four or five thousand, under the escort was designed by the framer s of the schem e of detachments of gendarmes, and from the as th e complem entary stage to the massacre of moment of starting their miseries began. They the men, and it was h eralded, like the latter, were mobbed by the Turkish peasants in the by a further posting of placards or another fi elds as they passed, and when they arrived at proclamation by the town-crier in the streets. a villag3, they were put up on view in some It was announced that all the rem aining public place, generally in front of the Govern­ Armenians in each centre-the women, that is, m ent Building, that the Moslem villagers, rich and su ch sick men, old men and male children and poor, might take their choice of the come­ as had been passed over till n ow-wer e to start liest women, girls and boys. The villages along on a certain day for D er-el-Zor or Damascus or the exile route were filled with these Armenian Mosul or some Dther place hundreds of miles slaves. They were seen by foreign travellers and many week s' journey away, at the opposite who traversed these roads in the oppo ite end of the Ottoman Empire. It was an direction on their way out of Turkey, and a appalling prospect, but the victims were given remnant of them were, happily, rescued by the little time for anticipation. Sometimes they Russian troops, in · the districts liberated were driven straight out of their houses on to the during the Grand Duke's great advance. They road ; at the village of Geben , in Cilicia, they were happier than their companions who did were driven from. the f01.mtain where they not excite the peasants' lust, for these remained were washing their clothes and h ad to march in the gendarmerie's hands_ They were com­ away without returning home to fetch their pelled by the gendarmes to sleep with t,hem at children or prepare t h emselves for the journey ; night, and were reserved for the horrors that but usu ally they were given a period of grace awaited the convoys in the later stages of their for preparation- occasionally a fortnight, but journey. Meanwhile, their numbers were being more often a week- and these days were among thinned by physical exhaustion, as well as by the most h eart-breaking of all. They had to the brutality of the m en at whose mercy they equip themselves with clothes and provisions, were. The Government professed to make · and with ready money to ren ew their supply, provision for their ~ransport, and in certain but the authorities placed an embargo on the cases an ox-cart (or araba, as it is call ed in realization of their possessions. Their pro­ Turkish) was comrnandeered for each deported perty (such was the fiction) was to be held in family. But the drivers (and owners) had no trust for them against their assumed return, intention of making this pilgrimage of hundreds and they might only part with a strictly limited of miles. They could count on the good-will of amount. But even when they were allowed their fellow-Moslems, the gendarmes, and when to sell, they could make little by it, for their they refused to go further, as they invariably Moslem n eighbours welll.mderstood their straits d id after the first few stages on the road, i he 3SS THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR.

g;endarmes made no opposition and the Arme­ the exiles was not uncommon, and many con, nians. had to proceed on foot. Where the voys reached Aleppo in this conc1jtion, some­ Government did not offer even this illusory times marching on foot, the women bent double conveyance, the richer Armenians often hired with shame, and sometunes crowded into carriages or pack-animals for themselves, at ex­ railway carriages on the last stage of their orbitant prices, while families fortunate enough route. The Moslem rabble of Aleppo gathered to possess a cart or a beast of their own started at the siding, and mocked the Armenian women out yvi~h them on the journey. But these, too, as they were driven out naked from the trains. were taken from them by the gendarmes at a But those who reached the journey's end longer or shorter distance · from their starting were only a fraction of those that set out, for place, sometimes from pure malice-as in the every further day they marched, more and more case of the villagers of Shar, in the Cilician perished of exJ::taustion on the road. The highlands, who started out with their own mules majority of them were townspeople, unused to and arabas on their journey to the plain, but physical hardship, and many were people who were deliberately conducted off the wheel-road had been in easy circumstances- the wives and on to a mountain-track in order that they might daughters of skilled workers, tradesmen, mer­ chants, lawyers, professors and doctors-women as delicately brought up and as refined in habit, in many cases, as the women of similar station 1ll Europe and America. These women were being driven day after day, by long marches, through the roughest country, toiling on foot, heavily laden, over unmetalled mountain tracks, and bivouacking by night on the bare grolmd on the outskirts of unfriendly villages. It was the hot season of the year, and their thirst alone was an intolerable torture. There is the remembrance of this thirst in all the narratives of the victims. They would march for hours together without finding water, and when they passed some stream or spring, the gendarme would amuse themselves by for­ bidding the column to halt, or would extort still more of the exiles' remaining possessions as the price of allowing them to rest themselves and drink. It was an ordeal that would have exhausted seasoned soldiers, and these Arme­ nian women were in no condition to bear it at TALAAT BEY. all. The most pitiable cases were those of the have to abandon them by the wayside-but women with child-for, since whole communi­ more often from covetousness on the gendarmes' ties had been uprooted without pity or dis­ part. The gendarmes sold the Armenians' crimination, there were women in all stages of beasts and conveyances to the local Moslems pregnancy in every convoy. These doomed along the route, and indeed they seized and sold mothers staggered along with the rest, fainting all the Armenians' effects. There was one under their burden and driven to their feet . convoy that had to cross a tributary of the again with the lash, till their hour came, perhaps Euphrates on its way to Aleppo. The gen­ at the halting place or perhaps on the march, darmes ordered the wotnen to strip and ford and the child was born. When this happened, the stream, and they did so, holding each other a guard was left behind with the woman, and, by the hand, while the gendarmes, with the after a few hours' respite, she was urged on carts, the beasts and the clothes remained on again to rejoin the column on the road. A case the other bank. But when the women had is reported of a merciful gendarme who saved crossed, the gendarmes refused to r estore even his charge from the molestations of the Moslem their clothes to them, and they had to continue cOlmtry-folk, br~ught her water and found a their journey naked. This literal stripping of beast to carry her; but most of the narratives THE TIMES HIS'JORY OF THE WAR. 389

THE REFUGEES' CAMP. Armenian Priest presenting Bibles to children. The representative of the London Bible Society (x ).

describe a different scene-the child left to The cruelty of the Moslem peasants in the Derish by the r oadside or under a bush , and the cultivated lands was as nothing compared to the woman struggling up under the blows, to die cruelty of the Kurds and" chetti" bands in the of hemorrhage a few yards from the place of mountains, and the gendarmes, whose duty it her d elivery or to collapse suddenly from shock was to protect the exiles on the Government's an hour or two further on t h e way. There were behalf, always frabernized with the marauders neutral residents in one town through which and outdid their atrocities with worse excesses many convoys passed, who used to go out to of their own. We have the narrative of an the place where the exiles encamped and try Armenian lady who marched in the third to save these mothers and their babes; but con voy of exiles from Baibourt--at Baibout't often they were k ept at a distance by the gen­ the proceedings opened with the hanging of the darmes, and even w hen they succeeded in Bishop and seven other Armenian notables, and I bringing Inother and child to their hospital in there was the usual massacre of adult males the town, it was generally too late to preserve b efore the deportation b egan. This lady was a their lives. wealthy widow, and the Turkish commandant at The worst experiences were those of the B aibourt had b een quartered in her house since' latest convoys to leave any given town, for the the outbreak of war, and urged her to remain roads they had to tra-,rerse were littered with behind under his protection. But the lady the corpses. of their fellow-exiles who had gone r efused to be separated from her people, and she before- corpses that wer e gene!'ally unrecogniz­ started off with her old mother and her little able, it is true, through corruption and the work daughter, eight years old, taking three pack. of carrion beasts. The ghastliest tract of all was horses with them to carry provisions. Her the road between Ourfa and Aleppo, the last narrative reads like some tale from hell. "We . . stage on the journey of many convoys con­ wer e only t wo hours (t ilt from home when bands verging from the north. Several neutral and of v illagers and briga.1.ds surrounded us on the Armenian t r avellers described how this road , road and robbed us Df all we had. The gen­ was flanked with corpses from one end to darmes took my horses and sold them to the other the trunks lightly buried in the soil, Turkish mouhadjil's. They took my money and the extremit ies protruding and gnawed away by the gold pieces from my daughter 's n eck, also dogs. These wer e in part the victims of exhaus­ all our food. After this, they singled out the tion, hl.mger, thirst, and disease, but they were men, one by one, and shot them all within six or also the v ictims of hmnan violence. seven days-every male above fifteen years old. 390 THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR.

By my sidE' were killed two priests, one of them depths of the valleys numbers of old men and over ninety years of age. The brigands took all babies were lying on the ground," wrote a:lother the good-looking women and carried them off survivor of the same convoy.) "vVe were not on their horses. Very many women and girls allowed to sleep. at night in the villages," the were thus carried off to the mountains, among lady continues, "but lay down outside. Under them my sister, whose one-year-old baby they cover of the night indescribable . deeds were threw away-a Turk picked it up and carried it committed by the gendarmes, brigands and off, I know not where. My mother walked till villagers. Many of us died of hunger and strokes she could walk no further, and dropped by the of apoplexy. Others were left by the roadside roadside on a mountain-top. We found on the too feeble to go on. . . • road many of those who had been in the " The worst and most unimaginable horrors previous convoys from Baibourt. There were were reserved for us at the banks of the women among the killed, with their husbands Euphrates, in the Erzindjan plain. The muti­ and sons. We also came across old people ~nd lated bodies of women, girls and little children little infants, still alive but in ,a pitiable' con­ made' everybody shudder. The brigands were dition, having shouted their voices away." doing all sorts of awful deeds to the women and (" On the heights of the ·mountains,·and in \the girls who were with us, whose cries went up to heaven. At the Euphrates the brigands and gendarmes threw into the river all the r emaming children under fifteen years old. Those that could swim were shot .down as they struggled in the water.... " F ew exiles, indeed, who reached Erzindjan ever passed alive beyond that point or arrived. like this lady, at Kharput, for, just below Erzindjan, the Euphrates;, fiows into the deep gorge of Kamakh Boghaz, a place marked out for their wholesale ,· slaughter. The very crime for which the .two Danish nurses were expelled from the German Red Cross hospital at Erzindjan was that of having befriended several

ARRIV AL OF ARMENIANS IN NEW YORK. Refugees rescued by a French cruiser off the coast of Syria. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR. 391 children belonging to a convoy from Baibourt open, without housing or bedding or shelter, to ~hich was on its way to this dreaded shambles. await for months their turn to proceed; and The women in this convoy, when the Danish this in the more inclement season of the year, nurses saw them, were frantic with terror. for these deportations from the north-west did " Save us," they were crying. "We will become not begin in June and July, like those in the Moslems or Germans or anything you like-only east, but in August and September, and dragged s ave us'. They are taking us to Kamakh Boghaz on into the winter months. The worst miseries to cut our throats." A few days earlier, when awaited these north-western exiles at the two the first convoy of exiles from Erzindjan itself gaps in the Baghdad line, where it was inter­ had entered the gorge of Kamakh Boghaz, rupted by the successive mountain-barriers of Kurdish tribesm en had suddenly fallen upon Taurus and Amanus, and the journey must be itc:: flanks from the heights above. on either side, continued by carriage or on foot. There is a 'and, when the panic-stricken crowd had turned dreadful description of an exile-encampment in 'and attempted to fly by the way they had come, a bleak upland valley of Taurus, just beyond they were shot down by the gendarmes who rail-head. The exiles were dying in their im­ brought up their rear. The story of the provised tents of exposure and disease, while massacre had been told by two Armenian down the valley they could see all the way to school-mistresses, who survived it, to the Tarsus in the plain; but they were too destitute Danish ladies, and the news of their destined to hire conveyances, and too weak to walk. The .fate had spread to the other convoys on the conditions were even worse in ,the mountain­ lllareh. The Danish ladies were told that the camps on Amanus-the second gap in the line­ usual procedure was to bind the victims' hands which were described by two Swiss residents at behind their backs and cast them into the river Adana who made their way to the scene to wholesale. "TIlls method was employed when administer relief. The exiles had accumulated the multitudes were too great to be dispatched here in enormous nillnbers; the camps were in any other fashion." deep in mud; there was no sanitation, and the The sufferings of these exiles deported over exiles were living in inconceivable filth, and the mountains on foot were unspeakable while dying in numbers of disease. They had no they lasted, but it may be doubted whether spirit in them to 'struggle over the remaining the sum of their misery was greater than. that stage of their journey to Aleppo, and even if .of the equally great masses of exiles who were they still had money to pay the hire, there were ·deported from the north-west by train. These no carts to be had to carry them to the rail-head were tradesmen and merchants from Constanti­ of the Aleppo line. nople and the neighbourhood-at Constanti- At Aleppo the two streams of exiles from the , -nopIe the Government made a register of Arme­ north-west and the north-east :flowed into one, nian inhabitants born in the city and those of but, as has been stated, only an inconsiderable -provincial birth, and sent the latter into exile­ proportion of the victims ever reached their seminarists of the Gregorian College at Armacha, goal. There are no comprehensive statistics, husiness men from prosperous country-towns but such figures as we possess are terrible in the like Adapazar in the district of Ismid, and inferences they suggest. A comb~ed convoy, peasants from the villages of Isnik. Men, for instance, of exiles from the provinces of women and children, the new-born babies and Mamouret-ul-Aziz and Sivas, which marched the sick, they were packed in cattle-trucks and out of Malatia 18,000 strong, numbered 301 .dispatched south-eastward aloIl-g the Anatolian when it descended into the plains again at line. The railway became congested at once Viran Shehr, and 150 when it reached Aleppo. with the :flow of these exiles from every quarter, Another convoy, from Kharput, was reduced ,and with the passage of troops in the opposite on the way to Aleppo from 5,000 to 213, and direction, returning from Syria for the defence one from a village near Kharput from 2,500 to -of the Dardanelles. The exile-trains were held 600. Yet the number of the convoys was so up for days at wayside stations, and at the great that eveh these fractions that survived larger halting places on the route-places like filled Aleppo to overflowing, and they were sent Afiun Kara Hissar, high up on the bleak Anato­ on in batches to' Damascus and Der-el-Zor. lian plateau, or Konia, under the inner edge of Yet many were fortunate enough to find rest at 'Taurus, on the sultry rim of the Anatolian Aleppo during that brief respite before they desert-they were simply turned out into the were driven forth on their road again. An 392 THE TIMES HIS TORY OF THE W AR.

American traveller who stayed som e days in Still worse than these isolated cases (for they Aleppo in the autumn of 191 5 describes how, were no more) of active participation is the con­ every morning, the carts went round from door don ation which both official and unofficial to door to carry away the dead. Germany extended to the crime. No protest was entered by the local German officials on the These atrocities had as their deliberate spot ; H err von Wangenheim, the German Am­ object the extermination of the Armenian r ace, bassador at Constantinople, declared that it was and it is not difficult to assess the guilt. The not his role to interfere ; the atrocities were de­ Kurds and Chettis, who did some of the most fended by publicists in the German Press ; they ghastly deeds, merely acted after their kind; were first denied and then apologized for by the the gendarmes who emulated them cannot b e German Ambassador in the United States. too vehemently condemned, and the Turkish In the German Reichstag on January 11, 191 6, peasants (who impressed their opponents so H err von Stwnm, chief of the Political D epart­ favourably as soldiers at the front) displayed ment of the F oreign Office, replied as follows. an extreme barbarity towards their Armenian to the urgent enquiries of the courageous neighbours at home. But Kurds, Chettis, Socialist D eputy, Dr. Liebknecht : peasants and gendarmes would never have done It is known to the Imperial Chancellor that revolu­ what they did if they had not been licensed or tionary demonstrations, organized by our enemies. h ~ve incited from above. The guilt lay with the taken place in Armenia, a nd that they have caused the Turkish Government to ex.'Pel the Armenian population Y oung Tl~kish Governnlent at Constantinople of ,certain d istrict.s and to allot to t hem n ew dwelling ­ and with the local officials who acted in collusion places. An e4change of views a bou t the reaction of with them. But there was a greater criminal these measures upon the population is now taking place. Further information carmot be given. even than the Young Turkish Government, for behind Turkey stood the cOlmtry that was Germany, in fact, signified in · the clearest Turkey's ally and the dominant partner in the manner that the Young Turks' attempt to policy she pursued. There was a consider­ exterminate their Armenian subjects was right able variation in the conduct of individual in German eyes; and, indeed, this Young Germans in Turkey. The German missionaries Turkish policy coincided precisely with German seem to have stood laudably by their principles, ambitions. One of the chief prizes which and the German Vice-Consul at Erzerum is Germany hoped to gain from the war was the said to have sent the exiles r elief. But in the unbridled power to dominate all the submerged Aleppo province and Cilicia the German officials, nationalities of the Near East-to blast their both military and civil, _ threw 'themselves hopes of national liberty, to stunt their national actively into the Young Turks' scheme;, at growth, to drain their en ergies to h er own ad ­ Moush and Van German officers are b elieved to vantage, and to rob them of a territory stretchin g have participated directly in the slaughter, and from Belgrade to Aleppo, and from Aleppo, at Erzerum they are r eported to have taken through B aghdad and Damascus, to the ,P ersian their share of the Armenian girls. Gulf and the Suez Canal.