Chapter I: Part II: Out of the Depths 49

What the Turkish Constitution Means for the Armenians 51

The Armenian Question 53

Open Letter to the Honorable President William Howard Taft 56

Abdul Hamid, the Triumph of Crime 58

L’Avenir 60

The Origin of the Armenians--The Introduction of Christianity
into Armenia--Decline and Grand Revival 63

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE.

They Tore the Babes from the Arms of their Mothers Frontispiece

Scene of the Massacres in Asia Minor 4

In this House 115 Women and Children were Roasted Alive 5

Ruined Church and Homes at Adana 6

General Prince Loris Melikoff 19

General Ter Goukassoff 24

Muckertich Khirimian 30

Matthevose Ezmerlian 33

Nerses Varjabetian 46

Minaret at Erivan, one of the Cities Tradition Ascribes to be
Founded by Noah 64

Great and Little Ararat 66

Abgar King of Armenia 70

Soorb Gregore Loosavoritch 74

The Cathedral of Etchmiatzi 76

WHY AND WHEREFORE.

In making a study of my race, I have found three marked characteristics Intelligence--Energy--Industry. Combined with these three characteristics is an intense Love of Nationality. We live in a complex world. In an independent people these characteristics and this sentiment are laudable Virtues. In a subject people they are Crimes.

After I had laid this bitter Truth to heart, I did not have to seek for the Why and Wherefore of the Armenian Massacres.

The Armenian Massacres stand without their parallel in history. The human mind staggers to contemplate the fiendish orgies of which they have been the victims, and no pen can describe their horrors: and this helpless christian people are to-day in the same deadly peril as they have been since the famous Treaty of Berlin consigned them bound hand and foot to the mercy of their executioners.

The Armenians may be led again “as sheep to the slaughter” and the work of extermination may be completed--Jesus Christ was crucified on Calvary and the servant is not greater than his Lord--but the work of their extermination can only be completed when the evil influences in the Turkish Empire have reached their culminating point. Hitherto the Powers of Europe have by their jealousies and rivalries cultivated these evil influences, they have watered them and made them grow, but when their culminating point is reached, they must re-act on Christendom and the natural consequence must follow. Those who sow the wind, must reap the whirlwind. It is in the natural order of things.

I will allow that Liberty, Justice, Equality, Fraternity are the watchwords of Young Turkey, but Young Turkey is only a small minority; the great majority of the Turkish nation are not Young Turks.

The question therefore resolves itself into this critical point: “What will Christendom do even now?”

The trouble began in Adana. An armed mob strengthened and augmented by soldiers fell in overwhelming numbers upon the unarmed Christians. The Armenian population of Antioch and vicinity were practically wiped out and the Armenian villages in the Alexandretta district destroyed with immense loss of life. Hadjim, Kessab and the neighbouring villages were burned. The Armenian quarter in Tarsus was ruined and ill-omened Marash stained again with the blood of thousands of Armenians. Zeitoon was desolated. The entire population of Kirikon between Aleppo and Alexandretta were massacred to the last babe. The mob and the soldiers burned what they could not carry away, so that the material loss has been enormous. In place of the former abundance and thriving industries there are instead desolated provinces and the charred and blackened remains of pillaged and ruined homes, and the residue of those who escaped massacre are reduced to homelessness and starvation.]

DISINTERESTED EVIDENCE.

I have thought it advisable to insert a few extracts from accounts of the Massacres of April, 1909, given by disinterested witnesses.

History repeats itself. In 1895 Turkish soldiers fell upon seventy to eighty young women and girls in a church, where they had fled for refuge, and after hideously outraging them, barricaded them in, setting fire to the building at the same time, and derisively shouting to their victims as they were being roasted alive, to call upon their Christ to save them now.]

“We are having a perfectly hideous time here. Thousands have
been murdered--25,000 in this province they say; but the
number is probably greater, for every Christian village was
wiped out. In Adana about 5000 have perished. After Turks and
Armenians had made peace, the Turks came in the night with hose
and kerosene, and set fire to what remained of the Armenian
quarter. Next day the French and Armenian schools were fired.
Nearly everyone in the Armenian school perished, anybody trying
to escape being shot down by the soldiers.”

“The Turkish Authorities do nothing except arrest unoffending
Armenians, from whom by torture they extort the most fanciful
confessions. Even the wounded are not safe from their
injustice. A man was being carried in to me yesterday when he
was seized and taken off to gaol. I dare not think what his
fate may be.”

“For fiends incarnate commend me to the Turks. Nobody is safe
from them. They murder babies in front of their mothers; they
half murder men, and violate the wives while the husbands are
lying there dying in pools of blood.”

“The authorities did nothing, and the soldiers were worse
than the crowd, for they were better armed. One house in our
quarter was burned with 115 people inside. We counted the
bodies. The soldiers set fire to the door, and as the windows
had iron bars, nobody could get out. Everybody in the house
was roasted alive. They were all women and children and old
people.”--Extract from letter of Mrs. Doughty-Wylie, wife of
British Consul at Adana; published in the London “Daily Mail.”

* * * * *

“The soldiers led the way in these horrors and were guilty of
atrocities so terrible that they can never be described in a
public print. Even the soldiers landed at Mersina--the soldiers
sent expressly to restore order--added to the crimes and for
three days continued the murders unchecked.”--Extract from the
London “Daily Mail.”

* * * * *

“The outbreak began in the Armenian bazaar on April 14th, and
on the pretence that an Armenian revolt was in progress the
Redifs or reserves were called out. These, as villainous a crew
as could well be found, had arms and ammunition served out to
them, and immediately joined in the slaughter, and all the
worst of the subsequent killing, looting, and house burning was
done by them.”

“The Armenians did not take their punishment lying down. Their
quarter of the town was so well defended that the mob, mad
as they were with lust for blood, would not venture into it.
Houses on the outskirts were besieged by thousands of men and
held by half a dozen; in fact, the courage of these hordes of
Moslem savages was only equal to butchering women and children
and unarmed men. I saw a Greek house which was held for eight
hours by one Armenian with a shotgun against hundreds of Turks
firing from the surrounding houses and the minaret of a mosque.
At last his cartridges gave-out, but not for two hours after
that did the mob pluck up courage to rush the house.”--Extracts
from accounts by Mr. J. L. C. Booth, special correspondent of
the London “Graphic.”

* * * * *

“Kessab was a thrifty Armenian town of about eight thousand
inhabitants, situated on the landward slope of Mt. Cassius
(Arabic, Jebel Akra) which stands out prominently upon the
Mediterranean seacoast half-way between Alexandretta and
Latakia. Kessab is now a mass of blackened ruins, the stark
walls of the churches and houses rising up out of the ashes
and charred timbers heaped on every side. What must it mean to
the five thousand men and women and little children who have
survived a painful flight to the seacoast and have now returned
to their mountain home, only to find their houses sacked and
burned! There were nine Christian villages which clustered
about Kessab in the valleys below. Several of these have been
completely destroyed by fire. All have been plundered and the
helpless people driven out or slain.”

“Can you imagine the feelings of the Kessab people as they
climbed on foot the long trail up the mountain, and then as
they came over the ridge into full view of their charred and
ruined dwellings? Their stores of wheat, barley and rice had
been burned; clothing, cooking utensils, furniture and tools
had gone; their goats, cows and mules had been stolen; their
silk industries stamped out; their beloved churches reduced to
smouldering heaps. The bodies of their friends and relatives
who had been killed had not been buried. And yet the love of
home is so strong that the people have settled down there with
the determination to clear up the debris and rebuild their
houses.”--Extracts from “The Sack of Kessab,” Stephen Van R.
Trowbridge.

As these sheets are going through the press there comes news of famine at Zeitoon. The Rev. F. W. Macullum, American Missionary at Marash, writes to the Rev. W. W. Peet, American Missionary at Constantinople, that 12,000 souls in and around Zeitoon are dying of hunger; they are wandering about in rags, mixing bran and water, and cooking and eating it, if they can get even that. Rev. Macullum adds, “The same story comes to us from all sides. As we foresaw all along, from now on the distress will be greatest.”

If 50,000 were massacred, the list of those who have died and are dying of homelessness and starvation will exceed 150,000. It is true; and the numbers are not exaggerated. Last year the people reaped no harvest, and this year there are no sowings.

The latest news is that Mush, a prosperous Armenian village that had escaped the desolation of the massacres, has been plundered in a night attack by armed Kurds, and the villagers are now reduced to extreme distress. Before the outbreak the Armenian patriarchal vicar at Mush had repeatedly appealed to the Armenian Patriarch at Constantinople, and the Armenian Patriarch had repeatedly appealed to the Authorities at Constantinople asking protection for the villagers of Mush as a Kurdish attack was apprehended. It is evident that the authorities at Constantinople are unable to protect thriving Armenian villages from Kurdish and Turkish raiders.