“We have a detailed account of what is happening at Der-el-Zor, from a
particularly trustworthy source--the testimony of Fraulein Beatrice
Rohner, a Swiss missionary from Basle. Fraulein Rohner has personally
witnessed the sufferings of the Armenians at Der-el-Zor, and has
published her description of them in the ‘_Sonnenaufgang_’ (Sunrise),
the organ of the ‘Deutscher Hilfsbund für Christliches Liebeswerk in
Orient’ (German League of Help for Work of Christian Charity in the
East). Here are some extracts from her narrative:
“At Der-el-Zor, a large town in the desert, about six days’ drive from
Aleppo, we saw a big khan, all the rooms, the roof and the verandahs
of which were crowded with Armenians, mostly women and children,
with a few old men. They had slept on their blankets wherever they
could find any shade.... For these mountaineers the desert climate is
terrible. On the next day I reached a large Armenian camp of goatskin
tents, but most of the unfortunate people were sleeping out in the sun
on the burning sands. The Turks had given them a day’s rest on account
of the large number of sick. It was evident from their clothing that
these people had been well-to-do; they were natives of Geben, another
village near Zeitoun, and were led by their religious head. It was a
daily occurrence for five or six of the children of these people to
die by the wayside.
“On the next day I met another camp of these Zeitoun Armenians.
There were the same indescribable sufferings, the same accounts of
misery--‘why do they not kill us once for all?’ asked they. ‘For days
we have no water to drink, and our children are crying for water. At
night the Arabs attack us; they steal our bedding; our clothes that
we have been able to get together; they carry away by force our girls
and outrage our women. If any of us are unable to walk, the convoy of
_gendarmes_ beat us. Some of our women threw themselves down from the
rocks into the Euphrates in order to save their honor--some of these
with their infants in their arms.’”
The German missionaries, who have been witnessing these terrible
cruelties, have made a protest to their foreign office. This protest
was signed by the following persons: Director Huber, Dr. Niepage, Dr.
Graetner, and M. Spieler, who constituted the faculty of the German
High School at Aleppo, Turkey. A copy of this protest and a letter from
Dr. Graetner were secured by the New York _Times_ and were published in
its issue of September 20th, 1916. We quote the following extracts:
“We feel it our duty to call the attention of the foreign office
to the fact that our school work, the formation of a basis of
civilization and instilling of respect in the natives will be
henceforward impossible if the German Government is not in a position
to put an end to the brutalities inflicted here on the exiled wives
and children of murdered Armenians. In face of the horrible scenes
which take place daily near our school buildings, before our very
eyes, our school work has sunk to a level which is an insult to all
human sentiments....
“Girls, boys, and women, all practically naked, lie on the ground
breathing their last sighs amid the dying and among the coffins put
out ready for them. Forty to fifty people reduced to skeletons are
all that is left of the 2000 to 3000 healthy peasant women driven
down here from Upper Armenia. The good-looking ones are decimated by
the vice of their gaolers, whilst the ugly ones are victimized by
beatings, hunger, and thirst. Even those lying at the water’s edge
are not allowed to drink. Europeans are prohibited from distributing
bread among them. More than a hundred corpses are taken out daily from
Aleppo. All this is taking place before the eyes of highly placed
Turkish officials. Forty to fifty people reduced to skeletons are
lying heaped up in a yard near our school. They are practically insane
and have forgotten how to eat. If one offers them bread they push it
indifferently aside. They utter low groans and await death. _Ta-a-lim
el almon_ (the cult of the Germans) is responsible for this, the
natives declare. It will always remain a terrible stain on Germany’s
honor among the generations to come.
“... Perhaps the German people, too, are ignorant of these events.
How would it be possible otherwise for the usually truth-loving
German press to report the humane treatment of Armenians accused of
high treason? But it may be that the German government’s hands are
tied by reason of certain contracts.... Every cultured human being is
competent to intervene, and it is, in fact, his sacred duty to do so.
Our esteem among the generations to come is at stake. The more refined
Turks and Arabs shake their heads sorrowfully when they see brutal
soldiers bringing convoys through the town of women far advanced in
pregnancy, whom they beat with cudgels, these poor wretches being
hardly able to drag themselves along.”[180]
Dr. Edward Graetner’s letter was dated July 7, 1916, and was written
from Basle, Switzerland, to a German theologian in a neutral country:
“I am going to tell you more about the Armenian episode, for this
time the question was not one of the traditional massacres, but of
nothing more or less than the complete extermination of the Armenians
in Turkey. This fact Talaat Bey’s Turkish officials cynically admitted
with some embarrassment to the German Consul. The government first
made out that they only wanted to clear the war zone and to assign new
dwellings to the emigrants.
“They began by enticing the most warlike of the mountaineers out of
their rocky fastnesses. This they did with the help of the securities
[promises] of the Turkish Empire, of the heads of their own churches,
of the American missionaries and of one German consul.[181] Thereupon
began expulsions from everywhere, even from districts to which the
war will never be carried. How these were affected is shown from the
fact that out of the 18,000 people driven out of Harpoot and Sivas
only 350 reached Aleppo, and only eleven out of the 1900 from Erzerum.
Once at Aleppo the poorest of these were by no means at the end of
their troubles. Those who did not die here (the cemeteries are full)
were driven by night to the Syrian steppes, toward the Zor on the
Euphrates. Here a very small percentage drag out their existence,
threatened by starvation. I state this as an eye-witness. I was there
in October of last year and saw with my own eyes several Armenian
corpses floating in the Euphrates and lying about the steppes.
“The Germans, with a number of laudable exceptions, witnessed these
things quite unperturbed, holding out the following excuse: ‘We
just need the Turks, you see!’ I know for a fact, moreover, that
an employee of the German Cotton Association and one of the Bagdad
railway were forbidden to help the Armenians. German officers have
also raised a complaint against their consul for his sympathy with
the Armenians, and a German teacher, although most capable, was not
appointed to a school of the Turco-German Association, on account of
his having an Armenian wife. They are afraid that the Turks might
take offense at this. The Turks are less considerate. ‘The question
is one of a Turkish internal affair, we must not mix ourselves up
in it!’ This is what one constantly hears people say. Once it was a
question, however, of persuading the Armenians to yield, they _did_
mix themselves up in it!
“The Armenians of Urfa, seeing the fate which had befallen their
compatriots from other districts, refused to leave their city and
offered resistance. Thereupon no less a person than Count Wolf von
Walfskehl ordered the town to be bombarded, and after the surrender
of 1000 Armenian men he had not the power to prevent their being
massacred.”[182]
The poor refugees are on the move all the time, from privation to
starvation, from pest-hole to pest-hole. We quote the following from
two different quarters of the country which tell the same tale:
“The Turk, if he is now asked what he is doing with the Armenians,
simply replies, he is deporting them. The town of Kessab has been
completely emptied.... All had been deported to places where they are
sure to die, even the Home was not exempt this time, the government
ordering the deportation of the children to Aleppo. This was protested
against but the protest amounted to little, and the children were
finally taken on a four days’ wearisome journey over mountain and
valley to Aleppo, one of our workers (Miss Louisa Stahl) accompanying
them that far, and paying sufficient money to a native pastor to look
after them while she returned to Kessab to talk over matters with the
others.
“Some time afterwards it was learned that the dear pastor in whose
hands the money was entrusted was not permitted by the authorities to
have anything to do with the children, and they were transferred to
the building in which they were housed to another building where they
were sure to be infested with disease, and this so happened, and the
majority of them [about 36 out of 39] succumbed to the privations and
to death.”[183]
“The misery and hopelessness of the situation are such that many are
reported to resort to suicide. In illustrating the methods employed,
report is made of the gathering of a group of one hundred children
whom they placed in care of an educated young widow from ----. Two
weeks later these children were deported, and from two survivors
found further down the caravan route it was learned that the rest had
perished. The house-mother, crazed by this treatment of her charges,
was among the deported who were moving on. Boatloads sent from ----
down the river, arrived at ----, ---- miles away, with three-fifths
of the passengers missing. There appears, in short, a steady policy
to exterminate these people, but to deny charge of massacre. Their
destruction from so-called natural causes seems decided upon.”[184]
In conclusion, let us state a few facts: The extermination of two
millions of innocent, “loyal to a fault,” Christian subjects of the
Sultan of Turkey was planned at, and ordered from, Constantinople.
This crime has been committed. The young Turks have proved themselves
unfit to rule even under a constitution. The Turkish government has
forfeited its right to exist as a government. She has been weighed and
found wanting. The Young Turks would not have dared to commit this
awful crime, if this horrible war had not been brought about. Even
after the war broke out, they hesitated until they were dragged into
the war. Then those who are responsible for this war, and those who
dragged the Turkish government into the conflict, must share the crime
of the Turk. Again, the governments which had the sole influence over
the unspeakable Turk to stop him from his barbarities, but did not for
fear of offending him, or for other consideration are accessories to
his crime.
Again, in spite of the horrors of this World-War and the greatest
calamity which ever fell upon the loyal and innocent Armenians, men,
women, and children, there are some positive signs that the dawn of
liberty is at hand. That soon will the morning light break upon the
suffering humanity. There is the liberation of 175,000,000 Russians
from the tyranny of autocracy. Here America’s inexhaustible sources
of wealth and power, both material and moral, are also thrown against
the Turco-Teutonic barbarism. That 100,000,000 peace-loving Americans
finally have been forced by the enemies of mankind to declare by their
leader and head, President Wilson: “We enter this War only where we are
clearly forced into it, because there are no other means of defending
our rights....
“It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into
War--into the most terrible and disastrous of all Wars, civilization
itself seeming to be in the balance.
“But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the
things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for democracy,
for the right of those who submit to authority to a voice in their
own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a
universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall
bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last
free.
“To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything
that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those
who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend
her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and
happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she
can do no other.”
Within the last few months some changes have taken place which injures
the cause of the Entente and will endanger the lives of many Christians.
The revolution in March (1917) in Russia was a great rejoicing for
the lovers of freedom. But when some extreme Socialists claimed
self-assumed authority as the deputies of the Socialistic Council of
Soldiers and Workmen and seized the Provisional government and set up
the Bolshevik reign by violence in November, they did not think that
they were depriving themselves of the fruits of the revolution and
democracy. And when they were intent to give peace to the war-worn
nations of the world that they did neither think of their inability
nor the Teutonic duplicity. And when their delegates met with the
delegates of the Germanic Allies in peace conference in January (1918),
then they, for the first time, learned that they had to submit to the
victor’s terms or fight. But to fight was impossible. They had already
demoralized and demobilized the Russian army. The German forces began
their advance into Russia at once. The Bolshevik delegates, who had
broken off the conference and refused to sign the treaty, hurried back
and signed it in February.
Accordingly the Russian armies are vacating Turkish Armenia, which they
had occupied since the summer of 1915. Russia has also to return to
Turkey her former conquests in Armenia. Thus about 1,500,000 Russian
Armenians and 300,000 Armenian refugees from Turkey are to be exposed
to the Turco-Teutonic outrages and massacres. It is the most gloomy
outlook. Yet God still reigns.
“Ye fearful Saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
“Judge not the Lord by feeble Sense,
But trust Him for His Grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
“Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own Interpreter,
And He will make it plain.”