[21] Visitors to the San Francisco Exhibition will have seen and admired
the work of the Armenian sculptor Haik Partigian, whose exhibits, I am
told by one who saw them, were among the best, if not the best, of all
the exhibits in the Sculpture Section. Russia's great marine painter
Aivazovsky was an Armenian. The recently instituted Society of Armenian
Artists is holding its first exhibition in Tiflis at the time of
writing.
[22] It was reported in the Tiflis papers, after the above was written,
that Mr. Mantashian, the Baku oil king, has made a further donation of
£60,000 for agricultural improvements, and offered thirty thoroughbreds
to improve the breed of horses in Armenia.
[23] Some of the most distressing and disgraceful cases of Turkish
bestiality appeared in Doctor (Major) Aspland's report on the hospital
at Van, which was under his charge as representative of the Lord Mayor's
Armenian Relief Fund. Describing some of the individual cases brought to
him for treatment, Dr. Aspland says--
"Here is a young woman leaving hospital to-day, who was raped by eight
Kurds. She has suffered for months, and even now, in spite of
operations, will be crippled for the rest of her life. Here is _a small
girl aged five, similarly treated by Turks_, and is now lying in plaster
of Paris in order to recover from injury to the hip joint."--(_Ararat_,
October 1916, p. 172.)
[24] Compare this with the diary of a Turkish officer, reported in the
_Russkaia Viedomosti_ (p. 75).