with child, who were made to march with the convoys and gave birth to
their babies on the road. This is alluded to in Doc. 12 from a German
source, at second-hand, but in Docs. 129 and 137 we have the testimony
of neutral witnesses who actually succoured these victims, so far as the
extremity of their plight and the brutality of their escort made succour
possible. It should be mentioned that in Doc. 68 an Armenian exile
testifies to the kindness of an individual Turkish gendarme to one of
her fellow-victims who was in these straits.
(vi) The vast scale of these massacres and the pitiless cruelty with
which the deportations were carried out may seem to some readers to
throw doubt on the authenticity of the narratives. Can human beings (it
may be asked) have perpetrated such crimes on innocent women and
children? But a recollection of previous massacres will show that such
crimes are part of the long settled and often repeated policy of Turkish
rulers. In Chios, nearly a century ago, the Turks slaughtered almost the
whole Greek population of the island. In European Turkey in 1876 many
thousands of Bulgarians were killed on the suspicion of an intended
rising, and the outrages committed on women were, on a smaller scale, as
bad as those here recorded. In 1895 and 1896 more than a hundred
thousand Armenian Christians were put to death by Abd-ul-Hamid, many
thousands of whom died as martyrs to their Christian faith, by abjuring
which they could have saved their lives. All these massacres are
registered not only in the ordinary press records of current history but
in the reports of British diplomatic and consular officials written at
the time. They are as certain as anything else that has happened in our
day. There is, therefore, no antecedent improbability to be overcome
before the accounts here given can be accepted. All that happened in
1915 is in the regular line of Turkish policy. The only differences are
in the scale of the present crimes, and in the fact that the lingering
sufferings of deportations in which the deaths were as numerous as in
the massacres, and fell with special severity upon the women, have in
this latest instance been added.
The evidence is cumulative. Each part of it supports the rest because
each part is independent of the others. The main facts are the same, and
reveal the same plans and intentions at work. Even the varieties are
instructive because they show those diversities of temper and feeling
which appear in human nature everywhere.
The Turkish officials are usually heartless and callous. But here and
there we see one of a finer temper, who refuses to carry out the orders
given him and is sometimes dismissed for his refusal. The Moslem rabble
is usually pitiless. It pillages the houses and robs the persons of the
hapless exiles. But now and then there appear pious and compassionate
Moslems who try to save the lives or alleviate the miseries of their
Christian neighbours. We have a vivid picture of human life, where
wickedness in high places deliberately lets loose the passions of racial
or religious hatred, as well as the commoner passion of rapacity, yet
cannot extinguish those better feelings which show as points of light in
the gloom.
It is, however, for the reader to form his own judgment on these
documents as he peruses them. They do not, and by the nature of the case
cannot, constitute what is called judicial evidence, such as a Court of
Justice obtains when it puts witnesses on oath and subjects them to
cross-examination. But by far the larger part (almost all, indeed, of
what is here published) does constitute historical evidence of the best
kind, inasmuch as the statements come from those who saw the events they
describe and recorded them in writing immediately afterwards. They
corroborate one another, the narratives given by different observers
showing a substantial agreement, which becomes conclusive when we find
the salient facts repeated with no more variations in detail than the
various opportunities of the independent observers made natural. The
gravest facts are those for which the evidence is most complete, and it
all tallies fatally with that which twenty years ago established the
guilt of Abd-ul-Hamid for the deeds that have made his name infamous. In
this case there are, moreover, what was wanting then, admissions which
add weight to the testimony here presented, I mean the admissions of the
Turkish Government and of their German apologists.[3] The attempts made
to find excuses for wholesale slaughter and for the removal of a whole
people from its homes leave no room for doubt as to the slaughter and
the removal. The main facts are established by the confession of the
criminals themselves. What the evidence here presented does is to show
in detail how these things were effected, what cruelties accompanied
them, and how inexcusable they were. The disproval of the palliations
which the Turks have put forward is as complete as the proof of the
atrocities themselves.
In order to test the soundness of my own conclusions as to the value of
the evidence, I have submitted it to the judgment of three friends, men
for whose opinion everyone who knows them will have the highest
respect—a distinguished historian, Mr. H.A.L. Fisher (Vice-Chancellor of
the University of Sheffield); a distinguished scholar, Mr. Gilbert
Murray (Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford); and a
distinguished American lawyer of long experience and high authority, Mr.
Moorfield Storey, of Boston, Mass.—men accustomed in their respective
walks of life to examine and appraise evidence; and I append the letters
which convey their several views.
This preface is intended to deal only with the credibility of the
evidence here presented, so I will refrain from comment on the facts. A
single observation, or rather a single question, may, however, be
permitted from one who has closely followed the history of the Turkish
East for more than forty years. European travellers have often commended
the honesty and the kindliness of the Turkish peasantry, and our
soldiers have said that they are fair fighters. Against them I have
nothing to say, and will even add that I have known individual Turkish
officials who impressed me as men of honesty and good-will. But the
record of the rulers of Turkey for the last two or three centuries, from
the Sultan on his throne down to the district Mutessarif, is, taken as a
whole, an almost unbroken record of corruption, of injustice, of an
oppression which often rises into hideous cruelty. The Young Turks, when
they deposed Abd-ul-Hamid, came forward as the apostles of freedom,
promising equal rights and equal treatment to all Ottoman subjects. The
facts here recorded show how that promise was kept. Can any one still
continue to hope that the evils of such a government are curable? Or
does the evidence contained in this volume furnish the most terrible and
convincing proof that it can no longer be permitted to rule over
subjects of a different faith?
BRYCE.
LETTER FROM MR. H.A.L. FISHER,
VICE-CHANCELLOR OF SHEFFIELD UNIVERSITY,
TO VISCOUNT BRYCE.
The University,
Sheffield,
_August 2nd, 1916_.
MY DEAR LORD BRYCE,
The evidence here collected with respect to the sufferings of the
Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire during the present war will
carry conviction wherever and whenever it is studied by honest
enquirers. It bears upon the face of it all the marks of
credibility. In the first place, the transactions were recorded soon
after they took place and while the memory of them was still fresh
and poignant. Then the greater part of the story rests upon the word
of eye-witnesses, and the remainder upon the evidence of persons who
had special opportunities for obtaining correct information. It is
true that some of the witnesses are Armenians, whose testimony, if
otherwise unconfirmed, might be regarded as liable to be
over-coloured or distorted, but the Armenian evidence does not stand
alone. It is corroborated by reports received from Americans, Danes,
Swiss, Germans, Italians and other foreigners. Again, this foreign
testimony comes for the most part from men and women whose calling
alone entitles them to be heard with respect, that is to say, from
witnesses who may fairly be expected to exceed the average level of
character and intelligence and to view the transactions which they
record with as much detachment as is compatible with human feeling.
Indeed, the foreign witnesses who happened to be spectators of the
deportation, dispersion, and massacre of the Armenian nation, do not
strike me as being, in any one case, blind and indiscriminate haters
of the Turk. They are prompt to notice facts which strike them as
creditable to individual members of the Moslem community.
I am also impressed with the cumulative effect of the evidence.
Whoever speaks, and from whatever quarter in the wide region covered
by these reports the voice may proceed, the story is one and the
same. There are no discrepancies or contradictions of importance,
but, on the contrary, countless scattered pieces of mutual
corroboration. There is no contrariety as to the broad fact that the
Armenian population has been uprooted from its homes, dispersed,
and, to a large though not exactly calculable extent, exterminated
in consequence of general orders issued from Constantinople. It is
clear that a catastrophe, conceived upon a scale quite unparalleled
in modern history, has been contrived for the Armenian inhabitants
of the Ottoman Empire. It is found that the original responsibility
rests with the Ottoman Government at Constantinople, whose policy
was actively seconded by the members of the Committee of Union and
Progress in the Provinces. And in view of the fact that the
representations of the Austrian Ambassador with the Porte were
effectual in procuring a partial measure of exemption for the
Armenian Catholics, we are led to surmise that the unspeakable
horrors which this volume records might have been mitigated, if not
wholly checked, had active and energetic remonstrances been from the
first moment addressed to the Ottoman Government by the two Powers
who had acquired a predominant influence in Constantinople. The
evidence, on the contrary, tends to suggest that these two Powers
were, in a general way, favourable to the policy of deportation.
Yours sincerely,
HERBERT FISHER.
LETTER FROM PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY,
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, TO VISCOUNT BRYCE.
82, Woodstock Road,
Oxford,
_June 27th, 1916_.
DEAR LORD BRYCE,
I have spent some time studying the documents you are about to
publish relative to the deportations and massacres of Armenians in
the Turkish Empire during the spring and summer of 1915. I know, of
course, how carefully a historian should scrutinize the evidence for
events so startling in character, reported to have occurred in
regions so far removed from the eyes of civilized Europe. I realize
that in times of persecution passions run high, that oriental races
tend to use hyperbolical language, and that the victims of
oppression cannot be expected to speak with strict fairness of their
oppressors. But the evidence of these letters and reports will bear
any scrutiny and overpower any scepticism. Their genuineness is
established beyond question, though obviously you are right in
withholding certain of the names of persons and places. The
statements of the Armenian refugees themselves are fully confirmed
by residents of American, Scandinavian and even of German
nationality; and the undesigned agreement between so many credible
witnesses from widely separate districts puts all the main lines of
the story beyond the possibility of doubt.
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
GILBERT MURRAY.
LETTER FROM MR. MOORFIELD STOREY,
EX-PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN
BAR ASSOCIATION, TO VISCOUNT BRYCE.
735, Exchange Building,
Boston, U.S.,
_7th August, 1916_.
MY DEAR SIR,
I have examined considerable portions of the volume which contains
the statements regarding the treatment of the Armenians by the
Turks, in order to determine the value of these statements as
evidence.
I have no doubt that, while there may be inaccuracies of detail,
these statements establish without any question the essential facts.
It must be borne in mind that in such a case the evidence of
eye-witnesses is not easily obtained; the victims, with few
exceptions, are dead; the perpetrators will not confess; any casual
spectators cannot be reached, and in most cases are either in
sympathy with what was done or afraid to speak. There are no
tribunals before which witnesses can be summoned and compelled to
testify, and a rigid censorship is maintained by the authorities
responsible for the crimes, which prevents the truth from coming out
freely, and no investigation by impartial persons will be permitted.
Such statements as you print are the best evidence which, in the
circumstances, it is possible to obtain. They come from persons
holding positions which give weight to their words, and from other
persons with no motive to falsify, and it is impossible that such a
body of concurring evidence should have been manufactured. Moreover,
it is confirmed by evidence from German sources which has with
difficulty escaped the rigid censorship maintained by the German
authorities—a censorship which is in itself a confession, since
there is no reason why the Germans should not give full currency to
such evidence unless the authorities felt themselves in some way
responsible for what it discloses.
In my opinion, the evidence which you print is as reliable as that
upon which rests our belief in many of the universally admitted
facts of history, and I think it establishes beyond any reasonable
doubt the deliberate purpose of the Turkish authorities practically
to exterminate the Armenians, and their responsibility for the
hideous atrocities which have been perpetrated upon that unhappy
people.
Yours truly,
MOORFIELD STOREY.
LETTER, DATED ALEPPO, 8th OCTOBER, 1915, FROM
FOUR MEMBERS OF THE GERMAN MISSIONS
STAFF IN TURKEY TO THE IMPERIAL GERMAN
MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT BERLIN.[4]
We think it our duty to draw the attention of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to the fact that our school work will be deprived,
for the future, of its moral basis and will lose all authority in
the eyes of the natives, if it is really beyond the power of the
German Government to mitigate the brutality of the treatment which
the exiled women and children of the massacred Armenians are
receiving.
In face of the scenes of horror which are being unfolded daily
before our eyes in the neighbourhood of our school, our educational
activity becomes a mockery of humanity. How can we make our pupils
listen to the Tales of the Seven Dwarfs, how can we teach them
conjugations and declensions, when, in the compounds next door to
our school, death is carrying off their starving compatriots—when
there are girls and women and children, practically naked, some
lying on the ground, others stretched between the dead or the
coffins made ready for them beforehand, and breathing their last
breath!
Out of 2,000 to 3,000 peasant women from the Armenian Plateau who
were brought here in good health, only forty or fifty skeletons are
left. The prettier ones are the victims of their gaolers’ lust; the
plain ones succumb to blows, hunger and thirst (they lie by the
water’s edge, but are not allowed to quench their thirst). The
Europeans are forbidden to distribute bread to the starving. Every
day more than a hundred corpses are carried out of Aleppo.
All this happens under the eyes of high Turkish officials. There are
forty or fifty emaciated phantoms crowded into the compound opposite
our school. They are women out of their mind; they have forgotten
how to eat; when one offers them bread, they throw it aside with
indifference. They only groan and wait for death.
“See,” say the natives: “Taâlim el Alman (the teaching of the
Germans).”
The German scutcheon is in danger of being smirched for ever in the
memory of the Near Eastern peoples. There are natives of Aleppo,
more enlightened than the rest, who say: “The Germans do not want
these horrors. Perhaps the German nation does not know about them.
If it did, how could the German Press, which is attached to the
truth, talk about the humanity of the treatment accorded to the
Armenians who are guilty of High Treason? Perhaps, too, the German
Government has its hands tied by some contract defining the powers
of the [German and Turkish] States in regard to one another’s
affairs?”
No, when it is a question of giving over thousands of women and
children to death by starvation, the words “Opportunism” and
“definition of powers” lose their meaning. Every civilised human
being is “empowered” in this case to interfere, and it is his
bounden duty to do so. Our prestige in the East is the thing at
stake. There are even Turks and Arabs who have remained human, and
who shake their heads in sorrow when they see, in the exile convoys
that pass through the town, how the brutal soldiers shower blows on
women with child who can march no farther.
We may expect further and still more dreadful hecatombs after the
order published by Djemal Pasha. (The engineers of the Baghdad
Railway are forbidden, by this order, to photograph the Armenian
convoys; any plates they have already used for this must be given up
within twenty-four hours, under penalty of prosecution before the
Council of War.) It is a proof that the responsible authorities fear
the light, but have no intention of putting an end to scenes which
are a disgrace to humanity.
We know that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already, from other
sources, received detailed descriptions of what is happening here.
But as no change has occurred in the system of the deportations, we
feel ourselves under a double obligation to make this report, all
the more because the fact of our living abroad enables us to see
more clearly the immense danger by which the German name is
threatened here.
MEMORANDUM BY THE EDITOR.
As far as their contents are concerned, the documents collected in
this volume explain themselves, and if any reader wishes for an
outline of the events they describe, as a guide to their detail, he
will find it in the “Historical Summary” at the end of the book,
especially in Section V. In this preliminary memorandum the Editor
has simply to state the sources, character and value of the
documents, and to explain the system on which they have been edited.
The sources of the documents are very varied. Some of them were
communicated to the Editor directly by the writers themselves, or,
in the case of private letters, by the persons to whom the letters
were addressed. Several of those relating to the distribution of
relief in Russian Caucasia have been placed in his hands by the
courtesy of the British Foreign Office. Others, again, he owes to
the courtesy of individuals, including Lord Bryce, who has
superintended the work throughout, and given most generously of his
time and thought towards making it as accurate and complete as
possible; several members of the American Committee for Armenian and
Syrian Relief[5]; the Rev. G.T. Scott, Assistant Secretary of the
Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.;
M. Arshag Tchobanian; Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons; Dr. William Walter
Rockwell, of the Union Theological Seminary of New York; the Rev.
Stephen Trowbridge, Secretary of the American Red Cross Committee at
Cairo; the Rev. I.N. Camp, a missionary in the service of the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, at present
stationed at Cairo; Aneurin Williams, Esq., M.P.; the Rev. Harold
Buxton, Treasurer of the Armenian Refugees (Lord Mayor’s) Fund; Mr.
J.D. Bourchier, correspondent of the London _Times_ newspaper in the
Balkans; Mrs. D.S. Margoliouth, of Oxford; the Rev. F.N. Heazell,
Organising Secretary of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian
Mission; Mr. G.H. Paelian, an American citizen resident in London;
Mr. A.S. Safrastian, of Tiflis; and Mr. H.N. Mosditchian, of London.
Another source of material has been the Press. Despatches, letters
and statements have been reprinted in this volume from the columns
of English, American, Swiss, French, Russian, Italian and also
German newspapers, and from Armenian journals published at Tiflis,
London and New York. The editors of _Ararat_, _Gotchnag_ and the
_New Armenia_ have shown the Editor of this volume every possible
kindness, and have courteously presented him with free copies of
their current issues.
The documents are all rendered here in English, but they reached the
Editor’s hands in various languages—not only English but French,
Italian, German and Armenian. The translations from the French,
German and Italian have been made by the Editor with the assistance
of his wife. For the translation of documents from the Armenian he
is indebted to Mr. Paelian, who has devoted a large part of his
scanty leisure to doing the Editor this most valuable service. But
for Mr. Paelian’s promptness and good will, the work might have been
considerably delayed.
The character of the documents varies with the writers. Some of the
witnesses are native Armenian or Nestorian inhabitants of the Near
East, who were either victims of the atrocities themselves or were
intimately connected with others who played a direct part in the
scenes described. A majority of the witnesses, however, are foreign
residents in the Ottoman Empire or the Persian Province of
Azerbaijan, and nearly all these, again, are citizens of neutral
countries, either European or American—missionaries, teachers,
doctors, Red Cross nurses or officials. A few witnesses (and these
are the weightiest of all) are subjects of states allied to Turkey
in the present war.
The value of the documents of course depends upon the witnesses’
standing and character, and upon the opportunities they possessed of
knowing the facts. The Editor is certain in his own mind that all
the documents published here are genuine statements of the truth,
and he presents them in this assurance. Errors will, doubtless, be
here and there discovered, but he believes that any errors there may
be have been made in good faith, and that they will prove to touch
only points of detail, which do not affect the truth of the whole.
At the same time he realises that, considered as legal evidence
before a court, the documents differ considerably in probative
value. From this legal point of view, they can be tabulated in
several classes:—
(_a_) Evidence published by the editor of a German journal in
Germany, and suppressed by the Imperial German Censorship
(Doc. 12. This evidence is, of course, above any suspicion
of prejudice against the Turks.
(_b_) Documents written by German eye-witnesses of the events
they describe (Docs. 18, 23, 91, 145), or by neutral
eye-witnesses resident in Turkey in the service of German
missionary or philanthropic institutions, or of the German
Red Cross (Docs. 62, 64, 117, 142). This evidence is equally
above suspicion of partiality against the Turks or in favour
of the Armenians.
(_c_) Documents written by other neutral eye-witnesses,
principally American and Swiss, who have no connection,
either public or private, with the Turco-German Alliance or
with the Entente, and who are presumably without bias
towards either party. Documents of such authorship
constitute the bulk of the material in this volume, and
practically all of them are written at first hand. There are
no apparent grounds for not reposing full confidence in
them.