INFORMATION FROM OTHER SOURCES
I have often been impressed with the hopelessness of making people who
have not been eye-witnesses, comprehend the dreadful character of the
massacres which were carried on by the Turks against the Christian
population of the Orient. I have never been able to describe sights
that I have witnessed in such manner as to make my listeners actually
see and understand. It frequently happens that people, sitting in their
comfortable houses, lay aside an article or book on the subject, with the
remark: “We are fed up on Armenian atrocities.”
Here is another strong point of the Turk’s position: he has killed so
many human beings and over so long a period of time that people are tired
of hearing about it. He can, therefore, continue without interference.
In Doctor Elliott’s _Beginning Again at Ararat_, she gives the following
story of a young girl, heard in the rescue home in Turkey, of which she
was in charge:
“I was twelve years old, I was with my mother. They drove us
with whips and we had no water. It was very hot and many of us
died because there was no water. They drove us with whips, I
do not know how many days and nights and weeks, until we came
to the Arabian desert. My sisters and the little baby died on
the way. We went to a town, I do not know its name. The streets
were full of dead, all cut to pieces. They drove us over them.
I kept dreaming about that. We came to a place on the desert, a
hollow place in the sand, with hills all around it. There were
thousands of us there, many, many thousands, all women and girl
children. They herded us like sheep into the hollow. Then it
was dark and we heard firing all around. We said, ‘The killing
has begun.’ All night we waited for them, my mother and I, we
waited for them to reach us. But they did not come, and in the
morning, when we looked around, no one was killed. No one was
killed at all. They had not been killing us. They had been
signaling to the wild tribes that we were there. The Kurds came
later in the morning, in the daylight; the Kurds and many other
kinds of men from the desert; they came over the hills and rode
down and began killing us. All day long they were killing; you
see, there were so many of us. All they did not think they
could sell, they killed. They kept on killing all night and in
the morning—in the morning they killed my mother.”
This quotation is given because it condenses in a few vivid and
convincing words the clearest description that has appeared anywhere of
the character of the Turkish “deportations” of the Armenians. All the
official documents and the testimony of a host of American, German and
other eye-witnesses corroborate the accuracy of this picture.
In the report of the Military Mission to Armenia, commonly known as
the “Harbord Mission,” published by the American Association for
International Conciliation, in June, 1920, is to be found the following
passage:
“Meanwhile there have been organized official massacres of the
Armenians ordered every few years since Abdul Hamid ascended
the throne. In 1895, one hundred thousand perished. At Van,
in 1908, and at Adana and elsewhere in Cilicia in 1909, over
thirty thousand were murdered. The last and greatest of
these tragedies was in 1915. Massacres and deportations were
organized in the spring of 1915, under a definite system, the
soldiers going from town to town. Young men were first summoned
to the government building in each village and then marched out
and killed. The women, the old men and the children were, after
a few days, deported to what Talaat Pasha called “Agricultural
Colonies,” from the high, breeze-swept plateaus of Armenia to
the malarial flats of the Euphrates and the burning sands of
Syria and Arabia. The dead, from this wholesale attempt on the
race, are variously estimated at from five hundred thousand to
a million, the usual figure being about eight hundred thousand.
Driven on foot under a hot sun, robbed of their clothing and
such petty articles as they carried, prodded by bayonets if
they lagged, starvation, typhus, and dysentery left thousands
dead by the trail side, etc., etc.”
I have in my possession another report of a credible European who
witnessed the destruction of the Armenians at Aleppo and elsewhere,
which gives many details similar to those found in the memorandum of
Mr. Geddes, but I refrain from offering it here for fear of wearying
the readers. In view of the difficulty of producing the testimony of
eye-witnesses, and as this report has never been published, it is a
valuable historical document. Enough has been said, however, to convince
the reader that the extermination of the Christians of Turkey was an
organized butchery, carried out on a great scale, and well under way
before the Greeks were sent to Smyrna. We have seen it in operation
in the days of Abdul Hamid, “the butcher,” we have seen it more fully
developed and better organized under Talaat and Enver, those statesmen of
the “Constitution.” We shall behold it carried out to its dire finish by
Mustapha Khemal, the “George Washington” of Turkey.
This part of the story would not be complete if I passed over in
silence the systematic extermination, and the satiating of all the
lowest passions of man or beast which characterize Turkish massacres of
the Greeks and Armenians of the Pontus. There have been, from time to
time, descriptions of the massing of bands of these wretched people at
different points on the shores of the Black Sea where they had arrived
after long journeys on foot and indescribable hardships, and of the
relief given them by American organizations. Often officers of these
organizations, or American missionaries, have uttered cries of protest,
which have caused a momentary feeling of wonder in the minds of the
American people, or have passed unheeded. Yet the systematic massacre,
deportation, plundering and violation that went on among the Christians
of the once prosperous region of the Black Sea is one of the darkest and
foulest pages even in Turkish history.
The flourishing communities of Amasia, Cæsarea, Trebizonde, Chaldes,
Rhodopolis, Colonia, centers of Greek civilization for many hundreds of
years, have been practically annihilated in a persistent campaign of
massacre, hanging, deportation, fire and rape. The victims amount to
hundreds of thousands, bringing the sum total of exterminated Armenians
and Greeks in the whole of the old Roman province of Asia up to the
grand total of one million, five hundred thousand. Thus has been created
that “regenerated” Turkey which has been compared in some quarters to
Switzerland and the United States.