Armenia The Crucifixionof a People

IN THE DARK HISTORY OF TURKISH TYRANNY THIS IS THE BLACKEST PAGE, ANDOF ALL ITS HORRORS GERMANY SHARES THE GUILT

By Willis J. Abbot

WHEN the Bolsheviki delegates tothe Brest-Litovsk peace confer-ence set their signatures to the

treaty of peace forced upon them by Ger-man arms and German intrigue, they signedaway, so far as they had power, the livesof a people whose agonies during this warhave almost passed human comprehension.One clause of that treaty provided that

all the territory in Asia Minor taken fromthe Turks by Russia during the war shouldbe returned to its former owners. A secondceded to Turkey all that part of theRussian Caucasus which has been the placeof refuge of the Armenians in years gonebythe region of Batum, Kars, and Tiflis.

In this territory resides the remnant ofthe Armenian peoplea body of perhapsfifteen hundred thousand destitute, starv-ing, and grief-laden people, left afterTurkish massacres had taken the lives offully a million of their race within the lasttwo years. They had fled from Turkishterritory into the Russian Caucasus. Theyfind now that the deadly pall of Turkishauthority and power has been extendedover their place of refuge by the treacheryof the Bolsheviki.

Here in the United States our workingpeople were told, for a time, that the Bol-sheviki were the true friends of humanityeverywhere, that they cherished the uni-versal common interest of the workingclass unhampered by national prejudicesand unvexed by the boundary-lines of na-tions. But in the very first negotiations ofan international character in which theBolshevists took part they callously turnedover to Turkish cruelty and rapacity awhole people, a Christian, civilized, and in-dustrial people, whom for forty years and

more the Turks have been doing their bestto exterminate.

Never was a seemingly lofty ideal, acreed of international brotherhood, sogrossly repudiated by its noisiest preachers.Never did practise so cynically repudiatepreachments.

It is true that the Bolshevist arrange-ments have not been taken seriously by theworld at large. To make them permanent,the Germans and their allies would have towin the waran unbelievable outcome.With our success the very first act of theAllies will be to denounce and repudiatethese treaties forced upon a disorganizedRussia by the Bolshevist minority whichhad seized the powers of the government.

But while the war continues they arein force. All territory occupied by theArmenians is returned to the Turks, andthe merciless Orientals are at liberty to takeup again their practise of spoliation, de-portation, torture, rape, and murder bywhich for more than a generation, withbrief intervals of quiet, they have endeav-ored to exterminate this luckless people.

Into the early history of the Armenianpeople it is not my purpose to go here.Enough to say that for centuries they haveexisted as a coherent, prosperous, Chris-tian people in the very heart of the Moslemempire. They are essentially an industrialand commercial peoplethe storekeepers,manufacturers, and money-lenders of thecommunities in which they dwell. Con-cerning them it has been written by otherresidents of the districts whence they havebeen expelled:

Now that the Armenians are gone, there are nodoctors, chemists, lawyers, smiths, potters, tanners,or weavers left in this place.

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Their enterprise and intelligence alwayswon them first place in the professions andindustries. But their strong sense of na-tionality aroused the dread of the Turkishgovernment, which professed to detectamong them a conspiracy to throw off itsauthority and become an independent peo-ple. Their prosperity stimulated the cu-pidity of their Moslem neighbors, who sawprofit fr themselves in driving out thesebankers and merchants and seizing theirproperty. Their Christianity aroused the

savage religious hatred of the Mohamme-dans by whom they were governed.As a result, when the end of the Russo-

Turkish War, in 1877, had left Turkey freeto regulate her internal problems, and Ab-dul Hamid" Abdul the Damned "hadascended the throne, that ferocious figureof rapine and massacre undertook to breakthe growing power of the Armenians. Hedid it by arming the wandering tribes ofKurds that occupied the same territory,and encouraging them to raids upon Arme-

THE PATRIARCH OF THE ARMENIAN CHURCH AT JERUSALEMARMENIA CLAIMS TO POSSESSTHE OLDEST NATIONAL CHURCH IN ALL CHRISTENDOM

From a copyrighted Photograph by the Western Newspaper Union

ARMENIATHE CRUCIFIXION OF A PEOPLE 283

A STREET IN THE ARMENIAN QUARTER OF THE CITY OF ADANA, IN ASIA MINOR, AFTER THELOOTING AND MASSACRE BY THE TURKS IN JUNE, I909

nian' villages and farms. In the larger cit-ies massacres, not unlike the anti-Jewishpogroms of Russia a few years ago, wereremorselessly conducted under the author-ity of the Turkish government. In suchconsiderable towns as Erzerum and Treb-izond the slaughter, led by governmenttroops, went on in the streets for days. AtConstantinople the slain were numbered bythe tens of thousands. Zeitoum, a townalmost wholly populated by Armenians,was besieged by regular Turkish troops forsix months, amnesty being finally grantedas a result of the diplomatic protests of thepowersthe only thing the nations of Eu-rope were able to accomplish toward stop-ping the atrocities, despite their protesta-tions of horror. All were afraid to " reopenthe Turkish question."The system by which Abdul Hamid was

able to work his will, and still plausibly ex-cuse his acts, was simple. Secretly hearmed the Kurds and encouraged them toraid Armenian towns, slaughter the men,and carry away the women and girls. TheArmenians naturally armed for self-defense.Thereupon the Sultan proclaimed that theywere plotting a revolt against the govern-

ment, and brought his regular troops intoaction. In the end he was thus able todo away with more than a hundred thou-sand of the unfortunate peoplea meretrifle in comparison with the massacres of19 1 5, when the Germans' superior geniusfor that class of work was brought intoplay.

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It is a strange fact that virile peoplesthrive on persecutions. It. does not so ap-pear at the moment of their agonies, butalmost invariably, when the fiery blast hasswept on, they gather up their remnantsand march on to greater power. The age-long history of the despised and persecutedJews has proved this, and the story of theArmenians has been of the same sort.Turkey suffered severely from its own

inhumanity. The Armenians in but a fewyears had healed their wounds and devel-oped new vigor. Those who had fled de-veloped communities in the Russian Cau-casus, the United States, the south ofFrance. They became prosperous abroad,and contributed to the prosperity of theirfellows at home. The latter so thrived andmultiplied that when the world war fellwith its blight upon humanity they had

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A REFUGEE CAMP OF ARMENIANS DEPORTED FROM THEIR HOMES BY THE TURKISH AUTHORITIES

already attracted the malign attention ofWilliam II of Germany, who thought hesaw in such a vigorous people, domiciled inthe quadrangle between the Caspian andthe Black Sea, the Mediterranean and thePersian Gulf, a possible obstacle to his am-bition for a Pan-German empire to extendfrom the chill North Sea to the sunnywaters of India.

THE KAISER'S HAND IN TURKEY

Nothing that has happened in Turkeyduring the last quarter of a century canbe fully understood without searching forthe Kaiser's share in it. He was the self-proclaimed friend of Abdul Hamid, a pil-grim to the Sultan's court, who dressed inTurkish raiment to do honor to the agedMoslem. But when that hoary old repro-bate had been cast down and sent intoexile, with a mere fragment of his haremto mitigate his loneliness, it was discoveredthat the Kaiser had been deep in the YoungTurk movement which accomplished his

downfall. From that moment until thepresent the word of Germany has beenlaw in Turkey, and no occurrence of theproportions of the Armenian atrocitiescould have taken place without Germanacquiescence.

What, then, were the characteristics ofthe policy adopted toward the Armeniansafter Turkey had entered upon the warand had begun taking orders from Ger-many?*

Let me first summarize and then go tosome extent into detail.

In February, 19 15, a decree was issuedthat all Armenians should be disarmed, andthat those in the army should be takenfrom the ranks and set to civil occupations,such as building roads or fortifications. Theorder was defended upon the ground thatmany Armenians were in the enemy's ar-mieswhich was of course true, since hun-dreds of thousands had been driven intothe Russian Caucasus by the persecutionsof Abdul Hamid, and were liable to Rus-

ARMENIATHE CRUCIFIXION OF A PEOPLE 285

sian service, while thousands of others,hating Turkish domination, had slippedfrom their homes and joined the Russianforces. But the real purpose of the orderwas to render the Armenians helplessagainst the policy of extermination whichTurkey now purposed applying to them.Under the operation of this policy, ac-

cording to the encyclopedic " Report on theTreatment of Armenians in the OttomanEmpire," compiled under the direction ofViscount Brycea man whom Americanslove to honorthere were in Ottoman ter-ritory, when the deportations began, 1,600,-ooo Armenians. The Armenian Patriarch-ate fixed the number at 2,100,000; theOttoman government put it at 1,100,000.The one had an interest in magnifying thenumber; the other in minimizing it. TheBryce report adopts a midway figure.

Of these human beings the report esti-mates that six hundred thousand were

either directly murdered or perished mis-erably of exhaustion, cold, and hunger onthe cruel forced marches incident to theirdeportation. About a like number may stillbe alive in the places of their exile. Theremainder have either been forcibly con-verted to Islam, fled to hiding-places in themountains, or escaped beyond the Ottomanfrontier.

This is perhaps as good a point as anyto note that " conversion to Islam " wasoffered to women only as an alternative todeath. It was by no means an emptyreligious ceremony, or a perfunctory decla-ration of a changed faith. It involved theimmediate " marriage " of the woman tosome Moslem. To embrace Mohammedan-ism without embracing one of the faithfulwas no part of the gentle Turk's plan ofconversion.

If the woman in question were a widowwith children, the little ones must be sur-

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MUSH, AN IMPORTANT ARMENIAN TOWN ON THE HEAD-WATERS OF THE EUPHRATESTHERE WASA TERRIBLE MASSACRE OF ARMENIANS HERE IN 1894

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THE GRUZINIAN ROAD THROUGH THE CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS, BUILT BY THE RUSSIANS AS AMILITARY HIGHWAY TO THE FRONTIER PROVINCES

rendered to be brought up in the TrueFaith in a so-called government orphanage.This condition was not made the easier forthe mother by the notorious fact that nosuch institution really existed.

In the Bryce report we find the followingcontribution to this topic:

The Armenian children in the German orphan-age at H. were sent away with the rest.

" My orders," said the vali, " are to deport allArmenians. I cannot make an exception of these."

He announced, however, that a governmentorphanage was to be established for any childrenthat remained, and shortly afterward he called onSister D. and asked her to come and visit it.Sister D. went with him, and found about sevenhundred Armenian children in a good building.For every twelve or fifteen children there was oneArmenian nurse, and they were well clothed andfed.

" See what care the government is taking ofthe Armenians," the vali said.

She returned home surprised and pleased; butwhen she visited the orphanage again, several dayslater, there were only thirteen of the seven htm-

ARMENIATHE CRUCIFIXION OF A PEOPLE 287

dred children leftthe rest had disappeared. Theyhad been taken, she learned, to a lake, six hours'journey by road from the town, and drowned.Three hundred fresh children were subsequently

collected at the " orphanage," and Sister D. be-lieved that they suffered the same fate as theirpredecessors. These victims were the residue ofthe Armenian children at H. The finest boys andprettiest girls had been picked out and carried offby the Turks and Kurds of the district, and itwas the remainder, who had been left on thegovernment's hands, that had been disposed of inthis way.

Since 19 15 it has been the Turkish pur-pose not merely to harass, intimidate, rob,torture, outrage, and massacre the Arme-nians, but actually to exterminate the wholerace. The so-called " deportations " aredefendedwhen any defense is offered

upon the theory that the people are beingmoved to some place where they will beeconomically more useful, or perhaps onthe plea that they are being shifted from asection where they are exposed to theforays of the savage Kurds to one wheretheir lives will be safe. But this is mereshallow pretensethe unfortunates have infact been deported from life to death. Forfive thousand to be started on the marchfrom their homes to some alleged destina-tion, and for less than two hundred to ar-rive, was no uncommon record. Of thewomen it was said:

Only those too ugly to arouse the soldiers' lust,and sufficiently sturdy to withstand the fatiguesof a march that would exhaust oxen, could hopeto reach their destination alive.

From the well-authenticated testimonywhich makes the Bryce report the most ter-rible of all records of human savagery, letus try to reconstruct the story of a typical

deportation. It is the case of a town inwhich perhaps ten thousand Armenians areliving, mainly women and children," or oldmen, for the men of military age are away,serving in the Turkish armies. Those whoremain have been systematically disarmeda seemingly superfluous precaution, formost are not of the age or sex able to wieldarms effectively if they had them.To this people comes suddenly the word

that they must at once be ready to leavetheir homes for some place wholly unknownto them, at a distance of hundreds of miles.In cases of unusual clemency they wereallowed a week to prepareordinarilyforty-eight hours was the limit.Now the Armenians are a prosperous

people, and their standard of living is Eu-

ropean rather than Asiatic. They accumu-late household goods, for which theycherish an affection, even as the rest of ushonest-living humans do. But what arethey to do with such things? The order ofdeportation permits them to take nothingthat they cannot carry in their hands, andthe way will be long and toilsome.When they try to sell in a hurry, they

find that the Turks, the only possible pur-chasers, offer pitifully small prices. Inmany instances putting their goods in stor-age was prohibitedeven sale was forbid-den. All was to be left to the benevolentcare of the authorities until the pilgrims,being duly established in their new homes,might send for their possessions. But asmost of the pilgrims never reached theirnew homes, and the Turkish authoritieswell knew that they would not, the dustof the marching column had not disap-peared before those authorities weredividing up the spoil among themselves.The fact is that governmental and indi-

vidual greed has had quite as much to dowith the Armenian persecutions as the al-leged political or military considerations.The Armenians were a propertied class.They owned lands and houses and well-stocked shops. When the owner was mur-dered or driven into exile, some Turk, eitherofficial or more commonplace robber, gar-neredthe loot.

HORRORS OF THE DEPORTATIONS

We read of caravans of deported womenand children, stripped naked, being drivenalong under the burning sun of an Asiaticsummer, or suffering the cold of the nightsupon the uplands. Commonly we attributethis special infamy to the bestiality or moraldegeneracy of their guards; but it was mere-ly part of 'the system of spoliation. AsiaMinor is a poor country, and clothing, eventhough well worn, had a cash value in thebazaars of the towns near which the pitifulpilgrims passed. The Bryce report says ofthe deportations from Diarbekr:

A short time after, the prisoners (six hundredand seventy-four) were stripped of all their money(about six thousand pounds Turkish), and thenof their clothes; after that they were thrown intothe river. The gendarmes on the bank wereordered to let none of them escape. The clothesof these victims were sold in the market of Diar-bekr.

And on another page of the same reportwe read of an exiled community:

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BATUM, THE CHIEF PORT ON THE EASTERN COAST OF THE BLACK SEA; CEDED TO RUSSIA BYTURKEY IN 1878, AND RECENTLY RESTORED TO TURKISH RULE

As to their houses, the furniture was distrib-uted among the officers and soldiers. Pianos,sideboards, and other objects too luxurious forsoldiers' houses, were sold by auction, where thebest bidders, in many districts, were Jews,' whoconsidered the price of fifty piasters (two dollars)too high for a piano, and tried to buy them atten or fifteen piasters (forty or sixty cents). Thehouses thus emptied were given over to Turkishimmigrants or paupers. The copper kitchenutensils, and, in fact, everything made of copper,were carefully packed and sent by different meansto Constantinople, where the Germans wereanxiously waiting for them as their share of theplunder.

But to return to our typical deportation.When the miserable people, all terror andtears, were gathered in the streets, eachclinging to a pitiful bundle of neededthings, the first act of their guards was toselect the few able-bodied men and boysold enough to threaten trouble on themarch, take them off into the fields, andshoot them. If any escaped this fate at thefirst stage of the deportation, they met itafter a day's march had taken them outof sight of the towns.

Sometimes, before starting, the prisoners

were offered as slaves to the people of thetown

placed, as the Bryce report has it," at the disposal of the Moslem population.The highest official as well as the simplestpeasant chose out the woman or girl whocaught his fancy, and took her to wife, con-verting her by force to Islam."

.Once on the road, the hapless people soon

discovered that it was really to death thatthe road they had to travel led. Here areillustrations, all vouched for by incorpora-tion in the official report:

At the present moment there are at - morethan ten thousand deported widows and children.Among the latter one sees no boys above elevenyears of age. They had been on the road fromthree to five months; they have been plunderedseveral times over, and have marched along nakedand starving; the government gave them on onesingle occasion a morsel of breada few have hadit twice. It is said that the number of these de-ported widows will reach sixty thousand

;they are

so exhausted that they cannot stand upright; themajority have great sores on their feet, throughhaving had to march barefoot.An inquiry has proved that out of a thousand

who started scarcely four hundred reached .Out of the six hundred to be accounted for, three

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hundred and eighty men and boys above elevenyears of age, and eighty-five women, had beenmassacred or drowned, out of sight of thetowns, by the gendarmes who conducted them

;

one hundred and twenty young women and girlsand forty boys had been carried off, with theresult that one does not see a single pretty faceamong the survivors.

Out of these survivors sixty per cent are sick;

age, they were made the prey of soldiers,bandits, peasantsall who chose to takethem. Death, to them, was merciful.As the real significance of the deporta-

tions came to be understood, the Arme-nians in the more populous places beganto offer resistance. Thev secured arms in

A GEORGIAN SHEPHERD AND HIS FLOCK IN A VALLEY Ob" THE CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS

they are to be sent in the immediate future to, where certain death awaits them. One can-

not describe the ferocious treatment to which theyhave been exposed. They had been on the roadfrom three to five months; they had been plun-dered two, three, five, seven times; so far frombeing given anything to eat," they had even beenprevented from drinking while passing a stream.Three-quarters of the young women had been ab-ducted; the remainder . . . Thousands diedunder these outrages, and the survivors havestories to tell of refinements of outrage so dis-gusting that they pollute one's ears.

Two features of the Turkish treatmentof the Armenians cannot be faithfully de-scribed in any magazine of general circu-lation. The details of the treatment ofthe women and of the torture of thousandsof prisoners of both sexes must be left toworks like the Bryce report or to scientifictreatises on the phenomena of degeneracy.The variety and the fiendishness of the tor-tures inflicted on the unhappy Armeniansseem as if they would have tested thegenius of the very devils from hell.As for the women, even girls of tender

all imaginable ways, even buying riflesfrom the Turkish soldiery against whomthey expected to use them. As a result,there followed in many of the towns pitchedbattles, in which the Armenians were occa-sionally able to "worst their oppressors.

THE* TRAGEDY OF ANTOK

Sassoun, a province in the Lake Van dis-trict, witnessed many desperate struggles.Of one of these an eye-witness writes:The Armenians were compelled to abandon the

outlying lines of their defense, and were retreatingday by day into the heights of Antok, the centralblock of the mountains, some ten thousand feethigh. Then non-combatant women and children,and their large flocks of cattle greatly hamperedthe free movements of the defenders, whose num-bers had been reduced from three thousand toabout half that figure. Terrible confusion pre-vailed during the Turkish attacks, as well as theArmenian counter-attacks. Many of the Ar-menians smashed their rifles after firing their lastcartridge, and grasped their revolvers and daggers.The Turkish regulars and Kurds, amounting nowto something like thirty thousand altogether,pushed higher -and higher up the heights, and

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surrounded the main Armenian position at closequarters.Then followed one of those desperate and heroic

struggles for life which have always been thepride of mountaineers. Men, women, and chil-dren fought with knives, scythes, stones, and any-thing else they could handle. They rolled blocksof stone down the steep slopes, killing many ofthe enemy. In the frightful hand-to-hand combat,women were seen thrusting their knives into thethroats of Turks, thus accounting for many ofthem.On the 5th of August, the last day of the fight-

ing, the blood-stained rocks of Antok were cap-tured by the Turks. The Armenian Warriors ofSassoun, except those who had worked around tothe rear of the Turks to attack them on theirflanks, had died in battle. Several young women,who were in danger of falling into Turkish hands,threw themselves from the rocks, some of themwith their infants in their arms. The survivorshave since been carrying on a guerrilla warfare,living only on unsalted mutton and grass.

But enough! Surely the murderous andbarbaric nature of the Turkish attack uponthe Armenian people has been sufficientlyindicated. Missionaries and the agents forArmenian relief in this country are disin-clined to ascribe its savagery to the indi-vidual Turk. It is a fact, not widelyknown, that most of the fighting men whohave campaigned against the Turk esteemhim a chivalrous and honorable foe. The

Germans, in their retreats in France andBelgium, poisoned wells and wantonly de-stroyed and defiled every house or farm;but the Turk, retiring before the British inPalestine and Mesopotamia, scrupulouslyprotected private property, and even leftplacards indicating where pure water couldbe found. Armenian atrocities were or-dered by high government officials directlyunder German influence.

With the advance of the Russians intoArmenia and the entrance of the Britishupon Mesopotamia and Palestine, thebloody work of the Turks in the occupiedsections was ended. Moreover, after theearly part of 19 17, it languished because ofthe sharper pressure of the European armiesupon Turkish territories and forces. Spo-radically, however, it has continued,though largely a matter of raids by suchtribes as the Kurds and Tatars. The lat-ter are even now threatening murderousassaults in the Russian Caucasus, which theBolshevists have supinely surrendered. Re-turning missionaries declare that the riflesused in the bloody work are furnished byGermany.A recent statement in the Christian Sci-

ence Monitor, made by Dr. W. F. McCul-

AN OIL FIRE AT BAKUBAKU, THE CENTER OF THE RUSSIAN OIL-FIELD ON THE CASPIAN,THOUGH NOT CEDED TO TURKEY BY THE TREATY OF BREST-LITOVSK,

WAS SEIZED BY THE TURKS IN SEPTEMBER LAST

ARMENIATHE CRUCIFIXION OF A PEOPLE 293

OIL-WELLS NEAR BAKUIN I913 THE TOTAL PRODUCTION OF THE BAKU OIL-FIELD WASABOUT SIXTY MILLION BARRELS

lum, for twenty-five years a resident ofConstantinople, and a member of theAmerican Board of Foreign Missions, mer-its new emphasis."I had a hope," says Dr. McCullum,

speaking of the massacres, " that Germanywould stop this; but as time went on Ifound that massacres were formulated inGermany. The whole thing could havebeen stopped by a word from the Kaiser,or by a word from the German ambassadorat Constantinople, and the moral guilt ofthis bloodshed lies wholly at the door ofGermany."

A PEOPLE PERISHING OF HUNGER

Hunger and utter destitution are nowdoing the Turk's work for him. In thedesperate struggle of years for self-defense,the Armenian in Ottoman territory has hadlittle time to make due provision for foodand clothing. Yesterday the nation wasbeing put to the sword; to-day it is faintingfrom hunger.

In the busy offices of the American Com-mittee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, inthe tall tower of the building overlookingMadison Square, New York, I sat one dayand read scores of cablegrams, comingthrough the State Department, and tellingof the present condition of these unhappy

people. Here are a few specimens rigidlycondensed:

CairoRefugees from desolated villages evacu-ated by the Turks drifting southward. Poorestpeople reduced to eating orange-peels and garbage.Six soup-kitchens feeding eight thousand destitute.

TeheranForty thousand destitute people eat-ing dead animals. Women abandoning their in-fants. Scores dying of hunger at Hamadan.

TiflisCondition of refugees critical. Starva-tion has begun. Committee besieged by dele-gations of starving people, often numberinghundreds, coming long distances begging for bread.

Such is the state of Armenia to-day. Tothe torch and the sword have succeededhunger and cold. With the ever-presentterror of the recurrence of the massacres,the people face immediate starvation.The story arouses our wrath against the

unspeakable Turk and his ally and insti-gator to crime, Germany. The demandrises that we should declare war upon theformer, even as we have upon the latter.Unfortunately, if that course be followed,all our missionaries and agents for reliefmust be withdrawn, and the last state ofArmenia will be worse than the first.

Of all the tragedies of the ages, none ismore black with human guilt, or more piti-ful in its measure of human agony, thanthis of Armenia.