Part 4

Corroborative and additional evidence is given by the Danish Red Cross nurses who, with a noble disregard of their own safety, accompanied one of these caravans from Erzerum to Erzinjan. They speak of the massacres at Kamakh, of the killing by the river, and of a battue through the cornfields, where the wheat was high, into which some Armenians had escaped. At one time these Danish Sisters were in the charge of a gendarme who had superintended a massacre of 3000 women and children driven from their homes into the country, rounded up and killed. He told the Sisters that this was the best method of getting rid of them, for they should be made to suffer first, and besides it would be inconvenient for Moslems to live in a village with so many corpses about. At another place they came to a shambles, where Armenian soldiers, deprived of their arms, and sent to make roads, had been slaughtered: at another there were three gangs of labourers, one Moslem, one Greek, and one Armenian. These latter were guarded. Presently, as they proceeded along their road, they looked round and saw that the Armenian gang was being formed up by itself, a little off the highroad....

And so the ghastly record went on all over Armenia. At one place only, the town of Van, was any resistance organised. There, after the massacre had begun, some 1500 Armenians got hold of arms (probably many of these men were soldiers who had not yet had their arms taken from them), and for the space of twenty-seven days defended themselves against five thousand Turkish troops, till the Russian advance relieved them. During that advance Armenian refugees, into whose districts the massacres had not yet penetrated, fled for refuge to the invading army, and in all some 250,000 Armenians under its protection crossed in safety the Russian frontier into Trans-Caucasia. How many died on the way from hunger and exhaustion is not known. Cholera, dysentery, and spotted fever broke out among them, and the path of their passage was lined with dead and dying. Companies of Kurds made descents upon them, taking toll of their maidenhood, but, with the Russian line to protect them at their rear, they struggled on out of the cemetery and brothel of their native country, and out of the accursed confines of that hell on earth, the Ottoman Empire, leaving behind them the murdered myriads of their husbands and their sons, their violated wives and daughters. Through incredible hardships they passed, but, unlike the other pilgrimages we have briefly traced, they moved not towards death, but towards safety and life, and their dark steps were lightened with Hope.

Before the last of those who survived the hunger and the pestilence of that pilgrimage had reached Russian soil, it is probable that in all Armenia there was not a man of their race left alive, nor a woman either unless she had accepted Islamism and the life of the harem. A peaceful and progressive nation had been wiped out with every accompaniment of horror and cruelty and bestial lust, and in Armenia itself there would never more be an Armenian question. Abdul Hamid had hinted at the solution of it, and had made, as we have seen, experiments in that direction; but it was reserved for Enver Pasha and Talaat Bey, enlightened men of the Young Turk party, with the advantages of a Prussian example, to complete the work. Already Enver had said that he would never rest until the last Armenian in the Ottoman Empire had been killed, and before the end of 1915, as far as Armenia itself went, he was able to see a reasonable prospect of repose before him. But there was much work still left to do in other provinces.

We have seen that for the extirpation of Armenians in Armenia proper, the excuse put forward, if not by the Turks themselves, by their German apologists, was the necessity of guarding against treachery in the vicinity of the Turkish army, and against spying and collusion between the Armenians behind the Russian lines and those behind Turkish lines. The same pretext was put forward for the massacres and deportations from Thrace, from Constantinople, and from the shores of the Sea of Marmora. Here, if anywhere, there may be thought to be some justification for measures which might have been undertaken for the sake of public safety. At any rate, there were definite charges brought against Armenians in these districts, and the Armenian boatmen of Silivri, for instance, were imprisoned, but not, as far as I know, massacred, on the charge of revictualling English submarines, which at that time, as the reader will remember, had penetrated into the Sea of Marmora, and indeed had reached Constantinople itself. It is not, of course, consonant with Turkish or Prussian justice to substantiate charges before inflicting penalties, it is sufficient in the new World-justice to accuse. But here round Constantinople, there was some pretence at procedure before resorting to murder and deportation. A register was drawn up of all Armenians resident in the capital, dividing into separate classes those who were born in Constantinople, and those who were immigrants from Armenia, with a view to deporting those who were not native to the city. Here, I think, we may see traces of the Prussian instinct for tabulation, for classification, for category-mongering. Enver and his colleagues lost patience with these dilatory tactics. The Armenians of the province of Brussa were deported wholesale, and long before the registration lists of Constantinople were finished, all Armenians were moved out of the town. Ten thousand males were massacred in the mountains of Ismid, and the Armenian women and children taken into collecting stations for deportation to 'agricultural colonies' (so the phrase ran in the Pecksniff language of Prussia) situated in the Anatolian desert, in the desert of Arabia, and in malarious marshes on the Euphrates. With this clearing out of Armenians from Thrace, from Constantinople, and from Armenia itself, we have finished with our first class of the Armenian atrocities. For it reasons were at least invented by German apologists. Military necessities, which here, as in Belgium, knew no law, dictated it; the frightfulness involved was incidental to War. But such considerations were not even alleged for the second class of the murder-scheme. Before passing on, it will be well to review, quite shortly, the reasons which dictated it, and penetrate into the infernal councils of Enver Pasha and Talaat Bey.

The text of the scheme is to be found in the defined policy of the Young Turk party as set forth in their Congress of 1911. 'Turkey must become a really Mohammedan country, and Moslem ideas and Moslem influence must be preponderant.... Sooner or later the complete Ottomanisation of all Turkish subjects must be effected: it is clear, however, that this can never be attained by persuasion, but that we must resort to armed force.'

There is the text that was expanded into the discourse of murder; it is the definition of a policy. Within a few years there followed the European War, and that probably was the immediate cause of its being put into effect. No more admirable opportunity for Ottomanisation could present itself, for the entry of Turkey into the war was most unpopular with the bulk of the Turkish population, and it was advisable to bribe them into acceptance of it. The bribe was the houses, the property, the money and the trade that throughout the length and breadth of Turkey was in Armenian hands. For the Armenians were by far the wealthiest of the alien populations, and some 90 per cent. of Turkish trade passed through their shops and offices. Here, then, was the psychological moment: Turkey for the Turk was the aim of the Committee of Union and Progress, and with a discontented population, unwilling to fight, the moment had come for restoring to the Turk this mass of property which at present belonged to an alien race. War might have its drawbacks and its clouds, but war would be seen to have its advantages and its silver linings, if out of it there came this legacy of Armenian wealth. And by the same stroke Turkey could get rid of those thousands of meddlesome missionaries, American and French, who spread religion and learning and other undesirable things among the cursed race. Once remove the cursed race, and there would be an end of their instructors also, for there would be none to instruct. 'Thanks to their schools,' so we read in the Hilal, an organ of the Young Turks, 'foreigners were able to exercise great moral influence over the young men of the country.... By closing them (i.e. by exterminating their pupils) the Government has put an end to a situation as humiliating as it was dangerous.'

Such, then, was the spirit that animated Enver and Talaat, and during the winter of 1914-15 they perfected their plans. The Armenian race was to cease, and the Valis and other officials were, each in his district, to see to the thoroughness of its cessation. Sometimes, as happened at Erzerum, the Vali in question, not having the broad out-look of Enver, or quaintly and curiously having a womanish objection to the national duty of flogging men to death and giving over young girls to a barbarous soldiery, remonstrated with the authorities, or even refused to obey orders. Such a one was instantly removed from his office, and a stauncher patriot substituted. All was put on an orderly footing: here Kurds were to be employed on the old Abdul Hamid formula, who by way of wage would enjoy the privilege of raping as many women and girls out of their hapless convoy as seemed desirable, while in agricultural districts they were allowed also to take over the sheep and cattle of their murdered victims. Here, in towns where there was more chance of resistance than in scattered homesteads, it would be wise to employ regular troops, backed, if necessary, by artillery, to whom would be entrusted the murder of the whole male population, after suitable tortures, supposing the executioners had a taste for the sport, and to them was given the right of general plunder. Then, as soon as the number and capacity of the vacant houses were telegraphed to Constantinople, occupiers from the discontented townsfolk and natives of Thrace were assigned to them. Sometimes there would be a big school building to give away as well, but that was not always so, for it might be more convenient to assemble Armenians there for purposes of registration or so forth, and then, if it happened to catch fire, why Enver would understand that such accidents would occur. Among other careful and well-thought-out instructions came the order that, when possible, the murders should not take place in the town, but outside it, for clean Allah-fearing Moslems would not like to live in habitations defiled by Christian corpses. But, above all, there must be thoroughness; not a man must be left alive, not a girl nor a woman who must not drag her outraged body, so long as breath and the heart-beat remained in it, to, or rather towards those 'agricultural colonies,' as Talaat Bey, in a flash of whimsical Prussian humour, called them. One was advantageously situated in the middle of the Anatolian desert at the village of Sultanieh. There, for miles round, stretched the rocks and sands of a waterless wilderness, but no doubt the women and children of this very industrious race would manage to make it wave with cornfields. Another agricultural colony, by way of contrast, should be established a couple of days' journey south of Aleppo, where the river loses itself in pestilential and malarious swamps. Arabs could not live there, but who knew whether those hardy Armenians (the women and children, of them at least who had proved themselves robust enough to reach the place) would not flourish there out of harm's way? After the swamps one came to the Arabian desert, and there, a hundred miles south-east, was a place called Deir-el-Zor; wandering Arab tribes sometimes passed through it, but, arrived there, the Armenians should wander no more. In those arid sands and waterless furnaces of barren rock there was room for all and to spare. Sultanieh, the swamps, and Deir-el-Zor: these were the chief of Talaat Bey's agricultural colonies.

There must be collecting stations for these tragic colonists, centres to which they must be herded in from surrounding districts: one at Osmanieh, let us say, one at Aleppo, one at Ras-el-Ain, one at Damascus. And since it would be a pity to let so many flowers of girlhood waste their sweetness on the desert air of Deir-el-Zor, slave markets must be established at these collecting stations. There would be plenty of girls, and prices would be low, but the reverend ministers of Allah the God of Love, the Ulemas, the Padis and the Muftis, should be accorded a preferential tariff. Indeed they should pay nothing at all; they should just choose a girl and take her away, and, with the help of Allah the God of Love, convert her to the blessed creed. No one was too young for these lessons.... A little abstemiousness would not hurt these pampered Christians, so when they set out on their marches they need not be provided with rations or water. Perhaps some might die, but Talaat had no use for weaklings at his agricultural colonies. Nor must there be any poking and prying on the part of those interfering American missionaries; and so Talaat Bey put all the agricultural colonies out of bounds for foreigners....

There was no hurry over these deportations, for the plea of military exigencies, which had caused the deportations in Armenia itself to be terminated by massacre with a rapidity almost inartistic, did not apply to Armenians so far from the seat of war. Their picnics could be conducted quietly and pleasantly in the leisurely Oriental manner. Even the men need not be murdered absolutely out of hand. Strong young fellows might be stripped and tied down and then beaten to death by bastinadoing the feet till they burst, or by five hundred blows on the chest and stomach. Their cries would mingle with the screams of their sisters in the embrace of Turkish soldiers. And, talking of embraces, if a woman was desirable, she need not walk all the way to Deir-el-Zor, but by embracing Islamism be transferred to a harem. But these were details that might be left to individual taste: there were no precise instructions save that no Armenian men must be discoverable in the Ottoman Empire at all, and no women save those who had become Turkish women, or who were at work on the waterless and the malarial agricultural colonies.

Talaat Bey reviewed his finished scheme. He thought it would do, and Enver Pasha agreed with him, and Jemal Bey (who soon after styled himself Jemal the Great), the Military Governor of Syria, and so responsible for the last stages of their pilgrimage, thought it would do very well indeed. And instructions were sent out to every town in the Empire where there were Armenians, in accordance with the programme of Talaat Bey.

How Enver carried out his part of the programme in Armenia itself we have seen, and by the end of the year (1915) his work was done, and Armenia was Armenia no longer. But operations, as I have said, were conducted in a more leisurely manner elsewhere, and the agony of that butchery protracted. But Jemal got to work at once in the thickly populated district round Zeitun. He had had no success in the campaign of the winter in the direction of the Suez Canal, and his troops were hungry for some sort of victory. The Zeitunlis were hardy independent mountaineers, who were possessed of arms, and Jemal thought it more prudent not to dally with deportations, but conduct a regular campaign against them. For two or three months they resisted, entrenching themselves in the hills, but they could not hold out against artillery and the modern apparatus of war, and the whole tribe was wiped out. That done, Jemal became Jemal the Great by reason of his national services, and paid a visit to Germany. On his return we shall hear of him again.

Meanwhile, from all the reports that have arrived from missionaries and others, we may take one or two, almost at random. At certain places, as in the governments of Ismid, Angora and Diarbekr, the Armenian population was completely wiped out. Sometimes tortures were added, as at a certain Anatolian town where there was a big Armenian school, in which a number of professors and instructors, some of whom had studied in America, in Scotland, and in Germany, had for years been working.

What happened to them was this:--

(1) Professor A served the College thirty-five years, and taught Turkish and history. He was arrested without charge, the hair of his head and beard were pulled out in order to secure damaging confessions. He was starved and hung up by the arms for a day and a night and repeatedly beaten. He was then murdered.

(2) Professor B, who had served the College thirty-three years, and taught mathematics, suffered the same fate.

(3) Professor C, head of the preparatory department, had served the College for twenty years. He was made to witness the spectacle of a man being beaten almost to death, and became mentally deranged. He was murdered with his family.

(4) Professor D, who taught mental and moral sciences, was treated in the same way as Professor A. He also had three finger nails pulled out by the roots, and was subsequently murdered.

Similarly, at Diarbekr, the Armenians were collected in batches of 600, taken out of the town, and killed to the last man. Among them was the Armenian Archbishop; his eyes and nails were dragged out before he was butchered.

Or let us take a look at some of the collecting camps. At one, described by an eye-witness, we find that the convoy had arrived after several months of travel. More than half were already dead, they had been pillaged by bandits and Kurds seven times. They were forbidden to drink water when they passed by a stream, three-quarters of the young women and girls had been kidnapped, the rest were compelled to sleep with the gendarmes who conducted them. At Osmanieh it was decided to deport the women and children by train. They lay about the station starving and fever-stricken. When the train arrived many were jostled on to the line, and the driver yelled with joy, crying out, 'Did you see how I smashed them up?'

At another camp typhus broke out; those who died of it were left unburied, as vouched for by a Turkish officer, in order to increase the infection....

Urfa was another collecting camp for the Armenians in that district, and the following account is based on the information of an eye-witness. Here, before the concentration began, the Armenians living in the town offered resistance to the Turks, and held out until Fahri Bey, second in command to Jemal the Great, arrived with artillery, bombarded the town, and massacred every Armenian there. Quiet being thus restored, the bands of deported began to arrive. They came by rail or on foot, and, with the Prussian love of tabulation, were divided into three groups.

The first group consisted of old men, old women, and young children. They, guarded by gendarmes, were sent marching through the desert to Deir-el-Zor. Few, if any, ever arrived there, all dying by the way.

The second group, consisting of able-bodied men, was led off in batches and slaughtered. Among them were Zohrab and Vartkes, Armenian deputies who had been brought there from Constantinople.

The third group consisted of young marriageable girls. Some, perhaps, found their way into harems.

From Aleppo (one of the final concentration camps before such as were left of the convoys set forth for their goal, the swamps or the desert round Deir-el-Zor) we have the detailed evidence of Dr. Martin Niepage, High Grade teacher in the German Technical School. This gentleman, with a courage and a humanity to which the highest tribute must be paid, addressed a report of protest to the German Ambassador at Constantinople, and wrote an open letter to the Reichstag on the subject of what he had seen with his own eyes in that town. In his preliminary matter he speaks as follows:--

'In dilapidated caravanserais I found quantities of dead, many corpses being half-decomposed, and others still living among them who were soon to breathe their last. In other yards I found quantities of sick and dying people, whom nobody was looking after.... We teachers and our pupils had to pass them every day. Every time we went out we saw through the open windows their pitiful forms, emaciated and wrapped in rags. In the morning our school children, on their way through the narrow streets, had to push past the two-wheeled ox-carts on which every day, from eight to ten rigid corpses without coffin or shroud, were carried away, their arms and legs trailing out of the vehicle.'

From the report itself:--

'Out of convoys which, when they left their homes on the Armenian plateau, numbered from two to three thousand men, women, and children, only two or three hundred survivors arrived here in the south. The men were slaughtered on the way, the women and girls, with the exception of the old, the ugly and those who are still children, have been abused by Turkish soldiers and officers.... Even when they are fording rivers they do not allow those dying of thirst to drink. All the nourishment they receive is a daily ration of a little meal sprinkled on their hands.... Opposite the German Technical School at Aleppo, a mass of about four hundred emaciated forms, the remnant of such convoys, is lying in one of the caravanserais. There are about a hundred children (boys and girls) among them, from five to seven years old. Most of them are suffering from typhoid and dysentery. When one enters the yard, one has the impression of entering a madhouse. If one brings food, one notices that they have forgotten how to eat.... If one gives them bread, they put it aside indifferently. They just lie there quietly waiting for death.'