The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1895-02-03
ACTS OF GREAT BARBARITY.
Investigation Does Not Decrease the
Terrible Horrors.
THIEVING KURDS RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL
But the Real Massaeres Did Not Begin
Until the Turkish Government Took
a Hand in the Affair.

LONDON, Feb. "A letter has been re-
celved here from the special correspondent
OF the Associated Press who was sent to
Armenia from London to investigate the
reported Armenian atrocities and who at
present is in Armenia. For reasons that
will be readily understood the name of
this correspondent is withheld, but he is a
newspaper man well known in America and
he was instructed to make an impartial in
vestigation of the stories told of Turkish
cruelty.
The Associated Press correspondent
spent week or more in Constantinople
before starting for Armenia during which
time he investigated the reports current
there and continued his journey. His first
letter has just reached here, after having
been posted by trusted messenger at
Tlf1ls, Russia. 1t contains the first au-
thentic news from Armenia direct, and
says:
Whatever secrets may lie under the
snow on the Armenian mountains, it seems
beyond dispute from what I have heard
from many lips, that the published stories
of ferocious butchery and red horror in the
foundation of truth, and that any changes
authorized by further investigation will
deal more with numbers than with the de-
gree of the horror
But from what the correspondent of the
Associated Press says in latter part Of his
letter, there are two sides to the Armenian
story, as he remarks:
"But no matter what light we throw
upon the spasmodic wickedness of the
Turk, or upon the ingenious deviltry of
the revolutionary conspirators we find
that it is still the innocent that suffer most.
The Turk declares that the Armenians
have inflicted shocking outrages upon
Turkish men and women, and from what
is already known of conspiracy methods it
is quite likely that the assertion is true.
"For instance it is reported that as a
means of melting the Turks to commit out
RACES that will bring down upon them the
wrath of the civilized world Armenians
have thrust gun cartridges into the bodies
of living Turkish men and women and have
exploded them and that in the case of one
man, hole was made Just below the bones
of the chest for the insertion of quantity
of gunpowder, which was then ignited as a
sort of bomb.
These facts are known at the embassies
at Constantinople and probably they have
been transmitted in reports to the various
Governments. The correspondent also re-
marks:
''The impartial truth of the Sassoun
massacre will probably never be known,
for the dead tell no tales. A careful sift-
ing of all the facts obtainable from trust
worthy sources in Constantinople, Sas-
SCUM, Kerasund, Trebizond and Bitlis
indicates that this is what happened:
Certain Armenian peasants to the num-
Der of several thousand were tending their
herds and 1ocks in their summer pastures
in the Sassoun mountains along the Dor
ders of Kurdistan. They were living in
mere temporary villages, which they in
habited only during the summer pasture
season, their winter homes being far down
the valley.
They were under contract to defend
them against the raids of cattle-stealers
and Kurdish bands. A short time before
the villagers were ready to return to their
homes in the valleys with their fattened
cattle q band of Kurdish bandits, indus
triously searching for winters supply of
provisions, raided their stock. The viii
layers and their Kurdish protectors made
vigorous defense. They would have ended
it, but before the fighting was over the
Turkish Government came into the affair,
and then the real trouble began.
Some of them telegraphed that con-
spiracy was in progress among the Ar
menians in the mountain villages and the
order came straight from the palace:
"Punish the villagers to the utmost
extremity"
The palace had not paused to inquire
into the truth of the rumor and the officers
entrusted with the order did not investigate
the facts when the troops arrived on the
ground.
The Kurdish bandits joined forces with
the Turkish regulars, and even the Kurds,
who had been defending the Armenians,
turned traitors and swelled the numbers of
the Government troops, The poor Ar
menian peasants were then left at the
mercy of force of Turkish regulars and
two bands of Kurds.
The massacre began. For the Armenians
it was fight without hope, but still they
fought as only men can to defend their
wives and children from outrage and
death. They took refuge in their houses
and barricaded themselves in, but the
Kurdish cannon made short work of these,
and when the men fled in terror from their
hiding-places they were slain without
mercy-man, woman and child.
The Armenians in Athens and Constan-
tinople assert that R42 villages were de-
stroyed and nearly 10000 persons mas
sacred; but more impartial and equally in
formed persons put the number at rs vii
lagos and from 1000 to 5000 persons killed.
The exact number will never be known.
AS for the Turkish Commission, it is
such fraud that it is waste of breath
to talk about it, This assertion may seem
to be of the nature of hanging man be-
fore he is tried, but in Constantinople no
European of ordinary intelligence has any
other view of it.
In the foreign embassies there is of
course disposition to give the Turks
chance to show what the commission will
DO, with perhaps hope that the European
delegates will have good effect toward
creating at least a semblance of an investi-