The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-06-07
Y. M. KAREkIN.

(Ine WTlI0T O1 pled TOT E1nef1cdn representations in the Armenian Crisis, is a son of one of the leading men of the Province of Maamuret-ul-aZiz l in Central Armenia. His father was l impoverished by the pillage and mass acres of 1895, and afterwards govern ment officials forced him to total bankruptcy by various devices com l mon in Turkish government circles. MT. Karekin's father was away from home at the time of the last nassacres and barely escaped The son, a. boy g. little over thirteen, fell in lodging hatchet thrown at his head. His mother. who was near him, tainted at | the sight. She lay in a pool of blood, and the Turks, thinking Ter dead, left her there The boy, after seeing his uncle killed, although wounded him self. ran until exhausted and lay among dead and wounded bodies till | morning, while the Moslems mauled | them over, giving the last blows that left only corpses behind.) To prevent-have caught your gos- pei? To prevent faGnine, orphanhood, distress. It is with such words that bespeak the interest of Americans co prevent the slaughters of my country men in Asiatic Turkey.
 My plea is not a random one After the 1895 and 1896 massacres, central Armenia became a veritable field of orphan asylums. Different mission ary organizations, the French Roman Catholic, German Lutheran, the Amer ican missions established scores of them, at least two in each principal | town, numbering in all in the neigh borhood of 15O throughout the interior provinces.
 Furthermore, for eighteen months thereRhas been famine in Asiatic Tur- key. The 1895 and 489e massacres, brutal though they were. did not de- crease the supply of bread stuffs, be- cause the farmers had done their sum- mer work and the massacres came in October Now, the disturbances are coming at a critical time. This is the month for the farmers to plant. Should the seed time go past and another summers crop fail, hunger would claim the country. Long, long before the outbreak of the present troubles, 1t has been harassed in ways that leave it weak. The Christian is the farmer of Asiatic Turkey. The fam inc has not been of Gods sending.
 The old regime of the Sultan is wholly responsible for poor conditions. Bribery and oppression at the hands Of subordinate officials could be trac- ed to his encouragement. Chiefs of different Kurdish tribes and influen- tial Mohammedans have forcibly taken away the tiIlable land from Christians. on one pretext or another, mainly threatening that they would betray them as revolutionary men, which is the biggest fear in the coun- into wild cattle pastures. On the other hand, taxation has been growing heavier and heavier every year. The Sultan's official goes to the poor wid- ow who has only one son of eighteen, a sole protector, who tills the land with a yoke of oxen, the only treas- ures that he owns, and supports his mother. The official conducts away forcibIy that yoke Of oxen and sells it at auction and leaves him helpless
 Orphanage, famine and poyerty-the toll of the masSacre-is not complete even with these. We must add sick | 1QQE iy, cities that were along the rivers. the bodies of the dead were thrown into the water after lying about the streets for week or more. This years massacre, country where the climate Is very warm, and gradually spreading to the northern, has summer before 1t ana will certainly mean cholera, for Meso- plague in Arabia.
 We must see the Armenian massa- cres in relation to the situation at Constantinople. There are. perhaps. 2,56O 900 Armenians with probably 20,- GOO, 900 Mohammedans in the country which they inhabit. They were loaded with taxes and famine was starting in the country when, last summer, con- in Turkey. Under the constitution, the provinces were to elect representa- tives with free votes. Instead, the Turkish officials threatened the pub
 
 casting their votes for certain Turkish tyrants most of whom were the lead CTS of the 1895 massacres. However. the Armenians succeeded in having eight representatives, two of them the most able lawyers of their country. During the nine months of the parlia- mentary session, repeated complaints came from the provinces that the us president Of the Chamber, Ahmed Riza, the present grand vizier to sbe, put them to one side and those who insisted on having their complaints with being thrown out of office, for the young Turks are Pan-Islamites.
 There is another element in the re- form party in Turkey, which, while ment and the empire. would leave large measures of self government to the races and cities composing it. After the constitution was restored last sum- mer, a number of broad-minded, well educated Moslem officials who were exiled by the old regime and who also were members of the Young Turk par ty. returned to Constantinople- They noticed that the Committee of Union and Progress was trying to be all powerful in civil matters and dis eliminating against different Chris tian elements because of racial pre- judice These leaders. the nucleus of the present Liberal party, held that if five hundred years of tyranny and oc- casional butchery could not force these different proud old races to forget their nationality. the present system could not force them to do so and make them Ottomans now that they had been given freedom of press and speech. Besides, they pointed out, it was the Christian element which had advanced the commerce. the industry. the skilled labor and art.
 No sooner had the Liberal party with its broader notions come into power, early in April. than the reactionaries provoked the military uprising in Con stantinople, which provoked the coun- ter revolution of the Young Turks and has led by quick stages to the deposi- tion of the old sultan. While the Young Turks were still marching on Con- stantinople. the ecclesiastics, suspect ing what their fate would be. fled in- land to the Armenian provinces to agitate massacre and plumber there.
 My belief is that the real struggle in