The Cordova daily times., 1917-03-27
ARMEN|ANS | ARE CONSERVATIVES
 MARTYRS

(By Viscount Bryce, United Press) LONDON, March 26. - The slaugh- ter of between seven and eight hun dred thousand Armenians by the Turks since che beginning of the war reveals the Armenians quite as much martyrs to Christianity as any of the early Christians who died in Nero's arena.
 There are today more than a million Armenians and Syrians starving to death in Asia Minor, Syria, the Rus sian Caucasus, Persia and Palestine. The relief work for them in America is in charge of the American commit tee for Armenian and Syrian relief in New York.
 In the history of the early Christian church there are no figures so glori- ous, none which have continued to be so much honored by the church all through it's later days as those of the martyrs, men and women, who from the time of Nero down to that of Dio- clestian sealed with their blood the testimony to their faith withstanding every lure and every threat in order to preserve to their faith loyalty to their Lord and Master Christ
 In our own time we have seen this example of fidelity repeated in the Turkish empire, and it is strange that the Christians of Europe and America should not have been more moved by the examples of courage and heroic devotion which the Armenian Chris tians have given. Of the seven or eight hundred thousand of Armenians who have perished in the recent mas sacres many thousands have died as martyrs, by which I mean they have died for their Christian faith when they could have saved their lives by renouncing it.
 This has perhaps not been realized even by those who in Europe or Am erica have read of and been mortified
 by the wholesale slaughter and hide ous cruelties by which half of an an- cient nation has been exterminated. They can hardly understand how there should be religious persecution in our
 time; so let me try to explain the
 facts.
 It was not religious fanaticism that
 led the present rulers of Turkey to
 seek to root out Christianity. So far
 from being fanatics most of these men
 though nominally Mohammedans have no religion whatever. Their aim was political. They wanted to make the whole Turkish empire Mohammedan | in order to make it uniform with only | one creed and no difference between l one class of subjects and another. They saw that the Christian part of ! the population, suffering under con- | stant expressions and cruelties, con- | tinued to turn its eyes westward and | hope for some redress from the Chris | tian nations; so they determined to | eliminate Christianity altogether.
 During these recent massacres,
 whenever any Christian would turn
 Mohammedan his life was spared. It
 was only as a Christian that he was
 killed. Many a Christian child was
 torn from it's parents to be brought
 up as a Mussulman. Thousands of
 Armenian Christian girls were sold
 in the market or distributed among Turkish officers to be imprisoned for
 life in Turkish harems and there
 forced into Mohammedanism. But
 many more thousands of Armenians
 women as we'll as men, were offered
 their choice between Christ and Mo
 hammed, and when they refused Mo
 hammed were shot or drowned forth
 with. For days and days together tht
 bodies of Christian women who hat
 thus perished were seen floating
 down the Euphrates.
 Surely the remains of this suffering
 nation could make no stronger appea for pity and help to the Christians O America than they make through thes' martyr deaths. Only a remnant il now left to whom charity can be ex l tended. It is still a sorely afflicted remnant
 /
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