The daily progressive-miner., 1917-10-16
ATROCITIES PLANNED IN GERMANY FOR THE TURKS TO
 CARRY OUT

from Turkey was made in Germany and suggested to the Turks by German officials" and where the Armenians made stand against their Moslem oppressors it was German officers and German cannon that broke them up, according to the Rev Alpheus Newell Andrus, senior missionary for the Con- gregation station at Mardin, Mesopo- tamia, who told of his experiences ] here today. The farsighted Germans, l he said, were looking forward to the time when they expected to gain com i plete dominion in Turkey and they wanted 'c s2 the Armenian o..eston by getting rid Of the Armon- ian race.
 One of the ways the Turks went about it was t0 load Armenian men on goatskin rafts on the understand ing that they were to be deported- and then they were taken out and dumped into the Tigris River and drowned" he said "This was the fate of at least 2,500 men from the vicinity of Diarbekir and it's suburbs in North ern Mesopotamia
 i Armed soldiers were on the rafts which each carried about seventy-fve 10 a hundred victims. Kurd boatmen | rowed them out into deep water. Then the soldiers would drive the Armenans to one side of the rafts until they tilt ed and dumped them into the river If they tried to climb back on the rafts the soldiers and boatmen beat them and shot them until all perished."
 The Germans and the Turkish gov ernment. Dr. Andrus said, looked up on the destruction of the Armenians in Turkey as a cold blooded political move, and gave the actual execution of it into the hands of the Kurds and Turkish soldiers who went about it 'ith the ferocity of Moslem fanatic Iis'e.
 first the Turkish government objected to the German suggestion of tie removal of the Armenians on the round that they were valuable as
 ms and business men and nee i essary to the economic life of the country continued Dr. Andrus, "but 1 the Germans promised to supply men to take their places. Having persuad- ed the Turks, the Germans then left I fn +IO,, ta +lo ;,o+ NcfC 1 But the Turkish soldiers in some places could not overcome the Armen- ians. At Urfa, the city of suffering i the Armenians resolved to resist de- portation and defend their innocent i families and their church. They bar ricaded themselves in their stone i houses in their quarter. For ten days ! they withstood all the efforts of the l Turkish soldiery to dislodge them. In the end they would have prevailed but i that German officers brought and l trained cannon upon their stronghold and forced them to flee.
 Surely such people should not be allowed to perish. There still re- main of them to cared for 6,300 in i Urfa and nearby. Will not the Amer < ican people help care for them? 2 Conditions in Mesopotamia have not tention for the reason that there has not been anyone to report the state of things there and because no report could get past the rigid Turkish cen sorship.
 More than 30,OO0 Armenians were deported from Diarbekir and it's SUI burbs. It was some of these who were dumped into the Tigris and drowned. The leading and rich men were among these. The others were detailed to dig trenches and to do other work with only an insufficient allowance of bread daily. Later they were shot in groups, when no longer able to endure the hardship imposed
 There follWed an epidemic of chol- era and then a scourge of typhus. Be- fore the war and deportations the city contained some 60,000 inhabitants The last I heard there were only 1000 citizens left there.
 "Women were clubbed, stabbed or shot down on the Mesopotamia plains and left for dead in piles on the ground or thrown into old cisterns. Some, coming to consciousness, crawled out from the piles and up from the cisterns and dragged themselves up the mountain to our hospital at Mardin to have their wounds dressed.
 Some of the Moslems at Mardin took pity upon more than a thousand babies of deported women who, in pas sing through, left those they had no milk to feed no strength to carry as they went on to their lingering deaths on the plains below. When the local government officials learned that Mos lems had the little ones they issued an order that whoever harbored any Ar menian would be visited with the treat ment dealt to the Armenians.
 "Tba Moc1amc tharaforo cacret1v