The Washington herald., 1918-10-21
Second Instnlment.

And now for nearly thirty years
Turkey gave the world an illustration
of government by massacre. We in
( Europe and America heard of these
events when they reached especially
monstrous proportions, as they did
! in 1855, when nearly 10000 Ar
menians were most atrociously done
/ to death. But through all these years
the existence of the Armenians was
/ one continuous nightmare. Their
property was stolen. their men were
murdered. their women were ravished,
their young girls were kidnapped and
forced to live in Turkish harems. Yet
Abdul Hamid was not able to accom-
( plish his full purpose. Had he had
his will, he would have massacred the
whole nation in one hideous orgy. He
attempted to eXterminate the Ar
menfans in 1895 and 1896, but found
( certain insuperable distractions to
his scheme. Chief of these were Eng
| land, France. and Russia. These
! atrocities called Gladstone, then SO
years old, from his retirement and his
speeches, in which he denounced the
Sultan as the great assassin"
aroused the whole world to the enor-
mites that were taking place. 1t be-
came apparent that unless the Sultan
desisted, England, France. and Russia
would intervene. and the Sultan well
knew, that, in case this Intervention
! took place. such remnants of Turkey
as had survived earlier partitions
would disappear. Thus Abdul Hamid
had to abandon his Satanic enterprise
of destroying a whole race by muir
| der, yet Armenia continued to suffer
the slow agony OF pitiless persecution.
ITp to the outbreak of the European
war not a day had passed in the Ar
menian vilayets without. its outrages
and its murders. The Young Turk
regime, despite its promises of uni
versaI brotherhood, brought no respite
| to the Armenians. A few months after
| the love feastings already described
one of the worst massacres took
place at Adana, in which 5000 people
were destroyed. 3.
| And now the Young Turks. who had
| adopted so many of Abdul Hamid's
! ideas, also made his Armenian policy
their own. Their passion for Turki-
! flying the nation seemed to demand
logically the determination of all
| Christians-Greeks, Syrians. and Ar
menians. Much as they admired the
Mohammedan conquerors of the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries, they
/ stupidity believed that these great
warriors had made one fatal mistake,
| for they had had it in their power
J completely to obliterate the Christian
populations and had neglected to do
so. This policy in their opinion was
fatal error of statesmanship and
explained all the woes from which
Turkey has suffered in modern times.
Had these old Moslem chieftains,
when they conquered Bulgaria, put alT
tho Bulgarians to the sword. and peo-
pied the Bulgarian country with Mos
4 lem Turks, there would never have
been any modern Bulgarian problem
and Turkey would have never lost
I this part of her empire. Similarly,
had they destroyed all the Rumanians,
/ Serbians, and Greeks, the provinces
which are now occupied by these
races would still have remained in
I tegral parts of the Sultan's domain.
! They felt that the mistake had been
terrible one, but that something
might be saved from the ruin They
would destroy all Greeks, Syrians, Ar
menians, and other Christians, move
Moslem families into their homes and
| into their farms, and so make sure
/ that these territories would not SIM
ilarly be taken away from Turkey.
In order to accomplish this great re-
form, 1t would not be necessary to
murder every living Christian The
most beautiful and healthy Armenian
girls could be taken, converted forci-
bly, to Mohammedanism, and made
the wives or concubines of devout fol-
lowers of the Prophet Their children
would then automatically become
Moslems and so strengthen the en-
lx.,w 81 l.
ened 1t formerly. These Armenian
girls represent a high type of woman-
hood and the Young Turks, in their
crude. sntuitive way. recognized that