The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1918-04-04
MEN, WOMEN
AND THINGS

with french captain VINO was IN the
siege of verdun.
/ thought they had been through ano
seen about all the horrors that moral
men could see and not go mad, but L
have just been talking with man who
has lived through six Turkish massacres.
Col. 7. o. Smith came back last year
from trip up east and told me about
having heard a Britisher tell of the car
mage of Vimy Ridge, and how his very
Ieyes seemed charged with the horror Of
it until it almost made him look I'M
canny. 1 thought it was Toms magma
ton, but now 1 know he was trying to
describe something that was only too
true.
/ have seen many sad faces and tired
eyes, but until | looked into the care
worn countenance and wearied orbs Of
DIR. Clarence D. USHER, the returned
medical missionary from Turkey, VINO
spoke here yesterday at lunch at the
Southern club and at night at the Jeffer-
sen theatre, / had never caught the look
that must have been on Dante's face as
the Florentne children pointed to him as
the man who had been in hell
The man appealed to me as much as
his message. as appealing as it is, for
it's the story of people racked and
driven, robbed and despoiled, beaten and
killed, for in all history l know of no
race which has been tortured as has the
Armenians at the hands of the bloody
Mahometans, the nation of whom Glad
stone contemptuously spoke as the "un-
speakable Turk
But the thing which made my blooa
boil was the statement of the greet
hearted missionary that the last massa-
ere surpassed all the former ones in fury
as a winters gale the breath of spring,
for it was carried out not in the haphaz-
ard way of the crafty oriental, but with
the cold-blooded precision of the Prus-
sian military organization.
One incident alone given by him is
enough to forever put Germany outside
/ /
in desperation having fortified themselves
in town, preferring to die fighting
rather than to be cruelty murdered, were
making a brave stand The Turkish
company sent against them in spite OF
the fact that they had two field guns
refused to fire on the helpless defenders
of their homes, when two German Off
GERS happened along and to show their
skill used the guns to give an exhibition
OF their craftsmanship.
Again he told of how old men, women
and children fleeing before their perse-
cutors, came into the courtyard of eel
ebrated mosque and, lowering with fear,
awaited their prosecutors. AT last they
came, and on a parapet a German officer
stood and harangued them for not be-
and then firing his pistol in the air, a
! signal to the soldiers to do their helllsh
purposes nearly 5000 dead bodies were
piled in heaps,ea monument to Turkish
cruelty as backed by German 'kultur."
1 want to drive it home to you that
we are fighting the Emperor who could
write to the willy old bird of prey, sultan
Abdul Hamid, who died few weeks
ago, and who won for himself the unen-
viable sobriquet of the Butcher of Eu-
rope" as my my dear friend" This to
the monster whose vulture face haunts
me to this day, though it's been more
than quarter of a century ago that |
saw it as he was on his way to prayers
To the man characterized publicly by an
English statesman as Abdul the
Damned
l have heard no man, English, French,
Italian or American. who has been as
bold or so severe in his denunciations OF
Germany's perfidy in the east than DR..
lUssher and all the while he was looking
the saint that he is, and never raising
his voice above a conversational tone,
and yet carrying an indictment more
convincing than If he had worked him
self into passion and shrieked out his
unanswerable charges.
| can hardly write commercially as l
call to mind things which he unfolded OF
German preparation and German treach h.
cry to take and use the Mahommedan
hordes against the helpless Armenian
Christians because they stood in the way
of his plan Tor "Mittel Europa" which
was to reach from Berlin to Bagdad
and be the nucleus of an empire which
later would be world wide
II the full story of German machina-
lions in the east were known, how for
years she had made plans to have the
Moslems start holy war" it wouldn't
be necessary to have to beg any. one to
buy a Liberty Bond, join the Red Cross
or give to the army Y M c. A. or any
of the war activities, for even apathetic
Americans would have their dull eyes
opened 10 the fact that when Germany
wants anything there is nothing secular
or sacred that will stop her if she has the
power to get it either by diplomacy or
arms.
DIR. USHER comes primarily to stir IN.
terest in the 100000 fund TO be raised
for the suffering AImenians, Syrians
and Greeks who are in the grip OF lie
Goddess Kaiser at Berlin and the
Christless Sultan at Constantinople The
money ought to be raised. 1t means lie
or death to thousands upon thousands
but no one who has come here in the in.
terest of Liberty Loan Bonds has stirrdd