The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-09-20
From the International News Bu


 initiation of this ancient Christian people will lie for ever upon Germany and Austria. History will not, and
 cannot, admit that the two great Christian Empires of Central Europe were not in a position to impose their will upon their Asiatic ally, at least in such a case as this. where the life and death of g. whole people are at stake.")
 This indictment of the attitude of the Central Powers in the face of Turkeys avowed purpose to exter- minate the Armenian nation, is con tained in a dispatch from Tifiis ad- dressed to the Berlin Foreign Office on August 20, 1918, by the Bavarian general, Baron Kress von Kressen- stein, some time Chief of Staff to Djemal Pasha's Fourth Turkish Army in Syria, who, after the Brest-LitOvsk conference, had been appointed Ger man High Commissioner in the Cau- casus, with instructions to study the Armenian question on the spot.
 Baron von Kress' dispatch figures in collection of German official doc uments just published in Berlin, with the authority of the wiIhelmstrasse, by pr Johannes Lepsins. founder of the German Orient Mission and pres idenr of the German Armenian SO- ciety. The collection. which Is en- titled Germany and Armenia: 1914 191S," is issued as a volume of over
 500 pages, price 15 marks. by the Potsdam Tempelverlag. After the revolution in Berlin last November. he was granted full access to the re- ports of the German diplomatic and consular agents in Turkey, and he as- sumes, as editor. complete responst- biity for the present production.
 He disClaims any desire to accuse or to exculpate anyone. But his ar ray of evidence conclusively shows
 that from the Imperial Chancellor in Berlin down to the lowest grade off cial in Anatolia, the whole of the i German Foreign Service knew day by day what was happening in Ar menia. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were as weSl aware of every detail as were the veteran von der Goltz and Liman von Sanders. The Main Com mittee of the Reichstag shared the guilty secret. Yet nothing effective was done to bring the Turks to their f'seuses At Constantinople the Ger ] man Ambassador of the day confined himself to making academic repre- U Turks in return gave Germany to un- derstand that it was her business to | win the war. and not to meddle in l Turkish internal affairs. The Ger mans, for their part. appreciated only | 100 clearly the retort to which their | own policy of deportation in France | and Belgium ultimately exposed them. 1 Dr. Lcpsius' labors also afford the l German public its first comprehens- i i've view of what he describes as per ! haps the greatest persecution of | Christians of all time"
 l The drama opened in COnstantino- ! pie with an Oriental Bartholomew | Night on April 25. 1915. when 500 | Armenian notables were arrested, de- | ported. and done to death. In Ar l menia itself a so-called rising at i Van furnished the pretext for the | wholesale massacre and deportations 1 that continued until the end of the year. And from December, 1915, be- | gan the period of systematic conver- l sion to Islam. Tn this proceeding g | German diplomacy was prepared to i lcqulesce, on the sententious ground 1 that 'Tn the East creed and nation 1 ality are synonymous" But even the | German diplomatists had to acknowl- l edge that the Decree of August 1. | 1916, determining the political and l religious rights of the Armenians,
 was designed to terminate the very ex- l istence of the Armenian nation.
 1 Dr. Lepsius estimates that before ! the war l,345,45 Armenians had | their homes in the Ottoman domIn- lions. During the war the Turks de-
 ported nearly 1,4OO. 900 persons, and 1 of these no fewer than 1000. 900 per 1 ished, not including some 50,0OO to | 100000 Armenians of the Caucasus 1 who are also missing" No nation, l Dr. Lepsius observes. even among l those that have taken direct part in l the war, can show such a record of 1 loss. The value of Armenian prop
 erty confiscated by the Turks is esti- i mated at 1000, 100000 marks (nom- finally S25O.OOO.OOO.)
 Young Turks Ferocious Greed. Dr. Lepsius couples the ferocious greed of the Young Turks with the l trumped-up raison d'Etat of the Ma tionalist Constantinople Committee as T the main spring of the policy of ex-
 termination Talaat, Halil, and Enver
 are exhibited as its most conspicuous
 opponents.
 r The Young Turks remained will
 fully blind to the inevitable loss of
 economic and indeed of military, ef- lhciency that followed from the per secution of the Armenians.
 | But there Is nobody here now
 (wrOte Count Paul Wolff-Metternich, h, then Ambassador. to Herr von Beth mann-Hollweg in 1916) strong
 enough to tame the many-headed
 hydra of the committee, with it's 1 chauvfnism and fanaticism. The com mittee insists that the last remnants of the Armenians shall be devoured, and the government has to submit. T But there is now little left for the | hungry wolves of the committee to ! extort from these wretched creatures. | To ''Turkefy''. means to expel
 or to kill everything that is not Turk
 ish-it means to destroy and forcibly
 to annex other peoples property.
 Herein for the moment, and in the
 childish repetition of French Liberal phrases, consists the vaunted new birth of Turkey.
 i Prince Hohenlohe on one occasion,
 and Count olff-Metternich on
 another alone urged Herr von Beth
 mann Hollweg to consider the ex- pediency of publicly dissociating Ger I +I,x H.r