November 14, 1918 
LAND d? WATER 
13 
Unlike Abdul Hamid, the Young Turks found themselves 
in a position where they could carry out this "holy" enter- 
prise. Great Britain, France, and Russia had stood in the 
way of their predecessor. But now these obstacles had been 
removed. The Young Turks, as 1 have said, believed that 
they had defeated them, and that they could, therefore, no 
longer interfere with their internal affairs. Only one Power 
could successfully raise objections, and that was Germany. 
In 1898, while all the rest of Europe was ringing with 
Gladstone's denunciations and demanding intervention. 
Kaiser Wilhelm the Second had gone to Constantinople, 
visited Abdul Hamid, pinned his finest decorations on that 
bloody tyrant's breast, and kissed him on both cheeks. The 
same Kaiser who had done this in 1898 was still sitting on 
the throne in 1915, and was now Turkey's ally. Thus, for 
the first time in two centuries, the Turks, in 1915, had their 
Christian populations utterly at their mercy. The time had 
finally come to make Turkey exclusively the country of the 
Turks. 
The Turkish province of Van lies in the remote north- 
eastern comer of Asia Minor ; it touches the frontiers of 
Persia on the east and its northern boundary looks toward 
the Caucasus. It is one of the most beautiful and most 
fruitful parts of the Turkish Empire and one of the richest in 
historictil associations. The city of Van, which is capital 
of the vilayet, lies on the eastern shores of the lake of the 
same name ; it is the one large town in Asia Minor in which 
the Armenian population is larger than the Moslem. In 
the fall of 1914, its population of about 30,000 people repre- 
sented one of the most peaceful and happy and prosperous 
communities in the Turkish Empire. Though Van, like 
practically every other section where Armenians lived, had 
had its periods of oppression and massacre, yet the Moslem 
yoke, comparatively speaking, rested upon its people rather 
lightly. Its Turkish Governor, Tahsin Pasha, was one of 
the more enlightened type of Turkish ofiicials. Relations 
between the Armenians, who lived in the better section of 
the city, and the Turks and the Kurds, who occupied the 
mud huts in the Moslem quarter, had been tolerably agree- 
able for many years. 
The location of this vilayet, however, inevitably made it 
the scene of military operations, and made the activities of 
its Armenian population a matter of daily suspicion. Should 
Russia attempt an invasion of Turkey one of the most acces- 
sible routes lay through this province. The war had not 
gone far when causes of irritation arose. The requisitions 
of army supplies fell far more heavily upon the Christian 
than upon the Mohammedan elements in Van, just as they 
did in every other part of Turkey. The Armenians had to 
stand quietly by while the Turkish officers appropriated all 
their cattle, all their wheat, and all their goods of every 
kind, giving them only worthless pieces of paper in exchange. , 
The attempt at general disarmament that took place also 
aroused their apprehension, which was increased by the 
brutal treatment visited upon Armenian soldiers in the 
Caucasus. On the other hand, the Turks made many charges 
against the Christian population, and, in fact, they attributed 
to them the larger share of the blame for the reverses which 
the Turkish armies had suffered in the Caucasus. The fact 
that a considerable element in the Russian forces was com- 
posed of Armenians aroused their unbridled wrath. Since 
about half the Armenians in the world inhabit the Russian 
provinces in the Caucasus, and are liable, like all Russians, 
to military service, there was certainly no legitimate grounds 
for complaint, so far as these Armenian levies were bona fide 
subjects of the Tsar. But the Turks asserted that large 
numbers of Armenian soldiers in Van and other of their 
Armenian provinces deserted, crossed the border, and joined 
the Russian Army, where their knowledge of roads and the 
terrain was an important factor in the Russian victories. 
Though the exact facts are not yet ascertained, it seems 
not unlikely that such desertions, perhaps a few hundred, 
did take place. At the beginning of the war. Union and 
Progress agents appeared in Erzerum and Van, and appealed 
to the Armenian leaders to go into Russian Armenia and 
attempt to start revolutions against the Russian Government ; 
and the fact that the Ottoman Armenians refused to do this 
contributed further to the prevailing irritation. The Turkish 
Government has made much of the "treasonable" behaviour 
of the Armenians of Van, and have even urged it as an excuse 
for their subsequent treatment of the whole race. Their 
attitude illustrates once more the perversity of the Turkish 
mind. After massacring hundreds of thousands of Armenians 
in the course of thirty years, outraging their women and 
girls, and robbing and maltreating them in every conceivable 
way, the Turks still apparently believed that they had the 
right to expect from them the most enthusiastic "loyalty." 
That the Armenians all over Turkey sympathised with the 
Entente was no secret. "If you want to know how the war 
is going," remarked a huinorous Turkish newspaper, "all you 
need to do is to look in the face of an Armenian. If he is 
smiling, then the Allies are winning ; if he is downcast, 
then the Germans are successful." If an Ottoman Armenian 
soldier should desert and join the Russians, that would 
unquestionably constitute a technical crime against the 
State, and might be punished without violating the rules of 
all civilised countries. Only the Turkish mind, however 
— and possibly the German — could regard it as furnishing 
an excuse for the terrible barbarities that now took 
place. 
Early in the spring the Russians temporarily retreated. 
It is generally recognised as good military tactics for a 
victorious army to follow up the retreating enemy In the 
eyes of the Turkish generals, however, the withdrawal of 
the Russians was a happy turn of war, mainly because it 
deprived the Armenians of their protectors and left them at ■ 
the mercies of the Turkish Army. Instead of following the 
retreating foe, therefore, the Turk's army turned aside and 
invaded their own territory of Van. Instead of fighting the 
trained Russian army of men, they turned their rifles, machine 
guns, and other weapons upon the Armenian women, children, 
and old men in the villages of Van. Following their usual 
custom, they distributed the most beautiful Armenian w^omen 
among the Moslems, sacked and burned the Armenian villages, 
and massacred uninterruptedly for days. On April 15th, 
about 500 young Armenian men of Akantz were mustered to 
hear an order of the Sultan ; at sunset they were marched 
outside the town and every man shot in cold blood. This 
procedure was repeated in about eighty Armenian 
villages in the district north of Lake Van, and in three 
days 24,000 Armenians were murdered in this atrocious 
fashion. 
And so when Djevdet Bey, who had replaced Tahsin Pasha 
as governor, demanded that Van furnish him immediately 
4,000 soldiers, the people were naturally in no mood to dccede 
to his request. When we consider what had happened before 
and what happened subsequently, there remains little doubt 
concerning the purpose which underlay this demand. Djevdet, 
acting in obedience to orders from Constantinople, was pre- 
paring to wipe out the whole population, and his purpose in 
cklling for 4,000 able-bodied men was merely to massacre 
them, so that the rest of the Armenians might have no 
defenders. The Armenians, parleying to gain time, offered 
to furnish five hundred soldiers and to pay exemption money 
for the rest ; now, however, Djevdet began to talk aloud 
about "rebellion," and his determination to "crush" it at 
any cost. "If the rebels fire a single shot," he declared, 
"I shall kill every Christian man, woman, and child, up to 
here," pointing to his knee. For some time the Turks had 
been constructing entrenchments around the Armenian 
quarter and filling them with soldiers, and, in response to 
this provocation, the Armenians began to make preparations 
for a defence. On April 20th a band of Turkish soldiers 
seized several Armenian women who were entering the city ; 
a couple of Armenians ran to their assistance, and were shot 
dead. The Turks now opened fire on the Armenian quarters 
with rifles and artillery ; soon a large part of the town was 
in flames and a regular siege had started. The whole 
Armenian fighting force consisted of only 1,500 men ; they 
had only 300 rifles and a most inadequate supply of ammuni- 
tion, while Djevdet had an army of 5,000 men, completely 
equipped and supplied. Yet the Armenians fought with the 
utmost heroism, and skill ; they had little chance of holding 
off their enemies indefinitely, but they knew that a Russian 
army was fighting its way to Van, and their utmost hope was 
that they would be able to defy the besiegers until these 
Russians arrived. As I am not writing the story of sieges 
and battles, I cannot describe in detail the numerous acts of 
individual heroism, the co-operation of the Armenian women, 
the ardour and energy of the Armenian children, the self- 
sacrificing zeal of the American missionaries, especially 
Dr. Usher and his wife and Miss Grace H. Knapp, and the 
thousand other circumstances that make this terrible month 
one of the most glorious pages in modern Annenian history. 
The wonderful thing about it is that the Armenians triumphed. 
After nearly five weeks of sleepless fighting, the Russian 
army suddenly appeared, and the Turks fled into the sur- 
rounding country, where they found aj)peasemcnt for their 
anger by again massacring- unprotected Armenian villages. 
Dr. Usher, the American medical missionary, whose hospital 
at Van was destroyed by bombardment, is authority for the 
statement that, after driving oft the Turks, the "Russians 
began to collect and to cremate the bodies of Armenians who 
had been murdered in the province, with the result that 
55,000 bodies were burned. 
[{To'Jbe continued) 
