14 
LAND 6? WATER 
November 21, 1918 
pieces of wood — evidently in imitation of tiie crucifixion, 
and then, while the sufferer writhed in his agony,' they would 
cry : 
"Now let your Christ come and help you!" 
These cruelties — -and many others which I forbear to 
describe — were usually inflicted in the night time. Turks 
would be stationed around the prisons, beating drums and 
blowing whistles, so that the screams of the sufferers would 
not reach the villagers. 
In thousands of cases, the Armenians endured these agonies 
and refused to surrender their arms simply because they 
had none to surrender. However, they could not persuade 
their tormentors that this was the case. It therefore 
became customary, when news was received that the searchers 
were approaching, for Armenians to purchase arms from 
their Turkish neighbours. 
One day I was discussing these proceedings with a respon- 
sible Turkish ofHcial, who was describing the tortures inflicted. 
He made no secret of the fact that the Government had 
instigated them, and, like all Turks of the official classes, he 
enthusiastically approved this treatment of the detested race. 
This official told me that all these details were matters of 
nightly discussion at the headquarters of the Union and 
Progress Committee. Each new method of inflicting pain 
was hailed as a splendid discovery, and the regular attendants 
were constantly ransacking their brains in the effort to 
devise some new torment. He told me that they even 
delved into the records of the Spanish Inquisition and other 
historic institutions of torture, and adopted all the sugges- 
tions found there. He did not tell me who carried off the 
prize in this gruesome competition, but common reputation 
throughout Armenia gave a pre-eminent infamy to Djevdet 
Bey, the Vali of Van, whose activities in that section I have 
already described. All through this country Djevdet was 
generally known as the "horseshoer of Bashkala," for this 
connoisseur in torture had invented what was perhaps the 
masterpiece of all — that of nailing horseshoes to the feet 
of his Armenian victims. 
Yet these happenings did not constitute what the news- 
papers of the time commonly referred to as the Armenian 
atrocities; they were merely the preparatory steps in the 
destruction of the race. The Young Turks displayed greater 
ingenuity than their predecessor, Abdul Hamid. The 
injunction of the deposed Sultan was merely "to kill, kill," 
whereas the Turkish democracy hit upon an entirely new 
plan. Instead of massacring outright the Armenian race, 
they now decided to deport it. In the south and south- 
eastern section of the Ottoman Empire lie the Syrian /Desert 
and the Mesopotamian Valley. Though part of this area, 
was once the scene of a flourishing civilisation, for the last 
five centuries it has suffered the blight that becomes the lot 
of any country that is subjected to Turkish rule ; and it is 
iiow a dreary, desolate waste, without cities and towns or 
life of any kind, populated only by a few wild and fanatical 
Bedouin tribes. Only the most industrious labour, expended 
through many years, could transform this desert into the 
abiding place of any considerable population. The central 
government now announced its intention of gathering the 
2,000,000 or more Armenians living in the several sections 
of the empire and transporting them to this desolate and 
inhospitable region. Had they undertaken such a deporta- 
tion in good faith it would have represented the height of 
cruelty and injustice. As a matter of fact, the Turks never 
had the slightest idea of re-estabHshing the Armenians in 
this new country. They knew that the great majority would 
never reach their destination and that those who did would 
either die of thirst and starvation, or be murdered by the 
wild Mohammedan desert tribes. The real purpose of the 
deportation was robbery and destruction ; it really repre- 
sented a new method of massacre. When the Turkish 
authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they 
were merely giving the death-warrant to a whole race ; they 
understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, 
they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact. 
All through the spring and summer of 1915 the deporta- 
tions took place. Of the larger cities, only Constantinople, 
Smyrna, and Aleppo were spared ; practically all other 
places were a single Armenian family lived now'became the 
scenes of these unspeakable tragedies. Scarcely a single 
Armenian, whatever his education or wealth, or whatever 
the social class to which he belonged, was exempted from 
the order. In some villages placards were posted ordering 
the whole Armenian population to present itself in a public 
place at an appointed time— usually a day or two ahead, 
and in other places the town-crier" would go through the 
streets delivering the order vocally. In still others not the 
slightest warning was given. The gendarmes would appear 
before an Armenian house and order all the inmates to follow 
them. They would take women engaged in their domestic 
tasks without giving them the chance to change their clothes. 
The police fell upon them just as the eruption of Vesuvius 
fell upon Pompeii ; women were taken from the wash-tubs, 
children were snatched out of bed, the bread was left half- 
baked in the oven, the family meal was abandoned partly- 
eaten, the children were taken from the school-room, leaving 
their books open at the daily task, and the men were forced 
to abandon their ploughs in the fields and their cattle on the- 
mountain side. Even women who had just given birth to 
children would be forced to leave their beds and join the 
panic-stricken throng, their sleeping babies in their arms. 
Such things as they hurriedly snatched up — a shawl, a 
blanket, perhaps a few scraps of food — was all that they 
could take of their household belongings. To their frantic 
questions: "Where are we going?" the gendarmes would 
vouchsafe only one reply : " To tlie interior." 
Systematic Robbery 
In some cases the refugees were given a few hours, in 
exceptional instances a few days, to dispose of their property 
and household effects. But the proceeding, of course, 
amounted simply to robbery. They could sell only to Turks, 
and since both buyers and sellers knew that they had only 
a day or two to market the accumulations of a lifetime, 
the prices obtained represented a small fraction of their 
value. Sewing-machines would bring one or two dollars — 
a cow would go for a dollar, a houseful of furniture would be 
sold for a pittance. In many cases Armenians were pro- 
hibited from selling or Turks from buying even at these 
ridiculous prices ; under pretence that the Government 
intended to sell their effects to pay the creditors whom they 
would inevitably leave behind, their household furniture 
would be placed in stores or heaped up in public places, 
where it was usually pillaged by Turkish men and women. 
The Government officials would also inform the Armenians 
that, since their deportation was only temporary, the inten- 
tion being to bring them back after the war was over, they 
would not be permitted to sell their houses. Scarcely had 
the former possessors left the village, when Mohammedan 
Mohadjirs — immigrants from other parts of Turkey — would 
be moved into the Armenian quarters. Similarly all their 
valuables, money, rings, watches, and jewellery, would be 
taken to the police stations for "safe keeping" pending their 
return, and then parcelled out among the Turks. Yet these 
robberies gave the refugees little anguish, for far more terrible 
and agonising scenes were taking place under their eyes. 
The systematic extermination of the men continued ; such 
males as the persecutions which I have already described 
had left were now violently dealt with. Before the caravans 
were started it became the regular practice to separate the 
young men from the families, tie them together in groups of 
four, lead them to the outskirts, and shoot them. Public 
hangings without trial— the only offence being that the 
victims were Armenians — were taking place constantly. The 
gendarmes showed a particular desire to annihilate the 
educated and the influential. From American Consuls and 
missionaries I was constantly receiving reports of such 
executions, and many of the' events which they described 
will never fade from my memory, At Angora all Armenian 
men from 15 to 70 were arrested, bound together in groups of 
four, and sent on the road in the direction of Caesarea. When 
they had travelled five or six hours and had reached a secluded 
valley, a mob of Turkish peasants fell upon them with clubs, 
hammers, axes, scythes, spades, and saws. Such instru- 
ments not only caused more agonising deaths than guns and 
pistols, but, as the Turks themselves boasted, they were 
more economical, since they did not involve the waste of 
powder and shot. In this way they exterminated the whole 
male population of Angora, including all its men of wealth 
and breeding, and their bodies, horribly mutilated, were 
left in the valley, where they were devoured by wild beasts. 
After completing this destruction, the peasants and gendarmes 
gathered in the local tavern, comparing notes and boasting 
of the number of "giaours" that each had slain. In Tre- 
bizond the men were placed in boats and sent out on the 
Black Sea ; gendarmes would then come up in boats, shoot 
them down and throw their bodies into the water. 
When the signal was given for the caravans to move, there- 
fore, they consisted in the greater part of women, children, 
and old men. Anyone who could possibly have protected 
them from the fate that awaited them had been destroyed. 
Not infrequently the prefect of the city, as the mass started 
on its way, would wish them a derisive "pleasant journey." 
In these six months, as far as can be ascertained, about 
1,200,000 people started on this journey to the Syrian Desert. 
{To be continued. ) 
