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Art. 10.-GERMANY, TURKEY, AND THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES.

Deutschland und Armenien, 1914-1918. Sammlung diplomatischer Aktenstücke. Edited by Dr Johannes Lepsius. Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919.

DURING the course of the War, and especially in the years 1914 and 1916, the question has often been discussed whether the Turks or the Germans were chiefly responsible for the slaughter of the Armenian nation. At the time the position was somewhat obscure, through lack of information, but since then various books have appeared which throw light upon the subject. Among these the most valuable is undoubtedly the stout volume edited by Dr Lepsius, a noted orientalist and a true friend of the Armenians. This book furnishes us at last with the authentic documents relating to Armenia, comprising more than 400 dispatches and telegrams exchanged between the Berlin authorities and the German Embassy in Constantinople on the one hand, and between that Embassy and the German Consulates throughout the Turkish Empire on the other. It contains also numerous important official reports, memoranda, etc. Dr Lepsius had, on his own request, received permission to study the documents bearing on the Armenian question kept at the German Foreign Office, and he has published all the most important papers. His book, of which the British Press has hitherto taken practically no notice, is indispensable to the historian.

The massacre of the Armenians is probably the greatest crime in modern history. The Armenians are an old and highly civilised Christian race. They are a peaceful people engaged in agriculture and especially in commerce and industry. The business of Turkey was chiefly carried on by the industrious Armenians. At the outbreak of War, Turkey contained, according to the statistics of the Armenian Patriarchate, 1,845,450 Armenians. Of these about 250,000 succeeded in escaping to Russia across the land-frontier or the sea. Of the remaining 1,600,000, about 1,000,000, or two-thirds of their number, were killed. Half of these were women and children. Of the surviving 600,000 about 200,000

girls, women and children were carried away into slavery and were forcibly converted to Mohammedanism; and about 400,000 were wandering about in the wilderness, starving and in rags, or or were kept in the Turkish concentration camps, at the end of the War. In addition to about 1,000,000 Armenians killed in Turkey proper, the Turks massacred from 50,000 to 100,000 Armenians when invading the Russian Caucasus. Lord Bryce and various other investigators have furnished us with figures similar to those provided by Dr Lepsius.

The murder of the Armenians was due not to Moslem fanaticism but to cold calculation on the part of the governing Turks. In their policy of extermination the Committee of Union and Progress followed in the footsteps of Sultan Abdul Hamid, Gladstone's' great assassin,' whom they had deposed. At the Young-Turkish Congress held in Salonica in October 1911 the Committee of Union and Progress had formulated a Pan-Islamic programme according to which the Mohammedans were to secure for themselves the paramountcy in Turkey by extirpating those non-Turkish and non-Islamic nationalities dwelling in Turkey which were not willing to amalgamate voluntarily with the Turks. But the murder of the Armenians sprang not merely from political motives but also from sordid greed of gain. The Armenians were a wealthy community, including numerous millionaires. The lands and houses of the Armenians could be seized and their movable property appropriated by their murderers.

Turkey entered the War on Nov. 1, 1914. On April 20, 1915, the Turkish Government reported that a grave Armenian rising had occurred in Van. This rising,' which furnished a welcome pretext to the Turkish Government, was, according to Dr Lepsius, not an act of aggression on the part of the Armenians but merely an act of legitimate self-defence. The Turks had arrested and murdered some of the leading Armenians, and had then attacked the Armenian quarter at Van. Not unnaturally the Armenians resisted. In the fighting the Turks lost 18 men killed. This justifiable resistance of the inhabitants was henceforward described by the men in power as a treasonable act against Turkey. In its desire to put the Armenians in the wrong, the Turkish

Government asserted, through its accredited representatives in Berlin and elsewhere, that the Armenians had killed not 18 Turks but 180,000.

The ruling Turks resolved to destroy the Armenians by what they euphemistically called deportation. In the night between April 24 and 25, 1915, the Turkish authorities arrested in Constantinople 600 leading Armenians-politicians, priests, scientists, merchants, doctors, authors, journalists, etc.-and on May 27 the Turkish Government published a Provisional Law for the Deportation of Suspected Persons. Article II of that Law ran as follows:

'The commanders of armies, army corps and divisions may, if military requirements demand it, deport and settle in other localities, either individually or jointly, the inhabitants of the towns and villages whom they suspect of being guilty of treason or espionage.'

It will be noticed that no proof of guilt was required. Mere suspicion was considered sufficient for deporting the population of entire districts. In fact all Armenians were considered to be suspect.

Down to the end of June 1915 the persecution of the Armenians by means of forcible deportation appeared to be limited to those frontier districts which might seem strategically threatened. However, at the end of June, the Turkish Government began to deport large numbers of Armenians from the central provinces as well, although these were hundreds of miles from the theatre of war. Moreover, the Turks began confiscating all Armenian property throughout the country. As a rule, they killed all the men and carried away all the young women and girls. Altogether 1,400,000 Armenians were deported, and their possessions were seized. Wealthy and cultured people, invalids and delicate women, were driven like animals into the wilderness. People who had known every comfort and luxury were wandering about in rags and had to beg passers-by for a crust of bread or a drink of water.

The Armenian massacres were started by the Committee of Union and Progress with the two-fold aim of extirpating this Christian and non-Turkish race and enriching themselves. Count Wolff-Metternich, who

was the German Ambassador at the time, reported on June 30, 1916, to the Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg:

'No one here has the power to tame the many-headed hydra of the Committee and its chauvinism and fanaticism. The Committee demand the destruction of the last remnant of the Armenians, and the Government must give way. The members of the Committee cannot expect to obtain much from the persecution of these unfortunate people. Their property has been confiscated long ago by so-called "liquidation." When, for instance, an Armenian had a house worth 1007., it has been sold to a friend or member of the Committee for about 27. To nationalise means in Turkey to expel or kill all non-Turks and to rob them of all they possess. In this activity and in the mechanical repetition of phrases about liberty learned from the French consists the vaunted regeneration of Turkey.'

...

In Turkey the governing politicians, the members of the Committee of Union and Progress, not the military, were responsible for the massacres. Many Turkish officers and high officials were disgusted with that policy and refused to carry it out. They were superseded. The Turkish outrages were tolerated and condoned by the German statesmen, who contemplated the murder of a whole nation with callous indifference. On the other hand, many German soldiers viewed Turkey's policy with undisguised disgust and horror. Several of the German generals in Turkey protested with the greatest energy, and even threatened to oppose the continuation of the slaughter by force of arms. But, without the support of their Government they were powerless. With strange indifference and perversity the German Chancellor and the authoritative representatives of the German Foreign Office watched the destruction of the Armenian people which they might have prevented. On May 31, 1915, the German Ambassador, Wangenheim, telegraphed to his Foreign Office:

"To limit Armenian espionage and to prevent extensive risings, Enver Pasha means to close a large number of Armenian schools, to suppress Armenian postal correspondence and Armenian newspapers, and to settle in Mesopotamia all Armenian families which are not entirely free from suspicion. He asks urgently that Germany should not interfere with him in this.

'Of course these Turkish measures will once more cause great excitement among all the Powers hostile to Germany and will be exploited against us. These measures are certainly very harsh for the Armenians. However, I am of opinion that we may only try to mitigate their form but must not hinder them on principle. . . .'

When that dispatch was written, Wangenheim either was of opinion that the persecution of the Armenians, though harsh, was excusable and was due to military reasons of necessity, or he wished the German Government to believe that that was the case. However, a few days later he discovered, or thought it no longer safe to disguise the fact, that the Turkish Government had resolved not merely to persecute the Armenians but to exterminate them. Talaat Bey, in a conversation with one of the members of the Embassy, had given an unmistakable hint as to Turkey's aim, and information from other quarters had confirmed it. On June 17, 1915, Wangenheim reported to the German Chancellor :

'It is obvious that the banishment of the Armenians is due not solely to military considerations. Talaat Bey, the Minister of the Interior, has quite frankly said to Dr Mordtmann, of the Embassy, that the Turkish Government intended to make use of the World-War and deal thoroughly with its internal enemies, the Christians in Turkey, and that it meant not to be disturbed in this by diplomatic intervention from abroad. The Armenian Patriarch told the same gentleman a few days later the Turkish Government did not intend merely to make the Armenians temporarily innocuous but to expel them from Turkey or rather to exterminate them.'

These reports and others, which the German Government received from the Constantinople Embassy and from elsewhere, did not disturb its equanimity. The fate of the Armenians did not interest it. It did not intend to intervene, and it left action in the Armenian matter to its local representative who favoured the policy of non-intervention. However, in view of the indignation which Turkey's barbarous policy was likely to arouse, the German Foreign Office thought that a formal protest might be advisable for appearance's sake. So Herr Zimmermann, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, telegraphed to Wangenheim on June 18,

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