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TURKEY : THE BLIGHT OF ASIA

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INFORMATION FROM OTHER SOURCES

    I HAVE often been impressed with the hopelessness of making people who have not been eye-witnesses, comprehend the dreadful character of the massacres which were carried on by the Turks against the Christian population of the Orient. I have never been able to describe sights that I have witnessed in such manner as to make my listeners actually see and understand. It frequently happens that people, sitting in their comfortable houses, lay aside an article or book on the subject, with the remark: "We are fed up on Armenian atrocities."

    Here is another strong point of the Turk’s position: he has killed so many human beings and over so long a period of time that people are tired of hearing about it. He can, therefore, continue without interference.

    In Doctor Elliott’s "Beginning Again at Ararat", gives the following story of a young girl, heard in the rescue home in Turkey, of which she was in charge:

    "I was twelve years old, I was with my mother. They drove us with whips and we had no water. It was very hot and many of us died because there was no water. They drove us with whips, I do not know how many days and nights and weeks, until we came to the Arabian Desert. My sisters and the little baby died on the way. We went to a town, I do not know its name. The streets were full of dead, all cut to pieces. They drove us over them. I kept dreaming about that. We came to a place on the Desert, a hollow place in the sand, with hills all around it. There were thousands of us there, many, many thousands, all women and girl children. They herded us like sheep into the hollow. Then it was dark and we heard firing all around. We said, "The killing has begun." All night we waited for them, my mother and I, we waited for them to reach us. But they did not come, and in the morning, when we looked around, no one was killed. No one was killed at all. They had not been killing us. They had been signaling to the wild tribes that we were there. The Kurds came later in the morning, in the daylight; the Kurds and many other kinds of men from the Desert; they came over the hills and rode down and began killing us. All day long they were killing; you see, there were so many of us. All they did not think they could sell, they killed. They kept on killing all night and in the morning—in the morning they killed my mother."

    This quotation is given because it condenses in a few vivid and convincing words the clearest description that has appeared anywhere of the character of the Turkish "deportations" of the Armenians. All the official documents and the testimony of a host of American, German and other eye-witnesses corroborate the accuracy of this picture.

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