Witnesses Tell of Turk Horror
Armenian massacres said to be worse than any of Abdul Hamid
A statement confirming the massacre of Armenians in Turkey was given out here by Professor Samuel T. Dutton, secretary of the committee on Armenian Atrocities. The statement follows:
“A sub-committee has thoroughly investigated the evidence and has made report to the full committee, confirming in every particular the statement made recently by Viscount Bryce regarding the imprisonment, torture, murder, massacre, and exile into the deserts of Northern Arabia of defenseless and innocent Armenians, including decrepit men, women and children.”
Written testimonies of eyewitnesses, whose names are known to the committee, but which obviously cannot now be made public, have been examined. This testimony covers the character and positions of the authors and the positiveness of utterance carry absolute conviction.
The witnesses examined include Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians Italians, Germans, Turks, Englishmen, and Americans of rank.
Not a single statement can be questioned. These all agree that from Smyrna on the west of Persia and from the Black Sea to Arabia a propaganda of termination of non-Moslems now is being carried on by the Turkish government, surpassing in ferocity and exceeding in destruction anything done by Abdul Hamid during his long career of massacre and extermination.
TORTURE IS PRACTICED.
The statements examined, many of which, are in possession of the committee, cover hundreds of towns and cities in which in many instances all of the Armenians have been killed outright, often after horrible torture, or sent to the desert to die of starvation and that too with diabolical cruelty.
The ostensible deportation of men, women, and children toward Mesopotamia usually is but a form of marching those starving, hopeless and frequently naked refugees out into the mountains to be outraged and butchered, sometimes by their guards and sometimes by the Kurds, who gladly co-operate in the work of destruction.
Included among these refugees and victims are pupils and graduates from the American schools and colleges, teachers and professional men, who have taken degrees in American and European universities- men and women who have represented the brains and enterprise of the country for a generation or more.
The plan of procedure, which is identical in all parts of the country, seems to aim at the complete elimination of all non-Moslem races from Asiatic Turkey and already that aim is in fair way to accomplishment, so far as Armenians are concerned.
In several places American property has been seized, Americans searched, imprisoned and expelled from the country, their letter and telegrams, even from United States consular offices, interrupted, and their lives put in jeopardy.
500,000 KILLED.
Evidence seems to prove that probably 500,000 Armenians have been murdered or forced to the desert, where only death awaits them unless relief is obtained at once. And all this has taken place since March and now is at the height of its gruesome fury.
The committee is confident that if the press of the country should with all the emphasis at its command, voice its protest and call upon the Turkish government to put an end to this crime against humanity, and return the exiles who yet may be living, to their homes, it could hardly fail to produce results.
In view of the great influence which Germany and Austria exercise over their ally, the American people cannot fail to hold them morally responsible if these atrocities are permitted to continued.