Turkey Threatens New Massacres

May Let More Blood if Empire is Cut Up by Allied Nation

“Kill All Christian Dogs,” Is the Cry

Washington, D.C., June 17 – The sick man of Europe is getting well again!
Turkey is making its voice heard at the peace table in Paris and this s the message its emissaries have brought:
The Moslem hordes will massacre all the Christians in Asia Minor if the allies impose a peace on Turkey which cuts up the empire!
According to advices received in government circles in Washington, the sultan’s government is making the open threat at Paris that the Armenian massacres which shocked the world in 1914 will be humane affairs compared to what will happen in 1919.
“Kill every Christian dog!” will be the cry of the sultan’s brutes.
The Turks, according to the information available here, will not object to any military or financial clauses in the peace treaty. Their principle objection is granting freedom to Armenia, and to the reported purpose of the allies to eject the porte from Constantinople, the “holy” city which has been the Mussulman capital for centuries.
Concessions might be granted permitting the allies to maintain a protectorate over Palestine – but that is as far as the Turks will go.
The most surprising thing is the fact that the Turkish government has used American missionaries as its tools in laying this message before the peace conference.
The sultan’s agents have made pleasant promises to the missionaries that they will be good if Turkey is left intact, that some sort of autonomy under Turkish suzerainty will be granted to Armenia, and that Christians will be permitted complete freedom of worship in future.
It’s a form of propaganda taught the Turks by their German masters. The American missionaries – who have always been well treated, even patronized, by the Turks, particularly in Constantinople – are said to have been much impressed by the agreement, and to have gone to Paris with a plea that the allies be easy on the sultan – lest he turn loose his assassins once more on the defenseless Armenian Christians.
The Armenian delegation at Paris is exerting every influence to offset the effects of this propaganda innocently abetted t=by American citizens.
The “Big Four” has already committed itself, officially or unofficially, to the proposition of freeing Armenia under the mandatory of the United States, and it is not likely that the Turkish threat will frighten them. On the other hand, it is more likely to bring about the other course that has been suggested – the proposal that America take a mandate over Turkey as well as over Armenia.