Modern World History: Patterns of Interaction (October 1916)

Press Coverage of the Armenian Genocide (1915-1920)

Like the death throes of a wild beast are the frantic efforts of the ruling
party in the Ottoman Empire to destroy their fellow countrymen-the Armenians
and others who are of a different race and an opposing faith. The horrors of this
march of death have been told only in part. They cannot be fully described. Over
eight hundred thousand Armenians have already been murdered or have died as
a result of deportation and abuse. A like number have been deported to
Mesopotamia and Arabia or have fled into Russia and Egypt. How many of these
will survive cannot be estimated, but the Armenian and Syrian Relief Committee
(70 Fifth Avenue, New York) is endeavoring to raise $5,000,000 to feed and clothe
the starving and naked and to enable survivors to become again self-supporting.

One who has recently traveled in northern Arabia and whose statements
are reliable gives this vivid glimpse of the horrors he saw there:

"At Meskene I found 3,500 deported Armenians, and more than 100
orphans. A part of the people have settled here as bakers and butchers, etc., even
though Meskene is but a halting-place. All the rest are begging. In every tent
there are sick and dying. Anyone who cannot manage to get a piece of bread by
begging, eats grass raw and without salt. Many hundreds of the sick are left
without any tent and covering, in the open, under the glowing sun. I saw
desperate ones throw themselves in grave-trenches, and beg the grave-diggers to
bury them. The Turkish Government does not give the hungry any bread, nor any
tent to those who remain outside. There came a caravan of sick women and
children from Bab. They were in an indescribable condition. They were thrown
down from the wagons like dogs. They cried for water, they were given each a
piece of dry bread, but no one gave them water.

"I sought someone to care for the orphans and I found a young widow from
Hadjin, who asked to take the children. She belonged to a good family, and gave
herself with an intense love to the work for children. Ten days after my departure
they had sent the woman with the one hundred children south. A few weeks later
I found her in Sepka clothed in rags; she had lost her wits and wandered about
the place asking every one; 'Where are my children?' Only two had survived.
 "In Hama I found 7,000 deported, three thousand of them hungry and
practically naked. Here there is no grass, for the locusts have consumed
everything. The people were gathering locusts and eating them raw or cooked.
Others were looking for the roots of grasses. They catch street dogs and, like
savages, pounce upon dead animals whose flesh they eat eagerly without
cooking.

"At Der Zor and in the neighborhood there are over 30,000 Armenians. The
deportees are especially badly treated in the region of Der Zor. The people are
driven back and forward with whip blows and cannot even take their most urgent
necessities. The people have the appearance of lost men. We often see a whole
row of ghastly forms, raising suddenly out of a grave and asking for some bread
and water. They have all dug their graves and lie waiting death. In Sepka a
preacher from Aintab told me that parents have often killed their children. At the
Government investigation it was shown that some people had eaten their
children."

Such is the death struggle. It is inconceivable.

Armenian National Institute

734 15th Street NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20005The Missionary Review of the World (October 1916)