Bryce Asks Us To Aid Armenia -nyt19150921
BRYCE ASKS US TO AID ARMENIA
Tuesday, September 21, 1915
Says That All the Christians in Trebizond, Numbering 10,000 Were Drowned.
WOMEN SEIZED FOR HAREMS
Only Power That Can Stop the Massacres is Germany and We Might Persuade Her to Act.
London, Sept. 20- Viscount Bryce, formerly Ambassador to the United States, has sent to the Associated Press a plea that America try to stop the slaughter of Armenians. He says:
"The civilized world, especially Americans, ought to know what horrors have been passing in Asiatic Turkey during the last few months, for if anything can stop the destroying hand of the Turkish Government it will be an expression of the opinion of neutral nations, chiefly the judgement of humane America.
"Soon after war broke out between Turkey and the Allies, the Turkish Government formed, and since has been carrying out with relentless cruelty, a plan for extirpating Christianity by killing off Christians of the Armenian race. Accounts from different sources agree that over the whole of Eastern and Northern Asia Minor and Armenia the Christian population is being deliberately exterminated, the men of military age being killed and the younger women seized for Turkish harems, compelled to become Mohammedans, and kept, with the children, in virtual slavery. The rest of the inhabitants, old women, men and children, have been driven under convoy of Turkish soldiers into unhealthful parts of Asia Minor, some to the deserts between Syria and the Euphrates. Many die or are murdered en route and all perish sooner or later.
"In Trebizond City, where the Armenians numbered over 10,000, orders came from Constantinople to seize all Armenians. Troops hunted them, drove them to the shore, took them to sea, threw them overboard and drowned them all -men, women, and children. This was seen and described by the Italian Council.
"Some in the country escaped by professing to accept Islam, and a quarter of a million escaped over the Russian frontier, but perhaps half a million were slaughtered or deported, and those deported are fast dying from ill-treatment, disease, or starvation. The roads and the hillsides are strewn with corpses of innocent peasants.
"We can all try to send aid to the miserable refugees now in Russian territory, but what can stop the massacres? Not the allied powers at war with Turkey. Only one power can take action for that purpose. It is Germany. Would not the expression of American public opinion, voicing the conscience of neutral nations, lead Germany to check the Turkish government?"
Thanks to HEROIAN for digitizing this article.