The Great War - The Armenian Massacres -im19151213
THE GREAT WAR
DECEMBER 13, 1915
THE GREAT WAR
November 29-- Bulgars capture Prisrend. Kaiser visits Vienna.
November 30--Serbs leave Monastir. Three Austrian ministers resign.
December 1--Italy will not make separate peace. British retreat down Tigris from Baghdad.
December 2--Germany asked to recall Captains Boy-Ed and von Papen. Austrians invading Montegro.
December 3--Allies ask freedom of action in Macedonia. Anglo-French campaign in Cameroon progresses.
December 4--Germans renew attacks on Dvinsk from western side. Italian attacks on Gorz slacken.
December 5--Rumania commandeers foreign shipping in her ports. Chinese cruiser "Chao-ho" mutinies at Shanghai.
The Armenian Massacres
The photographs given here show how one small band of Armenians from the villages about Antioch escaped the destruction which has a miracle that with less than a thousand men and with and with not enough guns to go around and with little food and ammunition these Armenian families were able to hold the mountain on which they had taken refuge against an army of 7000 Turks under German officers. Their entire stock of arms consisted of 150 old French rifles, 500 shotguns, 50 revolvers and 2000 daggers. The attacking Turks several times got within five yards of the trenches when they were driven back by the gun fire and the rocks rolled down upon them by the Armenian men and women.
The Turks have taken care to avoid injury to the American missionaries who have in many cases been able to save Armenian families from slaughter and the girls in the American schools from being carried off to the harems. But it is now reported that the Super-intendment of the American mission at Urfa, the Rev. Francis Hayes Leslie, has been murdered by the Turks while trying to protect the Armenians under his care. Dr. Leslie is a graduate of Fargo College, North Dakota, and had been sent back to Urfa before the war together with Dr. Bridge, of Michigan.
The commission of which Viscount Bryce is the head reports that the extent of the massacre and the cruelties practiced are greater than at first supposed. Since last May 800,000 Armenian men, women and children have been murdered, a crime unparalleled in history. The worst details of the atrocities as told by the refugees at Tiflis are too hideous to be printed in a magazine but we quote a few passages from the Bryce report :
At Mush early in July the authorities called on the Armenians to hand over their arms and a large ransom for the notables of the town and the leading men. The villagers were subjected to revolting tortures. Finger nails and toe nails were forcibly extracted, teeth were knocked out, noses whittled down and the victims done to death in lingering agony. The female relatives of the victims who came to their rescue were outraged before their eyes, and the shrieks of the mutilated men and the death cries of the victims filled the air.
The method employed in disposing of the women and children in the concentrated camps was by burning.
In the hill country of Sasun 1500 surviving warriors were surrounded by 30,000 Turks and Kurds. Then followed a desperate, heroic struggle for life. Men, women and children fought with knives, scythes, stones--anything they could get.
SERBIA CONQUERED
The only two remaining towns of importance in Serbia, Prisrend and Monster, have now been surrendered, so six weeks after the Austro-German forces began their invasion the country has been completely conquered.
p.112, THE FLAG OF SAFETY
p.112, THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT OF THE CHRISTIANS, FROM ANTIOCH
One of the most moving incidents of the Great War is the marvelous escape from massacre of a body of Armenians from six villages just west of Antioch. Notified that they were to be banished to the deserts of Mesopotamia within eight days and knowing that this would mean death for most of them, they fled to the hills overlooking the Gulf of Alexandretta. Here they defended themselves for fifty-three days against an overwhelming force of Turks until finally their Red Cross flag caught the attention of a passing French Cruiser which carried them to Port Said and safety. Those rescued included a thousand men, fourteen hundred women and eleven hundred and four hundred babies.
A hard copy of this article or hundreds of others from the time of the Armenian Genocide can be found in The Armenian Genocide: News Accounts From The American Press: 1915-1922