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A. THE INVASION OF PERSIA 17

C. CILICIA AND NORTHERN SYRIA 53

D. ALEPPO 93

A.B.'s Report 123 C.D.'s Report 127

INTRODUCTION.

The blue book as to the treatment of the Armenians which has recently been issued contains a large mass of evidence relating to facts which, incredible as they are, have been so incontrovertibly established that no doubt as to their existence can possibly be entertained by any reasonable person. The greater part of the documents included in the blue book does not, however, throw much light on the attitude taken by the German public and the German Government with reference to the crimes which have been committed. The object of this pamphlet is to bring before the public a collection of documents specially selected for the purpose of throwing light on this subject. Some of them are included in the blue book, but the documents Nos. 1, 6, 9, 10 and 12 have not, as yet, been published in Great Britain or the United States. The two documents printed in the Appendix have no direct bearing on the questions relating to the German attitude. But as they came into the possession of the British authorities after the publication of the blue book and are of special interest as giving the impressions of two intelligent Turkish officers, it was thought right to include them.

A perusal of the documents included in this collection must convince the reader of three things: that the Germans in Armenia are as full of indignation, and as anxious to see a stop put to the methods of extermination applied by the Turkish Government, as the most ardent friends of the Armenian cause in this country; that, owing to the wilful or reckless perversion of the facts in the German press and the German pamphlet-literature, and owing also to the indifference and credulity of the general German public, the true state of things is unknown or ignored by the majority; that the German Government could have stopped the outrages if they had desired to do so and that their non-interference was not in any way due to ignorance of the true facts.

One very interesting document which has come to the Editor's notice is of too confidential a nature to be reproduced in this place. It is a Memorandum written by a distinguished German scholar, whose name for obvious reasons has to be suppressed, but whose good faith and whose critical acumen would be acknowledged by every one of his countrymen whose powers of judgment have not been perverted by the passion of war. This Memorandum contains ample evidence of the fact referred to above, that in consequence of the misstatements or suppressions of fact of which German writers on the subject have been guilty, public opinion in Germany has entirely failed to realise the horrors of the Armenian situation, and that some influential persons even approve of the action of the Turkish authorities. The old legend about the unscrupulousness of the Armenian traders and their exploitation of Turkish innocence and trustfulness--of which the groundlessness is convincingly demonstrated by the author of the Memorandum--seems to be firmly believed throughout Germany, and is made use of by those German politicians and journalists who approve cruelty, provided only it serves the cause of German world-dominion. Thus Count Reventlow in a passage quoted in the Memorandum refers to these matters in the following terms: "The Turk is unsuspicious and good-natured; everywhere he furnishes a convenient object for exploitation--up to a certain point and to a certain degree; then despair seizes him and he rises against his tormentors. Regrettable as such unlawful self-defence may be from the point of view of civilisation, it is obvious that the Armenians ... least of all deserve the pity and the compassionate emotions of the civilized world."

The author of the Memorandum disposes of this tirade by saying that "it is of course unknown to the writer" of the passage quoted by us "that 80 per cent. of the Armenian population, and particularly those who were affected by the deportations, are peasant farmers, who presumably were not engaged in the exploitation of the Kurdish brigands by whom they were surrounded.... The assumption that the deportation and annihilation of the Armenian race was in the nature of unlawful self-defence is so far removed from the true facts that it does not require any refutation."

The whole German press--as stated by the author of the Memorandum--reproduced an interview with Dr. Rifaat, a member of the Committee of Union and Progress, originally published in a Danish paper, in the course of which the interviewed politician spoke of "a conspiracy embracing the whole Armenian population residing in Turkey, threatening the very existence of the country and intended to play Constantinople into the hands of the Allies." He further stated that the plot was discovered before it had ripened, that many of the conspirators, including the Arabian Chief Abd-ul-Kerim, had been arrested and punished, and that 21 of the adherents of the latter were hanged. The author of the Memorandum makes the following comment on this statement: "If Dr. Rifaat knows anything of an Arabian conspiracy, it is impossible for us to verify this finding. In any case an 'Arabian' conspiracy is not an 'Armenian' conspiracy. But the number of the 21 conspirators hanged and the other contents of the 'interview' lead inevitably to the conclusion that Dr. Rifaat did intentionally mislead public opinion, by representing the plot of the Turkish opposition which had already been discovered before the war, and which aimed at the fall of the present government and the murder of Talaat Bey and other Young Turk leaders, as 'a conspiracy embracing the whole Armenian population residing in Turkey.'"

The interview with Dr. Rifaat is also one of the trump-cards played in a pamphlet published in Berlin under the title of "The Armenian Question" by C. A. Bratter, a person describing himself as "a Citizen of a neutral State and a German Journalist." This pamphlet is minutely analyzed by the author of the Memorandum, together with its pretended sources of information; and he demonstrates irrefutably its utter untrustworthiness as well as the bad faith of its writer. He significantly adds: "How forgetful and how uncritical must any reader be to whom it is possible to present such lies."

Being ourselves in a position of greater freedom, we can say that this forgetfulness and this want of critical power are not surprising in the German public, having regard to the fact that their Government is in close alliance with the perpetrators of the crimes which Bratter and other persons of the same mental and moral calibre try to explain away or justify, and which could and would have been prevented long ago if that Government had not disregarded the elementary dictates of humanity.

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