“The annual (Synodical) meeting was to have been held in Adana. So the pastors and delegates of the churches were on the road to the north and east of that city when the trouble began. We have now the names of twenty-seven killed with the particulars of their deaths. Twenty-two churches are left pastorless. It is a fearful blow. Our two missionaries, (Henry) Maurer and Daniel M. Rogers, bring the number up to twenty-nine.” There was a general impression at the time of the massacres of Adana, that the butchery and plunder in the cities, towns, and in the villages, were due to the reaction, that, “The mutiny and the massacre were the last stroke of the dying monster Sultan Abdul Hamid.” It appeared plausible, and it was even probable. But it was and is firmly believed by others that it was the work of the Young Turks.[151] They did not dethrone Abdul Hamid because he was too cruel to his Christian subjects. Oh! no. They dethroned him, because they wanted to have the glory of finishing the work of the extermination of the Armenian nation. The Young Turks are the legitimate successors of Abdul Hamid, so far as the latter’s determination to annihilate the Armenians was concerned, and this massacre was another step towards their goal. It may be questioned why they should do such a thing at such a time. The answer is that, because there was an easy and plausible way of shoving off the responsibility for the crime on the monster Sultan Abdul Hamid.[152] We are told that Talaat Bey boasted that he had done more in destroying the Armenians in thirty days than Abdul Hamid in thirty years. It is, moreover, stated that when Talaat Bey gave the final signal for the massacre and deportation of the Armenians in 1915, he said, “After this there will be no Armenian question for fifty years.” There would be no Armenian question if the Young Turks intended to rule and run the government according to the Constitution. Armenians would have been satisfied even under the monarchy had they received what was promised to them, namely, religious liberty, the protection of their lives, honor, and property. These, oft-made promises fulfilled, there could be no Armenian question. Why should the Young Turks resort to the cruel process of annihilation of a nation to solve such a simple problem? We have to repeat Vambery’s words: “The conviction is inevitable that until the power of _Islamism is broken_ the true reformation of this land is an impossibility.” (Whether the government is monarchical or constitutional, it made no difference.) “At whose door shall we lay the blame of cherishing such a _viper_? (First at England’s, now at Germany’s.)” FOOTNOTES: [150] Greene, “Leavening the Levant,” pp. 41-2. [151] It was established. See _The New Armenian_, N. Y., August 1, 1916, p. 260. [152] Abdul Hamid died on the 10th of February, 1918. XVII THE REIGN OF THE YOUNG TURKS