The testimonies of the German and American missionaries confirm and supplement one another, and show the fearful results of the holy war. For the Persian Armenians and Nestorians--Persia itself--had nothing to do with Turkey. But the object of the Young Turks and their allies was to arouse the Mohammedans of Persia--the only Mohammedan power besides Turkey--against Russia, and Turks and Tatars in Transcaucasia, and that thus they might spread the fire of the holy war. But they have signally failed in the main. When the Turkish army had to retreat from Persia before the advancing Russians and fell back into Armenia proper in Turkish territory, they let loose the demons--the Turkish regular and Kurdish irregular troops upon the Armenian population. Their barbarities, outrages, mutilations, murders, the devastations of numerous Armenian villages, by the sword and fire, are beyond the possibility of description. The few that could escape came to Van and told the people of the horrors they witnessed and passed through. The Armenians of Van knew that the same fate would soon come to them. What should they do? Be loyal, submissive, passive, be butchered by the Turkish soldiers and by their inveterate enemies, the Kurds? Or should they make an attempt of self-defense, and let it cost the Turks and Kurds something more than the mere time, labor and ammunition to massacre the Armenians of Van? And that even if they should be declared rebels against the lawful authorities by the Prussian and Turkish officials? They decided upon the latter. And they did not decide too soon either. For on the 20th of April, Jevdet Bey, the governor of Van, and the Turkish soldiers commenced an attack on the city. The Armenians armed themselves as best they could, and making such barricades and defenses as time and materials could permit, they stood a siege of twenty-seven days--only about 1500 defenders against 5000 assailants well equipped with artillery. The Turks and Kurds on hearing of a Russian force approaching left them and fled southward. On the 17th of May, the Russians occupied Van. This is one of only two instances where the Armenians disappointed the Turkish government and her Teutonic and Kurdish allies, and deprived them of the pleasure of massacring the Christians. No wonder that in the face of such instances Count Ernst von Reventlow resented the American protest against Turkish massacres of the Armenians. We reproduce only one paragraph from Reventlow’s article:[164] “Indeed, the Turkish empire has been long enough compelled to allow all powers who would destroy and rob her have their say in her affairs. To-day the time for this is past. It will be past for ever, so soon as the German empire takes up determinedly the standpoint that the question as to what it intends to do with the bloodthirsty Armenians is one that concerns her Turkish ally alone.”