[22] It was reported in the Tiflis papers, after the above was written, that Mr. Mantashian, the Baku oil king, has made a further donation of £60,000 for agricultural improvements, and offered thirty thoroughbreds to improve the breed of horses in Armenia. [23] Some of the most distressing and disgraceful cases of Turkish bestiality appeared in Doctor (Major) Aspland's report on the hospital at Van, which was under his charge as representative of the Lord Mayor's Armenian Relief Fund. Describing some of the individual cases brought to him for treatment, Dr. Aspland says-- "Here is a young woman leaving hospital to-day, who was raped by eight Kurds. She has suffered for months, and even now, in spite of operations, will be crippled for the rest of her life. Here is _a small girl aged five, similarly treated by Turks_, and is now lying in plaster of Paris in order to recover from injury to the hip joint."--(_Ararat_, October 1916, p. 172.) [24] Compare this with the diary of a Turkish officer, reported in the _Russkaia Viedomosti_ (p. 75). IX EXTRACTS FROM THE BLUE-BOOK _Group A_ "The Archbishop of Erzeroum, His Grace Sempad, who, with the Vali's authorization, was returning to Constantinople, was murdered at Erzindjan by the brigands in the service of the Union and Progress Committee. The bishops of Trebizond, Kaisaria, Moush, Bitlis, Sairt, and Erzindjan have all been murdered by order of the Young Turk Government" (p. 23). "The shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in the various camps was to burn them. Fire was set to large wooden sheds in Alidjan, Megrakom, Khaskegh, and other Armenian villages, and these absolutely helpless women and children were roasted to death.... And the executioners, who seem to have been unmoved by this unparalleled savagery, grasped infants by one leg and hurled them into the fire, calling out to the burning mothers: 'Here are your lions'" (p. 86). "The Turks boasted of having now got rid of all the Armenians. I heard it from the officers myself, how they revelled in thought that the Armenians had been got rid of" (p. 88). "It was heartrending to hear the cries of the people and children who were being burnt to death in their houses. The soldiers took great delight in hearing them, and when people who were out in the streets during the bombardment fell dead the soldiers merely laughed at them" (p. 90). "Every officer boasted of the number he had personally massacred as his share in ridding Turkey of the Armenian race" (p. 90). "Mehmed Effendi, the Ottoman deputy for Gendje (Ginj), collected about forty women and children and killed them" (p. 94). "Of the other children, a girl was taken away and only escaped many months later when the Russians came. Very reluctantly she poured out her story to the Stapletons, from which it appeared that she had been handed round to ten officers after the murder of her husband and his mother, to be their sport" (p. 225).