BLEEDING ARMENIA Its History and Horrors Under the Curse of Islam BY Rev. A. W. WILLIAMS, of Chicago For twenty years a close student of Missionary work in the East--Syria, Turkey and Persia AND Dr. M. S. GABRIEL President of the Armenian Patriotic Alliance, New York CONTAINING ALSO THE VIEWS OF HON. WM. E. GLADSTONE ON THE TURKISH ATROCITIES THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY ON ENGLAND'S ATTITUDE AND EDWARD A. FREEMAN, the Historian ON THE EASTERN QUESTION Fully and Appropriately Illustrated. PUBLISHERS' UNION 1896 Copyright 1896 BY A. W. Williams PREFACE. In offering to the public this volume on Bleeding Armenia under the Curse of Islam the writer does not seek to harrow the feelings of sensitive readers by the recital of blood-curdling outrages, tortures, murders, and butcherings; neither does he aim to discuss at any length the involved problems of the Eastern Question, but he does definitely seek to awaken interest in the history and fate of what may truly be called the Martyr Nation of the World. It is not the isolated fact that Armenia is now undergoing a most terrible persecution, that fifty thousand or sixty thousand helpless men, women and children have already suffered death in every form which the most depraved nature, the most cruel instincts, the most bitter and fanatical hatred could devise, that so deeply arouses us; but the fact that for more than a thousand years this has been the bitter and bloody story of her wrongs--this is what staggers us. That the reader may have some clearer conceptions of the present terrible situation in Armenia and of the causes which make her general condition one most deplorable to contemplate, its early history, civilization and conversion to Christianity is briefly sketched, and attention is called to the fact that its very geographical position has for many centuries made it the highway for the contending armies of the East and West. Armenia has been the battle ground where diverse systems of religion and civilization have fought for supremacy. Its fate has always been to suffer, whichever power was for the time victorious. It has been sometimes ground to powder between the upper and nether millstone.