In Adana I saw a troop of Armenian orphans marching through the streets under the escort of Turkish soldiers. The parents have been slaughtered; the children must become Mohammedans. It has happened everywhere that adult Armenians were able to save their lives by declaring their readiness to go over to Islam. In some places, however, Turkish officials, wishing to throw dust in the eyes of Europeans, replied grandiloquently to Christians who had applied for admission into the Mohammedan fold, that religion is not a thing to play with, and preferred to have the petitioners killed. Men like Talaat Bey and Enver Pasha have repeatedly said, thanking distinguished Armenians, who brought them gifts, that they would have been still better pleased if the givers had presented them as Mohammedans. One of these gentlemen said to a newspaper reporter: "Certainly we are now punishing many innocent people, but we must protect ourselves, even from those who might become guilty in the future." Such reasons are adduced by Turkish statesmen in justification of the indiscriminate slaughter of defenceless woman and children. A German Catholic priest reports that Enver Pasha had told Monsignore Dolci, the Papal representative at Constantinople, that he would not rest while one single Armenian was still living. The object of the deportations is the extirpation of the entire Armenian nation. This intention is also evidenced by the fact that the Turkish Government refuses all help from missionaries, Sisters of Mercy, and Europeans settled in the country, and tries systematically to prevent the giving of any such help. A Swiss engineer was to have come before a court-martial, because he had distributed bread in Anatolia among the starving women and children belonging to a convoy of deported persons. The Government did not scruple to deport Armenian pupils and teachers from the German schools at Adana and Aleppo, and Armenian children from the German orphanages; the protests of the Consuls and of the heads of the institutions were left unheeded. The offer of the American Government to take the deported persons to America on American ships and at America's expense was refused. What our German Consuls and many foreigners residing in Turkey think about the massacres of Armenians will one day be known from their reports. As regards the opinion of the German officers in Turkey I am unable to say anything. I often noticed when in their company an ominous silence or a convulsive effort to change the subject whenever any German of strong feelings and independent judgment began to speak about the fearful sufferings of the Armenians. [30]