During the Spring of 1915 they evolved their plan to destroy the Armenian race. They criticised their ancestors for neglecting to destroy or convert the Christian races to Mohammedanism at the time when they first subjugated them. Now, as four of the great powers were at war with them and the two others were their allies, they thought the time opportune to make good the oversight of their ancestors in the fifteenth century. They drafted the able-bodied Armenians into the army without, however, giving them arms; they used them simply to build roads or do similar work. Then, under the pretext of searching the houses for arms, they pillaged the belongings of the villagers. * * * The final and worst measure was the wholesale deportation of the entire population from their homes and their exile to the desert, with all the accompanying horrors on the way. * * * The facts contained in the reports received at the embassy from absolutely trustworthy eyewitnesses surpass the most beastly and diabolical cruelties ever perpetrated or imagined in the history of the world. BARBAROUS TORTURES Many of these horrors were told in detail in the monumental report of Viscount Bryce, portions of which were published in CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE, November, 1916. To these may be added a statement made to Mr. Morgenthau personally by an eyewitness--a German missionary!--and put into writing at the American Embassy in Constantinople, which reads in part as follows: It was that very afternoon that I received the first terrible reports, but I did not fully believe them. A few millers and bakers, whose services were needed by the Government, had remained, and they received the news first. The men had all been tied together and shot outside of the town. The women and children were taken to the neighboring villages, placed in houses by the hundreds, and either burned alive or thrown into the river. (Our buildings being in the main quarter of the town we could receive the news quite promptly.) Furthermore, one could see women and children pass by with blood streaming down, weeping. * * * Who can describe such pictures? Add to all this the sight of burning houses and the smell of many burning corpses. Within a week everything was nearly over. The officers boasted now of their bravery, that they had succeeded in exterminating the whole Armenian race. Three weeks later when we left Moush, the villages were still burning. Nothing that belonged to the Armenians, either in the city or the villages, was allowed to remain. In Moush alone there were 25,000 Armenians; besides, Moush had 300 villages with a large Armenian population.