already said, they represent the economic force of the country. To seize such peoples by the million and send them into one of the most barren parts of Asia would have been an act of the most inhuman spoliation. As a matter of fact, the Turks never had the slightest idea of re-establishing the Armenians in this new country. They knew that the great majority would never reach their destination and that those who did would either die of thirst and starvation, or be murdered by the wild Mohammedan desert tribes. The real purpose of the deportation was robbery and destruction; it really represented a new method of massacre. When Talaat, as Minister of the Interior, gave the orders for these deportations, he was merely giving the death-warrant to a whole race; he understood this well, and in his conversations with me he made no particular attempt to conceal the fact. All through the spring and summer of 1915 the deportations took place. Of the larger cities, only Constantinople, Smyrna, and Kutahia were spared; practically all other places where a single Armenian family lived now became the scenes of these unspeakable tragedies. Scarcely a single Armenian, whatever his education or wealth, or whatever the social class to which he belonged, was exempted from the order. In some villages placards were posted ordering the whole Armenian population to present itself in a public place at an appointed time--usually a day or two ahead, and in other places the town-crier would go through the streets delivering the order vocally. In still others not the slightest warning was given. The gendarmes would appear before an Armenian house and order all the inmates to follow them. They would take women engaged in their domestic tasks without giving them the chance to change their clothes. The police fell upon them first as the eruption of Vesuvius fell upon Pompeii; women were taken from the wash-tubs, children were snatched out of bed, the bread would be left half-baked in the oven, the family meal would be abandoned partly eaten, the children would be taken from the schoolroom, leaving their books open at the daily task, the men would be forced to abandon their plough in the fields and their cattle on the mountain-side. Even women who had just given birth to children would be forced to leave their beds and join the panic-stricken throng, their sleeping babies in their arms. Such things as they hurriedly snatched up--a shawl, a blanket, perhaps a few scraps of food--was all that they could take of their household belongings. To their frantic question, “Where are we going?” the gendarmes would vouchsafe only one reply: “To the interior.”