“How can we furnish bread to the Armenians,” Enver declared, “when we can’t get it for our own people? I know that they are suffering and that it is quite likely that they cannot get bread at all this coming winter. But we have the utmost difficulty in getting flour and clothing right here in Constantinople.” I said that I had the money and that American missionaries were anxious to go and use it for the benefit of the refugees. “We don’t want the Americans to feed the Armenians,” he flatly replied. “That is one of the worst things that could happen to them. I have already said that it is their belief that they have friends in other countries, which leads them to oppose the Government and so brings down upon them all their miseries. If you Americans begin to distribute food and clothing among them, they will then think that they have powerful friends in the United States. This wall encourage them to rebellion again, and then we shall have to punish them still more. If you will give such money as you have received to the Turks, we shall see that it is used for the benefit of the Armenians.” Enver made this proposal with a straight face, and he made it not only on this occasion but on several others. At the very moment that Enver suggested this mechanism of relief, the Turkish gendarmes and the Turkish officials were not only robbing the Armenians of all their household possessions, of all their food and all their money, but they were even stripping women of their last shreds of clothing and prodding their naked bodies with bayonets as they staggered across the burning desert. And the Minister of War now proposed that we give our American money to these same guardians of the law for distribution among their charges! However, I had to be tactful. “If you or other heads of the Government would become personally responsible for the distribution,” I said, “of course we would be glad to entrust the money to you. But, naturally, you would not expect us to give this money to the men who have been killing the Armenians and outraging their women.” But Enver returned to his main point. “They must never know,” he said, “that they have a friend in the United States. That would absolutely ruin them! It is far better that they starve, and in saying this I am really thinking of the welfare of the Armenians themselves. If they can only be convinced that they have no friends in other countries, then they will settle down, recognise that Turkey is their only refuge, and become quiet citizens. Your country is doing them no kindness by constantly showing your sympathy. You are merely drawing upon them greater hardships.”