The blight of Asia : $b An account of the systematic extermination of Christian populations by Mohammedans and of the culpability of certain great powers; with the true story of the burning of SmyrnaHorton, George
History
The blight of Asia : $b An account of the systematic extermination of Christian populations by Mohammedans and of the culpability of certain great powers; with the true story of the burning of Smyrna
Horton, George
Christians -- Turkey; Fires -- Turkey -- İzmir; Greeks -- Turkey; Turkey; İzmir (Turkey) -- History
“Meanwhile there have been organized official massacres of the
Armenians ordered every few years since Abdul Hamid ascended
the throne. In 1895, one hundred thousand perished. At Van,
in 1908, and at Adana and elsewhere in Cilicia in 1909, over
thirty thousand were murdered. The last and greatest of
these tragedies was in 1915. Massacres and deportations were
organized in the spring of 1915, under a definite system, the
soldiers going from town to town. Young men were first summoned
to the government building in each village and then marched out
and killed. The women, the old men and the children were, after
a few days, deported to what Talaat Pasha called “Agricultural
Colonies,” from the high, breeze-swept plateaus of Armenia to
the malarial flats of the Euphrates and the burning sands of
Syria and Arabia. The dead, from this wholesale attempt on the
race, are variously estimated at from five hundred thousand to
a million, the usual figure being about eight hundred thousand.
Driven on foot under a hot sun, robbed of their clothing and
such petty articles as they carried, prodded by bayonets if
they lagged, starvation, typhus, and dysentery left thousands
dead by the trail side, etc., etc.”
I have in my possession another report of a credible European who
witnessed the destruction of the Armenians at Aleppo and elsewhere,
which gives many details similar to those found in the memorandum of
Mr. Geddes, but I refrain from offering it here for fear of wearying
the readers. In view of the difficulty of producing the testimony of
eye-witnesses, and as this report has never been published, it is a
valuable historical document. Enough has been said, however, to convince
the reader that the extermination of the Christians of Turkey was an
organized butchery, carried out on a great scale, and well under way
before the Greeks were sent to Smyrna. We have seen it in operation
in the days of Abdul Hamid, “the butcher,” we have seen it more fully
developed and better organized under Talaat and Enver, those statesmen of
the “Constitution.” We shall behold it carried out to its dire finish by
Mustapha Khemal, the “George Washington” of Turkey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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