The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
History
The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
Armenian question; Armenians; World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Refugees
The Turkish officials are usually heartless and callous. But here and
there we see one of a finer temper, who refuses to carry out the orders
given him and is sometimes dismissed for his refusal. The Moslem rabble
is usually pitiless. It pillages the houses and robs the persons of the
hapless exiles. But now and then there appear pious and compassionate
Moslems who try to save the lives or alleviate the miseries of their
Christian neighbours. We have a vivid picture of human life, where
wickedness in high places deliberately lets loose the passions of racial
or religious hatred, as well as the commoner passion of rapacity, yet
cannot extinguish those better feelings which show as points of light in
the gloom.
It is, however, for the reader to form his own judgment on these
documents as he peruses them. They do not, and by the nature of the case
cannot, constitute what is called judicial evidence, such as a Court of
Justice obtains when it puts witnesses on oath and subjects them to
cross-examination. But by far the larger part (almost all, indeed, of
what is here published) does constitute historical evidence of the best
kind, inasmuch as the statements come from those who saw the events they
describe and recorded them in writing immediately afterwards. They
corroborate one another, the narratives given by different observers
showing a substantial agreement, which becomes conclusive when we find
the salient facts repeated with no more variations in detail than the
various opportunities of the independent observers made natural. The
gravest facts are those for which the evidence is most complete, and it
all tallies fatally with that which twenty years ago established the
guilt of Abd-ul-Hamid for the deeds that have made his name infamous. In
this case there are, moreover, what was wanting then, admissions which
add weight to the testimony here presented, I mean the admissions of the
Turkish Government and of their German apologists.[3] The attempts made
to find excuses for wholesale slaughter and for the removal of a whole
people from its homes leave no room for doubt as to the slaughter and
the removal. The main facts are established by the confession of the
criminals themselves. What the evidence here presented does is to show
in detail how these things were effected, what cruelties accompanied
them, and how inexcusable they were. The disproval of the palliations
which the Turks have put forward is as complete as the proof of the
atrocities themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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