In that very month of April, while Khalil Bey was confidently attempting, as we have seen, to surround the left wing of the Russian army in Persia, over in Van the Armenians had taken up arms in self-defence, and for one whole month were fighting another division of Turkish troops and thousands of Kurds until the first days of May, when three other battalions of Armenian volunteers, under the command of General Nikolaeff, came to the rescue, riding a distance of 250 kilometers (155 miles)--from Erivan to Van--in ten days. For one who is acquainted with the local conditions, it is an undisputed fact that if the Armenians of Van in April, 1915, by their heroic resistance had not kept busy that one division of regular Turkish troops and thousands of Kurds, and had made it possible for them to join the army of Khalil Bey, the Turks undoubtedly would have been able to crush the Russian forces in Persia and reach Baku in a few weeks, for the simple reason that from the banks of the Araxes to Baku the Russians had no forces at all, while the local Tartar inhabitants, armed and ready, were awaiting the coming of the Turks before rising en masse to join them. From the very beginning of the war, Baku has been the real objective of the Turks, just as Paris has been the objective of the Germans, and that for two reasons: first, as a fountain of wealth, the Turks knew very well that the Russian government received from the oil wells of Baku an annual income of more than 200,000,000 rubles ($100,000,000), a sum which is more than all the revenues of the bankrupt Turkish government put together, and they looked upon these financial resources as indispensable for the accomplishment of their plan of a Pan-Turanian Empire; second, because the very plan of their Pan-Turanism had been introduced in Constantinople after 1908 by these very Tartars of Baku. The commanders of the Turkish forces engaged in Persia and Van--Khalil and Jevded--understood very well why their plans failed in the month of April, 1915; and that failure is the explanation of those frightful massacres which took place on the plains of Bitlis and Moush in June of the same year, when the armies of the same Khalil and Jevded, defeated in Persia and Van, were forced to retreat under the pressure of the Armenian volunteers. [Illustration: ANDRANIK The commander of the first battalion of Armenian Volunteers]