following day only, thanks to the intervention of General Oganowsky, the Armenian volunteers received permission to organize the retreat of the Armenian inhabitants of the plains of Alashkert toward Igdir and to defend them from the attacks of the Kurds. During the seven days that the retreat lasted the Armenians lost only 400 persons, and most of those on account of the severe cold. Another example of this hostile treatment of the Armenians by the Russian authorities might be mentioned,--the retreat from the Van district in July, 1915. There General Nikolaeff for eight continuous days deceived the Armenian leaders and made them remain idle (telling them every day that he would not retreat under any circumstances, and that therefore it was entirely needless to remove the people), until behold, one day, July 18, he suddenly sent for the mayor of Van, Aram, and the commander-in-chief of the Armenian volunteers, Vartan, and informed them that he had received orders to retreat immediately, but in order to make it possible for the people to prepare for departure, he would wait until the 20th of the month. Thus the Armenian leaders were forced to remove in two or three days nearly 150,000 people of the Van region, and if those three battalions of Armenian volunteers had not been there to protect the people from Kurdish and Turkish raids, the loss of life during the journey would have been tenfold more than it actually was. Whereas, if the Russian general had not been so deceitful in his behavior but had given an opportunity of seven or eight days to organize the retreat, it would have been possible to direct the people to Erivan without the loss of a single life. The Armenians suffered a loss of 8,000 to 10,000 men, women, and children during the retreat. [Illustration: KHETCHO The commander of the cavalry corps of the Armenian volunteers, who was killed in July, 1915, near Bitlis.] TWO. When Turkish Armenia was almost wholly emptied of its Armenian inhabitants, due to these successive retreats, the Russian government raised all sorts of barriers before the refugees to prevent them from returning to their former homes when the Russian army recaptured the Armenian vilayets. For example, in 1916-1917, scarcely 8,000 to 10,000 Armenians were permitted to go back and inhabit the region of Van; the rest were compelled to stay within the borders of the Caucasus as refugees. Toward the latter part of 1916, even among Russian governmental circles there was talk of transferring to Siberia nearly 250,000 Turkish Armenian immigrants who had sought refuge in the Caucasus, because it was objected that no available lands existed there for them. Russians considered it a settled question that even after the war the Turkish Armenians would not be permitted to return to their own homes.