Winning a Cause: World War StoriesThompson, John G. (John Gilbert)
History
Winning a Cause: World War Stories
Thompson, John G. (John Gilbert)
Readers -- History; Readers -- World War, 1914-1918
Between the two visits of Kaiser William II, Abdul Hamid had been able
to put into effect some of the ideas in which he believed. First he
made a plan to kill about two million of his subjects living in
Armenia. Here it was that Noah is said to have landed with the ark on
Mt. Ararat after the flood had partially subsided, and here was a
people called Armenians and a country called Armenia long before the
time of Christ. But the Turk said in the days of Abdul Hamid, "There
is no such country as Armenia," and the Armenians were ordered never to
use the word or to speak of their country for it had disappeared, and
they now lived in a Turkish province. Abdul Hamid determined the
people should also disappear.
It seems almost impossible for Americans in the twentieth century to
believe that such a story can be true. They can easily believe it of a
thousand years ago, but not of twenty-five years ago. Yet it is beyond
doubt. Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey during the
first two years of the World War, has written the story of the attempts
by the Turkish government to massacre the Armenian Christians in 1895
and in 1915.
He writes: "Abdul Hamid apparently thought there was only one way of
ridding Turkey of the Armenian problem--and that was to rid her of the
Armenians. The physical destruction of two million men, women, and
children by massacres, organized and directed by the state, seemed to
be the one sure way of forestalling the further disruption of the
Turkish Empire. . . . Yet Abdul Hamid was not able to accomplish his
full purpose. Had he had his will, he would have massacred the whole
nation in one hideous orgy."
In 1895-96 nearly two hundred thousand Armenians were put to death on
one pretext or another, usually in the most horrible ways, and in many
cases after the most terrible torture. The entire race would have been
exterminated if Christian Europe and America had not risen in protest.
But no word of protest came from Abdul Hamid's good friend, William II.
Instead, the Kaiser visited, within two years after these terrible
massacres, the monarch who was now called throughout Europe, "Abdul the
Damned," and kissing him on both cheeks, called him brother!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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