ARMENIAN HORRORS.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15395, 28 September 1915, Page 8

ARMENIAN HORRORS.

AN APPALLING INDICT3IENT. EXTERMINATING A NATION. LONDON, September 26. An awful story of cruelty to Ar- ' Jnenians is related bv an eyo-witness in the "Daily Chronicle." He says that lii.storv does not record such scenes. Besides many thousands who have been killed half a million have been deported, beginning in last April. The first step was disarming them, under pretext of which there were many murders and tortures. Then the people were imprisoned en masse and deportation iollowcd, accompanied by nias.sjeres. Scarcely a man was loft in the Klini-pnt province. Tho Turks marketed, ihe remainder, and all, from the highest functionary to the simplest peasant, bought wives, forcibly converting them to Islamism.

The children were put upon the roads and wandered about famished until many died of starvation. There were similar scenes in the IJearbekir province. Some facilities were granted deportees in other provinces, but robbers arid peaasnts looted and stripped the caravans, killed the few remaining youths, and abducted the women and girK They whipped the old women along tho roads until they dropped from exhaustion and died of hunger. The eve-witness stated that women who Mere deported from the Erzcroum province, were left in the Ivharput Plain without food, and died at the rate of fifty or sixty daily. A little girl states that when tho caravan arrived at the Governor's office in Sarikiehila. children were torn from their mother's arms and tho caravan was forced to continue without them. Ah they arrived in each village the women were exposed in the Governor's offices to allow Moslems to take their pick. The caravan starting from Pjipert, gradually dwindled, and finally the remaining women and children were thrown into the Euphrates beforo Erzingah was reached. Two Gorman Red Cross nurses were bo shocked that they resigned, and reported the atrocities to tho Constantinople Embassy. Tho roads of many provinces were littered with corpses. A Mussulman traveller states that during tho nine hours' journey from Malaka to Sivaa he encountered only corpses of men, women, and Armenian soldiers. Tho name fate awaited those at Erzeroum and Dearbekir, wherb they were «ent to work on the roads, and would then be butchered. One thousand eight hundred .people from Ivharput were massacred. Many Armenians sought to be converted to Islamism to escape their co-religionists' fate. Those at Sivas were notified that they must first surrender their children for education, and the authorities at Kharput ordered tho women desiring conversion to first marry Mussulmans. Many throw themselves into tho Euphrates with their babies. Evidently the Government is determined to end the Armenian question one® and for all by the extermination of the people. \