THE TURKISH LEOPARD

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2988, 27 January 1917, Page 10

THE TURKISH LEOPARD

6 INHERENT PROCLIVITY FOR CRUELTY. A highly important Blue Book was published "recently on the treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during 1915-16. It consists of documents presented to Viscount Grey by Viscount Bryco, with a preface by, the latter, in the course of which he says: European travellers have often commended the honesty and the kindliness of the Turkish peasan- , try, and our soldiers hare said that they are fair fighters. Against i them I have nothing to say, and I will even add that I have known individual Turkish officials who impressed me' as men of honesty and goodwill. But the record of the rulers of Turkey for the last two or three centuries, from the Sultan on his throne down to the district Mutessarif, is, taken as a whole, an almost unbroken record of corruption, of injustice, of an oppression which often rises into hideous cruelty. The horrible outrages of which the Blue Book gives details were doubtless planned hy the Turkish Government; ihut Germany and Austria-Hungary have still a heavy, burilen of responsibility for what happened. Germany has all through been the predominant partner, and if sho had wished to check the policy of "frightfulness" against the Armenians, she could quite easily have done so.