THE "UNSPEAKABLE TURK."

Evening Star, Issue 14117, 21 July 1909, Page 3

THE "UNSPEAKABLE TURK."

[Feom Our Special Cob respondent.]

LONDON, June 11. Ino Armenian Horrors" season has commenced, and if we are to believe some ot the tales told bv refugees from Asia -Minor, the " unspeakable "Turk" of that part of the Sultan's dominions is simply wallowing in tho blood of his Christian neighbors. •juite the most horrible tales that have appeared are those told by two women who managed to escape from a bloody kittle at Kozolook, an Armenian village north of Tarsus. The village was raided, sacked, and burned by Tuiks, who made prisoners of all the inhabitants, and having marched Ihem in batches in various directions proceeded to "wipe them out." The way one batch containing ■ forty-seven men, women, and children were'dealt with is described by a woman who, though fearfully wounded, managed to escape with her life. She suvs :

Wo wore all at the edge of a field of wheat.; they took ii» away into eome hushes, for they .said the" fire would hurt the wheat. They ordered us to lie down on the ground in a row, with our heads to the west. We begged them to shoot us through the heart or the head, hut they said they did not want to waste powder and ball on 6wine like us; they would do the thing more cheaply. There was a great crowd of them. Four or live went at each of us with swords and daggers, hacking our heads and breast*. 1_ cannot get the shrieks out of mv cars. They had made a great fire of dry bushes, and now they threw us all, dead and wounded, into "it. My three little children had not been killed ; the men took my oldest and my youngest, a mere babo, and (lung them 'into the flames, where they perished. I had my second ehild in my arms, and we were thrown -into the fire togetlver. I at once scrambled out, though badly burned, with the little one. I ran a short dis-

tanue. and sit down dazed and weeping. A Turk had pity on me, and led me away, and at last sent me here. My husband and thirty other mem he re of

our large family were killed." The substance of the second woman's story is this. She and eleven male members of her family, including her husband and two sons, with several women and children, were taken to a Turkish village ; they were without food for thirty-six hours, and no one heeded tlteir requests for a little bread. As they sat huddled together in the house to which they had been taken, a man cam* in armed with gun and dagger. He took the husband back into a corner and made him give up the little money that was on his person, and in like manner robbed all. Then the man and his neighbors took all the men out a few yards from the door, and killed them in the'presenoe of the women. These latter begged the murderers to slay them also, but the 'JuTks reserved them for a different fate—all save the old women.

Tt is difficult to get at the real truth (oncoming these alleged Turkish atrocities. Circumstantial accounts hare often aplwared in the English papers of horrible deeds perpetrated in some remote distiicts of Asia Minor which have, on investigation, proved to be either entirely imaginary or grossly exaggerated. People who"have been closely associated with Arnieui:iiis usually take these atrocity stories with large dressings of salt, for the low-class Armenian has no particular regard for facts if the exercise of imagination is likely to produce k'tter result from a financial liomt of view. A.id it is a somewhat suggestive fact that these tales of lwrror are always told in the first place to people connected with missions, which depend for existence on the benevolence of the British public, and that the tales as retold for our edification invariably lead up to urgent appeals for funds wherewith to succor the survivors of the Turks' ferocity.