The Carnage at Constantinople.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 8659, 23 October 1896, Page 3

The Carnage at Constantinople.

Many of the details of the atrocities in Constantinople in August seem to show that the seizure of the Ottoman Bank by “ Armenian patriots ” was a sham affair arranged' by Turks to afford an excuse for a general slaughter of Armenians in the city. One English resident wrote to his father in England:—“So far as 1 know, not a single Jew or European has been killed. The mob were most scrupulously careful; and everything points to a carefully arranged plan between the invaders of the bank ana the Palace officials for the slaughter of the helpless Armenians, as simultaneously with the explosion of the first bomb at the bank the Turkish mob appeared in the street ready armed, and commenced slaughtering the Armenian passers-by. An Austrian gentleman who was in the bank at the time of the attack told me this, and said that he saw twenty-one poor wretches cruelly murdered in a few minutes. Did I tell you that the men who attacked the bank were taken off in the Messageries Maritime? steamer which sailed for Marseilles, and each had fifteen Turkish pounds given him lor expenses on arvivfll ?** Another writes The coolness and politeness of the raiders also negatives a theory that they were desperate men fighting for a, sacred Cause,. We shall hear more later as to these daring bombthrowers ; but the general view is that they are agents of Nazim Pasha and Izett Bey, who have the credit for organising the maesaares throughout the eafplita dnritrg the past wo years. Cel«

tainly the Turkish mob was fully prepared. I saw hundreds from our window, young mostly, armed with clubs, swords, knives, and rifles, and poured out yelling directly the row at the bank began, and many hundreds of troops, mixed freely with the Kurds and Lazes, halfdressed in uniform, were seen assisting in the slaughter in various quarters of Pera and Stamboul. My own notion is that the Sultan knows more about it than he caves to admit, because no arrests were made, and the police say they had distinct orders not to interfere. . . The authorities made no efforts to stop the rioters until late on Thursday, when, the orders having once been given, peace was soon restored.” A lady medico, who was in the bank, and left it as the first of the raiders entered, was also struck by the rapidity with which the attack on the Armenians began, and concluded that the whole affair was arranged by the Turks. There was a good deal of bomb-throw-ing within the bank and from the bank into the street, but no one appears to have been hurt by it. One suggestion was that the bombs were pyrotechnic dummies, making plenty of noise, but doing no harm. About five and twenty men entered the bank, and some were killed or wounded by shooting from outside, leaving seventeen only to be removed. They look charge of the bank at 1 p.m., and the same afternoon made overtures for capitation and escape from the country. When they finally quitted the bank they left behind them seventeen kilos of dynamite, eighty-seven bombs and a quantity of cartridges, all of which had been openly brought into the bank in bags artfully made up to resemble sacks of money. On the other hand, Mr Barker, an Englishman who accompanied the seventeen men to Marseilles, reported that he had long conversations with them, and learned that the “ Foreign Committee ” of an Armenian Reform Society had planned the thing three months before. The two chief bants were to be occupied simultaneously, and in order to make this more easy of accomplishment, bomb-throwers were to operate in several other parts of the city so as to distract the attention of the authorities. Somehow or other the rest of the scheme broke down. The seizure of the bank was determined on, because it was thought the foreign Powers were more interested in the finances than anything else, and that a threat to blow up the principal banks would have more influence with them than any other. The stories of the atrocities show that the Turks behaved with inhuman ferocity hunting the Armenians with clubs, spades and any other heavy weapons, as if they were rats, and the estimates of the murdered varied from 4000 to 10,000.

One London correspondent writes “ The more we learn about the carnage at Constantinople the more certain it becomes that the Armenians themselves were largely to blame. Certainly I do not wonder at people despairing about them. What with their fanatical and irrational patriots, their shameless traitors and their venality, their cruelty and their cowardice, they are a most difficult nation to help."