BUTCHER'S BATTALIONS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 563, 29 November 1915, Page 8

BUTCHER'S BATTALIONS.

MURDER, TORTURE, AND RAPINE. THE UNSPEAKABLE TURK AND HIS victims; LONDON, November 27. Lord Bryce in a letter to the newspapers, says the latest evidence regarding the atrocities in Northern and Eastern Anatolia confirms the dreadful certainty of the horrible story. The civilised world is powerless to intervene at present, But it must bear tluese unspeakable crimes in constant memory against the final day of reckoning. A careful estimate of the loss of life to August 15 gives a total of over 500,000. The Turkish police are constantly using whips and clubs, and many women have been beaten black and blue.

A correspondent at Tifli& states, that Djeved Bey expelled Armenians from Van, and many fled southward. Eight thousand soldiers, whom he cailed the "Butcher's Battalions," massacred most of the Christians, Djeved ordering the soldiers to burn two Armenian bishops in the public square. The Turks at Mush early in July disarmed the Armenians in order to secure a large ransom for the notable men of the town. The head men of the villages were subjected to revolting tortures. Their finger-nails, and then their toe-nails, were forcibly extracted. Their teeth were knocked out, and in some cases their noses were whittled with knives, the victims dying in lingering agony.; The Armenians at Mush then en-j trenched themselves in their churches and stone-built houses, j They fought for four days, but the Turkish artillery, manned by German officers, broke down the positions, and every man was killed. The Moslem rabble then descended upon the Armenian women and children and drove them into large camps. The ghastly scene which followed seems incredible, but it has been confirmed beyond doubt. The Turks set lire to large wooden sheds in Aliejan, Mograkom, Whaskegh, and other villages, roasting the helpless women and children to death. Many women threw their children away. Some knelt down and prayed amid the flames, while others shrieked for help, but their executioners were unmoved. With unparalleled savagery they grasped infants by one leg and hauled them out of the fire, calling out to the burning mothers: "Here are your cubs." Thirty thousand Turks and Kurds surrounded 1500 Armenians in the hill country of Sahun. The mountaineers put up a desperate struggle. Men, women, and children fought with knives and scythes, and rolled blocks of stone down the steep slopes. During the final hand-to-hand combat, women were seen thrusting knives into the throats of the Turks. When every man had been killed, several young women, some with infants in their arms, threw themselves from the rocks to •avoid capture.