TURKS MURDER 1,000,000.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 February 1916, Page 8

TURKS MURDER 1,000,000.

MEN TIED TOGETHER AND KILLED. PATE <iF WOMEN. Lord Bryce lias received, via the. United States, further reliable reports of wholesale cruelties and massacre? of Christians by the" Turks. They are the reports of foreigners engaged in hospital work in a, town where several streams of deported Armenians converged at a stage in their journey to death. A competent authority, putting the total number of Armenians in Turkey at about -2,000,000, thinks nearly 1,000,000 have perished. The following passages illustrate, the horrors being inflicted upon a''harmless people by the Kaisers barbarian allies: "Suddenly the order would come from the police that all were to leave for V , and the whole number who were in the town, perhaps 3000, would be driven under tin; lash into the streets, with all their goods, and rushed to the encampment. There, perhaps, 100 waggons would be ready, and 500 people find • places and be sent oh". Tim rest were then left to stay in the encampment \ or bride their way back to the town again and re-rent their bouses, until another alarm and driving forth, REWARD OF LOYALTY. ■' , "In the encampment the police .would Pome along in the morning and order all tents in. a certain section taken-down, saying they were to start for Y , and this order would be enforced instantly with scourge and club. The terror of the people from the reports they had of that journey 'beyond,' of pillage, murder, outrage, stealing of girls, and starvation was such that they were always ready to purchase a few days' respite if they had any money to fdo it with. The Armenians of Z sent here were forced to come by waggon. The Circassians followed, a'nd robbed them, and shot one girl. Gendarmes were sent out after tho Circassians, and only took their turn in completing the stripping of the party. "Hardly anything makes me so hot as the thought of the soldiers' families. The men—the fathers, brothers, sons, husbands—are .-erving in the Turkish army as loyally as any, and their families—their children, with wives and sisters—are driven off in this inhuman manner. "Some two or three weeks ago about two hundred of the chief Armenians at lv weii! taken at night in waguoiK thirty or forty at a time, to ihe r.ver bank, and there killed. Eighteen of the employers of the railway and the director ni the bank were among these. Within this past week all the "ArmctiI ian men. whether Gregorian. Protestant I or Catholic, have been taken, stripped, I tied together, and taken away, f ,i„, heard of no more.

OFFICER AXD SCOI'XDPEL. "Tlie women ami girls liave been distributed to the Turkish villages. Turks coming and looking over the girls, and choosing what they wanted. .[ could give yon the name of one of the wealthiest men in K , whose wile and three' daughters were tnkcn away before his eyes, and who went crazy. '•Yesterday an unusually pretty anil relined young girl of ],"> was brought to us by her parents; she had been, pursued all the way from W- by an army ollicer, but they had been able to elude him, and the police as well. Our hospital is too public to shelter her, anit we are still looking for a place for her. "Most of the people in town K re seared i 0 do anything- at all, foreigners included, but w e don't propose to "show the white feather, and are only waiting for certain ollicial person- to return from X fwlierc they went :i few days ago, to get larger liberties for tied Cross activities. "To-day I counted twenty-one women and children in one of our waitingrooms, mostly lying on the Moor, from sheer exhaustion, one child moribund, l«o others nearly so, ami half the rest of the group quite likely' to die in a few dayn if thev are allowed to remain where they are in the camp. "Dr. and .Mrs. A. went through the massacres of J Sill and ISOK, and thev and .Mi.-s I!, and I have been through two revolution-, one massacre, and two war* since then, but we all agree that we have never seen anything like this/'

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