ARMENIANS STARVING IN EXILE.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 May 1916, Page 3

ARMENIANS STARVING IN EXILE.

A JOURNEY THROUGH TURKEY. WOMEN TIED TO DONKEYS. BABIES THROWN INTO RIVERS. The story of a journey through Turkey, from a port on the Mediterranean to Constantinople, is told in the January bulletin of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions by a member of the party who recently arrived in America. The trustworthiness of the narrator is vouched for by the Board.

The' journey to Constantinople began on a Monday morning, a few weeks ago. The first stop was a little village where the party had to remain three hours. While there the travellers west to the home of a young Armenian woman, the wife of an Armenian physician who had a year before gone to the front as a member of the Medical Corps of the Turkish army. The fact that her husband was at the front for Turkey and ministering to Turkish wounded and sick did not save this young woman and her two little children from exportation by the Turkish authorities, While the travellers were in this woman's home the Turks came, ordered her and the children to leave, and then plundered the house.

"It was one of the saddest Hours I ever lived through," says the person who tells this story, "and we knew that in hundreds of other homes in that town the 9amc heartrending scenes might be witnessed. The courage of that little woman who knew she must take her two babi& and face starvation arid death with them! Her smile was like a beacon in that mud village, where hnndredi were doomed. Her husband was far away, administering to those who were sending her and her babies to destruction.

"'lt is the slow massacre of our entire race," said one woman. 'lt is worse than massacre,' replied a man. "The town crier went through all the streets of the village, crying out that anyone who helped the Armenians in any way, gave them food, money, or anything, would be beaten and cast into prison. To help them we could do nothing; we were powerless to save their lives.

"Already the Turks had taken the Armenian school and church, and after a procession through the streets had consecrated the church into a moqque and made the school a Turkish school. They had taken down the cross and put up the crescent. Some weeks before they had exiled the faithful Armenian pastor, who for a great many years had toiled there, as he said, 'to make a little oasis in the desert^' "Hardly had we left the tow*n when we began to meet one train after another, crowded, jammed with these poor people being carried away to some spot where no food could be obtained. At every station we stopped we came side by side with one of these trains. It was made up of cattle cars, and the faces of little children were looking out from behind the tiny, barred windows of each car. The side doors were open, and one could plainly see old men and old women, young mother?, with tiny babies, men, women, and children all Uuddled together—human Wings treated worse than cattle are treated. About S o'clock that evening we came to a station where stood one of these trains. The Armenians told us that they had been in the station for three days, with no f<>od. They said the Turks forbade them buying food. At the end of each train was a car of Turkish soldiers, ready to drive the poor people on when they reached the desert, or to whatever pla'je they were being taken. "They told us that twenty babies had been thrown into a river as a train crossed, thrown by the mothers themselves, who could not bear to hear Jieir little ones crying for food when there ; was no food to give them. One woman gave birth to twins in one of those crowded cars, and crossing a river she threw both her babies and then herself into the water. Those who could not pay to ride .in these eattle ears were forced to walk. All along the road, as our train passed, we saw them walking slowly and sadly along, driven from their homes like sheep to the slaughter.

"A German officer was on the> train with us, and I asked him if Germany had anything to do ,vith this exile, for I thought it was the most brutal thing that had ever happened. He said: 'You can't object to exiling a race; it's only the way the Turks are doing it which is bad.' He said he had just come from the interior himself, and had seen the most terrihle sight 3 he ever saw in hi-i life. 'Hundreds of people were walking over the mountains, driven hv soldiers. Many were dead a" dying by the roadside. , Old women and little children too feeble to walk were strapped to the pities of donkeys. Babies lay dead in the road. Human life was thrown away everywhere.' "Another man on the train said that in one train he was in the mothers begged him to take their children, to save them from such a death. He said that an Armenian, a leading business man in , told him that he would rather kill his four daughters with his own hand than see the Turks take them from him. This Armenian was made to leave hfc home, his business and all he had, and started off with his family to walk to whatever place the Turks desired to exile him. "When we reached a station near Constantinople we. met a long train of Armenians that had just been exiled. Some of our party talked with one of the native teachers from the Armenian school. Among other things, he said that an old man was walking the street when the order came to leave. The old man was deaf and did not understand. Because he made no move to leave, the soldiers shot him down in the street.

"On every train we met we heard the heartrending cries of little children."