AN APPEAL FOR ARMENIA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6132, 19 March 1898, Page 6

AN APPEAL FOR ARMENIA.

♦ — [By A.S.] In a book just published, "By Far Euphrates," Bliss Alcock portrays with awful vividness the ghastly sufferings of the Armenians. In her preface the authoress says : — " Every instance of faith or heroism given in these pages is not only true in itself, but typical of a huridred others." Bearing these words in mind, can anyone read with calmness instances of torture such as the following :-^-" Turka, meanwhUte, were rushing up the gallery stairs, seizing the younger women and girls, and carrying them out. A Turk forced his way to Hanum Self erian. 'Do you know me ?' he asked her. ' I killed your husband yesterday because I want to marry you. Come with me, and I will save you and your children.' He seized her zebonn, but with an effort she freed herself from his grasp. * * Then the Armenian mother lifted her youngest child in her arms, and looked at the three little girls clinging to her side. ' Children/ she said, 'will you go with that man and be Moslems, or' will you die for Christ with me'?' ' Mother, we will die with you/ said the little voices, speaking all at once. She could do for them one thing yet Twenty feet down, right into the heart of the hottest fire, she flung her youngest child. Then followed the little girls, .and then, just as the Turk's hand touched her shoulder, her own rest was won." Tet-it is not against tbe Turks that Miss Alcock'a anger burns hottest. Of them she isapparently able to feel, Shall sorrow win God's pity, and not sinThat burden ten times heavier to be borne ? But of the English, some 'few of whom we see, and almosfcall of whom must now have heard of the intolerable persecutions inflicted on the helpless' Armenians, who yet stand passive^and say in effect, " What concern is itof ours — why should we interfere?" she evidently wouhtsay Where we disavow Being keeper to our brother,. we're his Cain. In the appendix to her book, Miss Alcock writes: — "The greatest care has been taken to make the foregoing page 3 absolutely true to fact. AH that bus been told of the massacres and their attendant circumstances has been taken either from thoroughly reliable published sources, or from the narratives of trustworthy eyerwitne9ses. * * * There is, nevertheless, one important sense in. which facts have not been truly represented. It has been absolutely impossible to depict the worst features of these horrible crimes. To tell all we know would be simply to defeat the end for which we write— no one would read' the pages. It has been necessary to cover tortures — the most ingenious, the most hideous,. and the most excruciating — with a veil of general expressions, and outrages yet more terrible than any torture with a still denser •veil of reticence. Of what has been endured by unnumbered multitudes of our helpless sisters, it is agony to speak, but 13 it not also sin and cowardice to keep silence? * * This deeply suffering race is not faultless — what race ever was, or is, or will be ? — but it is emphatically worth saving. And it is still in our power-to sava very-many starving men, desolate and bcgpeless women and helpless little children. Should the readers of the foregoing pages desire to bear a hand in this good works — and even those who have little to give may save, or help to save, one woman or one child — they may learn how to do it by communicating with, the Association of Friends of Armenia, 47, Victoria-Street, Westminster."