Crescent and Iron Cross eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 171 pages of information about Crescent and Iron Cross.

Crescent and Iron Cross eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 171 pages of information about Crescent and Iron Cross.

Dr. Niepage wrote this report in the hope of saving such as then (1915) survived.  No notice whatever was taken of it, and his postscript, written in May 1916, records the fact that ’the exiles encamped at Ras-el-Ain on the Bagdad Railway, estimated at 20,000 men, women and children, were slaughtered to the last one.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  It is right to add that at Aleppo an officer called Bekir Sami guarded 50,000 Armenians whom he had collected from neighbouring districts, who were threatened with massacre, and I find that a German missionary states that there were 45,000 Armenians alive in Aleppo.  This forms confirmatory evidence, but at the same time there is nothing to show that they were not subsequently deported to Deir-el-Zor.  In this case it is highly improbable that any survive.]

In Dr. Niepage’s view, as I have stated elsewhere, the Germans are directly responsible for the continuance of the massacres.  Such, too, is the opinion, he tells us, of the educated Moslems, and his courage in stating this has lost him his post at Aleppo.  It is to be sincerely hoped that he has escaped the fate of a certain Dr. Lepsius, who, for drawing attention to the fact that Germany allowed the Armenian massacres, has been arrested for high treason.

Before the end of 1915 the German authorities, who had refused to interfere in the massacres, and both in the official press and through official utterances had expressed their support of this Ottomanisation of the Empire, began to think that you might have too much of a good thing, and that the massacres had really gone far enough.  Their reason was clear and explicit:  there would be a very serious shortage of labour in the beet-growing industry and in the harvest-fields, for which they had sent grain and artificial manures from Germany.  There had been some talk, they said, of saving 500,000 Armenians out of the race, but, in the way things were going on, it seemed that the remnant would not nearly approach that figure.  Would not the great Ottomanisers temper their patriotism with a little clemency?  Talaat Bey disagreed:  he wanted to make a complete job of it, but Jemal the Great, fresh from his visit to Germany, supported the idea, and, in spite of Talaat’s opposition, made a spectacular exhibition of clemency, in which, beyond doubt, we can trace an ‘Imitatio Imperatoris,’ in the following manner.

There was at the time a large convoy of men and women in Constantinople which was to be led out for murder and deportation, and Jemal gave orders that it should be spared and sent back to its highland home.  He gave orders also that the entire convoy should be informed who was their saviour, and should be led in procession past his house and show their gratitude.  All day the sorry pageant lasted, the ragged, half-starved crowd streamed by the house of Jemal the Great, with murmurs of thanksgiving and uplifted hands, and all manner of obeisances, while Jemal the Great stood in his porch with stern, impassive face, and hand on his sword-hilt in the best Potsdam manner, and acknowledged these thanksgivings....[1]

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Crescent and Iron Cross from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.