ARMENIAN MASSACRES.

POLICY OF EXTERMINATION.

In a message dated Oct. 24 Reuter’s correspondent at the General Headquarters of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force sends some additional particulars of the ruthless persecution of the Armenians by the Turks. Most of these details were furnished by an Armenian prisoner of war, who witnessed some of the incidents he describes. At Ashhall, Tirgen, Yenikeui, Sivas, and Tokat, the persecution of the Armenians was very bitter. The narrator says: The Bishop of Sivas was exiled to a distant place. The Vali gave orders to shoe his bare feet just like a horse, saying: “He is an old man, and the head of the Armenians of this district. So as to mark the honour of his office and out of respect for his years, we must see that he does not go barefooted.” I was an eye-witness of this cruel deed. Of course, the unhappy bishop could not even move, and was thrown into prison. At Zile, after numerous arrests, the Armenians closed their shops, but were compelled to re-open them. The narrative proceeds: After a few days’ respite the police began arresting Armenian men wherever they found them without making any specific charge. These men were thrown into prison, where they were the victims of unspeakable mishandling. At last they were led out of town four abreast tied together with ropes, ostensibly to be taken to Sivas for trial by court-martial. In reality they were to be massacred near a marshy place called Chazgeulu. This was the first of a series of massacres. A State siege was proclaimed at Zile, and nobody was allowed to enter or leave the town under the penalty of death. The authorities at Zile also resorted to attempts at the forcible conversion of women and children to Mohammedanism. Women and children were taken out of town in ox-carts and exposed on the open plain to hunger and cold for many days and nights until it was thought the women were sufficiently desperate to accept conversion to Islam in order to save their lives. They were told their husbands were dead, and that if they accepted the true faith they could return home with their children. Without exception, the women refused. The Turkish commander then ordered the children to be put into carts, and had the mothers bayoneted by the gendarmes before the children’s eyes. An instance is mentioned in which about 800 Armenian prisoners, tied together in fours, were led out into the country and bayoneted by about 100 voluntary assassins. This terrible story concludes: “In palliation of these crimes the Turks pretend to have knowledge that the Armenians were intriguing with the Russians.” The Telegraph’s coverage of the First World War up to this point can be found at: telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive