Page:Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.djvu/445

This page has been validated.
AMBASSADOR MORGENTHAU'S STORY
377

to reach me from many sources that my "meddling" in behalf of the Armenians was making me more and more unpopular in German officialdom. One day in October, Neurath, the German Conseiller, called and showed me a telegram which he had just received from the German Foreign Office. This contained the information that Earl Crewe and Earl Cromer had spoken on the Armenians in the House of Lords, had laid the responsibility for the massacres upon the Germans, and had declared that they had received their information from an American witness. The telegram also referred to an article in the Westminster Gazette, which said that the German consuls at certain places had instigated and even led the attacks, and particularly mentioned Resler of Aleppo. Neurath said that his government had directed him to obtain a denial of these charges from the American Ambassador at Constantinople. I refused to make such a denial, saying that I did not feel called upon to decide officially whether Turkey or Germany was to blame for these crimes.

Yet everywhere in diplomatic circles there seemed to be a conviction that the American Ambassador was responsible for the wide publicity which the Armenian massacres were receiving in Europe and the United States. I have no hesitation in saying that they were right about this. In December, my son, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., paid a visit to the Gallipoli peninsula, where he was entertained by General Liman von Sanders and other German officers. He had hardly stepped into German headquarters when an officer came up to him and said:

"Those are very interesting articles on the Armenian