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ARMENIAN MASSACRES 257 ARMENIAN MASSACRES about 69-66 B. C, but was left on the throne. Since then its fortunes have been various under the Romans, Parthi- ans, Byzantine emperors, Persians, Sara- cens, Turks, etc. A considerable portion of it was acquired by Russia in the 19th century, part of this in 1878. Within recent years thousands of Ar- menians have been massacred or have perished of starvation. In 1894-1896 they suffered terrible atrocities in the Sasun district. The Great Powers forced the Sultan to accept a scheme of reforms. In spite of the Sultan's acquiescence the atrocities broke out afresh in 1895, and lasted till the spring of 1896. In the au- tumn of 1896 the persecutions recom- menced and terrible massacres occurred at Harpoot and Egin. It is estimated that over 80,000 people perished in the various outbreaks. In Harpoot the fury of the mob seemed to be directed against the American and English mission sta- tions. Several American missionaries were killed. See Armenian Massacres. After Turkey entered the European War of 1914-1918, a systematic extermi- nation of the Armenian people was started. The American Committee for Armenian Relief reported in 1916 that between 600,000 and 850,000 Armenians were killed or perished from privations. In 1920 the Great Powers in the League of Nations offered the United States the mandate of the Armenian Republic, but it was declined. See Ar- menian Republic. ARMENIAN MASSACRES. Shortly after the oubreak of the war Turkish so-called "patriotic" societies began to send threatening letters to the Armenian press in Constantinople. Bands of Turk- ish "nationalists" were at this time go- ing nightly through the Armenian quar- tier of Constantinople making threats of death upon the doors of houses, churches and schools. Shortly after the Young Turk Government made a definite at- tempt to win the Armenians over to the side of the Central Powers, whose cause they had espoused; but one leading au- thority at least believes that even then their ultimate destruction had been de- termined upon — was indeed a foregone conclusion with so good a pretext as the outbreak of a general war. The Young Turks started their oppression of the Ar- menians of Turkey by "requisitioning" their property recklessly, and by send- ing exclusive battalions to the most ex- posed French and British fronts. The Turks now felt that they had a free course. The restraining hand of Europe was no longer upon them. Indeed they had the countenance of Germany, whom they believed to be invincible. The Ar- menians as a people were in many cases armed and the government's first step was to make them defenseless. The program they decided upon was to mur- der all the Armenian soldiery every- where at one blow — at the same time to decoy and murder the Armenian lead- ers — and finally to fall on the popula- tion. In less than a year the program had been carried out to the eternal shame of the Ottoman Government and the hor- ror of civilization. The Armenians of Turkey to the number of about a million, old and young, rich and poor, and of both sexes, had been collectively drowned, burned, bayonetted, starved, bastinadoed or otherwise tortured to death, or else deported on foot penniless and without food, to the burning Arabian deserts. Lord Bryce in his report to the House of Lords, Oct. 6, 1915, said : "The whole Armenian population of each town or village was cleaned out by a house-to- house search. Every inmate was driven into the street. Some of the men were thrown into prison, where they were put to death, sometimes with torture; the rest of the men with the women and children were marched out of the town. When they had got some little distance they were separated, the men being taken to some place among the hills where the soldiers, or the Kurdish tribes who were called to help in the work of slaughter, despatched them by shooting or bayonet- ing; the women or children, and old men were sent off under convoy of the lowest kind of soldiers — many of them just drawn from gaols, to their distant desti- nation which was sometimes one of the unhealthy districts in the center of Asia Minor, but more frequently the large desert in the province of Der-El-Lor, which lies east of Aleppo, in the direc- tion of Euphrates. They were driven along by the soldiers day after day, all on foot, beaten or left behind to perish if they could not keep up with the cara- van; many fell by the way, and many died of hunger. No provisions were given them by the Turkish Government, and they had already been robbed of every- thing they possessed. Not a few of the women were stripped naked and made to travel in that condition beneath a burn- ing sun. Some of the mothers went mad, and threw away their children, being unable to carry them further. The cara- van route was marked by a line of corpses, and comparatively few seem to have arrived at their destination — chosen, no doubt, because return was im- possible and because there was little prospect that any would survive their hardships." Before the deportations be-