THE LITERARY DIGEST

October 2, 1915

It is a period marking the death of nations, and the one to reach the goal first seems to be the victim of the Jahad which was to overwhelm the Allies. Instead of having any such result, the Holy War is merely extinguishing the race who were Christians when our ancestors were offering hearten sacrifices in the dense forests of Europe. "Turkey is now in the act of murdering Armenia, and she has almost completed her work," says Vincent Yardum in the New York Times. All able-bodied males, we are told, have perished in prisons or on the gallows. Old men, women, and children have been driven out of their homes and sent into exile toward Arabia, where they never arrive. Death from starvation or from the attacks of plundering Mohammedans overtakes most of them. The American Armenian Relief Fund Committee issues in The Churchman (New York) a letter dated Constantinople, June 15, 1915, and purporting to come from "a high authority whose word is not top be doubted." We quote:

"The Public in America are unaware of the great crisis through which the Armenian nation in Turkey is passing at present. Indeed, our knowledge of the actual condition of the provinces is very little, because of the strict censorship to which communications with the interior are subjected, and because of the absolute interdiction against traveling on the part of Armenians; yet you will have an idea of what we know already. The Armenian nation is dwindling between life and death at this moment in every part of Turkey. I will pass over the misery caused by arbitrary confiscations, the ravages of typhus, the conscription of men between eighteen and fifty, and the imprisonment and exile during the last two months of thousands of Armenians. About the beginning of April, immediately after the events of Van, Armenian houses, schools, churches, and diocesan offices were searched, by the order of the Central Government, even in the poorest country corners, and consequently many people were thrown into prison for possessing arms, which were hitherto permitted, and for books and pictures publicly sold. In the jails of Cesarea alone 500 Armenians are incarcerated to-day, besides those who have been exiled, by administrative orders only and without any guilt, to places inhabited solely by Moslems. But this condition of affairs is much milder than of the provinces of Cilicia and of those bordering the Caucasus. The Turkish Government is executing to-day the plan of scattering the Armenians of the Armenian provinces, profiting from the troubles of the European powers and from the acquiescence of Germany and Austria. This scheme began to be carried out first in Cilicia. The whole of the population of Zeitun, destroyed, and its neighborhood, and the greater part of those of Marsh and Hassanbeyly were deported forcibly and without notice. . . . . .

"The condition of the Armenians is extremely aggravated since my last letter. It is not Armenian population of Cilicia only which has been deported wholesale and exiled to the deserts. Armenian commutes from all the provinces of Armenia--from Erzerum, Trebisond, Sivas, Kharput, Bitlis, Van, and Diarbekir, also from Samsun, Cesarea, and Ourfa--a population of 1,500,000--are marching to-day, the stick of forced pilgrimage in hand, toward the Mesopotamian wilderness, to live among Arabias and Kurdish savage tribes. It is evident that these poor people can take with them only a little of their good and property, owing to the impossibility of transportation and the insecurity of traveling. Very few of them will be able to reach the spots designated for their exile, and those who do will perish from starvation, if no immediate relief reaches them. There are no means of communicating with the people in the provinces, as the scattered people are not permitted to send any telegraphic dispatches. However, we hope that it will not take very long to find out their present locations and to reach them somehow or other. I trust that the Armenians of America will hasten, on being informed of the distress of their parents, children, and relatives, to send us funds, so that their lives may be saved. I hope also that the American charitable public, on hearing the condition of this ill-fated nation, already in the throes of death, will not refuse its helping hand. Immediate action is necessary. Every day that passes carries away many victims of starvation. It would be superfluous to add anything more. You may conceive from these lines that we are facing the extermination of a nation. Is it that God Almighty, not deeming sufficient the unlimited sufferings of this people in the past ages, has left the bitterest cup to be tasted in this twentieth century? It is in the name of starving population of 1,500.000 that urgent appeals should be made to the charitable public of America."

The Chicago Daily news prints a dispatch from Sofia, Bulgaria, giving an account of the activities of Henry Morgentau, the American Ambassador to Turkey, who recently made an offer to the Turkish Government to raise $1,000,000 to transport to America the Armenians who thus escaped the general massacres:

"Enver Pasha, the Minister of War, and Talaat Bey, Minister of the Interior, accepted the offer, and September 3 the Ambassador asked the Government at Washington to appoint a committee of five Americans, whom he recommended, to take charge of the great undertaking. Mr. Morgenthau declined, however, to give me their names when I saw him recently in Constantinople.

"Since May,' said the Ambassador, '350,000 Armenians have been slaughtered or have died of starvation. There are 550,000 Armenians who could now be sent to America, and we need help to save them. One million dollars is too little for the purpose of the transporting them, as it takes $100 to equip, feed, and transport one man. Perhaps $5,000,000 will be necessary. I should like to see each of the Western States raise a fund to equip a ship to bring the number of settlers it wants. The Armenians are a moral, hard-working race, and would make good citizens to settle the less thickly populated parts of the Western States.'

"Turks admit that the Armenian persecution is the first step in a plan to get rid of Christians, and that Greeks will come next. Jews also are marked for slaughter or expulsion. American missionaries must also be driven out, for Turkey henceforth is to be for Turks alone. The Sheik-ul-Islam, on being questioned, said that the deportation of the Armenians was contrary to Moslem law, but that he was powerless in the face of military despotism.

"Foreigners in Constantinople hold the Germans, in part at least, responsible for the persecution of the Armenians, for they are doing nothing to prevent the distribution of inflammatory literature among the savage tribes inciting them to attack Christians."

Viscount Bryce, formerly Ambassador to the United States, writes to the Associated Press to enlist the aid of America in this crisis. "If anything can stop the destroying hand of the Turkish Government," he thinks, "it will be an expression of the opinion of neutral nations, chiefly the judgment of humane America." He writes:

"Soon after was broke out between Turkey and the Allies, the Turkish Government formed, and since has carrying out with relentless cruelty, a plan for extirpating Christianity by killing off Christians of the Armenian race. . . . . . .

"In Trabizond City, where the Armenians numbered over 10,000, orders came from Constantinople to seize all Armenians. Troops hunted them, drove them to the shore, took them to sea, threw them overboard, and drowned them all — men, women, and children. This was seen and described by the Italian Counsel.

"Some in the country escaped by professing to accept Islam, and a quarter of a million escaped over the Russian frontier, but perhaps half a million were slaughtered or deported, and those deported are fast dying from ill-treatment, disease, or starvation. The roads and the hillsides are strewn with corpses of innocent peasants.

"We can all try to send aid to the miserable refugees now in Russian territory, but what man can stop the massacres? Not the Allied Powers at war with Turkey. Only one Power can take action for that purpose. It is Germany. Would not the expression of American public opinion, voicing the conscience of neutral nations, lead Germany to check the Turkish Government?"

Here we go:

"The Chicago Daily news prints a dispatch from Sofia, Bulgaria, giving an account of the activities of Henry Morgenthau, the American Ambassador to Turkey, who recently made an offer to the Turkish Government to raise $1,000,000 to transport to America the Armenians who thus escaped the general massacres."

The next paragraph tells us Enver and Talaat accepted the offer. That makes it sound like the Ottoman leaders were trading lives for money, doesn't it?

Morgenthau is then quoted as saying the following:

"One million dollars is too little for the purpose of the transporting them, as it takes $100 to equip, feed, and transport one man. Perhaps $5,000,000 will be necessary."

IN OTHER WORDS, NONE OF THIS MONEY WAS EARMARKED FOR THE TURKS.

The question begs to be asked: If the idea was to exterminate the Armenians, because they were Christians or whatever other reason pro-Armenian propagandists have concocted, why would the Turks have agreed to the deal?

Why would they have wanted such good treatment for the Armenians, if the Turks weren't going to turn a profit? (Another genocidal reason, as you know, is that the Muslims were after Christian wealth.)

(Those who have read the real Ottoman orders safeguarding the lives and properties of the Armenians already are aware the government had the good treatment of Armenians at heart... whether conditions permitted the scrupulous following of these orders by locals was a different story.)

Let's think about this carefully: Since Armenian propaganda tells us that the Armenians were all marked for death, why the humanitarian gesture?

If Adolf Hitler were asked to ship out the Jews of his concentration camps at no monetary gain, would he have accepted? Would he have accepted even if he were bribed with a huge monetary amount? NO. Because Everyone knows Hitler had the "intent" to exterminate the Jews.

What we have examined is a Holocaust parallel worth considering. This is one clearly flying in the face of genocidal theory.

The Armenian Genocide simply does not make sense. Even repulsively racist and irresponsible articles from the period as this one offer evidence.

 Early Morgenthau kept a lid on his propagandistic ways, before the "genocide" (that is, the relocation) of the Armenians had begun. Let's reproduce a March 1915 report from the "relatively honest" Henry Morgenthau (thanks to Mavi Boncuk) :



U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau on the Anglo-French Setback at the Dardanelles, 18 March 1915


On March 18th, the Allied fleet made its greatest attack. As all the world knows, that attack proved disastrous to the Allies. The outcome was the sinking of the Bouvet, the Ocean, and the Irresistible and the serious crippling of four other vessels.

Of the sixteen ships engaged in this battle of the 18th, seven were thus put temporarily or permanently out of action. Naturally the Germans and Turks rejoiced over this victory. The police went around, and ordered each householder to display a prescribed number of flags in honour of the event.

The Turkish people have so little spontaneous patriotism or enthusiasm of any kind that they would never decorate their establishments without such definite orders. As a matter of fact, neither Germans nor Turks regarded this celebration too seriously, for they were not yet persuaded that they had really won a victory.

Most still believed that the Allied fleets would succeed in forcing their way through. The only question, they said, was whether the Entente was ready to sacrifice the necessary number of ships. Neither Wangenheim (note: German Ambassador) nor Pallavicini (note: Austro-Hungarian Ambassador) believed that the disastrous experience of the 18th would end the naval attack, and for days they anxiously waited for the fleet to return.

The high tension lasted for days and weeks after the repulse of the 18th. We were still momentarily expecting the renewal of the attack. But the great armada never returned.

Should it have comeback? Could the Allied ships really have captured Constantinople? I am constantly asked this question. As a layman my own opinion can have little value, but I have quoted the opinions of the German generals and admirals, and of the Turks - practically all of whom, except Enver, believed that the enterprise would succeed, and I am half inclined to believe that Enver's attitude was merely a case of graveyard whistling.

In what I now have to say on this point, therefore, I wish it understood that I am giving not my own views, but merely those of the officials then in Turkey who were best qualified to judge.

Enver had told me, in our talk on the deck of the Yuruk, that he had "plenty of guns - plenty of ammunition." But this statement was not true. A glimpse at the map will show why Turkey was not receiving munitions from Germany or Austria at that time. The fact was that Turkey was just as completely isolated from her allies then as was Russia.

There were two railroad lines leading from Constantinople to Germany. One went by way of Bulgaria and Serbia. Bulgaria was then not an ally; even though she had winked at the passage of guns and shells, this line could not have been used, since Serbia, which controlled the vital link extending from Nish to Belgrade, was still intact.

The other railroad line went through Rumania, by way of Bucharest. This route was independent of Serbia, and, had the Rumanian Government consented, it would have formed a clear route from the Krupps to the Dardanelles. The fact that munitions could be sent with the connivance of the Rumanian Government perhaps accounts for the suspicion that guns and shells were going by that route.

Day after day the French and British ministers protested at Bucharest against this alleged violation of neutrality, only to be met with angry denials that the Germans were using this line. There is no doubt now that the Rumanian Government was perfectly honourable in making these denials. It is not unlikely that the Germans themselves started all these stories, merely to fool the Allied fleet into the belief that their supplies were inexhaustible.

Let us suppose that the Allies had returned, say on the morning of the nineteenth, what would have happened? The one overwhelming fact is that the fortifications were very short of ammunition. They had almost reached the limit of their resisting power when the British fleet passed out on the afternoon of the 18th.

I had secured permission for Mr. George A. Schreiner, the well-known American correspondent of the Associated Press, to visit the Dardanelles on this occasion. On the night of the 18th, this correspondent discussed the situation with General Mertens, who was the chief technical officer at the straits. General Mertens admitted that the outlook was very discouraging for the defence.

"We expect that the British will come back early tomorrow morning," he said, "and if they do, we may be able to hold out for a few hours."

General Mertens did not declare in so many words that the ammunition was practically exhausted, but Mr. Schreiner discovered that such was the case. The fact was that Fort Hamidie, the most powerful defence on the Asiatic side, had just seventeen armour-piercing shells left, while at Kilidul-Bahr, which was the main defence on the European side, there were precisely ten.

"I should advise you to get up at six o'clock to-morrow morning," said General Mertens, "and take to the Anatolian hills. That's what we are going to do."

The troops at all the fortifications had their orders to man the guns until the last shell had been fired and then to abandon the forts.

Once these defences became helpless, the problem of the Allied fleet would have been a simple one. The only bar to their progress would have been the minefield, which stretched from a point about two miles north of Erenkeui to Kilid-ul-Bahr.

But the Allied fleet had plenty of minesweepers, which could have made a channel in a few hours. North of Tchanak, as I have already explained, there were a few guns, but they were of the 1878 model, and could not discharge projectiles that could pierce modern armour plate. North of Point Nagara there were only two batteries, and both dated from 1835!

Thus, once having silenced the outer straits, there was nothing to bar the passage to Constantinople except the German and Turkish warships. The Goeben was the only first-class fighting ship in either fleet, and it would not have lasted long against the Queen Elizabeth. The disproportion in the strength of the opposing fleets, indeed, was so enormous that it is doubtful whether there would ever have been an engagement.

Thus the Allied fleet would have appeared before Constantinople on the morning of the twentieth. What would have happened then? We have heard much discussion as to whether this purely naval attack was justified. Enver, in his conversation with me, had laid much stress on the absurdity of sending a fleet to Constantinople, supported by no adequate landing force, and much of the criticism since passed upon the Dardanelles expedition has centred on that point.

Yet it is my opinion that this exclusively naval attack was justified. I base this judgment purely upon the political situation which then existed in Turkey. Under ordinary circumstances such an enterprise would probably have been a foolish one, but the political conditions in Constantinople then were not ordinary.

There was no solidly established government in Turkey at that time. A political committee, not exceeding forty members, headed by Talaat, Enver, and Djemal, controlled the Central Government, but their authority throughout the empire was exceedingly tenuous. As a matter of fact, the whole Ottoman state, on that eighteenth day of March, 1915, when the Allied fleet abandoned the attack, was on the brink of dissolution.

All over Turkey ambitious chieftains had arisen, who were momentarily expecting its fall, and who were looking for the opportunity to seize their parts of the inheritance. As previously described, Djemal had already organized practically an independent government in Syria. In Smyrna Rahmi Bey, the Governor-General, had often disregarded the authorities at the capital.

In Adrianople Hadji Adil, one of the most courageous Turks of the time, was believed to be plotting to set up his own government. Arabia had already become practically an independent nation. Among the subject races the spirit of revolt was rapidly spreading. The Greeks and the Armenians would also have welcomed an opportunity to strengthen the hands of the Allies.

The existing financial and industrial conditions seemed to make revolution inevitable. Many farmers went on strike; they had no seeds and would not accept them as a free gift from the Government because, they said, as soon as their crops should be garnered the armies would immediately requisition them.

As for Constantinople, the populace there and the best elements among the Turks, far from opposing the arrival of the Allied fleet, would have welcomed it with joy. The Turks themselves were praying that the British and French would take their city, for this would relieve them of the controlling gang, emancipate them from the hated Germans, bring about peace, and end their miseries.

No one understood this better than Talaat. He was taking no chances on making an expeditious retreat, in case the Allied fleet appeared before the city. For several months the Turkish leaders had been casting envious glances at a Minerva automobile that had been reposing in the Belgian legation ever since Turkey's declaration of war.

Talaat finally obtained possession of the coveted prize. He had obtained somewhere another automobile, which he had loaded with extra tires, gasoline, and all the other essentials of a protracted journey. This was evidently intended to accompany the more pretentious machine as a kind of "mother ship."

Talaat stationed these automobiles on the Asiatic side of the city with chauffeurs constantly at hand. Everything was prepared to leave for the interior of Asia Minor at a moment's notice.

But the great Allied armada never returned to the attack.

Source: Source Records of the Great War, Vol. III, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni 1923


Now then. Let us examine the several ways in which the more "honest" Henry Morgenthau "proved" there was "no genocide":

1) Most importantly, he informs us the authority of the central government was "exceedingly tenuous." This is the government that kept sending orders to safeguard Armenian lives and property during the relocation, orders that were not always followed. If Morgenthau himself is telling us government control was weak, a state-sponsored extermination policy enters even more into the realm of fantasy.

2) Morgenthau tells us the Turkish people had little support for their government, to the point of "praying" that the French and English would take over to "relieve" them of the CUP gang, and to "end their miseries." (Of course, if the French and English had taken over, that would have spelled the beginning of the Turks' miseries, as the French and British went on to demonstrate a few years later by signing the Turkish nation's death warrant.) There goes Vahakn Dadrian's assessment of "[T]here was massive, popular participation in the atrocities." If the government had such little support, it stands to reason their supposed policy of "genocide" would equally find no support.

3) Morgenthau clearly documents that the "spirit of revolt" was spreading among the "subject races," specifying the "Armenians" as wishing to "strengthen the hand of the Allies." There you have it: straight from the mouth of Morgenthau that the Armenians' rebellion just might have had a lot more substance than he let on in his "Story" book. He further elaborates on the potential of the Armenians' disloyalty to their nation by referring to the "best elements" of Constantinople as welcoming the Allied fleet "with joy." (We don't have to think hard as to what the racist Morgenthau regarded as the "best elements.")

Two quick notes: Morgenthau refers to what sounds like a close relationship with newspaperman George Schreiner. This would be the same George Schreiner who would be appalled over the lies of Henry's "Story" book... and the one who concluded there was no "genocide."

Lastly, let's all try to keep in mind Morgenthau's own quote, "my own opinion can have little value." That truism can be applied to the bulk of Morgenthau's opinions on record.

 
Ambassador Henry Morgenthau

The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story

Exposing the Lies of "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story"

Another reason for Mr. Morgenthau's ways involved his commitment to Zionism and the creation of a Jewish state:

"The Burning Tigris" Critique; Chapter 17 on Henry Morgenthau