Ambassador Morgenthau's Story

by Henry Morgenthau

  Strangely enough, these remarks did not offend Talaat, but they did not shake his determination. I might as well have been talking to a stone wall. From my abstractions he immediately came down to something definite.

  "These people," he said, "refused to disarm when we told them to. They opposed us at Van and at Zeitoun, and they helped the Russians. There is only one way in which we can defend ourselves against them in the future, and that is just to deport them."

  "Suppose a few Armenians did betray you," I said. "Is that a reason for destroying a whole race? Is that an excuse for making innocent women and children suffer?"

  "Those things are inevitable," he replied.

  This remark to me was not quite so illuminating as one which Talaat made subsequently to a reporter of the Berliner Tageblatt, who asked him the same question. "We have been reproached," he said, according to this interviewer, "for making no distinction between the innocent Armenians and the guilty; but that was utterly impossible, in view of the fact that those who were innocent to-day might be guilty to-morrow"!

  One reason why Talaat could not discuss this matter with me freely, was because the member of the embassy staff who did the interpreting was himself an Armenian. In the early part of August, therefore, he sent a personal messenger to me, asking if I could not see him alone-he said that he himself would provide the interpreter. This was the first time that Talaat had admitted that his treatment of the Armenians was a matter with which I had any concern. The interview took place two days afterward. It so happened that since the last time I had visited Talaat I had shaved my beard. As soon as I came in the burly Minister began talking in his customary bantering fashion.

  "You have become a young man again," he said; "you are so young now that I cannot go to you for advice any more."

  "I have shaved my beard," I replied, "because it had become very gray-made gray by your treatment of the Armenians."

  Fig 49. ARMENIAN SOLDIERS. Until 1908 no Armenian was allowed to serve in the Ottoman army. In the Balkan Wars, they distinguished themselves by their bravery and skill. In the present war, the Turks have taken away their arms and transformed them into pack animals and road labourers

  Fig 50. THOSE WHO FELL BY THE WAYSIDE. Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces, in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms-massacre, starvation, exhaustion-destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation

  Fig 51. A VIEW OF HARPOOT. Where massacres of men took place on a large scale

  After this exchange of compliments we settled down to the business in hand. "I have asked you to come to-day," began Talaat, "so that I can explain our position on the whole Armenian subject. We base our objections to the Armenians on three distinct grounds. In the first place, they have enriched themselves at the expense of the Turks. In the second place, they are determined to domineer over us and to establish a separate state. In the third place, they have openly encouraged our enemies. They have assisted the Russians in the Caucasus and our failure there is largely explained by their actions. We have therefore come to the irrevocable decision that we shall make them powerless before this war is ended."

  On every one of these points I had plenty of arguments in rebuttal. Talaat's first objection was merely an admission that the Armenians were more industrious and more able than the dull-witted and lazy Turks. Massacre as a means of destroying business competition was certainly an original conception! His general charge that the Armenians were "conspiring" against Turkey and that they openly sympathized with Turkey's enemies merely meant, when reduced to its original elements, that the Armenians were constantly appealing to the European Powers to protect them against robbery, murder, and outrage. The Armenian problem, like most race problems, was the result of centuries of ill-treatment and injustice. There could be only one solution for it, the creation of an orderly system of government, in which all citizens were to be treated upon an equality, and in which all offenses were to be punished as the acts of individuals and not as of peoples. I argued for a long time along these and similar lines.

  "It is no use for you to argue," Talaat answered, "we have already disposed of three quarters of the Armenians; there are none at all left in Bitlis, Van, and Erzeroum. The hatred between the Turks and the Armenians is now so intense that we have got to finish with them. If we don't, they will plan their revenge."

  "If you are not influenced by humane considerations," I replied, "think of the material loss. These people are your business men. They control many of your industries. They are very large tax-payers. What would become of you commercially without them?"

  "We care nothing about the commercial loss," replied Talaat. "We have figured all that out and we know that it will not exceed five million pounds. We don't worry about that. I have asked you to come here so as to let you know that our Armenian policy is absolutely fixed and that nothing can change it. We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert but nowhere else."

  I still attempted to persuade Talaat that the treatment of the Armenians was destroying Turkey in the eyes of the world, and that his country would never be able to recover from this infamy.

  "You are making a terrible mistake," I said, and I repeated the statement three times.

  "Yes, we may make mistakes," he replied, "but" –and he firmly closed his lips and shook his head-"we never regret."

  I had many talks with Talaat on the Armenians, but I never succeeded in moving him to the slightest degree. He always came back to the points which he had made in this interview. He was very willing to grant any request I made in behalf of the Americans or even of the French and English, but I could obtain no general concessions for the Armenians. He seemed to me always to have the deepest personal feeling in this matter, and his antagonism to the Armenians seemed to increase as their sufferings increased. One day, discussing a particular Armenian, I told Talaat that he was mistaken in regarding this man as an enemy of the Turks; that in reality he was their friend.

  "No Armenian," replied Talaat, "can be our friend after what we have done to them."

  One day Talaat made what was perhaps the most astonishing request I had ever heard. The New York Life Insurance Company and the Equitable Life of New York had for years done considerable business among the Armenians. The extent to which this people insured their lives was merely another indication of their thrifty habits.

  "I wish," Talaat now said, "that you would get the American life insurance companies to send us a complete list of their Armenian policy holders. They are practically all dead now and have left no heirs to collect the money. It of course all escheats to the State. The Government is the beneficiary now. Will you do so?"

  This was almost too much, and I lost my temper.

  "You will get no such list from me," I said, and I got up and left him.

  One other episode involving the Armenians stirred Talaat to one of his most ferocious moods. In the latter part of September, Mrs. Morgenthau left for America. The sufferings of the Armenians had greatly preyed upon her mind and she really left for home because she could not any longer endure to live in such a country. But she determined to make one last intercession for this poor people on her own account. Her way home took her through Bulgaria, and she had received an intimation that Queen Eleanor of that country would be glad to receive her. Perhaps it was Mrs. Morgenthau's well-known interest in social work that led to this invitation. Queen Eleanor was a high-minded woman, who had led a sad and lonely existence, and who was spending most of her time attempting to improve the condition of the poor in Bulgaria. She knew all about social work in American cities, and, a few years before, she had made all her plans to visit the United States in order to study our settlements at first hand. At the time of Mrs. Morgenthau's visit the Queen had two American nurses from the Henry Street Settlement of New York instructing a group of Bulgarian girls in the methods of the American Red Cros
s.

  My wife was mainly interested in visiting the Queen in order that, as one woman to another, she might make a plea for the Armenians. At that time the question of Bulgaria's entrance into the war had reached a critical stage, and Turkey was prepared to make concessions to gain her as an ally. It was therefore a propitious moment to make such an appeal.

  The Queen received Mrs. Morgenthau informally, and my wife spent about an hour telling her all about the Armenians. Most of what she said was entirely new to the Queen. Little had yet appeared in the European press on this subject, and Queen Eleanor was precisely the kind of woman from whom the truth would be concealed as long as possible. Mrs. Morgenthau gave her all the facts about the treatment of Armenian women and children and asked her to intercede in their behalf. She even went so far as to suggest that it would be a terrible thing if Bulgaria, which in the past had herself suffered such atrocities at the hands of the Turks, should now become their allies in war. Queen Eleanor was greatly moved. She thanked my wife for telling her these truths and said that she would investigate immediately and see if something could not be done.

  Just as Mrs. Morgenthau was getting ready to leave she saw the Duke of Mecklenburg standing near the door. The Duke was in Sofia at that time attempting to arrange for Bulgaria's participation in the war. The Queen introduced him to Mrs. Morgenthau; His Highness was polite, but his air was rather cold and injured. His whole manner, particularly the stern glances which he cast on Mrs. Morgenthau, showed that he had heard a considerable part of the conversation. As he was exerting all his efforts to bring Bulgaria in on Germany's side, it is not surprising that he did not relish the plea which Mrs. Morgenthau was making to the Queen that Bulgaria should not ally herself with Turkey.

  Queen Eleanor immediately interested herself in the Armenian cause, and, as a result, the Bulgarian Minister to Turkey was instructed to protest against the atrocities. This protest accomplished nothing, but it did arouse Talaat's momentary wrath against the American Ambassador. A few days afterward, when routine business called me to the Sublime Porte; I found him in an exceedingly ugly humour. He answered most of my questions savagely and in monosyllables, and I was afterward told that Mrs. Morgenthau's intercession with the Queen had put him into this mood. In a few days, however, he was as good-natured as ever, for Bulgaria had taken sides with Turkey.

  Talaat's attitude toward the Armenians was summed up in the proud boast which he made to his friends: "I have accomplished more toward solving the Armenian problem in three months than Abdul Hamid accomplished in thirty years!" CHAPTER XXVI

  ENVER PASHA DISCUSSES THE ARMENIANS

  All this time I was bringing pressure upon Enver also. The Minister of War, as I have already indicated, was a different type of man from Talaat. He concealed his real feelings much more successfully; he was usually suave, cold-blooded, and scrupulously polite. And at first he was by no means so callous as Talaat in discussing the Armenians. He dismissed the early stories as wild exaggerations, declared that the troubles at Van were merely ordinary warfare, and attempted to quiet my fears that the wholesale annihilation of the Armenians had been decided on. Yet all the time that Enver was attempting to deceive me, he was making open admissions to other people-a fact of which I was aware. In particular he made no attempt to conceal the real situation from Dr. Lepsius, a representative of German missionary interests. Dr. Lepsius was a high-minded Christian gentleman. He had been all through the Armenian massacres of 1895, and he had raised considerable sums of money to build orphanages for Armenian children who had lost their parents at that time. He came again in 1915 to investigate the Armenian situation in behalf of German missionary interests. He asked for the privilege of inspecting the reports of American consuls and I granted it. These documents, supplemented by other information which Dr. Lepsius obtained, largely from German missionaries in the interior, left no doubt in his mind as to the policy of the Turks. His feelings were aroused chiefly against his own government. He expressed to me the humiliation which he felt, as a German, that the Turks should set about to exterminate their Christian subjects, while Germany, which called itself a Christian country, was making no endeavours to prevent it. From him Enver scarcely concealed the official purpose. Dr. Lepsius was simply staggered by his frankness, for Enver told him in so many words that they at last had an opportunity to rid themselves of the Armenians and that they proposed to use it.

  By this time Enver had become more frank with me-the circumstantial reports which I possessed made it useless for him to attempt to conceal the true situation further-and we had many long and animated discussions on the subject. One of these I recall with particular vividness. I notified Enver that I intended to take up the matter in detail and he laid aside enough time to go over the whole situation.

  "The Armenians had a fair warning," Enver began, "of what would happen to them in case they joined our enemies. Three months ago I sent for the Armenian Patriarch and I told him that if the Armenians attempted to start a revolution or to assist the Russians, I would be unable to prevent mischief from happening to them. My warning produced no effect and the Armenians started a revolution and helped the Russians. You know what happened at Van. They obtained control of the city, used bombs against government buildings, and killed a large number of Moslems. We knew that they were planning uprisings in other places. You must understand that we are now fighting for our lives at the Dardanelles and that we are sacrificing thousands of men. While we are engaged in such a struggle as this, we cannot permit people in our own country to attack us in the back. We have got to prevent this no matter what means we have to resort to. It is absolutely true that I am not opposed to the Armenians as a people. I have the greatest admiration for their intelligence and industry, and I should like nothing better than to see them become a real part of our nation. But if they ally themselves with our enemies, as they did in the Van district, they will have to be destroyed. I have taken pains to see that no injustice is done; only recently I gave orders to have three Armenians who had been deported returned to their homes, when I found that they were innocent. Russia, France, Great Britain, and America are doing the Armenians no kindness by sympathizing with and encouraging them. I know what such encouragement means to a people who are inclined to revolution. When our Union and Progress Party attacked Abdul Hamid, we received all our moral encouragement from the outside world. This encouragement was of great help to us and had much to do with our success. It might similarly now help the Armenians and their revolutionary programme. I am sure that if these outside countries did not encourage them, they would give up all their efforts to oppose the present government and become law-abiding citizens. We now have this country in our absolute control and we can easily revenge ourselves on any revolutionists."

  "After all," I said, "suppose what you say is true, why not punish the guilty? Why sacrifice a whole race for the alleged crimes of individuals?"

  "Your point is all right during peace times," replied Enver. "We can then use Platonic means to quiet Armenians and Greeks, but in time of war we cannot investigate and negotiate. We must act promptly and with determination. I also think that the Armenians are making a mistake in depending upon the Russians. The Russians really would rather see them killed than alive. They are as great a danger to the Russians as they are to us. If they should form an independent government in Turkey, the Armenians in Russia would attempt to form an independent government there. The Armenians have also been guilty of massacres; in the entire district around Van only 30,000 Turks escaped, all the rest were murdered by the Armenians and Kurds. I attempted to protect the non-combatants at the Caucasus; I gave orders that they should not be injured, but I found that the situation was beyond my control. There are about 70,000 Armenians in Constantinople and they will not be molested, except those who are Dashnaguists and those who are plotting against the Turks. However, I think you can ease your mind on the whole subject as there will be no more massacres of Armenians."

  I did not take
seriously Enver's concluding statement. At the time that he was speaking, massacres and deportations were taking place all over the Armenian provinces and they went on almost without interruption for several months.

  As soon as the reports reached the United States the question of relief became a pressing one. In the latter part of July, I heard that there were 5,000 Armenians from Zeitoun and SultaniŽ who were receiving no food whatever. I spoke about them to Enver, who positively declared that they would receive proper food. He did not receive favourably any suggestion that American representatives should go to that part of the country and assist and care for the exiles.

  "For any American to do this," he said, "would encourage all Armenians and make further trouble. There are twenty-eight million people in Turkey and one million Armenians, and we do not propose to have one million disturb the peace of the rest of the population. The great trouble with the Armenians is that they are separatists. They are determined to have a kingdom of their own, and they have allowed themselves to be fooled by the Russians. Because they have relied upon the friendship of the Russians, they have helped them in this war. We are determined that they shall behave just as Turks do. You must remember that when we started this revolution in Turkey there were only two hundred of us. With these few followers we were able to deceive the Sultan and the public, who thought that we were immensely more numerous and powerful than we were. We really prevailed upon him and the public through our sheer audacity, and in this way we established the Constitution. It is our own experience with revolutions which makes us fear the Armenians. If two hundred Turks could overturn the Government, then a few hundred bright, educated Armenians could do the same thing. We have therefore deliberately adopted the plan of scattering them so that they can do us no harm. As I told you once before, I warned the Armenian Patriarch that if the Armenians attacked us while we were engaged in a foreign war, that we Turks would hit back and that we would hit back indiscriminately."