Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

NEW SITUATION IN THE NEAR EAST. 45

ping-boy on which Constantinople had taken revenge for its defeats and fears. This is not the place to discuss the causes of the Armenian persecutions. In the two years between 1895 and 1897 Abdul Hamid had destroyed little less than half a million. In 190g, the Young Turks, not to be outdone in this honourable activity, had instituted the Adana massacres. The atrocities which filled the first eight months of 1915 were carefully organized and represented the fulfilment of a long-cherished policy. Their instigators were Enver and Talaat, the Bulgarian gipsy, ably seconded by the Jew Cavasso and by other members of the Committee of Union and Progress. Now that Turkey was at war with the West, she need listen to no more pratings about humanity, what the Grand Vizier described as “ nonsense about Armenian reforms.” She could make a manly effort to extirpate a race she had always detested. She was in alliance with Germany, who had shown by her doings in Belgium that she possessed a robust conscience. Talaat was erfectly frank. ‘I am taking the necessary steps,” he told the American Ambassador at Constantinople, “to make it impossible for the Armenians ever to utter the word autonomy during the next fifty years.” He was as good as his word. In the early spring, while the Turkish regulars seem to have behaved with some moderation, the irregular bands round Bayazid and Erzerum and on the Persian frontier slaughtered mercilessly, and drove the miserable remnants into Russian territory. From April onward the whole of Eastern Anatolia, from Trebizond to Alexandretta, was the scene of systematic massacres. In a military history it is needless to dwell