country. Here the eastern and north-eastern frontiers of Turkey, across
which lie the province of Russian Trans-Caucasia and Persia, pass
through the middle of districts peopled by men of Armenian blood, and
when, in the autumn of 1914, the Turks made their entry into the
European War, their eastern armies, operating against Russia, found
themselves confronted by troops among whom were many Armenians, while in
their advance into the Persian province of Adarbaijan, there were in the
ranks of their opponents, Armenians and Syriac Christians. They advanced
in fact, in the first weeks of the war, into a country largely peopled
with men of the same blood as those on their own side of the frontier.
Though the edict had not yet come from Constantinople for the massacre
of the Armenians (Talaat Bey did not complete his arrangements till the
following April), the slaughter of them began then, first in the advance
of the Turkish armies, and following on that movement, which lasted but
a few weeks, in their subsequent retreat before the Russians. All
villages through which the Turkish armies passed were plundered and
burned, all the inhabitants on whom the Turks could lay their hands were
killed. Sometimes women and children were given to the Kurds, who formed
bands of irregular troops in conjunction with the Turkish army, and
these were outraged before they were slaughtered. A price was put on
every Christian head, and in the Turkish retreat the corpses were thrust
into the wells in order to pollute them. The excuse for this, as given
by German apologists (not apologists, perhaps, so much as supporters and
adherents of the policy), was that since behind the Turkish lines the
country was populated by a race of the same blood as that through which
they advanced, and then retreated, extermination was necessary in order
to prevent or to punish treachery and collusion. But I have been nowhere
able to find that there were instances of such, nor that the Turks put
forward that excuse themselves. Indeed it would have been an unnecessary
explanation, for but a few months after the opening of the war, Talaat