Apcar, Diana Agabeg. The Peace Problem.

23 THE PEACE PROBLEM “I may add that I never heard a word about this matter from any person connected with the British Embassy. I have not seen any person connected in any way with the Embassy for moths, and never at any time heard any opinion expressed by any person in or connected with the Embassy regarding this or any other aspect of the Adana massacre.

My informant also told me that his knowledge was derived wholly from Turkish sources, and that he had heard nothing about this affair from any English source.

“If this is true, it shows how well-informed the Armenians were as to the intentions of the Young Turks, and it explains several things which were previously a mystery to me.”

Sir William Ramsay always brings forward the palliative suggestion that the fear of an insurrection on the part of the Armenians prompted the massacres. As far as the second massacre of Adana is concerned, what insurrection could the government fear from a wounded, famished and homeless crowd, composed of the greater part of women and children; but there was an actual insurrection on the part of the Turks at Constantinople against the Constitutional Government. Why did not then the government massacre Turks wholesale? And what insurrection could the Constitutional Government fear as coming from a nation that had taken such an appreciable part in establishing the Constitution? The Armenian revolutionary societies had voluntarily laid down their arms with the inauguration of the Constitution, and, as I have said before, the plan of the coup d’etat which gave Turkey a Constitutional Government emanated from the head of an Armenian.

I may also add that strict instructions were sent from Constantinople before either the first or second massacre began not to touch the foreigners. “Do not touch the Europeans,” was the pass parole of the massacres; and it was not only the German traders in Adana who appealed for protection before the massacres began, but months previous the Armenian bishop of Adana, Moushegh Seropian, the Armenian Catholicos of Sis, seversl prelates, and several responsible Armenians repeatedly and repeatedly appealed to the Central Government through the intermediary of the Armenian Patriarch at Constantinople and also to the government of Adana. Bishop Seropian even offered his own head and the head of the Catholicos of Sis as hostages to the Governor of Adana for the fealty of the Armenians to the Constitution. But the Governor of Adana, Djevad Bey, was one of the principle organizers of the massacres, and all the Armenian appeals, both to the local and central government, to take precautionary measures against a Moslem outbreak were naturally disregarded; and after the massacres the government of Young Turkey publicly accused Bishop Seripian of inciting and instigating strife.

It is also known now that the slaughter of Cilicia would have been continued for a longer period and have extended over a wider area if the bloody hand of Young Turkey had not been arrested by the action of the “Armenian Benevolent Union,” whose headquarters are at Cairo, and of which Paul Nubar Pasha, the son of Nubar Pasha, is President. When the news of the massacre raging in Cilicia reached Egypt the “Armenian Benevolent Union” took immediate measures to secure a decree from the President of “Al-Azhar” denouncing the mal-treatment to the Mahommedan communities