Volume 2 — "THEY BOWED THE KNEE BEFORE HIM"
Reading edition
The extermination of Armenian Christians, Autumn of 1915
These atrocities had as their deliberate object the extermination of the Armenian race, and it is not difficult to assess the guilt. The guilt lay with the Young Turkish Government at Constantinople and with the local officials who acted in collusion with them. But there was a greater criminal even than the Young Turkish Government, for behind Turkey stood the country that was Turkey's ally and the dominant partner in the policy she pursued. There was a considerable variation in the conduct of individual Germans in Turkey. The German missionaries seem to have stood laudably by their principles, and the German Vice-Consul at Erzerum is said to have sent the exiles relief. But in the Aleppo province and Cilicia the German officials, both military and civil, threw themselves actively into the Young Turks' scheme; at Moush and Van German officers are believed to have participated directly in the slaughter, and at Erzerum they are reported to have taken their share of the Armenian girls.
Times History of the War.
