Note 247 — A SUMMARY OF ARMENIAN HISTORY UP TO AND INCLUDING THE YEAR 1915. (continued 2)

Proclamations announcing and justifying the deportation of the Armenians are quoted in Docs. 83 and 120 of this volume, while the alleged text of one of them has been published complete in the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post of the 5th February, 1915, and is reproduced here as Annexe C. to this summary. The latter document differs in its wording and in the order of its clauses from the versions quoted in the places mentioned above, but there is no reason to doubt its genuineness. Probably the Central Government communicated its instructions to the local authorities by telegraph or secret despatch, and the local authorities embodied these instructions, at their own discretion, in a printed proclamation to the inhabitants of their province.