ARMENIA.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 348, 1 December 1915, Page 3

ARMENIA.

BLOOD - CURDLING ATROCITIES,

THE LATEST EVIDENCE,

LONDON, Nov. 28.

Viscount Bryce, in a letter . to the newspapers, states that the latest evidence of the atrocities in Northern and Eastern Anatolia confirms the dreadful certainty of the horrible story. The civilised world is powerless to intervene at present, but must bear the unspeakable crimes in constant memory against the final day of reckoning.

A careful estimate of the loss of life to the loth of August puts it at over half a million.

The Turkish police are constantly using whips and clubs, and many women are black and blue.

A eorresopndent at Tiflis states that Djaved Bey was expelled from Van, and may have fled southward. Eight thousand soldiers, whom he called the "butcher battalions’’ massacred most of the Christians at lairt, ordering the soldiers to burn two Armenian bishops in the public square.

The Turks at Mush, early in July, disarmed the Armenians in order to secure large ransom for notables of the town. The headmen in the villages subjected them to revolting tortures. Their finger-nail's, and then their toe-nails, were forcibly extracted, and their teeth knocked out. In some cases their noses were whittled, the victims dying in lingering agonies. The Armenians at Mush then en trenched themselves in churches and stone-built houses, and fought for four days, but th Turkish artillery, manned by German officers, broke down the positions, and every mm was killed.

The Moslem rabble then descended on the Armenian women and children, and drove them into large camps. The ghastlv scene was incredible, but it was confirmed beyond doubt. The Turks set fire to largo wooden sheds at Aliejan, Modgrakom, Uhaskegh, and other vilages, roasting the helpless women and children to death. Many threw their children away. Some knelt down and prayed amid the flames. Others shrieked for help, but their executioners were unmoved. With uuparalllcd savagery they grasped the infants by one leg tin hurled them into the fire, calling out

to the burning mothers: “Here are

your cubs. ’ ’

Thirty thousand Turks and Kurds surrounded fifteen hundred in the lull country of Sahun. The mountaineer's put up a desperate struggle. Men, women, and children fought witn knives and scythes, and rolled blocks of stone down the steep slopes. During the final hand-to-hand combat, the women were seen thrusting knives into the throats of the Turk;. When every man was killed, several young women, some with infants in their arms, threw themselves from rocks to avoid capture.