The Daily News. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1915. ARMENIAN ATROCITIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 September 1915, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1915. ARMENIAN ATROCITIES.

The Turks have earned an unenviable notoriety for unbridled cruelty in their treatment of the Bulgarians and Armenians. It would seem as if they were bound to have some nation which would serve as a vent for their horrible cruelties and atrocities, and now that Bulgaria is out of the sphere of their Just for murder *«id rapine the full coirent of their vengeance U descending with terrible fores an Die Armenians, For practically thirty years past the juxtapositiovi of turbulent and bitterly hostile Mohammedans and Artncr.iafls in Asia Minor has resulted 5a the continual persecution and brutal Massacre (if Von latter, chiefly by the tartaric Kurda, to whom slaughter to the tTsath of life. Again and again hAi the Sultan of Turkey been presasd !r, iSw Powers to institute administrative reforms that wo'.-ld afford protection for tho Armenians, but all in vain. The trouble dates ;.ack for centurics ; being reallj clao to the antagonism of the Crescent asd the I Cross. In 18IM there was a terrible slaughter of Artviciiians at Sassun, which aroused deep indignation throughout Europe, and massacres, with other cruelties, have been intermittent ever since, some seven or eight thousand Gregorian Armenians being massacred. These oppressed people are entirely at the mercy of the Turks, and it is estimated that after ISC6 some 50,000 of them have been put to death, while the destruction of their property has been enormous. Recent cables have notified a recrudescence of these horrors, for in addition to the massacres which took place not long since, we are now told that 800,090 Armenians have been deported from Asia Minor to the interior of Turkey, a significant detail being that only about a third will reach their | destination. Women and girls have been ! sent to Turkish harems, and babies auctioned at Constantinople. It is | almost inconceivable that in thia era isuch atrocities could be perpetrated, nor could they except by the unspeakable j Turk, and the equally unspeakable German. One stands aghast at the change which Time has wrought on the Armenians. When we realise that the history of these people dates back before the Flood, and that it was on the top of the highest mountain of Armenia that was the ascribed resting place of Noali's Ark, we may well feel the deepest pity for this ancient race. It is the irony of fate that their history ceased as suddenly as it begun, in the second half of the seventh century 8.C., owing to their country being over-run by the great Indn-Gcrmanic invasion of barbarians, and that now their possible extermination is being attempted by the ally of the Germans, whose barbaric cruelties only fall little short of those of the Turks. When wo come to the root of this great evil and find that it is intense religious hatred—the undying antagonism of the Mahommedans towards the Christians—it seems to call down bitter shame on the Christian Powers that this prolonged persecution should have been permitted. The only excuse that is offered is that of political expediency—the maintenance of Turkey as a buffer State. That reason no longer holds good,

for Turkey is doomed, and the abominationa now being coinmitteed by the Turks in the dying hours of their national existence should act as a spur to the Allies to sweep these monsters of iniquity off the face of the earth as speedily as possible. Christianity demands the protection of Christian people from relentless persecution, and no efforts should be spared to effectively accomplish this end. It is a terrible commentary on the two thousand years' teachings of Christianity that such horrors as the Armenians have experienced Bhould be now possible.