CHAPTER XVII

OUR SMALLEST ALLY

Nine years have elapsed since the last chapter was written, and the hope with which it ends has been most tragically deferred. Nearer Asia has been swept by another of those great cataclysms with which its past history has rendered it but too familiar--in this case a back-wash only of a yet more worldwide catastrophe, but scarcely less devastating than the ravages of Genghis or Timour. Of those mentioned by name in our earlier chapters a large proportion have perished. Nay, whole communities and nations have been almost completely erased. And some brief epilogue is needed to tell of the fate that has befallen them, and to arouse some new interest among Englishmen in the future of those battered remnants whom their Treaties still pledge them to protect.

The most prominent place in our previous narrative has been given to the Assyrian Christians, and especially to the Ashiret mountaineers of Hakkiari, who formed the most virile and independent section of that tiny nation and Church. And it is but fitting that we should again give them precedence in the "Footnote to the History of the Great War" which we are now contributing; since, in this obscure corner of the stage upon which that portentous drama was enacted, they played perhaps the most prominent and assuredly the worthiest part.

The first news of the outbreak of war was brought to Mar Shimun at Qudshanis. He had just returned thither from Van, where he had been discussing Governmental business with the Vali. The discussions had been most amicable; and he had brought back with him a whole crop of promises for the redress of grievances--promises which he had accepted with becoming gratitude, but at the recognised rate of discount, having had ripe experience of the value at which they were apt to be redeemed. And he was far from feeling reassured by the startling tidings that now reached him; for all knew the sort of justice that the Ottoman reserved for his helots whenever the eyes of Europe might chance to be diverted elsewhere.

He soon saw an earnest of his misgivings in the sacking of isolated Armenian villages, and in renewed outbreaks of the feuds which were perpetually simmering on the Persian border between the Begzade Kurds and the Assyrians of Mergawar and Tergawar. A general massacre of all Christians began to be openly talked about; and when (in November) the expected happened, and Turkey entered the lists as a combatant, that event was signalised by the pillaging of all the Christian villages near Bashkala with the practically open approval of the local Ottoman authority.

The first open fighting, however, occurred in neutral Persia--a country which should (theoretically) have been out of bounds to both sides. But Urmi, though nominally Persian, had for years been practically administered by the resident Russian "consul," and the Turks were not altogether unjustified in electing to regard it as enemy territory. A mixed force of Turks and Kurds swept down from the mountains upon Urmi, massacring the wretched Armenians, and driving before them the struggling Assyrians from the villages of Mergawar and Tergawar. They felt so confident of victory that, when within a mile or two of the city, they flung away the reserves of bread that they had brought with them, relying on the promise of their leaders that next day they would be sacking the bazaars. And, verily, it looked as if they would be; for Urmi is only defended by a ruinous mud wall, and its sole effective garrison (apart from the Assyrian auxiliaries) was the Russian consular guard. But it was now discovered that the consul had also in reserve a considerable stock of arms and ammunition, and with these the clansmen were rearmed. An opportune Russian reinforcement arrived in the nick of time from Tabriz, and the great assault on the morrow was decisively and bloodily repulsed. The invaders recoiled to the mountains, where their ill-disciplined Kurdish levies dispersed; and soon another defeat of a second Kurdish force near Suj Bulak rendered the position at Urmi, at all events, temporarily secure.

But the Russian commanders were uneasy. Enver Pasha's invasion of Transcaucasia was by now beginning to make headway, and the Russians were recalling their detachments in Azerbaijan to meet the threat to Batum. They told the American missionaries that the utmost they could promise them was not to withdraw without full notice; and even this guarded promise proved illusory, for the very next morning brought them imperative orders from headquarters directing immediate evacuation. The whole Russian force marched off instantly--and in their train some 10,000 of the Christian population of Urmi, taking with them such scanty provision as they were able at the moment to collect. They saved their bare lives by their flight, and eventually the greater part of them found a miserable asylum at Tiflis; but the hardships of their journey, and of their prolonged exile, exacted a terrible toll.

The fate of those who remained proved that the fugitives' forebodings had been well grounded. Urmi was abandoned once more to the wretched misrule of the Persians; and the man who obtained chief authority was that same Mejid es Sultaneh of whom we have already spoken on page 215. In those days he had been generally regarded as one of the most enlightened and free-thinking of the Persian nobility. His reforming tendencies had earned him disgrace and exile; and it had been to the generosity of sympathetic English merchants that he had owed the preservation of his forfeited estates. But apparently the only lesson that he had been capable of learning from adversity was the wisdom of truckling to iniquity, and he now reappeared as a pan-Islamic fanatic of the most virulent and reactionary type.

The Persian magnates were as much averse to Turkish domination as to Russian, and might have been expected to evince some gratitude to their Christian neighbours for the prominent share they had taken in repelling the recent assault. But apparently they argued in their own minds that the very presence of the Christians had in some sort invited the invasion; that anyway they had helped the hated Russians, and that a general persecution of them would be the best way of conciliating the Turks.

So some hundreds of these poor wretches were massacred during the winter--driven out in batches of 50 or 60 to one or other of the neighbouring villages, and there mercilessly put to death. Among them were a batch of 70 from the Christian villages of Gawar, who had been impressed to act as porters by the Turks in the recent invasion and had given their captors the slip when the invading army took to flight. These were marched back towards Gawar and handed over to the Kurds--possibly the very men who had impressed them--by whom they were all knifed or clubbed to death.

In these massacres perished Mar Dinkha,[154] the Bishop of Mergawar; and we, who have laughed at his oddities must not omit to pay our tribute to the heroism of the old man's martyrdom. Utterly crippled by his injuries, he spent his last hours in prison crawling to and fro to comfort his fellow-sufferers--his last moments in bestowing absolution upon them as each in turn preceded him to death.

It should be noted by our phil-Islamites that, in nearly every instance, all these victims were offered their lives on the sole condition of apostasy. With Islam (when free to express itself) it is still "the Koran or the sword."

Mercifully the return of spring brought a respite from this reign of terror. Enver's invasion of Transcaucasia had been utterly crushed at Sara Hamish. The Russian outposts spread south again, and Urmi was reoccupied once more.

With the Assyrian tribesmen in the mountains the crisis had not developed so rapidly. The Turks themselves were anxious to defer it. Indeed, there is no valid reason to doubt that they would have liked to evade it altogether. This knot of hardy mountaineers ensconced in their rocky fastnesses were far more difficult to eradicate than ten times their number of Armenians--poor, spiritless hucksters and husbandmen dispersed in open villages and towns. There was little spoil to be won from them--many more hard knocks than ha'pence--and the force that would be needed to subdue them was wanted rather urgently elsewhere. Moreover, if they could only be cajoled into complacency they might prove quite a useful asset later as independent witnesses to character. The Armenian massacres were now really beginning, and the Turks were inflexibly resolved to persist in them to the uttermost. There could come no protests from Europe, but perhaps from America there might--and the presence of American missionaries in the country rendered it impossible for the facts to be altogether hid. It would be but prudent accordingly to prepare a line of apology, and to invest with some faint plausibility the plea that this monstrous holocaust had been "exaggerated," and that such "repressive measures" as had been adopted were really no more than were necessary to quell an incipient revolt. Such a plea might gain valuable corroboration from the fact that another Christian _millet_, living in the same provinces and under the same conditions as the Armenians, had nevertheless continued loyal to their suzerains, and had seen in the Turks' proceedings no cause of apprehension for themselves. On military grounds also the mountaineers were worth conciliating; for, if Turkish Armenia were invaded, this little garrison on their flank might sensibly hamper the defenders.

Thus, quite high bids were made for what the Turks called Assyrian loyalty, and what the Assyrians (clinging fondly to their traditional but shadowy independence) preferred to style alliance. Their Patriarch, their bishops, and their chiefs were all to be salaried. They were to be armed. They were to be allowed absolute freedom for education. And many of the Assyrian leaders felt certainly much tempted to clinch the bargain, and to adopt what (on the face of things) seemed manifestly the safer course.

But the very magnitude of these Greek gifts aroused the distrust of the majority. They knew well that Turkish promises were apt to prove so much "hot air." The arms and salaries were things that could never be expected to materialise. They doubted even the immunity which all these lavish promises implied. _Jehad_ had been proclaimed, and they were Christians in a Moslem country. Could the Turks guarantee them from the attacks of their turbulent Kurdish neighbours--attacks from which they had never been wholly exempt even in their most tranquil periods, and to which the proclamation of _Jehad_ would now give sanction and cohesion? Could they even rest assured that the Turks themselves would not attack them as soon as their hands were freed from the embarrassments which now beset them? They saw the fate that had overtaken their co-religionists, the Armenians and Jacobites; the fate that had befallen their own fellow-tribesmen in the outlying districts to the East. Every night brought their Patriarch news (for now none dared travel by day) of some fresh massacre perpetrated in some of their isolated villages. One night came five successive messengers from five different villages; and all closed their tidings with the same refrain, "I only am escaped to tell." Would it not be better to trust to their own right arms? To the chance of help from Russia, to the fainter chance of help from England? These nations had always befriended them, and with them their real sympathies lay.

Yet the peril was great and obvious. They were in the very jaws of the wolf, and who could blame them if they elected to play for safety? They could rest assured at all events that England and Russia would not. They might argue, with their Yezidi neighbours (and with a good many other more enlightened folk in less remote districts than Sheikh Adi) that it was safer to offend a good God, who might forgive, than a malignant Devil who assuredly would not.

Meanwhile the war was still distant, and no final choice was forced on them. Through the winter the nation wavered. But it was significant that the Patriarch quitted Qudshanis (which lay on the outskirts of his territory, and close to the Turkish garrison at Julamerk), and withdrew across the Zab into the rugged mountain fastnesses of Diz. This seemed to portend rejection of the Turkish overtures, yet in truth under what other conditions could he continue to negotiate with a Government which had just inaugurated the Armenian massacres by treacherously kidnapping and assassinating their chiefs?

Then, in the spring of 1915, the war took a turn in Russia's favour. The Turkish invasion of Transcaucasia was defeated, and the Russian invasion of Turkish Armenia began. A Russian army reached Van and relieved the Armenians beleaguered there; and a detachment thrust forward to Bashkala sent a formal invitation to the Assyrians to throw in their lot with the Allies. The invitation was boldly accepted; and the point that seems definitely to have turned the scale in favour of acceptance was the religious character that had been given to the war by the Turkish proclamation of _Jehad_. The Assyrians felt that they were now called to play their part on the side of Humanity and Christendom; and as soon as the call came definitely they braved all the risks that it involved.

But no doubt it is too much to assert that they were guided entirely by this higher motive. They were (as our previous chapters have indicated) a nation of fighters with a healthy, carnal appetite for what is vulgarly called "a jolly row." And they were probably swayed in the same direction by the fact that all their neighbours with whom they had long-standing and (in the main) very just causes of quarrel, were ranged on the contrary side. The war-song of _Shamasha_ Ephraim was soon in all men's mouths in the mountain villages, and some of its spirited lines deserve quoting as evincing the ardour with which they entered the war:

Brothers, up and arm you; 'tis the Turk assails you; Lo, the day is dawning when we march to meet the foe! Quit your flocks and cornfields, grip your trusty rifles, Forth we go to battle in the name of Mar Shimun.

Stand by one another, clansmen of the nation, Tkhuma by Tyari, and let Baz by Jilu stand. Like a band of brothers, hearts and hands united, Forth we go to battle in the name of Mar Shimun.

David is our leader, valiant in the combat, He is captain over us to lead us forth to war. Danger shall not daunt us, fear shall flee before us, Forth we go to battle in the name of Mar Shimun.

Young men of the nation, tribes renowned in story, Mighty men in battle were our fathers' kings of old. Raging through the valleys, storming o'er the mountains, Forth we go to battle in the name of Mar Shimun.

Nineveh the holy[155] beckons back her children; Know ye not her ancient walls shall be the victor's crown? There alone, Assyrians, shall our race be stablished, Forth we go to battle in the name of Mar Shimun.

Their valour was soon to be tested for scarcely had they committed themselves, when the Russians withdrew again northward and left them to fight it out alone. A formidable accumulation of enemies was promptly mustered against them, and within five weeks of their decision the Assyrians were battling for their lives. Mira Reshid[156] the tyrant of Berwar, led the confederated Kurds from the westward against Lizan and Lower Tyari and with him marched a strong contingent of regular troops from Mosul with batteries of mountain guns. Chumba and Upper Tyari were attacked by the Artosh Kurds and the regular troops from Julamerk. The Agha of Chal[157] brought his forces against Salabekan and Tkhuma; and Sutu Agha of Oramar assailed Jilu and Baz. The Christians were outnumbered on all sides and were much worse equipped than their enemies; for except for a small supply of rifles and ammunition which they had obtained from the Russians their arms were all sadly obsolete.

And yet the general result of this great combined attack was failure. Qudshanis was pillaged and burned and the Valley of Lizan was occupied. So also were the villages in the Sapna and Berwar valleys; but these were all open and isolated, and had never been regarded as tenable. The attacks on Jilu, Chumba and Salabekan were all three heavily repulsed. Thus, after a week's hard fighting the Assyrians had lost only the outskirts of their territory on the right (or western) bank of the Zab, and had kept all their key fastnesses (on the eastern side of it) intact. It was only the first round certainly, but the Turks had been foiled for a season; and it was hoped that the Russian operations in Armenia might eventually bring them relief.

Then followed a deed as brutal and dastardly as it was characteristically Turkish. Hormizd, Mar Shimun's eldest brother, a young man of three-and-twenty, had been at Constantinople for his education--at the Turkish Government's own invitation--for a period of over two years. As soon as Turkey entered the war, he had been arrested and placed in confinement, and obviously could have had no personal responsibility for any of the events that had occurred subsequently. He was now sent under guard to Mosul to be used for the foulest of blackmail.

The Vali of that city was no longer worthy old Tahir.[158] With the good luck that had generally attended him, and which he had generally merited, he had been gathered to his fathers little more than a twelve-month before. His successor, Haidar Beg, was a ruffian--a fit tool for higher placed ruffians--and this man now sent Mar Shimun the message: "Your brother is in my hands, and unless you surrender he dies."

The brothers were almost of an age. They had been bound together from infancy by ties of the closest affection. It is vain to hope that any words of ours can succeed in conveying to our readers the poignancy of the trial to which Mar Shimun now found himself subjected. But his choice was the choice of Guzman the Good. "My people are in my charge, and they are many," he answered; "how can I betray them for the sake of one, though that one be my brother?" And, on the receipt of this answer, Hormizd was put to death.

Mar Shimun had made two attempts to obtain further succour from the Russians during the five or six weeks' respite which succeeded the first attacks. And on the second occasion some reinforcement appears to have been sent, but it is not quite known at what period, while it is certain that it never arrived. For some years previous to the war common rumour had persistently credited the Russians with having secretly sapped the allegiance of many prominent chiefs among the Kurds; and as soon as war broke out it had been confidently expected that these men would turn against Turkey. How far this rumour was justified is perhaps known positively to no one; but it is certain that, while hopes of plunder and butchery lasted, the Kurds all sided with the Turks. Perhaps the Russians may have had some cause to think that the more prosperous aspect of their affairs in Asia Minor might now be prompting these double traitors to think better of their first bargain. Anyway a party of some 400 Cossacks was about this time pushed up from Urmi into Oramar. Sutu Agha received them most graciously, and sent two of his own sons with them to guide them on their further journey. But secretly he betrayed them into an ambush which he had prepared with the assistance of the Kurds of Shemsdinan, and in the deep Balanda gorge they were exterminated to the last man.

The second assault on the Assyrians was delivered in the middle of August; and this time the assailants had the formidable assistance of the Kurds of Barzan, who lay to the south of Tkhuma, and formed the connecting link between the co-ordinated assaults from Oramar on the east and from Berwar on the west. Our friend Sheikh Abdul Selim[159] was unhappily no longer their leader. The Government had always looked with a jealous eye on the tolerant "Sheikh of the Christians," and a few months earlier he had been enticed down to Mosul by the Vali Haidar Beg, and there secretly put to death.

It is doubtful perhaps whether, had he still been in power, he would have been able to resist the pressure put upon him by the _Hukumet_ (and by his own tribesmen) to play his part in an official _Jehad_. After all he was a Moslem, and a Turkish vassal, and a consistent contemner of Russians, so wherefore should he stand aside? But he might have proved a chivalrous, albeit a formidable, enemy, and his influence might have alleviated some of the vindictiveness of the campaign.

For this second assault was successful. It was from the southern side that the Christian valleys were most assailable; and Tkhuma, Baz, Jilu, and Tyari were ravaged from end to end. The churches and houses were burned, the fields wasted, the trees cut down, the irrigation channels demolished; and the valleys were thus rendered practically uninhabitable for years.

It was in this devastation that the famous church of Mar Zeia in Jilu[160] was plundered for the first time in its history--maugre that notable talisman that had always preserved it previously, the Charter of Protection granted to it (as believed) by Mohammed himself. But its fate was not quite unavenged. A fierce young Kurdish chieftain, the eldest son of Simco Agha of the Shekak Kurds, was the leader of the spoilers; and he (like Fanatic Brooke) had boasted that he would not rest till he had seen the ruin of every Christian church in the land. As he now stood at the door, watching the destruction of that wonderful and weird collection of age-old votive offerings, a bullet fired at extreme range took him in the head, and he dropped dead on the desecrated threshold.

But though beaten out of their valleys, the Assyrians were not yet done with. They now took refuge on their _Yailas_--the upland pastures on the laps of the mountains, 10,000 feet above sea-level--whither they had always been accustomed to drive their flocks and herds in summer, and where a considerable part of the nation used generally to remain encamped as long as the cattle were there. It was summer still, and the cattle had been driven there as usual: the _Yailas_ were, therefore, already well provisioned, and there is always water from the melting snows.

These strongholds are only approachable by a few precipitous pathways, and the Kurdish attempts to penetrate to them were everywhere easily repulsed. Raiding parties of Assyrians were even able to sally down from them into the valleys, and carry back small supplies of corn from the hidden granaries in the villages. Lack of salt was the chief privation that the bulk of the people suffered during their sojourn here, but salt is wellnigh a necessity to an Oriental; and their Patriarch, who (as a _Rabban_) was prohibited by his vows from eating flesh meat, was obliged to live almost entirely upon milk and parched corn.

But if the _Yailas_ were impregnable, there was yet one fatal defect in them. It is absolutely and utterly impossible for any creature to live there in winter. Autumn was already beginning; and, at these lofty altitudes, the first snows may fall as early as October. The Assyrians were virtually "treed" (to use an expressive Americanism); and their enemies, as fully conscious of the defect in their position as they were, were content to form a leaguer round them, and wait till they should come down to be killed.

In this almost hopeless position, Mar Shimun determined on making one final appeal to the Russians. Accompanied by one of his principal chiefs (the _Malik_ Khoshaba of Lizan) and by two other companions, he quitted the _Yaila_ of Shina[161] at the head of the Tal and Tkhuma gorges to make his way across the mountains and down to Urmi Plain. The whole intervening country was thickly beset with enemies; but, travelling mostly by night and with experienced guides, the little party succeeded in accomplishing their daring journey, and reached the Russian outposts near Salmas.

But only to meet disappointment. The local Russian commanders professed themselves utterly unable to render the least assistance, and could only offer the Patriarch the abjectly despairing counsel that, now he himself had escaped, he had better remain in safety, and not sacrifice his life uselessly by a vain attempt to return. Mar Shimun indignantly refused to rest even one night in safety, and turned back at once to the mountains to share his people's doom.

The outlook was now truly terrible, but the Assyrians were determined not to perish without one more struggle. They would attempt to break the leaguer and force their way down to Urmi Plain. Even for an uncumbered army this could hardly be thought a promising enterprise; and the tribesmen were but ill-armed and poorly disciplined. Moreover, they must endeavour to carry off with them their non-combatants--women and children. They would number in all about 25,000 persons, and flocks and herds besides. Their route, as all know who have travelled there, lay through one of the most rugged and most difficult of the mountain districts in Asia; and the paths are seldom wide enough for two men to walk on them abreast. It was a desperate expedient, but to stay was certain death. Surrender meant massacre, for there was no mercy either in Turk or Kurd; and if the worst came to the worst, it was better to die fighting. Moreover, they had leaders who knew how to make the most even of the slenderest chances; and the plan which they resolved to attempt was marked by all the hardihood and ingenuity of desperation.

The bulk of their foes lay to the eastward, blocking all the direct tracks to Urmi, and drawing their sustenance from the fertile fields of Gawar, where Nuri Beg had just completed a peculiarly atrocious massacre of the unarmed Christians of the plain. Therefore they would break out westward, where no one would dream of expecting them. They would march in two bands, lest their line should be strung out unwieldily--and perhaps with a tacit prevision like that of the patriarch Jacob, that if one band was caught and overwhelmed the other might have chances of escape. They would cross the Zab by the flimsy wooden bridges near the mouths of the lateral valleys of Diz and Tal.[162] Then, making a wide circuit northward, they would reunite on the further side of Julamerk, whence one more long day's march would bring them to Albaq (near Bashkala) and the pass that led to Salmas Plain.

And, in the face of all military probability, this daring plan actually succeeded. If the Assyrians were but poorly disciplined, the Kurds who beleaguered them were no better.

The pursuers who should have pressed on their tracks, as soon as they found that the _Yailas_ had been evacuated, stayed behind to quarrel over the division of such sheep as had been abandoned; and the isolated detachments that strove to check their progress were surprised by their sudden sally and easily brushed aside.

The Patriarch marched with the Tal column, and his march was marked by an incident as moving as it is picturesque. His route led him over a lofty mountain col near Julamerk,[163] whence for the last time he was able to look down upon the little green "alp" that marked the site of his own village of Qudshanis; and, as he paused to gaze, one natural sigh escaped him: "When shall I ever drink the waters of Qudshanis again?" The words were caught by as attentive ears as those of the three mighty men who followed the son of Jesse. Without a word to their chieftain a small party of devoted warriors broke away from the line of march, burst through the Kurdish picket that attempted to bar the path against them, and brought back to their beloved Patriarch a pitcher of water from the Qudshanis spring.

The columns from Tal and Diz joined hands again at Kotranis, and the reunited nation reached Albaq according to plan. Here they had one last struggle; for a body of Kurds from Gawar had crossed the Zab by one of the higher bridges and cut into their path ahead of them. But the pass was carried triumphantly by a detachment under Khoshaba of Lizan; and the Assyrians, saved by their own exertions, poured at last into Salmas Plain.

It was not a beaten host that arrived--or, at all events, no more beaten than that untamable Serbian army which, just at this very same period, was being driven from its own country by the combined Austrians and Bulgars. They had held their own against great odds as long as resistance was possible; and, when forced to retreat under appalling difficulties, they had brought away with them not only their women and children, but a large proportion of their flocks and herds as well. They had indeed suffered heavy losses in the fighting and many women and children had succumbed to the hardships of the retreat. But their spirit was still unbroken, as they were yet destined amply to prove.

Their irruption over the border of Persia introduced an additional complication into a medley of anomalies which was already quite complicated enough. Persia was nominally neutral, but too weak to enforce her neutrality; and both combatants were still professedly respecting a neutrality which their every act ignored.

Azerbaijan is an appanage of the _Vali Ahd_ (the Persian heir-apparent). The Governor of Urmi is consequently his nominee, and the Governor's Advisory Council are the Moslem notables of the place. But the infamous régime which these gentry had established during the previous winter had been promptly suppressed by the Russians as soon as they returned in the spring. The Governor still held his post--was he not still (nominally) Governor? But the only orders he was allowed to issue were those that were put into his mouth by the Russian "consul." And, if the Russian consul chose to take previous council with anyone, he consulted not the Moslem notables, but the despised local Christians, who possessed no _locus standi_ in the eyes of the Government at all. How intolerable this position must have seemed to a city full of fanatical Moslems will be appreciated by those who know the overbearing arrogance with which fanatical Moslems are accustomed to treat any Christian helots who may be subject to them, and the amount of swagger which an Oriental menial is apt to assume to celebrate his emancipation. But, grin as they might in secret, they did not dare do so openly in the presence of Russian soldiery; and, indeed, though he may be a bully, the Persian is generally a coward.

And now to complete their afflictions came this horde of ruffians from the mountains--men whom they despised, not merely as Christians, but as savages yet of whose physical prowess they were all mortally afraid; men who had lost their all, and who (so at least Urmi credited) had been accustomed from their cradles to regard robbery and bloodshed as their ordinary daily work. Here they were with arms in their hands and Urmi at their mercy.

Yet in truth (in the words of Dr. Macdowell of the American Hospital at Urmi) the newcomers "behaved much better than anyone could reasonably expect." They certainly plundered at first--not, indeed, in the district of Salmas where the Patriarch had settled himself, but in the neighbourhood of Urmi where there was no controlling hand. But it is certain also that the Persians who complained of them had themselves been asking for trouble rather importunately. Starving men with arms in their hands are apt to grow rather restive when they find conspicuously hard bargains being driven at their expense; and, having just saved their bare lives by means of their trusty weapons, they are mighty suspicious of invitations to surrender those weapons in exchange for a little food. Moreover, they had uglier treatment to complain of. Ijlal el Mulk, the Persian Governor of Urmi, came suddenly upon a party of Assyrians as he turned the sharp, rocky point at the northern end of the lake which is known as "Snatch-beard Corner," and promptly loosed his guards upon them in sheer panic terror, under the crazy delusion that they were an ambuscade. But even events like these were presently smoothed over; and, as there were plenty of deserted villages in the districts of Urmi and Salmas, the Assyrians found little difficulty in gradually suiting themselves with new homes.

Meanwhile they were not quite oblivious of the fact that "there was still a war on." Now, for the first time, they began to get adequately armed with modern rifles and ammunition from the Russian arsenals. And perhaps it deserves to be recorded that they took extremely kindly to bombing. Bombs made such noble detonations when used liberally in echoing ravines. Surma, the Patriarch's sister (as the only non-combatant who carried sufficient authority), was installed in charge of the ammunition depot; and, after living for months in a house crammed to the doors with high explosives, was amused to overhear a couple of her reckless tribesmen lamenting her pitiable "nervousness," because she had sternly prohibited their smoking when they came to fetch powder from the magazine.

They now grew distinctly assiduous in the payment of a series of return calls upon their lately exulting Kurdish enemies. Sutu Agha's stronghold at Oramar was captured and sacked; and this victory regained for them quite a lot of the plunder of Jilu. Chal fell to a well-planned raid under David, the Patriarch's brother; and the summer camps of the nomad Heriki[164] yielded quite a rich booty of sheep. These forays were conducted in much more gentlemanly fashion than the harrying of the Christian valleys in the autumn of 1915. The son of the Agha of Chal for instance, was captured at the fall of that fastness, and was at once released on a verbal promise that he would arrange an exchange of prisoners--a promise which (to the Kurds' credit) was for once loyally redeemed. "Grass soon grows over blood that has been shed in fair fight"; and if these courtesies were more often reciprocated by the Moslems we might entertain some hope of eventual peace in Kurdistan.

These diversions had at least the effect of immobilising a good number of Kurdish levies, who might otherwise have caused annoyance on the flank of the Russian advance to Erzerum; and the Russians rewarded this service by a lavish distribution of decorations which were immensely appreciated and universally worn. Mar Shimun himself received a personal letter of congratulation from the Tsar, and was welcomed with high distinction at Tiflis by the Grand Duke Nicholas.

Thus matters continued prosperous till the autumn of 1917, when the outlook again became fearfully overclouded by omens of Russian collapse. The munitions of war had never before been so plentiful as they were at this period in eastern Asia Minor. The arsenals of England, France, and America had been pouring material into the country to equip the armies of Russia. But the men for whom it was intended had no longer spirit to use it; and an Allied Commission had been despatched in hot haste to the Caucasus to try and rake together a few substitutes to replace their exhausted protagonist.

There was plenty of fighting spirit still to be found among the Assyrians and a certain dour gloomy inveteracy among some Armenian units further north. Between these lay the territory of Simco (_i.e._, Ismail) Agha of the Shekak Kurds; and the allied liaison officers conceived the notion that these three elements might be combined into a coherent line of defence.

Simco was the Agha whom we mentioned on page 228 as anxious to acquire a British consul's Mannlicher rifle at the price of his newly married wife. At Kotur he held a position of high strategic importance; and he commanded a considerable following, comprising some 2000 horse. He had participated two years previously in the combined attack on the Assyrians; but it was thought he would feel no scruples about changing sides, if it could be shown that it was worth his while. And certainly he had no cause to love the Persians; for his own brother (and predecessor in the chieftainship) was that same Jaffar who had been so foully assassinated at Tabriz by the ex-Shah when he was _Vali Ahd_.[165]

The scheme on the whole was a good one and its advantages were obvious. But it had one fatal objection--the connecting link was a Kurd. Hanpartsunian, the Armenian leader, was most reluctant to admit him to the league; and when Mar Shimun heard the proposal he shared his reluctance to the full. But in those days British officers were rather inclined to assume that Kurds were "indifferent honest." It is believed that after four years' experience of administration in Mesopotamia they would now vote this theory obsolete.

Despite their rooted prejudices to the contrary, the Armenian and Assyrian chieftains allowed themselves to be over-persuaded, and the plan won acquiescence from their followers. Simco embraced it with enthusiasm, and swore upon the Koran to keep faith with his Christian associates, protesting (somewhat anomalously) that he regarded the Assyrian Patriarch as "the Religious Head of Kurdistan."

This ill-assorted alliance was soon to be crucially tested. Some Russian assistance had been counted upon, and 250 Russian officers were to have undertaken the organisation of the combined force. But the officers never arrived; and what Russian force still remained in the district gradually melted away to nothing. Russia was no longer only a falling wall whose collapse might be averted by buttressing. The very bricks of which it was built had disintegrated, and resolved into the mud from which they had been made.

It was now February, 1918--not yet quite the darkest hour upon the Western Front, but already very nearly so. And in the East the collapse of Russia had completely convinced all waverers that Germany and her allies had virtually won the war. The all-conquering Mackensen was rumoured to be already on his way to assume the command at Mosul, and to besom the British out of Mesopotamia; and Ijlal el Mulk plucked up heart of grace, and issued a grandiose proclamation ordering the Assyrians to lay down their arms.

Mar Shimun wrote a letter of protest to Mukht-i-Shems, the Persian Governor of Tabriz, reiterating that his people were merely refugees, and carried arms solely for their own protection. But these were facts of which the Persians had, of course, been fully aware for two years and more. They did not want an apology--only a pretext for falling on their unwelcome guests.

Then abruptly the flash-point was reached. For some weeks an explosion had manifestly been growing inevitable, but what precisely caused it was never known. There was a sudden outbreak at Urmi--two days of sharp street fighting--and the Moslems were crushed decisively, and the Assyrians remained masters of the town.

Foiled utterly in open warfare, the Persians turned at once to their more familiar trade of treachery; and Mukht-i-Shems, the official representative of his nation, a Persian nobleman with an English education, wrote plainly to Simco Agha to tell him that he might earn the gratitude of the Persian Government by the assassination of Mar Shimun. The Kurd took the hint promptly. He had already been growing uneasy at the conviction that after all he had espoused the losing side; and now he wrote to Mar Shimun (who by this time had returned to Salmas), requesting that he would meet him at a conference to discuss the new situation caused by the Russian debacle.

The trap was cunningly baited. Such a conference seemed not merely desirable, but imperative. What could be more natural under the circumstances than a meeting between two sworn allies? And Mar Shimun, accompanied by his brother David and a few other friends, drove out to the Armenian village of Koni Shehr, which was the appointed meeting-place.

There were whispers that treachery was intended. An Armenian villager was told by a friendly Kurd: "There is no danger for _your_ folk"; and on this he at once sent off his son with a warning message, which was unhappily disregarded. As the party entered the house where the meeting was to be held, David pointed to a group of Kurds upon a neighbouring roof, and asked "what those fellows wanted." But the Patriarch had seemingly determined that he must "trust all in all, or not at all." "They only want to get a good view, I suppose," he answered, and passed in.

Simco received him most cordially. The ceremonial hospitality, which throughout the East is held to set the seal of inviolability upon the guest's person, was duly offered and accepted. The conference proceeded, and terminated without the least hint of disagreement; and Simco, with marked deference, conducted his guest to the door.

His turning back was the signal. There was a volley from the roof, and the Patriarch was shot dead. It was an almost literal repetition of the treachery perpetrated upon Simco's own brother by the _Vali Ahd_ eight years before. How David escaped is a mystery. He was wounded, but friendly Armenians snatched him into one of the adjoining houses and hid him till the search was over. In the ensuing confusion only one other member of the party was actually killed and the rest succeeded in escaping.

The Patriarch's body was treated with the grossest indignity--stripped, and flung out into the street. But afterwards it was reverently taken up by the Armenians and buried by their priest in the village church. In those medieval times to which Benyamin Mar Shimun belonged alike by character and training that church would be held to enshrine the relics of a martyr.

The almost incredulous fury with which the wild tribesmen learned the news of their beloved Patriarch's murder can, perhaps, be barely imagined by people less primitive than they. In the first gust of their rage they began a massacre of the Kurds in Urmi; but this was quickly arrested by the interposition of their chiefs. Polus a younger brother, was chosen as the Patriarch's successor; and under David and Khoshaba a strong force mustered to avenge his death.

With these two there marched a third leader. And among the many disreputable characters who "made good" during war-time, it can surely not be easy to find a parallel to Petros of Baz--that knavish exploiter of bogus Macedonian orphanages, whose shady antecedents were recounted on page 218. With the fruits of his youthful peculations he had acquired a prominent position in Urmi, no less than that of Ottoman consul. Thus, as soon as the war broke out, he was able to pose as a leader; and from the husk of a glib-tongued swindler there now emerged a born Captain of _guerilleros_, whose achievements during these later stages were among the most remarkable in the war. Like several others of his kidney, he has since (we regret to say) reverted. But assuredly, while the ball lasted it cannot be denied that this arch-thief showed a singularly handsome leg.

Simco's army was thoroughly routed and his castle at Chara captured; but he himself unhappily escaped and has since been allowed even by the allies of his victim, to reap all the profits of his crime. In his house was found the actual letter which he had received from Mukht-i-Shems prompting him to the Patriarch's murder. Can it be wondered that the wrath of the Assyrians burns yet more hotly against the Persian than it does against the Turk?

But the crushing of their false friend did not deminish the number of their enemies. The Christians were now threatened on all sides by Turk, by Kurd, and by Persian; and in Urmi they had to control a seething hostile community considerably more numerous than themselves. The British advance from Baghdad had still penetrated no higher than Tekrit, 250 miles to the southward; and all hope of Russian help was gone. They were still well off for munitions; but the bulk of the lavish supplies which had been intended for the armament of Russia had fallen into the hands of their enemies, and the Turkish armies in Eastern Asia Minor were now equipped as no Turkish armies in that district had ever been equipped before.

There still remained, however, some scattered contingents of Armenians--unhappily divided against themselves by bitter internecine dissensions--and with one of these led by a grim fighter named Andranik who commanded a personal following of about 5000, there was still some chance of effecting a junction. Petros got into communication with him, and a plan was concerted to this end.

Had the plan succeeded it is probable, in the light of subsequent events, that the Assyrians would have been able to keep their hold upon Urmi until the Armistice. But the Turks held the interior lines and Ali Ihsan, their commander in this district, was unluckily a General of considerable capacity. He flung himself across Petros' path as he pressed northward and repulsed his attempt to break through. Petros, better as a tactician than as a strategist, unhappily did not renew the assault at the moment when perseverance might have earned victory; and Ali Ihsan, in the nick of time, was able to turn upon Andranik, and beat him back after a long day's desperate fighting in the streets of Khoi.

Nevertheless the Assyrians still continued to present a bold front to their enemies; and for three months, under Petros' able leadership, they beat back in battle after battle all the attacks that were delivered against them both north and south of Urmi. They are said to have fought no fewer than fourteen actions in this time. In one of these, at Ushnu, they captured nearly 350 Turkish regular soldiers, besides 5 machine guns and 2 pieces of field artillery; and with almost unbelievable generosity these prisoners were released upon parole.

"But what of your Kurdish prisoners, Saypu?" we asked of the stalwart young warrior whose maiden exploit in arms we related on page 315.

"We took no Kurdish prisoners, Rabbi," replied Saypu grimly, "after the death of Mar Shimun."

Their humanity is more to their credit, since they knew well the fate of their kinsfolk in the outlying villages which they were forced to abandon, and might learn thence to what fate they themselves were doomed should they fail to make good their defence. Ali Ihsan had now gone southward to take over the command at Mosul, and to be defeated by General Marshall in the last battle of the war. The Turkish leader in the north was now Jevdet Bey, previously Vali of Van, the brutal son of kind old Tahir and brother-in-law of Enver Pasha, a man who had already earned eternal infamy by his pitiless massacres of the Armenians at Van. Now on one occasion he forced the entire population of a village, numbering it is said 700, and including all the women and children, to dig a deep trench for their own grave along the foot of a lofty mud wall. When the trench was finished they were marched into it. The wall was thrown down on the top of them; and every soul was buried alive. On another occasion a village, which had defended itself to the last cartridge, surrendered at last on fair conditions which the Turks solemnly confirmed by oaths taken on the Koran. Every male was immediately massacred; every female stripped and outraged, and then turned adrift naked to crawl to Urmi as she could.

Such incidents are, of course, but samples of hundreds of similar atrocities perpetrated by the Turks upon their Christian helots during the recent war. Neither is it permissible for any honest chronicler to leave them unrecorded, so long as there are any advocates for a policy of leaving Christians subject to Turks.

And the cruel mercies of Islam seemed now closing round the Assyrians. Their fighting force was steadily dwindling and now their ammunition was running out. The end was almost in sight; but once more there came a gleam of hope just as the last hope seemed extinguished, and an aeroplane appeared over Urmi on July 8th, 1918. It was saluted with a hot fusillade, for all, of course, deemed it Turkish. But presently it dawned upon someone that the tricoloured circles were not a Turkish emblem, and it was wildly welcomed to earth. Captain Pennington of the Royal Air Force had flown from Miani in the south over 150 miles of unknown and hostile country; and, having escaped his friends' bullets, was next nearly suffocated by their embraces, for all, of course, argued (Oriental-like) that their final relief was now assured.

But Captain Pennington was no more than the far-advanced scout of a woefully weak flying column, consisting of a machine-gun company and a squadron of the 14th Hussars; and these had only penetrated as far as the village of Sain Kaleh, 100 miles to the south. Yet he bore a message of hope. They had escorted thither a first instalment of money, munitions, and officers; and if only the Assyrians could gain touch with them these supplies might enable them to hold out.

But how could touch be established? Urmi was now menaced by a force of two Turkish divisions--the 5th from the north and the 6th from the south--and by large irregular levies of Kurds and Persians as well. It was agreed that Petros, with the Urmi division of his army, should attempt to clear the way to Sain Kaleh; and that the Salmas division should hold on to Urmi till his return. It was once more a desperate chance; but the Assyrians had only preserved themselves hitherto by taking a whole series of desperate chances. Unhappily, on this occasion, they could only partly win through.

Petros marched south, and, with his usual skill and daring, defeated the 6th Division at Suj Bulak, and drove them into the mountains towards Rowanduz. But, unfortunately, the 5th Division learned of his departure, and seized the opportunity to deliver a vigorous assault upon those who had remained behind. The line of the Nazlu River, which the Assyrians had sought to hold was forced; and the defeated mountaineers swept back in confusion upon Urmi. Panic seized upon that hapless city. Under the protection of the Assyrians it had become a sort of asylum of refuge for thousands of fugitives who had escaped from previous massacres; and now the whole Christian population--Assyrian and Armenian, men, women, and children--determined instantly on flight. Harvest had just been gathered, so they had food available, and enough beasts and vehicles to improvise some kind of transport; and soon the whole mob was trailing southward in an agony of terror and despair. Somewhere in that direction lay their last faint hope of survival, and, heedless of order or discipline, they fled in Petros' wake.

That flight was a ghastly tragedy, comparable perhaps, while it lasted, only to that terrible trek of the Calmuck Tartars so graphically depicted by De Quincey. Provisions, indeed, were adequate; and, had they been unmolested, the fugitives might have won through without very great loss or suffering. But their enemies swarmed on their tracks like wolves upon a drove of cattle. Even before they cleared the city the bazaar ruffians under Mejid es Sultaneh freed from the fear of their recent masters, were cutting the throats of the stragglers as they emerged from their houses; and hampered by hosts of non-combatants--dispirited and without cohesion--that long, slow, straggling convoy formed a fatally vulnerable prey. The mountaineers, indeed, suffered less than the townsfolk as being more accustomed than they to conditions of trek and battle. It was even said, unkindly but plausibly, that the Tyari men eventually reached their journey's end not only with all their women, but with more sheep than they had at the start. But for all the conditions were terrible enough. Men were slaughtered by hundreds; women stripped and outraged; girls borne off to Mussulman harems; and many who dropped from the ranks were seen to roll themselves in filth and ordure in the hope of escaping the violation which they knew was their probable fate. It must be within the mark to state that at least 15,000 persons--a fourth of the whole number--perished in those dreadful days.

The British were no longer at Sain Kaleh. Petros had been a week late at his rendezvous, and they had strict orders not to linger in such a perilously advanced position. But happily they were not beyond recall, and, with Petros' army to back them, they now hurried back to bring aid. That handful of well-armed and disciplined men fell like a thunderbolt into the midst of the disorderly hordes of the pursuers, and, ignorant what force might be following, these scattered before them in dismay. There was one instance where seven men equipped with a Lewis gun, and led by Captains Savage and Scott-Ollson, dashed at a force of several hundred Kurds who were besetting a group of fugitives, and drove them off in confusion--a feat that might have earned a lay in the annals of the Round Table.

It took three days' sharp fighting to complete the rescue, for the fugitives only struggled in by driblets and the Kurds and Persians who clung to them were loth to relinquish their prey. But at last the Assyrians' purgatory was over. The column was re-formed at Sain Kaleh and proceeded by easier stages 200 miles further southward to Hamadan. They were blamed for plundering on this march; and, undoubtedly, they did plunder wholesale. But what wonder? They were utterly destitute and had surely every possible excuse for regarding Persia as an enemy country. And be it recorded to their honour that by the admission even of their enemies, and though the atrocities that their own women had suffered were still fresh in their memories even now no Mussulman woman was insulted or maltreated by them.

Early in September they were transferred to the great refugee camp which had been prepared for their reception at Baquba on the Diala near Baghdad; and here they were established when Turkey sued for peace a few weeks later. Not less than two-thirds of their nation must have perished in their four years' trial; but, like Sir Hugh Percy, they had "saved the bird in their bosom," and assuredly had no cause for shame in the plucky part that they had played.

The fate of their neighbours, the Armenians, is already too well known to be dwelt upon, but, alas! too little regarded, for us to pass over it even here. We have sketched the horrors endured by one small sister community--a community whose position was admittedly much more defensible, and whose stout-hearted resistance enabled them to avert the worst. Multiply those horrors twenty fold to allow for the greater numbers of the Armenians. Double them again for the helplessness that robbed them of self-defence. And our minds are incapable of grasping the scope of a butchery more hideous and widespread than any that has horrified Asia since the ravages of the Tartar hordes. "Then there took place such wholesale slaughter and unrestrained looting and excessive torture and mutilation as is hard to hear spoken of, even generally; how think you, then, of the details? There happened things I dare not mention, therefore imagine what you will."[166]

Nay, the Tartar massacres after all were mostly perpetrated in hot blood, and in days that followed close upon battles; but these advisedly, upon unresisting helots, and persistently for months and years. In these the blind fury of the fanatic and the blood-lust of the Kurdish robber were deliberately manipulated by cool-headed and calculating administrators. And even Abdul Hamid's cruelty was not so coarse and stupid as that of the low-bred upstarts who now reigned in his room.

Talaat Pasha's own letters are extant to prove how he hounded on his underlings to the butchery; how he dismissed and disgraced those who shrank from the ghastly tasks imposed upon them; nay, even those who permitted the slightest alleviation of horrors at which their souls sickened; how he insisted repeatedly and categorically that not even children must be spared. And Enver and Djemal, his fellow-triumvirs, seconded him inexorably in all.

That some Turks did venture on protests we are ready to admit gladly; but with the bulk of the nation the crime was actually popular. No Mollah raised his voice to denounce it; and there was never the least difficulty in finding plenty of willing executioners. The crime was the crime of the Ottoman nation and of the Stamboul Caliphate, and the criminals are still rejoicing in the success and impunity of their crime.

The programme of massacre was identical in practically every district. First, the chief local leaders of the Armenians (Parliamentary Deputies and so forth) were quietly entrapped and assassinated before their vague forebodings had ripened into serious alarm. Then those who had been called up for military service (of course, the pick of the nation) were disarmed, drafted into labour battalions, and set to road-making and other tasks in remote and sparsely populated districts, where they were soon worn out with hard work, exposure, and starvation, or shot down at leisure in idle sport by their armed guards. Then all the better class townsfolk--doctors, teachers, merchants, tradesmen, and artificers--were arrested, formed into columns, and marched away from their homes, ostensibly for some distant destination. It was arranged that armed Kurds (or their own escort) should fall upon them during the journey; and all that was known of them subsequently was that they had never arrived. The villages and towns were then sacked in detail, and the men almost all exterminated, though young and good-looking girls were reserved for the Mussulman harems. If any pretext were needed, it was generally supplied by demanding the surrender of a stated number of rifles, which it was assumed that the villagers were concealing, and torture was often applied to extort what they had never possessed.

Then the "Red Massacres" were over, and the "White Massacres" started. The victims of these were mostly the miserable women and their children--practically all who still survived. These were formed up into columns and literally marched to death. With bleeding feet, starving and unsheltered, they were driven pitilessly forward--day after day, week after week--on a march that was never intended to have any ending till the last of them had dropped and died. And such of them as survived to cross the Taurus were finally thrust forth into the bleak foodless waterless desert; Talaat professing with fiendish effrontery that he was thus "colonising Mesopotamia."

Surely if ever assassination was justified it was in the death of this monster, and it is the shame of all Europe that it was to an assassin that they left the task.

We have said that some Turks protested, and were deprived of their offices for protesting. The Vali of Aleppo and the Mutaserif of Mardin were two of these. In some towns the Moslem population presented petitions against the massacres. In Urfa--even in fanatical Urfa--there was one such petition sent in. Diarbekr was true to its grim traditions, and here there was no relenting. Here the notables of the city had formed a "Committee for the Study of the Armenian Question," and the fruit of their "Studies" was a revival of Carrier's infamous _noyades_. The clothes of which the victims were stripped before they were flung overboard were, with sickening shamelessness, sold openly by their executioners in the bazaar.

At Mosul the sword was stayed; we cannot conceive for what reason. But perhaps the Arabs, though equally keen robbers, were not found such practised butchers as the Kurds.

Jevdet Bey, the Vali of Van, was one of the most relentless murderers; and the thoroughness of his methods in the villages of his _Vilayet_ even caused him to be employed as an expert in redeeming slackness elsewhere. But of Van city itself--thanks to its proximity to the frontier--he made rather a botched job. Aram, the Tashnakist whom we mentioned in an earlier chapter[167] was by accident absent from the city when the other two local leaders were assassinated. The Armenians took alarm betimes and stood on their defence.

Van was a large sprawling city, and the Armenians formed rather the larger half of the population. They had much previous experience of massacres and alarms of massacre; and they now drew together instinctively in their own quarter of the Garden City, and fortified themselves with abattis and barricades. They sent a message to their Moslem fellow-citizens that they had no quarrel with them and were only defending themselves against the Vali. And the Moslems replied sympathetically though they said they would be obliged to fight.

Perhaps it was owing to their lukewarmness that Jevdet, though supported by the regular soldiers of the garrison, never ventured to deliver a formal assault upon the entrenched quarter; but there was much desultory fighting, and most of the city was burned. Jevdet relied principally upon blockading his victims, and reducing them by hunger; and, to quicken their surrender, he even refrained from massacring the few surviving villagers, and drove them into the entrenchments to help in consuming supplies. After four weeks' leaguer this scheme was on the point of succeeding, when suddenly the despairing Armenians saw their enemies preparing to withdraw. The Russians advancing from Sara Hamish had approached within striking distance, and next day Van was relieved.

When the Russians withdrew a little later the Armenians, of course, fled with them, and took refuge across the border, near Tiflis and Erivan. How many of them, we wonder, have survived their later tribulations--war, famine, typhus, internecine strife and Bolshevism?

And the motive for all this butchery? The alleged "plot" is merely a subterfuge. The Armenians would, no doubt, have welcomed the coming of the Russians; what subject race in Turkey would not? But, until the Russians arrived, they were no more a menace to the rear of the Turks than the citizens of occupied Belgium were to the rear of the Germans. There is something, perhaps, in the suggestion that one motive was sheer plunder. Many Armenians were wealthy; and the Turks, impoverished by a series of wars, were intent on seizing their wealth, never reflecting that by the extermination of their cleverest traders, and their best artificers and husbandmen, they were only consigning themselves to a deeper and more hopeless poverty. There was certainly also a religious motive; for, though we can hardly say that the profession of Islam would in all cases have secured quarter, yet it is certain that this was made an essential condition in the sparing of the few who were spared. And what but religious bigotry could have involved the Jacobites in the fate of the Armenians? There was no plot to fear from the Jacobites. They had neither the cohesion nor the national aspirations of the Armenians. Their escapes in previous massacres prove that the Turks could have spared them if they wished. And yet this time they were not spared.

But professed infidels like Talaat and Enver are not swayed by religious bigotry. It was national and political bigotry that was the ruling motive with them. They only consented to the sparing of apostates because apostasy in those regions sets the seal upon the abjuration of nationality. And in the Ottoman Empire they meant the Turk to reign alone. In their extirpation of the Armenians the Young Turks were carrying out a deliberate national policy, conceived by the Old Turks more than a generation before. And the Young Turks, taking it over, had only been waiting their opportunity till the preoccupation of Europe should leave their hands untied.

It only remains to add that the Yezidis were not massacred. And, even in such a plethora of massacres, it is strange they should have suffered such neglect. We can only suppose that _Melek Taüs_, seeing all idle hands so desirably occupied, devoted his unaccustomed leisure to taking care of his own.