With Our Soldiers in France Part 10

APPENDIX II

EXTRACTS FROM "THE TREATMENT OF ARMENIANS"

BY

VISCOUNT BRYCE

From Four Members of the German Missions Staff in Turkey to the Imperial German Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Berlin: "Out of 2,000 to 3,000 peasant women from the Armenian Plateau who were brought here in good health, only forty or fifty skeletons are left. The prettier ones are the victims of their gaolers' l.u.s.t; the plain ones succ.u.mb to blows, hunger, and thirst. Every day more than a hundred corpses are carried out of Aleppo. All this happened under the eyes of high Turkish officials. The German scutcheon is in danger of being smirched for ever in the memory of the Near Eastern peoples."

Events in Armenia, published in the _Sonnenaufgang_, and in the _Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift_, November, 1915: "Twelve hundred of the most prominent Armenians and other Christians were arrested; 674 of them were embarked on thirteen Tigris barges, the prisoners were stripped of all their money and then of their clothes; after that they were thrown into the river. Five or six priests were stripped naked one day, smeared with tar, and dragged through the streets. For a whole month corpses were observed floating down the River Euphrates, hideously mutilated. The prisons at Biredjik are filled regularly every day and emptied every night--into the Euphrates." . . .

From a German eye-witness: "In Moush there are 25,000 Armenians; in the neighborhood there are 300 villages, each containing about 500 houses.

In all these not a single male Armenian is now to be seen, and hardly a woman. Every officer boasted of the number he had personally ma.s.sacred. In Harpout the people have had to endure terrible tortures.

They have had their eyebrows plucked out, their b.r.e.a.s.t.s cut off, their nails torn off. Their torturers hew off their feet or else hammer nails into them just as they do in shoeing horses. When they die, the soldiers cry: 'Now let your Christ help you.'"

Memorandum forwarded by a foreign resident at H.: "On the 1st of June, 3,000 people (mostly women, girls, and children) left H. accompanied by seventy policemen. The policemen many times violated the women openly.

Another convoy of exiles joined the party, 18,000 in all. The journey began, and on the way the pretty girls were carried off one by one, while the stragglers from the convoy were invariably killed. On the fortieth day the convoy came in sight of the Euphrates. Here they saw the bodies of more than 200 men floating in the river. Here the Kurds took from them everything they had, so that for five days the whole convoy marched completely naked under the scorching sun. For another five days they did not have a morsel of bread, nor even a drop of water. They were scorched to death by thirst. Hundreds upon hundreds fell dead on the way, their tongues were turned to charcoal, and when, at the end of five days, they reached a fountain, the whole convoy naturally rushed towards it. But here the policemen barred the way and forbade them to take a single drop of water. At another place where there were wells, some women threw themselves into them, as there was no rope or pail to draw up the water. These women were drowned, the dead bodies still remaining there stinking in the water, and yet the rest of the people later drank from that well. On the sixty-fourth day, they gathered together all the men and sick women and children and burned and killed them all. On the seventieth day, when they reached Aleppo, there were left 150 women and children altogether out of the whole convoy of 18,000."

APPENDIX III

LINES WRITTEN BY A SOLDIER IN THE

ENGLISH ARMY ABOUT MARCH, 1916.

_Christ in Flanders_

"We had forgotten You or very nearly, You did not seem to touch us very nearly.

Of course we thought about You now and then Especially in any time of trouble, We know that You were good in time of trouble But we are very ordinary men.

And there were always other things to think of, There's lots of things a man has got to think of, His work, his home, his pleasure and his wife And so we only thought of You on Sunday; Sometimes perhaps not even on a Sunday Because there's always lots to fill one's life.

And all the while, in street or lane or byway In country lane in city street or byway You walked among us, and we did not see.

Your feet were bleeding, as You walked our pavements How did we miss Your foot-prints on our pavements; Can there be other folk as blind as we?

Now we remember over here in Flanders (It isn't strange to think of You in Flanders) This hideous warfare seems to make things clear, We never thought about You much in England But now that we are far away from England We have no doubts--we know that You are here.

You helped us pa.s.s the jest along the trenches Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches, You touched its ribaldry and made it fine.

You stood beside us in our pain and weakness.

We're glad to think You understand our weakness.

Somehow it seems to help us not to whine.

We think about You kneeling in the Garden Ah! G.o.d, the agony of that dread Garden; We know you prayed for us upon the Cross.

If anything could make us glad to bear it 'Twould be the knowledge, that You willed to bear it Pain, death, the uttermost of human loss.

Tho' we forgot You, You will not forget us.

We feel so sure that You will not forget us.

But stay with us until this dream is past-- And so we ask for courage, strength, and pardon, Especially I think, we ask for pardon, And that You'll stand beside us to the last."

APPENDIX IV

LETTER FROM LORD KITCHENER TO HIS MEN

"You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy. You have to perform a task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience.

Remember that the honor of the British Army depends upon your individual conduct. It will be your duty not only to set an example of discipline and perfect steadiness under fire, but also to maintain the most friendly relations with those whom you are helping in this struggle. The operations in which you are engaged will, for the most part, take place in a friendly country, and you can do your own country no better service than in showing yourself, in France and Belgium, in the true character of a British soldier.

Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind. Never do anything likely to injure or destroy property, and always look upon looting as a disgraceful act. You are sure to meet with a welcome and to be trusted; and your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust.

Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. So keep constantly on your guard against any excesses. In this new experience you may find temptations both in wine and women. You must entirely resist both temptations, and while treating all women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.

Do your duty bravely.

Fear G.o.d.

Honor the King."

Kitchener, Field-Marshal.