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ARMENIA IN MODERN TIMES 307
ambassadors and consuls could do little or nothing in that
respect, their reports furnish a pitiless exposure of the mis
deeds of their ally. The long list of ghastly documents and
the unparalleled inhumanity of the atrocities committed make
it perfectly clear that the whole thing was carried out in
accordance with a plan carefully laid by the Young Turkish
leaders and their committee. The cowardly fashion in which
the Turks subsequently denied that there had been any
atrocities, and that everything had been done intentionally
and according to plan, does not make their case any better.
The German ambassador, Baron Wangenheim, wrote to
Berlin on June 17, 191 5, that " Tala’at Bey has ... openly
stated that the Porte wished to take advantage of the oppor
tunity offered by the war to make a clean sweep of their
enemies at home without being troubled by foreign diplomatic
intervention." And on July 7, 191 5, he writes again that
the fact of the deportations also taking place in provinces
which are not in danger of a hostile invasion, and the way
in which they are being carried out, " show that the
Government is really aiming at the extermination of the
Armenian race in the Ottoman Empire." On July 10, 1916,
Count Metternich telegraphed to Bethmann-Hollweg, the
Imperial Chancellor, that the Turkish Government had refused
to be deterred by the German representations " from carrying
out their programme of solving the Armenian problem by
exterminating the Armenian race."
A telegram in cipher sent on September 15, 191 5, runs
as follows :
To the Police Office at Aleppo.
It has already been reported that by the order of the Committee
the Government have determined completely to exterminate the
Armenians living in Turkey. Those who refuse to obey this
order cannot be regarded as friends of the Government. Regard
less of women, children, or invalids, and however deplorable the
methods of destruction may seem, an end is to be put to their
existence without paying any heed to feeling or conscience.
Minister for the Interior.
Talart.1
1 A photographic reproduction of this cipher telegram is given in Åge M.
Benedictsen’s Armenien, p. 259, Copenhagen> 1925.
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