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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
318
to exterminate in the persecutions of 191 5 and 191 6 cannot
be ascertained with complete certainty. Starting from the
statistics before the war, which showed that there were then
1,845,450 Armenians in Turkey, Dr. Lepsius came to the
conclusion in 191 9 that about one million of these had been kil/ed
or had died during the interval, as 845,000 were still alive. Of
these latter, about 200,000 were living in their hornes in
Turkey, about 200,000 were scattered, about 250,000 had fled
to Transcaucasia, and about 200,000 were supposed to be still
surviving as famine-stricken beggars in the concentration
camps of Syria and Mesopotamia. According to this compu
tation the Turks exterminated, during the years in question,
more than one-third of the whole Armenian people.
Not content with driving out and destroying endless hosts
of despairing people, the Turkish authorities took all the
property of the Armenians in Anatolia, valued at hundreds of
milUons of pounds. Their amazing inhumanity was due to
no religious fanaticism either in the leaders or in the Turkish
people. The Young Turks were indifferent to religion, and
to give the Turkish-speaking population their due, they were
not as ready to begin looting and massacring as the authorities
wished ; in some places they even resisted the deportation
of the Armenians, and some Turkish officials refused to obey
orders and tried to save the Armenian population. But the
authorities soon overcame such difficulties, and too compas
sionate officials were either removed or murdered. The whole
plan of extermination was nothing more nor less than a
cold-blooded, calculated political measure, håving for its
object the annihilation of a superior element in the population
which might prove troublesome. And to this must be added
the motive of greed.
These were atrocities which far exceed any wc know in
history, both in their extent and their appalling cruelty. It
could hardly be otherwise when a nation, whose public
morality was that of the Middle Ages, became possessed of
modem appliances and methods. The letter previously
mentioned (p. 298) shows that the committee which issued
the orders was ready to accept responsibility for " the disgrace
which that step will bring upon Osmanli history " for
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