Friday, February 9, 2018

UNPUBLISHED HORRORS




Armenian victims at Erzerum, photographed in November 1895.
Cortland Evening Standard, Friday, March 29, 1895.

UNPUBLISHED HORRORS.
Details of Turkish Barbarism Heretofore Suppressed.
RELATED BY AN EYEWITNESS.
Even the Brutal Kurds Stood Aghast at the Nameless Crimes Perpetrated by
Their Turkish Allies—The Worst Crimes in History Surpassed.
   LONDON, March 29.—The Times publishes a long report on the Armenian atrocities, written by a competent and trustworthy man, who made a personal investigation on the spot. This report was written in January, but only arrived in London yesterday. The writer says he is convinced that in both 1893 and 1894 the Turkish government gave both oral and written orders to the Kurds to attack the Armenians, promising them the booty and relieving them of the responsibility for the consequences.
   In the first attacks made upon them the Armenians defeated the Kurds. Undoubtedly but for Turkish help, the Kurds would have been unable to have gained a permanent victory. The Kurds in the earlier premises did not harm women and children. Even when incited by the Turks they did little in comparison with the latter.
   The account proceeds to confirm the pit incident and the report of the governor of Bitlis reading at Djellyegoozan the sultan's firman [edict], ordering the Kurds to destroy the disaffected villages, sparing nothing for their sultan and prophet.
   This occurred about the middle of August and the massacre which followed beggars all description. The Occidentals of the Nineteenth century cannot comprehend it. Youths were bound, covered with brushwood, and burned alive. Others were hacked to pieces.
   At Shenig a house filled with 50 men, women and children was set on fire and all were cremated. The officers forced their men to acts of cruelty from which the latter shrank.
   A young priest at Dalvorig persuaded 70 of his followers to yield. They were ordered to dig a trench, and when enough earth had been thrown up all were hacked to pieces and cast into the trench. Priests suffered horrible deaths. One was thrown into the air and allowed to fall on a number of bayonets that had been stuck upright in the ground.
   Commenting editorially upon this report, The Times admits that owing to the obstacles Turkey has thrown in the way, the report, from which the most revolting details are excluded, lacks the qualities demanded by the scientific historian, but when Turkey has had the benefit of every consideration that research, crippled by her own action, allows us to conceive, the indictment goes unanswered, and assails the entire system of Turkish rule.
   The Daily News this morning also publishes a long account from a Turkish source confirming the stories of the Armenian outrages. Editorially it says: "The bare facts will have their natural effect upon all those who are responsible for our relations with a power which is the very negation of good.''
   A correspondent, investigating the circumstances of the atrocities perpetrated in Armenia recently, telegraphs another version of the story concerning the death pit at Djellyegoozan.
   He said that the refugees on Mount Andok were inveigled back to the village on the assurance that the authorities desired the re-establishment of peace in the district. Hearing this, Priest O'Hannes went with about 300 persons to the camp, where they were well received. They were asked to remain a few hours in the camp. Meantime, soldiers were busy digging a big pit behind the house of a village elder, a man named Bedo.
   About 6 o'clock in the evening Priest O'Hannes was taken to the cross, and the gospel was flung at his feet, and he was ordered by a Turkish officer to trample on it. He refused, and the officer ordered the soldiers to gouge out his eyes. Then they gave him a pocket handkerchief and commanded him to dance.
   Next Armenians were distributed among the soldiers and killed with bayonets and flung into the pit, dead or dying. The only two Armenians of this party who escaped were a merchant named Avak and Pia Ohan Zoroyan, the latter getting away after he had received 12 bayonet wounds.
   The correspondent attached great importance to the statement of a Kurd who killed many innocent women and children in Sassoun, and with whom he "exchanged daggers."
   The correspondent took this man's deposition before respectable non-Armenian witnesses, and from this deposition he telegraphed the following blood curdling extracts:
   "The Turkish soldiers took little children by the feet and dashed them against stones. I saw an Armenian priest. Soldiers tortured him, squeezing his neck; gouging his eyes and tearing off his flesh with pincers. We hate that; we only stab or bayonet or cut off heads. We dislike needless pain. I saw a Turkish sergeant bind an old Armenian head downwards to two or three branches and slowly cut him through with an ax. Armenians who implored protection and surrendered were butchered at night. I saw it done. The soldiers stood in double lines of three on each side. The Armenians were marched in, their hands tied, and they were then bayonetted and flung into the pit. Not all were dead who were in the pit.
   "I saw the soldiers take a woman and stand around her, joking and making bets as to the sex of her unborn child. She was then cut open and the money was paid to the scoundrel who had guessed rightly."
   The correspondent telegraphed the details of this revolting deed, but the paper suppressed them as being too horrible for publication.
   Continuing, the Kurd said. "The Kurds killed people with bullets and daggers, but the soldiers delighted in torturing. They put some to death with scissors, cutting them and opening veins in the neck. Others were sawed, others hacked, tongues cut, eyes gouged out and several fingers cut off before death. I saw men and women thus mutilated and they lay about the camp for two hours before they were killed."

THROUGH AMERICAN EYES.
China Falling to Pieces—Nobody Cares a Straw.
   MASSILLON, O., March 29.—Robert H. Folger of this city has received a letter from his son, Wm. Folger , commander of the United States cruiser Yorktown, containing the following statement: "I saw quite a number of engagements between the Japanese fleet and the forts at Wei Hai-Wei, which have just fallen. It would seem to us here that great changes might be expected in the government of China. It seems to be failing to pieces without the people caring a straw."

PAGE TWO—EDITORIALS.
What Is Not Known About Gout.
   At a meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine recently a number of eminent physicians contributed to science some of their wide, profound and exhaustive ignorance on the subject of gout. First one doctor said it was not very prevalent in America. Another remarked a little later that it "existed in America to a large extent" It used to be attributed to high living, but now we find that persons most temperate and simple in their eating and drinking are as apt to have it as anybody.
   Next it was attributed to acid in the blood. Doctors have been going it tremendously of late on the subject of acid in the blood. But now comes Dr. William H. Draper, who inclines to the idea that, after all, gout is a nervous disease. Its attacks are very similar to those of a purely nervous disease anyhow. The popular idea is that gouty people must not eat meat. But Dr. Draper said he had had numerous cases where meat diet was the best. There was only one point advanced by Dr. Bishop that some medical brother did not seem to dispute. It was that the drinking of beer and ale and sour wine made the disease much worse.
   Again, for many years the heavy drinking of certain mineral waters has been popularly advocated by physicians as a remedy for both gout and rheumatism. Even this fond old superstition was exploded at that doctors' meeting. Dr. Draper said the main thing was to drink plenty of pure water. It was just plain water, not mineral water that did the good.

◘ The workings of that law passed by the Illinois legislature to "rescue the municipal government of Chicago from the partisan spoils system" will be watched with interest. If it can rescue Chicago, it can rescue anything, even a member of congress who has fallen from the path of virtue.
◘ Trenton has a breed of mice that are wanted in every state capital and in every city in this Union. Fortunes can be made by rearing them to order. They are the breed of mice that ate up the documents proving frauds had been committed in furnishing the statehouse supplies.
◘ General Neal Dow of Maine, aged 91, is in excellent health, thank you. Shall we score it down to total abstinence?
◘ The trouble with Spain is that she has become hysterical and sees in every fishing smack that comes within sight of Cuba an armed cruiser loaded with revolutionists from the United States.

Trolley car No. 7 on  Railroad Street (Central Avenue), Cortland.
Always Take off the Brakes.
   Car No. 7 ran to the D., L. & W. station on a regular trip yesterday afternoon, turned its trolley around and prepared to come back up town. The motorman turned on the electricity, but the car wouldn't move. The motorman and conductor looked it all over and couldn't see any reason why the car shouldn't go, but it didn't. Suddenly a new and bright idea seemed to strike the motorman and he stepped to the rear and tried the brake. It was shut down hard just as he had left it when he stopped the car on its arrival at the end of his trip. He loosened the brake and the car moved right off.
   There was a laugh on the motorman from the bystanders who had been noticing his perplexity, and he doubtless concluded that cars move much better with the brakes off than they do with brakes set.

MILEAGE OF THE GLOBE.
Some Interesting Statistics Gathered by the Railroad Age.
   The Railroad Age has just compiled a table showing the mileage of the railroads of the entire globe in 1893. The total number of miles is 406,416 or one mile for every 3,516 inhabitants.
   The smallest railway mileage is possessed by Porto Rico [sic], which was only 11 miles; the largest by the United States, with 174,748 miles at the close of 1892, were far ahead of any other country. Next, but at a great interval, comes Germany, with 27,455 miles, followed by France with 24,018 miles. The United Kingdom comes fourth with 20,325 miles, and Russia fifth, with 19,656 miles. There are in Europe altogether 144,3 80 miles of railway; in North and South America, 218,910; in Asia, only 23,299, of which 17,768 miles are in British India; in Australia, 12,685 miles, and in Africa, 7,212 miles. The islands of Malta, Jersey and Man have between them 68 miles. Persia has but 24 and Hawaii 56 miles.

Grady's Cycle House.
   Mr. Wm. Grady is now nicely settled in his cycle house on Railroad-st. and has one of the finest displays of wheels in this section. He occupies E. B. Richardson's old stand, at 22 Railroad-st., and has secured the agencies of the Ramblers, Eclipse, Diana and Queen City. He also has on hand a large stock of second hand wheels, which are marked at surprisingly low figures, also wheel supplies of every description and has secured the experienced cycle mechanic, James Farrell, who was with Mr. Richardson last season, to the repairing. The store has been completely renovated and presents a very attractive appearance.

Susan B. Anthony.
BREVITIES.
   — Mr. Lewis S. Hayes has been granted a patent on a typewriter drop cabinet.
   —J. D. Green has closed his grocery store and is moving his stock and fixtures to a barn on Reynolds-ave., where they are to be stored.
   —The National Teachers' association is to be held at Denver next July. A special round trip rate is announced for teachers of $2 in addition to a one way fare.
   —Mayor Shieren of Brooklyn has announced his intention of appointing some women on the board of education, to the great joy of the friends of education, who have been urging it for years.
   —Prof. C. V. Coon will speak at the Rescue Mission in the W. C. T. U. rooms on Saturday evening at 7:30 o'clock. These meetings are growing in interest. Everybody will be welcome.
   —The latest convert to the wheel is Mr. C. F. Hornbeck, the popular jeweler on the corner of Main and Railroad-sts., who has purchased a Columbia and is waiting for dry weather to master the animal.
   —The Cornell crew will embark for England on an American liner, they will row in an American paper boat and blue will be added to the red and white of Cornell that floats from the stern of their scull.—Ithaca Democrat.
   —Bob Burdette gets down to bed rock when he says: "God wasted mud when he made the man so mean as to tell his postmaster to return a newspaper marked 'Refused,' when he owes two or three years' subscription."
   —Mrs. Edward McMahon died this morning of consumption, aged 22 years. Besides her husband she leaves a two-year-old son Leo and a father, Mr. Patrick Clancey of Clinton-ave. The funeral will be held from her late home on Pendleton-st. at 1 P. M. Sunday and at St. Mary's at 1:45 o'clock.
   —The remains of William Tanner, who died Sunday night at Groton of lingering heart disease, aged 77 years, were taken to Blodgett Mills for burial Wednesday. The deceased was an uncle of Mr. James E. Tanner of Warren, Tanner & Co. of Cortland and Mr. E. L. Tanner of Blodgett Mills.
   —Here is the sensible statement of a sensible woman who has been a very hard worker for many years, but who has preserved her health in a remarkable degree to a good old age. Susan B. Anthony says: "After my lectures I do not accept invitations to swell suppers. I go straight to my rooms, take a bath, and drink a cup of hot milk and eat a cracker. I think if I lived down in New Orleans I would merely eat an orange and cracker before retiring.''
 

No comments:

Post a Comment