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| Armenian victims at Erzerum, photographed in November 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UNPUBLISHED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.
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| 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.''
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