26
THE KING’S BUSINESS
Box.” Five minutes’ walk to the east of us was the German orphanage managed by - Herr Sporris, his wife and daughter (Swiss extraction) and three single ladies. THE AMERICAN PERSONNEL The American force in 1914-1915 con sisted of the veteran missionary, Mrs. J. C. Raynolds (Dr. Raynolds had been in America a year and a half collecting funds for our Van College, and was prevented from returning by the outbreak of war) Dr. Clarence D. Ussher, in charge of the hospital and medical work; Mrs. Ussher, in charge of a philanthropic lace industry; Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Yarrow, in charge of the Boys School and general work; Miss Gertrude Rogers, principal of the Girls School; Miss Caroline Silliman, in charge of the primary department, and two Armen ians and one Turkish kindergarten; Miss Elizabeth Ussher, in charge of the musical department; Miss Louise Bond, the English head-nurse of the hospital. Dr. Ussher and Mr. Yarrow had each four children. During the mobilization of the fall and winter the Armenians had been ruthlessly plundered, under the name of “requisition ing ;” rich men were ruined and the poor stripped. Armenian soldiers in the Turk ish Army were neglected, half starved, dig ging trenches and doing the menial work; but worst of all they were deprived of their arms, and thus left at the mercy of their fanatical, age-long enemies—their Moslem fellow-soldiers. Small wonder that those who could find a loophole of escape or could pay for exemption from military duty did so; many of those who could do neither, simply would not give themselves up. We felt a day of reckon ing would soon come—a collision between those opposing forces/or a holy war, But the revolutionists conducted themselves with remarkable restraint and prudence; controlled' their hot-headed youth; pa trolled the streets to prevent skirmishes; and bade the villagers to endure in silence —better a village or two burned unavenged than that any attempt at reprisals should furnish an excuse for massacre.
For some time after Jevdet Bey, a brother-in-law of Enver Pasha, minister of war, became Governor General of Van vulayet, he was absent from the city fight ing at the border. When he returned in the early spring everyone felt there would be soon “something doing.” There was. He demanded from the Armenians 3,000 soldiers. So anxious were they' to keep the peace that they promised to accede to this demand. But at this juncture trouble broke out between Armenians and Turks in the Shadakh region, and Jevdet Bey requested' Ishkan to go there as peace commissioner, accompanied by three other notable revolutionists. On their way there he had all fou r. treacherously murdered. This was Friday, the 16th of April. He then summoned Vremyan to him, under the pretense of consulting with this leader, arrested him and sent him to Constanti nople. The revolutionists •said they could not trust Jevdet Bey, the Vali, in any-way, and that therefore they could not give him the 3,000 men. They toldJiim they could pay by degrees the exemption tax and give 400 for_ the rest. He would not accept the compromise. The Armenians begged Dr. Ussher and Mr. Yarrow to see Jevdet Bey and try to mollify him. The Vali was obdurate. He “must be obeyed.” He would put down this “rebellion” at all costs. He would punish Shadakh, then attend to Van, but if the rebels fired one shot meanwhile he would put to death every man and child of the Christians. TREACHEROUS TURKS The fact cannot be too strongly empha sized that there was no “rebellion.” As already pointed out, the revolutionists meant to keep the peace if it lay in their power. But for sometime past a line of Turkish entrenchments had been secretly drawn around the Armenian quarter of the Gardens. The revolutionists, determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible, pre pared a defensive line of entrenchments. Jevdet Bey said he wished- to send a guard of fifty soldiers to the American
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