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to deport them to the Arabian deserts. I was
also told that individual Armenians had lent
themselves to acts of espionage.
After I had informed myself about the facts
and had made enquiries on all sides, I came to
the conclusion that all these accusations against
the Armenians were, in fact, based on trifling
provocations, which were taken as an excuse
for slaughtering io,ooo innocents for one guilty
person, for the most savage outrages against
women and children, and for a campaign of
starvation against the exiles which was intended
to exterminate the whole nation.
To test the conclusion derived from my infor-
mation, I visited all the places in the city where
there were Armenians left behind by the con-
voys. In dilapidated caravansaries (hans) I
found quantities of dead, many corpses being half-
decomposed, and others, still living, among them,
who were soon to breathe their last. In other
yards I found quantities of sick and starving
people whom no one was looking after. In the
neighbourhood of the German Technical School,
at which I am employed as a higher grade teacher,
there were four such hans, with seven or eight
hundred exiles dying of starvation. We teachers
and our pupils had to pass by them every day.
Every time we went out we saw through the
open windows their pitiful forms, emaciated and
wrapped in rags. In the mornings our school
children, on their way through the narrow
streets, had to push past the two-wheeled ox-