Mr. Olney to Moustapha Bey.
Washington, November 19, 1896.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of November 16, whereby you inform me that you have referred to your Government the note I addressed to your predecessor on the 17th of October last in relation to the claims preferred on behalf of citizens of the United States for losses and damages sustained at various points in Asia Minor during the disturbances in that quarter.
I note that while awaiting the instructions of your Government in the premises you take occasion to express your own view that “those losses were nothing more nor less than the consequence of an abnormal situation the responsibility of which could not and can not fall upon the Imperial Government.”
The Porte has been furnished by the United States minister with full and precise averments of the sufferers at Harpoot and Marash, showing [Page 898] the tardiness and insufficiency of the protective measures extended to them; the injuries inflicted on their premises by Turkish shot and shell; the refusal at first to take any step to extinguish a threatening conflagration; the eventual and apparently reluctant assistance given by the Turkish soldiery to the missionaries and their servants in extinguishing the flames; the circumstance that Turkish soldiers were seen carrying articles of property from the pillaged buildings openly through the streets, which property was afterwards seen in their possession and use, and other incriminating facts, to which the Turkish Government has as yet made no satisfactory reply, and which, as I infer from your note, have not been made known to you.
The weight of these averments is in nowise diminished by the natural expression of gratitude on the part of the missionaries for the tardy assistance rendered to them by the vali’s orders after the disturbance had partially subsided, and I may add that the United States minister has cheerfully borne testimony to the fact that upon his reiterated demand troops and mounted gendarmes were subsequently stationed to protect the persons and property of Americans citizens in that quarter and avert the recurrence of the incidents in question.
As the presentation of the demands in the case and of the evidence in support thereof has been intrusted to the United States minister at Constantinople, I shall communicate to him a copy of your note, for his information and in order that he may again call attention to the obvious shortcoming of the defense which it would seem the Sublime Porte is disposed to allege in respect to these just claims.
Accept, etc.,