File No. 867.4016/173
The German Ambassador (Bernstorff) to the
Secretary of State
J. Nr. A 5952]
Cedarhurst, N. Y.,
October 8, 1915.
[Received October 16.]
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I have the honor to
enclose for your confidential information a copy of a memorandum handed
to the
[Page 990]
Imperial Ottoman
Government by the acting Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople on August
9 about the expulsion of the Armenians.
The Imperial Ottoman Government has informed the German Government that
it will take the measures necessary to prevent the repetition of
excesses.
I am [etc.]
[Enclosure—Translation]
The German Embassy in Turkey
to
the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Memorandum
By its memorandum of July 4, the German Embassy had the honor to
acquaint the Sublime Porte With the views of the Imperial German
Government concerning the banishment of the Armenian inhabitants of
the Anatolian provinces and to draw its attention to the fact that
the measures had been attended in several places by acts of violence
such as massacres and plundering which the end sought by the Ottoman
Imperial Government could not justify.
The German Embassy regrets to state that it appears from information
received subsequently from impartial and trustworthy sources that
incidents of that character, instead of being prevented by the local
authorities, have regularly occurred upon the expulsion of
Armenians, so that most of them perished even before reaching their
destination. These are reported mainly from the provinces of
Trebizond, Diarbekr and Erzerum. In some places, at Mardin for
instance, all the Christians without distinction of race or faith
have had the same fate.
At the same time the Ottoman Imperial Government saw fit to extend
the banishment order to the other provinces of Asia Minor, and quite
recently the Armenian villages of the Izmid district were emptied of
their inhabitants under like conditions.
In the presence of those events the German Embassy, by order of its
Government, is constrained to remonstrate once more upon those
horrible deeds and to decline any responsibility for the
consequences they may involve. It finds itself under the necessity
of drawing the attention of the Ottoman Government to that point all
the more as public opinion is already inclined to believe that
Germany as a friendly power allied to Turkey may have approved or
even instigated those acts of violence.
Pera
[Constantinople], August 9,
1915.
