File No. 867.4016/383
The President of the Armenian National Delegation ( Nubar ) to President Wilson
[Received April 17, 1918, 9.35 a.m.]
Armenia is passing through the most tragic days of its history. The Turks, who have already massacred nearly a million Armenians in Turkey, are reoccupying the Armenian provinces abandoned by the Russians and invading the Caucasus itself, threatening the two million Armenians of Russia. They are displaying anew their implacable hatred of the Armenians, not only by fresh crimes, but also by their treacherous zeal in spreading throughout neutral countries [Page 887] the foulest slanders against the Armenians, charging them with perpetrating atrocities upon Musulmans, with the sole object of attempting to excuse in advance the further massacres which they will not fail to represent as justifiable reprisals. Therefore, in order to avert, before it is too late, the final and fatal blow which will annihilate a Christian nation, the Armenian National Delegation appeals to your holiest sentiments of justice and humanity, proclaimed in your utterances which have been like the cry of the conscience, not only of the American people, but of all civilized peoples, to prevent the complete extermination of a whole people which has known glorious days since the remotest antiquity and which, by its toil and its natural gifts, has been the most potent civilizing factor in the East.