700) Turk Hating Newspaper Confirms: ARMENIAN REVOLT

The article in question is directly below. (Thanks to reader Conan.)

We're familiar with the New York Times' record of mindlessly publishing any story celebrating the "Great Armenian Horrors' Boom," so coined by the Armenophile Richard Davey back in 1895. Peter Balakian and company have made sure to drill into our heads the New York Times printed 145 Armenian tales in 1915 alone. This is their "genocidal proof," and on the surface, like all other "genocide evidence," rather impressive; The New York Times is perhaps the USA's most prestigious newspaper. Yet, this newspaper showed its bias time and again by publishing the atrocity news unfit to print. Practically all of these stories were secondhand, provided by missionaries and Armenians.

But if The New York Times acted so irresponsibly, imagine how the run-of-the-mill newspapers of the United States treated the subject matter. On this page, we'll focus on a couple of the dailies from Minnesota.

Minnesota is home to the University of Minnesota, one of the most Armenian friendly universities in the nation. Its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) is run by Dr. Stephen Feinstein, and their web site outdoes many Armenian sites as far as their hatefulness and distorted information. Somebody decided to go through the archives of the local papers, to offer "evidence" for this mythological genocide.

As with all propaganda, one must read go through much sludge to come up with the few kernels of truth. In this regard, one of these newspapers provided some interesting contra-genocide evidence. It is entitled, ARMENIANS ARE BLAMED, and it is from The Duluth Herald.

Before we get to the article, let's examine the variety of sorry "1915" contributions The Duluth Herald made to the "Great Armenian Horrors' Boom":
Over 1,000 Christians Killed in Urumiah
Missionaries Abandon Van
Americans Willing to Assist Armenians
Half Million Armenians Put to Death in Turkey
Instructed to Inquire Into Turk Outrages
Holy War is on in Turkey
Massacre of Armenians


The Duluth Herald was matched atrocity for atrocity by its sister in sensationalism, The Duluth News Tribune.

A Quick Look at the Caliber of Some of These Accounts
The Duluth News Tribune - September 13, 1915.
Armenian Girls Sold in Turkish Capital

ROME. Sept. 12 ? A Rome news agency tonight gave out a copy of a telegram from Bucharest stating that 800,000 Armenians are now in Turkish internment camps. Thousands of women, the telegram stated, have been carried off to Turkish harems, and young Armenian girls and children are being sold at auction in Constantinople.

Note that all we're told as the source is "a telegram from Bucharest." Anyone could have been behind it, likely an Armenian. Never mind how someone from Bucharest could possibly know these details. It's got sex, it's got sensationalism! The kind of story the readers, well accustomed by now as far as what a different species the Turkish people represent, simply ate up. Note how ludicrous is the claim that there was an "auction of slaves" in the capital itself ? right under the noses of the foreigners and newspaper people.

The Italian press was especially reputed to "make things up"; who knows, perhaps there was no telegram, and the "Rome news agency" decided to add a little color to the atrocity festivities. As C. F. Dixon-Johnson related, regarding the experience of newspaperman Melton Prior:

The renowned war correspondent confided In me that he was in an awkward predicament. The public at home had heard of nameless atrocities, and was anxious to receive pictorial representations of these. The difficulty was how to supply them with what they wanted, as the dead Armenians had been buried and no women or children suffered hurt, and no Armenian church had been desecrated. As an old admirer of the Turks, and as an honest man, he declined to invent what he had not witnessed. But others were not equally scrupulous. I subsequently saw an Italian illustrated paper containing harrowing pictures of women and children being massacred in a church.


One More Example
The Duluth News Tribune - October 21, 1915.
Two Americans Slain by Turks in Armenia

Columbia, Mo., Oct. 20. -- That American missionaries as well as native Armenians are being killed by the Turks, was asserted in a letter by Leonard Ardroonig, instructor of economics in the University of Missouri from Kurken Hussian, an Armenian refugee. The letter was written from Tiflis. In it Hussian tells of the deaths at Turkish hands of Mrs. Charles E. Ely and Joe Knapp, Americans, stationed at Bitlis, Turkish Armenia.

Mrs. Ely, the letter said, was shot by Turkish soldiers when she protested against their carrying away the Armenian girls, students of the mission school. How Knapp met his death, the letter does not say. Although he spent most of his life in Bitlis, Knapp was an American citizen. His father was a pioneer missionary in Armenia.

Isn't it incredible? It's not only hearsay, but hearsay from the pen of an Armenian. How many readers questioned this story? The first thing they thought about in their bigoted minds was that the "Unspeakable" Turks were at it again, carving up poor, innocent Christians, and... as cleverly calculated by the Armenian propagandist... Americans, to boot. Tailor-made to increase the hatred Americans already felt toward what they had been conditioned to regard as a sub-human species.

And The Duluth News Tribune was only too happy to publish such an unverified, defamatory story. Multiply this sort of racist irresponsibility all across the newspapers and magazines of the land, and it's no wonder the Turks will have the greatest difficulty in living down their terrible reputation.

But here's the funny part; you'll notice the missionary Knapp's death is also blamed on the Turks (the article states his death is not explained, yet The Duluth News Tribune happily filled in the blanks with the article's headline!); however, the newspaper published this other story less than two weeks prior:

October 2, 1915

American Missionary Dies in Asiatic Turkey
BOSTON, Oct. 1 ? News of the death at Diarbekir, Asiatic Turkey of the Rev. George Perkins Knapp, a missionary, about Aug. 10 last, was received today by the American board of commissioners of foreign missions. The nature of his illness has not been learned. He had been engaged in missionary work in Turkey for the last 25 years.

The Armenian propagandist might have gotten the first name and location wrong, but he was obviously referring to the same man. And The Duluth News Tribune either failed to put two and two together, or purposely ignored their own recent report. How do you like them apples.

ARMENIANS ARE BLAMED
The Duluth Herald
October 9, 1915
ARMENIANS ARE BLAMED
Conduct Towards Ottoman Government Has Invited Repressive Measures.
Turk Wreaking Vengeance Upon the Guilty and Innocent Alike.
(Correspondence of the Associated Press.)

Constantinople, Sept. 16. ? By virtue of a total suppression of all news on the subject, the Turkish government has succeeded in throwing an impenetrable veil over its actions towards all Armenians. Nothing definite is obtainable in Constantinople of the fate of this people out in the provinces, but it is known that severe measures planed against the Armenians in the Ottoman capital were not carried out owing to objections of the German government.

Concerning the Armenian affair, three separate notes were presented to the Ottoman government by the German ambassador as interim, Prince Hobenlohe-Langenburg. If the Associated Press is rightly informed, these notes had no far-reaching effect, because under present conditions, the German government has been obliged to act rather gently. Turkey is still the ally of Germany, and the Armenians seem to have alienated the good will of the German government and people to a considerable extent by having made open cause with the entente powers. Many of them have joined the Russian forces near Van, and at Zeitoun and Dort Jul they revolted against Turkish authority, The three notes referred to were but official incidents in weeks of endeavor to persuade the Turkish government to take a more reasonable and humane view of the Armenian affair. One of the notes drew attention to the great injustice of making all Armenians suffer for the acts of a few.

Turk is Adamantine.
The Turkish government, however, seems to have remained adamantine.

As already stated, it has been impossible to secure accurate information in the premises. Turkish officials have either refused to discuss the situation, or have placed all blame on the Armenians; these latter, on the other hand, have either refused to talk for fear of being also persecuted, or have assigned all responsibility to the Turks. A mass of irreconciliable statements has been the result, ranging on the part of the Turkish officials, from the absurd claim that the Armenians were being well treated, to the assertions of Armenians that in Zeitoun, Dort Jul and other places 50,000 Armenians had been massacred.

That the Turks have in many instances been guilty of needless severity and in some cases have permitted barbarous acts of violence, including murder and rape, seems well established. On the other hand, the Armenians in the Van country have been accused of similar excesses against the Turkish population, and the Turks, having power on their side, have repaid such acts with liberal interest, it is said, in well-informed Constantinople circles.

Will Not Talk.
It cannot be said that the acts of the Turkish government in this connection have found the approbation of the advanced Turkish classes in the capital, who, for the greater part, favor a policy of conciliation, and some of whom even go so far as to advocat the establishment of a separate Armenian state in Asia Minor under the sovereignty of the Ottoman imperial government. Meanwhile the tendency of the Ottoman government, to either deny altogether that the Armenians are being persecuted, or give its acts a too obviously artificial basis and character, would have but one result, namely that it is both ashamed and afraid to let the truth be known. The many attempts made by the Associated Press correspondent to throw some light on the Armenian situation resulted in failure, because the Turkish officials would not talk and the censorship would not permit the free messages of dispatches on the subject.

Nevertheless it must be said that the Armenians are not blameless. Divested of all factors related to the national ambitions of the Armenians, their conduct toward the Turks, and the Ottoman government has invited constantly measures of repression. The rising of Zeitoun, Dort Jul and Van, and wholesale desertion of Armenian soldiers to the allies on the Gallipoli peninsula, and to the Russians in the Caucases, have turned the Turk's heart into stone in matters Armenian; he is now wreaking vengeance upon guilty and innocent alike.

Many Rumors Afloat
Constantinople has for weeks had its daily crop of Armenian rumors. One of the most interesting of them is that even the Sheik-ul-Islam had protested against the excesses from which the Armenians had suffered. There is a possibility that this is true, because the Sheik-ul-Islam is a man of moderation and very progressive tendencies.

It is asserted in Constantinople that the German government has for some time, even at the beginning of the war, taken a special interest in the Armenians. The Germans feared from the very start of the war between Turkey and the Entente that the Armenians would make an attempt to re-establish by force, their independence.

Prominent Armenians were informed that Germany would continue, and even increase, its benevelont interest in the race, if a reasonable attitude was taken during the war. For a time the influence of the men who had been intrusted with the dissemination of this promise had the desired result. But last January and February, more especially in March and April, when the allies had begun to attack the Dardanelles in real earnest the services of these intermediaries ceased to be of value. Exaggerated reports of Entente victories inflamed the imagination of the Armenians and in many parts they rose in revolt.

What has happened since then is still an unwritten chapter. No newspapermen are allowed to visit the affected districts and reports from there are altogether unreliable. The reticence of the Turkish government cannot be looked upon as a good sign, however, especially when viewed in the light of what the German government has been obliged to do.

Note the underlying racist tone of the article; the Turks are referred to, as was customary in the reportage of many newspapers, as "The Turk." As though these things weren't even human, and that whatever they are must surely deserve our contempt. (Compare: when others were referred to as a race, would we be offered terms such as "The Swede" or "The Austrian"? Perhaps on occasion, but never as a rule. Substitute with the sub-headline, "Turk Wreaking Vengeance Upon the Guilty and Innocent Alike.")

The article is very revealing, when one reads in between the lines.

For one, the newspaper admits that "Nothing definite is obtainable," confirming these reports of the "Great Armenian Horrors' Boom" were all secondhand. We're further told that "No newspapermen are allowed to visit the affected districts and reports from there are altogether unreliable."

There you have it: "unreliable." That did not stop newspapers as this to print whatever stories they heard as the facts, however.

According to Jay winter's propaganda book, America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915, there was one American newspaperman who did manage to travel through the Ottoman interior in 1915. His name: George Schreiner. His conclusion: There was no "genocide."

The article sheds rare insight into the facts that not only did the Armenians perpetrate atrocities in 1915, but that there was a definite revolt going on. For such a Turk-unfriendly newspaper, these conclusions are highly significant.

It's interesting that Armenians were reported to have claimed only 50,000 Armenians were "massacred" by October 1915. (Why, U.S. Consul Jesse Jackson had figured one million only the month before.)

Note as well we are informed Armenians not only deserted in the east to join the Russians, but also in the west, to join the British and the French.

Two Other Reports of Interest

The Duluth Herald ? September 13, 1915.
Turk Army in Bad Way
No Coal at Constantinople. (Excerpted)

Owing to the interruption of sea transportation it is almost impossible to purchase coal at Constantinople, and wood is being used for locomotives. The crops were good but it has been almost impossible to harvest them. Petroleum costs $1 a gallon and the price of sugar has increased seven fold.


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Saint Paul Pioneer Press ? August 16, 1915
"Armenians Go to Fight"
Twelve Leave St. Paul to Join Countrymen on Way to Europe

Another delegation of Armenian volunteers left St. Paul last night for New York, where they will join volunteers from all parts of the United States and go to Europe to fight for their country. Practically all of the soldiery now opposing the Turks in Turkey are Armenian volunteers, many of whom formerly lived in the United States. The delegation which left last night consisted of twelve former St. Paul residents. The first party of twenty-five volunteers left St. Paul several weeks ago.


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© Holdwater

The source site of this article gets revised often, as better
information comes along. For the most up-to-date version, and
the related photos, the reader may consider reviewing
the direct link as follows:

www.tallarmeniantale.com/newspaper-armrevolt.htm
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