“The whole Armenian population of each town or village was cleared out; by a house-to-house search. Every inmate was driven into the street. Some of the men were thrown
into prison, where they were put to death, the rest of the men, with the women and
children, were marched out of the town. When they had got some little distance they
were separated, the men being taken to some place among the hills where the soldiers,
or the Kurdish tribes who were called in to help in the work of slaughter, dispatched
them by shooting or bayoneting.”
Lord James Bryce (1838-1922)
The British historian, jurist and statesman
“In 1915 the Turkish government began and ruthlessly carried
out the infamous general massacre and deportation of
Armenians in Asia Minor.” There is no reasonable doubt that
this crime was planned and executed for political reason.”
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965)
British politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom (1940-1945, 1951-1955)
“The massacres are the result of a policy which, as far as can be ascertained, has been
entertained for some considerable time by the gang of unscrupulous adventurers who
are now in possession of the Government of the Turkish Empire. They hesitated to put
it in practice until they thought the favorable moment had come, and that moment
seems to have arrived about the month of April.”
British Viscount James Bryce
October 6, 1915, speech
House of Lords, Hansard (5th series), Vol. XIX, 6 October 1915. Cols?
“I think it may be said, without the least fear of exaggeration, that no more horrible
crime has been committed in the history of the world. This is a premeditative crime
determined on long ago. It was a long-considered, deliberate policy to destroy and wipe
out of existence the Armenians in Turkey. It was systematically carried out. It was
ordered from above…”
Lord Robert Cecil
Under-secretary of state for foreign affairs
“We soon learned that orders had been issued to the governors of the provinces to send
into exile the entire Armenian population in their jurisdiction irrespective of age and
sex.”
Henry Morgenthau (1856-1946)
American lawyer and diplomat who was appointed U.S. Ambassador in Constantinople (1914-
1916). He was chairman of the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission formed by the League of
Nations in 1923.
“…the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act
against Turkey is to condone it … the failure to deal radically with the Turkish horror
means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous
nonsense.”
Theodore Roosevelt
May 11, 1918, letter to Cleveland Hoadley Dodge
“A process of genocide is being carried out before the eyes of the world.”
Pope John Paul II (b. 1920)
“Turks continued their previous policy. They would not stop committing massive and
most awful massacres that even Timur Lang [Tamerlane] would not dare to do.”
Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873-1924)
“Armenia is dying, but it will survive. The little blood that it still has left is precious
blood that will give birth to a heroic generation. A nation that does not want to die,
does not die.”
Anatole France (1844-1924)
French novelist and Nobel winner, 1916
