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James G. Harbord

CONDITIONS IN THE NEAR EAST: REPORT OF THE AMERICAN
MILITARY MISSION TO ARMENIA


===TABLE OF CONTENTS===

Letter to Secretary of State submitting report of American Military Mission to
Armenia

History and present situation of Armenian people

Political situation and suggestions for readjustment

Conditions and problems involved in a mandate for Turkey and Transcaucasia

The military problem

Conclusions

... 3

... 4

. . . 11

. . . 20

. . . 21

. . . 24

===EXHIBITS===

Appended at end of report

A. — Map showing routes, including distances, covered by the mission. (See frontispiece.)
(Not printed.)

B. — Joint letter, October 15, 1919, from Armenian patriarch, Catholic Armenian
patriarch, and the Vekil of Armenian Protestant communities to Gen. Harbord.

C. — Statement of Mustapha Kemal Pasha concerning organization, objects, “League for
the defense of the rights of Anatolia and Roumelia.”

D. — Gen. Harbord’s letter of October 9, 1919, to Mustapha Kemal Pasha.

E. — Declaration of the Congress of Sivas.

F. — Resolution of National Congress of Sivas addressed to the Senate of the United
States of America requesting that Senatorial committee visit and investigate
conditions within the Ottoman Empire.

G. — Population and resources.

LIST OF APPENDIXES.

A. — Political factors and problems, by Capt. Stanley K. Hornbeck, Ordnance
Department, United States Army.

B. — Government in Turkey and Transcaucasia, by Lieut. Col. Jasper Y. Brinton, judge
advocate, United States Army.

C. — Public and private finance of Turkey and Transcaucasia, by Prof. W. W.
Cumberland.

D. — Commerce and industry in Turkey and Transcaucasia, by Trade Commissioner Eliot
Grinnell Mears.

Grinnell Mears.

E. — Public health and sanitation, by Col. Henry Beeuwkes, Medical Corps, United
States Army.

F. — Population; industrial and other qualities; maintenance, by Lieut. Col. John Price
Jackson, Engineers, United States Army.

G. — Climate, natural resources, animal industry, and agriculture, by Lieut. Col. E.
Bowditch, Infantry, United States Army.

H. — Geography, mining, and boundaries, by Maj. Lawrence Martin, General Staff,
United States Army.

I. — The press of Turkey and Transcaucasia, by Maj. Harold W. Clark, Infantry, United
States Army.

J. — The military problem of a mandatory, by Brig. Gen. Geo. Van Horn Moseley,
General Staff, United States Army.

K. — Transport and communications in Asia Minor and the Transcaucasus, by William B.
Poland, Engineer member of the mission.

L. — Bibliography.

[page 3]

CONDITIONS IN THE NEAR EAST.

AMERICAN MILITARY MISSION TO ARMENIA,
On Board U. S. S. Martha Washington, October 16, 1919.

From: Maj. Gen. James G. Harbord, United States Army.

To: The Secretary of State.

Subject: Report of the American Military Mission to Armenia.

The undersigned submits herewith the report of the American Military Mission to Armenia.
The mission, organized under authority of the President, consisted of Maj. Gen. James G.
Harbord, United States Army; Brig. Gen. Frank R. McCoy, United States Army; Brig. Gen.
George Van Horn Moseley, United States Army; Col. Henry Beeuwkes, Medical Corps,
United States Army; Lieut. Col. John Price Jackson, United States Engineers; Lieut. Col.
Jasper Y. Brinton, judge advocate, United States Army; Lieut. Col. Edward Bowditch, jr.,
Infantry, United States Army; Commander W. W. Bertholf, United States Navy; Maj.
Lawrence Martin, General Staff, United States Army; Maj. Harold Clark, Infantry, United
States Army; Capt. Stanley K. Hornbeck, Ordnance Department, United States Army (chief
of Far Eastern Division, American Commission to Negotiate Peace); Mr. William B. Poland,
chief of the American Relief Commission for Belgium and Northern France; Prof. W. W.
Cumberland, economic advisor to the American Commission to Negotiate Peace; Mr. Eliot
Grinnell Mears, trade commissioner, Department of Commerce, with other -officers, clerks,
interpreters, etc.

The instructions to the mission were to—

Proceed without delay on a Government vessel to Constantinople, Batum, and such other places in Armenia,
Russian Transcaucasia, and Syria, as will enable you to carry out instructions already discussed with you. It is

Russian Transcaucasia, and Syria, as will enable you to carry out instructions already discussed with you. It is
desired that you investigate and report on political, military, geographical, administrative, economic, and other
considerations involved in possible American interests and responsibilities in that region.

The mission proceeded by ship to Constantinople. From there it traveled by the Bagdad
Railway to Adana near the northeastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; the scene of the
massacres of 1909, and the principal city of the rich Province of Cilicia, where two days were
spent visiting Tarsus, and the ports of Ayas and Mersina; thence continued by rail via Aleppo
to Mardin; from there by motor car to Diarbekir, Kharput, Malatia, Sivas, Erzinjan, Erzerum,
Kars, Erivan, and Tiflis; thence by rail to Baku and Batum. Erivan, Tiflis, and Baku are the
capitals, respectively, of the Republics of Armenia, Georgia, and Azarbaijan, and Batum is
the seat of the British military government of the Georgian district of that name. Members of
the mission also traveled by carriage from Ula-Kishla to Sivas; from Sivas to Samsun; visiting
Marsovan where there is much apprehension among the Armenian population at this time;
from Trebizond to Erzerum;by horseback from Khorasan to Bayazid; from Erivan to Nakhichevan, near the Persian
border. The Armenian Catholicos, His Holiness Kevork V, was visited at Etchmiadzin the
historic seat of the Armenian Church, with its ancient cathedral dated from 301 A. D. The
mission traversed Asia Minor for its entire length and the Trans-caucasus from north to south
and east to west. All of the Vilayets of Turkish Armenia were visited except Van and Bitlis,
which were inaccessible in the time available, but which have been well covered by Capt.
Niles, an Army officer who inspected them on horseback in August, and whose report
corroborates our observations in the neighboring regions; as well as both Provinces of the
Armenian Republic, and the Republics of Azarbaijan and Georgia. The Turkish frontier was
paralleled from the Black Sea to Persia. On the return voyage from Batum the mission visited
Samsun, the port of one of the world’s great tobacco regions, and Trebizond, the latter a
principal port on the south shore of the Black Sea, terminus of the ancient caravan route to
Persia, of historic interest as the point where the Greek 10,000 reached the sea under
Xenophon over 2,300 years ago.

The mission spent 30 days in Asia Minor and Transcaucasia, and interviewed at length
representatives of every Government exercising sovereignty in that region, as well as
individual Turks, Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, Tartars, Georgians, Russians, Persians, Jews,
Arabs, British, and French, including Americans for some time domiciled in the country. It
also gave consideration to the views of the various educational, religious, and charitable
organizations supported by America. In addition to this personal contact the mission before
leaving Paris was in frequent conference with the various delegations to the peace conference
from the regions visited. It has had before it numerous reports of the American Committee for
Relief in the Near East, and Food Administration, and that of the mission of Mr. Benjamin B.
Moore, sent by the peace conference to Transcaucasia, as well as the very complete library
on the region, its geography, history, and governments, loaned by the Librarian of Congress,
the American Mission to Negotiate Peace, and others. It has listened to the personal
experiences of many witnesses to the atrocities of 1915, and benefited by the views of many
persons whose knowledge of the various peoples in the regions visited is that obtained by
years spent among them.

The interest, the horror, and sympathy of the civilized world are so centered on Armenia, and
the purpose and work of this mission so focus on that blood-soaked region and its tragic
remnant of a Christian population that this report should seem to fall naturally under the
following heads: (a) History and present situation of the Armenian people; (b) the political
situation and suggestions for readjustment; (c) the conditions and problems involved in a

situation and suggestions for readjustment; (c) the conditions and problems involved in a
mandatory; (d) the considerations for and against the undertaking of a mandate. The report is
accordingly so presented.

===THE HISTORY AND PRESENT SITUATION OF ARMENIAN PEOPLE.===

The Armenians were known to history under that name in the fifth century B. C, and since
that period have lived in the region where their misfortunes find them to-day. Their country is
the great rough tableland, from 3,000 to 8,000 feet above the level of the sea, of which Mount Ararat is the dominant peak. In ancient times it touched the
Mediterranean, Caspian, and Black Seas. In later days it has dwindled to about 140,000
square miles, an area about as large as Montana, without political identity, but existing in
1914 in two parts, the eastern belonging to Russia, which consisted of Kars and Erivan, and
some portions of the present territory of Azarbaijan: the remainder being Turkish Armenia,
comprised in the Villayets of Van, Bitlis, Erzerum, Diarbekir, Kharput, and Cilicia, though
Armenians were scattered more or less throughout the whole of Transcaucasia and Asia
Minor. Armenia was an organized nation 1,000 years before there was one in Europe, except
Greece and Rome. For over 12 of the 25 centuries of its history Armenia enjoyed
independence within borders that shifted with the events of the times. Its last king, Leon VI,
an exile from his own land, spent his last years in the effort to bring about an understanding
between France and England, then in the struggle of the Hundred Years War, and actually
presided at a peace conference near Boulogne in 1386, which brought about the
understanding which led to the end of that war. Armenia was evangelized by Apostles fresh
from the memory of our Lord, as early as 33 A. D., and as a nation adopted Christianity and
founded a National Church in 301 A. D., which has outridden the storms of the centuries, and
is vital to-day. Armenia was the first nation to officially adopt Christianity, with all that act
involved in a pagan world.

The first two centuries following the foundation of the church were a golden age of Armenian
literature, witnessing the invention of an Armenian alphabet; the translation of the Bible into
the vernacular; the thronging of Armenians to the great centers of learning at Athens, Rome,
and Alexandria; and the development of a flexible literary language, one of the great assets of
national life.

By its geographical location on the great highway of invasion from east to west the ambitions
of Persia, the Saracens and the rising tide of Islam, and the Crusades found Armenia the
extreme frontier of Christianity in the East. Persians, Parthians, Saracens, Tartars, and Turks
have exacted more martyrs from the Armenian church in proportion to its numbers than have
been sacrificed by any other race. The last Armenian dynasty was overthrown by the Sultan
of Egypt 78 years before the fall of Constantinople to Mahomet II in 1453. From that time
until to-day the story of their martyrdom is unbroken. In the Persian, the Roman, the
Byzantine, the Armenian found Aryan kinsmen and tyranny was tempered with partial
autonomy. Even the Saracen was a high racial type and reciprocal adjustments had been
possible. The Turk to whom they now fall prey was a raiding nomad from central Asia. His
mainsprings of action were plunder, murder, and enslavement; his methods the scimitar and
the bowstring. The Crusades were long ended. Europe busy with her own renaissance
contented herself with standing on the defensive against the Moslem, and the eastern
Christian was forgotten. For more than three centuries the Armenian people figure little in the
history of the times, though at an earlier period 16 Byzantine Emperors were of that race, and
ruled the eastern Empire with distinction. Many individuals, and even colonies, however,
played a part in distant lands. Europe, India, and Persia welcomed them. They were

played a part in distant lands. Europe, India, and Persia welcomed them. They were
translators, bankers, scholars, artisans,artists, and traders, and even under their tyrannical masters filled posts which called for
administrative ability, became ambassadors and ministers, and more than once saved a
tottering throne. They carried on trades, conducted commerce, and designed and constructed
palaces. Nevertheless as a race they were forbidden military service, taxed to poverty, their
property confiscated at pleasure, and their women forced into the harems of the conqueror.
Such slavery leaves some inevitable and unlovable traces upon the character, but in the main
the Armenian preserved his religion, his language, and his racial purity, persecution bringing
cohesion.

Time, temperament and talent eventually brought most of the industry, finance, commerce,
and much of the intellectual and administrative work of the Ottoman Empire into Armenian
hands.

The progress of events in Europe brought about in the early nineteenth century a revival of
interest in the forgotten Near East. As early as 1744 the treaty of Kainardje had placed
Imperial Russia, in the rle of a protector of the Christians of the Near East, an attitude many
times under suspicion by contemporary statesmen, but whatever its motives, the only genuine
attempt by any European nation to afford such protection to helpless Armenia. A plebiscite in
Russian Armenia, if fairly held, would probably vote a reconstituted Russia into a mandatory
for that region.

With Armenian consciousness of their own capacity to trade, to administer, and to govern in
the name of others, there came in the last quarter of the nineteenth century the opportunity to
throw their weight into the scale for the reform of Turkey from within, at a time when the
dismemberment of Turkey was balanced in European politics against the possibility of her
self-redemption. In 1876 a constitution for Turkey was drawn up by the Armenian Krikor
Odian, secretary to Midhat Pasha the reformer, and was proclaimed and almost immediately
revoked by Sultan Abdul Hamid.

The foregoing inadequately sketches the story of the wrongs of Armenia down to our own
times. From 1876 it is a story of massacre and of broken and violated guaranties.

The Russo-Turkish War ended in 1877 by the treaty of San Stefano, under which Russia was
to occupy certain regions until actual reforms had taken place in Turkey. This treaty, through
British jealousy of Russia, was torn up the following year and the futile treaty of Berlin
substituted, asking protection but without guaranties. Meantime there had been the
convention of Cyprus, by which that island passed to Great Britain, and the protection of
Turkey was promised for the Armenians in return for Great Britain’s agreement to come to
the aid of Turkey against Russia. A collective note of the powers in 1880 was ignored by
Turkey. Then followed the agreement of 1895, which was never carried out, and the
restoration of the constitution of 1876 in 1908. A further agreement in 1914 was abrogated at
the entrance of Turkey in the war—and the last of the series is a secret treaty of 1916
between Great Britain, France and Russia, the existence and publication of which rests on
Bolshevik authority, by which Armenia was to be divided between Russia and France.
Meanwhile there have been organized official massacres of the Armenians ordered every few
years since Abdul (Hamid ascended the throne. In 1895, 100,000 perished. At Van in 1908,
and at Adana and elsewhere in Cilicia in 1909, over 30,000 were murdered. The last and greatest of these tragedies was in
1915. Conservative estimates place the number of Armenians in Asiatic Turkey in 1914 over
1,500,000, though some make it higher. Massacres and deportations were organized in the
spring of 1915 under definite system, the soldiers going from town to town. The official
reports of the Turkish Government show 1,100,000 as having been deported. Young men
were first summoned to the government building in each village and then marched out and
killed. The women, the old men, and children were, after a few days, deported to what Talaat
Pasha called “ agricultural colonies,” from the high, cool, breeze-swept plateau of Armenia to
the malarial flats of the Euphrates and the burning sands of Syria and Arabia. The dead from
this wholesale attempt on the race are variously estimated from 500,000 to more than a
million, the usual figure being about 800,000.

Driven on foot under a fierce summer sun, robbed of their clothing and such petty articles as
they carried, prodded by bayonet if they lagged; starvation, typhus, and dysentery left
thousands dead by the trail side. The ration was a pound of bread every alternate day, which
many did not receive, and later a small daily sprinkling of meal on the palm of the
outstretched hand was the only food. Many perished from thirst or were killed as they
attempted to slake thirst at the crossing of running streams. Numbers were murdered by
savage Kurds, against whom the Turkish soldiery afforded no protection. Little girls of 9 or
10 were sold to Kurdish brigands for a few piastres, and women were promiscuously violated.
At Sivas an instance was related of a teacher in the Sivas Teachers’ College, a gentle, refined
Armenian girl, speaking English, knowing music, attractive by the standards of any land, who
was given in enforced marriage to the beg of a neighboring Kurdish village, a filthy, ragged
ruffian three times her age, with whom she still has to live, and by whom she has borne a
child. In the orphanage there maintained under American relief auspices, there were 150
“brides,” being girls, many of them of tender age, who had been living as wives in Moslem
homes and had been rescued. Of the female refugees among some 75,000 repatriated from
Syria and Mesopotamia, we were informed at Aleppo that 40 per cent are infected with
venereal disease from the lives to which they have been forced. The women of this race were
free from such diseases before the deportation. Mutilation, violation, torture, and death have
left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that
region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages. Yet
immunity from it all might have been purchased for any Armenian girl or comely woman by
abjuring her religion and turning Moslem. Surely no faith has ever been put to harder test or
has been cherished at greater cost.

Even before the war the Armenians were far from being in the majority in the region claimed
as Turkish Armenia, excepting in a few places. To-day we doubt if they would be in the
majority in a single community even when the last survivors of the massacres and
deportations have returned to the soil, though the great losses of Turkish population to some
extent offset the difference brought about by slaughter. We estimate that there are probably
270,000 Armenians to-day in Turkish Armenia. Some 75,000 have been repatriated from the
Syrian and Mesopotamian side, others are slowly returning from other regions, and some from one cause or another remained in the country.
There are in the Transcaucasus probably 300,000 refugees from Turkish Armenia, and some
thousands more in other lands, for they have drifted to all parts of the Near East. The
orphanages seen throughout Turkey and Russian Armenia testify to the loss of life among
adults. They are Turkish as well as Armenian, and the mission has seen thousands of these
pathetic little survivors of the unhappy years of the war. Reports from 20 stations in Turkey
show 15,000 orphans receiving American aid, and undoubtedly the number demanding care is

show 15,000 orphans receiving American aid, and undoubtedly the number demanding care is
double this, for many were seen cared for under the auspices of the Red Crescent, the
organization which in Moslem countries corresponds to our Red Cross. Twenty thousand are
being cared for at the expense of the various relief agencies in the Transcaucasus. On the
route traveled by the mission fully 50,000 orphans are to-day receiving Government or other
organized care. We estimate a total of perhaps half a million refugee Armenians as available
to eventually begin life anew in a region about the size of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio,
to which would be added those, not refugees, who might return from other lands. The
condition of the refugees seen in the Transcaucasus is pitiable to the last degree. They subsist
on the charity of the American relief organizations with some help, not great, however, from
their more prosperous kinsmen domiciled in that region. Generally they wear the rags they
have worn for four years. Eighty per cent of them suffer from malaria, 10 per cent from
venereal troubles, and practically all from diseases that flourish on the frontiers of starvation.
There are also the diseases that accompany filth, loathsome skin troubles, and great numbers
of sore eyes, the latter especially among the children. The hospitals are crowded with such
cases.

The refugees in Russian Armenia have hitherto drifted from place to place, but an effort is
now being made by the administration of Col. Haskell to concentrate them in several refugee
camps. The winter season will see many deaths, for the winters there are extremely severe,
fuel is scarce, and shelter inadequate. Medicines are scarce and very dear. Quinine cost
approximately $30 a pound. On the Turkish side of the border where Armenians have
returned they are gradually recovering their property, and in some cases have received rent
for it, but generally they find things in ruins, and face winter out of touch with the American
relief, and with only such desultory assistance as the Turkish Government can afford. Things
are little if any better with the peasant Turks in the same region. They are practically serfs
equally destitute, and equally defenseless against the winter. No doctors or medicines are to
be had. Villages are in ruins, some having been destroyed when the Armenians fled or were
deported; some during the Russian advance; some on the retreat of the Armenian irregulars
and Russians after the fall of the Empire. Not over 20 per cent of the Turkish peasants who
went to war have returned. The absence of men between the ages of 20 and 35 is very
noticeable. Six hundred thousand Turkish soldiers died of typhus alone, it is stated, and
insufficient hospital service and absolute poverty of supply greatly swelled the death lists.

In the region which witnessed the ebb and flow of the Russian and Turkish Armies, the
physical condition of the country is very deplorable. No crops have been raised for several
years and the land ordinarily cultivated has gone to weeds. Scarcely a village or city exists which is not largely in
ruins. The country is practically treeless.

Where the desperate character of the warfare with its reprisals of burning and destroying as
one side and then the other advanced, has not destroyed the buildings, which are generally of
abode, the wooden beams have been taken for fuel and the houses are ruined. In the territory
untouched by war from which Armenians were deported the ruined villages are undoubtedly
due to Turkish deviltry, but where Armenians advanced and retired with the Russians their
retaliatory cruelties unquestionably rivaled the Turks in their inhumanity. The reconstruction
of this country will be little short in difficulty of its original reclamation from virgin
wilderness in days when the world was young.

Where the Russian went he built fine macadam highways, and even the main Turkish roads
generally built during the war, over which our mission traveled, were passable, and some

generally built during the war, over which our mission traveled, were passable, and some
quite good. All highways are rapidly going to ruin for lack of maintenance. A country once
fairly equipped for motor traffic is sliding back to dependence on the camel caravan, the
diminutive pack donkey, and the rattly, ramshackly araba wagon. The ox is the principal draft
animal. A good highway existed from Erzerum to Trebizond, on the line of the most ancient
trade route in the world, that from Persia to the Black Sea, through which, in all ages, the
carpets and jewels of Persia have reached the western world. The distance is about 150 miles.
The freight rate is now between $145 and $150 per ton.

In the portion of Turkey traversed we heard of brigandage, but experienced no
inconvenience. Apparently the Turkish Government, inefficient and wicked as it sometimes
is, can control its people, and does govern. In the region once policed by Russia the
relaxation from its iron hand has been great, and life and property are unsafe in many regions
Our mission was fired upon by Kurds in Russian Armenia and several motor cars struck by
bullets, and over half the party were kept prisoner one night by Moslems who claimed to
have been driven from their villages by Armenians.

In Azarbaijan we were also fired upon. Train wrecks for robbery are frequent on the
Transcaucasian Railroad, and the Georgian Government took the precaution to run pilot
engines ahead of our train for safety. The highways are unsafe even to the suburbs of the
large towns. Practically every man in Georgia and Azarbaijan, outside the cities, carries a
rifle. If he desires to stop a traveler on the highway he motions or calls to him, and if
unheeded fires at him.

The relief work consists of the allotment made to the Transcaucasus from the unexpended
balance of the hundred millions appropriated by Congress for relief in allied countries, and of
the funds contributed through the American Committee for Relief in the Near East. All
circumstances considered, the relief administration in the Trans¬caucasus seems to have been
conducted with more than average energy. It has rescued the refugees there from starvation,
and brought the name of America to a height of sympathy and esteem it has never before
enjoyed in this region. It extends now throughout the Near East, and is felt by the wild,
ragged Kurd, the plausible Georgian, the suspicious Azarbaijan, the able Armenian, and the
grave Turk with equal seriousness. With it or probably because of it there has come
widespread knowledge of the Fourteen Points submitted by the President, and “self-
determination” has been quoted to the mission by wild Arabs from Shamar and Basra, by
every Government in Transcaucasia; by the mountaineers of Daghestan, the dignified and
able chiefs of the Turkish Nationalist movement at Sivas and Erzerum, and the nomad Kurds
who 10 minutes before had fired at our party thinking us to be Armenians. Undoubtedly some
charges of corruption on the part of native officials connected with the relief could be
substantiated. Charges of partiality favoring Christian against Moslem in equal distress are
not infrequent. Due to inexperience, to difficulties of communication and other causes there
has been inefficiency on the part of American officials and employees. Enthusiastic young
Americans out of touch with the sources of their funds, confronted with the horrors of famine
in a refugee population, drew drafts on the good faith and generosity of their countrymen,
procedure not usual in the business world, but drafts that were honored nevertheless. Any
criticism of unbusinesslike methods must be accompanied with the statement of work
accomplished, which has been very great and very creditable to America and her splendid
citizens who have so generously contributed to this cause. Col. Haskell has reorganized the
work in the Transcaucasus and is getting better results. In some way funds must be found and
this work must be continued and the people be sustained until they can harvest a crop. If seed
is available for planting, a crop should be due in August, 1920. Even this prospective

is available for planting, a crop should be due in August, 1920. Even this prospective
amelioration only applies to those repossessed of their lands.

There is much to show that, left to themselves, the Turk and the Armenian when left without
official instigation have hitherto been able to live together in peace. Their existence side by
side on the same soil for five centuries unmistakably indicates their interdependence and
mutual interest. The aged Vali of Erzerum, a man old in years and in official experience,
informed us that in his youth, before massacres began under Abdul Hamid, the Turk and the
Armenian lived in peace and confidence. The Turk making the pilgrimage to the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina left his family and property with his Armenian neighbor; similarly the
Armenian on the eve of a journey intrusted his treasures to his Turkish friend. Testimony is
universal that the massacres have always been ordered from Constantinople. Some Turkish
officials were pointed out to us by American missionaries as having refused to carry out the
1915 order for deportation. That order is universally attributed to the Committee of Union
and Progress, of which Enver Bey, Talaat Bey, and Djemal Pasha were the leaders. A court
has been sitting in the capital practically since the armistice, and one man, an unimportant
subordinate, has been hung. Talaat, Enver, and Djemal are at large, and a group of men
charged with various crimes against the laws of war are at Malta in custody of the British,
unpunished, except as restrained from personal liberty. Various rumors place Enver Bey as
scheming in the Transcaucasus, and a French officer is authority for the statement that he has
been in Tiflis within two months conferring with Government officials. This man is in Turkish
eyes a heroic figure; risen from obscurity by his own efforts, allied by marriage to
the Imperial House of Osman, credited with military ability, the possibilities of disturbance
are very great should he appear in command of Moslem irregulars on the Azarbaijan-
Armenian frontier.

Such are conditions to-day in the regions where the remnant of the Armenian people exist;
roads and lands almost back to the wild; starvation only kept off by American relief; villages
and towns in ruins; brigandage rampant in the Transcaucasus; lack of medicines and warm
clothing; winter coming on in a treeless land without coal. We saw nothing to prove that
Armenians who have returned to their homes in Turkey are in danger of their lives, but their
natural apprehension has been greatly increased by unbalanced advice given by officers on
the withdrawal of foreign troops from certain regions. The events at Smyrna have
undoubtedly cheapened every Christian life in Turkey, the landing of the Greeks there being
looked upon by the Turks as deliberate violation by the Allies of the terms of their armistice
and the probable forerunner of further unwarranted aggression. The moral responsibility for
present unrest throughout Turkey is very heavy on foreign powers.

Meantime, the Armenian, unarmed at the time of the deportations and massacres, a brave
soldier by thousands in the armies of Russia, France, and America during the war, is still
unarmed in a land where every man but himself carries a rifle.

===Текст заголовка===

In seeking a remedy for political conditions which shriek of misery, ruin, starvation, and all
the melancholy aftermath, not only of honorable warfare, but of beastial brutality
unrestrained by God or man, but which nevertheless prevail under an existing government
with which the powers of Europe have long been willing to treat on terms of equality, one’s
first impulse is to inquire as to the possibility of reform from within. The machinery of
government existing, can it be repaired and made a going concern, affording to its people the

government existing, can it be repaired and made a going concern, affording to its people the
guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which the modern world expects of its
governments ? The case of the Turkish Empire was duly presented to the peace conference in
Paris on June 17 last by the Turkish Grand Vizier, Damad Ferid Pasha, in which he admitted
for the Turkish Government of the unhappy region under consideration, the commission of
“misdeeds which are such as to make the conscience of mankind shudder with horror
forever,” and that “Asia Minor is to-day nothing but a vast heap of ruins.” In the reply made
by the council of ten of the peace conference, to the plea of the Grand Vizier for the life of
his Empire, the probability of that Government being able to accomplish reforms from within
which will satisfy modern requirements and perhaps make amends for past crimes, is well
weighed in the following words:

Yet in all these changes there has been no case found either in Europe or in Asia or in Africa in which the
establishment of Turkish rule in any country has not been followed by a diminution of prosperity in that country.
Neither is there any case to be found in which the withdrawal of Turkish rule has not been followed by material
prosperity and a rise in culture. Never among the Christians in Europe, nor among the Moslems in Syria, Arabia,
or Africa has the Turk done other than destroy wherever he has conquered. Never has he shown that he is able to
develop in peace what he has gained in war. Not in this direction do his talents lie.
It seems likely, therefore, that as far as the Armenians are concerned, the Turk has had his
day and that further uncontrolled opportunity will be denied him.

With the break-up of Russia the Transcaucasus found itself adrift. This Transcaucasian region
is ethnographically one of the most complicated in the world. In all ages it has been one of
the great highways for mankind. Here stragglers and racial remnants have lodged during all
the centuries that the tides of migration have swept the base of the great Caucasus Range,
until to-day its small area contains five great racial groups, divided into some 40 distinct
races. Nine of these have arrived in comparatively recent times, but the remaining 31 are
more or less indigenous. There are here 25 purely Caucasian races. This racial diversity is
complicated by the fact that with the exception of the fairly compact group of Georgians, and
one of Tartars, these peoples are inextricably commingled throughout the region. Their
civilization varies from the mountain savage to individuals of the highest types. Of the 40
distinct races, the most important groups are the Georgians, the Azarbaijanese Tartars, and
the Armenians.

A Transcaucasian confederation formed by all the peoples in that region was followed by an
alignment in three small Republics, Georgia, Azarbaijan, and Armenia. Georgia is Christian
and its Iberian population are in the majority; Azarbaijan is Tartar and Moslem; Armenia is
made up of the former provinces that composed Russian Armenia, less the part that went to
Azarbaijan in the split, and the majority of its people are the blood brothers of the Armenians
of Turkey in Asia. These republics have been recognized by none of the powers except
Turkey. The Armenian Republic seeks at the peace conference a union with the Turkish
Armenians and the creation of an Armenian state to include Russian Armenia and the six
Turkish Vilayets (Van, Bitlis, Diarbekir, Kharput, Sivas, Erzerum) and Cilicia, to be governed
by a mandatory of the great powers during a transition state of a term of years in which
Armenians of the dispersion may return to their homes, and a constituent assembly be held to
determine the form of the eventual permanent Government. Georgia and Azarbaijan ask
independence at the peace conference with certain adjustments of disputed boundaries in
which all Transcaucasia is interested.

Both Georgia and Azarbaijan, living on the salvage from the wreck of Russia, have persuaded
themselves that the civilization and governmental and business machinery they have taken
over have been theirs from the beginning. The Georgians, with a church of their own

over have been theirs from the beginning. The Georgians, with a church of their own
antedating that of Russia and traditions of a Georgian dynasty of Armenian origin which
reigned in Tiflis for a thousand years before Russia took over the country in 1802, are a very
proud and plausible race. They have been much influenced by the proximity of bolshevism,
fly the red flag of revolution over their own, and have nationalized land, taking it from the
original owners without compensation, to sell to peasants. This measure has been
unsatisfactory to both peasant and proprietor. The Azarbaijanese are Tartars by blood and
Moslem by religion and sympathy. The varied topography of their little country and the
diversity of its products make them more independent of outside help than either of the other
Transcaucasian Republics. Both Georgian and Azerbaijan Governments live in terror of the
forces of Deniken coming south of the Caucasus Mountains. Georgia has her little army on
her northern frontier; and Azarbaijan has a tacit agreement with Gen. Deniken to refrain from
hostilities against him in return for immunity from attack by his gunboats on the Caspian Sea.

The Russian Armenians are the blood brothers of those in Turkey, and came under Russian
domination in 1878. They absorbed many Russian manners and customs, and the wealth and
ability of the race gave them a predominant role in the Transcaucasus under Russia. Tiflis,
which was the Russian capital, has probably the largest Armenian population of any city in
the world except New York and Constantinople. They are friendly to Deniken and a
reconstituted Russia, and their refusal to join Georgia and Azarbaijan against Deniken caused
the break-up of the Transcaucasian Federation.

The dominant civilization in Transcaucasia is Russian. Everything worth while in the country
is due to Russian money and Russian enterprise. Besides this common bond, these countries
are interdependent in the matter of transportation. From Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, a
railroad runs west to the Black Sea at Batum and east to the Caspian Sea at Baku, the capital
of Azarbaijan; and south to Erivan, the capital of the Republic of Armenia. The road is one of
system, of the Russian gauge, with the three radii from Tiflis, each ending in a different
country, somethng like the following:

Under Russia the road was, of course, under one management, with shops, rollling stock, and
policy in common. Georgia now controls the shops, Azarbaijan the oil fuel, and each of the
three such rolling stock as it can get. No one of the three trusts the others; no through or
continuous traffic is possible without an outside power guaranteeing the return of the rolling
stock when it passes from one jurisdiction to another. Georgia does not hesitate to embargo
freight against Armenia, and from her position of vantage simply censors the railroad traffic

to that unfortunate country. Azarbaijan controls the fuel supply and combines with Georgia
against Armenia, which alone of the three has nothing by which to
exert leverage. The railroad can neither be consolidated nor properly operated under native
control. Roadbed and rolling stock are rapidly deteriorating. An example of the power of
Georgia over Armenia is that the latter is not permitted to import either arms or ammunition,
though under almost constant menace from its neighbors.

The three Governments from an occidental standpoint are now thoroughly inefficient,
without credit, and undoubtedly corrupt. Alone each faces inextricable financial difficulties. ,
Religious differences, added to racial, threaten to embroil them unless brought under a
common control. Two of them have no outlet to the Black Sea except through Georgia over
the railroad. They have no present intermonetary, postal, or customs union, and, as stated, no
definite agreement for common control and use of the railroad, and are in continual squabbles
over boundaries. Azarbaijan has no educated class capable of well administering a
government; Georgia is threatened by bolshevism; Armenia is in ruins, and partial starvation.
All our investigation brings conviction that the people in each would welcome a mandatory
by a trustworthy outside power. Russian Armenia would to-day probably vote a mandate to
Russia if that power were reconstituted. Georgia recalls its ancient independence and was
never thoroughly reconciled to Russian rule. Azarbaijan, Tartar and Moslem, feels a double
tie to Turkey and distrusts the Christian, but the more intelligent people realize that outside
control is inevitable and even necessary to their relations with Christain countries and that
Turkey is beyond consideration. So closely are the countries related geographically,
commercially, and by the habit of generations that this mission not only believes that a
mandatory is necessary for them, but that it is imperative from the standpoints of peace,
order, efficiency, and economy that the same power shall exercise a mandate over them all,
leaving for the present their interior boundaries unsettled. The ultimate disposition or form of
government of these States, other than that they may look forward to autonomy but not
necessarily independence, should in our opinion not now be announced. Their capacity for
self-government and their ability to sustain amicable and workable relations among
themselves remain to be tested under control by such power as may foe induced to undertake
its supervision, facing a long period of tutelage for possibly unappreciative and ungrateful
pupils, much expense, probably diplomatic embarrassment from a reconstitution of Russia,
and little reward except the consciousness of having contributed to the peace of the world
and the rehabilitation of oppressed humanity.

The covenant of the League of Nations contemplates that “certain communities formerly
belonging to the Turkish Empire” shall be subject to a mandatory power for an unstated
period, thus appearing to recognize in advance the dismemberment to some degree of that
Empire. (The italic is ours.) This, in connection with the arraignment of the Turkish
Government in the reply of the peace conference, partly quoted on page 15 ante (see page 6),
may not unreasonably be construed to apply to any or all parts of the Turkish Empire, as fast
as they reach a certain stage of development. As between actual dismemberment and a
receivership for his entire country, the Turk would beyond doubt prefer a mandatory for the
whole Empire as it may stand after adjudication by the peace confer-
ence. Bad as he is, without the pale of consideration from many standpoints, there would
seem to be no objection to action taken in his interest and in line with his preference if the
interest and inclination of the world lie in the same direction.

A power which should undertake a mandatory for Armenia and Transcaucasia without
control of the contiguous territory of Asia Minor—Anatolia—and of Constantinople, with its
hinterland of Roumelia, would undertake it under most unfavorable and trying conditions, so
difficult as to make the cost almost prohibitive, the maintenance of law and order and the
security of life and property uncertain, and ultimate success extremely doubtful. With the
Turkish Empire still freely controlling Constantinople, such a power would be practically
emasculated as far as real power is concerned. For generations these peoples have looked to
Constantinople as the seat of authority. The most intelligent and ambitious Armenians have
sought the capital as a career. The patriarch of the Armenian Church in Constantinople,
although subordinate in matters of doctrine to the Catholicos at Etchmiadzin, is in reality the
political head of the Armenian people by his location in Constantinople. Every people in the
Empire is numerously represented at the capital, the Armenians reaching before the war the
number of 150,000, with business connections ramifying to distant corners of the entire
country. To no small degree the future business and industrial development of their native
land will depend upon these men. Transportation lines and commerce center at
Constantinople. Before the war Constantinople was the most important port in Continental
Europe, reckoned upon the basis of shipping clearances. There are well-informed business
men who believe it is destined to become the third most important commercial city in the
world. But, through generations of habit, unless put under a mandatory, Constantinople will
continue to be a whirlpool of financial and political currents. Concession hunting, financial
intrigue, political exploitation, and international rivalries will center there in the future as in
the past. Concerted international action for administration of Constantinople is impracticable.
All concerts for governmental action are cumbersome; all concerts must have a leader to
secure effectiveness, and were it possible to agree upon one power which should really lead,
the reality of a mandate would exist with the handicap of a camouflage concert. In any
concert for the future government of Constantinople there would still exist the temptation for
single powers to play politics and befriend Turkey for value received. There must be actual
control, for responsibility without authority is worse than useless in a land of oriental
viewpoints.

As Americans supposed to be disinterested, this mission was the recipient of confidences
from the various sources. Turks when not deriding foreign efforts were deploring their effect
on their unfortunate Empire. Without dependable centralized control of Constantinople, a
power exercising mandate in Armenia would be crippled in administration, restricted in trade
development, ridden by concessionaires, dependent on Turkish discredited diplomacy for
redress of local and boundary grievances, and in extreme case practically cut off from
communication with the western world. It is believed that allied sentiment is so crystallized in
the opinion that Constantinople
must be placed under a mandatory that it may safely be assumed for the purposes of this
report that this will be done.

Conceded that there shall be a mandate for Armenia and Transcaucasia and one for
Constantinople and Anatolia, there are many considerations that indicate the desirability of
having such mandates exercised by the same power. If separate powers exercised such
mandate the inevitable jealousies, hatreds, exaggerated separatist tendencies, and economic
difficulties would compel failure. With all its faults the Turkish Empire is an existing
institution and it has some rusty blood-stained political machinery which under control of a
strong mandatory can be made to function. The peoples in question live in adjacent territory
and whether they wish it or not are neighbors. A single mandatory for the Turkish Empire and
the Trans-caucasus would be the most economical solution. No intelligent scheme for

the Trans-caucasus would be the most economical solution. No intelligent scheme for
development of railroads for Transcaucasia and Armenia can be worked out without
extension into Anatolia. Natural highways through the high mountains of Armenia are few,
and transportation development will, with proper feeders, at best be costly and difficult;
without access into Anatolia it will be impossible. For many years the expenses of
exploitation will not be met by equivalent receipts. This situation would be alleviated by
control of both regions. With Constantinople, Anatolia, and Armenia in different hands, the
manufacturers and exporters of Armenia could not hope for an equal share in the commerce
and trade of the Near East.

The Armenian Patriarch, the head of the Armenian Protestants, and others at Constantinople,
on our return from Armenia, called and volunteered the belief that the Armenian question
could not be settled within the boundaries of that country, and that they were prepared to
pass under a single mandate which should include the other parts of the Turkish Empire. In a
later written statement, however,1 they modified this, stating that while “ Different nations of
this Empire may enjoy the help of the same mandatory power” they felt that to bring Armenia
under the same system of administration as that of the Turks would defeat the object of the
development of Armenian ideals, “because by assuring the individual rights of a people the
national rights and ideals of the same people can not necessarily be assured”; that “Giving a
good government to the whole Turkish Empire will not induce the Armenians to gather to
their native land. They will still be a scattered people, etc.” A party of distinguished Turks,
including a former cabinet minister of high standing and a diplomat who for eight years
represented his country at one of the European courts, stated that as between the
independence of Turkey as it existed in 1914, and a mandate for the Empire given to the
United States they greatly preferred the latter, and believed that they spoke for the educated
classes of all Turkey.

It has been very evident to this mission that Turkey would not object to a single disinterested
power taking a mandate for her territory as outlined in the armistice with the Allies, and that
it could be accomplished with a minimum of foreign soldiery, where an attempt to carve out
territory for any particular region would mean a strong foreign force in constant occupation
for many years. The aim of the Nationalist, or National Defense Party, as its adherents style
it, as

-------
1
See Exhibit B, joint letter, Oct. 15,1919, from Armenian Patriarch, Catholic Armenian
Patriarchat, and the Vekil of Armenian Protestant Community.
stated by Mustapha Kemal Pasha, its head, is the preservation of the territorial integrity of the
Empire under a mandatory of a single disinterested power, preferably America.

The mission, while at Sivas, had a conference with the chiefs of this party, which held a
congress at Erzerum in July and one at Sivas in September. This movement has been the
cause of much apprehension on the part of those interested in the fate of the Armenians, to
whose safety it has been supposed to portend danger. The leader, Mustapha Kemal Pasha, is
a former general officer in the Turkish Army, who commanded with distinction an army corps
at the Dardanelles, and appears to be a young man of force and keen intelligence. He is
supposed to have resigned from the army to lead this movement. It sought, as a means to its
end, the overthrow of the Ferid Pasha cabinet, which has since fallen, claiming that it was
entirely under the influence of one of the great powers which itself desires a mandate for the
Empire. While professing entire loyalty to the Sultan the Nationalist leader had gone to the
extremity of cutting all official telegraph communications between the capital and the

extremity of cutting all official telegraph communications between the capital and the
interior, pending the removal of the cabinet. The fall of the Damad Ferid Pasha ministry in
October would seem to put the Empire behind the movement, for the Turkish officials in the
interior were already identified with it. In a statement given out on October 15, Mustapha
Kemal1 said:

The Nationalist Party recognized the necessity of the aid of an impartial foreign country. It is our aim to secure the
development of Turkey as she stood at the armistice. We have no expansionist plans, but it is our conviction that
Turkey can be made a rich and prosperous country if she can get a good government. Our Government has become
weakened through foreign interference and intrigues. After all our experience we are sure that America is the only
country able to help us. We guarantee no new Turkish violences against the Armenians will take place.

The events of the Greek occupation of Smyrna and the uneasiness produced by the activities
and propaganda of certain European powers have so stirred the Turkish people in the long
interval since the armistice that the mission fears that an announcement from Paris at this
time of an intention to carve from Turkey a State of Armenia, unless preceded by a strong
military occupation of the whole Empire, might be the signal for massacres of Christians in
every part of the country. There is no wisdom in now incorporating Turkish territory in a
separate Armenia, no matter what the aspirations of the Armenians. Certainly it is unwise to
invite trouble which may be avoided by the consolidation of the mandate region under a
single power. Under one mandatory they will be neighbors. Under two or more they will be
rivals, their small differences subjected to the interminable processes of diplomatic
representation, with the maintenance of duplicate and parallel establishments in many lines of
governmental activity. Only under a single mandatory can the matter of ultimate boundaries
be deferred, which is believed by this mission to be important.

In the proposition to carve an independent Armenia from the Ottoman Empire there is
something to be said on the part of the

-------
1
See Exhibits “C,” Statement of Mustapha Kemal Pasha concerning organization, objects,
“League for the Defense of the Rights of Anatolia and Roumelia”; “D,” Gen. Harbord’s
letter, Oct. 9, 1919, to Mustapha Kemal; “E,” Declaration of the Congress of Sivas; “F,”
Resolution of National Congress of Sivas addressed to Senate of the United States of America
requesting that senatorial committee visit and investigate conditions within Ottoman Empire.

S D—66-2—vol 15——34

Turk; namely, that his people even when all the refugees shall have returned to their homes,
will be in the majority in the region contemplated for a reconstituted Armenia—and they
were in the majority before the deportations took place—even though due, as it may be, to
the gerrymandering of provincial boundaries and the partial extermination of a people.
Notwithstanding his many estimable qualities, his culture, and his tenacity of race and
religion, the Armenian generally does not endear himself to those of other races with whom
he comes in contact. The Armenian stands among his neighbors very much as the Jew stands
in Russia and Poland, having as he does, the strong and preeminent ability of that race. He
incurs the penalty which attaches among backward races to the banker, the middleman, and
the creditor. Unjust as it may be, the sentiment regarding him is expressed by this saying
current in the Near East: “The Armenian is never legally in the wrong; never morally in the
right.” Even the American missionary, who in so many instances has risked his life for his
Armenian charges, does not as a rule personally like the Armenian as well as he does the
more genial but indolent and pleasure-loving Turk. The Armenian is not guiltless of blood

more genial but indolent and pleasure-loving Turk. The Armenian is not guiltless of blood
himself; his memory is long and reprisals are due, and will doubtless be made if opportunity
offers. Racially allied to the wild Aryan Kurd he is cordially hated by the latter. Kurds
appealed to this mission with tears in their eyes to protect them from Armenians who had
driven them from their villages, appealing to be allowed to go back to their homes for
protection against the rigorous winter now rapidly approaching on the high interior plateau.
The Kurds claim that many of their people were massacred under the most cruel
circumstances by Armenian irregulars accompanying the Russian Bolshevists when the
Russian Army went to pieces after the collapse of the empire.

Similar claim is made by the people of Erzerum, who point to burned buildings in which
hundreds of Turks perished, and by the authorities of Hassan-Kala, who give the number of
villages destroyed by the Armenians in their great plain as 43. According to British Consul
Stevens, at Batum, these statements were verified by a commission which examined into the
allegations and on which Armenians had a representation. In Baku the massacre of 2,000
Azarbaijanese by Armenians in March, 1918, was followed by the killing of 4,000 Armenians
by Azarbaijanese in November of the same year. From the standpoint of this mission the
capacity of the Armenian to govern himself is something to be tested under supervision. With
that still in doubt the possibility of an Armenian minority being given authority over a
Moslem majority against whom its hearts are filled with rancor for centuries of tyranny, may
well justify apprehension. There are very many who believe that the best elements of the
Armenian race have perished. It is believed that with the reestablishment of order in their
native country many of those who have emigrated to other countries will return. That,
however, can only come with time, and even then it is doubted if many of the wealthy and
influential Armenians long domiciled in happier lands will return to their somewhat primitive
ancient home, even though such absentees have raised their voices most loudly for an
autonomous Armenia. Certainly with arbitrary boundaries on the Anatolia side determined
only by Armenian wishes, expediency,tradition, or even verified historical claims of former occupation, without regard to the
present population, the mandatory powers for both Anatolia and Armenia should inaugurate
government by placing a cordon of trustworthy foreign soldiers from the Black Sea to the
Mediterranean. With a single power in control of both peoples and boundaries unannounced
except as they have hitherto existed, such difficulties would not arise. Against such
combination of authority and postponement of delimitation of boundaries is to be weighed the
unchangeable belief of many that the Turk at the end of his tutelage will still be the Turk,
bloodthirsty, unregenerate, and revengeful, and that it is unthinkable that Armenia shall ever
again form part of a country which may be governed by him; that the sufferings of centuries
should now be terminated by definite and permanent separation of Armenia from Turkey, and
that this plan seems to contemplate a tutelage of indefinite length. To this the reply is that the
Armenian should have no fear to submit his case to the League of Nations—the court of the
world—and that he must in the meantime prove his capacity not only to govern himself but
others, and that at the behest of the great powers a plebiscite could be had and the mandatory
at any time be terminated by detachment of his territory from Anatolia as well as now and
with much greater safety to him and convenience to his benefactors.

The conclusion of the American military mission to Armenia is that the remedy for the
existing conditions in Armenia and the Transcaucasus is a mandatory control to be exercised
by a single-great power. The Armenian question can not be settled in Armenia, It can not be
finally settled without answering two questions:

What is to be done with Turkey ?

What is to be done with Turkey ?

What is Russia going to do ?

Pending the ultimate settlement of these questions the mission believes that, for reasons set
forth, the power which takes a mandate for Armenia should also exercise a mandate for
Anatolia, Roumelia, Constantinople, and Transcaucasia; the boundaries of the Turkish-
vilayets of Armenia and Anatolia and the interior boundaries of Russian Armenia, Georgia,
and Azarbaijan to remain substantially as they are for the present. The divisions of such
mandate are an administrative detail to be worked out by the mandatory power. Good
administration indicates that there should be some intermediate authority between the
provinces and the capital. A natural subdivision of such a mandate as has been indicated
would probably be: Roumelia, city of Constantinople (federal district), Anatolia, Armenia,
district of Transcaucasia (less Russian Armenia).

The inclusion of the whole Turkish Empire under the government of a single mandatory
would be simpler and proportionately more economical than to divide it. A plebiscite fairly
taken would in all probability ask for an American mandate throughout the Empire. Syria and
Mesopotamia, however, not being considered essential to the settlement of the Armenian
question or as being the field for possible American responsibilities and interests in the Near
East as contemplated in the instructions to the mission, because actually occupied by France
and Great Britain at this time, have been considered by us as excluded from our
considerations, as is for a similar reason Arabia. In its belief that the Armenian problem is
only to be solved by a mandatory which should include also. Constantinople,
Anatolia, Turkish Armenia, and the Transcaucasus, the mission has the concurrence of many
Americans whose views by reason of long residence in the Near East are entitled to great
weight. Such Americans are practically a unit in believing that the problems of Armenia,
Anatolia, Constantinople, and Transcaucasia must be considered as an inseparable whole.

The mission has a strong conviction that the nation which may be induced by its colleagues to
undertake this mandate should be one prepared to steadfastly carry out a continuity of policy
for at least a generation, and to send only its most gifted sons to leadership in the work
without regard to political affiliations. Only on the certainty of continuity of a nonpartisan
policy would the best men forsake their careers in their own country to take up its burdens in
these eastern lands. No disinterested nation would undertake such a mandatory except from a
strong sense of altruism and international duty to the peace of the world in this breeding place
of wars and at the unanimous wish of other parties to the covenant of the League of Nations.

No duty of modern times would be undertaken under so fierce a glare of publicity. Such
nation would hold the center of the international stage with the spotlight from every foreign
office and from every church steeple in the world focussed upon it. No nation could afford to
fail, or to withdraw when once committed to this most serious and difficult problem growing
out of the great war. No nation incapable of united and nonpartisan action for a long period
should undertake it.

===Текст заголовка===

This report has heretofore endeavored to consider the conditions and questions of which it
treats in the abstract sense applicable to any nation which might be induced to assume the
task of a practical regeneration of this region. Its interest for our country, however, lies in the

task of a practical regeneration of this region. Its interest for our country, however, lies in the
possibility that the United States may be called upon by the world to undertake the task, and
the necessity therefore of knowing what it would mean for America. The problems for the
United States would not be identical with those of any other nation which might undertake it.
A not too sympathetic Old World, without pretensions to altruism or too much devotion to
ideals, will expect of America in the Near East the same lofty standards shown in Cuba and
the Philippines—the development of peoples rather than of material resources and
commerce. Distance, our time-honored detachment from the affairs of the Old World, our
innocence from participation in the intrigues which have hitherto characterized intercourse
with the Turk, our freedom from bias through the necessity of considering moslem public
opinion in other parts of the world, and the fact that we have no financial interest in the great
foreign debt of the Ottoman Empire, give America a viewpoint and an advantage in
approaching the situation that are enjoyed by no other great power.

A great part of the work of the mission has been devoted to a consideration of the situation as
it would affect our own country should it be invited to asume a mandate in the Near East.
The problem as a whole has been kept in mind while individual members of the mission have made special
inquiry into different matters of which knowledge is necessary to reach an intelligent
appreciation of the difficulties to be solved in this region. Each of these studies constitutes a
unit on the subject with which it deals, too important to justify the risk of an attempt at
epitomizing for this report. They are therefore submitted as appendices as follows:

A. Political Factors and Problems, by Capt. Stanley K. Hornbeck, Ordnance Department,
United States Army.

B. Government in Turkey and Transcaucasia, by Lieut. Col. Jasper Y. Brinton, judge
advocate, United States Army.

C. Public and Private Finance of Turkey and Transcaucasia, by Prof. W. W. Cumberland.

D. Commerce and Industry in Turkey and Transcaucasia, by Trade Commissioner Eliot
Grinnell Mears.

E. Public Health and Sanitation, by Col. Henry Beeuwkes, Medical Corps, United States
Army.

F. Population; Industrial and Other Qualities; Maintenance, by Lieut. Col. John Price
Jackson, Engineers, United States Army.

G. Climate, Natural Resources, Animal Industry, and Agriculture, by Lieut. Col. E. Bowditch,
Infantry, United States Army.

H. Geography, Mining and Boundaries, by Maj. Lawrence Martin, General Staff, United
States Army.

I. The Press of Turkey and Transcaucasia, by Maj. Harold W. Clark, Infantry, United States
Army.

J. The Military Problem of a Mandatory, by Brig. Gen. George Van Horn Moseley, General
Staff, United States Army.

K. Transport and Communications in Asia Minor and the Transcaucasus, by William B.

K. Transport and Communications in Asia Minor and the Transcaucasus, by William B.
Poland, engineer member of the mission.

L. Bibliography.

===THE MILITARY PROBLEM.===

Our country has so recently sent its young manhood to war overseas, and the heart of the
Nation is so sensitive to any enterprise which calls for its sons to serve as soldiers in distant
lands, that the greatest interest attaches to the military problem involved in any mandate to
which our people may ever give consideration.

The immediate problems which would lie before the Army and Navy of a mandatory power
in Turkey and Transcaucasia are:

(a) The suppression of any disorder attendant upon withdrawal of occupying troops and the
initiation of the government.

(b) The maintenance of order until a constabulary could be organized for the rural police of
the mandatory region.

(c) To help organize and train a native constabulary.

(d) To constitute a reserve for moral effect; for possible actual use in supplementing the local
constabulary in case of emergency; and for the prestige of the mandatory government in a
region which has been governed by force since the beginning of history.

The inauguration of a mandatory government would be followed at a very early date by the
withdrawal of the foreign troops now occupying the region and by the dissolution, as soon as
practicable, of the permanent military establishments now maintained by Turkey and
Transcaucasia. The United States accepting the mandate at the request of the other great
powers and of the peoples interested, no resistance to her troops would be anticipated. On the
contrary, they would doubtless be welcomed. No problem of external defense of the country
occupied would exist.

(a) The present occupying force of the region under consideration, Roumelia, Constantinople,
Anatolia, and Transcaucasia, excluding five Greek divisions occupying Smyrna, is the Army
of the Black Sea and the troops in Cilicia, comprising about 50,000 of the British, French,
Italian, and Greek Governments. The regular troops of Turkey and Transcaucasia to be
disbanded in the same region at the convenience of the mandatory government aggregate
about 92,000 men. The gendarmerie of Turkey amounts to about 30,000 men. The loss of
man power in Turkey has been appalling, and too many men are still absent from work and
carrying rifles.

It is not thought that any serious disorder would attend this substitution of the troops of the
mandatory power for the army of occupation and for the native regular forces.

(b) During the formation of an efficient native constabulary, a period of six months to a year,
small garrisons would have to be furnished along the railroads and in isolated towns,
especially on the old frontiers, where feeling runs high between races. This would give
security while the various nationals are being repatriated, reconstructing their homes, and
adjusting themselves to new conditions. The suppression of outlaw bands, which already exist

adjusting themselves to new conditions. The suppression of outlaw bands, which already exist
in some localities, and the formation of which in eastern countries invariably follows the
disbandment of armies after a long war, would call for constant use of a certain number of
United States troops pending the completion of the constabulary organization for service.
During this period the disarmament of the civilian population would be accomplished.

(c) The first duty of a mandatory would be to guarantee the safety of life and property
through the country, and to this end its earliest efforts should be directed to the establishment
of a native rural police or constabulary for the suppression of brigandage, outlawry, and other
crimes outside the towns. This force, with a military organization, should be a force of peace
officers as that term is used in our own country, empowered to make arrests of criminals of
all kinds, serve warrants, execute orders of arrest, etc. While decentralized in its
administration, and destined eventually to operate in small bodies, it should be a Federal
force, cooperating with but not serving under provincial officials. Its personnel should absorb
the best elements of the present gendarmerie, and also provide suitable employment for
deserving officers of the disbanded armies. For a considerable period its highest officers
would necessarily be Americans, but as fast as the quality of the native officers justifies, the
force should become native. The strength of the constabulary should be such as to enable it to
take over the whole task of maintaining order outside the towns and release American troops
at the earliest practicable date. Coincident with the organization of the constabulary would be
the creation of efficient municipal police.

(d) Considering the uncertain character of the neighboring populations, the traditional
lawlessness of migratory Kurds and Arabs, and the isolation of certain regions where the
temptation to reprisals for past wrongs will be strong for at least a generation, a certain force
must be kept in hand to supplement the native constabulary when needed. Such a force will
also be necessary for general moral effect. Its mere existence will prevent organized disorder
on a scale too large for a peace force to handle. Such a force would be stationed near
the capital, trained for quick expeditionary work, and sent where needed.

The character of the troops should be suited to the purpose for which used. For expeditionary
purposes, marines or infantry with artillery would be best. For moral effect in the interior and
during the period of constabulary, organization cavalry would be preferable. A small efficient
air service should be maintained. The aeroplane is not only a means of very rapid
communication, but its value for dealing with a distant small problem among half-wild tribes
can not be overestimated. The country much resembles Mexico, and the conditions would be
not unlike our border cavalry service. A regiment of railway engineers would be a necessity.
During the initial period of the mandatory, troops would be needed in connection with the
general problem of sanitation and cleaning up, and an extra proportion of sanitary troops
would be necessary.

Estimates of the necessary number of mandatory troops vary greatly—from 25,0.00 to
200,000. Conditions change so rapidly that plans made to-day for the use of troops might be
obsolete in six months. Uncertainty as to the time the mandate will be tendered and accepted
make estimates merely approximate. Under conditions as they exist to-day the undersigned
believes that a force of two American divisions, with several hundred extra officers, or a total
force of 59,000 would be ample. Such force would be specially organized; one aeroplane
squadron; a minimum of artillery; not to exceed one regiment of 75’s motorized; a minimum
of the special services ; four times the usual number of sanitary troops; four regiments of
cavalry, with minor changes in organization at the discretion of the senior general officer on
duty with the mandatory government. This force should be substantially reduced at the end of
two years, and by 50 per cent at the end of the third year. After that some further reduction

two years, and by 50 per cent at the end of the third year. After that some further reduction
could be slowly effected, but the irreducible minimum would be reached at about the strength
of one division.

The annual cost for the force of the army above stated would be at the maximum:

For the first year

At the end of two years perhaps

At the end of three years

with thereafter a continuing appropriation of that sum less such amount as the local revenues
could afford, probably a very substantial fraction of the cost.

To offset our expenditures there would be available at least a part of the naval and military
budget hitherto used for the support of the disbanded armies in the region. In Turkey before
the war this totaled about $61,000,000 annually for the army, including $5,000,000 for the
navy.

The naval establishment should consist of a station ship for the capital, and probably one
each for Smyrna, Mersina, Batum, and Baku, to meet local needs in quick transportation of
troops. A transport of light draft capable of carrying a complete regiment should be
permanently on station at the capital. Four to six destroyers would be needed for
communication and moral effect. Collier, repair, and hospital service afloat should be in
proportion. Old ships of obsolete type would probably answer for all except the station ship at
the capital and the destroyers. Some ships of the
Turkish Navy, of which there are over 30, could doubtless be used with American crews soon
to be replaced by natives.

The naval establishment might not entail any additional Federal appropriations. Ships and
personnel could probably be drawn from existing establishment; the only additional expense
would probably be the difference in cost of maintenance in near eastern and home waters.
It is very important that a proper military and naval setting be given the mandatory
government at the beginning. In no part of the world is prestige so important, and in no region
have people been so continuously governed by force. The mandatory could at the outset
afford to take no unnecessary risks among such a population in densest ignorance as to our
resources and our national traits.

...................

...................

. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .

$88,500,000

59,000,000

44, 250,000

===CONCLUSIONS.===

This mission has had constantly in mind the moral effect to be exercised by its inquiry in the
region visited. Very alarming reports had been received from Transcaucasia for several
months before its departure from France, particularly as to organized attacks by the Turkish
Army impending along the old international border between Turkey and Russia. The itinerary
of the mission through Turkey was planned with those reports before it and with the intention
of observing as to their truth and if possible to exert a restraining influence. We practically
covered the frontier of Turkey from the Black Sea to Persia, and found nothing to justify the
reports. The Turkish Army is not massed along the border; their organizations are reduced to
skeletons; and the country shows an appalling lack of people, either military or civilian. At
every principal town through which we passed the chief of the mission held a conference

every principal town through which we passed the chief of the mission held a conference
with the Turkish officials. Inquiry was made as to the Christian Community, some were
always interviewed; the interest of America in its own missionaries and in the native
Christians was invariably emphasized; the Armenian deportations, the massacres, and the
return of the survivors were discussed on each occasion, as well as other matters intended to
convince Turkish officials that their country is on trial before the world. The visit of the
mission has had a considerable moral effect in securing the safety of Christian lives and
property pending action by the peace conference.

We would again point out that if America accepts a mandate for the region visited by this
mission, it will undoubtedly do so from a strong sense of international duty, and at the
unanimous desire—so expressed at least—of its colleagues in the League of Nations.
Accepting this difficult task without previously securing the assurance of conditions would be
fatal to success. The United States should make its own conditions as a preliminary to
consideration of the subject—certainly before and not after acceptance, for there are a
multitude of interests that will conflict with what any American would consider a proper
administration of the country. Every possible precaution against international complications
should be taken in advance. In our opinion there should be specific pledges in terms of formal
agreements with France and England and definite approval from Germany and Russia of the
dispositions made of Turkey and Transcaucasia, and a pledge to respect them.

Of particular importance are the following:

Absolute control of the foreign relations of the Turkish Empire, no ambassador, envoy,
minister, or diplomatic agent to be accredited to Turkey, and the latter to send none such
abroad.

Concessions involving exclusive privileges to be subject to review if shown to be contrary to
the best interests of the State.

Concessions undesirable from the standpoint of the mandatory upon which work has not been
started to be canceled. Compensation to be allowed to holders when necessary.

The system by which specified revenues are assigned for particular purposes to be discarded.
All revenues to be controlled by the treasury, and all creditors to look only to the treasury as
the source of payment.

Foreign control over Turkey’s financial machinery to cease, meaning the dissolution of the
council of administration of the Ottoman public debt, reserving the right to retain some
individual members of the council as advisors because of their familiarity with Ottoman
finances.

All foreign obligations of the Empire to be unified and refunded.

Those countries receiving territory of the Turkish Empire, e. g., Syria and Mesopotamia, to
assume their reasonable share of the paper currency, of the foreign obligations, and of
obligation for possible reparation payments.

Abrogation, on due notice, of existing commercial treaties with Turkey.

All foreign Governments and troops to vacate territorial limits of mandate at dates to be fixed
by the mandatory power.

Consent to many of these measures would not easily be obtained. Many nations now have

Consent to many of these measures would not easily be obtained. Many nations now have
some sort of financial control within the Ottoman Empire, and they would not see this control
taken away without protest.

It needs no argument, however, to show that the United States could not submit to having her
financial policies controlled from foreign capitals. The refunding of the debt, possibly with a
reduction of the capital amount, would raise a storm of protest, but it should be insisted upon.
Otherwise an American administration would be embarrassed and run the risk of being
discredited.

The mission has not felt that it is expected to submit a recommendation as to the United
States accepting a mandate in the Near East. It, therefore, simply submits the following
summary of reasons for and against such action, based on all information obtainable during
six weeks constant contact with the peoples of the region:

===REASONS FOR.===

===REASONS AGAINST.===

1. As one of the chief contributors to the
formation of the League of Nations, the
United States is morally bound to accept the
obligations and responsibilities of a
mandatory power.

2. The insurance of world peace at the
world’s cross-ways, the focus of war
infection since the beginning of history.

1. The United States has prior and nearer
foreign obligations, and ample
responsibilities with domestic problems
growing out of the war.

2. This region has been a battle ground of
militarism and imperialism for centuries.
There is every likelihood that ambitious
nations will still maneuver for its control. It
would weaken our position relative to
Monroe doctrine and probably eventually
involve us with a reconsti-

3. The Near East presents the greatest
humanitarian opportunity of the age—a duty
for which the United States is better fitted
than any other—as witness Cuba, Porto
Rico, Philippines, Hawaii, Panama, and our
altruistic policy of developing peoples rather
than material
resources alone.

4. America is practically the unanimous
choice and fervent hope of all the peoples
involved.

5. America is already spending millions to
save starving peoples in Turkey and
Transcaucasia and could do this with much
more efficiency if in control. Whoever
becomes mandatory for these regions we
shall be still expected to finance their relief,
and will probably eventually furnish the
capital for material development.

tuted Russia. The taking of a mandate in this
region would bring the United States into the
politics of the Old World, contrary to our
traditional policy of keeping free of affairs in
the Eastern Hemisphere.

3. Humanitarianism should begin at home.
There is a sufficient number of difficult
situations which call for our action within the
well-recognized spheres of American
influence.

4. The United States has in no way
contributed to and is not responsible for the
conditions, political, social, or economic, that
prevail in this region. It will be entirely
consistent to decline the invitation.

5. American philanthropy and charity are
world wide. Such policy would commit us to
a policy of meddling or draw upon our
philanthropy to the point of exhaustion.

6. America is the only hope of the
Armenians. They consider but one other
nation, Great Britain, which they fear would
sacrifice their interests to Moslem public
opinion as long as she controls hundreds of
millions of that faith. Others fear Britain’s
imperialistic policy and her
habit of staying where she hoists her flag.

For a mandatory America is not only the first
The United States is not capable of sustaining
choice of all the peoples of the Near East,
but of each of the great powers, after itself. a continuity of foreign policy. One Congress
can not bind another. Even treaties can be
American power is adequate; its record
nullified by cutting off appropriations.
clean; its motives above suspicion.
Nonpartisanship is difficult to attain in our
Government.
7. The mandatory would be self-supporting
after an initial period of not to exceed five
7. Our country would be put to great
years. The building of railroads would offer expense, involving probably an increase of
opportunities to our capital. There would be the Army and Navy. Large numbers of
great trade advantages not only in the
Americans would serve in a country of
mandatory region, but in the proximity to
loathsome and dangerous diseases. It is
Russia, Roumania, etc.
questionable if railroads could for many
years pay interest on investments in their
America would clean this hotbed of disease very difficult construction. Capital for
and filth as she has in Cuba and Panama.
railways would not go there except on
Government guaranty.
8. Intervention would be a liberal education
for our people in world politics; give outlet to The effort and money spent would get us
a vast amount of spirit and energy and would more trade in nearer lands than we could
furnish a shining example.
hope for in Russia and Roumania.

philanthropy to the point of exhaustion.

6. Other powers, particularly Great Britain
and Russia, have shown continued interest in
the welfare of Armenia. Great Britain is
fitted by experience and government, has
great resources in money and trained
personnel, and though she might not be as
sympathetic to Armenian aspirations, her
rule would guarantee security and justice.

Proximity and competition would increase
the possibility of our becoming involved in
conflict with the policies and ambitions of
states which now our friends would be made
our rivals.

8. Our spirit and energy can find scope in
domestic enterprises, or in lands south and
west of ours. Intervention in the Near East
would rob us of the strategic advantage
enjoyed through the Atlantic which rolls
between us and probable foes.

9. It would definitely stop further massacres
of Armenians and other Christians, give
justice to the Turks, Kurds, Greeks, and
other peoples.

10. It would increase the strength and

Our reputation for fair dealing might be
impaired. Efficient supervision of a mandate
at such distance would be difficult or
impossible. We do not need or wish further
education in world politics.

10. It would increase the strength and
prestige of the United States abroad and
inspire interest at home in the regeneration
of the Near East.

11. America has strong sentimental interests
in the region; our missions and colleges.

12. If the United States does not take
responsibility in this region, it is likely that
international jealousies will result in a
continuance of the unspeakable misrule of
the Turk.

13. “And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is
Abel thy brother? And he said: ‘I know not;
am I my brother’s keeper?’”

Better millions for a mandate than billions
for future wars.

9. Peace and justice would be equally
assured under any other of the great powers.

10. It would weaken and dissipate our
strength which should be reserved for future
responsibilities on the American continents
and in the Far East. Our line of
communication to Constantinople would be
at the mercy of other naval powers, and
especially of Great Britain, with Gibraltar
and Malta, etc., on the route.

11. These institutions have been respected
even by the Turks throughout the war and
the massacres; and sympathy and respect
would be shown by any other mandatory.

12. The peace conference has definitely
informed the Turkish Government that it
may expect to go under a mandate. It is not
conceivable that the League of Nations
would permit further uncontrolled rule by
that thoroughly discredited government.

13. The first duty of America is to its own
people and its nearer neighbors.

Our country would be involved in this
adventure for at least a generation and in
counting the cost Congress must be prepared
to advance some such sums, less such
amount as the Turkish and Transcaucasian
revenues could afford, for the first five
years, as follows:

====FIRST YEAR.====
General government
Communications, railroads, etc
Relief, repatriation, education, etc
Army and Navy
Sanitation

...
...
...
...
...

$100, 000,000
20, 000,000
50,000,000
88, 500, 000
17,000,000

Total . . . 275, 000,000

====SECOND YEAR.====

General government
Communications, railroads, etc
Relief, education, etc
Army and Navy
Sanitation, etc

...
...
...
...
...

75, 000, 000
20, 000, 000
13, 000, 000
59, 000, 000
7, 264, 000

Total

174,264,000

Total

174,264,000

====THIRD YEAR.====

General government
Communications, railroads, etc

. . . 50, 000, 000
. . . 20,000,000

THIRD YEAR—continued.
Relief, education, etc
Army and navy
Sanitation, etc

. . . $100, 000,000
. . . 20, 000,000
. . . 50,000,000

Total . . . 123,750,000

General government
Communications, railroads, etc
Relief, education, etc
Army and navy
Sanitation, etc

...
...
...
...
...

Total

25,000, 000
20,000, 000
4,500,000
44,250,000
3,000,000

96,750,000

====FIFTH YEAR.====

General government
Communications, railroads, etc
Relief, education, etc
Army and navy
Sanitation, etc

...
...
...
...
...

Total . . . 85,750,000

15,000,000
20,000,000
4,500,000
44,250,000
3,000,000

====SUMMARY====
Total first year
Total second year
Total third year
Total fourth year
Total fifth year

...
...
...
...
...

Grand total . . . 756, 014, 000

275, 500, 000
174, 264, 000
123, 750, 000
96, 750, 000
85, 750, 000

14. Here is a man’s job that the world says
can be better done by America than by any
other. America can afford the money; she
has the men; no duty to her own people
would suffer; her traditional policy of
isolation did not keep her from successful
participation in the Great War. Shall it be
said that our country lacks the courage to

said that our country lacks the courage to
take up new and difficult duties?

Without visiting the Near East it is not possible for an American to realize even faintly the
respect, faith, and affection with which our country is regarded throughout that region.
Whether it is the world-wide reputation which we enjoy for fair dealing, a tribute perhaps to
the crusading spirit which carried us into the Great War, not untinged with hope that the same
spirit may urge us into the solution of great problems growing out of that conflict, or whether
due to unselfish and impartial missionary and educational influence exerted for a century, it is
the one faith which is held alike by Christian and Moslem, by Jew and Gentile, by prince and
peasant in the Near East. It is very gratifying to the pride of Americans far from home. But it
brings with it the heavy responsibility of deciding great questions with a seriousness worthy
of such faith. Burdens that might be assumed on the appeal of such sentiment would have
to be carried for not less than a generation under circumstances so trying that we might easily
forfeit the faith of the world. If we refuse to assume it, for no matter what reasons
satisfactory to ourselves, we shall be considered by many millions of people as having left
unfinished the task for which we entered the war, and as having betrayed their hopes.

Respectfully submitted.

JAMES G. HARBORD,
Major General, United States Army, Chief of Mission.

NOTE.—The mission is indebted for assistance to the American high commissioner, Rear
Admiral Mark L. Bristol, United States Navy, and to Consul General G. B. Ravndal at
Constantinople, to American Consuls Jackson at Aleppo, and Doolittle at Tiflis, as well as to
the allied high commissioner to Armenia, Col. W. N. Haskell, United States Army.
Acknowledgments are also made to Dr. Mary Mills Patrick, president of the Woman’s
College of Constantinople; to the authorities of Robert College, particularly Prof. Hussein
Bey; and to Messrs. Barton, Chambers, Christie, Riggs, Partridge, Prof. Robert P. Blake, of
National University, Mr. Benjamin Burgess Moore, chief American political intelligence
mission to the Transcaucasus, Tiflis, and Misses Graffam and Fenanga, as well as to various
other representatives of the American committee for relief in the Near East, and of the
several missionary centers. All of these devoted missionaries have passed years of exile in
this country, offering their lives for its betterment, and have the high respect of not only the
people among whom they live, but of the various foreign representatives to whom they are
known. American missions and schools have for 100 years produced striking and far-reaching
results in Asiatic Turkey, and are a credit to our country. The mission is also under obligation
to government officials in all the countries visited, from whom it has received nothing but
courteous assistance in its work.

===EXHIBIT C.===

===Текст заголовка===

I. Our league was not in existence when the Sublime Porte signed the armistice of September
30, 1919.

After the conclusion of this convention on the basis of the principle of nationalities as
formulated by President Wilson, our nation firmly entertained the hope that it would obtain a
just peace and was eagerly looking forward to such a consummation. As a matter of fact, the
carrying out of the armistice gave arbitrarily rise on the part of the Entente Powers to daily
increasing transgressions and violations of its clauses.

The non-Moslem elements with which we have led a joint existence ab antique, encouraged
by the favor shown to them by the Entente Powers, broke into open attacks on the dignity
and rights of the nation and State.

Constantinople, the seat of the caliphate and throne, was occupied by the forces of the
Entente Powers in a brutal and oppressive form. The police and the gendarmerie having been
placed under the control of the occupying powers. This constituted a de facto interference
with the administration of the capital and the independence of the country.

The regions of Adana and Adalia were occupied right up to Koniah. The cession of Smyrna
and the surrounding territory as well as of
Thrace to Greece and the creation of an extensive Armenian State in eastern Anatolia on the
one hand, and of a Republic of the Pontus along the Black Sea shore of the Empire on the
other hand, began to be seriously discussed.

It was natural, under these circumstances, that the Turkish nation should feel deeply affected
by these operations directed against the integrity of its territory and independence as well as
against its dignity and other legitimate rights.

On the other hand, the Chamber of Deputies, in session at Constantinople, having been
dissolved, the cabinets which came to power in succession and were composed of incapable
individuals did not derive their authority from the national forces and escaped the control of
the representatives of the nation. Presently it was realized that these cabinets were not only
lacking in the necessary qualities for defending the rights and dignity of the nation, but that
they actually lent themselves to the satisfaction of the ambitions of the foreign powers,
principally England, in whose hands they had become simple toys.

Thus it came to pass that the nation, which began to feel seriously concerned about its
existence, felt the necessity of manifesting directly its power and administrative action by its
personal intervention.

As a consequence, national organizations sprang up spontaneously in every part of the
country.

Of these national organizations the following are the principal: The Erzeroum Association for
the Defense of the Fatherland; the Diarbekir Association for the Defense of the Fatherland;
The Cilicia Association for the Defense of National Rights; The Smyrna Association for the
Defense of National Rights (this association latterly assumed the name of “Association for
Defending the National Rights and Preventing Cession of Territory”); The Thrace and Pasha
Ili Association (this association having combined with the associations of Western Thrace
adopted the general denomination of “Association of Thrace”) A number of associations
were also formed in Constantinople, of which the National Unity Association is the principal.

These associations have no connection whatsoever with the existing political parties or those
in course of formation. On the contrary, they are entirely free from all political ambition and

in course of formation. On the contrary, they are entirely free from all political ambition and
owe their existence exclusively to the common aim of safeguarding the territorial integrity
and other rights of the Nation and State. They are all acting under the same influences and
causes.

II. It was while these associations formed throughout the country Were busy extending their
organization in a perfectly orderly and peaceful manner—they were looking forward with
confidence to the assertion of the principles of right and justice—that the Greeks occupied
Smyrna and the environing country under the patronage of the Entente rowers and committed
on this occasion untold atrocities. The Greek troops and the local Greeks who had joined
them in arms started a general massacre of the Mussulmen population in which the officials
and Ottoman officers and soldiers as well as the peaceful inhabitants were indiscriminately
put to death and subjected to forms of torture and savagery worthy of the Inquisition and
constituting in any case a barbarous violation of the laws of humanity.
Naturally the outcry was great among the Mussulmen population. It appealed for help. The
voice thus raised by the innocent and tormented Mussulmen of Smyrna reverberated
throughout the land. The whole nation rose as one man to oppose the barbarously hostile
action of the Greeks. Meetings were organized in the towns and even in the villages and
telegrams dispatched by the hundred to the Entente Powers and the whole civilized world,
tearfully appealing for protection and help. These solicitations of a whole people for a
reversion to the laws of humanity and justice remained unheard. On the contrary the Greeks
extended the zone of their operations to the continued accompaniment of their first atrocities.
In Constantinople the oppressive measures of the English acting in conjunction with the
Central Government took a severer form. The Italian forces in Adalia were increased. In
Cilicia the Mussulmen population continued to be subjected to insult and outrage and
reenforced measures were adopted for the suppression of Turkish authority. The Greek bands
whose activity was directed from Constantinople and Smyrna indulged in increased outrages
at the expense of the Mussulmen element.

At this juncture the Ferid Pasha cabinet, which in no wise represents the feelings and wishes
of the nation, was invited to send a delegation to Paris. The treatment with which our
delegates met at the congress was only another instance added to so many others of the
offensive attitude so easily adopted toward Turkey.

III. The nation, realizing that salvation resided in the formation of a general and joint
organization acting in perfect unity. The population of Trebizond and Erzeroum took steps in
June, 1919, in view of the convocation of a congress in the latter town which was to bring
about the unification of the eastern vilayets. At the same time a resolution was adopted at
Amassia for the meeting of a congress at Sivas for the unification of the whole of Anatolia
and Roumelia.

On the 23d of July, 1919, the first of the intended congresses met at Erzeroum. It was
composed of the elected representatives of all the vilayets, subprefectures, and cazas of
eastern Anatolia. It remained in session 15 days. (The proclamation embodying its essential
resolutions, system of organization, aims, and points of view is in principle the same as that of
the congress that followed at Sivas and is annexed in the Turkish original to this
memorandum.)

On the fourth of September 1919, the second Congress met at Sivas. It was composed of the
elected representatives of western Anatolia and Roumelia and, acting in the name of eastern
Anatolia, a body of fully empowered delegates elected by the Congress of Erzeroum. The

Anatolia, a body of fully empowered delegates elected by the Congress of Erzeroum. The
latter Congress having already established the principal basis of action of the national
movement, the Sivas Congress completed its deliberations and adopted its resolutions in the
course of a week. (These resolutions as mentioned above are annexed to the present
memorandum.)

At this general Congress it was once more established that all those parts of the Empire which
were under Turkish authority at the time of the conclusion of the armistice between the
Sublime Porte and the Entente Powers formed one joint block of territory and that our
compatriots of the same faith formed a united body pursuing one aim in perfect unison. This
Congress took the name of “League for the Defense of the Rights of Anatolia and Roumelia.”
In this fashion the whole nation and the Ottoman Army which is recruited from among the sons of
the nation and whose primary duty is the defense of the Fatherland form the sources of our
strength.

A “committee of representatives” was elected with powers to pursue the common end and to
administer the affairs of the organization.

IV. As shown in the annexed regulations, the foremost object of our league is, on the one
hand, to constitute the national forces into a factor for the maintenance of the territorial
integrity of the Ottoman Fatherland within the borders already mentioned and for the defense
of the national independence and the rights of the caliphate and throne and, on the other
hand, to establish the supremacy of the national will.

Concerning our non-Moslem compatriots with whom we have lived together for such a long
time (Armenians, Greeks, Jews, etc.) we have no other point of view or feeling than to be
sincerely animated with the best intentions toward them and to consider them entitled to
perfect equality with ourselves. We are absolutely certain that if the country is freed from the
evil influences and suggestions which have been at work in its midst so far, the different races
of the Empire will live in peace with one another and lead, in common, a happy and
prosperous life.

The high and pure aims which are ours exclude all aggressive intentions against the Entente
Powers. It will be natural and inevitable for us, however, to defend ourselves and retaliate in
answer to attacks in a material form upon our existence in violation of the laws of justice and
humanity.

V. It is to be deplored that whereas the nature of our aims was to be gathered from our
explanations as well as from our acts, a number of evil-minded and malevolent individuals,
starting a campaign of misrepresentation and false rumors, sought to attribute to our
intentions forms which never crossed our minds and had no connection whatever with truth.
In this respect, those who went furthest are the English and the Ferid Pasha cabinet which, as
already stated, is but a tool in their hands.

Ferid Pasha and his colleagues are convinced that they could not enjoy any authority
whatsoever if the administration was run on constitutional and liberal lines and rested on the
national forces. That is why, the nation, having given proof of its maturity and shown its
general capability as well as its consciousness of its civil and natural rights, the only concern
of this cabinet is to crush the national organization and its action. In this campaign one of its
weapons is the fear of the unionists, those unionists who gained such unenviable notoriety the
world over by their misrule lasting several years to the great detriment of the nation and by

world over by their misrule lasting several years to the great detriment of the nation and by
their last crime which was to plunge the country into an abyss from which it is experiencing
such difficulty in extricating itself. Speculating on this fear the present cabinet is fatuously
seeking to discredit our action which is free from every kind of self-seeking ambition and is
pursuing thoroughly national aims by representing these as being connected with unionism.
Another weapon to which the cabinet clings is the fear of bolshevism. In the official
communications they are striving to get through to the provincial governors, they are not
ashamed to assert that the Bolshevists have entered Anatolia and that all our activities are
inspired by them.
As a matter of fact we realize and estimate the painful consequences to which unionism has
led the nation much better than Ferid Pasha and his likes. Our object, so far from being to
deal the last blow to the existence of our fatherland and nation by launching upon adventures,
is to proceed with the greatest discrimination and forethought and to find the means for
insuring their survival and welfare. Consequently there can be no relationship between us and
the unionists.

As to the Bolshevists, there is no room whatever in our country for this doctrine, our religion
and customs as well as our social organization being entirely unfavorable to its implantation.
In Turkey there are neither great capitalists nor millions of artisans and workingmen. On the
other hand, we are not saddled with an agrarian question. Finally, from the social point of
view, our religious principles are such as to dispense us with the adoption of bolshevism. The
best proof that the Turkish nation has no leanings in favor of this doctrine and that, if
necessary, it is ready to combat it, is to be found in the attempt of Ferid Pasha to deceive the
nation by way of alarming it into the belief that bolshevism has invaded the land or is on the
point of doing so. The Ferid Pasha cabinet is truly a coat cut to measure of the expansionist
ambitions of the English. The latter, founding their plans on their experiences in India, Egypt,
and the other countries they have succeeded in bringing under their arbitrary rule, realize full
well that after reducing the Turkish nation to the condition of a flock deprived of all sense of
human dignity and all national and patriotic virtues, as well as of the right of liberty and
education, they will be able to degrade it into a troop of slaves bowing to their will. This is the
end toward which they are working, having recourse to numberless intrigues in our midst in
view of its attainment. To quote a few instance of their tactics:

(a) Falsely accusing quite a number of Ottoman citizens of unionism, opposition to England,
and what not, they proceeded to arrest and exile them, thus tampering with the country’s
judicial rights. Besides this, they are busy discovering or creating reasons for the arrest of the
Nationalists and patriots remaining in the country and employ the Government as an
instrument for persecuting them.

(b) With the idea of bringing about the partition of the Empire and creating a fratricidal
struggle between Turks and Kurds, they incited the latter to join in a plan for the
establishment of an independent Kurdistan under English protection, the argument put
forward by them being that the Empire was, in any case, condemned to dissolution. For the
carrying out of this enterprise they spent large sums of money, had recourse to every form of
espionage, and even sent emissaries on the spot. Thus an English officer of the name of
Naivill exerted himself in this sense for a long time at Diarbekir, having recourse to every
kind of fraud and deception in his operations. But our Kurd compatriots, guessing what was
on foot, drove him out of the place as well as a handful of traitors who had sold their
consciences for money. Disappointed in his action at Kiarbekir, Mr. Naivill betook himself to
Malatia with several adventurers belonging to the Bedrihan clan and whom he had won over
with money but who enjoy no credit with their kinsmen such as Kiamouran, Djaladoh, and

with money but who enjoy no credit with their kinsmen such as Kiamouran, Djaladoh, and
Diarbekirli, Djemil Pasha Lade

S D—66-2—vol 15——35
Ekrem. There he renewed his attempt in view of the establishment of an independent
Kurdistan in collaboration with the mutesarif (subgovernor), Khasil Bey, also a member of
the Bedrihan clan.

On the other hand, combining with the Vali of Kharput, Ghalil Bey—an instrument of the
self-seeking Minister of the Interior Abil Bey and the likewise self-seeking Minister of War
Suleyman Chefik Pasha—who was committed to take measures against the national
movement and more especially against the Sivas Congress, he and the crowd of his associates
started the cry, “The Armenian soldiers are going to occupy the country—to arms,” intending
in this manner to provoke a rising of our simple-minded Kurdish compatriots. The object of
this wicked plan was threefold: To resuscitate Kurdish particularism, to destroy the national
forces, and to create a conflict and the shedding of blood between children of the same
country. The conspirators did not even shrink from trying to implicate in the projected
tragedy a detachment of troops Ghalil Bey had asked for under pretense of pursuing
personally a band of brigands which was said to have ransacked the mail. (Several documents
concerning this affair are annexed to the present memorandum.)

These individuals met with the confusion which was to be expected of their underestimation
of the national forces. The local population which remained innocent of all participation in
these intrigues very soon understood their criminal meaning and was proceeding to take the
culprits into custody when they fled.

(c) While perfect tranquillity was reigning in Eski Shehir, English troops entered the house of
the local commandant, Col. Atif Bey, and putting forward the most unlikely calumnies
against him, carried him off under the eyes of his soldiers and sent him under escort to
Constantinople. In explanation of the emotion and effervescence very naturally caused
among the local population by the outrage the English spread reports to the effect that the
Bolshevists and unionists were invading the district and on this pretense adopted special
military measures in the locality.

(d) Ferid Pasha publishes, by means of the telegraphic agencies, the report that disturbances
are taking place in Anatolia and his accomplices, the English, making out that the Armenians
are being made the victims of outrages in Sivas, addresses a minatory note to the Sublime
Porte. At .the same time an outcry is raised on the invaded ground that a massacre of the
Christians is being planned at Marzivan. As a matter of fact, not only has it been ascertained
materially that no such things have happened, but that there is absolutely no likelihood of
their occurring. On the contrary, the encounters which were taking place in the region of
Samsoun before the organization of the national movement between the Greek bands formed
with a political object and the Mussulmen population against which the former were
practicing their ferocity and who, in the absence of all protection on the part of the army and
gendarmerie, was forced to act in self-defense, have stopped as a result of the advice given to
both sides by the national organization and without recourse having been had to measures of
force. To-day perfect tranquillity reigns in this region as in the other parts of the country.

VI. We entertain no unfriendly dispositions toward the Armenian Republic of which Erivan is
the center. For the present the league
has no relations with this State and is not interested in it. Our knowledge concerning it is
derived from rumors and indirect information. We know, however, so much to be a fact that
the Armenians in the new State are carrying on operations in view of exterminating the
Mussulmen element in obedience to orders from the Armenian corps commander. We have
had copies of their orders under our eyes. That the Armenians of Erivan are following a
policy of extermination against the Mussulmen and this wave of sanguinary savagery has
spread right up to our frontier is also established by the fact of the presence within our
borders of numerous Mussulmen fleeing from death on the other side. The government of
Erivan has, on the other hand, resorted to direct acts of provocation such as the practice of
gunfire this side of the border.

Although the course of these events the English encouraged on the one hand the Armenians
in the attitude adopted by them against the Mussulmen or even stirred them up to it and, on
the other hand, enumerating to us the outrages of the former and describing them as
unbearable, they urged us to retaliate by attacking the neighboring State. But we, putting up
with the Armenian provocations, turned a deaf ear to the indignations of the English, feeling
sure that the truth would make itself known soon enough. As a matter of fact we thought we
could detect in the attitude of the English trying to launch us upon an attack against Armenia,
the plan of creating a situation of which they would avail themselves to dispatch their own
troops into that country. All these maneuvers of the English were started by their officers and
representatives after they saw themselves obliged to evacuate Caucasia.

We hear that conflicts are taking place between the Azarbaijanese and the Erivan Armenians.
We presume that the reason for this is the refusal of the Armenians to join the alliance
concluded between the Azarbaijanese and the Georgians against England’s protege, Denikin,
who is trying to push southward.

It is quite natural that the Mussulmen of Erzeroum and Van, and more particularly those
among them living in the border regions should have reached a high state of excitement as a
result of the news reaching them daily of the massacres in Armenia and the sight of the
unfortunate refugees having escaped death and whose condition is lamentable. What adds to
their effervescence is the gunfire practice of the Armenians without our border. But our
organization has succeeded in appeasing them and all likelihood of violent reaction on their
part has been exerted.

VII. Refraining from going to the assistance of the unfortunate Mussulmen population in
Armenia and from collaborating with the Mussulmen of Azarbaijan, we consider it
indispensable to confine our action and aims to the task of insuring the future existence and
welfare of the Fatherland and Nation, within the borders already defined. We are, in effect,
convinced that Fouranism is a mischievous conception. We consider that, by dispersing our
material and moral forces in the pursuit of chimeras a long distance from our frontiers, we
will only weaken the strength we require for defending the seat of the throne and caliphate
which is the heart of our Fatherland and the knot of our existence.
Quite recent events, unfolding themselves under our very eyes, have taught us to remain
faithful to moderate conceptions. For instance, during the general war which has not yet
ended in peace, the man at the head of our Government employed the Ottoman forces to
attain such ends as the conquest of Caucasia, the strengthening of the Azarbaijan
Government and the recovery of Egypt. As a result of this policy the very source of life in
our real Fatherland, the population has diminished considerably. Many fertile and otherwise

our real Fatherland, the population has diminished considerably. Many fertile and otherwise
valuable lands have been wrested from us and even within the frontiers we have assigned to
ourselves as our last future, our capital, as well as such peerless sections of our country as
Smyrna, Adalia, and Adana are under foreign military occupation. Whereas, if we had not
entered the war, or at least, if having entered it, we had wisely employed our forces with a
view to defending our territory within its existing borders, instead of wasting them in
ambitious enterprises, our situation, though perhaps still that of a vanquished people, would
be different from what it is.

In any case the spreading of the preposterous report that Fouranism forms part of our aims
and action is but another instance of the calumnies in which the English indulge at our
expense.

VIII. With a view to distorting the truth, that is the purely national character of our
movement, the English have also thrown into circulation reports to the effect that we have
obtained money now from the Germans or Bolshevists, now from the foreign Mussulmen or
unionists, now again from Enver Pasha, and we do not know who else. These reports suiting
the Ferid Pasha cabinet, it is giving them prominence after sorting and strengthening them. In
reality our league has no connection whatsoever with the sources just mentioned, and can not
have, since, as explained from the very beginning, our object is purely national and patriotic
and follows an open course. To accept money from any source whatsoever, it is necessary for
us who pursue a conservative and legitimate object, to sacrifice the money thus received to
the intentions and wishes of the donors.

Generally speaking, our league does not require as large sums of money as is imagined. Ours
is not an illegitimate object, acceptance of which by a foreign power we are trying to obtain
by means of money. Nor are we in a position obliging us to buy the conscience of some other
nation. Nor, again, are we in the necessity of suggesting an unknown object to our nation,
spending money for the purpose. Our league is the result of a pure and patriotic movement
born of the national consciousness and consists in the adoption by this movement of a
national form and organization. Our treasury is the conscience of the nation which has learnt
to appreciate the value of independence and patriotism. The sources of our. revenues are the
spontaneous donations of the nation.

IX. After the armistice the European powers fell into the mistake of imagining that in Turkey
there was not a nation conscious of its rights and ready to defend them. Whatever a lifeless
country and a bloodless nation is worthy of that is what it was sought to apply to us. The idea
was entertained at the Versailles conference of partitioning our fatherland and distributing its
fragments as presents right and left. It is a subject for thankfulness that these preposterous de-
cisions, which were calculated to plunge humanity in new tragedies, have been deferred. It is
also a subject for thankfulness that the decisive resolutions concerning our fate have been
made dependent on the deliberations and decisions of the American Congress. It was the faith
placed in the nationalistic and natural principles put forward by the American Nation that
brought about the end of the general war which has soaked the soil of the globe with human
blood and strewn it with human corpses, thus causing the shedding of endless tears.

We entertain an unshaken confidence that thanks to the humane decisions of the Americans
the ground will be found for the establishment of an enduring and perfect peace. We have no
doubt that the American Nation and the American Congress, representing the cause of
civilization, right, and justice in its midst, have been sufficiently enlightened in regard to our
pure-hearted Turkish people and its degree of attachment to and connection with civilization
and will adopt the most efficient, equitable, and practical resolutions concerning its fate,

and will adopt the most efficient, equitable, and practical resolutions concerning its fate,
leaving us thus overflowing with gratitude.

X. The Turkish people possess a more than 10-century-old right of existence in these lands.
This is established by the survival of numerous relics of the past. As for the Ottoman State, it
dates from seven centuries and can boast a glorious past and history. We are a people whose
power and majesty were recognized by the world in three such continents as Asia, Europe,
and Africa. Our men of war and merchantmen sailed the oceans and carried our flag as far as
India. Our capabilities are proven by the power we once wielded and which had become
world-wide. But during the last century the intrigues of the European powers in our capital
and as a result of these intrigues their interference with our independence, the restrictions
with which they trammeled our economic life, the seeds of discord they sowed between us
and the non-Moslem elements with which we had been living on fraternal terms for centuries,
and added to these circumstances the weakness and resulting misrule of our Governments
have acted as obstacles to our advance in the paths of modern progress and prosperity. The
painful condition which is ours to-day does not in the least imply any radical incapacity on
our part or incompatibility with modern civilization. It is solely due to the persistence of the
adverse causes enumerated above.

We can give the most positive assurances that our country, if freed from the incubus of
foreign intrigue and intervention and if its affairs are managed by a capable government
respectful of the national will and wishes, it will presently assume a condition which will be a
source of satisfaction to the whole world.

We make a special point of adding that the assistance of a powerful and impartial foreign
nation will be of great value to us in saving us from the iniquitous oppression of which we are
the victims and in hastening our development.

We derive great hope from the Wilsonian doctrine embodying the nationalistic principle and
from the spirit of justice and humanitarianism displayed by the American Nation in its action
to insure its triumph.

===MOUSTAPHA KEMAL PASHA.===

===EXHIBIT D.===

AMERICAN MILITARY MISSION,

On Board U. S. S. “Martha Washington,” October 9, 1919.

MY DEAR GENERAL: I acknowledged receipt at Samsoun of your letter setting forth the
aims of the party of which you are the chief. I thank you for it. In our journey after leaving
Sivas we were recipients of many courtesies from your people.

I have been informed by members of my mission who have traveled through Malatia,
Kaiseriya, and Marsovan that the Armenian people in those regions are still very
apprehensive of danger from the Nationalist movement, and that some are leaving their
homes again in consequence of threats from their Turkish neighbors. I found similar
uneasiness in other places. I again invite your attention to the keen interest America has in
the safety and welfare of these people, as shown by President Wilson’s cable to the Turkish
Government, and suggest a wider circulation of the information that your organization is in no
way inimical to the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire, as I understood from you is

way inimical to the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire, as I understood from you is
the case.

Please accept my thanks for your courtesy to my party, and believe me,

Very truly, yours,

JAS. G. HARBORD,
Major General, United States Army.

Gen. MUSTAPHA KEMAL,
Representative of the Committee for the Defense
of Turkey, Sivas, Turkey.

===EXHIBIT E.===

===DECLARATION OF THE CONGRESS OF SIVAS.===

In view of the exterior and interior perils which threaten our country, the national conscience
has become awakened and gave birth to our congress, which has reached the following
decision:

I. All of the Turkish territory within the frontier outlined 30 October, 1334 (1918), between
the Ottoman Government and the Allies, and inhabited by a preponderate majority of Turk
population, will form an undivided and inseparable whole. All the Mussulman elements living
in said territories are filled with mutual sentiments of respect and devotion for the social
conditions of the country and form a veritable fraternity.

II. In order to assure the integrity of our country and our national independence, as well as to
assure the conservation of the Sultanat and supreme Califat, it is indispensable to place in
action the national forces and the absolute will of the people.

III. Against all intermeddling or occupation of no matter what part of the Ottoman territory,
and in particular against every movement tending toward the formation, at the expense of the
mother country, of an independent Armenia and of an independent Greece on the Aidin,
Magnesie, and Balikessir fronts, we are absolutely resolved to resist and to defend our rights.
IV. It is inadmissible that privileges be accorded all non-Mussulman elements who, for ages,
have lived from the breast of the same country and who enjoy of the same rights of equality;
such privileges would tend to trouble our political government and break the social
equilibrium.

V. All methods and all means are taken with a view to safeguard the Sultanat, the supreme
Califat, and the integrity of the country in the case where the Turkish Government, under
foreign pressure, should be called upon to abandon no matter what part of our territory.

VI. We await a decision which will conform with right and with such justice as will annul the
initiatives that are contrary to our historic, ethnic, and religious rights; a decision relative to
the annulling of the project of the separation of our territory situated within the line of
demarcation traced by the armistice treaty, 30 October, 1334, and inhabited by a
preponderate majority of Mussulman population having an intellectual preponderance and

preponderate majority of Mussulman population having an intellectual preponderance and
economic superiority and forming an absolutely indivisible brotherhood which is inseparable
of race and religion.

VII. Our people honor and respect humanitarian and contemporary purposes and take in
consideration our scientific, industrial, and economic needs; in consequence whereof, on
condition that the interior and exterior independence of our people and of our State, and on
condition that the territorial integrity of our country shall be conserved intact, we will accept
with pleasure the scientific, industrial, and economic assistance of every State which will not
set forth imperialistic tendencies with respect to our country and which will respect the
principles of nationality within the limits indicated under Article VI. We await in the name of
the preservation of humanity and universal peace the urgent signature of a peace based on
the aforenamed equitable and humanitarian conditions which we consider to be our great
national objective.

VIII. In the course of historic events which fix the destinies of nations, it is indispensible that
our central Government shall submit itself to the national will, for the arbitrary decision,
emanating from a government which treats lightly of the supreme will of the people not only
causes that government not to be respected but, again, it could not be taken into
consideration; the history of our past is proof. In consequence, it is absolutely urgent that
before taking the means to remedy the anguish which exists within the very breast of the
nation, our central Government shall proceed without delaying further to convoke the
Nationalist Assembly and submit all the decisions to take with a view to safeguarding the
interests of the nation.

IX. The sufferings and the calamities of the nations have given birth to a federal assembly
called “the assembly to defend the rights and the interests of the Provinces of Anatolia and of
Roumelia.” That assembly abstracts all the tendencies of the political parties so that all our
Mussulman compatriots as such can be considered as legitimate members of that assembly.

X. The congress of that assembly, named “the assembly to defend the rights and the interests
of the Provinces of Anatolia and of Roumelia.” which met at Sivas 4 September, 1335
(1919), has chosen a representative corps charged to push on the proposed sacred cause and
to direct such similar organizations as well in the smaller communities as in the larger centers
of the vilayets.

===THE CONGRESS.===

===EXHIBIT F.===

To the PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA :

The National Congress of Sivas, representing the entire Mohammedan population of
European Turkey and Asia Minor, and composed of delegates representing every Province
and State in said portions of the Ottoman Empire, assembled on September 4, 1919, for the
purpose of securing the fulfillment of the wishes of the majority of the population of the
Empire with the protection of all minorities and with life, liberty, justice, and inviolability of
property rights guaranteed for all.

The National Congress of Sivas, by unanimous vote on September 9, 1919, passed a
resolution outlining the desires of the majority of the population of the Ottoman Empire and
embodying the principles which will guide the future action of the congress at Sivas, the

embodying the principles which will guide the future action of the congress at Sivas, the
central committee, which it will elect from among its members before dispersal, and all of the
subsidiary organizations within the frontiers of the Empire.

In accordance with the said resolution of policy, the National Congress of Sivas this day, by
unanimous vote, requests the Senate of the United States of America to send a committee of
its Members to visit all confines of the Ottoman Empire for the purpose of investigating, with
the clear vision of a disinterested nation, conditions as they actually are in the Ottoman
Empire, before permitting the arbitrary disposal of the peoples and territories of the Ottoman
Empire by a treaty of peace.

In the name of the National Congress of Sivas:

PRESIDENT MOUSTAPHA KEMAL PASHA.
VICE PRESIDENT HUSSIEN RAOUF.
SECOND VICE PRESIDENT TAMAILFAZIL
PASHA.
General en
Retraite.
SECRETARY EMIR XAMAIL HAMEY
SECRETARY M. CHUKRI.

SIVAS, TURKEY, September 9, 1919.

===EXHIBIT G.===

Population and resources of Turkey in Europe, Asia Minor, and the Transcaucasus.

[Tons except where otherwise specified.]