of the Armenians (Talaat Bey did not complete his arrangements till the
following April), the slaughter of them began then, first in the advance
of the Turkish armies, and following on that movement, which lasted but
a few weeks, in their subsequent retreat before the Russians. All
villages through which the Turkish armies passed were plundered and
burned, all the inhabitants on whom the Turks could lay their hands were
killed. Sometimes women and children were given to the Kurds, who formed
bands of irregular troops in conjunction with the Turkish army, and
these were outraged before they were slaughtered. A price was put on
every Christian head, and in the Turkish retreat the corpses were thrust
into the wells in order to pollute them. The excuse for this, as given
by German apologists (not apologists, perhaps, so much as supporters and
adherents of the policy), was that since behind the Turkish lines the
country was populated by a race of the same blood as that through which
they advanced, and then retreated, extermination was necessary in order
to prevent or to punish treachery and collusion. But I have been nowhere
able to find that there were instances of such, nor that the Turks put
forward that excuse themselves. Indeed it would have been an unnecessary
explanation, for but a few months after the opening of the war, Talaat
Bey's plans were complete, and the extermination of Armenians hundreds
of miles from any sphere of military operations rendered it needless to
say anything about it, or to invent instances of treachery if there were
actually none to hand.

Simultaneously the massacre of Armenians behind the Turkish lines
began. The whole male population of the district round Bitlis was
murdered, so too were all males in Bitlis itself. Then all women and
children were driven in, as a herdsman might drive sheep, from the
reeking villages round, and, for purposes of convenience, concentrated
in Bitlis. When they were all collected, they were driven in a flock to
the edge of the Tigris, shot, and the corpses were thrown into the
river. That was the solution of the Armenian question in Bitlis.

North-west of Bitlis, and some sixty miles distant, lies the town of
Mush. It used to contain about 25,000 Armenian inhabitants, and in the
district round there were some three hundred villages chiefly consisting
of Armenians. Arrangements were on foot for a general massacre there
when the arrival of Russian troops at Liz, s