PERSECUTIONS OF THE GREEKS IN TURKEY SINCE THE ...

x INTRODUCTION
on as merely passive spectators, while in the eyes of those
who closely followed affairs in Turkey and were cognizant
of the wire-pulling behind the scenes in Germany,
they were neither more nor less than abettors of the
murderers and assassins of our kinsmen in Asia.
One who investigates with some attention the second
period of the persecutions, from its very start discovers
in its every manifestation German participation and
activity. The Turk is a connoisseur in crime; he can kill,
he can debauch, but he is incapable of formulating a
really scientific system by which the foundations of a
nation may be undermined, and under which justificatory
reasons for his acts may be found. His cunning does
not reach such a point of inventiveness as that exhibited
during this period.
Even in the persecutions of 1913-14, the methods of
which evidenced the guilt of the Ottoman Government,
German activity appears timidly operative behind the
scenes, and although Germany was apparently at that
time acting in order to forward the Young Turk schemes,
which it thus flattered and adopted, it was, as a matter of
fact, working in its own behalf. There are very many
proofs of this German guilt.
As to the persecutions that took place before the war,
German guilt is revealed by the interview which took
place in April, 1914, between the Greek Charge d'Affaires,
J. Dragoumis, and the German Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Von Jagow (Report of the 7th of April,
1914, No. 643, Ministerial Archives, No. 10907). According
to this report the latter admits the persecutions
and the Turkish outrages, but, forgetting himself, for
the moment, and his position, he becomes the advocate
of the Turks and attempts to justify the persecutions by
using the arguments advanced by the Young Turks with
the object of concealing their crimes; first that every
Greek in Turkey is an apostle of Pan-Hellenism, as
though forsooth, the attempt on the part of the Greeks