acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

PROMPT REPRESSIVE MEASURES 137
in hot sunlight on a brown mountain-side. It layseveral
hours distant — perhaps ten miles by indirect
road—and looked very calm and peaceful in the
light of afternoon with soft shadows filling the
hollows above it. Of smoke or burning was no
sign : evidently
nothing serious had taken place.
But when I discovered clusters of people and
vehicles on the outskirts of the town, my speculations
upon conduct awoke to activity again.
When I pfot to the town it was clear that something
had happened. Unusual groups of men,
evidently countrymen, stood talking at corners with
an ominous manner of suppressed excitement.
Mounted gendarmerie and khaki-uniformed infantry
with fixed bayonets patrolled the streets. At the
door of the hhan to which I went were sentries, and
two others were inside the yard. All this military
display seemed out of proportion for a town of five
or six thousand inhabitants ; and so it was, for it
stood for something else. It represented the anxiety
of the higher powers to have no massacres when
the country was seeking foreign sympathy against
Italian
aggression.
Nor had any massacre taken place. What had
happened was significant of how readily these outbreaks
may be controlled when desired. Two or
three days earlier a Moslem and Armenian of the
town had fought, and contrary to precedent and
natural right the Armenian had killed the Moslem.
To level matters up the Moslems, who were a minority
of the population, then plotted to massacre
the Armenians, and called in the Moslem countryfolk
to help and share the spoil. Here were present
all the makinofs of a considerable massacre had the
authorities been willing. But they were not willmg :
they were indeed much against massacre just now,
and the local governor was a man equal to the
emergency. He telegraphed for gendarmerie to reinforce
his handful of zaptiehs, and a troop rode all
night from Sivas followed by infantry in waggons,