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The Marn Mafizczfec/ oo drmorni=7 Masyacror
How the Great Sheikh-ul-lslam Wllo
Prociaimed a Holy War to Destroy
the Christian Armenians Has Been
Humiliated and Punished
EVER has there neen a more im-
N presgsive demonstration of Divine
Justice than the fate of the Sheikh
ul-Islam, who until recently claimed to be
the head of the Mohammedans throughout
the world.
This powerful priest, who was
supposed to exercise a greater
spiritual authority than any man
In the Orient, lent his great in
fuence to ala tne German attempt
to enslave the world.
He issued, in 1915, proclama
tions declaring a “Holy War”
against the Allies, calling upon
all Mohammedans throughout the
world to rise against the Chris
tians and exterminate them--men,
women and children. In these
proclamations he halled the
Kaiser as the friend and pro
tector of Islam, using language
that could be understood as im
plying that the German Emperor
was actually Mohammedan, His
language was that of a fanatic,
but his spirit is that of a
hypocrite.
The SBheikh’'s proclamations
were mainly responsibie for the
dreadful slaughter of the Armen
jans, as they encouraged the
fanatical Turks and the wild, still
more murderous Kurds to com
mit murder as a religious duty.
Through this man's criminal in
citements upwards of 2,000,000
Armenians were slaughtered with
every circumstance of atrocity, as
the report of Lord Bryce's Com
mission has proved.
It was clearly the expectation of the
Bheikh-ul-lslam and the Germans that the
Mohammedans throughout the world, and
especially those of India, Egypt and other
parts of the British Empire, would rige in
rebellion against the British and the Allies
and overwhelm them., There are upwards
of 221,000,000 Mohammedans in the world
and 60,000,000 in British India alone.
In one of his proclamations the Sheikh
ul-Islam declated:
“Every Mohammedan fighting on the
side ol Great Britain, France and Russia i 3
not a warrior, but a murderer, and will
suffer eternal punishment for the unpar
donable sin against Allah. .
“KEvery Mohammedan who dies fighting
against the Christian unbelievers in this
war is assured of immediate entry into
Paradise and all the delights promised to
the true believer by the Prophet”
The Sheikh's action was evidently a
political conspiracy entered into with the
CGermans, the Turkish Prime Minister,
Enver Pasha, and the worst element of
the 'Turks, The Sheikh enjoyed enormous
power in Turkey., He was beyond the con
trol of the Sultan. Indeed, the Sultan's de
crees were not binding on the faithful if
they conflicted ‘'with the Koran and the
moral law, as interpreted by the Sheikh
ul-Islam and his college of priests, ~
The proclamation of the Holy War had
an opposite effect from that which the
wrotched Shelkh and his fellow conspira
tors intended. Instead of uniting the Mo
hammedans of the world in an attack upon
the Allies it came near to uniting them in
an effort to demolish the Shelkh's claim
to the headship of their® religion, There
were millions of Mohammedans who re
sented the leadership of the barbarous
Turks and were intelligent enough to see
that this so-called “Holy War" was noth
ing but a eriminal attempt by the Kaiser
and the Turks to make tools of them,
. An army mainly composed of Moham
medans from British India fought thelr
way up the Tigrls and Euphrates rivers
and drove the Turks from the rich lands
of Mesopotamia. Another army, similarly
comvosed of Mohammedans, drove the
Turks from the Holy Land of Palestine
and from other countries which the Turks
bad taken from more civilized races,
The worst blow of all to the Sheikh's am-
Pitions came from Mecca.
The Arabs of Mecca and Medina, the
pacred cities of Mohammedanism, seized
the opportunity to cast off the hated
yoke of the Turks. The Shereef of Mecca,
8 lineal descendant of Mahomet, was pro
tlaimed King of the Hejaz, He has a
tlaim to leadership over the Mohammedan
gommunity far better than that which the
Turkish Sheikh-ul-Islam posseased and has
more than filled the latter's place.
. At the end of the war there was nothing
Jest to the ambitious Sheikh-ul-lglam hut
his authority over the barbarous Turks
and Kurds, in the hills of Asia Minor. His
Rnouus dream of raling over 221,000,000
ohammedans throughout Asia and Africa
had dwindled to a precarious authority
over a gang of halfstarved assassins, high
waymen and peasants,
But the Shetkhauldslam’s effort to en
siave the world found its vietims in the
poor Armenians. They were immediately
4
under the thumb of the murdering Turks
and Kurds. They had long been accus
tomed to outrage and massacre, but as
soon as the Shelkh’s first proclamation of
a “Holy War” was issued a deliberate at
tempt was made to exerminate them,
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Bodies of Murdered
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" Turkish Massacre
—and—
All Who Remained
Alive After the Mas
sacre — One Woman
and These Forlorn
Little Orphans,
This attempt came
very near to succeed
ing. How near it is
still difficult to de
termine hut it is ac-
Cepted as certain that
considerably less than
one-half of the Ar
menian population
that existed before
the war now survives.
No Christian powers came to the help of
the poor Armenians, the oldest Christian
nation in the world, until the Turks had
done their worst.
They were left alone in their agony till
the war was over, They were the great
sacrifice in the struggle to save humanity
from slavery. Kven the sacrifice of Bel
gium or Serbla cannot compare with theirs.
In one region a community of 80,000
Armenians was gathered together and
driven into an Inaccessible desert, where
they were all killed or left to starve.
Scores of thousands of gentle Armenian
girls were put to death with every shame
and torture that devilish brutality could
surgest,
The story of Aurora Mardiganian, the
young Armenian girl who escaped from
the Turks, has already been told at length
in this newspaper. It is like thousands of
others, and yet unlike in that she
escaped alive. Aurora was one of
18,000 Armenians from one town, who
were carried away by the Turks to
be slaughtered in trackless wilder
nesses and secret places or condemned
to slavery in the harem. The attack
upon this community was the direct
result of the Sheikh-ullslam's proc
lamations, inciting the Turks to ex
terminate all Christians,
The martyrdom of those gentle
Christian people, the Armenians, is
one of the greatest tragedies of all
time, a tragedy that beggars desctip
tion. The American Committee for
Relief in the Near REast declded
that a great, concerted effort should
be made to put the entire story be
fore the eyes of the American people
and to induce them to save the
remnant of the Armenian nation by
money contributions and by political
action. The committee decided that
this object could not bhe better at
tained than by presenting the ex
periences of Aurora Mardiganian in
moving picture form to the American
public, because her experiences typi
fied the sufferings of the entire Ar
menian nation,
This poor little girl wandered on
foot in the wilderness for two years
and lived on the bark of trees and
such food as she could pick up. By a won
derful accident she escaped into the Rus
slan lines and was finally sent to America
by Amerfean friends of Armenia.
The Armenian committee sent Aurora to
California recently, and there her story
and the sufferings of her people were
placed on the film, with herself as the
chief actress. The production of this mov
ing pleture drama, entitled “Ravished
Armenia,” was carefully conducted with
fidelity to detail of scenes and costumes,
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Aurora
Mardiganian,
the Escaped
Waif, As She
Appears in
One of the
Scenes in
“Ravished
Armenia,”
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and, like Aurora Mardiganian, many of
those appearing in the picture were Ar
menians who had seen and suffered Turk
ish oppression.
At the opening of the drama Aurora is
shown in the city of Harpout, as the
charming young daughter of a wealthy
Christian banker. She is coveted by Pas
selt Pasha, the cruel Turkish ruler of the
province, and when the order is given by
the Sultan for wholesale Christian mas-
Copyright, 1919, by Star Company.
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A Spirited Scene from “Ravished Armenia” the Motion Picture
Which the Committee for Relief in the Near East Has Made to
Assist in Raising a $30,000,000 Fund to Save the Remnants of the
Persecuted Christian Armenians.
sacres he strives to put his evil designs
into execution. Aurora witnesses fright
tul scenes, in which thousands of men,
women and children are slain or deported
to face starvation and slavery, but herseli
manages to escape to a school conducted
by an English girl, Miss Graham,
Marauding bands invade the school and
carry off Aurora with hundreds of other
young Christian girls. Miss Graham is
also captured and tortured by being buried
in the sand because she will not renounce
her faith. Aurora and the other young
girls then endure two years of frightful
ness in Turkish harems and in the hands
of desert tribesmen. She sees her own
mother slain before her, and sees young
girls whipped to death and others cruci
fied because they will not willingly submit
to the wishes of their captors.
In the course of her adventures she
again escapes by leaping from a high cliff
into a river and wanders in the desert for
nearly two years. She i again captured
and sold in a slave market with other
Great Britain Rights Reserved.
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girls for the pathetic sum of eighty-five
cents, and is forced to endure fresh suf
ferings.
At last the Armenian patriots establish
relations with the Russian troops, Aurora
is rescued by her girlhood sweetheart. and,
through the aid of missionaries, is finally
brought safely to America.
One of the many remarkable features of
the film is the scene in which Turkish sav
ages while riding on horseback pick up
Armenian girls and throw them on the
points of swords planted in the ground.
This practice, sometimes called “the sword
game,” has been common among the Turks,
Kurds and others who have carried out
the extermination of the Armenians.
Aurora Mardiganian witnessed this
dreadful form of wholesale slaughter,
which she has thus described: e
“In a flat place on the plains a little dis
tance from the spot where 1 was held cap
tive, I saw a band of Tchetchens prepare
for one of the frightful pastimes for which,
as 1 afterward learned, the wild Circassian
tribes are famous. They planted their
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e g 35
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‘se Tmpassioned Appeals of the
Sheikh-ul-islo-m Spurred the
Moslenis to Wholesale Massacres
of the Helpless Armenian
Christians.
swords, which were the/ long. slender
bladed swords that come from Germany
to l‘lw Kurds and Tchetchens, in a jong
row in the sand, so that ihe sharp-pointed
blades rose out of the ground as high as
would be a very small child. When we
saw these preparations all of us knew
what was going to happen. When Arme
nian children are bad their mothers some
times tell them the Tchetchens will come
and get them if they don't he good. And
when the c¢hildren ask, ‘And when thel
Tchetchens come what will they do? their |
mothers say, ‘The Techetchens are very
wicked robber horsemen, who like to
sharpen their swords with little boys and
girls.’
“Already 1 was trembling with sickness
of heart because of the awful night before
and the'things 1 had seen that morning
when daylight came. The other girls be
side me were trembling, too, and felt as
it they would rather die than see any
more. We begged our Tchetchens to take
us away—to take us where we could not
look .upon those sword blades—but they
only laughed at us and told us we must
watch and be thankful to them we were
under their protection,
“When the long row of swords had peen
placed the Tchetchens hurried back to the
little band of Armenians. We saw them
crowd among the refugees, and then come
away carrying or drageing with them all
the young women who were left—maybe
fifteen or twenty-—I could not count them.
“Kach girl was forced to rtand with a
dismounted Tchetchen holding her on her
feet, half-way between two swords in the
long row. The captives cried and begged,
but the cruel bandits were heedless of
their pleadings.
“When the girls had been placed to
please them-—one between each two sword
blades-~the remaining Tchetchens mount
od their horses and gathered at the end of
the row. At a shouted signal the first one
galloped down the line of swords. He
seized a girl, lifted her high in the air and
flung her down upon a sword point with
out slackening his horse.”
This film drama, “Ravished Armenia”
is now being presented to the American
people in all the great cities of the United
States. The receipts from it will go
toward a fund of $30,000,000 which the
Armenian committee is raising to restore
the tortured Armenian people to a place
among the nations.
It is a vivid, realistic production, but
when you witness it you will enjoy much
more than the spectacle. You will have
the satisfaction of knowing that vou are
helping to restore Armenia and giving the
final stroke to the Sheihk-ul-lslam, the
horrible Turk, who tried to set the Mo
hammedan world in arms against the
Christian world. \