NEWS OF THE WEEK.
FRESH details as to the massacres which followed on the attack on the Ottoman Bank leak out from day to day. Not less than five, probably seven, thousand people—men, women, and children—were killed by a mob, protected in their work by the soldiers and police. The mob, formed of the scum of the Mahommedan population, hunted out the Armenians and killed them with clubs wherever they found them. They also entered the houses and pillaged them at will. It is stated that the massacres were deliberately planned, and many facts seem to point that way. In any case they were tolerated, and freely tolerated. No doubt there was some provocation in the shape of bomb-throwing, but the bulk of the people killed were perfectly harmless and innocent. They were killed simply and solely because they were Armenians, and because, rightly or wrongly, it was believed to be the will of the Sultan that there should be a general massacre of the accursed race. One incident deserves special mention. Forty-five women and children took refuge on the roof of a house. They were all slaughtered, and their bodies thrown into the street. We have noted else- where how comparatively apathetic has been the attitude of Europe. Yet the massacres were probably the greatest of modern times. There was nothing in the French Revolution which can fairly be called a massacre in which anything like so many persons perished. At the September massacres only twelve hundred people were killed.
