The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey

by Dawn Anahid MacKeen

Despite censorship, news of the “race extermination” was beginning to reach the rest of the world. Pleas to save the Armenians arrived at the U.S. State Department. Morgenthau tried to persuade the Ottoman Empire’s ally Germany to assist in stopping the persecution. The German ambassador did raise the subject, but the massacres continued nonetheless. Once again, the Turks warned other countries not to interfere in their domestic affairs. It was an effective defense when combined with foreigners’ reluctance to intervene. The headlines in the United States and the international press told of the fallout: “Turks Are Evicting Native Christians,” “Wholesale Massacres of Armenians by Turks,” “Report Turks Shot Women and Children: Nine Thousand Armenians Massacred and Thrown into Tigris, Socialist Committee Hears.” Following Morgenthau’s appeals for aid, the American Committee for Syrian and Armenian Relief was formed, and it solicited money for bread and medicine. Still, on August 18, 1915, this headline appeared in the New York Times: “Armenians Are Sent to Perish in Desert; Turks Accused of Plan to Exterminate Whole Population—People of Karahissar Massacred.”