User:EtienneDolet/Alice Riggs

Meanwhile, the storm clouds were gathering more thickly in the north. When a representative council of Armenians, in the city of Erzerum, refused to join the Turks in their fight against the Allies, the Germans and Turks united in a campaign of frightfulness against innocent Armenians generally. It included imprisonment, torture, and cold-blooded murder of the men, deportation of the women and children, sent out at an hour's notice from their homes, to wander over desert paths, robbed of food and clothing, until those who were not actually butchered died of thirst, starvation, and disease. Never was a more tragic page of history written in the blood of the innocent. Not even the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition or the brutalities of Nero can compare with what these Christian people suffered at the instigation of a "Christian people." Never was death more steadfastly met than by the martyrs of this martyr nation; never were known more thrilling deeds of heroism than those by which the few survivors saved their lives; never was there a race who could face the future with so brave a front after so crushing a calamity.