Enver declared, "when we can't get enough for our own people? I know that they are suffering and that it is quite likely that they cannot get bread at all this coming winter. But we have the utmost difficulty in getting flour and clothing right here in Constantinople."
I said that I had the money and that American missionaries were anxious to go and use it for the benefit of the refugees.
"We don't want the Americans to feed the Armenians," he flatly replied. "That is one of the worst things that could happen to them. I have already said that it is their belief that they have friends in other countries which leads them to oppose the Government and so brings down upon them all their miseries. If you Americans begin to distribute food and clothing among them, they will then think that they have powerful friends in the United States. This will encourage them to rebellion again and then we shall have to punish them still more. If you will give such money as you have received to the Turks, we shall see that it is used for the benefit of the Armenians."
Enver made this proposal with a straight face, and he made it not only on this occasion but on several others. At the very moment that Enver suggested this mechanism of relief, the Turkish gendarmes and the Turkish officials were not only robbing the Armenians of all their household possessions, of all their food and all their money, but they were even stripping women of their last shreds of clothing and prodding their naked bodies with bayonets as they staggered across the burning desert. And the Minister of War now proposed that we give our American money to these same
