on his feet and ran for a space, then falling down. We were astonished at this, and at his understanding that his mother was to be killed. A gendarme went and took hold of him, and laid him dead on his dead mother.” He also said that he had seen one of these women eating a piece of bread as she went up to the butcher, another smoking a cigarette, and that it was as though they cared nothing for death.
Narrative of Shevket Bey.—Shevket Bey, one of the officials charged with the extermination of the Armenians, told me, in company with others, the following story: “I was proceeding with a party, and when we had arrived outside the walls of Diarbekir and were beginning to shoot down the Armenians, a Kurd came up to me, kissed my hand, and begged me to give him a girl of about ten years old. I stopped the firing and sent a gendarme to bring the girl to me. When she came I pointed out a spot to her and said, ‘Sit there. I have given you to this man, and you will be saved from death.’ After a while, I saw that she had thrown herself amongst the dead Armenians, so I ordered the gendarmes to cease firing and bring her up. I said to her, ‘I have had pity on you and brought you out from among the others to spare your life. Why do you throw yourself with them? Go with this man and he will bring you up like a daughter.’ She said: ‘I am the daughter of an Armenian; my parents and kinsfolk are killed among these; I will have no others in their place, and I do not wish to live any longer without them.’ Then she cried and lamented; I tried hard to persuade her, but she would not listen, so I let her go her way. She left
