Yesterday evening, Dr. Davitian called on me on behalf of the Armenian Patriarchy to discuss Armenian matters.
Among other things, he mentioned that the Patriarch had also called on the Grand Vizier during the past few days and made petitions regarding the deportation measures. The Grand Vizier had replied that the measures would be carried out to the end. Taking this up, Dr. D. made the request that the Imperial Embassy deal with the matter.
I replied:
We do not deny the economic and political consequences of these measures for the Turkish Empire and regret them in the interests of the Armenian population.
It is to be assumed that the present rulers, all of them intelligent men, will have also carefully considered the consequences; they should also have exact information on the individual occurrences in the interior and know the difficulties of undertaking such a mass transplantation in these times.
If, despite this, the government continued and expanded the deportations, this would indicate that we were faced with an irreversible decision, against which it would be useless to make further petitions.
It goes without saying that we as Turkey’s allies could not exert any pressure and jeopardise our alliance relationship because of an internal Turkish matter.
No one at the Patriarchy seems to have any knowledge of the Ambassador’s diplomatic protest on the 4th inst.
Monseigneur Thoumayan also visited me yesterday on behalf of the Catholic-Armenian Patriarch.
The Patriarchate was informed by the Gregorian Patriarch of the massacres in Mardin, which mainly affected the Catholics there; in the end, this news probably comes from the American Embassy.
I replied that we had also heard of this, but were unable to check the news because we had no consul in Mardin.
Msgr. Th. also added that all of the Armenians in Marzovan (Vilayet Sivas) and in Malatia (Harpa) had also been killed.
I then informed him of my opinion that nothing could be done about this.
The Catholic-Armenian Patriarch wishes to bring about a diplomatic protest directly from the Pope.