Page:Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.djvu/449

 "You can assert that to the end of time," I replied "but nobody will believe it. The world will always hold Germany responsible; the guilt of these crimes will be your inheritance forever. I know that you have filed a paper protest. But what does that amount to? You know better than I do that such a protest will have no effect. I do not claim that Germany is responsible for these massacres in the sense that she instigated them. But she is responsible in the sense that she had the power to stop them and did not use it. And it is not only America and your present enemies that will hold you responsible. The German people will some day call your government to account. You are a Christian people and the time will come when Germans will realize that you have let a Mohammedan people destroy another Christian nation. How foolish is your protest that I am sending information to my State Department. Do you suppose that you can keep secret such hellish atrocities as these? Don't get such a silly, ostrich-like thought as that—don't think that by ignoring them yourselves, you can get the rest of the world to do so. Crimes like these cry to heaven. Do you think I could know about things like this and not report them to my government? And don't forget that German missionaries, as well as American, are sending me information about the Armenians."

"All that you say may be true," replied the German Ambassador, "but the big problem that confronts us is to win this war. Turkey has settled with her foreign enemies; she has done that at the Dardanelles and at Gallipoli. She is now trying to settle her internal affairs. They still greatly fear that the Capitulations will again be forced upon them. Before they are again