Page:Martyred Armenia - El-Ghusein.djvu/20

18 liberty or constitutional government, they resolved to return to the system of their Tartar forefathers, the devastation of cities and the slaughter of innocent men, as it was in that direction that their powers lay. They sent Zohrâb and his colleague Vartakis away from Constantinople, with orders that they should be killed on the way, and it was announced that they had been murdered by a band of brigands. They killed them in order that it might not be said that Armenians were more powerful, more learned, and more intelligent than Turks. Why should such bands murder none but Armenians? The falsity of the statement is obvious.

Zohrâb and Vartakis fell victims to their own courage and firmness of purpose; they were killed out of envy of their learning and their love for their own people, and for their tenacity in pursuing their own path. They were killed by that villain, Ahmed El-Serzi, one of the sworn men of the Unionists, he who murdered Zeki Bey; his story in the Ottoman upheaval is well known, and how the Unionists saved him from his fitting punishment and even from prison. A Kurd told me that Vartakis was one of the boldest and most courageous men who ever lived; he was chief of the Armenian bands in the time of Abdul-Hamîd; he was wounded in the foot by a cannon-ball whilst the Turkish troops were pursuing these bands, and was imprisoned either at Erzeroum or at Maaden, in the Vilayet of Diarbekir. The Sultan Abdul-Hamîd, through his officials, charged him to modify his attitude and acknowledge that he had been in error, when he should be pardoned and appointed to any post he might choose.