The New York Times/1918/11/11/Meets Lichnowsky's Fate
MEETS LICHNOWSKY'S FATE
Dr. Lipsius Forced to Flee Because of Armenian Exposures.
How the German Government drove into exile Dr. Johannes Lipsious, the one humane German who was bold enough to tell the truth about Turkish atrocities, was recently told byDr. Albert Oeri, editor of the Basler Nachtrichten of Basle, Switzerland, who is now in this country with a delegation of Swiss journalists invited to America by the Committee of Public Information.
Like Prince Lichnowsky, who was not afraid to state facts about Germany's responsibility for the war, Dr. Lipsius met teh fate prepared for all those who dared to tell the truth about Germany's methods. He found himself unable to live safely in Germany and is now residing in Holland.
Despite the persistent denials of the German press of his charges, Dr. Lipsius convinced many Germans twenty years ago in a book which he wrote about conditions in the east that the Turks were massacring the Armenians. In 1915 Dr. Lipsius went to Constantinople, as head of the German Orient Mission, where Ambassador Morgenthau made accessible to him unimpeachable information of the shocking cruelty of the Turks to the Armenians.
On the basis of these American reports and of the statements made by sisters in German hospitals in Turkey who were eyewitnesses of the deportations, Dr. Lipsius wrote a book in German about the atrocities and had it printed secretly in Germany. His intention was to send it to all the Protestant pastors in Germany and to all members of the Reichstag.
The German Post Office authorities did not wish the people to know the truth and attempted to seize these volumes, but since they were mailed at a number of post offices many copies actually reached the addresses. They aroused many pastors and many leaders of the Social Democrats, and there was actually held in 1917 a depate of the Armenian question in the German Reichstag, but the German newspapers were forbidden to publish anything concerning it. Dr. Lipsius was deposed as Secretary of the German Orient Mission and had to seek safety in flight.
Before the war, Germany, with Switzerland, supported an orphanage and hospital at Curfa to care for the victims of the Damascus massacre twenty years ago, but Germany's friendship for Turkey put a stop to all German help for these institutions. When the war broke out the Central Powers refused to allow Dr. Ardreas Vischer, the Swiss who was in charge of these institutions but who was then on a vacation in Switzerland, to return to Curfa, although his assistant was allowed to remain in the city.
According to information which reached Switzerland, Dr. Oeri said, none of the inmates of these two institutions who entered it in 1906 are living today. In 1915 Turkish soldiers under the leadership of a German officer entered the Armenian quarter, broke down the resistance of the men, murdered those who surrendered, and deported the women and children.