Simultaneously the massacre of Armenians behind the Turkish lines began.  The whole male population of the district round Bitlis was murdered, so too were all males in Bitlis itself.  Then all women and children were driven in, as a herdsman might drive sheep, from the reeking villages round, and, for purposes of convenience, concentrated in Bitlis.  When they were all collected, they were driven in a flock to the edge of the Tigris, shot, and the corpses were thrown into the river.  That was the solution of the Armenian question in Bitlis.

North-west of Bitlis, and some sixty miles distant, lies the town of Mush.  It used to contain about 25,000 Armenian inhabitants, and in the district round there were some three hundred villages chiefly consisting of Armenians.  Arrangements were on foot for a general massacre there when the arrival of Russian troops at Liz, some fifteen hours’ march away, caused the execution of it to be put off for a while, and up till July a few folk only had been shot, and a few beaten to death, as a warning to those treacherously inclined.  Then the Russians, in the face of superior forces, had to retire again, and the massacres were put on a systematic footing.  The account which follows is based on four independent authorities:  (1) The statement of a German eye-witness in Mush in charge of an Armenian orphanage; (2) the statement of a woman deported from a village near, and subsequently killed by Kurds; (3) information from refugees escaped to Trans-Caucasia; (4) the journal Horizon of Tiflis.  These supplement each other, often verify each other, and in no instance are contradictory.

Rumours of an impending massacre reached Mush before the end of 1914, at a time when the massacres across the frontier had begun.  The Mutessarif of Mush, an intimate friend of Enver Pasha, had openly declared that ’at an opportune moment’ the slaughter of the whole Armenian race was contemplated, and later Ekran Bey corroborated this in the presence of the American and German Consuls.  Enver indeed seems to have been the chief organiser with regard to the massacres in Armenia itself, while Talaat Bey saw to the fate of those dispersed in towns throughout the rest of Turkey.  During the whole of that winter, a very severe one, signs of the approaching extermination multiplied.  In the villages round fresh taxes were introduced, and when Armenians were unable to pay they were beaten to death, while, if they resisted, the village in question was burned.  But by July 1915 (after the unavoidable delay caused by the proximity of Russian troops) all was ready, and the massacre began in earnest.