2. The Speaker, London, January 12, 1895.

3. “A good deal of misapprehension exists with respect to the constitution of the Commission of Inquiry. It is not an international but a Turkish Commission, and, to judge by past experience, Turkish Commissions are instruments by which truth is suppressed and issues are obscured. It is satisfactory that representatives of Great Britain, France, and Russia will have the opportunity of examining the procÈs-verbaux, besides being present at the sittings of the Commission; and credit is due to the British Foreign Office for having taken the initiative in securing this concession; but it must be remembered that the powers of the international representatives will be strictly limited, and that they will not be able to guarantee the security of the witnesses.”—F. S. Stevenson, M.P., “Armenia,” in The Contemporary Review, February, 1895.

4. See Appendix B on the establishment of new U. S. Consulates in Eastern Turkey. Also Appendix A on American Diplomacy.

5. Brother and predecessor of the present Consul Jewett, at Sivas.

6. Encyc. Britannica, “Kurdistan.”

7. Encyc. Britannica, “Kurdistan.”

8. Armenia and the Campaign of 1877.

9. A piastre is a Turkish coin of about five cents, or two pence-half penny. In this region the pay of a day laborer is from two to five piastres.

10. Often called Nestorian.

11. Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, vol. ii., p. 374, 375.

12. The Contemporary Review, May and June, 1891.

13. The Case for the Armenians. London: Anglo-Armenian Association.

14. An Appeal to the Christians of America by the Christians of Armenia. New York: Phil-Armenic Society.

15. Morfill’s Russia, p. 287. Putnam.

16. Rev. H. O. Dwight, The Independent, New York, January 17, 1895.

17. At the time of the Crimean War Lord Aberdeen said:

“Notwithstanding the favorable opinion entertained by many, it is difficult to believe in the improvement of the Turks. It is true that, under the pressure of the moment, benevolent decrees may be issued; but these, except under the eye of some Foreign Minister, are entirely neglected. Their whole system is radically vicious and inhuman. I do not refer to fables which may be invented at St. Petersburg or Vienna, but to numerous dispatches of Lord Stratford (de Redcliffe) himself, and of our own consuls, who describe a frightful picture of lawless oppression and cruelty.” (Sir Theodore Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, vol. ii., p. 528.) Quoted by Canon MacColl, The Contemporary Review, January, 1895.

18. Judge.

19. Local districts.

20. Report of Mr. Wilson, Blue-Book, Turkey, No. 8 (1881), page 57, No. 48.

21. The Mohammedan Missionary Problem, p. 31. Jessup. Philadelphia, Presb. Pub. Soc.

22. Blue-Book, Turkey, No. 6, 1881, reports of Wilson, Bennett, Chermside, Trotter, Stewart, Clayton, Everett, and Bilotti.

23. Blue-Book, Turkey, 1881, p. 242.

24. Published by John Heywood, London, 1891, pp. 82–89.

25. Freeman, The Turks in Europe.

26. “Diplomatist,” “The Armenian Question” in The New Review, January, 1895.

27. Pp. 158–9. London: Cassell, Petter, & Galpin.

28. Speech in St. James’s Hall, December, 1876.

29. The Nineteenth Century, January, 1878.

30. From a descendant of Dahir Billah, the thirty-fifth caliph of Bagdad, Sultan Selim I. “procured the cession of his claims, and obtained the right to deem himself the shadow of God upon earth. Since then the Ottoman padishah has been held to inherit the rights of Omar and Haroun, and to be the legitimate commander of the faithful, and, as such, possessed of plenary temporal and spiritual authority over the followers of Mohammed.”^[31] The Persians and Moors, however, reject this claim, and at the close of the Russian War not a few of the Arab muftis declared that the caliphate had been forfeited by the inglorious defeat of the Turks, and should now return to the Arab family of Koreish.

31. Freeman, The Saracens, p. 158. Quoted by Jessup, The Mohammedan Missionary Problem, p. 21. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1879.

32. Hughes, Notes on Muhammadanism, pp. 209, 210.

33. Hughes, Notes on Muhammadanism, p. 10.

34. Parts of this chapter are taken from an article, “Notes on the Armenian Massacre,” in The Independent, New York, January 31, 1895, by a high authority, who is compelled to sign himself “A Student of Modern History.”

35. Latham, Russian and Turk, p. 417. London: W. H. Allen, 1878.

36. Layard’s Nineveh.

37. Colonel Churchill, Druzes and Maronites, p. 219. London: Quaritch, 1862.

38. Eugene Schuyler and Correspondent MacGahan, quoted in The Independent, January 10, 1895.

39. Chapter I. of this book.

40. M. Gaston Deschamps: “En Turquie—L’Ile de Chio,” Revue des Deux Mondes, p. 167, January 1, 1893.

41. Layard’s Nineveh, pp. 24–201.

42. Article by Mr. Savage, The Independent, January 10, 1894.

43. U. S. Consul Stillman’s The Cretan Insurrection of 1866–7–8. Henry Holt & Co., 1874.

44. C. B. Norman, Armenia and the Campaign of 1877, pp. 293–298. London: Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, 1879.

45. The Independent, January 17, 1895.

46. Ibid., January 31, 1895.

47. The Eastern Question.

48. New Review for January, 1895.

49. These extracts are from Blue-Book, Turkey, No. 8 (1881), pp. 57–110, as quoted by the high authority, M. Rolin-Jaequemyns, in his Armenia, the Armenians, and the Treaties, pp. 74–76. London: John Heywood, 1891.

50. The Hakim, who is a member of the religious body of Ulemas, presides over the lower court (Bidayet), which is to be found in every caza (hundred), and also over the Sandjak or district court.

51. The Turks in Europe.

52. The London Times, Weekly Edition Jan. 14, 1895.

53. Reprinted from The Christian Register, Boston, Dec. 1, 1894.

54. And yet England by the Cyprus Convention pledged all her resources to keep the door open, and the repetition thus made possible has occurred. Author.

55. “Kurdistan abounds in antiquities of the most varied and interesting character.... It may indeed be asserted that there is no region of the East at the present day which deserves a more careful scrutiny and promises a richer harvest to the antiquarian explorer than the lands inhabited by the Kurds from Erzeroum to Kirmanshahan.”—Major-General H. C. Rawlinson, Encyc. Britannica, article on “Kurdistan.”

56. Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, 2 vols. New York: Putnam’s, 1891. London: John Murray.

57. Gen. x., 2, 3.

58. Moses of Khorene, History, Bk. i., chap. 12.

59. Gen. viii., 4.

60. Heb. Ararat, 2 Kings xix., 37; Isa. xxxvii., 38.

61. Ezek. xxvii., 14; also xxxviii., 6.

62. Jer. li., 27–29; also l., 9, 41, 42.

63. Christian Lassen, Die altpersischen Keil-Inschriften von Persepolis, Bonn, 1836, pp. 86, 87.

64. History, Bk. iii., chap. 93.

65. Anabasis, Bk. iv.

66. Annales, Bk. ii., ch. 56.

67. Tozer, The Church and the Eastern Empire, pp. 22, 86.

68. Krikor “Loosavoritch,” from which title the Armenian Gregorian church calls itself Loosavortchagan.

69. Mrs. Bishop, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, vol. ii., p. 336.

70. By far the largest part of foreign missionary work in Turkey has always been in the hands of Americans, although, of course, they neither claim nor have any monopoly in this respect. As a matter of fact there are many other large and successful missionary, benevolent, and educational enterprises conducted in that land by other foreign societies as well as individuals. The various Roman Catholic orders are strongly established in many parts, and are generally of French connections and introduce that language in their work as the Americans do English. The following is a partial list of other societies at work in Turkey: The British and Foreign Bible Society, the Church Missionary Society, the Bible Lands Missions Aid Society, the British Syrian Mission Schools and Bible Work, the Church of Scotland Mission to the Jews, the Society of Friends (both English and American), the Irish Presbyterian Mission, the Reformed Presbyterian Mission, and the German Deaconesses. In addition to all these agencies, there are many private and local schools and institutions that are doing excellent work, but of which only this general mention can here be made.

The statistics of Robert College, Constantinople, are not included in these tables, as that institution, though a child of American Missions, is independent of them.

71. “The creation of churches, strict in their discipline, and protesting against the mass of superstitions which smother all spiritual life in the National Armenian Church, is undoubtedly having a very salutary effect far beyond the limited membership, and is tending to force reform upon an ancient church which contains within herself the elements of resurrection.”—Mrs. Bishop, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, vol. ii., p. 336.

72. Unhappily there are some who can see nothing but bigotry and mistakes in what the missionaries have done. Such characters are to be found among all races, as the following extract shows:

“It might be thought that here, [Missilonghi] on the spot where he [Byron] breathed his last, malignity would have held her accursed tongue; but it was not so. He had committed the fault, unpardonable in the eyes of political opponents, of attaching himself to one of the great parties that then divided Greece; and though he had given her all that man could give, in his own dying words, ‘his time, his means, his health, and, lastly, his life,’ the Greeks spoke of him with all the rancour and bitterness of party spirit. Even death had not won oblivion for his political offences; and I heard those who saw him die in her cause affirm that Byron was no friend to Greece.”—Stephens, Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1839.

73. This is an exact copy of the official documents as published by the State Department, capitalization included.