"This Identic Note commented severely on the calculated falsehoods of all kinds, and on the cunning procrastinations, which characterized the conduct and language of the Porte. It concluded by reminding that Government, as an essential fact, 'that by treaty engagements Turkey was bound to introduce the reforms which had been often indicated,' and that these reforms were to be 'carried out under the supervision of the Powers.'
"We might as well have addressed our representations to a convict just released from a long sentence, and determined at once to renew his career of crime. And so we had gone on for fifteen more years since 1880, failing to take, or even attempt taking, any effectual measures to protect the helpless populations subject to a Government which we knew to be so cruel and oppressive—populations towards whom we lay under so many responsibilities, from our persistent protection of their oppressors. At last comes, in 1894, one of those appalling outbreaks of brutality on the part of the Turks which always horrify, but need never astonish, the world. They are all according to what Bishop Butler would have called the 'natural constitution and course of things,' that is to say, they are the natural results of the nature and government of the Ottoman Turks."
Such is the nature of Great Britain's debt to us. It was rashly incurred by her statesmen. Successive British Governments have made strenuous efforts and run great risks to discharge it. But it has proved undischargeable for forty years, with consequences to us which are well known. This terrible war and the ensuing peace will give Great Britain both the power and the opportunity to discharge that obligation, and our weapons for enforcing our claim are the honour, the conscience and the never-failing sense of justice of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the British Empire. I appeal to these in the name of my sorely-stricken nation, pale, prostrate and bleeding almost to death, to stand by us and fight our battle at the Peace Conference. And if my appeal reaches a wide enough circle of British and Irish men and women, I am confident that my nation will not die, but will live and prosper, and carve out a future that will amply compensate her for the past.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Our Responsibilities for Turkey, by the Duke of Argyll, K.G., K.T., John Murray, 1896, p. 72.
[27] The supersession of Article 16 of the Treaty of San Stefano by Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin.
[28] Town Topics of February 10, 1917, had the following: "The idiotic and ignorant criticism of the Navy one hears occasionally, recalls an immortal answer by a harassed First Lord, during an earlier Armenian atrocity (1895-96)—
"'Will the right honourable gentleman tell the House definitely whether it is proposed to send a British battleship to Armenia?' asked the bore who worried about every country but his own.
"'It is not proposed to send any ships there,' replied the Minister gravely. 'Navigation, I am informed by expert advisers at the Admiralty, has not been good in the vicinity of Ararat since the cruise of the Ark.'"
Would to God that this intelligence had reached the Foreign Offices of Europe twenty years earlier, before the signing of the Treaty of Berlin.