The Turkish government found a convenient excuse for persecuting Christian Armenians under the garb of suppressing a revolutionary movement. But this movement was of a very recent origin, and altogether “harmless as to any effective force.” The Turkish misrule in Armenia, and in all parts of the Ottoman empire, persecutions, confiscations of property, forcible conversions to Islam, imprisonments, exiles, and massacres, have begun since the entrance of the Turks into Western Asia; at times they have been intensified; they are now at their height. “Tears of Armenia” was the title of a little book which contained the report of Vartabed Paul Nathanian, who was appointed in 1878 by Bishop Nerses, the patriarch, and the civic and ecclesiastical councils of Constantinople, to take charge of the diocese of Palu in Armenia. While there, this noble prelate, following the example of the Good Shepherd, traveled through the country, visited his flock, and reported the condition of the people. His report was published. With great propriety he begins the preface in the following manner: “Tears and misery, behold, these two painful words are chosen for the theme of this present work, of which with an aching heart will I speak, and still more painful it is, that the esteemed reader will hear undeniable truths.” The facts recorded in this pamphlet are too painful to be translated into the English language. The crimes of the Kurds and the injustice and cruelty of the government’s officers perpetrated upon the Christian Armenians run from the simplest forms of robbery and cruelty to the vilest forms of abduction, assault, outrage, torture, and murder. The report of this venerable Vartabed Nathanian was only the confirmation and verification of the oppressed condition of the Armenians in the interior, more or less known before. For, when, in the autumn of 1876, the European powers sent their representatives to meet at Constantinople to consider the cruelties of the Turkish government, the massacre of the Bulgarians and other disturbances in the empire, Bishop Nerses attempted then to draw attention to the condition of the Armenians. But his efforts were fruitless, as the conference itself was futile; a peaceful adjustment of the differences was not agreed upon. The Russo-Turkish war consequently broke out. Again Armenia had to furnish the battle-field for these two formidable combatant nations in Asia.