I have quoted a long passage from Mr. Norman’s book to show the miserable condition of the Armenians who were treated worse than the street-dogs by the Mohammedans, the officers and the rest, and that these outrages were well known in England, yet in the following year, “England at the Berlin Congress, and _England alone_--for none of the other powers took any interest in the matter--destroyed the security which Russia had extorted from the Turkish government at San Stefano, and substituted for the sterling guarantee of Russia, the worthless paper money of Ottoman promises.”[127] Mr. Norman himself wrote: “Naturally, since I have been here (in Armenia) I have had many, very many, opportunities of conversing with Turkish officers and men on the so-called Eastern question; and the consequence is that, arriving in the country a strong philo-Turk, deeply impressed with the necessity of preserving the ‘integrity of the Empire’ in order to uphold ‘British interests,’ I now fain would cry with Mr. Freeman, ‘Perish British interests, perish our dominion in India, rather than that we should strike a blow on behalf of the wrong against the right.’”[128] England, however, did strike a fatal “blow on behalf of the wrong against the right,” in the negotiations of 1878, when Lord Beaconsfield “substituted the Treaty of Berlin for the Treaty of San Stefano, and dictated the provisions of the Anglo-Turkish convention.” Sultan Abdul Hamid not only henceforth had a new lease of life for his empire, but by the British illegal protectorate over his Asiatic provinces, he had also her protection against Russia. And while thus protected, he determined to settle his internal affairs, not by doing what he promised, to the European powers collectively and to England separately, to do, namely, to protect his Christian subjects against robberies, oppressions, outrages and murders, but by systematic and gradual extermination of the Armenians in order to rid himself of the Armenian question. Vambery’s description of the character of Sultan Abdul Hamid II may give us some idea how this crafty man would act: “I never met with a man the salient features of whose character were so contradictory, so uneven, and disproportionate, as with Sultan Abdul Hamid. Benevolence and wickedness, generosity and meanness, cowardice and valor, shrewdness and ignorance, moderation and excess, and many other qualities have alternately found expression in his acts and words.”[129] Sultan Abdul Hamid could do like his master of whom Paul wrote to the Corinthians, and said: “No marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.” (II Cor. 11:14). He was too shrewd to openly inaugurate the work of extermination of the Christians and the persecution of Christianity, but he did it, first underhandedly, until some Armenians, driven to desperation, resorted to self-defense. Of course in the case of a Christian’s self-defense his resentment of