“That the Powers should have consented even to allow their representatives to spend time in such attempts as those [a commission to investigate the massacre and a scheme or reform for the Armenian provinces], after the experience of half a century of the hopeless bad faith and of the cunning procrastination of the Porte, is indeed astonishing. As usual, we seem to have been the leaders in this farce. Our Foreign Office boasted from time to time that we had got all the Powers to act ‘in line,’ which was, indeed, true. But what was the line doing? It was what is called in the language of military drill ‘practicing the Goose Step’--going through the form of taking steps, but not advancing one inch towards any practical result. The whole time occupied by Lord Rosebery’s Government, after they first heard of the impending dangers--which was at least eleven months from the beginning of August, 1894, to the middle of July, 1895--was wasted in this idle and grotesque procedure. And yet there really had been some encouraging symptoms of the disposition of Russia, if we had taken earnest and immediate advantage of them. And not less really had we very early noticed of what was coming from the Turks. So early as September 10, we knew that they were actually engaging a Kurdish chief of notoriously bad character to command three regiments of Kurdish irregular cavalry, as part of the forces destined for putting down what they were pleased to call the insurrection.” Here we also add Lord Bryce’s words which are emphatically true: “In the field of Eastern politics generally the conspicuous result has been the failure--the complete humiliating and irretrievable failure--of the traditional policy pursued by England of supporting the Turk against Russia.”[136] An Armenian deputation called on the late Hon. W. E. Gladstone on the occasion of his birthday (December 29, 1894). He delivered an address on the Sassoun massacre. A few paragraphs of his speech may be here reproduced: