England’s enemies--the enemies she had made in almost a hundred years of defending the barbarous Turk, and her jealous neighbors who were already her enemies--were secretly and openly encouraging the beast in human form to humiliate England through him, and also by befriending him, they were paving the way for their colonial and commercial ambitions. Thus the Armenians were abandoned to their fate. The following statement was made, it may be an attempt of England to throw off her responsibility: “In February, 1896, the cabinet of Lord Salisbury, the minister who had concluded the Convention (both of Cyprus and of Berlin in 1878), confessed that as the Turks had refused to carry out reforms promised in that instrument, it was impossible for England, notwithstanding the possession of Cyprus, to occupy Armenia and prevent the massacres which had happened there, and that it had become practically impossible for her any longer to give either moral or material support to the Turkish power.”[147] England’s confession of her inability--rather her unwillingness--encouraged the great assassin, the sultan, to do still more of his bloody work. The following statement is given by Dr. Lepsius: “The massacres of Van, Niksar, and Eghin in June of 1896, although in their course, 20,000 Armenians were slaughtered, have, in spite of the details given in the _Frankfort Journal_, made not the slightest impression on the continental press. For the culture of Central Europe, such events lie too far away in the depths of Turkish territory.” There is one more incident which belongs to this chapter. It is the massacre at Constantinople. The simple narrative of this horrible crime against humanity in general, and the Armenians in particular, is another indictment not only against the sultan, but also against the European Powers. On good authority we are informed, that the Turkish government knew beforehand that certain revolutionary Armenians from Russia would make an attack on the Ottoman Bank, and had taken the necessary measures, not to prevent the revolutionary action, but to organize, owing to this welcome opportunity, a universal massacre of the peaceful Armenians of Constantinople. “About noon (on the 26th of August, 1896) a band of Armenians, most of them from Russia, entered the Ottoman Bank, with arms and dynamite, took the employees prisoners and barricaded themselves in the building, with threat that, unless the ambassadors secure a pledge from the sultan of certain reforms, they would blow up the bank with dynamite. To finish with this part of the story, soldiers soon surrounded the bank, and negotiations began with the captors which in the evening resulted in their being permitted to leave the bank, go on board the yacht of the chief manager and leave the country unmolested.