In his Guildhall speech, November 9, 1896, Lord Salisbury was heard again. He declared that England would adhere to the European concert, yet the veto of any one power, meant that the concert could not act, he also admitted that to act separately from the concert would bring about a war; England was not prepared for this, because her strength consisted in her navy, and no fleet in the world could “get over the mountains of Taurus to protect the Armenians.” Thus the European Powers agreed to disagree to force the sultan to be truthful and fulfill his promises of reform, or even to stop his cruel work of extermination of a nation. The result of this disagreement to coerce the sultan to act humanely, and the Powers hiding themselves behind the European concert, was to leave Abdul Hamid to do as he pleased. And he pleased thus: From Constantinople to Van, from the shores of the Black Sea to the shores of the Mediterranean, “with inexpressible cruelty 150,000 men, women, and children were killed, burned or buried alive, and yet Europe seemed powerless.”[149] Why was (or seemed) Europe powerless? Because the veto of any one power meant that the _Concert_ could not act. What power or powers did the vetoing? We have no desire to incriminate any power, for all are guilty. But the evidence, judging by the events past and present, strongly points to the power which has been in desperate love with the modern Jezebel, the only Mohammedan power, for a political wedlock. This political matrimony has been consummated in the autumn of 1914. But let us look back to the time of the courtship. In 1888 German financiers secured concession from the sultan for a railroad in Asia Minor. And German colonists and expansionists “dreamed of linking the Baltic Sea with the Persian gulf and carrying the Teutonic empire across Asia.” Since then “the government had sedulously cultivated its influence over Turkey.” And shortly after the massacre of ten thousand Armenians in Constantinople, the kaiser, by a special embassy presented to the sultan the Imperial Family Portrait as a “token of esteem.” FOOTNOTES: [141] Lepsius, “Armenia and Europe.” See _The New Armenia_ of June 15, 1916, New York.