"We are puzzled, therefore, to understand Lord Salisbury when he says that all these promises did not mean anything. Certainly he ought to know, for, as the agent of the Disraeli government, it was Lord Salisbury who drafted the agreements and drew up the promises. For eighteen years Christian civilization has supposed that they did mean something. But Lord Salisbury says not. He says that all the powers agreed to do was to 'watch over the execution of those reforms' if they were promulgated. "What does that mean, anyway? Does it mean, as the Christian world has all along supposed, that the six powers would engage themselves to see that these reforms were carried out by Turkey, or does it mean that if the reforms were carried out they would simply look on; and if the reforms were not carried out, if ten thousand Armenian homes were destroyed, and four times ten thousand Armenian citizens were butchered, they would still simply look on? "Nor do we understand Lord Salisbury when he pleads that it requires time for the Turkish government to carry out the reforms 'which the Sultan recently has accepted.' Why the Turkish government? There is no Turkish government. There is a Mohammedan administration, but the government of the Ottoman Porte expired with the Treaty of Berlin. The Turkish government is vested de facto in the six signatory powers of the Berlin Congress. Even the local government of Constantinople itself lies in the hands of these powers. The capital is divided into six sections, each controlled by a treaty power. Each has its own courts, its own military, even its own police. When Englishmen wish a wrong to be righted in the Turkish Empire, or a reform to be executed, they do not request the 'Turkish government' to listen to their appeal. The British Minister summons the Grand Vezir and orders him to do what is wished. And he does it forthwith, so far as he is permitted by the orders of the representatives of the other treaty powers. It is in London, in Berlin, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, in Vienna, and in Rome that the Turkish government rests. "It is for these reasons that we are unable to understand what Lord Salisbury means when he says that the Berlin Treaty and the Cyprus Convention impose no responsibility for Armenian reforms upon any one save the Sultan. The Cyprus Convention specifies:-- "Treaty of Defensive Alliance between the British Government and the Sublime Porte, signed on June 4, 1878:--