They ordered the Sultan to reform Armenia, brought their fleets to the Dardanelles near Constantinople to overawe him, prepared a scheme of reform for Armenia, and made huge threats to the Sultan if he did not accept it. But he knew that this pretended concert of the powers for Armenian reform was a mere trick and sham, as I have persistently asserted all along in the face of my hopeful European and American friends; in fact, the Russian government at this very time was secretly urging him to stand firm and refuse to accept the reforms. He did so, broached a scheme of his own as a substitute, and the powers accepted it as such; and then the whole thing was dropped, the Sultan did nothing whatever about it, as he had never intended to. The European countries were hoodwinked, and the Armenian massacres and conflagrations, plundering and deflowering, went on at a greater pace than ever. Then the powers dropped the Armenian question, and took up that of gunboats in the Bosphorus, to protect their citizens against a rising in Constantinople; that they forced the Sultan to permit, because their own interests were concerned in it,--which shows that they could have forced him to stop exterminating the Armenians if they had cared. All joined in this except Germany; the German Emperor is the Sultan's friend, and backs him up. So now Germany, Russia, and the Sultan are hand in hand, leagued to prevent any of the miserable victims of his tyranny from escaping his clutches, and the Sultan has the best possible encouragement to go on killing the Armenians. The German Emperor says, "Better that Armenians be killed than have a war in Europe and lose the lives of some of my soldiers." The Czar says, "Time must be given to the Sultan to reform his country." Lord Salisbury says, "The Sultan has promised, and we must wait and see what he will do." And the Sultan, cursing every Emperor and lord of them all as a set of Christian hogs, orders the soldiers and the Kurds to go on with the good work in Armenia. And when we come to America, the Monroe doctrine obliges it to quarrel over Venezuela, and not only refuse help itself, but give Lord Salisbury a good excuse to give none either. Such is the situation; the massacres are going on in Armenia and the Armenians in despair are crying, "O Lord, how long, how long!"