The first general discussion of the terms of peace has coincided with the publication, as a Blue-book, of Lord Bryce's comprehensive documentary evidence on the attempt of the Turks to murder the Armenian nation in cold blood. I gratefully acknowledge the fact that many newspapers wrote sympathetic editorial articles or reviews on the Blue-book, emphasizing, with incontestable force, that this conclusive evidence of the abominable crimes committed by the Turks in Armenia without any protest from official Germany, is a crushing reply to the German Chancellor's protestations of solicitude for humanity. But, opportune as has been the immediate effect of this fresh evidence of Lord Bryce's noble and untiring labours in the cause of humanity, as a tragic and terrible exposure of the irony of the Central Powers' professions of pity for suffering humanity, that is surely not the only or the principal moral to be drawn from these haunting pages. They constitute a terrible and lasting reproach to the European diplomacy of our time. They unfold to the horrified gaze of mankind a vast column of human smoke and human anguish rising to the heavens as the incense of the most fearful yet most glorious mass-martyrdom the world has ever seen, but casting a shadow of lasting shame upon Christendom and civilization. The unparalleled outburst of barbarity they reveal did not come as a surprise. Europe had heard its premonitory rumblings these last forty years. As far back as 1880 the representatives of the Great Powers in their famous and futile Identic Note to the Sublime Porte, said: "So desperate was the misgovernment of the country that it would lead in all probability to the destruction of the Christian population of vast districts." The massacres of 1895-1896 and 1909 cost the lives of 250,000 to 300,000 Armenians. But most of the European statesmen of the day persistently refused to believe that "the gentle Turk" was capable of such bursts of unspeakable barbarism; while Bismarck declared openly that the whole Eastern Question was not worth "the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier." His successors have followed and improved upon his ruthless, unchristian policy, and Europe sees the result.