I believe that, under a just and honest government and better influences, the Turkish peasant will, in course of time, lose his proneness to cruelty, for he has good qualities. But if this war is intended to see the end of tyranny, oppression, brutal religious and political persecution and the discontent and unrest that such conditions always produce; if it is to prevent the possibility of a repetition of the hell that the Turks have let loose in Armenia since they entered the war and _so often before the war_; then it is clear that never again must the Turk be allowed to possess the power over other races, which he has so abominably abused ever since he "hacked his way through" to the fair, fertile and once highly prosperous country which he has devastated and converted into a charnel-house. The Armenians of Turkey had no separatist aspirations. They knew that was impracticable. Nothing would have suited them better than a reformed government in Turkey, that would give them security of life, honour and property, the free development of their national and religious institutions and an approach to equality with Moslems before the law. On the promulgation of the Constitution, all the Armenian revolutionary societies were transformed into peaceable and orderly political parties as by magic. They had great hopes of achieving these aims and the regeneration of the Ottoman Empire from within in co-operation with the Young Turks before the war, and they gave the Committee of Union and Progress (was there ever a more incongruous misnomer?) all the support they could, which was by no means negligible; but they had not long to wait to be completely and bitterly disillusioned. The Adana massacres gave their hopes the first blow. The Armenian leaders proved too earnest and sincere democrats for the Committee leaders who, with few exceptions, were actuated, as events proved, more by inordinate personal ambition than the "liberty" and "equality" which they so loudly proclaimed and which have proved such a hideous mockery. The chauvinistic wing soon gained complete ascendancy over the party, which resolved on the covert or forcible "Ottomanization" of all non-Turk races of the Empire (as is proved by the recent exposures of the Grand Sheriff of Mecca), and ended by joining the Germans in the war in the hope of conquering Egypt and the Caucasus. It is a mistake to think that Germany forced Turkey into the war against her will by the presence of the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_. Those who had any knowledge of Turkish affairs had no doubt of the existence of a military understanding between Germany and Turkey for some years before the war. The arrival of a military mission at Constantinople under Liman von Sanders left no doubt on that point.