No country and people have suffered so severely from the clash of rival empires, both in war and diplomacy, as have Armenia and the Armenians, so far as is known to the recorded history of the world. Her geographical position has made Armenia the cockpit of ambitious empires and conquerors, and the highway of their armies in Western Asia, much as Belgium and Poland have been the battle-grounds of Europe. But whereas in these European battle-grounds the invading armies have generally moved east and west only, Armenia has endured the horrors of invasion, time after time, from north, south, east and west. Then, again, Armenia being a much older country, the record of her suffering from the invading armies of her stronger neighbours, "hacking their way" through her territory, extends over a proportionately longer period than that of Belgium and Poland. Armenia has been invaded and ravaged in turn by Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Hittites, Parthians, Macedonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Tartars and Turks. Only during the first century B.C. did she succeed in subduing all her neighbours, and establishing a short-lived empire of her own, extending from the Mediterranean to the Caspian. The analogy between Armenia and her European co-sufferers from the ills of aggressive Imperialism ceases altogether, however, when we come to the period of Turkish domination. The blood-stained history of that régime is well enough known. Periodic explosions have reminded Europe of the existence of the inferno of unbridled lust, corruption and predatory barbarism which this unhappy people have been fated to endure for centuries. What has not been brought into sufficient relief is the fact that this "bloody tyranny" could have long since been brought to an end, or, at all events, effectively curbed, if it had not been for the jealousies and rivalries of the great modern Christian empires. The history of the acts of European diplomacy in regard to Armenia and the Near East during the last sixty or seventy years is not one of which the diplomats and statesmen concerned can be particularly proud. Who can claim for them to-day to have served, in the sum total of their results, either the interests of the Christian subjects of the Porte, the progress of civilization, the material interests of the Great Powers themselves, or the supreme interests of peace?