The investigation of the latest atrocities showed that the Armenians had been wantonly tortured and murdered, and that indescribable atrocities had been perpetrated. Men, women, and children were proved to have been hacked to pieces, and no respect had been shown to age or sex. Whole villages had been depopulated, and the fact of any community being Christian seemed to have been sufficient to provoke the murderous hostility of the authorities. Where the Turks did not commit the outrages themselves, they remained inactive while the Kurds committed them, and their inactivity amounted to connivance, because the Armenians are not allowed to arm themselves for their own protection. There was legitimate grounds for foreign powers urging reforms upon the Sultan, as in 1878, when the Berlin Congress was inclined to strip him of his Armenian provinces, he promised that Armenia should be governed better than it had been, and England became sponsor for the performance of his promises. Under those conditions the Sultan was allowed to retain the provinces, and his failure to effect the reforms was therefore a distinct breach of faith. The Ambassadors of England, France and Russia accordingly presented to the Sultan on May 11th a demand for twelve specific changes in the government of Armenia. The scheme outlined included the appointment of a High Commissioner, with whom should be associated a commission to sit at Constantinople, for the purpose of carrying out all reforms. The full details of the plan were not made public, but among the suggestions made were these: The appointment of governors and vice-governors in six Armenian vilayets--Van, Erzeroum, Sivas, Bitlis, Harpoot, and Trebizond; that either the governor or the vice-governor of each vilayet should be a Christian; that the collection of taxes be on a better basis; with various other reforms in the judicial and administrative departments: especially that torture should be abolished; the gendarmérie to be recruited from Christians as well as Mohammedans, and the practical disarmament of the Kurds. Note the names of these vilayets as they are the centers of the horrible massacres that followed the Porte's true answer to all its own promises of reform. To this project of reforms the following memorandum was attached:-- "The appended scheme, containing the general statement of the modifications which it would be necessary to introduce in regard to the administration, financial and judicial organization of the vilayets mentioned, it has appeared useful to indicate in a separate memorandum certain measures exceeding the scope of an administrative regulation, but which form the very basis of this regulation and the adoption of which by the Porte is a matter of primary importance." These different points are: 1. The eventual reduction of the number of vilayets. 2. The guarantee for the selection of the valis. 3. Amnesty for Armenians sentenced or in prison on political charges.