Mr. Eugene Schuyler, American Secretary of Legation at Constantinople, who visited the ruined villages in July and August, 1876, made his report to the United States Minister Plenipotentiary November 20th. In that report he says that "in the districts he visited at least nine thousand houses were burned, seventy-two thousand persons were left without roof or shelter and ten thousand nine hundred and eighty-four persons were numbered as killed. Many more were killed in the roads, in the fields, in the mountains; so that he numbers the slain at about fifteen thousand,--but adds many more died subsequently from disease, exposure and in prison." He says that he could only find proof of the death of one hundred and fifteen Mussulmans. "Neither Turkish women nor Turkish children were killed in cold blood. No Mussulman women were violated. No Mussulman was tortured. No purely Turkish village (with one exception) was attacked or burned. No Mussulman house was pillaged. No mosque was desecrated." The storm of indignation which followed the publication of the reports of Mr. Schuyler and Mr. Baring the British commissioner, was so terrible that even a Disraeli cabinet did not dare to enter into another monstrous alliance with the Turks against the only champion of the Christians. But official neutrality did not prevent the Turks from recruiting many officers in England; in spite of it British guineas and firearms strengthened their powers of resistance against Russia. It is a terrible indictment that may be brought against England that the question of righteousness never seems to enter into the questions of her foreign "policy," but only the question of interest and that chiefly the interest which is reckoned in pounds, shillings and pence. From a letter dated September 4th, 1876, published in one of the English Blue Books, addressed to the Earl of Derby by Sir Henry Elliot, English Ambassador at Constantinople,--the Sir Henry who would not support the Andrassy Note because he feared that the provisions of it trenched upon the rights of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs,--the following quotation is taken, viz:-- "An insurrection or civil war is everywhere accompanied by cruelties and abominable excesses, this being tenfold the case in oriental countries where people are divided into antagonistic creeds and races. * * * To the accusation of being a blind partisan of the Turks, I will only answer that my conduct here has never been guided by any sentimental affection for them, but by a firm determination to uphold the interests of Great Britain to the utmost of my power, and that those interests are deeply engaged in preventing the disruption of the Turkish Empire, is a conviction which I share in common with the most eminent statesmen who have directed our foreign policy. (This is the key to every position assumed by British diplomacy at the Porte. Never a question of righteousness.)