That is intelligible and natural, sometimes even right. But it is _not_ right that those who thus decline to examine the case should at the same time prejudge it, should dismiss with scorn, or incredulity, or carelessness, the testimony of those who, having gone down into that depth of horror, have come back burdened with an anguish which can only find relief in the effort to help the surviving sufferers. One of two things people surely ought to do--they ought to examine the evidence for themselves; or, declining this, and possibly with good reason, they ought to accept the conclusions of those who have. In the earlier stages of the tragedy many were misled, and not inexcusably, by reports that came from official sources in Turkey. Here is a specimen--a message sent by the Sultan to the Ambassador of England, in February, 1896, when the unprovoked slaughter of the unarmed and defenceless thousands of Urfa was still reeking to Heaven:--"That the Armenians have everywhere and always been the aggressors, that the Mussulmans have been attacked in their mosques during their prayers, that they have suffered nameless atrocities from the Armenians, for the latter had Martini guns, dynamite, and bombs, while, to defend themselves, the Mussulmans had only old, superseded fire-arms." Were Pascal amongst us now, he would scarcely devote to the confusion of the Jesuits his celebrated "_Mentiris Impudentissime!_" Happily, the truth is known now. It may be briefly summed up in the words of Victor Bérard, an eminent Frenchman well acquainted with the East, who has devoted himself to the careful investigation of the whole question, and published the results in "_La Politique du Sultan_." "In the opinion and the language of all, Christians and Mussulmans, 'young' and 'old Turks,' Greeks and Bulgarians, natives and strangers, he (the Sultan) remains the promoter and arranger of all that has been done within the last two years. Every one knows and every one says, 'He has wished it, he has ordained it. The Master has permitted us to kill the Armenians.' This permission has cost the lives of more than _Three Hundred Thousand_ human beings. For, besides the public butcheries, the 'fusillades en masse,' and the massacres with spear and sword, how many stabbings with knives, assassinations, and private murders! Besides those who were murdered, how many women, children, and old people perishing in the fields left uncultivated, in the villages infested with the odour of corpses, in that epidemic of plague and cholera which, since 1895, has desolated Turkish Armenia! Putting all exaggeration aside, we may make the following calculation. Since the 1st of July, 1894, more than 500 Armenian communities have been stricken or suppressed. Some, like those of Constantinople or Sassoun, have had more than 5,000 dead. The figure of 3,000, as at Malatia, Diarbekr, Arabkir, has often been reached. That of 1,000 is common, and the minimum of 300 has been everywhere exceeded.