Van, with 10,000, seems to hold the first rank. Taking then an average of 500 dead, we remain much under the truth, and this average, for the 500 communities stricken, gives 250,000 corpses. How, in a time of unbroken peace, could a man conceive such an enterprise, and how, under the eyes of Europe, could he bring it to pass?" It need only be added, that those on the spot consider the above figures indeed _much under the truth_. A common way of dismissing the subject with a phrase is to say "The Armenians are as bad as the Turks." This may be understood in either of two senses: the first originators probably meaning it in one, while those who repeat it commonly take it in the other. It may mean, "The Turk at bottom is as good as the Armenian,--The Armenian at bottom is as bad as the Turk." Whether this be true or no, it does not affect the present question. If we see a man being murdered, we do not stay to enquire into his character and antecedents before coming to his aid. Were the Armenians the most degraded race in the world, and the Turks (originally) the noblest, that is no reason why humanity should allow the Turks to torture and outrage and slay the Armenians. But, if the meaning is that the Armenians are as much to blame for these troubles, as much in fault with respect to them, as the Turks, it might be relevant, if it were true. True, however, it emphatically is not. Hear the testimony of Dr. Lepsius, who has made an exhaustive study of the whole question. "The Armenians are not to blame. It would certainly have been no wonder if the Armenian people, who for years, by a systematic policy of annihilation on the part of the Porte, had been given over defenceless to every kind of injustice at the hands of Turkish officials, to every sort of violence on the part of their Kourdish lords, to extortion by the commissioners of taxes, and to the utter illegality of the law courts, had risen up in a last desperate struggle against the iron yoke of tyranny. But as a matter of fact it was impossible to think of a national rising. To begin with, the Armenians, though large districts are thickly populated with them, are by no means everywhere in a majority in the provinces in question, and by the law which forbids Christians to carry arms, while allowing them to Mahometans, they are absolutely defenceless. In fact, no one in Armenia has ever thought of demanding anything like autonomy. All that was hoped for was that the Reforms should be carried out which eighteen years before had been guaranteed by the Christian Powers, and which seemed to promise to the Armenians an existence at least bearable. Through the entire district of the massacre we have not been able to discover, notwithstanding the fulness of our information, any movement (except that in Zeitoun) which could be considered to be of the nature of a revolt. The commissioners in their report were not even able to establish any act of provocation on the part of the Armenians; and when