To my appeals the nominal chief Minister was hardly more statesmanlike. I had the disagreeable task of sending him, on behalf of the British, French, and Russian Governments, a notification that these Powers would hold personally responsible for the Armenian atrocities the men who were then directing Ottoman affairs. This meant, of course, that in the event of Allied success, they would treat the Grand Vizier, Talaat, Enver, Djemal, and their companions as ordinary murderers. As I came into the room to discuss this somewhat embarrassing message to this member of the royal house of Egypt, he sat there, as usual, nervously fingering his beads, and not in a particularly genial frame of mind. He at once spoke of this telegram, his face flushed with anger, and he began a long diatribe against, the whole Armenian race. He declared that the Armenian “rebels” killed 120,000 Turks at Van. This and other of his statements were so absurd that I found myself spiritedly defending the persecuted race, and this aroused the Grand Vizier’s wrath still further, and, switching from the Armenians, he began to abuse my own country, making the usual charges that our sympathy with the Armenians was largely responsible for all their troubles. Soon after this interview Saïd Halim ceased to be Minister for Foreign Affairs. His successor was Halil Bey, who for some years had been Speaker of the Turkish Parliament. Halil was a very different type of man. He was much more tactful, much more intelligent, and much more influential in Turkish affairs. He was also a smooth and oily conversationalist, good-natured and fat, and by no means so lost to all decent sentiments as most Turkish politicians of the time. It was generally reported that Halil did not approve the Armenian proceedings, yet his official position compelled him to accept them, and even, as I now discovered, to defend them. Soon after obtaining his Cabinet post, Halil called upon me and made a somewhat rambling explanation of the Armenian atrocities. I had already had experiences with several official attitudes toward the persecutions; Talaat had been bloodthirsty and ferocious, Enver subtly calculating, while the Grand Vizier had been testy. Halil now regarded the elimination of this race with the utmost good humour. Not a single aspect of the proceeding, not even the unkindest things I could say concerning it, disturbed his equanimity in the least. He began by admitting that nothing could palliate these massacres, but, he added, in order to understand them, there were certain facts that I should keep in mind.