“You can assert that to the end of time,” I replied, “but nobody will believe it. The world will always hold Germany responsible; the guilt of these crimes will be your inheritance for ever. I know that you have filed a paper protest. But what does that amount to? You know better than I do that such a protest will have no effect. I do not claim that Germany is responsible for these massacres in the sense that she instigated them; but she is responsible in the sense that she had power to stop them and did not use it. And it is not only America and your present enemies that will hold you responsible. The German people will themselves some day call you to account. You are a Christian people, and the time will come when Germans will realise that you have let a Mohammedan people destroy another Christian nation. How foolish is your protest that I am sending information to my State Department! Do you suppose that you can keep things like these atrocities secret? Don’t get such a foolish, ostrich-like thought as that--don’t think that by ignoring them yourselves you can get the rest of the world to do so. Crimes like these cry to heaven. Do you think I could know about things like this and not report them to my Government? And don’t forget that German, missionaries, as well as American, are sending me information about the Armenians.” “All that you say may be true,” replied the German Ambassador, “but the big problem that confronts us is to win this war. Turkey has settled with her foreign enemies; she has done that at the Dardanelles and at Gallipoli. She is now trying to settle her internal affairs. They still greatly fear that the capitulations will be forced upon them again. If they should again be put under this restraint, they intend to have their internal problems in such shape that there will be little chance of any interference from foreign nations. Talaat has told me that he is determined to complete this task before peace is declared. In the future they don’t intend that the Russians shall be in a position to say that they have a right to intervene about Armenian matters because there are a large number of Armenians in Russia who are affected by the troubles of their co-religionists in Turkey. Giers used to be doing this all the time, and the Turks do not intend that any Ambassador from Russia, or from any other country, shall have such an opportunity in the future. The Armenians, anyway, are a very poor lot. You come in contact in Constantinople with Armenians of the educated classes, and you get your impressions about them from these men, but all the Armenians are not of that type. Yet I admit that they have been treated terribly. I sent a man to make investigations, and he reported that the worst outrages have not been committed by Turkish officials but by brigands.” Wangenheim again suggested that the Armenians be taken to the United States, and once more I gave him the reasons why this would be impossible.