I cannot believe that such a fate can befall that fair land, stricken as it now is with the ravages of war. I cannot believe that civilization in its journey with the sun will sink into endless night to gratify the ambition of leaders of this revolt, who seek to "Wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind." I have a far other and brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic, westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main,--and I see one people, and one law, and one language, and one faith, and over all that wide continent the home of freedom and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime. THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE Ladies and Gentlemen, Before I come to the resolution which I have undertaken to move, there are certain subjects which I wish to clear out of the way. There are most important distinctions to be drawn on the ground that the sufferers under the present misrule and the horribly accumulated outrages of the last two years are our own fellow-Christians. But we do not prosecute the cause we have in hand upon the ground that they are our fellow-Christians. This is no crusade against Mohammedanism. This is no declaration of an altered policy or sentiment as regards our Mohammedan fellow-subjects in India. Nay, more; I will say that it is no declaration of universal condemnation of the Mohammedans of the Turkish Empire. On the contrary, amid the dismal and heartrending reports of which we have had to read and hear so much, one of the rare touches of comfort and relief has been that in spite of the perpetration of massacres by the agents of the Government, in spite of the countenance given to massacre by the highest authority, there have been good and generous Mohammedans who have resisted these misdeeds to the uttermost of their power, who have established for themselves a claim to our sympathy and our admiration. Although it is true that those persons are Christians on whose behalf we move, I confidently affirm, and you will back me in my affirmation, that if instead of being Christians they were themselves Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists, or Confucianists--they would have precisely the same claims upon our support; and the motives which have brought us here to-day would be incumbent upon us with the same force and with the same sacredness that we recognize at the present moment.