“The Turk came in as an alien and barbarian encamped on the soil of Europe. At the end of five hundred years, he remains an alien and barbarian encamped on soil which he has no more made his own than it was when he first took Kallipolis. His rule during all that time has been the rule of strangers over enslaved nations in their own land. It has been the rule of cruelty, faithlessness, and brutal lust; it has not been government, but organized brigandage. His rule cannot be reformed. While all other nations get better and better, the Turk gets worse and worse. And when the chief powers of Europe join in demanding that he should make even the smallest reform, he impudently refuses to make any. If there was anything to be said for him before the late Conference, there is nothing to be said for him now. For an evil which cannot be reformed, there is one remedy only—to get rid of it. Justice, reason, humanity, demand that the rule of the Turk in Europe should be got rid of; and the time for getting rid of it has now come.” [Illustration: ARMENIAN REBELS WHO WOULD NOT PAY TAXES. ] This was written seventeen years ago with reference to the discontinuance of the Ottoman power in Europe. Does it not now apply with equal force to the discontinuance of the same régime in Armenia? CHAPTER IX. GLADSTONE ON THE ARMENIAN MASSACRE AND ON TURKISH MISRULE. On the eighty-fifth anniversary of Mr. W. E. Gladstone’s birth, December 29, 1894, a deputation of members of the National Church of Armenia presented to his son, the Rev. Stephen Gladstone, rector of Hawarden, a silver gilt chalice for the use of the church, in memory of the ex-Premier’s sympathy with and assistance to the Armenian people. On that occasion Mr. Gladstone made a long and eloquent speech, in the course of which—after thanking the deputation for their token of sympathy and their grateful references to himself—he said: “Well, Mr. Stevenson—I address myself now perhaps more particularly to you and to my own countrymen, to any of them who will take notice of the deputation. I have said that in my opinion this manifestation from the Armenian community in England and in Paris was, on my part at least, quite undeserved. I have done nothing for you in circumstances of great difficulty, and that, let me assure you, has not been owing to indifference. I will explain the cause in very few words. Rumors went abroad, growing more and more authenticated, which represented a state of horrible and indescribable outrage in Armenia. The impulse of every man in circumstances of that kind is to give way to a burst of strong feeling, but I had the conviction that in a grave case of this kind every nation is best and most properly represented by its government, which is the organ of the nation, and which has the right to speak with the authority of the nation.