The Germans had failed in their projected attack on Calais and Dunkirk after suffering enormous losses. The Franco-British forces were massing for the counter-stroke. Russia was almost at the gates of Cracow, Przemysl had fallen, and her armies were descending into the plains of Hungary. The Servians had retaken Belgrade after inflicting a disastrous defeat on the Austrians. The Allied fleets were hammering at the Dardanelles. Greece, Roumania and possibly Bulgaria might at any moment join the Entente Powers. The position of Turkey and the Central Powers appeared worse than it has ever been before or since. It is therefore most unlikely that the Turkish Government without receiving any provocation, and even if, as suggested by Lord Bryce, they entertained the idea of exterminating the Armenians, should have chosen so inopportune a moment to damn themselves and forfeit all hope of magnanimous treatment for their country if defeated, besides running the risk of prejudicing the Christian Balkan States against them. Lord Bryce’s accusation, from the point of view of political expediency, carries its own refutation. In peace the Turks are a good-natured, easy-going race, hospitable, generous to the poor, and particularly fond of animals and children—a sure sign of a kindly and humane disposition, long-suffering, but when provoked, like all the near Eastern races both Moslem and Christian, exhibiting a fury out of all proportion to the insult according to our Western ideas. In war time the Turks are neither fanatical nor intolerant. They are indeed less so than any of the Western nations with all their supposed superiority. When Greece was fighting Turkey, the Greeks of Constantinople, although Ottoman subjects, actually dared to fly the Greek flag over their houses, and after the death of their archbishop, which occurred at that same time, paraded his dead body, seated upon the episcopal throne, through the streets of Pera, escorted by their prelates and clergy, without being subjected to any molestation. Annually, too, the Host is borne in procession through the streets of the City of the Khalif. Contrast this extraordinary tolerance with present conditions in London, where German subjects are forbidden to pray in their own churches in the German tongue and where, only a few years ago, the British Government on the occasion of the Eucharistic Congress refused to allow the Host to be borne through the streets of Westminster.