During the Balkan war, when even the mosques were crowded with sick and starving refugees and only the most heroic efforts of the Turkish army, decimated with cholera, were able to keep the victorious Bulgars outside the gates of the city whose very foundations were shaking under the vibration of the enemy’s guns, Greeks, Bulgars and foreign adventurers of every description feasting and making merry in the cafés of Pera openly rejoiced at the misfortune of the Turkish Empire. The principal of Robert College, a Christian school on the shores of the Bosphorus, allowed full play to his sectarian bias, boasting that many of the enemy’s successful generals had been educated at the College, which was founded under the protection and goodwill of the Sultan. Yet during those bitter days, in spite of all this provocation, not a single alien enemy was interfered with by those “fanatical Moslems,” whose hierarchial chief, the Sheik-ul-Islam, set an example by continuing to employ the Greek gardener who had been in his service for many years. The Turks were either too tolerant or too contemptuous to even notice the unseemly and licentious behaviour of the enemies within their gates. Such is the character of a people who would rather go without their dinner than see a poor man hungry, and who, even at a period when Jews were being burnt alive in Christian Spain, Huguenots hunted out of France and priests guilty of saying Mass executed in England, allowed perfect freedom to every race and sect within her dominions. In the present war we have the overwhelming and convincing testimony of all ranks, from Lord Kitchener downwards, that the Turks have fought gallantly and cleanly, and have treated our wounded and prisoners with kindness and humanity. It is inconceivable, therefore, that these same Turks without any provocation (and Lord Bryce himself has said that there was no religious fanaticism), should have committed the devilries of which they are accused, and in this connection we have the curiously illuminating observation by a celebrated correspondent, on his return from the seat of the last Balkan war, that “paradoxical as it might seem, the Turks were the only Christians in the Balkans”! This brief examination of the Turkish military and political situation, and of Turkish character, ought sufficiently to refute the suggestion that the Turks were the aggressors and acted without provocation. On the other hand these same military and political factors, when applied to the Armenian point of view and seen in conjunction with the character of these people, afford good and sufficient reasons for believing that the Armenians themselves commenced the troubles by rising in rebellion. It would indeed have been more than extraordinary had the rebellious section, armed and ready for any mischief, remained quiet under circumstances which were so entirely in their favour.