Some people, perhaps, will say that whether these stories of massacres be true or false, it is inopportune to defend the reputation of a nation with whom we are at war. If this argument were true, it would apply with equal force as a criticism of the officers and men who have written home from Gallipoli, giving spontaneously such wholehearted and generous testimony to the bravery and chivalry of the Turks. Truth can never be inopportune so long as our conscience is clear, which it would not be if we allowed false stories to remain uncontradicted simply because the untrue assertions might be detrimental to an enemy. But at this advanced stage of the war such stories are scarcely likely to have any effect on the neutral nations, who are, indeed, more likely to be influenced in our favour if we show ourselves fair-minded and willing to investigate the truth. Their object is simply to bias public opinion in this country still further against an already misjudged and badly maligned enemy. Some good-natured people have indeed gone so far as to say, that “the fact of the Armenians rising in rebellion and butchering the Moslems of Van and only waiting an opportunity to do so in other places, was no justification for the severity of the Turkish Government, or for the reprisals of the local Turks and the cruelties of the Kurds.” But even admitting, all exaggeration apart, the severity of the Turkish Government’s action in ordering the removal of the Armenian population and the methods adopted by local officials to stamp out disaffection, it must not be forgotten how critical the situation was for Turkey: that for her it was a matter of life and death. There is not the slightest doubt that, unless the incipient revolution had been immediately crushed and further danger removed, the Turkish army on the Caucasus would have been hopelessly cut off and the Moslem population exterminated at the hands of the revolutionaries. The British Government has never hesitated under much less critical conditions to suppress rebellion within its borders with an iron hand and by measures which, surveyed after the time of stress and danger was past, have appeared both harsh and cruel in the extreme.