“All the statements of the publicists, which represent the Kurds as doing their best to exterminate the Armenians, must be altogether rejected. If they were reliable, no individual belonging to an alien race could have ever lived in the midst of the Kurds, and the various peoples living among them would have been obliged to emigrate bodily for want of bread, or to become their slaves. Now nothing of the kind has occurred. On the contrary, all those who know the eastern provinces state that in those countries the Christian villages are at any rate more prosperous than those of the Kurds. If the Kurds were only murderers and thieves, as is often said in Europe, the prosperous state of the Armenians till 1895 would have been utterly impossible. So the distress of the Armenians in Turkey till 1895 is a mere legend. The condition of the Turkish Armenians was no worse than that of the Armenians living in other countries. “The complaints according to which the condition of the Armenians in Turkey is represented as unbearable do not refer to the inhabitants of the towns, for the latter have always been free and enjoyed privileges in every respect. As to the peasants, owing to their perfect knowledge of farmwork and irrigation, their condition was far superior to that of the peasants in Central Russia. “As to the Armenian clergy, they make no attempt to teach religion; but they have striven hard to spread national ideas. Within the precincts of mysterious convents, the teaching of hatred of the Turk has replaced devotional observances. The schools and seminaries eagerly second the religious leaders.” After the collapse of Russia, the Armenians, Georgians, and Tatars formed a Transcaucasian Republic which was to be short-lived, and we have dealt in another book with the attempt made by these three States together to safeguard their independence.[38] The Soviet Government issued a decree on January 13, 1918, stipulating in Article 1 “the evacuation of Armenia by the Russian troops, and the immediate organisation of an Armenian militia in order to safeguard the personal and material security of the inhabitants of Turkish Armenia,” and in Article 4, “the establishment of a provisional Armenian Government in Turkish Armenia consisting of delegates of the Armenian people elected according to democratic principles,” which obviously could not satisfy the Armenians. Two months after the promulgation of this decree, the Brest-Litovsk treaty in March, 1918, stipulated in Article 4 that “Russia shall do her utmost to ensure the quick evacuation of the eastern provinces of Anatolia. Ardahan, Kars, and Batum shall be evacuated at once by the Russian troops.”