“With regard to the interior, signs of coming trouble were apparent a long time back. In some districts, where the Kurdish chiefs had been accustomed for centuries past to do all their business with the Armenian merchants and bankers in the towns, their mutual relations were of the most cordial character. The Kurds were even in the habit of staying in the houses of their Armenian friends when they came to town. Gradually a change came over the scene. The Kurds met strange faces in the towns, and the manner of the Armenian merchants visibly changed. Russian Armenian journalists from Tiflis became regular visitors, and the assumption is that they influenced the Armenian element in the direction of discontent and revolt. That they were able to do so is the more unaccountable as the Armenian language and the Armenian schools have always been entirely free, and in Turkey the Armenians are exempted from military service—a most distasteful profession to them—on paying a nominal sum. Moreover, the Armenians have been able, in the course of centuries, to gather into their hands the greater part of the wealth of the country. The Armenian ‘bakal,’ or village grocer, holds a great number of the Turkish peasantry in the perpetual bondage of usury. In Russia, on the other hand, the Armenians are rigorously drafted into the army, and are generally sent to serve their time in districts far away from their homes, while their schools and their language are interfered with by a severe censorship. “When the insurrectionary movement was ripe, the men who appeared on the scene gave themselves the name of ‘Fedaïs,’ or the ‘Sacrificed for the country.’ This is the sobriquet which the notorious Armenian revolutionist, Daniel Tschoueh, applied to himself. Under the pretext of saving his country he roamed through the vilayet of Sivas, where he committed acts of brigandage. And yet this very man was so deficient in physical courage that he died of fear the very day he was brought before the gendarmerie of Sivas. He was originally employed in the mines of Kara Hissar Charki, in the district of the vilayet of Sivas. Among other atrocities which he committed was the murder of the representative of the Procureur-Général of Kara Hissar Charki, as well as his wife and children, on the road to Sivas.