“Do you believe that any massacres would have taken place if no Armenian revolutionaries had come into the country and incited the Armenian population to rebellion?” I asked Mr. Graves. “Certainly not,” he replied. “I do not believe that a single Armenian would have been killed.” Mr. Graves is a weighty authority, and if he is in Turkey to-day I feel sure he will not object to my citing him in this important matter. Let it suffice, we did not meet a single person in Erzeroum, whatever his nationality, race, or creed might have been, who attached the slightest credence to a story which, cunningly invented and circulated broadcast, not only cruelly slandered a man of integrity, but did a deal of harm to his country in the public opinion of the world. The position of Vali or Governor-General of a Turkish province has come to be associated with an unenviable notoriety in the estimation of a large section of the European public. Not unnaturally, a great share of the responsibility for the wild vengeance of the mob rests with those invested with supreme authority, and where the person wielding this authority has been unequal to its grave responsibilities rumour has stepped in and has credited Turkish officials in general with every imaginable crime. There are doubtless bad Valis as there are bad men in other stations of life, and we were on the look-out for one in order to make an example of him. Alas that I can only give my experience of a good Vali, Mohamed Cherif Reouf Pasha, Governor-General of the first-class vilayet of Erzeroum. When General Grant visited Jerusalem, he found Reouf Pasha in the position of Governor of that wonderful city. A strong friendship sprang up between the thin-lipped, taciturn general and the suave, courtly, and yet most simple-mannered pasha. Their meeting had taken place many years previously, but Reouf still loved to talk of Grant, whom he recognized as one of the few truly great men he had come across in his lifetime. And as for Grant’s opinion of Reouf, I understand from a reliable source that, before leaving Jerusalem, Grant assured him that if he were again elected President of the United States, he would ask the Sultan to send him as Turkish Minister to Washington.