From the third month of the war, it became clear to us that the Russian government pursued unswervingly its Lobanoff-policy toward the Armenians. What was that policy? In 1896, when an English correspondent interviewed the Russian minister of foreign affairs, Count Lobanoff Rostowsky, and asked him why Russia did not occupy the Armenian vilayets of Turkey in order to save that Christian people from the Turkish massacres, the Russian minister cynically replied: "We need Armenia, but without the Armenians." It is worth while, then, to give here a few actual facts which reveal this fiendish policy pursued by the Russian government toward a people which was the only one of all the peoples of the Caucasus and the Near East to help the Russian army by its unreserved co-operation, and which was the only factor that saved the Caucasian front from an unavoidable catastrophe in 1914 and 1915. ONE. Every time that the Russian army was forced to retreat from the recaptured parts of Turkish Armenia, no precautionary measures were taken in order to save the local Armenian inhabitants from the inevitable massacres. For example, in December, 1914, when the Turks advanced as far as Sarikamish and Ardahan and forced the central Russian army to retreat from the neighborhood of Alashkert and Bayazid, the commander of the local forces, General Abatzieff (an Acétine Moslem who had joined the Greek church) strictly ordered the local Armenian inhabitants, nearly 32,000 in number, not to stir from their places, and in order to have his command accurately carried out he placed mounted Cossack patrols in the plains of Alashkert lest the Armenian peasants should emigrate toward the Russian frontier, in which direction the Russian army with its transports had already been moving since December 13. Three days later the second battalion of the Armenian volunteers, which had been fighting in the first-line positions for over two months under the command of the same general, returned to the army headquarters for a well-earned rest, and there only it heard about the serious happenings already mentioned, and the extraordinary attitude assumed by the Russian general. The Armenian peasants from every side appealed to the Armenian volunteers with tears in their eyes and begged to be saved from an inevitable massacre. The commander of the Armenian volunteers, Armen Garo, and his brave assistant, Khetcho, who died like a hero in July, 1915, on the shores of Lake Van, went immediately to General Abatzieff and asked him to revoke his order and permit the Armenian inhabitants to move with the army toward Igdir. The hostile general refused their request, his answer being that, if the people stirred from the place, he would be unable to remove the army transports soon enough. When he heard this answer, Armen Garo immediately telegraphed to Igdir and appealed to the commander-in-chief of the fourth army, General Oganowsky, and in touching words asked for his intervention. On the