England's Inactivity--Her Solemn Obligation--Treaty of San Stefano--Berlin--Convention with Turkey--Cyprus--Occupation of Egypt--Position of the English Government--Difficulties in the Way--But the Suffering Awful--Freeman--Gladstone 433
Possible Solution--Universal Arbitration--Constantinople a Free City--Europe Free--Armenia's Sorrows Healed--The Dawning of the Twentieth Century 470
Massacre of Armenians by Police, Softas and Kurds Frontispiece. Great and Little Ararat from the Northeast 19 Armenian Types and Costumes 38 Monastic Rock Chambers at Gueremeh 55 The Sultan Abdul Hamid in the Park of the Yildiz Palace 74 Types of Softas 91 "The Turks are upon us," A Panic in Stamboul 110 The New Grand Vizier on His Way to the Sublime Porte 127 Explaining the Inflammatory Placards 146 Taking Armenian Prisoners to the Grand Zaptie Prison 163 British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question 182 The British Mediterranean Fleet 199 Types and Costumes.--Kurdish Gentlemen 218 A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum 235 Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets 254 Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia 271 Armenian Women, Province of Van 290 Armenian Mountaineer of Shadokh 307 Grand Mosque and Interior of Urfah 324 Passage Boat on the Arras 343 Arresting the Murderers of Armenians 362 Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan 379 Refugees and Policemen at an Armenian Church 398 A Prayer for Revenge 415 Massacre of Armenians at Erzeroum 422 Burying the Bodies After the Massacre at Erzeroum 431 A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum 438 The Prison at Erzeroum 444 Trebizond 453 Principal Street and Bazaars of Erzeroum 459 Town and Citadel of Van 466 Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van 475
Map of Turkey in Asia 284-285 Map of Armenia 321
At no time of the world's history have there ever been two months so rich in grand tragedy as the Armenian period of November and December, 1895. It is not the enormous number of the killed nor the frightful suffering of the survivors that give this period its unique character, but the fact that the great majority of the 75,000 or more of the massacred Christians had a free choice to make between life and death, and they chose death. Civilized humanity is bound to take a supreme interest in the action of those heroes and heroines who sacrificed all the interests of existence to their moral ideal of life,--in those women who, in order to escape from the outrage of a bestial soldiery, threw themselves into the river Euphrates and were drowned,--in those virgins who, captured by the brutal Moslems, received twenty, thirty sword cuts in defending their honor,--in those men who, when threatened with instant death if they would not embrace Islam, answered, "we are ready to be immolated for the love of Christ," and they were slaughtered like sheep. The historian and the dramatic writer, the poet and the painter will soon follow the diplomatist and the journalist to take up the matter, and the Christian peoples of all lands will continue to receive now a thrill of pious admiration, now a tremendous shock at the recital of these events.