December 11, 1894.--An enthusiastic meeting of Baltimoreans was held last night at Levering Hall, Johns Hopkins University, to make an emphatic protest against the Turkish outrages upon Christian Armenians, and to urge the United States government to do all in its power to remedy the existing evils.
The meeting was called by a committee of Baltimore ministers. It was presided over by Attorney-General John P. Poe, and the Rev. T. M. Beadenkoff was the secretary.
Addresses were made by Mr. Poe, Rev. George H. Filian, an exiled Armenian Christian Minister, Rabbi Wm. Rosenan, and Rev. Dr. F. M. Ellis.
Cardinal Gibbons and Judge Harlan sent letters regretting their inability to be present, and expressing sympathy with the object of the gathering.
Mr. Poe, in taking the chair, said:--"The accounts which have reached us of the indescribable atrocities recently committed upon the Christians in Armenia have stirred the indignation and aroused the sympathy of the whole country.
"At first the nameless outrages inflicted upon them were received with incredulity, for it seemed almost impossible that they could be true. But there is now no reason to discredit the harrowing details. Indeed, denial is hardly any longer attempted, nor is it claimed that the reports of the cruelties of which these helpless people are the victims have been exaggerated.
"Conscious that the facts cannot be suppressed or belittled, the representatives and apologists of the ruthless perpetrators of these atrocities are endeavoring to palliate and excuse the enormities which they cannot truthfully deny. In order to shield themselves and their governments from universal execration, the world is asked to believe that the Christians of Armenia were themselves the aggressors, and that the horrors of massacre and rapine which have been visited upon them with such relentless fury were but necessary and pardonable measures of punishment and repression. The long record of the patient and submissive sufferers is a silent yet unanswerable refutation of this falsehood.
"In their misery and woe these sufferers lift their eyes to us, and ask us to extend to them such sympathy and assistance as will rescue them from total ruin.