CHAPTER VII.
PREVIOUS ACTS OF THE TURKISH TRAGEDY.

IN this chapter^ I shall take no account of events
that have taken place in legitimate warfare,
where the slain were foreign enemies or rebel¬
lious subjects of the Sultan, resisting with arms in
their hands after being ordered to submit. The " in¬
surgents "—as the Porte has called them—in all these
cases have consisted of men, women, children, and
infants, and in each case, by a curious coincidence,
have been non-Mohammedan.

In all of these massacres, Turkish military or civil
officers presided and directed the bloody work, as will
be seen by reference to the authorities mentioned.
There have been many other massacres of less than
ten thousand during the intervals, which, to use the
language of Beder Khan in Mosul (see Layard's
Nineveh), have confirmed the whole Turkish princi¬
ple, that *' the Armenians were becoming too numer¬
ous, and needed diminishing."

^ Parts of this chapter are taken from an article, *'Notes on the
Armenian Massacre," in The Independent^ New York, January 31,
^895, by a high authority, who is compelled to sign himself "A
Student of Modern History."

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