by the Turkish guards, and made to stand at a due distance for the distribution.  And when those ranks, with their parched throats and sun-cracked lips, were all ready, the Turkish guards opened the taps of the reservoirs, and allowed the whole of their contents to run away into the sand.  Whether Jemal the Great planned that, or whether it was but a humorous freak on the part of the officials, I cannot say.  But as a refinement of cruelty I have, outside the page of Poe’s tales, only once come across anything to equal it, and that in a letter from the Times’ correspondent at Berne on April 11, 1917.  He describes the treatment of English prisoners in Germany:  ’An equally common entertainment with those women (German Red Cross nurses) was to offer a wounded man a glass, perhaps, of water, then, standing just outside his reach, to pour it slowly on the ground.’  Could those sisters of mercy have read the account of Jemal’s clemency, or is it merely an instance of the parallelism of similar minds?

So the empty train returned, and Jemal the Great caused it to be known in Berlin that he was active in securing a proper water supply for the famous agricultural settlements in the desert, and loud were the encomiums in the press of the Central Powers over the colonisation of Syria by the Armenians, the progress and enlightenment of the Turks, and the skilful and humane organisation of Jemal the Great.

There is no difficulty in estimating to-day the number of Armenian men who survive in the Turkish Empire.  All appeals to the Prussian overlords, such as were made by Dr. Niepage, and the belated remonstrance of the Prussians themselves when they foresaw a dearth of labour for the husbandry of beet and cereals, fell on deaf ears, and I cannot see any reason for supposing that Armenian men exist any more in the Empire.  It is more difficult to judge of the numbers of women who, by accepting the Moslem creed and the harems, are still alive.  Certainly in some districts there were considerable ‘conversions,’ and Dr. Niepage rates them as many thousands.  But the willingness to accept those conditions was not always a guarantee for their being granted, and I have read reports where would-be converts were told that ‘religion’ was a more serious matter than that, and, instead of being accepted, they were massacred.  But even if Dr. Niepage is right, we can scarcely consider these women as constituting an Armenian element any more in the country.  The work of butchery, the torture, the long-drawn agonies of those inhuman pilgrimages have come to an end because there are no more Armenian victims available.  Apart from those who escaped over the Russian frontier, and the handful who sought refuge in Egypt, the race exists no longer, and the seal has been set on the bloodiest deed that ever stained the annals of the barbarous Osmanlis.  It is not in revenge on the murderers, but in order to rescue the other subject peoples, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, who are still enclosed