Information from British ambassador indicates far more loss of lives in
  Armenia, attended with atrocities, than stated in my telegram of 28th.

I have received absolutely no information concerning any cruelties committed “upon citizens who have declared their intention to become naturalized in this country,” or upon any persons who had a right to claim or have claimed for any reason the protection of the United States Government.

In the absence of such authentic detailed knowledge on the subject as would justify our interference no “expostulations have been addressed by this Government to the Government of Turkey in regard to such matters.”

The last inquiry contained in the resolution of the Senate touching these alleged cruelties seeks information concerning “any proposals made by or to this Government to act in concert with other Christian powers regarding the same.”

The first proposal of the kind referred to was made by the Turkish Government through our minister on the 30th day of November, when the Sultan then expressed a desire that a consul of the United States be sent with a Turkish commission to investigate these alleged atrocities on Armenians.  This was construed as an invitation on the part of the Turkish Government to actually take part with a Turkish commission in an investigation of these affairs and any report to be made thereon, and the proposition came before our minister’s second dispatch was received and at a time when the best information in the possession of our Government was derived from his first report, indicating that the statements made in the press were sensational and exaggerated and that the atrocities alleged really did not exist.  This condition very much weakened any motive for an interference based on considerations of humanity, and permitted us without embarrassment to pursue a course plainly marked out by other controlling incidents.

By a treaty entered into at Berlin in the year 1878 between Turkey and various other governments Turkey undertook to guarantee protection to the Armenians, and agreed that it would “periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the powers, who will superintend their application.”

Our Government was not a party to this treaty, and it is entirely obvious that in the face of the provisions of such treaty above recited our interference in the proposed investigation, especially without the invitation of any of the powers which had assumed by treaty obligations to secure the protection of these Armenians, might have been exceedingly embarrassing, if not entirely beyond the limits of justification or propriety.

The Turkish invitation to join the investigation set on foot by that Government was therefore, on the 2d day of December, declined.  On the same day, and after this declination had been sent, our minister at Constantinople forwarded his second dispatch, tending to modify his former report as to the extent and character of Armenian slaughter.  At the same time the request of the Sultan for our participation in the investigation was repeated, and Great Britain, one of the powers which joined in the treaty of Berlin, made a like request.