A large meeting was held in St. James Hall, London, October 19, 1896, in
memory of Christian Martyrs in Turkey. The Bishop of Rochester presided.
The hall was packed with an audience of 2,600, while nearly 7,000
applied for admission. Many prominent persons were present. The large
audience was in sombre funeral attire. About thirty front seats were
occupied by Armenians. It was stated that 60,000 Armenians so far had
been murdered with tortures and indignities indescribable. To this
meeting Mr. Gladstone addressed a letter which was greeted with the
wildest enthusiasm. He said that he hoped the meeting would worthily
crown the Armenian meetings of the past two months, which were without a
parallel during his political life. The great object, he said, was to
strengthen Lord Salisbury's hands and to stop the series of massacres,
which were probably still unfinished, and to provide against their
renewal. As he believed that Lord Salisbury would use his powerful
position for the best, personally he objected in the strongest manner to
abridging Lord Salisbury's discretion by laying down this or that as
things which he ought not to do. It was a wild paradox, without the
support of reason or history, to say that the enforcement of treaty
rights to stop systematic massacre, together with effective security
against Great Britain's abusing them for selfish ends, would provoke the
hostilities of one or more of the powers.
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