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The letters are arranged in chronological order. In view of the fact that the names of the cities from which the various documents are dated must be withheld at present, these places are designated by letters of the alphabet. The separate extracts are also numbered to facilitate reference. In order that there may be no confusion, all explanatory comments of the author are enclosed in brackets.

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[The reader should take notice that this first letter was written over four months before the massacre actually occurred.]

D..., April 3, 1894.

It does seem in this region as if the government were bent on reducing all those who survive the process to a grovelling poverty, when they can think of nothing more than getting their daily bread. There is good reason for thinking that unless so-called Christian nations extend a helping hand, they [the Armenians] will become wellnigh extinct. Of course I do not sympathize in any way with the extremists in other lands who are stirring things up here. Nor do I agree with those papers that decry this movement as very foolish because there is no hope for success. If I rightly interpret the movement in this region, the thought is not revolution at all, but a desperate effort to call the attention of Europe to the wrongs they are suffering and will ever continue to suffer under this government. They feel that they will never succeed in attracting that attention unless they show that they are desperate enough to sacrifice their lives. And there is no computing the lives that are going, not in open massacre as in Bulgaria—the government knows better than that,—but in secret, silent, secluded ways. The sooner it is known, the better. There never will be peaceful, prosperous conditions here until others take hold with a strong hand.