had been awaited through weeks of dismal foreboding. The well-known American missionary physician and relief agent in that city, Miss Grace M. Kimball, writing under date July 1, related that a tumult which had been started by a small band of Armenian revolutionists, armed interlopers from Russia, Bulgaria, and Persia, partly fanatics and partly villains-who scorned all the remonstrances of the British vice-consul and the American missionaries-had ended in raising a Turkish mob, which had murdered about 500 defenseless Armenian men and women in the city. The band of mischief-makers mostly made their escape across the Persian frontier. The slaughter in the eight days of rioting in the city would have been much greater had not the mob soon found more attractive work in pillaging the homes of the thrifty Armenians. A simultaneous murder and pillage went on throughout the province,

wrought, however, not so much by Turks as by Kurds. A report from another writer stated that forty villages were destroyed in the vicinity of Van, every male over eight years of age being killed, to the number of 12,000. This number seems exaggerated; but that the devastation was frightful appears from Miss Kimball's statement some weeks later, that the relief department in the city was then giving daily rations to more than 15,000 starving refugees, of whom 10,000 were also utterly homeless. The missionary hospital was crowded with wounded men and women. Dr. Kimball ascribes to the few Armenian miscreants above mentioned the blame of arousing this and brutal outbreak. She praises the conduct of the losavage cal governor, and the admirable adroitness and bravery of the British vice-consul, Major Williams. For several days the American mission, protected under the British flag, gave refuge to about 15,000 Armenians. The middle-class Turks also saved hundreds of persons from death at the hands of the mob.

From the region of Harpût, massacres were reported September 21 by United States Minister Terrell; and the Constantinople correspondent of the Berlin Tageblatt tele

graphed the following day that in disorders in the interior a week previously 6,000 persons had been killed.

The Gregorian Armenian Patriarch, Monsignor Matthew Izmirlian (Mattheos III.) resigned his patriarchate August 5. The sultan accepted his resignation-indeed, is thought to have used influence to bring it to pass -having notified him that he and his church council would hereafter be held personally responsible for the disorders which might occur.

He was born in 1845; held an Armenian bishopric in Egypt, 1886 -91; and was made patriarch, 1895. His soundness of judgment, courage, and purity of purpose commanded universal respect. He was unmoved equally by the sultan's threats or bribes and by the fanatical pressure of the Armenian revolutionist group. His resig nation, leaving his harassed nation without a widely recognized leader of intellectual and moral eminence, is due probably to his conviction that affairs have now reached a state in which he can do nothing more for his people.

Armenian Relief.-Contributions in Britain and America have slackened during the summer, though the real need has not decreased. The approaching winter, however, will soon decrease the need by putting beyond help multitudes of the shelterless people insufficiently clad even for the summer. To show the conditions of the Ottoman crisis" as it exists in the Armenian country, one of the large districts is here instanced-that of which Harpût is the distributing centre. In this district there are 100,000 needy persons who have lost nearly all their clothing, all their bedding, food, stores, household utensils, tools, business, and many of them their homes. They have lost heart also. Amid the ruins of their former thrift, and under constant menace of new assaults against which they have no protection by any government on earth, they sit hopeless. A government commission has estimated that merely to provide houses, at the cost of only $22 each for the simplest shelter of those whose houses have been burned, would require about $265,000. Of the $100,000 thus far raised and distributed, nothing has been used for building, because merely to keep the victims from starvation day by day has required more than all the funds contributed. Of the houseless multitude, many of those who have roofs to sleep under are found huddled in corners of stables and similar refuges, where, without beds they sleep on the floor with scarcely any covering. What will the winter be to them? As to their food, one of the agents of the Armenian relief association visiting the village of Ashvan to make sure that relief was really needed

there, found the people, even in summer, subsisting on a very little bread (many not having any bread) and on grass which they gathered in little bunches from the fields. They were gaunt with hunger. Their children were nigh starvation.

Clara Barton arrived in New York September 12, returning for rest from her mission of mercy after nearly seven months of most laborious, devoted, and efficient service as the executive and almoner of the Red Cross Society. It is no part of the work of this society to collect funds. She went, leading her trained and expert staff, to organize and systematize, in a land of utter disorder, an economical and judicious distribution of charities from Christian lands. The Red Cross, which originated during our civil war to bring aid to sufferers in camp and on the battlefield, keeps with military directness to its one object, which-as Miss Barton has found occasion to say to many inquirers is not investigation as to blame or responsibility for the evils in Turkey, nor speculation as to the duties of national governments, but simply the actual relief of the hundreds of thousands of helpless sufferers. It is understood that she expects to return to her work of mercy if funds are in hand, and that she looks with dread to the coming winter with its gloomy prospect of increased want and woe. Declining to testify as to the massacres-remarking that they occurred before her arrival-she testifies that the Armenians are now literally starving, and are reduced to abject fear and almost absolute helplessness. She testifies further that help must be immediate, and that the missionaries are " very efficient almoners." She praises the unfailing courtesy of the Turkish officials to her, and their protection of her and her associates in their work, and instances the sultan's farewell letter of thanks. Of Minister Terrell's assiduous help and furthering of her plans, she speaks with enthusiasm. Her departure (the papers report) was like a triumphal procession-throngs cheering her embarkation; flags, salutes, and cheers, from ship and shore, signalizing her passage down the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. It is probably wisest for us, at least in this review, to imitate her in not peering too far below the surface of the Turkish official compli

ment.

Constantinople in Tumult.-The last days of August were days of terror in the Turkish capital. From the conflicting accounts the following is sifted as presenting, on main points, the view of the most trustworthy observers.

On August 25 a society of patriot Armenians whose patriotism has become insanity under the hideous Turkish misrule, presented to the government and the foreign embassies a memorial declaring that the Armenian people had at last been driven to utter despair, and that the government could avoid an awful disaster only by immediately entering on the reforms so long promised in vain. A scheme of reform was subjoined. To emphasize this memorial a desperate attack-utterly wild in its general conception though skilfully planned in details-was made the next day on the Ottoman bank, a British institution, the chief nucleus of foreign interests in the Turkish empire. The plan was, after lodging dynamite in the bank cellar, to bring in a supply of bombs in sacks borne by men in the guise of the porters who carry coin, and then by a sudden rush to seize and close the doors and hold the bank officials as captives under threat of instantly blowing up the bank building in case of resistance. About 2 P. M., twenty-five men (some accounts say forty) who had taken positions unobserved in various parts of the edifice suddenly fired revolvers and exploded bombs, making terrific uproar and shattering glass, but harming no one. The officials in the cash department fled in sudden panic from their room, leaving about $50,000 exposed to the conspirators, who, however, did not touch it, and indeed afterward helped the cashier to place it securely in the safe. Many of the bank staff, with the governor, succeeded in escaping, and summoned military assistance; but two directors and about eighty clerks found themselves shut in, and were held as hostages by the invaders, who swiftly closed and barricaded every entrance, and announced that unless the reforms were granted at the expiration of a fixed period they would destroy all the bank's securities and blow up the whole building. Their intention was, they said, "to force Europe to take action," and "to show what the Armenian people could do." Small groups of Armenians made demonstrations at several other points in the city.

The police and troops, soon arriving, attempted to break their way into the bank, but were repulsed by bombs thrown on them by revolutionists stationed on the roof. Near midnight, the bank officials and representatives of the foreign embassies, having held a consultation-at which a message was received from the temporary masters of the bank building that they were ready to evacuate if they could be permitted to leave the country-sent three of their number to parley with the invaders and to arrange

terms for evacuation of the bank. The parley was held at a lower window; and, after much discussion, it was agreed at 2:30 A. M. that the revolutionists should be allowed to leave the place and the country without arrest. There has been some speculation as to the motive of M. Maximoff of the Russian embassy in leading this parley, which provided for saving the lives of these men. The agitators, reduced by death or wounds to about fifteen in number, were taken on board the yacht of Sir Edwin Vincent, governor of the bank, and the next morning were put on board a steamer bound for Marseilles. In a legal view, and in other regards, this whole proceeding is most extraordinary.

Almost immediately on the first outbreak at the bank, the streets in various parts of the city were filled with the Turkish and Kurdish rabble armed with yataghans and iron-shod clubs, who began hunting the defenseless Armenians in all directions, and braining or disembowelling them in the streets, often before the eyes of the troops and high military officers. Through the day and through the night and the following day till two hours after sunset, the horrid work continued, with wreck of houses and plundering of shops: at length orders were issued to the Bashi-Bazouks to cease. Through these thirty hours the only interference by soldiers was at times when they would drive an Armenian out of a house where he had taken refuge and into the midst of a score of Turks, who instantly fell on him with bludgeons and knives, crushing his head and then cutting his throat. Blood was like water in the streets; mutilated corpses lay for hours till the municipal offal carts carried them away. In the Kassein quarter, forty-five women and children on a flat roof, where they huddled together for safety, were seen by a mob. ran up, cut their throats, and threw their bodies down into the street. The worst slaughter was in the Galata quarter. The total number of murders in Constantinople is believed by the best judges to have been between 5,000 and 6,000. Crowds of Armenian refugees from the city and various parts of Turkey were reported as arriving at Russian ports on the Black sea-many of them maimed or destitute.

The mob

The foreign ambassadors, at a meeting on Saturday, August 29, sent a collective note to the sultan, sharply protesting that the anarchy in the capital was intolerable, and that his majesty was endangering the continuance of his empire by allowing such brutal lawlessness to continue under