SIR,—While all England is thrilling with horror and pity at
the appalling calamity which has overtaken our neighbours in France—a pity we all welcome and participate in most earnestly—may I call the attention of your readers to the- sidelight which is thus thrown upon the want of perspective and reliability in a certain section of modern thought ? At Ourfa, on December 28th, 1895 (according to the official report of Vice-Consul Fitzmanrice), at least eighteen hundred souls were deliberately burned to death, with every aggrava- tion of horror, by the agents of the very Government with which this country is allied in Crete. I use the term "allied," following the language of Lord Salisbury in his reply to the- Austrian proposal of last summer when he declined to accede to a blockade of Crete on the ground that it would put this country in the position of an ally of Turkey. Now, Sir, these very journals and individuals who, in the case of the massacre at Ourfa and similar enormities, treated as hysteria our in- dignant horror at the acts, and still more earnest repudiation of the Government which caused them, are the loudest in. giving full vent to the praiseworthy strength of their natural- sympathy in the case of the calamity at Paris. If the latter fire had been the deliberate act of any Government., would not those who accuse us of emotionalism with regard to. Turkey be the first to join in a national rejection of any further relations with the perpetrators of such a deed ?—I
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