Intelligence from Turkey is, we grieve to say, for the
moment obscured by the President's Message, the first effect of which will be to strengthen the hands of those who advise toleration of the Armenian massacres. This is the advice persistently pressed from Germany, and it is not without acceptance in our own country. There is consequently no improvement in the reports. The Mussulman irregulars and roughs instigated from the Palace, having secured all the plunder they can, and having, according to the United States Minister at Constantinople, murdered thirty thousand Armenians, are now turning their attention to conver- sions. They offer the old alternatives of conversion or death, and it is said the lower Armenians, despairing of help, are accepting Islam by whole villages at once. We quote elsewhere some instances of this process, which is going on for the second time, it being, we believe, historically certain that some of the " Kurdish" clans in the Armenian counties were once Christians converted in the rush of the original conquest. The idea at the Palace is that if there are no Christians left in Armenia, there can be no Armenian Question, and it seems probable, unless England or Russia intervene by force, that the idea will be carried out.
