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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
284
sultan, only to be deposed on the ground of insanity and
placed in confinement in August of the same year. Thereupon
Abdul Hamid became sultan, and soon proved to be the most
slippery, wily, and cruel ruler that Turkey had had for
centuries. This cunning politician engaged in a duel with
European diplomacy, and shielded himself by continually
playing off one Power against another. Although his own
mother was an Armenian he nourished an unquenchable
hatred of the Armenians, whom he regarded as one important
cause—or pretext—for the constant interference of the Great
Powers in Turkey’s affairs.
The British military consuls who were sent to Anatolia
after the peace of Berlin reported the most shocking things
about the appalling Turkish regime in Armenia. When
Gladstone came back to power in 1880 he took action ; but
not even he went beyond several sharply worded notes from
the Powers to the Porte, demanding the " immediate carrying
out " of the reforms promised in the Treaty of Berlin ; which
provoked several notes from the Porte in reply, evading the
point and denying the truth of the allegations. Nothing
more was done. Abdul Hamid knew well that none of the
Powers would resort to more forcible means than paper ; he
could go on maltreating the Armenians without interference.
When Great Britain, during Gladstone’s administration,
occupied Egypt in 1882, there came a change in its attitude
to Turkey, and also to France and Russia, which were embit
tered over this encroachment. There was no time to think
of the Armenians now. Shocking reports on the shameful
conditions in Turkish Armenia still kept coming in, but they
were no longer published, and there was silence in Europe
about the people whose cause had been betrayed. It was no
longer opportune for the British Government to try to fulfll
promises made to a small and suffering people, or to aggravate
the Porte by reminding it of its undertakings in regard to
them. As for Russia, the Liberal Government, under the
leadership of the able statesman Loris Melikoff, who was an
Armenian, had fallen in 1881 after the murder of Alexander 11.
To the incorrigibly reactionary Government that followed, the
Armenian movement for freedom was anathema. Even
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