it was but a humorous freak on the part of the officials, I cannot say.
But as a refinement of cruelty I have, outside the page of Poe's tales,
only once come across anything to equal it, and that in a letter from
the _Times'_ correspondent at Berne on April 11, 1917. He describes the
treatment of English prisoners in Germany: 'An equally common
entertainment with those women (German Red Cross nurses) was to offer a
wounded man a glass, perhaps, of water, then, standing just outside his
reach, to pour it slowly on the ground.' Could those sisters of mercy
have read the account of Jemal's clemency, or is it merely an instance
of the parallelism of similar minds?

So the empty train returned, and Jemal the Great caused it to be known
in Berlin that he was active in securing a proper water supply for the
famous agricultural settlements in the desert, and loud were the
encomiums in the press of the Central Powers over the colonisation of
Syria by the Armenians, the progress and enlightenment of the Turks, and
the skilful and humane organisation of Jemal the Great.

There is no difficulty in estimating to-day the number of Armenian men
who survive in the Turkish Empire. All appeals to the Prussian
overlords, such as were made by Dr. Niepage, and the belated
remonstrance of the Prussians themselves when they foresaw a dearth of
labour for the husbandry of beet and cereals, fell on deaf ears, and I
cannot see any reason for supposing that Armenian men exist any more in
the Empire. It is more difficult to judge of the numbers of women who,
by accepting the Moslem creed and the harems, are still alive. Certainly
in some districts there were considerable 'conversions,' and Dr. Niepage
rates them as many thousands. But the willingness to accept those
conditions was not always a guarantee for their being granted, and I
have read reports where would-be converts were told that 'religion' was