The Bulgarian Massacre

As to the accuracy of all the plain facts there can be no doubt. In Constantinople nobody hesitates to believe that many thousands of innocent men, women, and children have been slaughtered, that at least sixty villages have been utterly destroyed, that the most terrible scènes have been committed, and that a district among the most fertile in the empire has been ruined for many years to come. I have never pretended that the statistics of death and plunder could be given with anything like accuracy. In an indiscriminate destruction of lives and property only the broad facts are possible. In many cases, perhaps in most, there is a great tendency toward exaggeration. But I have taken the lower number rather than the higher, and have dismissed many stories which are probably well founded, but exaggerated. In the statements I have made there is, I believe, uo exaggeration. The allegations made in my last letter of the villages destroyed were deñnite. If any one is denied, the issue becomes one of fact, and I will prove it or admit that I have been misinformed. Till then it ia idle totalk about exaggeration. I have spoken to Turks who put the number óf killed at 20,000. I have met with officials connected with the various embassies which have had special information, and have heard virtually the same account from all. Nowhere, to my knowledgo, has the estimato of the killed- the great majority of whom are on all hands believed to be innocent - been put lower than 12,000. I have spoken with merchants who have had private letters telling the same tale. The Bulgarian Exarch has made snbstantially the same statements to the Porte in an official paper. From all sources comes a com pact body of testimony showing that crimes have been committed on a scale which Europe has not known for many years. Turkey has been telling Europe for years that she has arrived at a state of civilization where she ought to be recognized as within the pale of international laws, that the capitulations ought to be abolished, and that she ought no longer to be treated as a semibarbarous power. The facts I have mentioned are sufficient comment on her request.