CORRESPONDENCE

BETWEENVISCOUNT GREYOFFALLODONSecretary of State for Foreign AffairsANDVISCOUNT BRYCE.

BETWEEN

VISCOUNT GREYOFFALLODON

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

AND

VISCOUNT BRYCE.

LETTER FROM VISCOUNT BRYCE TO VISCOUNT GREYOF FALLODON, SECRETARY OF STATEFOR FOREIGNAFFAIRS.

LETTER FROM VISCOUNT BRYCE TO VISCOUNT GREY

OF FALLODON, SECRETARY OF STATE

FOR FOREIGN

AFFAIRS.

July 1st, 1916.

My dear Sir Edward,

In the autumn of 1915 accounts of massacres and deportations of the Christian population of Asiatic Turkey began to reach Western Europe and the United States. Few and imperfect at first—for every effort was made by the Turkish Government to prevent them from passing out of the country—these accounts increased in number and fullness of detail, till in the beginning of 1916 it became possible to obtain a fairly accurate knowledge of what had happened. It then struck me that, in the interest of historic truth, as well as with a view to the questions that must arise when the war ends, it had become necessary to try to complete these accounts, and test them by further evidence, so as to compile a general narrative of the events and estimate their significance. As materials were wanting or scanty in respect of some localities, I wrote to all the persons I could think of likely to possess or to be able to procure trustworthy data, begging them to favour me with such data. I addressed myself in particular to friends in the United States, a country which has long had intimate relations with the Eastern Christians and to which many of those Christians have in recent years emigrated. Similar requests were made to Switzerland, also a neutral country, many of whose people have taken a lively interest in the welfare of the Armenians. When the responses from these quarters showed that sufficient materials for a history—provisional, no doubt, but trustworthy as far as the present data went—could be obtained, I had the good fortune to secure the co-operation of a young historian of high academic distinction, Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee, late Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He undertook to examine and put together the pieces of evidence collected, arranging them in order and adding such observations, historical and geographical, as seemed needed to explain them. The materials so arranged by Mr. Toynbee, followed by such observations as aforesaid, I now transmit to you. They are, of course, of unequal value, for while most of them are narratives by eye-witnesses, some few report, at second hand what was told by eye-witnesses. In a short introduction prefixed, I have tried to estimate their value, and so need only say here that nothing has been admitted the substantial truth of which seems open to reasonable doubt. Facts only have been dealt with; questions of future policy have been carefully avoided.

It is evidently desirable not only that ascertained facts should be put on record for the sake of future historians, while the events are still fresh in living memory, but also that the public opinion of the belligerent nations—and, I may add, of neutral peoples also—should be enabled by a knowledge of what has happened in Asia Minor and Armenia to exercise its judgment on the course proper to be followed when, at the end of the present war, a political re-settlement of the Nearer East has to be undertaken.

I am,Yours sincerely,Bryce.

I am,

Yours sincerely,

Bryce.

LETTER FROM VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON,SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS,TO VISCOUNT BRYCE.

LETTER FROM VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON,

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

TO VISCOUNT BRYCE.

Foreign Office,August 23rd, 1916.

Foreign Office,

August 23rd, 1916.

My dear Bryce,

I have to thank you for sending me the collection of documents on the Armenian Massacres which has been so ably put together by Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee.

It is a terrible mass of evidence; but I feel that it ought to be published and widely studied by all who have the broad interests of humanity at heart. It will be valuable, not only for the immediate information of public opinion as to the conduct of the Turkish Government towards this defenceless people, but also as a mine of information for historians in the future, and for the other purposes suggested in your letter.

Yours sincerely,Grey of Fallodon.

Yours sincerely,

Grey of Fallodon.

Documents presented to

VISCOUNT GREYOFFALLODONSecretary of State for Foreign Affairs

VISCOUNT GREYOFFALLODON

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

By Viscount Bryce

With a preface by

VISCOUNT BRYCE.

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