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cases where danger threatened or safety was imperiled. We have sent
ships as far toward the points of actual disturbance as it is possible
for them to go, where they offer refuge to those obliged to flee, and we
have the promise of other powers which have ships in the neighborhood
that our citizens as well as theirs will be received and protected on
board those ships. On the demand of our minister orders have been issued
by the Sultan that Turkish soldiers shall guard and escort to the coast
American refugees.

These orders have been carried out, and our latest intelligence
gives assurance of the present personal safety of our citizens and
missionaries. Though thus far no lives of American citizens have been
sacrificed, there can be no doubt that serious loss and destruction of
mission property have resulted from riotous conflicts and outrageous
attacks.

By treaty several of the most powerful European powers have secured a
right and have assumed a duty not only in behalf of their own citizens
and in furtherance of their own interests, but as agents of the
Christian world. Their right is to enforce such conduct of Turkish
government as will restrain fanatical brutality, and if this fails their
duty is to so interfere as to insure against such dreadful occurrences
in Turkey as have lately shocked civilization. The powers declare this
right and this duty to be theirs alone, and it is earnestly hoped that
prompt and effective action on their part will not be delayed.

The new consulates at Erzerum and Harpoot, for which appropriation was
made last session, have been provisionally filled by trusted employees
of the Department of State. These appointees, though now in Turkey, have
not yet received their exequaturs.

The arbitration of the claim of the Venezuela Steam Transportation
Company under the treaty of January 19, 1892, between the United States
and Venezuela, resulted in an award in favor of the claimant.

The Government has used its good offices toward composing the
differences between Venezuela on the one hand and France and Belgium on
the other growing out of the dismissal of the representatives of those
powers on the ground of a publication deemed offensive to Venezuela.
Although that dismissal was coupled with a cordial request that other
more personally agreeable envoys be sent in their stead, a rupture of
intercourse ensued and still continues.

In view of the growth of our interests in foreign countr