It may be but a
vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching
from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from
the wild billows of the Atlantic, westward to the calmer waters of the
Pacific main,--and I see one people, and one law, and one language, and
one faith, and over all that wide continent the home of freedom and a
refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime.

THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES

WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE

Ladies and Gentlemen, Before I come to the resolution which I have
undertaken to move, there are certain subjects which I wish to clear out
of the way. There are most important distinctions to be drawn on the
ground that the sufferers under the present misrule and the horribly
accumulated outrages of the last two years are our own
fellow-Christians. But we do not prosecute the cause we have in hand
upon the ground that they are our fellow-Christians. This is no crusade
against Mohammedanism. This is no declaration of an altered policy or
sentiment as regards our Mohammedan fellow-subjects in India. Nay, more;
I will say that it is no declaration of universal condemnation of the
Mohammedans of the Turkish Empire. On the contrary, amid the dismal and
heartrending reports of which we have had to read and hear so much, one
of the rare touches of comfort and relief has been that in spite of the
perpetration of massacres by the agents of the Government, in spite of
the countenance given to massacre by the highest authority, there have
been good and generous Mohammedans who have resisted these misdeeds to
the uttermost of their power, who have established for themselves a
claim to our sympathy and our admiration.

Although it is true that those persons are Christians on whose behalf we
move, I confidently affirm, and you will back me in my affirmation, that
if instead of being Christians they were themselves Mohammedans, Hindus,
Buddhists, or Confucianists--they would have precisely the same claims
upon our support; and the motives which have brought us here to-day
would be incumbent upon us with the same force and with the same
sacredness that we recognize at the present moment.

There is another distinction, gentlemen, less conspicuous, that I would
wish to draw your attention to. You have been discouraged by the
attitude or by the tone of several of the Continental Governments. Do
not too hastily assume that in that attitude and tone they are