Note 28 — X
Reading edition
Town Topics of February 10, 1917, had the following: "The idiotic and ignorant criticism of the Navy one hears occasionally, recalls an immortal answer by a harassed First Lord, during an earlier Armenian atrocity (1895-96)—
"'Will the right honourable gentleman tell the House definitely whether it is proposed to send a British battleship to Armenia?' asked the bore who worried about every country but his own.
"'It is not proposed to send any ships there,' replied the Minister gravely. 'Navigation, I am informed by expert advisers at the Admiralty, has not been good in the vicinity of Ararat since the cruise of the Ark.'"
Would to God that this intelligence had reached the Foreign Offices of Europe twenty years earlier, before the signing of the Treaty of Berlin.