British Parliamentary Debates on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918

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"The Turkish authorities within the little time of five months proceeded systematically to exterminate a whole race out of their dominions. They did so not in thousands or tens of thousands, but in hundreds of thousands. One estimate states that five hundred thousand persons were killed within the five months, while according to another estimate the number was as many as eight hundred thousand killed. There have been massacres of the Armenians before this last one. Ten years ago thirty thousand were massacred, and ten years before that a hundred thousand. But those massacres, which made the world shudder at the time, shrink into insignificance beside these massacres which we have been unconsciously living through in the last six or seven months." Aneurin Williams, MP, 16 November 1915 "I think it may be said, without the least fear of exaggeration, that no more horrible crime has been committed in the history of the world. This is a premeditative crime determined on long ago. It was a long-considered, deliberate policy to destroy and wipe out of existence the Armenians in Turkey. It was systematically carried out. It was ordered from above." - Robert Cecil, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 16 November 1915