Since the Sublime Port, in his answer on July 5, 1880, once more displayed his unwillingness in this issue, the major powers adopted a more firm tone in a joint letter, dated to September 17, 1880. This they attached to the previous letter from June 11, and presented them to the Ottoman government, demanding the immediate implementation of paragraph 61 of the Berlin Treaty. 72 When the Turks ignored this request again and ulterior motives were revealed, the foreign minister of Great Britain, Lord Granville, on January 12, 1881, sent a number of orders to the British embassies in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St Petersburg and Rome requiring that each ambassador persuade his respective country to act jointly in the Armenian Question and coerce the Sublime Port to carry out his duties. 73 However, this proposal was met by protests from Bismarck. 74 Bismarck, who himself oppressed the people in Alsace-Lorraine, Poland and Denmark, considered all discussions regarding improvements of the situation within an oppressor nation as very dangerous to his own role. The leader of the Social-Democratic party in Germany, Eduard Bernstein, succinctly described German policy regarding the Armenian Question, describing how 19th century Germany, with oppressed people under its own rule, constantly used excuses in matters regarding the liberation of other oppressed nations. 75
Russia meanwhile, initially displaying interest in England's initiative, due to the reasons stated above later took a negative position against it. Moreover, there was a perverse satisfaction in witnessing the consequences of the theory which the Russians had defended in 1878, arguing that the implementation of reforms in the Armenian provinces could only be realised before the evacuation of the Russian troops from the region. 76
Before long England's focus shifted to its affairs in Egypt, and the question of implementation of reforms in Armenia became an issue of minor significance for the country. 77
As Albert Vandal writes: "During the years of the signing of the Berlin Treaty and the implementation of its terms, some major difficulties arose in deciding the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire (adjacent to Montenegro and Greece), which cooled the enthusiasm of the major powers and their engagement in other questions and exhausted them so that they were no longer able to intervene in the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire." 78
From 1883 onwards, the efforts to implement the agreed reforms of the Berlin Treaty fell into decline and the only result of the negotiations was that Europe and the government of the Ottoman Empire itself became aware of the existence of a question by the name of Armenia.
England, which now had recalled its military consuls, had consuls in Erzurum and Sivas, and in Van and Diyarbakir, and from information provided was able to publish the "Blue Book". Through this book, Europe learned of the situation in Western Armenia and the rule of violence and oppression which existed there with details of all the crimes committed.
These crimes, assaults and harassments provoked protests in Europe, but as Nansen points out "the men in power of the major nations misused the agitation of the European masses towards these violent acts and crimes which were happening in Armenia to achieve new privileges for their own states, without helping this victim nation in the slightest way, the wounds and the damages to which had become an excellent subject of discussion for them." 79
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