James Bryce

Viscount James Bryce, a member of the British Parliament and former ambassador to the United States, secured the services of a young historian, Arnold Toynbee, to collect and organize eyewitness accounts by missionaries, doctors and nurses, travelers, and Armenian survivors themselves. Toynbee organized 149 separate statements by region so that it was possible to compare accounts from one city or village with another. That document is the now famous The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Blue Book.

October 6, 1915, speech

The massacres are the result of a policy which, as far as can be ascertained, has been entertained for some considerable time by the gang of unscrupulous adventurers who are now in possession of the Government of the Turkish Empire. They hesitated to put it in practice until they thought the favorable moment had come, and that moment seems to have arrived about the month of April.

House of Lords, Hansard (5th series), Vol. XIX, 6 October 1915. Cols?

I am sorry to say that such information has reached me from many quarters goes to show that the figure of 800,000 which the noble earl thought incredible as a possible total for those who have been destroyed since May last is, unfortunately, quite a possilbe number. That is because the proceedings taken have been so absolutely premeditated and systematic, the massacres are the result of a policy which, as far as can be ascertained, has been entertained for some considerable time by the gang who are now in possession of the government of the Turkish Empire.