British Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone ( 1809 – 1898 ) , stated in a speech in 1895 , during the Hamidian massacres , that " To serve Armenia is to serve civilization . " Protestant missionary Johannes Lepsius ( 1858 – 1926 ) is described as the " German who knew the most about the Armenians for he had been supporting their cause vehemently since the massacres of the Armenians by Sultan Abdul Hamid at the end of the 19th century . " One author describes U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt ( 1858 – 1919 ) as " an ardent , even hawkish Armenophile . " Fridtjof Nansen ( 1861-1930 ) , a Norwegian explorer , has been described as a " friend of the Armenian nation " for his work in the 1920s to help Armenian refugees , many of them being genocide survivors . Nansen supported Armenian refugees in acquiring the Nansen passport , which allowed them to travel freely to various countries . Nansen wrote the book , '' Armenia and the Near East '' in 1923 which describes his sympathies to the plight of the Armenians in the wake of losing its independence to the Soviet Union . After visiting Armenia , Nansen wrote two additional books called " Gjennern Armenia " ( " Across Armenia " ) , published in 1927 and " Gjennern Kaukasus til Volga " ( " Through Caucasus to Volga " )
Hamidian massacres
Hamidian massacres
Armenophile