Howard Bliss, President of the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, and certain others, who have lived in the Levant for many years and are intimately familiar with the intricacies of its politics and the characters of its peoples.  But it does apply to those officials who, after hasty and personally conducted tours through Asiatic Turkey, or a few months’ residence in the Turkish capital, are accepted as “experts” by the Peace Conference and by the Government at Washington.  When I listen to their dogmatic opinions on subjects of which most of them were in abysmal ignorance prior to the Armistice, I am always reminded of a remark once made to me by Sir Edwin Pears, the celebrated historian and authority on Turkish affairs.  “I don’t pretend to understand the Turkish character,” Sir Edwin remarked dryly, “but, you see, I have lived here only forty years.”

It is an interesting and altruistic scheme, this proposed regeneration at American expense of a corrupt and decadent empire, but in their enthusiasm its supporters seem to have overlooked several obvious objections.  In the first place, though both England and France are perfectly willing to have the United States accept a mandate for European Turkey, Armenia and even Anatolia, I doubt if England would welcome with enthusiasm a proposal that she should evacuate Palestine and Mesopotamia, the conquest of which has cost her so much in blood and gold, or whether France would consent to renounce her claims to Syria, of which she has always considered herself the legatee.  As for Italy and Greece, I imagine that it would prove as difficult to oust the one from Adalia and the other from Smyrna as it has been to oust the Poet from Fiume.  Secondly, such a mandate would mean the end of Armenia’s dream of independence, for, though she might be given a certain measure of autonomy, and though she would, of course, no longer be exposed to Turkish massacres, she would enjoy about as much real independence under such an arrangement as the native states of India enjoy under the British Raj.  Lastly, nothing is further from our intention, if I know the temper of my countrymen, than to assume any responsibility in order to resurrect the Turk, nor are we interested in preserving the integrity of Turkey in any guise, shape or form.  Instead of perpetuating the unspeakable rule of the Osmanli, we should assist in ending it forever.

And now we come to the question of accepting a mandate for Armenia.  In order to get a mental picture of this foundling which we are asked to rear you must imagine a country about the size of North Dakota, with Dakota’s cold winters and scorching summers, consisting of a dreary, monotonous, mile-high plateau with grass-covered, treeless mountains and watered by many rivers, whose valleys form wide strips of arable land.  Rising above the general level of this Armenian tableland are barren and forbidding ranges, broken by many gloomy gorges, which culminate, on the extreme