by the relativity theory. The essential idea, common to the old æther-theories and those of the present day, is that for an understanding of nature we must keep an eye not only on the material objects but on the so-called empty spaces between-that there is something going on everywhere. The analysis of the new theory fully conforms to this, and gives us a picture of the world in which the comparatively incidental occurrence of particles of matter is emphasised. We are encouraged to look away from the particle to the properties of the space around, just as Faraday and Maxwell led our thoughts away from the electric charge and current to the electromagnetic forces in surrounding space. Whether there is a definite meaning, or not, in the statement that space is a plenum, it is regarded as a plenum from the present standpoint of relativity, as well as on the older theories.

The suggestion that the new discoveries can in any way dim the fame of Newton is too absurd to be entertained. In some respects his more tentative suggestions have been surprisingly confirmed, though no doubt there is a definite contradiction between his views of time, space, and force and those now enunciated. But, unless we are entirely mistaken as to his character, Newton himself would have been greatly disappointed if two centuries of research had not enabled us to make some little progress beyond his position. 'I seem to have been only as a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.' Einstein's achievement is one of those rare advances which open a new epoch in the history of science. At the moment the clear light of truth is dazzling. But, as the years pass, our eyes, accustomed to the light, will seek to penetrate what is yet beyond.

A. S. EDDINGTON.

Art. 14.-THE ARMENIANS: THEIR PAST AND FUTURE.

THAT it takes two Greeks to cheat a Maltese, two Maltese to cheat a Jew, and two Jews to cheat an Armenian,' is a ratio which has probably never been mathematically proved, but as a generalisation it is an index of the regard in which the Armenian is held by his neighbours. From Marseilles to Cairo, from Cairo to Tiflis, and up the Volga to Kazan, wherever the Armenian is found, he is universally disliked. The Egyptian occasionally lynches him, the Arab spurns him, the Turk systematically bullies him, the Khurd murders him, the Tatar robs him, the Georgian vituperates him, the Russian despises him. In the social system of the Eastern Mediterranean and Pontine lands, he fills that unenviable position which is occupied by the Jew in Central and Eastern Europe. Oppressed by the military and hated by the poor, he is the 'petit bourgeois in countries where the bourgeoisie has never developed as a political and social element.

Foreign opinion about the Armenians has been formed by contact with the wealthy but denationalised merchants of Marseilles and Manchester, and with 'the cringing Levantine, the Port Said photographer, and the dragomans of Constantinople and Smyrna.' 'I have no use for them,' says Mr Candler's Anglo-Indian, 'a chattering crowd, physically degenerate.' But 'one finds,' says Mr Noel Buxton, that not all Armenians are successful usurers or even men of business. By far the larger number of them are peasants... and to see the Armenian peasants at their best, one should make a tour among the villages near Erivan, north-east of Mount Ararat.' And Lord Bryce, visiting those districts thirty years before, declared the Armenians to be 'the most vigorous and intelligent of the Caucasian races.' Such is the Armenian under an administration which, whatever its shortcomings, at least permitted the development of peaceful peasant life; and even the Armenians of the more easterly districts of Asiatic Turkey still retain much of the inherent characteristics of sturdiness and obstinate courage, which History attributes to their race. In the mountainous regions of Erzerum and Van,

they have shown that, if they cannot live as men, they can die as men'; and in the terrible fighting at Zeitun they exhibited all the savage virtues of a race of warlike mountaineers.

The Zeitun Armenian and the Erivan Armenian are the real Armenians, the type of the nation which has preserved its individuality through three thousand years of vicissitudes. The history of the Armenians is one of incessant tragedy. Combining the artistic intelligence of the Persian with the commercial acumen of the Greek and the steady industry of the German, the Armenians should have held a prominent place among the nations by whom European civilisation was developed. But from her geographical position between the Eastern and Western seats of civilisation and the northern and southern breeding-grounds of the young and savage races who from century to century assailed these civilisations, Armenia became from earliest times the battle-ground of contending nations, and the Armenians were the victims of all the great historical changes which disturbed the neighbouring lands. Only at brief intervals, when the power of the contiguous imperial peoples was declining, were the Armenians able to assert their independence and to develop their national individuality.

During the first eight centuries. after Christ, Armenia was the battle-field of Roman and ParthoPersian, and then of Greek and Arab, while Alans, Khazars, and Huns periodically swarmed from the north into the country. It was a period of organised anarchy. The history of Armenia during these centuries is a dreary story of famine, massacre, and persecution, of wars, feuds, treasons, and intrigues. Among the petty native princes, patronised by Rome or Ctesiphon, Constantinople or Baghdad, there was little national spirit; each was for himself and acted as his personal interest guided. Eventually towards the end of the ninth century, the decline of the Khalifate occasioned an Armenian revival; the Bagratuni family at Ani and the Ardzruni at Van established little feudal monarchies. For a brief moment in his weary chronicle of wars and the rumours thereof, the venerable chronicler John Catholicos gives us the picture of a happy community

of farmers and husbandmen enjoying the riches which nature has given to them.

'Lands were bestowed,' he says; vines were planted and groves of olive-trees; the most ancient of fruit-trees yielded their fruit. The harvest produced corn in excessive abundance; the cellars were filled with wine when the vintage had been gathered in. The mountains were in great joy and so were the herdsmen and the shepherds, because of the quantity of the pasturage and the increase in the flock.'

But neither the Bagratuni nor the Ardzruni succeeded in building up an organised national state. Perhaps the Armenian renaissance had come too early; the feudal organisation of the country made it impossible to unite against the invaders.

At the beginning of the 11th century, a fresh wave of barbarian invasion began to sweep across the Middle East. In 1066 the Seljuk Turks overran Armenia and Georgia, and Alp Arslan sacked Ani. Mussulman Amirs took possession of the former cities of the Armenian kings, and the ruined country lapsed into the position of a hunting-ground for Khurds, Turks, and Mongols, until the Ottoman Sultans established their authority there. But foreign conquest and alien rule in its most brutal form alike failed to eliminate the Armenians as a race. Throughout the long centuries of Turkish domination they maintained their independence and individuality in thought and religion. A national Church, antiquated though it might be in dogma and practice, and a national literature, beautiful in expression and profound in sentiment, kept alive the memory of a legendary liberty which had never been very real.

At the end of the 17th century, the military and economic decline of the Turkish and Persian Empires and the simultaneous rise of Muscovite power, prompted the Armenians to look for assistance to the aggressive Imperialists of Russia, as formerly the Bagratuni had looked to the equally aggressive but less potent rulers of Constantinople. Peter the Great and his successors, in their long struggle with the Ottomans, treated the Armenians with the same treachery and unscrupulous disregard of promises and elementary rights as they exhibited in their dealings with the Serbs and Rumans;

but, in spite of many severe lessons in 'haute politique,' the Armenians always rose enthusiastically in support of a Russian invasion. Finally the Treaties of Turkmanchai (1828) and Adrianople (1829) definitely established the Russians in Trans-Caucasia; and with this event opened the modern phase of the Armenian Question.

The condition of the Armenians was indubitably ameliorated. Under the Russian Government they were accorded some degree of autonomy in educational and ecclesiastical affairs, and an administration which brought peace, if not liberty and justice. For eighty years the Armenians of Trans-Caucasia showed little discontent with Russian rule; and it was only the oppressive antinational measures of Prince Galitzin which drove them to take an active part in the Revolution of 1905. In the following years, nationalist feeling ran high in the Caucasus; and the Dashnaktsution' Club at Tiflis energetically exploited all grievances against the Russian regime. Against the Turkish Armenians the full vigour of Mahmud II's Europeanised bureaucracy was directed. While Stratford de Redcliffe was at Constantinople, some attempt was made to obtain recognition of their primary rights by the institution of an of an Armenian National Council; and in the Treaties of Paris aud Berlin certain provisions were inserted in their faviour. But Abdul Hamid was astute enough to see that the differences among the Powers on the subject of the Eastern Question would prevent them from combining to enforce these provisions, and with calculated brutality he set himself to carry out his policy of Turkification by the deliberate extermination of the Armenians. In the restless Khurdish hill-men, ever jealous of the industrious Armenian cultivator, he found willing tools, who proceeded to carry out that ghastly series of massacres which took place from the year 1894 onwards. There is no exaggeration,' wrote Sir W. M. Ramsay, 'in the worst accounts of the horrors of Armenia. . . . Armenia is "the black country."... It has become a charnel house.'

In 1908, when the Young Turks overthrew the incompetent autocracy of Yildiz and announced the millennium, the Turkish Armenians accepted with enthusiasm the doctrine of an 'Ottoman People, One and Indivisible'; and for a few months it seemed as though the Armenian