might fraternise with the Turk in the Heaven of Ahmed Riza. But the Adana massacres proved that a vigorous oligarchy had but succeeded a decaying despotism. The Young Turks proceeded to Turkify' all their subject peoples, even Arabs-and Albanians, the favoured of Abdul Hamid; and the Armenians were submitted to the same process. But in the last months of 1914, when the Russians were preparing to invade the Erzerum and Van vilayets, the Young Turks changed their plans. Enver had a scheme for the erection of a chain of buffer-states, under Turkish suzerainty, on the Russo-Turkish Marches. Accordingly, the C. U. P. sent delegates to the Armenian committees at Erzerum and Van, with proposals to erect an autonomous Armenian principality in return for support against Russia; but Erzerum, less cautious than Van, refused to consider this attractive plan, and threw in its lot with the Tiflis Dashnaktsution,' which had promised to support the Russian armies with 25,000 volunteers. As a result, the C. U. P. adopted Dr Paul Rohrbach's notorious scheme for transporting the Armenians en masse' to Mesopotamia, supplemented by massacres in which it is estimated that over a million Armenian men, women, and children perished.

There is not space here to recount the part played by the Armenians in the Caucasus campaigns; it must suffice to quote the words of Djevdet Bey, the Turkish Commandant of Van: 'It is the Armenians who are fighting us, much more than the Russians.' And in the terrible and critical winter of 1917-18, when the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was being negotiated, and the Russian soldiery was swarming into Tiflis and up the Dariel Pass, Armenian troops, in spite of disaster and treachery in the rear, unsupported and lacking munitions and artillery, continued to resist the Turkish advance into Trans-Caucasia.

It cannot be denied that the Allied Powers have treated a people who have sacrificed a third of their population in support of the Allied cause, with a callousness which would be deserving of condemnation in the case of a defeated enemy. In November 1918 the Erivan Government requested official recognition, financial assistance for reconstruction, and the reunion of all Vol. 233.-No. 462.

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Armenian troops serving in the Allied Armies, 'to serve as a nucleus, with the assistance of Allied officers, of a new Armenian Army.' These demands were ignored at Paris. A'reunion' of troops, similar to that suggested by the Erivan Government, was facilitated in the cases of Poland, Jugoslavia, and Czecho-Slovakia. General Torcom, the Chief of the Armenian Military Mission in London, drew up detailed plans for the organisation and employment of repatriated Armenian troops. Their arrival in Trans-Caucasia would have permitted the earlier withdrawal of the British Army of Occupation, and would have given the Erivan Government the strength and the opportunity to establish themselves in towns so definitely Armenian as Kars, Erzerum, and Van. But the British authorities neglected General Torcom's proposals.

Suggestions have been made that the United States should accept a mandate for Armenia, suggestions which were welcomed by every intelligent Armenian, who realised that the independence of his country could not be developed without the disinterested assistance of one of the Great Powers, and who appreciated the generous philanthropic work of Americans in the Near East during the last forty years. But greater things than the assumption of the Armenian mandate were involved in the acceptance of the Treaty by the United States; and, when Americans refused to undertake the responsibility of maintaining the enforcement of the Treaty terms in Europe, they repudiated a lesser responsibility which all the dictates of humanity should have impelled them to undertake. Meanwhile the French are firmly established in Adana and Mersina. Mustafa Kiamil is at Erzerum, trying to rouse the weary Osmanli and starving Khurds for some new wild Pan-Islamic venture; and the feeble rump at Erivan finds itself barely able to cope with the Nakhitcheven Tatars.

It now remains to be seen-in view of the fact that America will not actively participate-what arrangements the Allied Powers intend to formulate with regard to the future of the Near East. It appears to be certain that Britain intends to assume the mandate for Mesopotamia, and France that for Syria, including coveted Cilicia. It has been suggested that Italy will undertake

the regeneration and development of the territories to be left to the Ottoman Turks. The question of the future of Armenia and Trans-Caucasia is still unsolved, and is complicated by the probability that the political status of Russia will remain indefinite for some years.

The hectic nationalists who came to Paris last winter insisting that Armenia intends to fix her own frontiers from the Halys to the Koura' must now be disillusioned. They must recognise that Cilicia is irrevocably lost, and that it would be impossible-even were Paris to support their claims-to maintain their authority over Armenian Khurdistan. The six eastern vilayets of Asiatic Turkey' comprise an area which the Government at Erivan would be incapable of administering. From Trebizond to Bitlis, and from the Deve Boyun to Egin, the country is a depopulated desert. The Turks have annihilated the Armenian peasantry and the Russians the Khurdish hill-men. When the Khurdish refugees in Anatolia and the Armenians in TransCaucasia begin to return to their homes, it should be practicable for an Allied Commission to regulate the immigration in a manner to divide the two races into ethnic groupings, more distinct than those which they formed before the war, when Khurdish and Armenian villages were geographically mingled.

It has been suggested in the Times' that an autonomous Khurdistan, to be attached to the Mesopotamian Mandate, should be formed out of the 'four vilayets of Van, Bitlis, Diarbekr, and Kharput, with a small portion of the Mosul vilayet, so as to include Amadia and the upper Khabur valley.' This plan appears to be an equitable solution of the Khurdish Question, except that the north-western part of the vilayet of Van, together with the town of that name, should probably not be included in Khurdistan but in Armenia. The upper reaches of the Bohtan and the Zab-if the expropriated Nestorians return to their homes-might also come within the frontiers of Armenia.

The vilayets of Trebizond, Erzerum, and Van would remain to constitute the western portion of independent Armenia, and would afford an ample area of settlement for the hundreds of thousands of refugees in the Governments of Erivan and Kars. It might be added that it

would be necessary to guarantee a local autonomy to the Greeks of the Pontine littoral-a condition which carries the approval of M. Venizelos. To the three vilayets should be added those districts of the Governments of Erivan and Kars in which the Armenians are numerically predominant. Such an addition involves the larger question of the eventual independence or autonomy of the border races of the former Russian Empire. Whatever be the future form of government in Russia, this is a question which should not be allowed to remain in doubt. Self-determination for the borderraces must be the basis of any agreement with established authority in Russia. At the same time Russia must not be given reason to think that Britain desires to impose her hegemony in Trans-Caucasia. Whatever assistance, British or American, is given to the TransCaucasian republics, it should be made clear that it is intended that these countries shall eventually be either independent or members of a Russian Federated Republic.

Black as is the present prospect, there is no reason why Armenia should not prosper as a nation. There are in Armenia all the elements that should go to form a people capable of self-government-an heroic soldiery, an industrious peasantry, an intelligent bourgeoisie. The New Armenia should have a population of from two to three millions, and the country could support four times that number; the Armenians are a prolific people, and, free from the perils of massacre, expropriation, and famine, they should multiply quickly. Established in their independence and secure in their liberty, the Armenians will form a stable and civilising force for the regeneration of the Nearer East. In bloodshed and sorrow they have earned their right to freedom-their right to work and live.

W. E. D. ALLEN.

Art. 15.-NOTES OF A RECENT VISIT TO GERMANY.

IT has been said that Germany has had a Revolution without revolutionaries, and now has a Republic without republicans. Like all epigrams, this contains a fragment of truth. With the exception of the Independent Socialists, there had been in Germany no political group promoting a revolutionary Republican movement, even in the days immediately preceding the events of November 1918. What happened, therefore, was not the triumph of an idea, but rather the collapse of a system. Owing to unpreparedness and deficient political education, no original ideas came to light in the schemes proposed as substitutes for the vanished political institutions. The revolutionary temper simply grasped at such as lay ready to hand, provided they differed diametrically from those which had so ignominiously foundered, without questioning their adaptability to the character of land and people.

The revolutionaries were naturally attracted by the doctrines of extreme social metamorphosis now preached at Moscow. But this revolt against the inherited type of society was not limited to the working-class. It carried away many of the younger intellectuals and artists, with whom the emotional reaction had been more violent; and idealistic Munich turned heart and soul Communist, in art not less than in politics. Some of these, like Reinhardt's well-known star,' Moissi, have kept the creed to the present day, in spite of the scoffers who dubbed them Edelanarchisten. The more sober and experienced mass of intellectuals, however, together with many progressive business men, initiated early in November 1918, the formation of the Democratic Party. Embodying most of the old Progressives,' and a section of the old National-Liberals, it approaches more than any German party has done hitherto the principles and outlook of traditional British Liberalism. Nor were the mass of the industrial workers, once the first flush of excitement had passed, less restrained in mood. They remained more than faithful to their old organisations, for, notwithstanding the prevalence of the Soviet idea, the membership of the three great federations of trade