artisans of Western Asia, 80 per cent., of them are tillers of the soil.

What the Americans have done for Armenia has been done for Syria by the
French[43]. There are half a million Maronite Catholics in Syria, and
since the seventeenth century France has been the protectress of
Catholicism in the Near East. In 1864, when there was trouble in Syria
and the Maronites were being molested by the Ottoman Government, France
landed an army corps and secured autonomy for the Lebanon under a
Christian governor. But French influence is not limited to the Lebanon
province. All over Syria there are French clerical, secular, and Judaic
schools. Beirût and Damascus, Christian and Moslem--for there is more
religious tolerance in Syria than in most Near Eastern countries--are
equally under the spell of French civilisation; and France is the chief
economic power in the land, for French enterprise has built the Syrian
railways. The sufferings of Syria during the War have been described;
the Young Turks have confiscated the railways and deprived the Lebanon
of its autonomy; even Rohrbach deprecates the fact that "only a few of
the higher officials in Syria are chosen from among the natives of the
country, while almost all, from the Kaimakam upwards, are sent out from
Constantinople," and he attributes to this policy "the feeling against
the Turks, which is most acute in Damascus." This is Rohrbach's
periphrasis for Arab Nationalism, which will be master in its own house
when the Turk has been removed. The future status and boundaries of
Syria can no more be forecast than those of Armenia at the present stage
of the War; yet here, too, certain tendencies are clear. In some form or
other Arab Syria will retain her connection with France, and her growing
population will no longer be driven by misgovernment to emigration.

Syrians and Armenians have been emigrating for the last quarter of a
century, and during the same period the Jews, whose birthright in