Minor and in Constantinople. They, the Arabs, Kurds, and the majority of Syrians, are Mohammedans. The Armenians, Greeks, and some Syrians are Christians. The Turks do not engage in any business or other productive occupations and do practically nothing but mis-administer and live off the industrious part of the populations (Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Syrians). The so-called constitution of 1876 is a dead-letter: the government is a tyranny by a small clique of Turks, who have tried since 1909 to establish a Pan-Turkish or Pan-Turanian despotism over all the elements, even the Arabs. The Allies have pledged themselves to the expulsion of the Turks and to the freeing of all the races they have oppressed.

Turkey is fortunate in grain-producing plains, in the most varied mineral deposits, and in rich oil fields; with numerous seaports and facilities for river navigation and irrigation systems. The people themselves, except the Turks, are industrious and intelligent.

What would happen if the principle of free and self-determining nationalities were applied to Turkey? Aside from the small remnant of Turkey in Europe protecting Constantinople with its mixed population of Turks, Greeks, Jews, and other races, the main districts are: (1) Asia Minor or Anatolia, (2) Kurdistan-Armenia, (3) Mesopotamia, (4) Syria, (5) Arabia. Less than half the population are Turks. There are perhaps 21⁄2 million Greeks, mostly in Constantinople and European Turkey and along the sea-coast of Asia Minor, where in ancient times there were splendid Greek cities rivalling Athens and Sparta. The Armenians before the massacres formed the bulk of the population to the north, in what the Turks call Kurdistan, but we call Turkish Armenia. Mingled with them, in southern Armenia, are the Kurds and the Turks. In all sections of the empire there were about 2,000,000 Armenians. Of the Kurds there are close on two millions. Syria, including Palestine, has about 3,000,000, of whom practically none are Turks and the bulk of Semitic race, either Arabs, Syrians, or Jews.

Albania.

At the time of the First Balkan War, November-December, 1912, the province of Albania in European Turkey, between Greece, Montenegro, and Macedonia, was proclaimed an independent principality, to be administered by some European prince; and early in 1914 a German prince, Alexander of Wied, backed by an international commission of control, was sent to take possession. But the Albanians, both Mohammedan and Christian, are turbulent ultra-independent mountaineers an the German princeling never held any authority and did not remain long.

During the war the province has been overrun by Austriar and German as well as by Allied troops, especially Italian; and Italy has claimed a protectorate over a small section of it around the port of Avlona. The million or more Albanians are a race by themselves and do not readily mix either with the Serbs or Greeks, both because of strong racial characteristics and of their peculiar clan organization and strong traditions.

Their ability is extraordinary, but they are untamed. Their land is wild, little known, and the most romantic part of the Balkans. A local government was provisionally organized early in 1919.

Armenia.

What was at one time the kingdom of Armenia was parcelled up between three states; the north to Russia, the south to Turkey, and the south-west to Persia. The Armenians are an ancient race, early converts to Christianity, and always tenacious adversaries of the Turks, their conquerors. Before the massacres there were probably nearly two million Armenians in the Turkish Empire, over a million in Russian Armenia, 100,000 in Persia, and about twice as many more scattered in AustriaHungary, India, and the United States.

In the reconstruction it will be comparatively easy to fix the boundaries of an American commonwealth, and the only large non-Armenian element within its borders would be the Mohammedan Kurds.

As many as two million Armenians have survived in Russian, Turkish, and Persian Armenia, and in America and Europe. They should certainly be helped to the utmost by the Allies and the United States to build up an independent state, which will probably be given an outlet on the sea in Cilicia.

Palestine.

The existence of Palestine as a state seems assured. It must be remembered however that it can hardly be an entirely Jewish state as the great majority of the inhabitants are Mohammedan Arabs. It is estimated that before the war Palestine had 720,000 inhabitants, of whom 500,000 (mostly Arabs) were Mohammedans, while 120,000 were Jews and 100,000 were Christians. On the basis of nationality, therefore, it would be logical that Palestine should become part of any Arab state that may be established. But such an outcome is evidently impossible, and Palestine's Jewish population will probably be strengthened in a few years by Jewish immigration. It seems likely that either England or the League of Nations will oversee the beginnings of the new state.

Syria.

The province of Syria extends north of Palestine and west of Mesopotamia and the desert, with such ports as Beirut, and the wonderful cities of Damascus and Aleppo. The population of less than three millions is mainly of old Syrian Semitic stock with a large infusion of Arab blood, and the country was one that in ancient times enjoyed extraordinary prosperity-a pròsperity that might easily return. The natives have always looked to France for protection against Turkish misrule, and France has been their savior ever since the crusades. The Arabs claim the province, but France, if given control, would be more likely to perform the task of bringing prosperity back to Syria and preparing her to stand on her own feet. What all the provinces of the old Turkish Empire need is a development

of their extraordinarily rich and varied natural resources by European capital, and modern machinery and business methods.

An Arab Kingdom.

On June 27, 1916, Husayn, Grand Sherif of Mecca, renounced obedience to the Sultan of Turkey and took the title of King of the Hedjaz with its capital in the Holy City of all Islam, Mecca. This was practically establishing an Arab kingdom. Since then the Arab horsemen co-operated with the English army in Palestine under General Allenby and took a big share in surrounding and capturing the Turkish army and freeing both Palestine and Syria. The Turks were driven out of all the cities that the Arabs hold sacred-Mecca, Medina, Bagdad, Jerusalem, and Damascus. The Arabs have always hated and despised the Turks. It was the Turks who destroyed with crude and barbarous hands the wonderful Arab civilization of the middle ages, which was in almost everything superior to the civilization of the same time in Europe.

Now the Arabs dream of a new empire, to include not only all Arabia itself, but on the one side the fertile plains of Mesopotamia as far as Persia, and on the other side a large part of Syria. This would be entirely in harmony with the policy of independent nationalities, because all of Mesopotamia and a large part of Syria are peopled by Arabs. The great Mesopotamian plain of the Tigris and Euphrates, once the Babylonian empire, was then the most fertile region in the world. With the help of the Bagdad railroad with its branches and the great system of irrigation planned by Willcox, it can again become one of the great producing centres of the world. If the Arabs were again to cease their nomadic life, and with the spur of the great possibilities of national freedom to settle in cities and on farms, the matchless East might once more become a leader in art, science, literature, and industry, because the Arab has shown that he is capable of the greatest achievements in every walk in life. But he will need a foster-mother for a while not politically but industrially and scientifically-before he realizes the dreams of a modern "Thousand and One Nights."—(See London Times, Hist. & Encycl. of the War, Part 200, Aug. 20, 1918.)

ILLUSTRATIVE EXTRACTS

The Allied Peace Terms of January, 1917.

Their (the Allies') objects in the war are well known; they have been formulated on many occasions by the chiefs of their divers governments. Their objects will not be made known in detail, with all the equitable compensation and indemnities for damage suffered, until the hour of negotiations.

But the civilized world knows that they imply, in all necessity and in the first instance, the restoration of Belgium, of Serbia, and of Montenegro, and the indemnities which are due them; the evacuation of the invaded territories of France, of Russia, and of Rumania, with just reparation; the reorganization of Europe, guaranteed by a stable regime and founded as much upon respect of nationalities and full security and liberty of economic development, which all nations, great or small, possess, as upon territorial conventions and international agreements, suitable to guarantee territorial and maritime frontiers against unjustified attacks; the restitution of provinces or territories wrested in the past from the Allies by force or against the will of their populations; the liberation of the Italians, of Slavs, of Rumanians, and of Czecho-Slovaks from foreign domination; the enfranchisement of populations subject to the bloody tyranny of the Turks; the expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman empire, decidedly alien to western civilization. The intentions of his majesty the emperor of Russia regarding Poland have been clearly indicated in the proclamation which he has just addressed to his armies.

It goes without saying that if the Allies wish to liberate Europe from the brutal covetousness of Prussian militarism it never has been their design, as has been alleged, to encompass the extermination of the German peoples and their political disappearance.-(Answer of the Allied Governments to the American Peace Note of December 19, 1916, presented January, 10, 1917. It is supplemented by a subsequent address of Lloyd George.)

President Wilson's Fourteen Peace Conditions. (Jan. 8, 1918.)

The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program, and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this:

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace, and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that the national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest co-operation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good-will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontier of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated, occupied territories restored, Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea, and the relations of the several Balkan States to one another determined by friendly counsel along their topographically established lines of allegiance and nationality, and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should