ion of them should be formed into a mere patch severed from their
countrymen by so large a distance. Another sphere of influence also will
be operating near the borders of Cilicia, and to place the Armenians
under two protecting Powers would have serious disadvantages. In
addition they never were a sea-going people, and I cannot see what
object would be served by giving them a coast-board. In any case, if a
coast-board was found necessary, the most convenient would be the
coast-board of the Black Sea, lying adjacent to their main territory.

If it seems clear that for New Armenia the proper protecting Power is
Russia, it is no less clear that for the freed inhabitants of New Syria,
Arabs and Greeks alike, the proper protecting Power is France.
Historically France's connection with Syria dates from the time of the
Crusades in 1099; it has never been severed, and of late years the ties
between the two countries have been both strengthened and multiplied.
The Treaties of Paris, of London, of San Stefano, and of Berlin have all
recognised the affiliation; so, too, from an ecclesiastical standpoint,
have the encyclicals of Leo XIII. in 1888 and 1898. Similarly, it was
France who intervened in the Syrian massacres of 1845, who landed troops
for the protection of the Maronites in 1860, and established a
protectorate of the Lebanon there a few years later, which lasted up
till the outbreak of the European War. France was the largest holder, as
she was also the constructor, of Syrian railways, and the harbour of
Beirut, without doubt destined to be one of the most flourishing ports
of the Eastern Mediterranean, was also a French enterprise. And perhaps
more important than all these, as a link between Syria and France, has
been the educational penetration which France has effected there. What
the American missionaries did for Armenia, France has done for Syria,
and according to a recent estimate, of the 65,000 children who attended
European schools throughout Syria, not less than 40,000 attended French
schools. When we consider that that proportion has been maintained for
many years in Syria, it can be estimated how strong the intellectual
bond between the Syrian and the French now is. The French language,
similarly, is talked everywhere: it is as current as is modern Greek in
ports of the Levant.

In virtue of such claims few, if any, would dispute the title of France
to be the protecting Power in the case of Syria. Here there w