f
their adoptive country, which would then be their interests too, and
the other is to exterminate them, which is inhuman. There is no middle
course.

It is a salutary but humiliating fact that we incur the worst human ills
by our lack of human charity. We starved and over-crowded our poor till
they bred consumption, and we enslaved negroes till they degenerated our
Anglo-Saxon sturdiness of character, then plunged a great nation into
civil war, and have finally become one of its most serious social
problems. So the Jews were debarred from liberal pursuits and privileges
until they concentrated on finance and commerce, being also persecuted
until they perfected their defensive organisation. The consequence is
that they are individually formidable in those activities and
collectively invincible. Similarly the Turks harried the Armenians to
their own undoing with even less excuse, for those ill-used people were
certainly not interlopers, and so far from ameliorating their condition
in the course of time, as we have done with the Jews, the Turks went
from bad to worse till they culminated in atrocities which no
provocation can palliate or humanity condone.

But to return to Asia Minor; there the Armenians were first on the
ground, and yet the Moslems of Armenia outnumber them by three to one.
Any sound form of government would have to give equal rights, but it
would have to be strong and farseeing to prevent the greedy exploitation
and savage reprisals which such conditions would otherwise evolve.

On entering Asia we shall find a somewhat similar problem confronting
the administration in Syria and Palestine. Here we have several mixed
races and at least three distinct creeds--Christianity, Islam, and
Judaism.

The Zionist movement looks promising, everyone concerned seems to be in
accord, and a Jew millennium looms large in the offing, but----. In
Palestine there are normally about 700,000 Moslems and Christians (the
latter a very small minority) to 150,000 Jews. The lure of the Promised
Land will presumably increase the Jewish population enormously, but they
will still be very much in the minority unless the country is
over-populated. The Zionist organisation will naturally try to select
for emigration agriculturists, mechanics, and craftsmen generally to
develop the resources of the country, but that is easier said than done.
If Palestine, in addition to the sentimental aspect, is to be a refuge
and asylum for the