From the foregoing it is evident that the Armenian Question will not be settled so long as Armenian agitators are allowed to sow with impunity the seeds of sedition in Asia Minor, or so long as they are abetted by European nations whose manifest goal is the partition of the Turkish Empire.[221] It is also evident that, so long as present conditions persist, sporadic massacres like those provoked by the Armenians in Cilicia and Constantinople are inevitable. These conditions involve also the greater and more important Turkish Question, or, speaking broadly, the Mussulman Question. The Great Powers cannot, without grave consequences, treat Turkey as a pariah nation. This the ever-increasing number of adherents of the Prophet will not tolerate. The two hundred millions of the Faithful are, be it remembered, the chief factors in the Near Eastern Question, which can never be settled so long as the Moslems are not accorded fair play in the arena of nations. The present schemes of exploitation and conquest in Mohammedan lands now being executed by the Great Powers can, in the long run, have but one result--and that in spite of all peace treaties and leagues of nations--the result of still farther separating the Cross and the Crescent and of strengthening the barriers that have existed between the East and the West since Greek battled with Trojan on the Plain of Troy. As we wandered through the suburbs of Tarsus, made fragrant by the inviting gardens and orchards of lemon and orange, we were deeply impressed with the possibilities of the exceptionally rich alluvial soil of the Cilician Plain. Having all the fertility of the Nile it should, if drained, irrigated, and scientifically farmed, sustain a population even greater than that which inhabited it in the days of Pompey and Trajan. In soil and climate it is as favorable for the production of cotton and sugar cane as Texas or Louisiana, while in cereals and fruits of many kinds it yields as large crops as the most favored districts of France or Germany. But irrigation is needed near the foothills of the surrounding mountains and adequate drainage is required near the mouths of the four chief rivers that bring fertility to the plain. For, as it is now, a great part of the land bordering the Mediterranean is covered with swamps like that described by Ovid in his beautiful story of Philemon and Baucis: _Haud procul hinc stagnum, tellus habitabilis olim,_ _Nunc celebres mergis fulicisque palustribus undæ._[222]