Diarbekir is the key to the valleys of both the Tigris and the Euphrates—once there, they can decide whether they will move down the former to Bagdad, or down the latter to a point where they can command both rivers and reach the gulf ... the forests at the head of both rivers supply the means of constructing with small cost light boats or rafts, for floating reinforcements and military stores to any point where a General might choose to establish an entrenched camp, so that it would be almost impossible to shake his hold of the country, once he had entered and taken possession.... For it must be borne in mind that the swift currents of those rivers will enable an army to move without fatigue or difficulty from North to South, while a force moving northwards must toil along a roadless country where rapid marching is out of the question.... Once an army gets into the Mesopotamia plains, there is no fortified place there that could withstand it for an hour, and the current of the rivers would save even the trouble of locomotion. There would be nothing absolutely novel in this line of invasion. The Emperor Trajan and a couple of centuries later the Emperor Julian, descended the Euphrates with large fleets put together in the Armenian mountains. It is interesting to note that in Mr. Grattan Geary’s opinion a powerful nation holding Kurdistan could equally from Diarbekir overrun Syria and seriously menace Egypt. It may therefore not be out of place to consider how the Armenian question stood immediately before the outbreak of the European war. The policy of the British Government, bound by the Cyprus Convention to maintain the integrity of the Sultan’s dominions in Asia, had been to strengthen the position of Turkey by loyally endeavouring to ameliorate the unrest which the revolutionary societies had stirred up amongst the Armenians. It is well known that all schemes of reform proposed by Great Britain or by Turkey herself, had been without exception cold-shouldered or openly opposed by Russia, firstly because they would, if successful, destroy any excuse for intervention and subsequent annexation; secondly because they contained some form or other of self-government, which Russia feared would not only encourage the national feeling of the Ottoman Armenians (who would look to England as their protector rather than to Russia), but would also encourage a similar national sentiment amongst the Armenians in the Caucasus.