One who knew the Ottoman better than most has said, "If you want to know what a Turk will do under any circumstances, think first what you would do yourself; then what he ought to do; then what it is his obvious interest to do. After that, you can rule out all those alternatives with complete confidence; and that will at least narrow down the field of possible choice." Still, we must hope for the best. May it be an omen that the date-palm (Babylon's ancient and beautiful emblem of fertility and life) is now springing up anew in every trench of the excavations at Babil--sown there by the stones of the dates served out as rations to the native staff of labourers. CHAPTER XVII OUR SMALLEST ALLY Nine years have elapsed since the last chapter was written, and the hope with which it ends has been most tragically deferred. Nearer Asia has been swept by another of those great cataclysms with which its past history has rendered it but too familiar--in this case a back-wash only of a yet more worldwide catastrophe, but scarcely less devastating than the ravages of Genghis or Timour. Of those mentioned by name in our earlier chapters a large proportion have perished. Nay, whole communities and nations have been almost completely erased. And some brief epilogue is needed to tell of the fate that has befallen them, and to arouse some new interest among Englishmen in the future of those battered remnants whom their Treaties still pledge them to protect. The most prominent place in our previous narrative has been given to the Assyrian Christians, and especially to the Ashiret mountaineers of Hakkiari, who formed the most virile and independent section of that tiny nation and Church. And it is but fitting that we should again give them precedence in the "Footnote to the History of the Great War" which we are now contributing; since, in this obscure corner of the stage upon which that portentous drama was enacted, they played perhaps the most prominent and assuredly the worthiest part. The first news of the outbreak of war was brought to Mar Shimun at Qudshanis. He had just returned thither from Van, where he had been discussing Governmental business with the Vali. The discussions had been most amicable; and he had brought back with him a whole crop of promises for the redress of grievances--promises which he had accepted with becoming gratitude, but at the recognised rate of discount, having had ripe experience of the value at which they were apt to be redeemed. And he was far from feeling reassured by the startling tidings that now reached him; for all knew the sort of justice that the Ottoman reserved for his helots whenever the eyes of Europe might chance to be diverted elsewhere.