"The result of the deportations," the American Consul at Aleppo declares in an official report[23], "is that, as 90 per cent. of the commerce of the interior is in the hands of the Armenians, the country is facing ruin. The great bulk of business being done on credit, hundreds of prominent business men other than Armenians are facing bankruptcy. There will not be left in the places evacuated a single tanner, moulder, blacksmith, tailor, carpenter, clay-worker, weaver, shoemaker, jeweller, pharmacist, doctor, lawyer, or any of the professional people or tradesmen, with very few exceptions, and the country will be left in a practically helpless state." The German memorialist presses the indictment: "You cannot become a merchant by murdering one. You cannot master a handicraft if you smash its tools. A sparsely-populated country does not become more productive if it destroys its most industrious population. You do not advance the progress of civilisation if you drive into the desert, as the scapegoat for decades and centuries of wasted opportunities, the element in your population which shows the greatest economic ability, the greatest progressiveness in education, and the greatest energy in every respect, and which was fitted by nature to build the bridge between East and West. You only corrupt your own sense of right if you tread the rights of others under foot. The popularity of an unpopular war may temporarily be promoted among the Turkish masses by the destruction and spoliation of the non-Mohammedan elements--the Armenians most of all, but also, in part, the Syrians, Greeks, Maronites, and Jews--but thoughtful Mohammedans, when they realise the whole damage which the Empire has sustained, will lament the economic ruin of Turkey most bitterly, and will come to the conclusion that the Turkish Government has lost infinitely more than it can ever win"--it is a German writing--"by victories at the front." "We may call it political necessity or what not," declared an American travelling in Anatolia during the deportations of 1915, "but in essence it is a nominally ruling class, jealous of a more progressive race, striving by methods of primitive savagery to maintain the leading place[24]." What forces will be released in Western Asia when the Turk has met his fate? Who will repair the ruin he leaves behind?