The Armenians who will thus be reinstated within the boundaries of their own territory, will be practically penniless and without any of the means or paraphernalia of life, and the necessary outlay on supplies for them, and the cost of their rehabilitation would naturally fall on the protecting Power.  They will, however, be free from the taxes they have hitherto paid to the Turks, and it should not be difficult for them by means of taxes far less oppressive, to pay an adequate interest on the moneys expended on them.  These would thus take the form of a very small loan, the whole of which could easily be repaid by the Armenians in the course of a generation or so.  Once back on their own soil, and free from Turkish tyranny and the possibility of it, they are bound to prosper, even as they have prospered hitherto in spite of oppressions and massacres up till the year 1915, when, as we have seen, the liberal and progressive Nationalists organised and executed the extermination from which so few escaped.

It is hardly necessary to point out who the protecting Power would be in the case of the repatriated Armenians, for none but Russia is either desirable or possible.  With one side along the Russian frontier of Trans-Caucasia, the New Armenia necessarily falls into the sphere of Russian influence.

It has been suggested that not only Armenia proper, but part of Cilicia should also become a district of the repatriated Armenians, with an outlet to the sea.  But while it is true that complete compensation would demand this, since Zeitun and other districts in Cilicia were almost pure Armenian settlements, I cannot think that such a restoration is desirable.  For, in the first place, the extermination of the Zeitunlis (as carried out by Jemal the Great) was practically complete.  All the men were slaughtered, and it does not seem likely that any of the women and girls who were deported reached the ‘agricultural colony’ of Deir-el-Zor in the Arabian desert.  It is therefore difficult to see of whom the repatriation would consist.  In the second place, the New Armenia will be for several generations to come of an area more than ample for all the Armenians who have survived the flight into Russia, and it obviously will give them the best chance of corporate prosperity, if the whole of them are repatriated in a compact body rather than that a portion of them should be formed into a mere patch severed from their countrymen by so large a distance.  Another sphere of influence also will be operating near the borders of Cilicia, and to place the Armenians under two protecting Powers would have serious disadvantages.  In addition they never were a sea-going people, and I cannot see what object would be served by giving them a coast-board.  In any case, if a coast-board was found necessary, the most convenient would be the coast-board of the Black Sea, lying adjacent to their main territory.