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The Greeks were leaders of civilisation in the Ancient World and in the Middle Ages, till the Greek Empire of Constantinople was conquered by the Turks in 1453. From that moment they dropped out till the War of Liberation, a century ago, restored part of the Greek nation to independence. The Greeks who have remained under Turkish government have also remained cut off from Greek national life.

The Armenians were the first people to make Christianity their national religion. They are an intellectual people, clever and industrious in practical affairs and in the life of the spirit. When they possessed an independent kingdom they produced a fine literature and architecture, which Turkish conquest destroyed. Since then the Turks have repressed all symptoms of Armenian revival by massacres, the most terrible of which was perpetrated last year.

The Arabs created a wonderful civilisation at the time when Medieval Europe was in its darkest age. Their discoveries in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, are the foundations of modern science, as is witnessed by the Arabic words in our scientific vocabulary. This Arabic civilisation was swamped by the Turkish migrations from Central Asia in the 11th century, and blotted out by the Mongols, who followed in the wake of the Turks and sacked Baghdad, the Arab capital, in the 13th century. The Arabs are still the most progressive race in the Islamic world; they are almost as numerous as the Turks in the population of the Ottoman Empire, and they are not divided from the Turks by difference of religion. Yet the Turkish government excludes them from all share of control, and has thwarted their revival as persistently as it has thwarted that of the Armenians and Greeks. They too have been massacred and exiled during the present War.