Mr. Grattan Geary, than whom no writer has studied more closely the question at issue, speaks thus of the enormous advantage which the Power in possession of highland Kurdistan would have over the one that ruled lowland Mesopotamia:
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.
With the advent of the Anglo-Russian Entente, our policy was revised. There are many Englishmen who believed, and still firmly believe, that wise and prescient statesmanship should have succeeded in reconciling, or at least allaying, the hereditary animosity which existed between our new friend and our old, traditional ally, and that in any case it would have been more worthy and more dignified, besides being to the advantage of this country, had we openly declared that under no circumstances would we sacrifice sacred obligations and old friendships to a policy of expediency. Public opinion, awakened by recent occurrences in the Near East, at last realizes how mistaken was the attitude of our Government towards Turkey. Official Russia, we believe, would have appreciated and accepted our point of view. Progressive Russia most certainly would have done so.
Unfortunately the British Government apparently thought otherwise. In 1912, the Porte without any outside pressure and being genuinely anxious to improve the condition of her Asiatic provinces, demanded (under the terms of the Cyprus Convention) that they should be supplied with British administrators, but these were refused.
The Russian Government then took up the question of reforms, and Turkey appealed to Germany to protect her from the very unpalatable scheme put forward by Russia. Germany gained a nominal victory, but success really rested with Russia. As a compromise a thoroughly unpracticable scheme was adopted, by which two Inspector Generals were appointed, one of whom was a Dutchman and the other a Norwegian. Neither had any knowledge of the Near East: one spoke no language other than his own, and the other in addition spoke only a few words of French. Then came the European War, and neither of these gentlemen ever reached Kurdistan. The scheme was foredoomed to failure, as was, indeed, expected. In this connection the Russian “Orange Book” is full of interest. We find there that during the negotiations, on July 8th, 1913, M. Sazanoff sent the Porte a vigorous despatch, in which he laid stress on the fact that the integrity of the Ottoman Empire largely depended upon the degree of pacification of the Armenian provinces. He further declared that:
The Imperial Government cannot admit a chronic state of anarchy, which by reason of the proximity of the Turkish frontier, cannot fail to have a most pernicious effect on the neighbouring provinces of the Caucasus.
Further light is thrown on the situation as it was then, by an article published at that time in the “Nineteenth Century” by Mr. Noel Buxton, who had been travelling in Kurdistan. Mr. Buxton is all the more convincing because the object of the article apparently was to prove, that the only salvation of the district was annexation by Russia. Mr. Noel Buxton wrote: