434 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
protecting that civilization. This is the positive and beneficial 
“argument that is still advanced by nations of higher culture in their 
attempt to control more barbarous areas, and this is an inherent 
trend of civilization that can not be too cavalierly dismissed as sheer 
self-seeking. 
And Syria is a worthy prize of conquest and control. It is 
naturally a very rich land. It does not possess the unbounded agri- 
cultural wealth of Babylonia and Egypt, whose great rivers keep 
moist and fertile their vast plains. Syria is a country of hills and 
valleys, with alternating seasons of rain and drought. Its vegeta- 
tion responds to these meteorological conditions. It was in an- 
tiquity a land of great forests, famous over the world particularly 
for its cedars, which supplied the timber of the palaces and temples 
of Egypt and Babylonia, even as the Bible tells us that Solomon 
brought thence the wood for his palatial buildings. It is a land of 
natural richness, the natural home of the vine, olive, and all kinds 
of fruit, while its soil is especially adapted to the raising of grain. 
Indeed it is the home, or one of the homes, of the parent stock of our 
wheat. The present denuded and miserable aspect of Palestine is 
due to the decay produced by the centuries-long misrule of the Turk. 
In its heyday, under the Roman Empire, Palestine must have resem- 
bled Italy, with its rich and fruitful vegetation. An honest govern- 
ment and a sensible economical direction will again make Syria not 
. only self-supporting but a producer for the world. 
There is one geographical aspect of Palestine which distinguishes 
it from Egypt and Babylonia. This is its great sea front along the 
Mediterranean. Babylonia always has been and always will be 
distinctly Asiatic. Actually to-day the British conquest of that 
land is administered from India. Egypt likewise is African. True, 
it came into the orbit of western civilization, partly through its own 
expansion, partly through conquest by western powers, from Alex- 
ander and on, but its civilization has always remained unique and 
detached from the rest of the world. The delta lands which gave 
the approach to the sea were not developed till a late date, and they 
were always carefully guarded against the incursions of barbarous 
peoples from across the sea. But the front of Syria is exposed to the 
west, and so has always taken its part in the civilization of the Medi- 
terranean world, which is the parent of our western civilization.. 
The early Minoan civilization of the eastern Mediterranean, which 
we now know to be as ancient almost as that of Egypt and Babylonia, 
greatly affected Syria. The Philistines, the doughty enemies of the 
Hebrews about 1000 B. C., were probably forerunners of the Hel-. 
lenic races, and settled as pirates on the coast of Palestine. From 
about the same time is to be reckoned the first great Semitic push 
