The startling English by-elections of the last few weeks have called attention to the working of the new electorate in Great Britain and set men pondering about its possibilities in a way a general election failed to make them think. Democracy in the sense of government of a great state by the absolute and unfettered authority of the majority of its own citizens of all ranks and conditions is a modern experiment. The United States of America are the oldest democracy in the world to-day.
How many realise that Britain became a democracy for the first time in 1917? Until then the majority of its adult population had no voice in the making or administration of the laws that ruled their lives.
The United States of America, France and Italy have adopted universal suffrage as the basis of authority for many a year. So have the British Dominions, but Britain herself, the pioneer ofrepresentative institutions, until recently shrank from the experiment of adult suffrage. Before the Reform Act of 1832 the total electorate of this country numbered only 3 per cent. of the population. The distribution of power amongst this small percentage was so arranged that even the 3 per cent. represented in effect no more than at best 1 per cent.
A generation of turmoil and agitation, almost culminating in revolution, succeeded in forcing through a measure which increased the 3 per cent. to 4.5 per cent. of the population! It is true that the distribution of votes was more equitable, but even with that improvement to call this ridiculous percentage a democracy would be absurd. Another generation of growing agitation ensued. This also ended in violence. Then Mr. Disraeli, one of the boldest and most venturesome of British statesmen, in 1867 doubled the electorate. His measure increased the number of voters to 9 per cent. of the population.
Disraeli's audacious plunge horrified some of his aristocratic supporters and shocked many Whigs. "Bob" Lowe had already foretold calamities that would follow Gladstone's more cautious proposals. Seven years later saw the election of the first Toryparliament since 1841. So much for the prophecies of the men who always fear evil must flow from justice.
Fifteen years after the Disraeli measure the Gladstone administration added another 7 per cent. to the electorate. The Gladstone proposals, which raised the number of voters to 16 per cent., were so vehemently contested that they nearly precipitated a Constitutional crisis of the first magnitude. Ultimately, however, they were carried, and there the franchise remained until the war.
The electorate that, through its representatives, accepted the German challenge in 1914, and was therefore responsible for involving the country in the most costly and sanguinary war it ever waged, represented one-sixth of the population and about one-third of the adults. The conscription act converted the country to the injustice of this state of things. Millions of men were forced to risk their lives for a policy which they had no share in fashioning. Millions of women faced anxieties and tortures worse than death in pursuit of the same policy, and yet no woman was allowed to express any opinion as to the selection of the rulers who led them to this sacrifice.
It was felt to be so unjust that in the exaltation of war, which lifted men to a higher plane of equity, this obvious wrong was redressed. Hence the greatest of all the enfranchisement acts, the Act of 1917, that for the first time converted the British system of government into a democracy.
How has it worked? It is too early to speak of its results. Mr. Austen Chamberlain in a letter[10]has called attention to one aspect of its operation. He emphasises a fact which is already known to every man who has passed through the experience of a contested election, that nearly one-half the new electorate is unattached to any political party.
If you deduct out of the total the numbers of the old electorate which had already formed ties of a party character, you will find from the result of the elections that more than half the new electorate is free and floating about without any anchor or rudder and ready to be towed by the first party that succeeded in roping them. Millions of the new electors are too indifferent or too undecided about political issues to take sides at the polling booths.
In the hotly contested election of January, 1910,92 per cent. of the voters went to the poll. At the second election which took place in the same year the percentage was 89. The slight difference between the two elections would be accounted for by the fact that in the second election the register was old. Compare these results with the two elections which have occurred since the 1917 enfranchisement. At the 1918 election 64 per cent. only of the voters could be induced to make the acquaintance of the ballot-boxes. This might be explained by the inevitable political apathy which follows a great war. The pulse of party beat feebly and irregularly. The old party organisations had, through five years of neglect, fallen into complete disrepair—the new party had not yet had time to perfect its machinery. Hence the failure of competitive effort to induce at least 6,000,000 of the new voters to take a sufficient interest in their new privileges to exercise them at the election.
The next four years were a period of growing political activity. The new party was especially energetic. Their chief organiser, Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., is one of the most gifted party managers of this generation, and his achievement is an outstanding feature of political organisation inthis country. The old parties also had time to repair their machinery; by the time the election was called their organisations were in full working order. The only party which had no organisation worth speaking of was the National Liberal party. The others were ready for the struggle.
Nevertheless, when the election came in November nearly 5,000,000 of the electors were not sufficiently interested in the contest to take the trouble to record their votes. It showed an improvement of 10 per cent. on the previous election, but there still remained nearly 20 per cent.—making allowance for death, sickness, removals, etc.—who stayed at home, and could not be persuaded by personal or public appeal or pressure exercised by three or four great organisations, to walk a few hundred yards out of their way in order to place a simple cross on the ballot paper that was awaiting them.
The municipal elections tell a still more dismal story of apathy. But that is an old story. It was with difficulty that the old electorate, with all its long training, could be cajoled to visit the polling booths where the good government of the towns in which they breathed, lived, toiled, enjoyed themselves, and rested was being determined. At theirworst, however, they made a better show than the newly enfranchised voters.
How does the record compare with democracy in other lands? France is no better. On the whole, I understand it is worse. The voting in the United States of America fluctuates according to the interest excited by the particular election. In this respect America does not differ from Britain. I cannot lay my hand on the percentage of the poll at the last presidential election, but I gather it was higher than ours at the general election. The Germans polled at their last election 89 per cent. of their electorate; in Italy the percentage was much lower.
With an unpolled and unticketed electorate of over 4,000,000 anything may happen. They have clearly no interest in the ordinary political conflicts that engage the minds of their fellow-citizens; otherwise, the excitement of two general elections would have roused them to such faint exhibition of partisanship as is implied in the choosing of a candidate out of the two or three who have taken the trouble to send along their pictures.
But one day an issue may arise which will wake up the most lethargic. What will it be? Andwhat view will they take of it when it comes? And who will succeed in catching the eye of the slumbering multitude when it opens? Much depends on the answer to these questions. They may rally to the defence of property menaced by rapacious creeds. They may rush to the protection of their homes threatened by avaricious wealth.
Even those who have already voted are liable to sudden and devastating changes of opinion. Witness Mitcham, Willesden, and Edgehill. These three seats were regarded as being amongst the safest in England, and were selected for that very reason.
Amongst many disquieting factors there is one which ought to be dealt with ere another election arrive. Under the present system a minority of electors may usurp absolute dominion over the fortunes of this kingdom for fully five years.
This is one of the freaks of the group system. The present parliamentary majority has been elected by an aggregate vote which represents something a little better than one-fourth of the total electorate and one-third of those who recorded their votes. If Mitcham and Edgehill are a foretaste of what is to happen at the "General,"Labour will be the lucky third. A similar turnover of votes in every constituency would place them easily in that position.
America has brought its vast electorate under what seems to us to be a perfect discipline. But in the process it has passed through much tribulation, including the furnace of a terrible civil war. Italy has been impelled to correct the working of democratic institutions by a display of force. Britain may mobilise and drill its electoral forces with less trouble. But it has a Socialist party, which has grown by millions within less than a decade—and is still growing. This week its most eloquent member has proposed, in the House of Commons, a solemn motion for the abolition of private property. Deputies chosen by four and a quarter million of British electors will vote for this proposal, and if, four years hence, they add another million and a half to their poll, they will be in a position to place that motion on the statute book. Their increase between 1918 and 1922 was greater than that.
FOOTNOTE:[10]See theTimes, March 14, 1923.
[10]See theTimes, March 14, 1923.
[10]See theTimes, March 14, 1923.
A few weeks ago I predicted that the comparative calm which has prevailed in the political seas of Britain during the past few years was coming to an end. Recent parliamentary scenes leave no doubt that the prolonged political depression is to be followed by a period of storms—it may be hurricanes.
No amount of organisation or propaganda can excite real feeling in an electorate over trivial and unreal issues. Why did the coalition of 1915 fall? And why did the Liberal party split in 1916? Who was responsible? Should the general election have taken place in 1918 or 1919? Ought open and declared opponents of the government of the day to have then received government support or at least government neutrality? These are questions which agitate a few who are personally interested, but they leave the nation cold.
The war was real enough. But the war wassupported by men of all parties, and, therefore, provoked no political controversy. The minority which opposed it was negligible, and challenged no parliamentary discussion on the question. The treaty of peace was, on the whole, accepted by all parties when it was first submitted to Parliament. The leaders of the opposition parties in the Lords and Commons at the time of its presentation offered no serious criticism of its provisions.
The legislation proposed by the Coalition, although in ordinary seasons much of it would have aroused angry passions, coming as it did after the war had exhausted emotion, passed with no more than a feeble murmur of protest. Take, for instance, such controversial topics as adult suffrage, the enfranchisement of women, the wholesale reductions in hours of labour, representative government in India, and notably the conferring upon Ireland of a measure of Home Rule more complete than any proposed by Gladstone.
Any one of these measures proposed before the war would have led to heated discussion throughout the land. The case of Ireland is perhaps the most significant of the changed temper of the nation immediately after the great war. The conflictover Irish Home Rule has now culminated in a treaty accepted by the nation as a whole and acquiesced in by the most violent amongst its opponents.
But fiercer political passions were stirred up by the struggle between parties over Ireland than by any political question of modern times. The causes underlying the conflict dealt with two of the most powerful motives which make the human heart throb—race and religion. There was the old feud between Saxon and Gael extending over at least seven centuries. It drenched the moors of Ireland with the blood of both races before a keener edge was given to its hatreds by the introduction of an acute religious quarrel.
After the Reformation the religious differences which rent Europe with fratricidal wars added fresh fury to the racial enmities which made poor Ireland a cauldron of perpetual strife. When Mr. Gladstone proposed to settle this raging tumult by wresting supremacy from a race which had been dominant in that island for 700 years and a faith which had been supreme there for 400 years and transferring it to the race and religion which all that time had been in a condition of servitude, andwhen in order to attain his ends he had to secure the adhesion of men of the ruling blood and creed to his proposals, the passions raised were deeper and angrier than any witnessed in British politics for many a day. It led for the first time in the history of parliament to scenes of physical violence on the floor of the House. It shows what we may expect when there are genuine divisions of opinion which profoundly move masses of men and women in a democracy. Those who recall the tropical heat of parliamentary debates in 1893 naturally regard their voyage through the frigid proceedings of the last parliament as they would a sail through Arctic seas. That voyage is now over, and there are signs that the waters will soon be lashed into fury.
For years political controversy between parties has been suspended in the presence of a common danger. Reaction was inevitable, and the greater the suppression the more violent the rebound. That does not, however, altogether account for the visible omens of a coming struggle unprecedented in its gravity. Fundamental issues have been raised of such moment to millions that they cannot be settled without a struggle that will rock society.
The scene enacted in the Commons a few daysago was by no means as exciting as that which some of us witnessed in 1893. But it gave me an uneasy feeling that the period of calm is definitely over, and that Parliament henceforth must expect gusts and gales—and worse. Emotions are once more welling up, and there are signs of a great stir coming in British politics.
The cause is easily explained. The sense of exhaustion is passing away, and issues containing a serious challenge to the privileges and rights of powerful classes in the community and vital to the interests of all classes have been raised by one of the great political parties that divide Britain. The momentous character of that challenge may be gathered from the terms of the motion submitted by Mr. Philip Snowden to the judgment of the House of Commons:—
"That in view of the failure of the capitalist system to adequately utilise and organise natural resources and productive power, or to provide the necessary standard of life for vast numbers of the population, and believing that the cause of this failure lies in the private ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, thisHouse declares that legislative effort should be directed to the gradual supersession of the capitalist system by an industrial and social order based on the public ownership and democratic control of the instruments of production and distribution."
"That in view of the failure of the capitalist system to adequately utilise and organise natural resources and productive power, or to provide the necessary standard of life for vast numbers of the population, and believing that the cause of this failure lies in the private ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, thisHouse declares that legislative effort should be directed to the gradual supersession of the capitalist system by an industrial and social order based on the public ownership and democratic control of the instruments of production and distribution."
This motion will receive the full support of every member of the Labour party. A few men outside the Socialist party who have acquainted themselves with the publications of that party were quite prepared for this demand of a complete change in the organisation of society. And as they saw that party grow with startling rapidity they knew we should not have long to wait before these subversive ideas would be formulated in the House of Commons. Still, even for the students of Socialist literature, the actual tabling of the resolution on behalf of the second largest party in the State came as a surprise and a shock. Too much credit was given to the restraining influence of the trade union section of the party. Sir Lynden Macassey, in his informing book on "Labour Policy, False and True," points out that it was in 1885 that the avowed advocates of this proposal for the abolition of private property and for the nationalisation ofall the means of production and distribution first stood for Parliament. There were only two candidates standing on this platform, and they polled 32 and 29 votes respectively. Last election the aggregate Socialist poll reached the imposing figure of 4,251,011 votes. The party that secured a majority of members in the House of Commons only polled 5,457,871 votes. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald states categorically that he knows that the Independent Liberal members—exclusive of their leaders—favour nationalisation and the capital levy. If that be an accurate statement of the views of the majority of these gentlemen, and of those who elect them, nearly one-half the British electorate are already prepared to assent to Socialism by easy stages—which is the purport of Mr. Philip Snowden's motion.
On that assumption we are on the eve of greater and more fundamental changes affecting the lives of every class and condition of men and women than have yet been seen in this country. Hence the new sense of struggle with which the political atmosphere is palpitating. Capitalism is to be arraigned before the Supreme Court of the Nation, condemned, sentenced, and executed byinstalments—Chinese fashion. The composition of that court is not to-day favourable to the prosecution. But who will be the judge after the next general election? It is customary in political controversy to state that the election which is for the moment impending will be the most epoch-making in history. Without exaggeration, the next British election may well turn out to be so. The British people, with their inherited political instinct, are beginning to realise that grave decisions must then be taken. Hence the greater keenness shown by the voters at by-elections—hence the new interest taken by the public in the proceedings of Parliament. There is still a good deal of apathy and indifference. The average comfortable citizen is still inclined to think these Socialist schemes so crazy as to be impossible. They cannot believe that 21,000,000 of sane people can possibly contemplate giving their sanction to such fantasies.
There are two cardinal facts which are constantly overlooked by the complacent. The men and women who have no property for the State to seize constitute an overwhelming majority of the electors of the country. The second fact to note is the great preponderance of the industrial population overthe steadier and more stolid agricultural population. America, in spite of its gigantic manufacturing and distributing industries, still retains 60 per cent. of its population on the land. The same proportion of the French and Italian populations is agrarian. Barely 10 per cent. of the British workers are engaged in cultivating the soil. Most of our workers breathe and have their being in the crowded and excitable atmosphere of factories, workshops, and mines. The air is filled with germs of all kinds, and isolation in these thronging areas is impossible. Hence the rapidity with which the fever has spread.
Can it be arrested? Nothing will be done until the danger is visible to every eye. To vary the metaphor, no one will believe in the flood until it is upon us. Trained weather prophets who forecast its coming will be laughed at or told they have a personal or party interest in ark building. It is an old tale—as old as the dawn of history. "As in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking and knew not until the flood came and took them all away."
The trouble can only be averted in two ways. One is the systematic inculcation of sound doctrinesof economic truth into the minds of the working people of this country. The second, and the more important, is the rooting out of the social evils which furnish the revolutionary with striking and indisputable object-lessons of the failure of the capitalistic system as an agent of human happiness. Without the latter the former effort will be futile. Arguments in favour of the existing order will be refuted by glaring and painful facts. Meanwhile, let the champions of that order take note of the efforts put forth by the Socialists to advertise their eagerness to redress the wrongs of the ex-service men and to soften the asperities of discipline for the soldier. The Socialist leaders have shrewdly taken note of the causes that produced the overthrow of their Italian brethren, and they mean to take such steps as will ensure that if Fascism comes in Britain it will be an ally, and not a foe.
London, April 16th, 1923.
I am frankly delighted that negotiations between Lord Curzon and the Soviet government seem to indicate a genuine desire on the part of both parties to establish a more satisfactory understanding between this country and Russia. The Bolshevist episode, like all revolutionary terrors, has been at times a shrieking nightmare which has made the world shudder. It did render one supreme service to civilisation—it terrified democracy back into sanity just at the time when the nervous excitability that followed the war was bordering on mental instability. In our attitude towards the Soviet government we must, however, constantly bear in mind one consideration. What matters to us is not so much the Russian government as the people of Russia, and for the moment the Bolshevist administration represents the only medium for dealing with that mighty nation. As long as itremains the only constituted authority in Russia, every act of hostility against it injures Russia. As we discovered in 1919, you cannot wage war against the government for the time being of a country without devastating the land and alienating its people. You cannot refuse to trade with it now without depriving its people of commodities—and especially of equipments—essential to their well-being. It is the people, therefore, who would suffer, and it is the people who would ultimately resent that suffering. Governments come and go, but the nation goes on for ever.
The Russian people deserve—especially at the hands of all the Allied nations—every sympathetic consideration we can extend to them. Not only because they have to endure the sway of a tyrannical oligarchy imposing its will by ruthless violence, but even more for the reasons that led to the establishment of that tyranny. If the fruit is bitter we must bear in mind how the tree came to be planted in the soil. It may sound like quoting ancient history to revert to the events of eight or nine years ago, but no one can understand Russia, or do justice to its unhappy people, without recalling the incidents that led to the great catastrophe.
Those who denounce any dealings with the existing order seem to have persuaded themselves that pre-revolutionary Russia was governed by a gentle and beneficent despotism which conferred the blessings of a tolerant and kindly fatherland upon a well-ruled household. In no particular is this a true picture of theancien régime. The fortress of Peter and Paul was not erected, nor its dungeons dug, by the Bolshevists. Siberia was not set up as a penal settlement for political offenders for the first time—if at all—by the Bolshevists. In 1906 alone 45,000 political offenders were deported to endure the severities of Siberia. Persecution of suspected religious leaders was not started by the Soviets. To them does not belong the discredit of initiating the methods of Pogromism. Under the "paternal" reign of the Tsars dissent from the Orthodox faith was proscribed and persecuted, and the Jews were hunted like vermin.
Let us not forget also that beyond all these circumstances the revolution was rendered inevitable by the ineptitude and corruption of the old system, and especially by the terrible suffering and humiliation which that state of things inflicted on Russia in the Great War.
Any one who has read theMemoirs of an Ambassador, by M. Paléologue, will find a complete explanation in its pages of the savage hatred with which the Russian revolutionaries view all those who were associated in any degree with the old order. He tells the story of how the gallant army found itself at the critical hour without ammunition, rifles, transport, and often without food. No braver or more devoted men ever fought for their country than the young peasants who made up the Russian armies of 1914-15-16. With little and often no artillery support, they faced without faltering the best-equipped heavy artillery in the world. They were mown down by shell fire and machine guns by the million. Their aggregate casualties up to September, 1916, even according to the reluctant admissions of the Tsarist generals of the day, were five millions. In reality they were much heavier. Often they went into action with sticks, as the Russian War Office had no rifles with which to arm them. They picked up as they advanced rifles dropped by fallen comrades. There is nothing in the war comparable to the trustful heroism of these poor peasants. We know now why there were no rifles, or shells, or wagons. The wholesalecorruption of therégimehas been exposed to the world by irrefutable documentary evidence.
Here are a few extracts from M. Paléologue's interesting book. One extract from his diary reads:—
"The lack of ammunition means that the rôle of the artillery in battle is necessarily insignificant. The whole burden of the fighting falls on the infantry and the result is a ghastly expenditure of human life. A day or two ago one of the Grand Duke Sergius's collaborators, Colonel Englehardt, said to Major Wehrlin, my second military attaché: 'We're paying for the crimes of our administration with the blood of our men.'"
"The lack of ammunition means that the rôle of the artillery in battle is necessarily insignificant. The whole burden of the fighting falls on the infantry and the result is a ghastly expenditure of human life. A day or two ago one of the Grand Duke Sergius's collaborators, Colonel Englehardt, said to Major Wehrlin, my second military attaché: 'We're paying for the crimes of our administration with the blood of our men.'"
About the same date talking about the deplorable state of things, the Grand Duke Sergius, who was Inspector-General of Artillery, said to the French ambassador, "When I think that this exhibition of impotence is all that our aristocratic system has to show, it makes me want to be a Republican."
When a Grand Duke talked like that early in 1915, what must a peasant soldier have thought by the spring of 1917, after many more millions of hiscomrades had been slaughtered as a result of the same "exhibition of impotence."
It is no use pointing to the fact that our army was also short of ammunition at that date. The British army was a small army organised on the basis of a maximum expeditionary force of six divisions. The Russian army was a great conscript force organised on the basis of a hundred divisions in the field.
I recollect well our own military reports from the Russian fronts. They provided much distressing reading. They filled you with compassion for the millions of gallant men who were the victims of corruption and stupidity in high places. I recall one statement made to our general which betrays the callous indifference with which men in authority seemed to treat the appalling sacrifice of life amongst loyal soldiers who were facing death without a murmur, because the "Little Father" willed it. Whenever anxious inquiries were directed by our officer as to the gigantic losses in men which filled him with dismay as well as horror, the usual reply was, "Don't worry yourself. Thank God, of men at all events we have enough." An answer which sends a thrill of horror through you when youread it. That is why at the end of two and a half years the patient men in the field at last mutinied. That is why their parents and brothers in the fields supported them. The "Little Father" had failed them, and his minions had betrayed them. It is a sordid and horrid tale of peculation, maladministration, and cruel treachery. Millions of British and French money went in shameless and open bribery, whilst the soldiers in the field, for need of what the money could buy, were opposing bare breasts covering brave hearts to the most terrible artillery in the world. If the rest of the money had been well spent, what was left after providing for profuse graft would still have sufficed to save that gallant army from destruction. But unhappily no real interest was taken in anything beyond the amount and the payment of the pocket-money. That seemed to be the main purpose of the transaction. Nothing was well managed except the inevitable bribe. There were honourable and upright men who did their duty by their distracted and plundered country, but they were helpless in the torrent of corruption.
No wonder a great Russian industrialist engaged in the ministry of war, in dwelling on the sadfailure of tsarism and its probable results in June, 1905, predicted a revolution with "ten years of the most frightful anarchy." "We shall," he added, "see the days of Pugatchef[11]again and perhaps worse"—a striking prophecy verified with appalling accuracy.
It is not pleasant to recall these dreadful episodes, which reveal the betrayal of a devotion faithful unto death. But this story is essential to the right appreciation of events. There is no savagery like that of a trustful people which finds that its trust was being imposed upon the whole time. Here the retribution has been hideous in all its aspects. But the provocation was also revolting from every point of view. To judge Russia fairly that must be taken into account.
I think the government are, therefore, taking the right view of their responsibilities when through their foreign secretary they open negotiations with the representative of the Soviet government in this country. You can easily evoke resounding cheers amongst the thoughtless by declaringmelodramatically that you will never "shake hands with murder." In practice this policy has always been a failure. Mr. Pitt in a famous passage declined to assent to that doctrine when he was attacked for trying to open negotiations with the "assassins" of the French Revolution. He was driven out of this calm and rational attitude by the inflammable rhetoric of Burke, aided by the arrogance of the victorious revolutionaries. Nevertheless, the sequel proved he was right. French Bolshevism was not defeated by foreign armies, nor starved out by the British blockade. But it was driven into the arms of Napoleon, and Europe suffered bitterly for the folly of the hotheads on both sides. It would have been better for that generation had it listened to the wise counsel of William Pitt.
If you decline to treat with Russia as long as its present rulers remain in power, then you ought to place Turkey in the same category. The military junta that governed Turkey has been guilty of atrocities at least as vile as any committed by the Bolshevists. But at Lausanne we ostentatiously stretched the friendly hand of Britain to the authors of the Armenian massacres. And France,Italy—yes, and America also—tendered the same warm handshake. I am not criticising the offer of amity made as a condition of peace. We must make peace in the world, and you cannot do so if you put whole nations off your visiting list because of the misconduct of those who govern them. Once you begin you are not quite sure where it will end.
In these cases the innocent suffer the most. A refusal to trade with Russia would not deprive the Soviet commissaries of a single necessity or comfort of life. The Communists are quite strong enough to take care of themselves. But the peasants—who are not Communists—would continue to suffer, and their sufferings would increase as their reserves of clothing and other essentials became completely exhausted. And the people of this country who need the produce of Russia for their own use would also suffer to a certain extent. America can afford this exalted aloofness. She does not need the Russian grain and timber. She is an exporter of those commodities. But we cannot do as well without them, and we also sadly need Russian flax for our linen industries, which are languishing for the want of it. Last year there were quite considerable imports of Russian produceinto this country. This year owing to the prospects of an improved harvest these imports will be much larger. They are greatly needed here for our own consumption, and they pay for exports of machinery and textiles which the Russian on his part urgently requires.
But beyond and above all these material considerations, the world needs peace. In the old days conveyancing attorneys in this country kept a property transaction going by interminable requisitions on the title of the other party. They exercised all their ingenuity and invoked the added ingenuity of trained counsel to probe for defects in the right of the vendor to deal. Those were leisurely days, and men could afford to dawdle. Even then these exercises often ended in ruinous litigation. To-day time presses and the atmosphere is dangerous for the plying of irritating interrogatories. It is time we made up our minds that the Soviets have come to stay, whether we like it or no, and that one or other of the formidable men who rule Russia to-day are likely to rule it for some time to come. The sooner we have the courage to recognise this fact, the sooner will real peace be established.
FOOTNOTE[11]Pugatchef was the Pretender who led a revolt of the peasants in the reign of Catherine and spread rapine and carnage through the provinces bordering the Volga and Ural.
[11]Pugatchef was the Pretender who led a revolt of the peasants in the reign of Catherine and spread rapine and carnage through the provinces bordering the Volga and Ural.
[11]Pugatchef was the Pretender who led a revolt of the peasants in the reign of Catherine and spread rapine and carnage through the provinces bordering the Volga and Ural.
"What's his reason? I am a Jew."The Merchant of Venice.
"What's his reason? I am a Jew."The Merchant of Venice.
"What's his reason? I am a Jew."The Merchant of Venice.
"What's his reason? I am a Jew."
The Merchant of Venice.
Of all the bigotries that savage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic. It has no basis in reason; it is not rooted in faith; it aspires to no ideal; it is just one of those dank and unwholesome weeds that grow in the morass of racial hatred. How utterly devoid of reason it is may be gathered from the fact that it is almost entirely confined to nations who worship Jewish prophets and apostles, revere the national literature of the Hebrews as the only inspired message delivered by the deity to mankind, and whose only hope of salvation rests on the precepts and promises of the great teachers of Judah. Yet in the sight of these fanatics the Jews of to-day can do nothing right. If they are rich they are birds of prey. If they are poor they are vermin. If they are in favour of a war it is because they want to exploit thebloody feuds of the Gentiles to their own profit. If they are anxious for peace they are either instinctive cowards or traitors. If they give generously—and there are no more liberal givers than the Jews—they are doing it for some selfish purpose of their own. If they do not give—then what could one expect of a Jew but avarice? If labour is oppressed by great capital, the greed of the Jew is held responsible. If labour revolts against capital—as it did in Russia—the Jew is blamed for that also. If he lives in a strange land he must be persecuted and pogrommed out of it. If he wants to go back to his own he must be prevented. Through the centuries in every land, whatever he does, or intends, or fails to do, he has been pursued by the echo of the brutal cry of the rabble of Jerusalem against the greatest of all Jews—"Crucify Him!" No good has ever come of nations that crucified Jews. It is poor and pusillanimous sport, lacking all the true qualities of manliness, and those who indulge in it would be the first to run away were there any element of danger in it. Jew-baiters are generally of the type that found good reasons for evading military service when their own country was in danger.
The latest exhibition of this wretched indulgence is the agitation against settling poor Jews in the land their fathers made famous. Palestine under Jewish rule once maintained a population of 5,000,000. Under the blighting rule of the Turk it barely supported a population of 700,000. The land flowing with milk and honey is now largely a stony and unsightly desert. To quote one of the ablest and most far-sighted business men of to-day, "It is a land of immense possibilities, in spite of the terrible neglect of its resources resulting from Turkish misrule. It is a glorious estate let down by centuries of neglect. The Turks cut down the forests and never troubled to replant them. They slaughtered the cattle and never troubled to replace them." It is one of the peculiarities of the Jew-hunter that he adores the Turk.
If Palestine is to be restored to a condition even approximate to its ancient prosperity, it must be by settling Jews on its soil. The condition to which the land has been reduced by centuries of the most devastating oppression in the world is such that restoration is only possible by a race that is prepared for sentimental reasons to make and endure sacrifices for the purpose. What is the history ofthe Jewish settlement in Palestine? It did not begin with the Balfour Declaration. A century ago there were barely 10,000 Jews in the whole of Palestine. Before the war there were 100,000. The war considerably reduced these numbers, and immigration since 1918 has barely filled up the gaps. At the present timorous rate of progress it will be many years before it reaches 200,000. Jewish settlement started practically seventy years ago, with Sir Moses Montefiore's experiment in 1854—another war year. The Sultan had good reasons for propitiating the Jews in that year, as the Allies had in 1917. So the Jewish resettlement of Palestine began. From that day onward it has proceeded slowly but steadily. The land available was not of the best. Prejudices and fears had to be negotiated. Anything in the nature of wholesale expropriation of Arab cultivators, even for cash, had to be carefully avoided. The Jews were, therefore, often driven to settle on barren sand dunes and malarial swamps. The result can best be given by quoting from an article written by Mrs. Fawcett, the famous woman leader. She visited Palestine in 1921 and again in 1922, and this is her account of the Jewish settlements:
"So far from the colonies and the colonists draining the country of its resources they have created resources which were previously non-existent; they have planted and skilfully cultivated desert sands and converted them into fruitful vineyards and orange and lemon orchards; in other parts they have created valuable agricultural land out of what were previously dismal swamps producing nothing but malaria and other diseases. The colonists have not shrunk from the tremendous work and the heavy sacrifices required. Many of the early arrivals laid down their lives over their work; the survivors went on bravely, draining the swamps, planting eucalyptus trees by the hundred thousand so that at length the swamp became a fruitful garden, and the desert once more blossomed like the rose."
"So far from the colonies and the colonists draining the country of its resources they have created resources which were previously non-existent; they have planted and skilfully cultivated desert sands and converted them into fruitful vineyards and orange and lemon orchards; in other parts they have created valuable agricultural land out of what were previously dismal swamps producing nothing but malaria and other diseases. The colonists have not shrunk from the tremendous work and the heavy sacrifices required. Many of the early arrivals laid down their lives over their work; the survivors went on bravely, draining the swamps, planting eucalyptus trees by the hundred thousand so that at length the swamp became a fruitful garden, and the desert once more blossomed like the rose."
Everywhere the Jew cultivator produces heavier and richer crops than his Arab neighbour. He has introduced into Palestine more scientific methods of cultivation, and his example is producing a beneficent effect on the crude tillage of the Arab peasant. It will be long ere Canaan becomes once more a land flowing with milk and honey. The effects of the neglect and misrule of centuries cannot beeffaced by the issue of a declaration. The cutting down of the trees has left the soil unprotected against the heavy rains and the rocks which were once green with vineyards and olive groves have been swept bare. The terraces which ages of patient industry built up have been destroyed by a few generations of Turkish stupidity. They cannot be restored in a single generation. Great irrigation works must be constructed if settlement is to proceed on a satisfactory scale. Palestine possesses in some respects advantages for the modern settler which to its ancient inhabitants were a detriment. Its one great river and its tributaries are rapid and have a great fall. For power this is admirable. Whether for irrigation, or for the setting up of new industries, this gift of nature to Palestine is capable of exploitation only made possible by the scientific discoveries of the last century. The tableland of Judea has a rainfall which if caught in reservoirs at appropriate centres would make of the "desert of Judea" a garden. If this be done Arab and Jew alike share in the prosperity.
There are few countries on earth which have made less of their possibilities. Take its special attractions for the tourist. I was amazed to findthat the visitors to Palestine in the whole course of a year only aggregate 15,000. It contains the most famous shrines in the world. Its history is of more absorbing interest to the richest peoples on earth, and is better taught to their children, than even that of their own country. Some of its smallest villages are better known to countless millions than many a prosperous modern city. Hundreds of thousands ought to be treading this sacred ground every year. Why are they not doing so? The answer is: Turkish misrule scared away the pilgrim. Those who went there came back disillusioned and disappointed. The modern "spies" on their return did not carry with them the luscious grapes of Escol to thrill the multitude with a desire to follow their example. They brought home depressing tales of squalor, discomfort, and exaction which dispelled the glamour and discouraged further pilgrimages. Settled government gives the Holy Land its first chance for 1900 years. But there is so much undeveloped country demanding the attention of civilisation that Palestine will lose that chance unless it is made the special charge of some powerful influence. The Jews alone can redeem it from the wilderness and restore its ancient glory.
In that trust there is no injustice to any other race. The Arabs have neither the means, the energy, nor the ambition to discharge this duty. The British Empire has too many burdens on its shoulders to carry this experiment through successfully. The Jewish race with its genius, its resourcefulness, its tenacity, and not least its wealth, can alone perform this essential task. The Balfour Declaration is not an expropriating but an enabling clause. It is only a charter of equality for the Jews. Here are its terms:
"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
The declaration was subsequently endorsed and adopted by President Wilson and the French and Italian foreign ministers.
The Zionists ask for no more. It has been suggested by their enemies that they are seeking to establish a Jewish oligarchy in Palestine that will reduce the Arab inhabitant to a condition of servitude to a favoured Hebrew minority. The best answer to that charge is to be found in the memorandum submitted by the Zionist Association to the League of Nations.
"The Jews demand no privilege, unless it be the privilege of rebuilding by their own efforts and sacrifices a land which, once the seat of a thriving and productive civilisation, has long been suffered to remain derelict. They expect no favoured treatment in the matter of political or religious rights. They assume, as a matter of course, that all the inhabitants of Palestine, be they Jews or non-Jews, will be in every respect on a footing of perfect equality. They seek no share in the government beyond that to which they may be entitled under the Constitution as citizens of the country. They solicit no favours. They ask, in short, no more than an assured opportunity of peacefully building up their national home by their own exertions and of succeeding on their merits."
"The Jews demand no privilege, unless it be the privilege of rebuilding by their own efforts and sacrifices a land which, once the seat of a thriving and productive civilisation, has long been suffered to remain derelict. They expect no favoured treatment in the matter of political or religious rights. They assume, as a matter of course, that all the inhabitants of Palestine, be they Jews or non-Jews, will be in every respect on a footing of perfect equality. They seek no share in the government beyond that to which they may be entitled under the Constitution as citizens of the country. They solicit no favours. They ask, in short, no more than an assured opportunity of peacefully building up their national home by their own exertions and of succeeding on their merits."
It is a modest request which these exiles from Zion propound to the nations. And surely it is just that it should be conceded, and if conceded then carried out in the way men of honour fulfil their bond. There are fourteen millions of Jews in the world. They belong to a race which for at least 1900 years has been subjected to proscription, pillage, massacre, and the torments of endless derision—a race that has endured persecution, which for the variety of torture, physical, material and mental, inflicted on its victims, for the virulence and malignity with which it has been sustained, for the length of time it has lasted, and more than all for the fortitude and patience with which it has been suffered, is without parallel in the history of any other people. Is it too much to ask that those amongst them whose sufferings are the worst shall be able to find refuge in the land their fathers made holy by the splendour of their genius, by the loftiness of their thoughts, by the consecration of their lives, and by the inspiration of their message to mankind?
The vanquished have returned to their spiritual home at Angora throwing their fezzes in the air. The victors have returned with their tails well between their legs. All tragedies have their scenes of comedy, and the Lausanne Conference is one of those amusing episodes interpolated by fate to relieve the poignancy of one of its greatest tragic pieces—the Turk and civilisation.
The Turk may be a bad ruler, but he is the prince of anglers. The cunning and the patience with which he lands the most refractory fish once he has hooked it is beyond compare. What inimitable play we have witnessed for six months on the shores of Lake Leman! Once the fish seemed to have broken the tackle—that was when the first conference came to an abrupt end. Itsimply meant, however, that the wily Oriental was giving out plenty of line. Time never worries him, he can sit and wait. He knew the moment would come when they would return with the hook well in their gullets, and the play begin once more—the reeling in and the reeling out, the line sometimes taut and strained but never snapping. Time and patience rewarded him. At last the huge tarpon are all lying beached on the banks—Britain, France, Italy, and the United States of America—high and dry, landed and helpless, without a swish left in their tails, glistening and gasping in the summer sun.
It is little wonder that Ismet had a smile on his face when all was over. Reports from Angora state that the peace is hailed there as a great Turkish triumph; and so it is. The Turk is truly a great fisherman. If he could govern as well as he angles, his would be the most formidable Empire in the world. Unfortunately he is the worst of rulers, hence the trouble—his own and that of those who unhappily have drawn him as governor in the lottery of life.
The able correspondent of theDaily Telegraphat the Lausanne Conference has supplied us fromtime to time with vivid pen pictures of the four greatest Powers of the world struggling in the toils of the squalid and broken remains of an Empire with an aggregate population equal to that of a couple of English counties that I could name. This is what he wrote about this conference, which constitutes one of the most humiliating incidents in the history of Western civilisation:—
"The records of the present Conference present an even more marvellous series of concessions and surrenders. What was frayed before is threadbare now. The Allies have whittled away their own rights with a lavish hand in the cause of peace. They have also—and this is a graver matter, for which it seems they will have to give an account in the not distant future—gone back on their promises to small races, which are none the less promises because the small races have not the power to enforce their performance. The figure that the European delegates are cutting in Lausanne, and the agents of theconcessionnairesin Angora—all alike representatives of the West—has been rendered undignified as much by the manner as the matter of their worsting."
"The records of the present Conference present an even more marvellous series of concessions and surrenders. What was frayed before is threadbare now. The Allies have whittled away their own rights with a lavish hand in the cause of peace. They have also—and this is a graver matter, for which it seems they will have to give an account in the not distant future—gone back on their promises to small races, which are none the less promises because the small races have not the power to enforce their performance. The figure that the European delegates are cutting in Lausanne, and the agents of theconcessionnairesin Angora—all alike representatives of the West—has been rendered undignified as much by the manner as the matter of their worsting."
Since those distressing words were written the Powers have sunk yet deeper into the slough of humiliation.
The Timescorrespondent wiring after the agreement writes in a strain of deep indignation at the blow inflicted on the prestige of the West by this extraordinary Treaty. In order to gauge the extent of the disaster to civilisation which this Treaty implies it is only necessary to give a short summary of the war aims of the Allies in Turkey.
They were stated by Mr. Asquith with his usual succinctness and clarity in a speech which he delivered when Prime Minister at the Guildhall on November 9th, 1914:—
"It is not the Turkish people—it is the Ottoman Government that has drawn the sword, and which, I venture to predict, will perish by the sword. It is they and not we who have rung the death-knell of Ottoman dominion, not only in Europe but in Asia. With their disappearance will disappear as I, at least, hope and believe, the blight which for generations past has withered some of the fairest regions of the earth."
"It is not the Turkish people—it is the Ottoman Government that has drawn the sword, and which, I venture to predict, will perish by the sword. It is they and not we who have rung the death-knell of Ottoman dominion, not only in Europe but in Asia. With their disappearance will disappear as I, at least, hope and believe, the blight which for generations past has withered some of the fairest regions of the earth."
In pursuance of the policy thus declared by the British Premier on behalf of the Allies a series of Agreements was entered into in the early months of 1915 between France, Russia, and ourselves, by which the greater part of Turkey, with its conglomerate population, was to be partitioned at the end of the War. Cilicia and Syria were allocated to France; Mesopotamia to Britain; Armenia and Constantinople to Russia. Palestine was to be placed under the joint control of Britain and France. Arabia was to be declared independent and a territory carved largely out of the desert—but including some famous cities of the East, Damascus, Homs and Aleppo—was to be constituted into a new Arab State, partly under the protection of France and partly of Britain. Smyrna and its precincts were to be allotted to Greece if she joined her forces with those of the Allies in the war. The Straits were to be demilitarised and garrisoned. When Italy came into the war later on in 1915, it was stipulated that in the event of the partition of Turkey being carried out in pursuance of these agreements, territories in Southern Anatolia should be assigned to Italy for development.
What was the justification for breaking up the Turkish Empire? The portions to be cut out of Turkey have a population the majority of which is non-Turkish. Cilicia and Southern Anatolia might constitute a possible exception. In these territories massacres and misgovernment had perhaps succeeded at last in turning the balance in favour of the Turk. But in the main the distributed regions were being cultivated and developed before the war by a population which was Western and not Turanian in its origin and outlook. This population represented the original inhabitants of the soil.
The experiences, more especially of the past century, had demonstrated clearly that the Turk could no longer be entrusted with the property, the honour, or the lives of any Christian race within his dominions. Whole communities of Armenians had been massacred under circumstances of the most appalling cruelty in lands which their ancestors had occupied since the dawn of history. And even after the war began 700,000 of these wretched people had been done to death by these savages, to whom, it must be remembered, the Great Powers so ostentatiously proffered the hand offriendship at the first Lausanne conference. Even while the conference was in session, and the handshaking was going on, the Turks were torturing to death scores of thousands of young Greeks whom they deported into the interior. As "a precautionary measure" 150,000 Greeks of military age, of whom 30,000 were military prisoners, were last year driven inland to the mountains of Anatolia. On the way they were stripped of their clothes, and in this condition were herded across the icy mountains. It is not surprising that when an agreement was arrived at for the exchange of military prisoners, the Turks found the greatest difficulty in producing 11,000, and of the total 150,000 it is estimated that two-thirds perished. The Allied Powers had every good reason for determining, as they hoped for all time, that this barbarian should cease to shock the world by repeated exhibitions of savagery against helpless and unarmed people committed to his charge by a cruel fate.
Apart from these atrocities the fact that great tracts of country, once the most fertile and populous in the world, have been reduced by Turkish misrule and neglect to a condition which is indistinguishable from the wilderness, alone proves thatthe Turk is a blight and a curse wherever he pitches his tent, and that he ought in the interests of humanity to be treated as such. When a race, which has no title to its lands other than conquest, so mismanages the territories it holds by violence as to deprive the world of an essential contribution to its well-being, the nations have a right—nay, a duty—to intervene in order to restore these devastated areas to civilisation. This same duty constitutes the reason and justification for the white settlers of America overriding the prior claims of the Indian to the prairies and forests of the great West.
On the shores of the Mediterranean are two races with a surplus population of hard-working, intelligent cultivators, both of them belonging to countries which had themselves in the past been responsible for the government of the doomed lands covered by the Turkish Empire. Greece and Italy could claim that under their rule this vast territory throve and prospered mightily. They now pour their overflow of population into lands far away from the motherland. Yet they are essentially Mediterranean peoples. The history of the Mediterranean will for ever be associated with theirachievements on its shores and its waters. The derelict wastes of Asia Minor need them. Valleys formerly crowded with tillers are now practically abandoned to the desert weeds. Irrigation has been destroyed or neglected. The Italian engineers are amongst the best in the world, and once they were introduced into Asia Minor would make cultivation again possible. There is plenty of scope in the deserts of Anatolia for both Italian and Greek. I was hoping for a peace that would set them both working. Had such a settlement been attained, a generation hence would have witnessed gardens thronging with happy men, women, and children, where now you have a wilderness across which men, women, and children are periodically hunted down into nameless horror.
Yet another reason for the Allied decision was the bitter resentment that existed at the ingratitude displayed by the Turk towards Britain and France. They were naturally indignant that he should have joined their foes and slammed the gate of the Dardanelles in their face, and by that means complicated and prolonged their campaign and added enormously to their burdens, their losses, and their dangers. But he had not thethankfulness even of the beast of prey in the legend towards the man who had cured his wounded limb. France and Britain had many a time extracted the thorn from the Turkish paw when he was limping along in impotent misery. They had done more. They had often saved the life of that Empire when the Russian bear was on the point of crushing it out of existence; and yet without provocation, without even a quarrel, he had betrayed them to their enemies.
I have set out shortly what the war policy of the Allies was in reference to Turkey. The Treaty of Sèvres considerably modified that policy in many vital aspects. By that Treaty, Constantinople, Cilicia, and Southern Anatolia were left to the Turk; Armenia was created into an independent State. There were many objections which could be raised to the original proposals of 1915, as it might be argued that they contemplated handing over in Cilicia and Southern Anatolia populations which in the main were Turkish and Moslem to Christian rulers. But in substance the modified plan of Sèvres was sound, and if carried out would have conduced to the well-being of the millions to be liberated by its terms for ever from Turkishrule. The world at large also would have benefited by the opportunity afforded to the industrious and intelligent Armenian and Greek populations of Turkey to renew the fertility of this land, once so bountiful in its gifts, thus enriching man's store of good things. The barbarian invasion which withered that fertility was pushed back into the interior by the Treaty of Sèvres. The Treaty of Lausanne has extended and perpetuated its sway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. I have explained the why and wherefore of Sèvres. But why Lausanne? It is a long and painful story—a compound of shortsightedness, disloyalty, selfishness, and pusillanimity amongst nations and their statesmen. And more than all, Fate happened to be in its grimmest mood when dealing with this problem. The Russian Revolution eliminated that great country from the solution of the problem on the lines of protection for the oppressed races of Turkey, and instead cast its might on the side of the oppressor. President Wilson was inclined to recommend that the United States of America should undertake the mandate for the Armenians. Had he succeeded, what a different story would now havebeen told! What a different story the generations to come would also tell! But his health broke down at the vital moment and America would have none of his humanitarian schemes. Then came the departure of Sonnino from the Quirinal. With him went for a momentous while the old dreams of Italian colonisation, which in the past had done so much to spread civilisation in three continents. His successors were homelier men. I have still my doubts as to whether they served Italy best by the less adventurous and more domesticated policy they pursued. The future may decide that issue. But whatever the decision, the time for action passed away, and unless and until there is another break up in Turkey, the chance Italy has lost since 1919 will not be recovered. Will it ever come back?
There followed the French check in Cilicia, and the negotiations at Angora with Mustapha Kemal, which were both single-handed and under-handed; for the Allies were not even informed of what was going on. This was a fatal step, for it broke up the unity which alone would enable the Western Powers to deal effectively with the Turk. This unity was never fully re-created. There can be noreunion without confidence. There can be no trust in the West that is broken in the East. Much of the recent mischief in the Entente came from the clandestine negotiations at Angora.
The last fatal change was the Greek revolt against Venizelos. It is often said that he is the greatest statesman thrown up by that race since Pericles. In all he has undertaken he has never failed his people. Disaster has always come to them when they refused to follow his guidance. When King Alexander was killed by a monkey, the Greeks were called upon to decide between Constantine and Venizelos. Their choice was ruinous to their country. No greater evil can befall a nation than to choose for its ruler a stubborn man with no common sense. Before the advent of Constantine, Greece, with no aid and little countenance from the Powers, was able to hold the forces of Mustapha Kemal easily at bay and even to drive him back into the fastnesses of Anatolia. In encounter after encounter the Greek army, led by men chosen for their military gifts and sufficiently well equipped, inflicted defeat after defeat on the armies of Angora. But with Constantine came a change. In the Greek army, courtiers were substituted forsoldiers in the high command. French, British and Italian public opinion, with the memory of Constantine's treachery during the war still fresh in their minds, altered their attitude towards the Greeks who had elevated him to the throne in defiance of Allied sentiment. Indifferent Powers became hostile; hostile Powers became active. The final catastrophe began with the heroic but foolish march of the Greek army into the defiles of Asia Minor, followed by the inevitable retreat. It was consummated when Constantine for dynastic reasons appointed to the command of the troops in Asia Minor a crazy general whose mental condition had been under medical review. The Greeks fight valiantly when well led, but like the French, once they know they are not well led, confidence goes, and with confidence courage. Before the Kemalist attack reached their lines the Greek army was beaten and in full retreat. With attack came panic, with panic the complete destruction of what was once a fine army. With the disappearance of that army vanished the last hope for the salvation of Anatolia. That the history of the East, and probably the West, should have been changed by the bite of a monkey is just another grimace of thecomic spirit which bursts now and again into the pages of every great tragedy.
All that could be done afterwards was to save the remnants of a great policy. Western civilisation put up its last fight against the return of savagery into Europe, when in September and October of last year British soldiers and sailors, deserted by allies and associates alike, saved Constantinople from hideous carnage. The Pact of Mudania was not Sèvres, but it certainly was better than Lausanne. From Sèvres to Mudania was a retreat. From Mudania to Lausanne is a rout.
What next? Lausanne is not a terminus, it is only a milestone. Where is the next? No one claims that this Treaty is peace with honour. It is not even peace. If one were dealing with a regenerated Turk, there might be hope. But the burning of Smyrna, and the cold-blooded murders of tens of thousands of young Greeks in the interior, prove that the Turk is still unchanged. To quote again from the correspondent ofThe Timesat Lausanne:—
"All such evidence as can be obtained here confirms the belief that the new Turk is but the old,and that the coming era of enlightenment and brotherly love in Turkey, for which it is the correct thing officially to hope, will be from the foreigners' point of view at best a humiliating, and at worst a bloody, chaos."
"All such evidence as can be obtained here confirms the belief that the new Turk is but the old,and that the coming era of enlightenment and brotherly love in Turkey, for which it is the correct thing officially to hope, will be from the foreigners' point of view at best a humiliating, and at worst a bloody, chaos."
The amazing legend that the Turk is a gentleman is dying hard. That legend has saved him many a time when he was on the brink of destruction. It came to his aid in October last when the policy of this country was changed by the revolt of the Turcophile against the Coalition. The Turk has massacred hundreds of thousands of Armenians, and dishonoured myriads of Christian women who trusted to his protection. Nevertheless the Turk is a gentleman! By his indolence, his shiftiness, his stupidity, and his wantonness, he has reduced a garden to a desert. What better proof can there be that he is a real gentleman? For a German bribe he sold the friends who had repeatedly saved his wretched life. All the same, what a gentleman he is! He treated British prisoners with a barbarous neglect that killed them off in hundreds. Still, he is such a gentleman! He plunders, he slays, and outrages those who are unable to defend themselves.He misgoverns, cheats, lies, and betrays. For all that, the Turk is a gentleman! So an agitation was engineered with perverse tenacity to save this fine old Oriental gentleman from the plebeian hands that sought his destruction. Hence the black Treaty of Lausanne.
London, July 25th, 1923