DOES TURKEY WAVER ?

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 55, 6 March 1916, Page 6

DOES TURKEY WAVER ?

The tendency of war correspondents to write what they believe will be welcomed, rather than that which they know io be true, is so pronounced that optimistic forecasts have to be accepted with caution. With this reservation, the cabled statements concerning the peace movement in Turkey must he treated as important. The usually unreliable Athens strains our credulity when it suggests that the Turks are already lifting the mines in the Dardanelles, but the genera' body of the Turkish cablegrams is consistent with probability, especially since the Russian inroad into Armenia. With the Russian centre firmly based on Erzerum, the right threatening- Trebizond, the left embracing Mush and Bitlis—thus dominating the Van country, isolating the Urmia Turks, and threatening- Mosul, the military centre on the Upper Tigris —the Asiatic warfare has entered on a new phase distinctly unfavourable to Turkey. Designs on Townshend's force at Kut, and dreams of a passage via the Canal to Cairo, must halt while armies aro concentrated to meet the Armenian invasion, Such a transformation of the; fortune of war would be dangerous to the ruling power in any country; and it is especially dangerous in Turkey, the home of faction. If Germany fails to secure a big counter-triumph at Verdun, Enver Pasha and the Young Turks will be weakened, and hostile factions will be strengthened. Will Enver anticipate the storm, and endeavour to steer a new course by Pctrograd instead of by Berlin? The defection of Turkey would be so serious a thing for Germany that the desperation and waste of men at Verdun becomes understandable. Turkey has put a throttle on Russia, checking her grain trade and her munition imports. Turkey has diverted at least a million Russian, British, and French troops. Turkey has provided the only route from Germany to any vulnerable part of the British Empire, and Tin key has been the worst possible thorn in the side of the Entente. The removal of this thorn would be at once followed by a tremendous concentration against the Central Powers. No wonder, then, that the order of the day at.Yer(lun is ''Voeiwarlfi"—at any cost..