The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1923 A SERIOUS JOKE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 49, 27 February 1923, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1923 A SERIOUS JOKE.

Fnr the cause thnt lacks aetietant*. For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can do.

The Turkish proposal to compel all men to marry a*, twenty-five and all couples to have a child every two years, will appeal to the world's sense of humour, it will be a gift to the joke-makers. Why two years, it will be asked; why not a child every year? And why not twins? But the proposal, which, we ere informed, was carried "amid applause" by the Religious Committee of the Ansora Assembly, has its serious sirfp. It is a manifestation of Prussianism that may bode ill for the peace of the East, and therefore, of the world. That such

a law could be put into effect

to any great extent, eecms quite impossible; if the men did not object the women would, and the feminist move-

ment is by no means unknown in Turkey. The idea is more important as an indication of Turkish mentality. Only among a backward people could such an idea find favour, and then only if that people had become rampantly nationalist.

This mentality and this nationalism are raising the gravest problems in the Near East and no one knows -what the outcome may be. The Angora Assembly consists for the most part of men hopelessly ignorant of world affaire, led by a group who have inherited belief in tyrannical methods and burn to see Turkey a great military State. The wine of nationalism has gone to everybody's head. The defeats by Britain and Russia are forgotten, and only the victories over Greece remembered. Turkey is a match for all the world. Turkey, moreover, needs no help from Europe. The old tutelage must be abolished, and Turkey must be entirely self-reliant, supply. ing her own political and cultural ideas. The Turk, however, has developed along two lines only. He is either a peasant, or he is a conqueror, an overlord, a governor. He has never been anything else than one of these. He has developed no civilisation, no culture. For innumerable things h e has been indebted to the European- The Turk is not a trader, a shopkeeper, an artisan or a sailor; for the necessary work done by these callings he has had to depend on Christians and Jews, millions of whom have for agee lived in his country and performed these services. Now, in the intoxication of his nationalism, the Turk decrees that they must go, and what are left of them are going. The world is

witnessing one of history's great tragedies of migration. These people, who for so long have lived under Turkish rule and carried on necessary functions, are being driven out of the country for no other reasons than that they are Christians, and that they offend the pride of the Turk. Thrace is undergoing the same blind depopulation as Asiatic Turkey; everywhere the Greeks have fled, preferring to abandon the work of years rather than live under the Turkish yoke. The Turk is so swollen with pride that he decrees that

foreign business men operating in Turkey must conduct their business in Turkish.

It is no consolation for Europe, to reflect that the Turk's nationalism is largely a result of Western leaching. Nor does it appear to be worth while to point out to him that by banishing Commercial and artisan elements he is impoverishing himself; he must find that out. by experience. There he is, drunk with nationalism, an Asiatic upon whom Western idea? have been grafted, but a type fundamentally different from the European, master of a. great area, a power in Europe as well as Asia, and a menace to both. The plan of breeding Turks by statute to the glory of Turkey will not add a division to the Turkish army, but it is indicative of the peril that lies in this people, planted on the borders of Europe and Asia, a people fanatically religious, ignorant, cruel when their passions are aroused, and having no real affinity with tfre modern movement of democracy, a people in whom the nationalist spirit or the ambition of an adventurer leader may work with terrible results.