The Auckland Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATES The Evening News Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1024. TRAGEDY REPEATS ITSELF.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 250, 21 October 1924, Page 4

The Auckland Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATES The Evening News Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1024. TRAGEDY REPEATS ITSELF.

' . For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, Ami the good that wo can do.

Though a world weary of cruelty may bo unwilling to take much interest in the repetition of the old, old tragedy of conflict of races in the Near East, it should spare a thought for an item in to-day's news and it 3 implications. It is reported from Constantinople that the Turkish police have begun to round ■up Greeks for exchange, that they are acting in defiance of the Exchange Commission, and that these unfortunate people are being deprived of their property and marched off to concentration camps under armed escort. There is nothing new or surprising in this. The Turk has treated the Greek and the Armenian like this for ages. As a sequel to the campaign that flung the Greeks out of Asia Minor two years ago Greek civilians were treated with ' characteristic cruelty, and the Allies, I save through charity, were powerless to . help their friends. Though, however, I all this is neither new nor surprising, it has aspects that should be noted carefully. One is the effect on Turkey \ itself, and the other is the proof it offers that the governing class in Turkey has not changed, alid is still unfit to associate with civilised governments. It has been said often that Turkey's expulsion of Greeks and Armenians is , worse than a crime; it is a blunder. .The point may be stressed again to-day. The world has had so much of its attention taken up by other things that it has not appreciated fully the importance of this systematic uprooting of Christian elements in Asia Minor. "At the present day," wrote the Paris correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian" two months ago, "Turkey is, ' except for Constantinople, a country of ruin, dosolation, poverty, and corruption. The flight of Greeks and Armenians, who made up almost the entire trading and professional class, ' has made this ruin, if not utterly irreparable, at least irreparable for many years to come. The Lausanne Conference left the Turks standing' triumphant and independent, in the wreckage of their own country." Euro- j pean influence of every kind suffered,'l but French most of all. By a strange j irony the nation whoso Government had encouraged the Turks to rally against \ the Greeks has seen its widespread ' interests in Turkey almost entirely I destroyed. The correspondent says that the French Catholic institutes, which I were the' chief civilising agents in the I Near East, were closed down, and the ! French colonies at Smyrna, Brusa, and other towns scattered and abandoned , to. misery and destitution until relief came from Western Europe or America. I The French import trade was destroyed, i In fact, French policy in the Near East ' has fallen in ruins, and though England has suffered greatly materially and in prestige, she is "left in a position to ] exercise the greatest and perhaps decisive influence on the future of Turkey." The world cannot afford to be Indifferent to this change in Turkey. It must ask what is to be the effect on a ruling race that is already drunk with nationalism when the most important civilising elements in its country are removed. The Turk is nothing but a peasant at one end of the scale and an official at the other. How is he going to faro without the artisan, shopkeeping, and professional classes? Moreover he has not yet shown any change of heart. He is still cruel and untrustAvorthy. His treatment of Greeks is as characteristic as his raid on the frontier at Mosul.' Yet M. Herriot calls him the spiritual { heir of the French Republican ideal, and I the West is apparently expected to I embrace him as a brother.