The Dominion TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1918. AN EMPIRE IN EXTREMIS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 23, 22 October 1918, Page 4

The Dominion TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1918. AN EMPIRE IN EXTREMIS

It is one of the surprises of the war that while' Bulgaria has been | compelled to surrender Turkey is still in the field as an ally of Germany. Obviously Turkey's delay in seeking the best terms obtainable cannot be attributed to her being in better fighting trim -than her neighbour on the north. On the contrary, she has in all respects suffered far more heavily than had Bulgaria when that country sub-mitted-to the Allies, and is hopelessly bankrupt alike in hope and resources. She has ample, motives for surrendering in tho widespread invasion of her territories, in. the demoralisation of her surviving 'military forces, in appalling economic conditions, and, above all, in .-ier utter inability to remedy, by her own efforts or by any help she has prospects of rccoiving . from Germany, the evils to which she is a prey. Nothing in her military situation.affords her the faintest encouragement to continue- the struggle against the Allies. Her best armies have been annihilated in Palestine. It is.stated that she is concentrating twelve thousand men at Aleppo under Liman von Sanders, and she must have some forces still afoot in her European territory and in Mcsopotamiaj but at most and all told these troops arc a mere remnant which cannot for any.length of time prevent the complete invasion of her territory. Adding to this that Turkey has no hope of receiving effective aid from Germany, her desperate plight appears in something like its true proportions. ' By the Allied advance in the Balkans she is cut off from Germany so far as the overland route traversed by the.Orient railway is concerned, but it is more to the point that Germany no longer has any motive of interest for sending assistance to Turkey, and certainly will not do so in any spirit of altruism. The presence off Constantinople of the Black Sea fleet which Germany stole from Russia has been named as a factor making for Turkey's delay in throwing herself on the mercy of the Allies,, but it cannot be regarded as a decisive factor. The squadron consists of two, or possibly three, Dreadnoughts, about half a dozen, older battleships, and fairly strong destroyer and submarine flotillas, but the Allies would deal with it in short order on receiving the submission of an organised Turkish Government or of responsible representatives of Turkey.

It is" fairly plain that the worst weakness of Turkey's situation and the chief obstacle to her immediate surrender is the absence of a representative Government able and ready to speak with authority on behalf of the nation. The corrupt adventurers who wield authority at Constantinople, except in so far as they are themselves dominated by Germany and her agents, arc and have been from the first utterly indifferent to the interests and welfare of the polyplot masses over whom they rule. At all_ times their single and overmastering concern has been to open the widest possible

■field of peculation and profit. It follows naturally that tho members of this predatory gang, 'Enver Pasha ana the rest, are quite content to pursue a pejicy of drift, even when their country is at death's door and threatened with the last evils of war. No doubt tho parasites who take tho place in Turkey that should be filled by rulers have- been careful to keep open a private way of retreat, but they certainly cannot be relied upon to actively bestir themselves to obtain relief for their unhappy country in the only way possible. There is no reason to suppose that the recent Cabinet changes have brought_ peace any nearer. Enver and his gang have given place to others, but Turkish officialdom as a whole is vilely corrupt, and it is doubtful if the new Government is in any respect better than the old. Turkey is bound to collapse before long, because she is at the point-of exhaustion and because the Allies are well placed to strike such blows as may be needed to crush the last elements of her resistance, but on their record her own rulers may be expected to betray and prey upon her to the end. These opinions are supported by all that is known about the internal conditions of the Ottoman Empire. It is well' within the facts to say that in no country at 'war except those that have been completely overrun is the plight of the civil population and the remaining military forces more terrible than it is in Turkey. An illuminating gleam was cast upon economic conditions in Turkey by Djavid Bey, then Turkish Minister of Finance, in the course of a Budget speech. "At Berlin," he said, "the rise in price of the principal articles of prime necessity has averaged 12-1 per cent., at Vienna 178 per cent., and at Constantinople 1970 per cent." As a correspondent of the London Time s observed a few weeks ago, in the light of this official statement it is not surprising to hear neutrals who have been working in Turkey compute that nearly a quarter of the population of the Empire have perished already during the war by casualties, massacre, starvation, or disease.

. In other countries (the correspondent adds) this might shake the Government, bur the Committee of Union and Progress is not so easily unseated. . . .

There have been raids on provision shops, a riot or two, and such a flow of desertion from the army in tho Anatolian provinces that tho mountains are full of armed desperadoes, and travelling is hardly possible for civilians 1 . But famine, desertion, and brigandage are immemorial institutions in Turkey, and a mere, accentuation of these phenomena of State life does not cause a Turkish Government undue alarm. . . . After all, the interests of the whole Turkish official class are at bottom identical, and there is so much plunder to give away. , The Committee of Union and Progress is an organisation created by Salonika-Jewish brains for securing Turkish officialdom the maximum profit from the lands and peoples it rules; and during the war there has been profiteering, as Djavid phrased it in another passage of his 'syflech, "of a disquieting and fantastic kind." When supplies began to run short eacli Committee politician appeared as controller of some necessity of life. The same correspondent cites specific examples of the wholesale plundering of State revenues in which Turkish- Ministers indulge. The foul corruption that reigns at Constantinople makes it almost hopeless to expect any orderly endeavour by a Turkish Government to obtain for the country the measure of relief that would be afforded by a cessation of hostilities. But the inevitable at most is . postponed, and probably not for long. Failing the early surrender which Turkey's own interests demand, the Allies no doubt will,speedily round off the conquest in which they are already far advanced. It is likely enough that their task may be simplified by, the submission of detail sections of the distracted Ottoman Empire. Recent cablegrams . have mentioned, for instance, that the Governor of Smyrna is seeking terms from the Allies. Very possibly he may find it advisable to surrender, and if he does the Allies will be enabled to approach Constantinople and the Bosphorus almost as conveniently from the south as from the north.