AMERICAN AID URGED.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3146, 4 December 1922, Page 8

AMERICAN AID URGED.

(By Sir Philip Gibbs.)

The aftermath of the great war is truly a harvest of death for many Christian peoples. The infernal tragedy in the Near Last is beyond all description, even imagination, as Regards those many hundreds of thou sands of terror stricken refugees from Asia Minor and Thrace who fled from the pursuing Turks and even now havo no security, no place where they may rest. Already many have died from hunger and exhaustion. Winter, with added miseries, comes apace upon them; pestilence has broken out among them. Constantinople was no longer a sanctuary' for Christian men and women stiff with fear of Turk massacres. Christian minorities in Thrace, of whom there are 900,000 Greeks and Armenians, began to cross the Maritza River, where- once- in 1912 1 stood with King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, that old rogue elephant, who took my arm, waved his stick to the far horizon and said: “The soldiers have chased the old Turk out of his last lair in Europe.”

But the Turk was coming back again to that River Maritza, which many times ran red with blood when the armies of Islam passed that way. Greek and Armenian refugees, with fainting women and starved! children, have been trying to get to the safer sidle of its boundary, but those very Bulgarianswho marched against the Turk in 1912 have barred the way to these miserable hordes of Greeks. They will not allow entry of the fellow Christians into Bulgaria, where there is not much surplus food and no love of Greeks and Armenians. The plight of these people calls out the charity of all Christian nations for protection and food. One man lias emerged in France with rapid fame in this crisis, not unlike Lloyd George’s in some of his characteristics, but utterly opposite in political ideas. That is Bouillon. the. French adviser of Mustapha Kcmal. leader of the pro-Turk policy m France. When I iirst met that man before the war lie was of no account iih French politics, and was laughed at as an eccentric fellow, rather a buffoon, by serious men of his own nation. Speaking English, a Liberal of the advanced school who came to Baris for political knowledge, he was theoretically a Socialist dabbling in journalism. With immense self-assurance and a great gift of glib talk, he pushed himself into prominence and was suddenly entrusted by Poincare with a mission to the Turks, of Angora' when flic. French Prime .Minister was: angered by Lloyd George’s pro-Greek policy’. Bouillon made that separate treaty with Kcmal, which was a severe blow to the entente cordiale between England and 1 France, a complete violation of all pledges for common action. From that moment the Turks organised their armed strength and saw -a supreme chance for undoing the defeat of the great war by this disunion between victors. Bouillon's action was favored in all French circles, jealous of old England’s prestige ini the East, -angered by England’s generosity to Germany, hostile to Greek power in the Mediterranean. From that jiolitiea-l split have followed all subsequent happenings of tragedy and danger, which the French themselves now realise. But though Builloni played with lire, this good-natured, laughing, talkative fellow must have credit for having used his influence with Kemal on tho side of peace when one rash shot on cither side threatened to create war between Great Britain and Turkey.

Nevertheless the British people realise that there are. obligations toward Christian minorities threatened by extermination by Moslem fanaticism, and at all costs’, whether of blood or treasure, they will not stand by and permit their slaughter. England is sound at heart, whatever her enemies may say, and has a tradition which; she will not forfeit now of being the protector of defenceless peoples. But alone she has not the power to- enforce her will and safeguard all those Christian minorities whose positions are so perilous in spite of the great assurances of the Greek surrender. The immense and sacred responsibility lies upon France to co-operate in this protection. There is another country far from that misery, that weeping, hungry, ter rifled world of Christian folk under the advancing flag of Islam which cannot wish to hide its face from the world as- a sign of indifference to the fate of fellow Christians. That country is the United States of America. I write plainly because I feel deeply, and 1 say that the United States and its honor as a Christian nation are involved in the Near Eastern crisis. Great Britain needs and counts upon 1 lie moral support of the United States' in behalf of Christendom, which jk being challenged by the rise of the, Mohammedan world. England, impoverished of men and money, cannot stand alone. Tho old lion’s strength isn’t as it was, though his heart .s brave. With the moral power of the American people she would be sustained in a policy of peace and justice and would maintain the prestige of the; white race without need of war, which is abhorrent to her people. The voice of the American people has already spoken in sympathy with those ideals, and England believes any challenge to world peace, any threat of widespread massacre among Christian peoples, would bring the full weight of American diplomacy to her side, ,1s that certain, I wonder?