FACTORS IN THE NEAR EASTERN CRISIS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3149, 25 December 1922, Page 7

FACTORS IN THE NEAR EASTERN CRISIS.

Since days long antecedent to the art of history-writing, Asia Minor, or Anatolia, as*we now call that arm ol the continent of Asia thrust up toward fuiope, anil enfolded in the waters ol the .Mediterranean, the Straits, and the Black Sea, lias been a decisive battleground of world conquest. All the great, empires planted theii Hags and peonies there, hi this region the Turks, nomads out of Central Asia, came to national unity and power, by conquest of the Gr'aeco-Romao Empire; That defeat of the Greeks, live centuries ago iva.s by no means a swift and sudden rout, such as the past few weeks have witnessed. Greek' residents remained, and have remained until this day, ever dreaming i he dream of departed glories, and nursing the hope of a restoration of the cross to sacred soil where the crescent has supplanted if. All throughout the Christian East "the Gveat'ldea" is a stereotyped phrase which signifies the return of the cross '•to the dome of St. Sophia, in Constan--1 inople. Although conquered, I he Greeks never gave up their faith or their hope. By the Turkish law of the "millet," or religious community, under which all the Christian and Jewish groups in the Ottoman Empire lived, they were governed in many respects by their own religious leaders (religion and politics, being strangely blended in the Near East), and represented before the Government by them. The Greek Patriarch of Constantinople was a recognised official. This law of the "millet" enabled the Christians to maintain their identity and solidarity and purpose. Smyrna, which the Moslems called "Gaiour," or Christian Smyrna, one of tho seven cities to which the messages of the Book of the Revelation were addressed: and famous as the home and bishopric of Polyearp, who knew St. John, was the centre of the Greek population. The Greeks clearly outnumbered any other single group in this great seaport of many races, although no trustworthy statistics have ever been compiled; and their claim to he a majority of the total' polyglot population has been challenged. Greeks were also found in large numbers in every community in Anatolia, as elsewhere about tho .Mediterranean; and they were so strong in south-western Asia Minor that there was much talk, after the armistice, of their being made into an independent nation, on the plea that they were of a purer Greek stock than tho inhabitants of Greece; and that they had national interests apart from the motherland. This separatist movement succumbed to the patriotic and religious dream of Pan-Hellenism. Two great blunders were made, two real wrongs committed. The history of the Near East, since the Armistice may be told in terms of a Sunday School homily. First, the Greeks exceeded their rights and the moral obligations that are paramount among civilised nations. They pushed their lines in Anatolia far beyond the limits assigned them by the Allies, and beyond, their own (legitimate claims. They undertook to do to the Turks what the Turks had done to them. There were excesses and atrocities by the Greeks: notably the mas-acre in Smyrna upon the day of their landing, in .March, 1919. This inflanied the Turks and the whole Moslem world. The defeated; Ottoman people were given occasion to Haunt their own new wrongs, which l hey have suffered at the hands of Christians, so that the attention of the nations was diverted from the Turks' earlier and greater guilt. Turkey was given a. cause and a rallying-cry, which directly brought into existence the Nationalist movement and the Nationalist army. The culprit mined from the prisoner's box into t lie prosecutor's position. The other blunder and moral wrong that lies at the root of all .these dire events of late days in Asia Minor was the shocking failure of the Allies to carry out in Turkey the clear mandate of lire Peace Conference, and of civilisation and Christendom, to punish the guilty Turks for the Armenian atrocities; which tho Sultan himself told me werQ "the worst crime of the centuries." Terrible consequences are likely to ensue whenever justice is ignored or put to shame. No successful international policy can ever- be built up on an open betrayal of clear justice. This, is tho centre and circumference of the offending of the Allied nations in inspect to the Near East. They let considerations of policy and possible individual advantage to themselves take precedence of downright doty. Instead of devoting themselves unitedly, after their arrival in Constantinople as rulers of the defeated Ottoman nation, to the sheer and simple obligation to punish i be perpetrators of the great crime again the Armenian Christians, the representatives of the Entente- gave themselves up recklessly to furthering their individual national ambitious and interests. The clock was turned, back: days that the soldiers in franco thought had passed away lorever were brought in again; and I he old. diplomacy, el' intrigue, imperialism and commercial greed, once more was re-established upon the banks of the Bosphoru.l. Eveii outward concord among the Allies quickly disappeared, It was each for himself, and the devil lake, blie hindmost—though, of course, as inevitable, the devil seems to have got them all. Good faith vanished along with good-will: and it was only a matter ol' weeks before the representatives of tho three principal Allied nations were openly intriguing with the Turks and against one another. tJnity of purpose disappeared. Moral obligations were forgotten. Naturally, in these conditions, the Turk regained confidence, and concluded that instead of punishment he stood to win a great diplomatic triumph over those who had beaten him in war. In those mouths of plot and counterplot, each European power eager to seize everything possible lor itself. there came to pass a series of national re-alignments. Great Britain used the Greeks- for her own ends- it was the British who sent the Greek troops into Smyrna, to thwart an expected secret landing by the Italians and franco used the Armenians, uniforming and arming them. The Italians stuck closest to the Turks. Italian munitions were used by the Turks auainst British, flench and Greeks: as later Italian and french. equipment armed the Turks in their recent smashing of the Greeks. Intrigue, is the sort of game that the Turks can play better than any o'ber people in the world; and soon the mutually suspicious and contending Allies were deprived ol' everything they had s/rasped in Asia Minor. except what the Creeks held. The french, beaten, disarmed their Armenian mercenaries, and left then! to a cruel fate. Tho Italians withdrew their forces from Adalia and Konia, where they bad marked out a rich ".sphere." Great Britain lost her hold upon the Bagdad railway, and had to withdraw her troops to the Straits, where she was temporarily dominant, al Constantinople, franco and Italy followed the example of Soviet Itussia in limiting separate treaties with the Nationalist Turkish Government at Angora. In due time came the inevitable collapse of the distended Greek military adventure in Asia Minor. The route was one of the most, complete in Irstory; and it resulted more from the disintegration of Greek morale th&n

from the military power of the Turks. Some Greek regiments are reported by English writers to have hoisted the red Hag and assassinated their officers. Greece is now without a foothold on tho Continent of Asia. Turkey is in more complete control of Anatolia than she was before the war. Where Greeks were once a majority population, and unquestionably entitled to self-govern-ment .they are now either a crushed minority or else a fear-smitten subject population. Hundreds of thousands of them are abject refugees on the Aegean Islands or in Greece. The Treaty of Sevres has become a "scrap of paper." Turkey, unpunished, unehastened and newly arrogant, is a victorious power in historic Asia Minor. Angora has given up all claims to the Arabic-speaking population of the: former Ottoman Empire; the more willingly since l these peoples themselves are making endless I rouble for their new European overlord-. The gravest dangers in the present upheavals lie not in the direction of the Balkans and Europe, but toward the aroused East, where the Moslem peoples feel the Turkish victory as their victory ; and the discrediting of Europe as a sacred duty to be carried on to completion. One need not be a venturesome prophet to predict that the debacle in Asia Minor is the forerunner of the loss of their Moslem possessions by all the European nations. Mustapha Kemal's sensational victory is but the climax of the steadily lessening prestige of the western powers in the Near East. For this 1 reason we should take a rather close look at the vast Arabicspeaking regions of the former Ottoman Empire. These included Arabia proper, "Arabia Deserta," the oasis-dotted barren peninsula that dips down from Palestine and Syria between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. This is the home of the Bedouin, the nomad Arabs. It has few cities, of which Mecca and Medina are the most famous, because respectively the birthplace and burialplace of Mohammed. These are the principal shrines of the Moslem faith, to which every adult follower of the Prophet is expected to make pilgrimage at least once in his lifetime; becoming thereby a "hadji," or one who has made the "haj." This particular part of Arabia is called the Hejaz, the holy land of Islam. It numbers something more than a quarter of a million Arab inhabitants, and is about 750 miles long and 200 miles wide, lying cheek by jowl with Palestin and the Sinai Peninsula. Because of the religious significance of this sandy waste. Great Britain, during the war, established the Hejaz as- a separate kingdom, with a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, by name Hussein, as king. His forces, led by his son Poisai and Colonel Lawrence, materially helped in breaking the Turkish army in the East. It was originally purposed to elevate Hussein to the office of Caliph of Mam. to supplant the Sultan of Turkey, and thus break- the religious power of the Ottoman Empire. Even though Hussein is of the Prophet's line, and reigns in the Moslem holy of holies, Mecca, where, it has been certain death lor a Christian to be discovered, he has not been accepted by the Faithful of the world. Indeed, since the armistice' his capital itself, sacred Mecca, has 1 been invested by the ultra-orthodox Arabs who dwell next door, the Wahabis, and Hussein has needed British military help to withstand his foes. All tb:s section of romantic Arabia comprised within the Peninsula, of "Inch Hejaz and Iraq and Transjordania (ruled by Abdullah, another son of Hussein) and the Nejd are but parts, means' less to readers of the Review than that strip of land lying between the Mediterranean and "Arabia Deserta"- -the Holy Land of the Bible, where also Arabic, is the common speech. Although historically, geographically, socially, linguistically and economically one. the Holy Land was divided during the war into two parts, Syria and Palestine, by a Franco-British secret treaty, and it is now administered as two mandates, both filled with restless and protesting peoples, who want a "United Syria" and immediate independence. .Egypt, over which Turkey was suzerain until the late war, is also included in the Arabic-speaking section of the Ottoman Empire. By the Turkish Nationalist Pact—a sort of "Duclartion of Independauee" document, adopted by the Angora. Assembly, January 28, 1920, of which the world is likely to hear more—the assorted Arabac-speaking peoples were dismissed from Turkey with a sort of blessing that was meant to be a curse to the European nations: for the Nationalists insist that there shall be full 1 "self-de-termination" for all Arabs, and then an Arabic Confederation of States. This is an oriental way of saying that the European [towers shall get out of the Arabic world, bag and baggage; which is a programme with many Serious and interesting implications.