THROUGH THE MIDDLE EAST

Evening Star, Issue 23745, 28 November 1940, Page 4

THROUGH THE MIDDLE EAST

ADDRESS BY DR MDRKANE An interesting account of a trip which he made through Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey recently was given by Dr Morkane at a meeting of the Dunedin Travel Club in the Savoy Restaurant yesterday. Dr Morkano was introduced by the chairman (Mr W. R. Brugh). Dr Morkane dealt briefly with his visit to Egypt and the wonders of the Valley of Kings at Luxor, and went on to describe a motor tour he made, with four companions, through Palestine and Syria, proceeding from Jerusalem to Damascus, which he described as a singularly beautiful city that was as old as tune itself, in a sense, and thence across the Lebanon Mountains to the Mediterranean port of Beirut. From Beirut Dr Morkane joined a small steamer en -route to Constantinople, and during the following week visited the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, Mytilene (which' was originally Lesbos, where “ burning Sappho loved and sang”), and then put in at the city of Smyrna, which even at that time showed evidence of the destruction which was wrought when tho Turks, under Kemal Pasha, massacred the Greeks by thousands in 1922. Dr Morkane said that the tales he had been told by English and Italian residents of Smyrna who had been there during those fearful days were unbelievably harrowing, and what had made it worse was that lying in the roadstead oft the city were the warships of three Powers who were powerless to intervene in the horrible earnage. That was one phase of modern history that had not yet been written, be said.

Dr Morkane than described his trip through tho Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmora, past the site of the ancient city of Troy, and into the Bosphorus, whore the first sight of the eilv of Constantinople was unbelievably beautiful. “ In the soring of last year, before war broke out, I was in Italy,” Dr Morkane said. “ and at that time I was told that tho Italian people looked on England as their great old friend, and were intensely anxious to keep out of war, especially against England. I heard Mussolini give a speech from tho balcony of the famous Palazz' Venezia on the occasion of the taking of Albania, and there was obviously little 'real enthusiasm over the Albanian ouoslion, for although there was a great demonstration by the 70,000 who heard the speech, it was patently manufactured, and was at variance with the comments I heard from the people round about, me.”