THE H.B. TRIBUNE. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1922. THE NEAR EAST CRISIS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 237, 19 September 1922, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1922. THE NEAR EAST CRISIS.

The rapidity with which changes are effected in the general outlook in these troublous times is well illustrated by that which has come over the aspect in the Near East during the last few weeks. When our latest English mail left London, during the first week of last month, the daily press was full of reports that Greek troops were being assembled on the new Greco-Turkish treaty frontier with the avowed purpose of marching on and taking possession of Constantinople. This suggested movement was, of course, being met with loud and rather angry protests from the West, and was quickly smothered by emphatic prohibitions from the Allied Powers. That there was something more than a mere “try-on” in the Greek mind is shown by the purport of a note which was, on the last day of July, handed by the Greek Foreign Minister to the representatives of the Entente Powers in Athens. This note recited that the Greco-Turkish conflict was a sequel to the general war, and that the Allies occupied Constantinople in order to bring pressure to bear on Turkey. By the neutralisation of Constantinople, however, the Allies were protecting, instead of coercing, Turkey, and Greece was deprived of the means to impose peace. Greece, it said, had hitherto accepted the neutralisation of Constantinople, but now she realised that the conclusion of peft.ee was daily becoming more problematical and a further extension of the present situation was encouraging the Turks to the extermination of Christians. Greece considered that the occupation of Constantinople by her troops was the only means of bringing about peace. She had made arrangements for that purpose, and begged the Allies to give the necessary orders to the Army of Occupation, and was confident that no difficulties would be placed in the way of her efforts to bring about peace. But while Greece was thus seeking to get herself established in the Turkish capital, from which she hoped, no doubt, to dominate the situation, the Nationalist Turks in Asia Minor had been quietly gathering their forces together with a view to the military coup which has been carried out, “according to plan,” with a speedy completeness upon which they themselves can never have reckoned. As a result, the Western Powers are now faced with the much more critical task of keeping the Turkish, not the Greek, army

from taking forceful possession of Constantinople and the Straits. Under the Treaty of Sevres, Greece, France, and Italy were each accorded a “sphere of influence, ’ really of practical control, in a separate slice of Turkish Asiatic territory fronting the Levant and having a. very considerable area of hinterland attached. The allotment of these regions was presumed to •be based largely upon commercial interests that had already become more or less’established. In the case of that awarded to Greece there was the additional claim that, in the past of centuries ago, it had formed part of the Grecian Empire and carried a population which was largely of Greek descent. As it happened, this particular area, that lying nearest to the Straits, included Smyrna—the biggest of the Turkish Mediterranean ports and the outlet for by far the greater portion of Turkey’s Asiatic trade—as well as a considerable sweep of the most productive country. Both France and Italy at the time exhibited no little resentment at what was considered as an altogether disproportionate reward to Greece for the very little she had done in the way of assisting to win the war. Britain was, of course, blamed for asserting her influence in bringing about such unfair distribution of the spoils of victory, and doubtless by this time British diplomats have themselves realised that a grievous mistake was made. This realisation tvould probably begin when the Greeks cast out from power M. Venizelos, upon whom Britain had obviously depended to see that Greece’s new privileges and responsibilities were exercised and carried out in a proper spirit, and Constantine, upon whose abdication the Allies had insisted, was restored to the throne. The first difficulty of moment that arose was with regard to the administration' of Smyrna, which was to have been regarded as an international port, and in this the Greeks showed themselves as having an altogether exxaggerated notion of the hold upon it which had been conceded to them. Then, not content with the excessive aggrandisement they had secured, they made the protection of the Christian subjects of Turkey a pretext for an armed incursion far beyond the boundaries allotted to them. This was met by the armies organised by the Nationalist Turks who, under Mustapha Kemal, had altogether declined to acknowledge the Treaty, and had set up an independent Government at Angora. This Government was, of course, ostensibly in revolt against the “de jure* Turkish Government in Constantinople, which, however, made no effort to suppress it, and no doubt gave it countenance as a possible means of freeing Turkey from the impositions of the' Treaty. We all now know what the result has been after something like two years of war. The triumphant Turks are now seeking to dictate the terms of a new peace, and the Allies are set the task of checking their revived ambitions.