The New Zealand Times. SATURDAY, JUNE 3, 1922. FATE OF NEAR EAST!

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11226, 3 June 1922, Page 6

The New Zealand Times. SATURDAY, JUNE 3, 1922. FATE OF NEAR EAST!

The Hon. W. P. Reeves has recently stated the position in the Heat East, with a clearness and force worthy of the reputation he made as one of the ablest speakers heard in the New Zealand House of Representatives. Two days ago light was thrown here on that Eastern situation by the publication of a cabled summary of certain Turkish documents found in departmental offices at Aleppo, after General Allenby’s capture of the place in the course • of his victorious Syrian campaign. These documents contained peremptory instructions to the Turkish officials throughout the Ottoman Empire from the Constantinople Government, for the extermination of the entire Armenian population. The instructions are, to say nothing of much other. evidence, quite overwhelming in their disclosure of the. deliberate purpose of the notorious Armenian massacres. Some months earlier, the Greek Government, at the outset of its war against the Kenialistij of Angora, published similar proof*. ,of the deliberate massacre and starvation of Greek populations under Turkish rule. Just recently, the failure of the Greek armies against Angora was followed by a new treaty agreement. between the Allies and Turkey, under which much of the old Turkish territories is to be restored to Turkey, and millions of Christians are to be placed under Turkish rule, with no better protection than the old socalled guarantees which, with notorious consistency, always failed to save the Christian populations of Turkey from massacres, deportations, confiscation, outrage, and systematic injustice. Before this agreement was signed, the demand from India, hacked by Lord Reading, the Governor-General,' and Mr Montagu, the Indian Secretary, for the granting of the above conditions to the Turks, was made public. That, in fact, was during the sitting of the conference of the representatives of Britain, France, and Italy, which was discussing the matter as part of the change proposed in the Treaty of Sevres. The Anglo-Hellenio League promptly decided to enter a protest, ’ and the Hon. W. P. Reeves, as president of the league, formulated the same, and sent it broadcast round the world.

The protest begins by denouncing “the extraordinary attempt made from India to force the hand of the Imperial Government in the 'settlement of the Near East.’’ A! more severe adjective might well have been used, for the conspiracy, which secured the publication of the demand by taking advantage of the looseness of Cabinet practice, is easily first on li|t of things improper. But this is another story, as Mr Reeves wisely realised when he declined to discuss the manner in which the demahd had been made public, albeit a manner which had secured, as the wily conspirators well knew that it would secure, a publicity that no possible answer could ever hope to attain. That, of course, adds to the discreditable- character of the ihtrigue. What matters really is that this abominably smart conspiracy of intrigue succeeded. The weight imparted by the quotation of Indian opinion told, and, the friends of Turkey obtaining in consequence the vote of the British Government, the territories and populations concerned, freed by tho original Sevres Treaty from their old slavery, were put back into the Eastern shambles. To prove that there was no reason whatever for attaching any weight to the Ijidian reposentation, which nevertheless told, with such disastrous possibilities likely to follow in the train of its present

success, is the object of the protest so ably drawn up by Mr Reeves. The Indian case is that the Indian demand is a matter of such vital consequence to the Indian mind that refusal would entail a terrible outburst of volcanic Indian disloyalty. Mr Reeves has no difficulty in showing that this is the merest bluff. The question is a Moslem question, and the Moslem element in India is in a decisive minority. The Hindu element has always been, and is now, hostile to the Moslem. The Indian Moslem element, on the other hand, has never till now paid any attention to the affairs of the Moslem Empire of the Turk. As a matter of fact, the answer of Moslems in India to the Crimean war, which was fought by Britain on behalf of the Turk, was to take part in the Indian Mutiny. Moreover, the Moslem element was silent when Britain saved Turkey by sending a- fleet through the Dardanelles in 1878 to Constantinople. That fleet might just as well have gone to Sierra Leone for all the Moslems of India cared about it. Moslems of India fought very cheerfully during the Great War in Franoe, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, paying no attention to the “Kaliph” cry which adjured them to uphold the Turk rather than strafe him. All this is evidence from the past. The present offers the abandonment of Armenia after Versailles (in spite of Allied appeals to High Heaven)the abandonment of Cilicia by France and Britain to the Turk; the setting up of an Arab Kingdom of the- Hedjaz and of Arab rule at Bagdad; and the recent grant of independence to Egypt. But all’ these things have passed 'the Indian Moslem like the idle wind. The declaration that his loyalty depends on the pampering of the Turk is merest moonshine. The Government that has been taken in by it has convicted itself of cowardice. And this while it had before it the proof of radical Indian bluff in the case of Gandhi—Gandhi, whose arrest, which was to have exploded India in frantic revolution, was followed by lamblike meekness from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. Events have proved that there is no unbreakable bond between the Moslems of India and the Moslems of Turkey. - Commonsense suggests that the only bond which is urged—the bond of common religion—must not be regarded. For what would happen if the Empire were forced to interfere on behalf of co-religionists of its subjects at every turn? The whole plea of Indian relevancy is, at bottom, the danger of Indian insurrection. And the British Government has accepted that at its bluff value, and, therefore, agreed to hand territories to the Turk to misgovern, and populations to treat | with' injustice. Mr Reeves, writing for the Anglo-Hellenic League, has proved his case to the hilt. He has clinched it with the obvious truth, that neither the Turk, who is irreconcilably hostile to us, nor the Indian who is determinedly disloyal, will care a single straw for the surrender made to his preposterous pretensions. We need only add that, if this is the way in which peace on earth is to be brought •about, the outlook for the world is black indeed. |