FATE OF AN EMPIRE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14039, 23 April 1920, Page 6

FATE OF AN EMPIRE.

TiI.—ISLAM CIVILISATION.

(Jiy Perceval Laudon.) . The danger that the civilised peoples have. to leaV tipm lurkey-hes m tierweakness, and wot in lier strength , Therein lies the kernel ot t-h<> present .'trouble.', '.lust m time, the Allies are beginning .. to- realise- that, whatever other qualities the.Ottoman race may. >"aHd^,'*Bossvss.-.tlMSvalm o 3t-"tpadi.tional:-ineapncitv lor-^ood-government. this iiicurable"fl>elplossness,;,.Hid. dependence i upon otthers,. and this, .inability - to change with cHinifcyng times, makes it? i unassisted ■■••control. "Oi Constantinople an. impossibility . - Of: thej rest ol the Ottonuui territories I am not notv speaking,' nor ot the retention- ot theseat ot tlie Khali fate m-Stamfoonl. •. 1. • refer- only to the continued administration by Turks of the City and the • Sfcra»ts.> •• *■ To Attempt- •; owe - -more to make an empty, sack stand - upright is nob merely- to endorse the old unnappy , regime, it is to invite new more des- ' perate trouble, for. the:, world; Mi at t»- • still shivering trom the ague ot the late war. ? A• laissez-aller polic-y, swc-li as bas been dear to the- hearts of European :diplomat-iSts since the . Congres? of Berlin, is on all hands admitted to tbe inconceivable, and even toifebed witlv-disliohor t.o- all concerned. . -: _ After all it is we. the Western Powders, who hare ruined Turkeyr It is we" who' have for generations "taught her • to trade: upon our rivalries. . and to turn with certain hope to us for yet another and another dole of assistance or —sometimes of ' even greater help to a corrupt C4avemment—of inaction. We ha.ve behaved badly , to Turkey from lirst to last. We have encouraged her to perpetuate in a twentieth century continent the methods of the seventeenth.' We have spoiled a3 a- weak father spoils his child, by alternate petting and- scolding ; our doles have been mere temporaryVexpedients, and our threats hr.Ve been empty. Who has been chiefly to blame, for the present ' hopeless and helpless condition of political life'Jn Turicjey ?, Not so much the Ottoman people lor their inability to adjust themselves to modern standards and .eoneentions .ns certain cynical statesmen of, Europe who knew this ineptitude, 'and - used it' consistently and ... remorselessly as a pawn in a- selfish game. There is no question here of decrying the Turks as .a people. In many ways the hard material nations 6f the West have mueli to learn; from -.this easy-going, fanatical race. Are we, in whose hands the fate of Turkey has been placed, so much her superiors m courtesy, in sobriety, in physical courage". in religious obedience, or—above, all—in patience? Islam teaches that the 99th and last attribute of God- —for Allah's 100 th name rests unknown- to man —is ■ patience, and this quality at least the Turks have'assimilated. Hut all these excellent characteristics are .no foundation for political capacity such as. modern international'' life demands. if thev are accompanied by a want of initiative and of willingness to assume responsibility to the new standards of the world; by an ever-present liability to relapse into religious . ferocities that the rest of the world lias long ago lived down; and by :i- laziness and corruptibility that paralyse order and justice at it's fount.

That the religious attitude of Islam has hot moved forward for many ceii-. turies can perhaps' be best illustrated by examples. I give two... A fe>v days ago a meeting was held in the hall of the University here to do libnor to Pierre Loti, the French Tnr'cophile writer. The Heir to the Throne, Abdul Mejid, presided, and it .was therefore expected that especial stress would B? laid upon the literary talents of tjie. Academician, and that his known sympathy with Turkish people would at this moment of extreme crisis in their his-, tory be referred to with moderation. This was, however, not. the case. ..Thestatesman and orator, Suleiman Nazif Bev. - delivered a violent harangue, in the course of which he gave the lie direct to the Ottoman Government's repeated assurances to the Allies that Turkey had been dragged most unwillingly into the war by the chiefs of the partv of Uiiioir and Progress. " The Crown Prince listened without a word of protest to this strange, and damning assertion, and to the' loud applause which followed it. But when, it few minutes later, Suleiman boldly asserted that, the religious toleration shown in 1453 by Mohammed 11., 'the coiuiuerpr of Constantinople, was tc be deplored,: Prince Abdul Mejid cried 'out for all to hear, "One man alone could not do the,work, it remains for his descendants to complete it." This almcst too honest admission of the Royal willingness to imitate the action of Charles IX. on a- certain St. Bartholomew's Day ■was received with prolonged acclamations. The incident has thrown a flood of , useful light "upon the sincerity of the recent professions of the Turkish . Government, and unon the extent to winch religious toleration will exist, in this city if the strong hand of the Western, races is removed from it.

The. other illustration comes -from Egypt. A few years ago a man named Wardani was tried and condemned to death in Cairo for the cold-blooded, murder of the Prime Minister, Bontros Pasha, a Copt-. According to pecedent, the sentence was- submitted to the Multi, or Sheik-ul-Islam, • the highest religions authority in-Egypt. Tie latter, departing from an equally long precedent of silence on such occasions, denied the right of the Khedive's Government to -put- Wardani to death. In itself this, was a matter of rio great- importance. What were of extreme significance, however, were the reasons given by the Mufti for his denial. asserted, in a written reply, that the sentence was inadmissible for t?sree rea-., sons. One was that. the. used, a revolver, was not referred to in the Koran or the Traditions; a second was that no true, believer ought to te put to death for the murder of an infidel: the third, and most remarkable of all, was that the prosecution was the duty of n private avenger of .blood, and that the action of the State was consequent-, ly invalid—an amazing, and characteristic relapse into- the standards of the seventh, century. T have cajled. the Turks easy-going and fanatical: it is in. the" inability to be sure that- thev will not- at. any moment experience a. throwback to a." plane of thought that is quite intolerable in any race admitted lijto the comity of modern nations: • j;*:.. There is no nnterial for statesmanship in Constantinople; Even were a Venisrelos to be found amoiig -them he would meet with no srippoct from • a people that has for\so long lived on the charitv and the jealousies or na-' tions of stronger fibre. Personal _selfrespect—for' the taking of bribes is bv no mer.ite the degrading matter here that it is in England—the Turks have in full measure; of national self-re.sneet there is little. The pride that drives the smallest of European countries into standing at any cost- iipoji its ,own feet is unknown here. Other races c-laim the right to work out their own prosperity—the Ottoman Empire has always been content to accept-as its due 'the baksheesh of the world. - It is not their fault: and at this.morffent, behind all ihe fluency of their wiitten or spoken self-championship, therelurks as visibly as ever "the hope , that even at this eleventh hour someone will come' to their heln. . This is a nualitv inherent not so much in the Turkish nnturp as in the nature of all races who make Constantinople their home for centuries. J he 'true symbol of her enervating,ctimal?, and the want of character it inevitably engenders in-the -inhabitants.here, • -i« the Burnt Column in Stamhoul thatI rises about 500 yards from S. Sophia.: | The story of the'tradition conneotpfl . I with it liinjMvel 1 conclude this . letter, i | When Constnntinc refoimded Byzan- i I tium he put up : a cohimntof' purple i I marble,to his< own greater glory-and; to .1 I that-of the CiirisTian Ch\irch, of which, , I be it no ted i "he was not .vet' :L'member. , It remains to this day, sorely strippgdi' of its' ancient glorV,■ and so scarred l>y • the conflagrations whichvare the rather than the exception iiv Stamlioi^l: that, as I have r \said, -it is noiv "belt -known by tlie • name: .of • the Burnt 1 Church. -When Mohammed the Conquerer besieged the city, in 1463,/ of fall the copulation within it there, were: found .hut 0000 men to hold the gigantic walls.. 'Besides these there were 2000 foreigners --"among them • many Englishmen. and* Danes;." says the we know how even, this handfid held, i'fcv own against: the assault- uj|tiT sheer dolence let in' tlfe enemy by- ,a -forgotten postern gate. ' But even than the penpie of Constantinople put their faith in

the tradition that somehow they would be helped out of their distress by Another, greater than they. They believed that when the worst came to the worst the enemy, on reaching this column, would be annihilated by the militant . hosts of- God. But no help cajiie—and Constantinople has remained in : ithe hands of the Turks from that day until the Armistice of 1918."

Once again there is to-day the old helpless confidence that- somehow the people of this city will be. helped in their !hour. of well-deserved defeat. They iiave been spared even a shadow of the horrors 1 that accompanied Mohammed's victory, and there is abroad "among them a conviction that, after all, however badly they, or their political leaders, may have behaved, they are not going to be treated with the exact justice which has been meted out to the other Central Empires. Nor are. they wrong. Indeed, they have reason to believe that Western Europe, while making. a thorough and final change in. the regime here, will rather assist in every possible: way the launching of the new era. than exact the full reparations which those responsible for the old era should: in all justice be called upon to pay. ; And that is the course which thf Allied will most certainly adopt.- We have no wish to retaliate -upon- the Turks; we only intend that they-shall not again be in a position to: embroil. Europe. ' For what is tho use of ipurging the earth of militftrism,' of setting up new: standards, of. national and inieriiatioiial life, and of afctempt-ingrto-enleague all men in the service of all men, if Constantinople is left to I continue its old and evil tradition of I spreading enmity and -jealousy in the verv' heart- of the world?