THE GREEK BETRAYAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18787, 14 February 1923, Page 4

THE GREEK BETRAYAL

A PROTEST BY MR W. V. REEVES. ‘•CHRISTIAN! AD LEONES,” “THERE IS A GOD.” (From Ocn Own Correspondknt.) LONDON, December ?,0.

“If ! write with heat it is because I have brooded over the tragedy of the Near blast for many years; because, when you are tackling murder and diplomacy there, it is no use mincing matters; most of all, because. I am trying to plead for human sufferers hounded by (heir agony into crying that God has forsaken them.” This from Air IV. Pemher Reeves, who, living m comparative retirement, still uses his pen from lime to time for a cause he has deeply at heart. As chairman of the Anglo-lloilenic League he has now published' a booklet which is at. once a protest against the policy of the greater nations of Europe with regard to the Near East, and a stem reproof of that policy. nuking as his text the Marquis Cnrzon’s condemnation of the Turkish policy of extirpation in Anatolia and Armenia, Air Pemher Reeves asks: “Why does tin's scathing expose only come now? Had it been uttered three nr even two years ago. and our Foreign Office been guided accordingly —been guided, that is. hy a steady purpose

of ending a misrule hateful to God and man--then a great, tragedy might have been averted. At any rale, the lust and worst act of it might have been averted, for the tragedy as a drama began centuries ago. Why wait to denounce Turkish extirpation until the curtain has fallen on tho doom of Near Eastern Christianity from the Taunts Ranges to the Maritza? Where—save in Constantinople—are (lie

Asian Greeks, the Armenians, the Thracians? A million or so of miserable exiles have been added to the dispersed multitudes who have fled north and west from time to time during the last 30 years. Some 150,000 mishandled captives may he doing slave work waiting for release, chiefly by death. Any other remnants of tho living are being steadily expelled. Large gangs are being marched down to the' seaports, or, herded in hunger, await- shipment there. Where are the rest? Their hones litter the highways of Anatolia or have been flung into Armenian pits. ••Kenial's executioners, when not making away with (he bodies of their victims in some slovenly fashion, leave their skeletons to lie where they will. There they whiten, witnesses that (he long struggle for Asia Alinor, which Greek and Turk begun when tho Seljouks burst into Armenia nearly nine centuries ago, is over at last. Christianity and Hellenism have passed away: anything worth calling civilisation has gone with (hem. Greek, spoken in lonia since tile age of Homer, became a dead language there this autumn, and the last of the seven Churches of Asia lias perished in Are and blood.”

NOT BUSINESS. Constantinople, Mr Kecvcs acknowledges, sfiil stands. No man feels secure m Constantinople; trade and linanco are paralysed; l/0,000 persons, chiefly Eastern Christians, have fled from the city in three months, 'the Turcomaniae newspapers of Pans and ijondon tell us that, in the tallest, of scarelinos, It is not business. Hut capitulations and customs duties, bank loans and trade, consuls and navigation rights, these furnish reasons for which great, nations may fight and pay. It is only a few of us who think that Great Powers standing uv> in defence of commercial privileges, but doing so only after those inconvenient Christian multitudes have been put out of the way, provide more cause for silence than rejoicing. As for the reconciliation of the Allies —r< ally, to see politicians in Ungland and France burying Hie hatchet, in Mr Lloyd George's political grave might have made Diogenes grin, 'I he warning, "Put, not your trust in Princes,’ had it been given to-day. might it not have been enlarged by a few caustic words about allies and colleagues? "Year after year Eastern Christianity, fallen among thieves, lias lain by the roadside, stripped and wounded. England, America, and Franco were to come after file Armistice as Good Samaritans, binding up wounds, pouring in oil and wine. No Samaritans came. Financiers monopolised tile oil, and the Turks prohibited the wine. The wounds still bleed.”

"NO BLACK AND NO WHiTE.’

Mr Hooves refutes tho contention that (lie Greek atrocities were Its had as those of the Turks. "So far ns tho persons killed in Smyrna were Turks, they numbered, so I am told, 76, killed partly by Greek .soldiers and partly by llio town mnl). About 100 of other nations were killed also. The ringleaders in iho business wore executed by tile Greek authorities and compensation paid to the families of the victims. Lamentable and shameful as tho affair was, it lasted but a few hours. Smyrna a week after tlie Greek landing was a peaceful, well-ordered city. What was Smyrna a week after tlie Kemnlists returned to it?

"M. Poincare must be that rare thing, a Frenchman with no sense of tho ridiculous whatever. Speaking to the French Chamber, ho lias just, assured ids hearers that neither the Turks nor the Greeks can bo charged with tlie conflagration of Smyrna; its origin is veiled in mystery! Dies, sucli a mystery as the responsibility for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew or the murder of Sir Henry Wilson! Does M. Poincare consider flic slaughter of some xi.ooo Greeks and Armenians in the streets and houses of Smyrna equally mysterious, or that it, passes the wit of man to imagine the perpetrators of (lie countless outrages on women and the wholesale plunder of the e.ity and suburbs? Does he consider that the postponement of the incendiarism till a change of wind had made (he Turkish quarter safe was also a mystery? To such diplomats nonsense must distinguished official personages descend when they dare not speak tho truth.” ATTACK ON FRENCH POLICY.

While Mr Reeves believes that most of the ninny millions making up the brave, kindly, patriotic) French people have had little to do with French policy in the Mear hast, he has nothing hnt chastisement for the policy of the French authorities. “French policy.” he writes, “betrayed the Christians in order to worry England into supporting an impossible policy on the Rhine. Only the other day France stood out stoutly for her dignity as protector of the Eastern Christians. A moment more and a concession-hunting French policy befriends Christian-hunting Kemal. makes secret compacts with him behind England's hack, and begins the process of supplying him with moral support and military equipment. 3f rumour does not lie, military advice, with military intelligence of Creek forces and -dispositions, were secretly convoyed from unauthorised French sources to Angora. Meanwhile, France from time to lime professed to work with England, and blandly offered Greece her services as friendly mediator. French policy did all this, the policy of the country which had forced Greece into ijie war against Bulgaria and Turkey, hod joined in sending her to Smyrna, and had made use of her army to save Constantinople from Kemal! We are told that the Angora Pact was a financial necessity; that the Public Finance Committee of the French Chamber would not find money -for the defence of Gilicia, so that Franklu Bouillon had to he sent to sell the province. lie made his bargain. Gilicia was sold for prompt delivery—arms, munitions, and Christians to go with the estate, How neatly it all fitted in—superfluous Armenians, business-like Bouillon, opportunely exigennt public finance committee! All (hat the deque needed to do was to shut, their eyes to the fact that had Franco loyally hacked no Greece in Anatolia, and had she made (he blockade of Asia Minor elfeelnnl. she need not have had to fight- for Gilicia— there would have been no Kemalist army to fight against.

“ I WILL R ERA Y,” “Parisian newspapers jeer a I men simpleminded otioii trli (o euro whether the Near Eastern Christians live nr the. They call their sympathy ‘Puerile Puritanism.’ 'lliev say that, it is sentimentalism, and that, it does not pay. That, may lie so. ] have nowhere road that Christ, sells eoneessions. Yet it is rny faith that the Power that makes nations also watehes their deeds, and in the end punishes their misdeeds. ‘I will repay, saith the Lord’ ; and terribly has Tie repaid the Inner record of selfishness. deceit, greed, and desertion by one or other (Treat Power that make up so much oi the story of European war and diplornaey in the Near East. One episode in ths long catalogue of wrong became the iHvpH. of the Great War. Has it profiled Russia that she instigated unfortunate Greek peasants to rise against the Turks, and then abandoned them to massacre Look at Russia today. Did it profit Austria, that after hacking 'forks against Greeks, and egging Servians on ro assail Bulgaria, she seduced Bulgaria into attacking Rervia and Greece without warn ing. and finally herself invaded and ravaged Scrvia Where is Austria to-day? What has Germany gained hy deserting Christendom to corrupt Turkey and enlist her in a war against civilisation and hy afterwards doing the same with Bulgaria? Has it paid England to bolster up successive Abduls and Mahmouds, and enable them to prolong the worst government on earth? What has she got by sending the Greeks to Smyrna and then leaving them to he starved out thero by inches? What is France gain-

ing by her betrayal of Greece and Armenia, or by file (ricks she lias played England? On the last day of the Reign of Terror, when Robespierre, bis face shattered by a. pistol shot, lay blood-stained and groaning, prostrate and bound, waiting to be borne to (he guillotine, a certain man, it is re corded, stood over him. tad. bonding down, said. ‘Yes. Robespierre! There is a God.’ So now, looking round in Europe, remembering the war and its gigantic calamities, and seeing on all sides exhaustion, disappointment. grinding taxation, smouldering revolt, debt, hunger, hate, fear, grief for the dead, a man, remembering the cause of if all. may think of the dread reminder to the doomed revolutionary, and say from his soul: 'Yes, Christian nations! r i here is a God.’ ” ■