THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1923. TURKISH TRIUMPHINGS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18990, 11 October 1923, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1923. TURKISH TRIUMPHINGS.

The cablegrams announcing the triumphant re-entry of the troops of Turkey —the “Republic of Turkey”—into Constantinople are coloured with the flushed tints of Oriental glamour. Lord Macaulay’s historic and variegated imagination would have been captivated by an incident which is rich in pabulum for reflective thought. For the guardians of Occidental civilisation there may be a sinister and even a humiliating aspect to the description of a mentally inebriated populace “roaring a vociferous welcome and strewing confetti, flpwers, and streamers on the troops as they inarched under billows of waving flags down avenues of unbroken laurel festoons.” Perhaps, however, “description” is not the right word; for we are told that the scene was “indescribable.” It was perhaps just as well that the occasion synchronised with the proclamation, from the Angora capital, of an edict prohibiting the supply of more materially inebriat ing influences, —though prohibitionists may be dissatisfied with the chief result. “The price of alcoholic liquors,” it is reported, “was doubled immediately.” The representation of “a crushing Moslem victory in the twentieth century over the whole Christian world, transcending the original conquest,” unfortunately has its truthful as well as its extravagant side. It is a far cry from 1492, when the Ottoman hordes first took possession of the.city of Constantinople, to 1923; but, again, despite the short space of time, what a gulf separates the expectations of October, 1918, from the actual conditions of October, 1923! Allowing for exaggerations, the present Turkish triumphing does signalise a substantial Turkish triumph. If Turkey had been victorious instead of being vanquished in the Great War she eould hardly, as regards Europe, have done better for herself than she has done. If, when she sued unconditionally for peace Just on five years ago, or when the Treaty of Sevres (impracticable as it is now seen to have been) was signed, the inverted consummation of Lausanne or of last Saturday had been predicted, tho prophet would have been laughed to scorn. The

revival of the Gladstonian doctrine of expulsion, “bag and baggage,” from Europe lias como to nought; and instead of the anticipated spectacle of a Turkey rigidly restricted as regards military and u'hval strength, with little more than nominal occupation of Constantinople, we have the “second conquest” and the confetti and the “billow's of waving flags along avenues of unbroken laurel festoons.” It would be tedious and useless to recapitulate the tortuous story of opportunist diplomacy which produced this anti-climax. It is true that Turkey does uot occupy her pre-w'ar position. She has lost Mesopotamia, Arabia, Syria, and Palestine, as well as her rights in Egypt; but in other directions she is virtually ro-estab-lished in her former geographical limits. It has been pointed out that disquieting features in connection with the latest settlement are the inadequate provision for the protection of minorities and the entire absence of any stipulations favouring the Armenians. It can only he hoped, almost against hope, that the future will be better than the past; and in this connection it has to be borne in mind that Ismet Pasha declared some months ago that his country would be prepared to enter the League of Nations after the conclusion of peace.