ENVER PASHA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19879, 21 February 1920, Page 2

ENVER PASHA.

ONCE SCULLION, NOW KING IN LEAGUE WITH THE BOLSHEVIKS. (New York "Sun-") Sovereignty does not necessarily involve the blue blood of an ancient and illustrious lineage. Some monarchs have been of quite plebeian origin. But no King the writer can recall ever sprang from quite such humble beginnings as the new monarch of the Kurds, his Majesty Enver 1., for he started life 'as a scullion in the kitchens of the late Imperial Prince Suleiman Effendi. brother of Abdul .Hamid, of Sultan Mahmoud V. and of the wesent Padishah. ENVER T \ T THE SCULLERY. l'j;ive:'s father, by diuo of long time service, in the 3 of the late Prince Suleiman, had risen to ilio position of pantryman, and lor a time, j owing to the absence through illness of the actual incumbent of the office of taster, was employed to taste a mouthful of every uisn set before his im-| perial master in order to preserve the latter from the danger of poison. Then ! he was carefully watched lor a brief I spell by his master's physician, and if he showed no signs of having been poisoned then old Suleiman felt that he could devour his daily meals with perfect security. One day when the Prince had fared more than usually well and showed that he was in a particularly good humour his taster took ! advantage thereof to humbly entreat I his master to have his boy, until then employed as a scullion in the kitchens, ' admitted to the Military College, with j a view to the career of a soldier. The ! Prince complied with the petition and - 1 caused a letter to be written recom- ' mending the boy to the director of the j school in question, wher.e he was admitted, educated free of cost, and even- j tually graduated with a commission in i an infantry regiment of the line in the : army. The old Princo certainly never dreamed, when he thus gavo a, letter of recommendation to his pantryman for the latter's son, that his own favourite daughter, Princess Nadje Sultana, would be forced against her will into an abhorrent union with this vulgar upstart Pasha, whose boyhood had been spent in the sculleries of his pal- I ace and whose hands were stained with j the blood of several members of his house. MARRIES SULTAN'S DAUGHTER. Princess Nadje was one of the very few members of the imperial familv who were fond of Sultan Abdul HamidShe was his favourite niece. He treated her with the utmost consideration and with real affection. She was greatly distressed by his overthrow and deposition, and that she should have been compelled to wed the man of all others who was responsible fir her uncle Abdul Hamid's downfall was in her eyes an additional indignity. The late Sultan Mahmoud V., weakened physically and mentally by chronic infirmities, allowed himself"to' be completely dominated and terrorised by Enver. If the princess yielded it was because it was pointed out to her it was only by allying Enver to the dynasty through marriage that he could be prevented from availing himself of his autocracy at Stamboul to supplant the Sultan and the entire reigning house and to proclaim himself as Emperor of the Ottomans. She consented, therefore, to take him as husband in order to preserve the throne of Turkey to the house of Osman. BERLIN KNEW HIS VANITY. Enver, like so many men of diminutive stature, is incredibly vain and almost insanely ambitious.' Every fresh step in rank emboldened him to aspiro to something higher, a characteristic which was well known at Berlin and of which the ex-Kaiser and his councillors took every possible advantage. In fact, they played upon this particular weakness of Enver to their hearts' content and to much Teuton advantage, Thus, at the time of the Italian invasion of Tripoli, which may be said to have inaugurated the series of wars culminating in the great international conflagration of the last five years, Enver made his way to Cyrenaica, where he not only organised the Arab resistance against tho Italians but set to work to create an independent kingdom of Cyrenaica under the protection of the Sublime Porte and with its capital in the great desert stronghold of Burgneb. For purposes of administration the country was divided into districts under Sheikhs, assisted bv councils, which were responsible to him for the application of civil and military law. Enver opened a motor road from Solium to Benghazi and several other roads through the mountains from the coast into the interior which enabled him to control traffic and to impose import and export dues. He started trade schools and military schools, brought into existence an experimental farm for the teaching of agriculture, and really showed such successful administrative capacity that it was a distinct misfortune to the progress of the country rapidly develooing under his rule, when the conclusion of peace between Italy and the Sublime Porte compelled him to abandon his mission and to return to Constantinople. THREW IN HIS LOT WITH GERMANY. Then in 1917 and 1918 the exKaiser pledged himself and tho Central Powers to invest Enver with the khediviate of Egypt under Ottoman suzerainty, thus double crossing ex-Khedive Abbas, who had also been encouraged at Berlin to believe that a Teuton victory would mean his restoration to the throne in the land of the Nile. Enver counted confidently upon suoplnnting the now reigning dynasty of Mehemet Ah in Egypt with ono founded by himself and by his Turkish imperial consort. It was not the Central Powers, but these of the Entente, who won the victory, and as soo.i as Enver realised this and that tho game was up, ho laid hands on all the contents of tho Imperial Ottomon Treasury within his reach and managed to effect his escape to Berlin carrying with him, it ft said, gold and securities to tho amount of over 20,000,000 dollars. A demand was addressed by the Entente authorities and by the Turkish Government to the ruling junta at Berlin for his immediate arrest and surrender, along with his plunder. But he was warned in time vanished from sight, and after having been falsely asserted to have sought refuge in the wilds of Morocco and in North, Central and South America, was . finally heard of as organising an 'antiEntente movement in the° southern Caucasus and along the shores of the Caspian Sea, in conjunction and cooperation with the Bolsheviki junta at Moscow. Gradually he extended his operations to northern and eastern Armenia and to Kurdistan, rallying to his standard all these Turkish elements dissatisfied with Entente supremacy and reform nt Constantinople, and now finally has established himself as KINTr OF KURDISTAN. Although at first sight there might 5 be a disposition to scoii at his assumption of sovereignty of a nation that has never in all tho thousands of years of its existence accorded its submission to any ruler, and though Ave may feel inclined to treat as a. joke his rise from tho scullery washtubs to a throne, yet the hold which Enver has secured upon the allegiance of the Kurds is a. very serious matter indeed, and one of grave concern to the Powers of the Entente, especially to Great Britain. Kurdistan is a land of mountain fastnesses, enormously rich in undeveloped mineral wealth. There are oil, lead,and coal,

and at Arghana Maden there are whal are destined to prove the most wondertnl copper mines in the world. The Kurd, with all his faults, ha; shown himself a wonderfully clevei mechanic, especially in the oil fields or the Persian border. Hero in America he has proved himself a valuable immigrant, adapting himself readily to oui civilisation. But deep in his hearl there burns ever strongly the love ol his ancient race, and of iiis tribe, anc of the inaccessible valleys, and of the equally inaccessible mountain fastnesses ot tho rough mountainous regions ol his native Kurdistan. It is a country so mountainous as to render military operations on the part of tho English, or of any of the other Powers ot the Entente., well nigh impossible. PROFESSIONAL FREEBOOTERS. To talk of the conquest of Kurdistan is ridiculous. No Power lias over been able to accomplish it, although many nave tried, since the days when tho ancestors of the present day Kurds, namciy, tho ancient Kordueni hung or. to tho heels or Xenojpiou's Ten Thousand on ms histone march to the sea. They have always preserved their more lor less complete independence, then I distinct nationality and language, as well as those ethics which cause nrigandage and murder to be accounted as the natural pursuit of a Kurdish gentle- | man. Prom the dawn of history the i Kurds have been professional freebooters, accustomed to prey upon the peaceful inhabitants ol tho surrounding plains, and the creation of a Kuraisn Kingdom, under Enver, means, not the bringing into existence of a more or less civilised State, with some serabianco of law and of order, hut the j oragnisation of a huge robbers’ nest, in jan _ absolutely impregnable position, under tho leadership of one of the ; most utterly unscrupulous and resourcej ini scoundrels of our time, an implacl able foe of the Entente, and of our 1 civilisation, who has been carefully j trained at Berlin, under the direction : of the Kaiser, to stir up trouble, and to servo tho interests of Germany, wher- , ever he could harm the Allies, and who | is now working hand in glove with the Bolsheviki junta nt Moscow, to effect a great Pan-Asiatic Urnou against the Western World. HAND IN GLOVE WITH BOLSHEVIKS. Enver, who is now hand in glove with the Ameer of Afghanistan and with the jTqung Turk element m western Asia Minor, as well as with the so-cailed Nationalist element in Egypt, is eudeac curing, in conjunction with the Bolsheviki junta at Moscow, to extend his influence to China, where there is a largo Moslem population of several millions. Kurdistan lies to the east of tbn River Tigris, north-east of Bagdad and of Mosul, and may he said to menace on the ono hand the British forces in Mesopotamia, and on the other the Empireof Persia, to the protection of which from all aggression, such as that of King Enver and of his Kurds, Great Britain is. now committed. It forms a sort of link between the Bolsheviki of tho southern Caucasus and of the Caspian shores, across the northern boundary of Persia, to Afghanistan—-a country which is at the present moment to all intents; and purposes at war with Great Britain, The new Ameer at Cabul and Lenine at Moscow are in constant communication with ono another by means of special embassies, the leaders of which openly declare that the mam object which they have in Anew is the destruction of the British power m Asia and the emancipation of India from tho rule of George V., Kin" of England. a