AMERICA’S DUTY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18790, 26 May 1923, Page 11

AMERICA’S DUTY

PEACE IN THE NEAR EAST. URGED TO TAKE MANDATE. PROFESSOR ELIOT’S VIEWS. A remarkable pronouncement on the situation in the Near East, and America's responsibility for the maintenance of peace, hag been made iu the World’s Work by Professor Charles W. Eliot, president emiritus of Harvard University, one of the most distinguished of American scholars and publicists. He says it has Become obvious within the last three months that the thinking part of the American people are inclined to abandon the attitude of isolation and withdrawness which they as sinned in 1919. The American Government seems to be wishing for a good chance to abandon its policy of non-intervention, and to give the American people its legitimate influence in iqaking the earth a better place for mankind to live on. “The readmission of the Turk to Europe in consequence of divided interest and action by Great Britain and France suggests strongly that the opportunity which the American people and the American Government have been looking for has arrived,” says Professor Eliot. GREATEST CALAMITY SINCE ARMISTICE. "The coming back of the Turk into Constantinople, the Dardanelles, and Thrace is the greatest calamity which has befallen civilisation since the armistice. It means the cahccllation of a large part of the good done by the victory of the Allies over Germany. It means the revival of the centuries-old purpose of the Turks to rule in Eastern Europe. It means

the loss of ground won by the Balkan States against the Turks iu a long series of sanguinary wars. It opens a long vista of future struggles between the barbarous and cruel Turks and the Christian peoples in the Neat East, which know by bitter experience the effects of Turkish misgovernment. It means the chronic apprehension, so sickening to the demo cracies and constitutional monarch ies, that Germany, Russia, and Turkey, feeling strong again, will make a secret arrangement to settle old scores and new ones with the Allied and Associated Powers at the first good opportunity. Whence another great war, even crueller and more destructive than the last. AMERICA'S OPPORTUNITY. “Into this tangle, so full of danger and dread, the American Government, Administration, aßd Congress together, can now step with immediate effectiveness. Reversing her earlier action concerning Armenia, let America now say, 'I will accept a mandate for Armenia, Constantinople, the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and their shores. As mandatory I will give to the cause of peace and order my moral influence, my financial resources, aud my industrial capacity forthwith, and a large part of my fleet within four weeks.’ “Great Britain*, would welcome America to this mandate, because it would relieve her from much anxiety with regard to her own relation to the numerous Mahommedan populations within the new British Commonwealth. extend common action by the English-speaking peoples, and renew the co operation between Great Britain and France which is indispensable to the security and peace

of Western Europe. France would be glad to be quit of the unnatural support which she has given to the Turks against the Armenians, Syrians. and Greeks: for she has now become convinced that she can exercise control over no portion of Asia Minor or Syria without large expend! ture for the maintenance in those countries of a considerable French army, and she cannot afford these expenditures. The Turks themselves are likely to yield to American influence as soon as they are convinced that force can, and will, be used in support of that influence. They will modify their present belligerent attitude which resulted in their depar ture from Lausanne, and return to the safer and more wholesome state of mind which characterised them in 1919. “Abstention from going to the help of Europe during the past four years has cost the United States something more precious than money or goods, namely, a serious impairment of selfrespect, a relapse into selfishness and of zeal for liberty and justice among men, and a miserable period of discontent with itself, mankind, and the world. To recover its natural I disposition to take risks, make sacri- • flees, and suffer hardships in the cause of political, industrial, and social liberty for mankind would bo worth to the American people manyfold the cost, both material and spiritual, of the acceptance of thi® mandate."