The Waikato Times. With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 1923. TURKEY AND THE WAR.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15184, 9 March 1923, Page 4

The Waikato Times. With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 1923. TURKEY AND THE WAR.

A review of Turkish history from 1914 to 1922, and covering the entry of Turkey into the Great War, has recently been published. •It is written by Sir Valentine Chirol, at one time a director of the T’mes’ foreign department, and his standing as an observer and student of Eastern questions gives particular authority to his opinion. For British readers the book is a tragic epilogue. Turkey’s participation in the war against the Power which had fought at her side in the Crimea, and had again shielded her from the “great northern enemy" in 1878 was, as Sir Valentine Chirol clearly shows, a logical result of the steady decline of Britain’s diplomatic prestige since the days of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. Our position in the East was temporarily restored by Lord Salisbury’s rejection of Russia’s San Stefano proposals, and Sir Valentine marks the commencement of definite estrangement between Britain and Turkey as occurring in 1880, when Mr Gladstone’s return to power, and the rather ignominious volte face of our Ambassador in Constantinople, gave Germany an opportunity to step into England’s shoes. William 11., by repeated visits to Abdul Hamid, effectively supported the efforts of his very able Ambassadors to the Porte, whose diplomacy, in absolute contradiction to the past policy of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, tended to paralyse the attempts of the “European Concert” to impose internal reforms. At the end of 1913 General Liman von Sanders arrived at the head of a largely reinforced German mililary mission and was invested for the first time with full executive authority over Turkish troops. We know now that while a formal proclamation of neutrality followed the outbreak of war in Western Europe, Turkey was, in fact, already bound to Germany by a treaty secretly negotiated by Enver Pasha. But the Turkish people were averse from war, of which they had had some bitter experiences during the immediately preceding years; and it is possible that Enver and his treaty might have been discarded hut for two unfortunate episodes. i

The first was the peremptory requi. sition by the British Admiralty, while Turkey’s official position was still that of a neutral, of the two cruisers which Messrs Armstrong had just constructed for the Turkish Government. The money had been found largely by voluntary subscriptions, and a Turkish Naval Mission had already arrived in England to take over vessels which far exceeded in armaments and dimensions anything yet possessed by Turkey in Hie course of her history. They might have been kept in gage by Britain, and would have been invaluable as inducements to Turkey at least to remain neutral. The second episode was the accident of war hi which the Goebcn and Breslau elude 1 our Mediterranean Fleet. 7hey escap'd to the Dardanelles, and, being instantly disposed of to f'urkry by a bogus effected by Baron 'on

Wangenheim, became Turkish vessels, were allowed,to steam up the Straits and to anchor before Constantinople, which they dominated by their guns. This Sir Valentine considers the more calamitous event of the two. The importance of the Goebcn and Breslau incident was not that Turkey had the use of two more warships in the Black Sc*va, but that it enormously strengthened the hands of Enver |gainst the anti-German party in Constantinople, who were influential and P’Tbably well supported in the provinces. Sir Valentine tells briefly of the Gallipoli tragedy and it is noted that the flower of the Ottoman army perished there, “with results that were afterwards visible elsewhere in the waning power of resistance of the Turk'sh troops.” He touches upon the vicissi. tudes of the Mesopotamian -and Palestinian campaigns, and that the Anglo-Indian army captured by the Turks at Kut was the largest British force that had surrendered to an enemy since Yorktown. The systematic massacres and mass deportations of Armenians are also told of in language which from its sobriety forms all the more deadly an indictment of Turkish manners. Yet, the author goes on to point out, Turkey’s own plight was desperate when the war ended. Of an army of over a million, hardly two hundred thousand remainad; the Arab provinces of the empire vtfere gone; her people were starving. Enver and Talaat fled from Constantinople. “The whole edifice of Turkish misrule was quaking and tottering to its fall.” The Christian subject races whom the Allies had encouraged to oppe se their masters, and who had cruelly suffered, eagerly and oonfi.dently hoped that the day of their deliverance was at hand. Nevertheless, the terms of the armistice signed at Mudros on October 30, 1918, were lighter than those imposed upon other belligerents. Nothing was ,said about the surrender of arms and other war material. The Turks were allowed to keep their heavy artillery, of which, as the Greeks were later to realize, they still had a good supply. The beaten Oriental is abject; and for many months after the armistice the Turk was prepared to sjibmit to any term 3 that his victors cared to dictate. Fdr two years none were propounded; when they came he had recovered sufficient spirit to declare them intolerable. The Constantinople Govern, ment, indeed, signed the Treaty of Sevres under duress, but another Government was immediately formed in' Anatolia to challenge it. How four years of vacillating policy brought disillusionment to the Greeks, whom we befriended, ruin to the Turkish regime which cooperated with us, and triumph to the'Government which defied us, is recorded in Sir Valentine Chirol’s impartial but merciless narrative. The withdrawal of the bulk of British forces from the East and the encouragemenU given to Greece, even after the fall "of M. Venizelos, aggravated the conscquenoes of delay. What we refused to Turkey prostrated by defeat we eventually conceded to her victorious and sword in hand. / The conclusion reached, however, is that Turkey’s present resurgence may, after all, appear but a comparatively small matter to the eyes of the future. Compared to the Turkey in Europe of one hundred years ago the corner of Eastern Thrace which the Mudania Armistice allotted her is an insignificant morsel. The shrinkage of her Asiatic Empire has been on a corresponding scale, and her African Empire has simply disappeared.