Constantinople, according to the French view, must remain independent, though doubtless the freedom of the Straits would be assured by some form of international control. France is not particularly enthusiastic about the establishment of an independent Armenia, for many French politicians believe that the interests of the Armenians can be safeguarded while permitting them to remain under the nominal suzerainty of Turkey, but she will oppose no active objections to Armenian independence. But there must be no crusade against the Turkish Nationalists who are operating in Asia Minor and no pretext given for Nationalist massacres of Greeks and Armenians. And the Sultan must retain the Khalifate and his capital in Constantinople, for, according to the French view, it is far better for the interests of France, who has nearly 30,000,000 Moslem subjects of her own, to have an independent head of Islam at Constantinople, where he would be to a certain extent under French influence, than to have a British-controlled one at Mecca. The truth of the matter is that France is desperately anxious to protect her financial interests in Turkey, which are already enormous, and she knows perfectly well that her commercial and financial ascendency on the Bosphorus will suddenly wane if the Empire should be dismembered. That is the real reason why she is cuddling up to the Sick Man. Being perfectly aware that neither England nor Italy would consent to her becoming the mandatary for Constantinople, she proposes to do the next best thing and rule Turkey in the future, as in the past, through the medium of her financial interests. Sophisticated men who have read the remarkable tributes to Turkey which have been appearing in the French press, and its palliation of her long list of crimes, have been aware that something was afoot, but only those who have been on the inside of recent events realize how enormous are the stakes, and how shrewd and subtle a game France is playing.
Strictly speaking, Italy is not one of the claimants to Constantinople. Not that she does not want it, mind you, but because she knows that there is about as much chance of her being awarded such a mandate as there is of her obtaining French Savoy, which she likewise covets. Under no conceivable conditions would France consent to the Bosphorus passing under Italian control; according to French views, indeed, Italy is already far too powerful in the Balkans. Recognizing the hopelessness of attempting to overcome French opposition, Italy has confined her claims to the great rich region of Cilicia, which roughly corresponds to the Turkish vilayet of Adana, a rich and fertile region in southern Asia Minor, with a coast line stretching from Adana to Alexandretta. Cilicia, I might mention parenthetically, is usually included in the proposed Armenian state, and Armenians have anticipated that Alexandretta would be their port on the Mediterranean, but, while the peacemakers at Paris have been discussing the question, Italy has been pouring her troops into this region, having already occupied the hinterland as far back as Konia. Italy's sole claim to this region is that she wants it and that she is going to take it while the taking is good. There are, it is true, a few Italians along the coast, there are some Italian banks, and considerable Italian money has been invested in various local projects, but the population is overwhelmingly Turkish. But, as the Italians point out in defending this piece of land-grabbing, Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations expressly states that the wishes of people not yet civilized need not be considered.
Let us now consider the claims of Greece as a reversionary of the Sick Man's estate. Considering their attitude during the early part of the war (for it is no secret that General Sarrail's operations in Macedonia were seriously hampered by his fear that Greece might attack him in the rear) and the paucity of their losses in battle, the Greeks have done reasonably well in the game of territory grabbing. Do you realize, I wonder, the full extent of the Hellenic claims? Greece asks for (1) the southern portion of Albania, known as North Epirus; (2) for the whole of Bulgarian Thrace, thus completely barring Bulgaria from the Ægean; (3) for the whole of European Turkey, including the Dardanelles and Constantinople; (4) for the province of Trebizond, on the southern shore of the Black Sea, the Greek inhabitants of which attempted to establish the so-called Pontus Republic; (5) the great seaport of Smyrna, with its 400,000 inhabitants, and a considerable portion of the hinterland, which she has already occupied; (6) the Dodecannessus Islands, of which the largest is Rhodes, off the western coast of Asia Minor, which the Italians occupied during the Turco-Italian War and which they have not evacuated; (7) the cession of Cyprus by England, which has administered it since 1878. Greece's modest demands might be summed up in the words of a song which was popular in the United States a dozen years ago and which might appropriately be adopted by the Greeks as their national anthem:
"All I want is fifty million dollars,
A champagne fountain flowing at my feet;
J. Pierpont Morgan waiting at the table,
And Sousa's band a-playing while I eat."
I will be quite candid in saying that I have small sympathy for Greece's claims to these territories, not because she is not entitled to them on the ground of nationality—for there is no denying that, in all of the regions in question, save only Albania and Thrace, Greeks form a majority of the Christian inhabitants—but because she is not herself sufficiently advanced to be entrusted with authority over other races, particularly over Mohammedans. The atrocities committed by Greek troops on the Moslems of Albania and of Smyrna, to say nothing of the behavior of the Greek bands in Macedonia during the Balkan wars, should be sufficient proof of her unfitness to govern an alien race. I have already spoken in some detail of the reported Greek outrages in Albania. But this was not an isolated instance of the methods employed in "Hellenizing" Moslem populations. In the spring of 1919 the Peace Conference, hypnotized, apparently, by M. Venizelos, who is one of the ablest diplomats of the day, made the mistake of permitting Greek forces, unaccompanied by other troops, to land at Smyrna. Almost immediately there began an indiscriminate slaughter of Turkish officials and civilians, in retaliation, so the Greeks assert, for the massacre of Greeks by Turks in the outlying districts. The obvious answer to this is that, while the Greeks claim that they are a civilized race, they assert that the Turks are not. The outcry against the Greeks on this occasion was so great that an inter-allied commission, including American representatives, was appointed to make a thorough investigation. This commission unanimously found the Greeks guilty of the unprovoked massacre of 800 Turkish men, women and children, who were shot down in cold blood while being marched along the Smyrna waterfront, those who were not killed instantly being thrown by Greek soldiers into the sea. High handed and outrageous conduct by Greek troops in the towns and villages back of Smyrna was also proved. I do not require any further testimony as to the unwisdom of placing Mohammedans under Greek control, but, if I did, I have the evidence of Mr. Hamlin, the son of the founder of Roberts College, who was born in the Levant, who speaks both Turkish and Greek, and who was sent to Smyrna by the Greek government as an investigator and adviser. He told me that the Greek attitude toward the Moslems was highly provocative and overbearing and that the Allies were guilty of criminal negligence when they permitted the Greeks to land at Smyrna alone.
Though they know that their dream of restoring Hellenic rule over Byzantium cannot be realized, the Greeks are bitterly opposed to the United States receiving a mandate for Constantinople. The extent of Greek hostility toward the United States is not appreciated in America, yet I found traces of it everywhere in the Levant. A widespread Greek propaganda has laid the responsibility for Greece's failure to get the whole of Thrace at the door of the United States. To this accusation has been added the charge that Americans were foremost in creating sentiment against the Greek massacres in Smyrna, which, the Greeks contend, was merely an unfortunate incident and should be overlooked. All sorts of extraordinary reasons are advanced for America's alleged hostility to Greek claims, ranging from the charge that our attitude is inspired by the missionaries (for the Orthodox Church has always opposed the presence of American missionaries in Greek lands) to commercial ambition. As one leading Greek paper put it, "Alongside of America's greed and schemes for commercial expansion since the war, Germany's imperialism was pure idealism."
And now a few words as to the attitude of Turkey herself, for she has, after all, a certain interest in the matter. The Turks are perfectly resigned to accepting either America, England or France as mandatary, though they would much prefer America, provided that European Turkey, Anatolia and Armenia are kept together, for they realize that Syria, Mesopotamia and Arabia, whose populations are overwhelmingly Arab, are lost to them forever. What they would most eagerly welcome would be an American mandate for European Turkey and the whole of Asia Minor, including Armenia. This would keep out the Greeks, whom they hate, and the Italians, whom they distrust, and it would keep intact the most valuable portion of the Empire and the part for which they have the deepest sentimental attachment. Most Turks believe that, with America as the mandatary power, the country would not only benefit enormously through the railways, roads, harbor works, agricultural projects, sanitary improvements and financial reforms which would be carried out at American expense, as in the Philippines, but that, should the Turks behave themselves and demonstrate an ability for self-government, America would eventually restore their complete independence, as she has promised to restore that of the Filipinos. But if they find that Constantinople and Armenia are to be taken away from them, then I imagine that they would vigorously oppose any mandatary whatsoever. And they could make a far more effective opposition than is generally believed, for, though Constantinople is admittedly at the mercy of the Allied fleet in the Bosphorus, the Nationalist are said to have recruited a force numbering nearly 300,000 men, composed of well-trained and moderately well equipped veterans of the Gallipoli campaign, which is concentrated in the almost inaccessible regions of Central Anatolia. Moreover, Enver Pasha, the former Minister of War and leader of the Young Turk party, who, it is reported, has made himself King of Kurdistan, is said to be in command of a considerable force of Turks, Kurds and Georgians which he has raised for the avowed purpose of ending the troublesome Armenian question by exterminating what is left of the Armenians, and by effecting a union of the Turks, the Kurds, the Mohammedans of the Caucasus, the Persians, the Tartars and the Turkomans into a vast Turanian Empire, which would stretch from the shores of the Mediterranean to the borders of China. Though the realization of such a scheme is exceedingly improbable, it is by no means as far-fetched or chimerical as it sounds, for Enver is bold, shrewd, highly intelligent and utterly unscrupulous and to weld the various races of his proposed empire he is utilizing an enormously effective agency—the fanatical faith of all Moslems in the future of Islam. Neither England nor France have any desire to stir up this hornet's nest, which would probably result in grave disorders among their own Moslem subjects and which would almost certainly precipitate widespread massacres of the Christians in Asia Minor, for the sake of dismembering Turkey and ousting the Sultan.
I have tried to make it clear that there is nothing which the Turks so urgently desire as for the United States to take a mandate for the whole of Turkey. Those who are in touch with public opinion in this country realize, of course, that the people of the United States would never approve of, and that Congress would never give its assent to such an adventure, yet there are a considerable number of well-informed, able and conscientious men—former Ambassador Henry Morgenthau and President Henry King of Oberlin, for example—who give it their enthusiastic support. And they are backed up by a host of missionaries, commercial representatives, concessionaires and special commissioners of one sort and another. When I was in Constantinople the European colony in that city was watching with interest and amusement the maneuvers of the Turks to bring the American officials around to accepting this view of the matter. They "rushed" the rear admiral who was acting as American High Commissioner and his wife as the members of a college fraternity "rush" a desirable freshman. And, come to think of it, most of the American officials who were sent out to investigate and report on conditions in Turkey are freshmen when it comes to the complexities of Near Eastern affairs. This does not apply, of course, to such men as Consul-General Ravndal at Constantinople, Consul-General Horton at Smyrna, Dr. Howard Bliss, President of the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, and certain others, who have lived in the Levant for many years and are intimately familiar with the intricacies of its politics and the characters of its peoples. But it does apply to those officials who, after hasty and personally conducted tours through Asiatic Turkey, or a few months' residence in the Turkish capital, are accepted as "experts" by the Peace Conference and by the Government at Washington. When I listen to their dogmatic opinions on subjects of which most of them were in abysmal ignorance prior to the Armistice, I am always reminded of a remark once made to me by Sir Edwin Pears, the celebrated historian and authority on Turkish affairs. "I don't pretend to understand the Turkish character," Sir Edwin remarked dryly, "but, you see, I have lived here only forty years."
It is an interesting and altruistic scheme, this proposed regeneration at American expense of a corrupt and decadent empire, but in their enthusiasm its supporters seem to have overlooked several obvious objections. In the first place, though both England and France are perfectly willing to have the United States accept a mandate for European Turkey, Armenia and even Anatolia, I doubt if England would welcome with enthusiasm a proposal that she should evacuate Palestine and Mesopotamia, the conquest of which has cost her so much in blood and gold, or whether France would consent to renounce her claims to Syria, of which she has always considered herself the legatee. As for Italy and Greece, I imagine that it would prove as difficult to oust the one from Adalia and the other from Smyrna as it has been to oust the Poet from Fiume. Secondly, such a mandate would mean the end of Armenia's dream of independence, for, though she might be given a certain measure of autonomy, and though she would, of course, no longer be exposed to Turkish massacres, she would enjoy about as much real independence under such an arrangement as the native states of India enjoy under the British Raj. Lastly, nothing is further from our intention, if I know the temper of my countrymen, than to assume any responsibility in order to resurrect the Turk, nor are we interested in preserving the integrity of Turkey in any guise, shape or form. Instead of perpetuating the unspeakable rule of the Osmanli, we should assist in ending it forever.