Chapter XXXI: Unofficial Publication of "official" Information 361 (7)

I recollect well our own military reports from the Russian fronts. They provided much distressing reading. They filled you with compassion for the millions of gallant men who were the victims of corruption and stupidity in high places. I recall one statement made to our general which betrays the callous indifference with which men in authority seemed to treat the appalling sacrifice of life amongst loyal soldiers who were facing death without a murmur, because the "Little Father" willed it. Whenever anxious inquiries were directed by our officer as to the gigantic losses in men which filled him with dismay as well as horror, the usual reply was, "Don't worry yourself. Thank God, of men at all events we have enough." An answer which sends a thrill of horror through you when you read it. That is why at the end of two and a half years the patient men in the field at last mutinied. That is why their parents and brothers in the fields supported them. The "Little Father" had failed them, and his minions had betrayed them. It is a sordid and horrid tale of peculation, maladministration, and cruel treachery. Millions of British and French money went in shameless and open bribery, whilst the soldiers in the field, for need of what the money could buy, were opposing bare breasts covering brave hearts to the most terrible artillery in the world. If the rest of the money had been well spent, what was left after providing for profuse graft would still have sufficed to save that gallant army from destruction. But unhappily no real interest was taken in anything beyond the amount and the payment of the pocket-money. That seemed to be the main purpose of the transaction. Nothing was well managed except the inevitable bribe. There were honourable and upright men who did their duty by their distracted and plundered country, but they were helpless in the torrent of corruption.

No wonder a great Russian industrialist engaged in the ministry of war, in dwelling on the sad failure of tsarism and its probable results in June, 1905, predicted a revolution with "ten years of the most frightful anarchy." "We shall," he added, "see the days of Pugatchef[11] again and perhaps worse"--a striking prophecy verified with appalling accuracy.

It is not pleasant to recall these dreadful episodes, which reveal the betrayal of a devotion faithful unto death. But this story is essential to the right appreciation of events. There is no savagery like that of a trustful people which finds that its trust was being imposed upon the whole time. Here the retribution has been hideous in all its aspects. But the provocation was also revolting from every point of view. To judge Russia fairly that must be taken into account.

I think the government are, therefore, taking the right view of their responsibilities when through their foreign secretary they open negotiations with the representative of the Soviet government in this country. You can easily evoke resounding cheers amongst the thoughtless by declaring melodramatically that you will never "shake hands with murder." In practice this policy has always been a failure. Mr. Pitt in a famous passage declined to assent to that doctrine when he was attacked for trying to open negotiations with the "assassins" of the French Revolution. He was driven out of this calm and rational attitude by the inflammable rhetoric of Burke, aided by the arrogance of the victorious revolutionaries. Nevertheless, the sequel proved he was right. French Bolshevism was not defeated by foreign armies, nor starved out by the British blockade. But it was driven into the arms of Napoleon, and Europe suffered bitterly for the folly of the hotheads on both sides. It would have been better for that generation had it listened to the wise counsel of William Pitt.

If you decline to treat with Russia as long as its present rulers remain in power, then you ought to place Turkey in the same category. The military junta that governed Turkey has been guilty of atrocities at least as vile as any committed by the Bolshevists. But at Lausanne we ostentatiously stretched the friendly hand of Britain to the authors of the Armenian massacres. And France, Italy--yes, and America also--tendered the same warm handshake. I am not criticising the offer of amity made as a condition of peace. We must make peace in the world, and you cannot do so if you put whole nations off your visiting list because of the misconduct of those who govern them. Once you begin you are not quite sure where it will end.

In these cases the innocent suffer the most. A refusal to trade with Russia would not deprive the Soviet commissaries of a single necessity or comfort of life. The Communists are quite strong enough to take care of themselves. But the peasants--who are not Communists--would continue to suffer, and their sufferings would increase as their reserves of clothing and other essentials became completely exhausted. And the people of this country who need the produce of Russia for their own use would also suffer to a certain extent. America can afford this exalted aloofness. She does not need the Russian grain and timber. She is an exporter of those commodities. But we cannot do as well without them, and we also sadly need Russian flax for our linen industries, which are languishing for the want of it. Last year there were quite considerable imports of Russian produce into this country. This year owing to the prospects of an improved harvest these imports will be much larger. They are greatly needed here for our own consumption, and they pay for exports of machinery and textiles which the Russian on his part urgently requires.

But beyond and above all these material considerations, the world needs peace. In the old days conveyancing attorneys in this country kept a property transaction going by interminable requisitions on the title of the other party. They exercised all their ingenuity and invoked the added ingenuity of trained counsel to probe for defects in the right of the vendor to deal. Those were leisurely days, and men could afford to dawdle. Even then these exercises often ended in ruinous litigation. To-day time presses and the atmosphere is dangerous for the plying of irritating interrogatories. It is time we made up our minds that the Soviets have come to stay, whether we like it or no, and that one or other of the formidable men who rule Russia to-day are likely to rule it for some time to come. The sooner we have the courage to recognise this fact, the sooner will real peace be established.

FOOTNOTE:

[11] Pugatchef was the Pretender who led a revolt of the peasants in the reign of Catherine and spread rapine and carnage through the provinces bordering the Volga and Ural.

XXVII

PALESTINE AND THE JEWS

"What's his reason? I am a Jew."
_The Merchant of Venice._

Of all the bigotries that savage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic. It has no basis in reason; it is not rooted in faith; it aspires to no ideal; it is just one of those dank and unwholesome weeds that grow in the morass of racial hatred. How utterly devoid of reason it is may be gathered from the fact that it is almost entirely confined to nations who worship Jewish prophets and apostles, revere the national literature of the Hebrews as the only inspired message delivered by the deity to mankind, and whose only hope of salvation rests on the precepts and promises of the great teachers of Judah. Yet in the sight of these fanatics the Jews of to-day can do nothing right. If they are rich they are birds of prey. If they are poor they are vermin. If they are in favour of a war it is because they want to exploit the bloody feuds of the Gentiles to their own profit. If they are anxious for peace they are either instinctive cowards or traitors. If they give generously--and there are no more liberal givers than the Jews--they are doing it for some selfish purpose of their own. If they do not give--then what could one expect of a Jew but avarice? If labour is oppressed by great capital, the greed of the Jew is held responsible. If labour revolts against capital--as it did in Russia--the Jew is blamed for that also. If he lives in a strange land he must be persecuted and pogrommed out of it. If he wants to go back to his own he must be prevented. Through the centuries in every land, whatever he does, or intends, or fails to do, he has been pursued by the echo of the brutal cry of the rabble of Jerusalem against the greatest of all Jews--"Crucify Him!" No good has ever come of nations that crucified Jews. It is poor and pusillanimous sport, lacking all the true qualities of manliness, and those who indulge in it would be the first to run away were there any element of danger in it. Jew-baiters are generally of the type that found good reasons for evading military service when their own country was in danger.

The latest exhibition of this wretched indulgence is the agitation against settling poor Jews in the land their fathers made famous. Palestine under Jewish rule once maintained a population of 5,000,000. Under the blighting rule of the Turk it barely supported a population of 700,000. The land flowing with milk and honey is now largely a stony and unsightly desert. To quote one of the ablest and most far-sighted business men of to-day, "It is a land of immense possibilities, in spite of the terrible neglect of its resources resulting from Turkish misrule. It is a glorious estate let down by centuries of neglect. The Turks cut down the forests and never troubled to replant them. They slaughtered the cattle and never troubled to replace them." It is one of the peculiarities of the Jew-hunter that he adores the Turk.

If Palestine is to be restored to a condition even approximate to its ancient prosperity, it must be by settling Jews on its soil. The condition to which the land has been reduced by centuries of the most devastating oppression in the world is such that restoration is only possible by a race that is prepared for sentimental reasons to make and endure sacrifices for the purpose. What is the history of the Jewish settlement in Palestine? It did not begin with the Balfour Declaration. A century ago there were barely 10,000 Jews in the whole of Palestine. Before the war there were 100,000. The war considerably reduced these numbers, and immigration since 1918 has barely filled up the gaps. At the present timorous rate of progress it will be many years before it reaches 200,000. Jewish settlement started practically seventy years ago, with Sir Moses Montefiore's experiment in 1854--another war year. The Sultan had good reasons for propitiating the Jews in that year, as the Allies had in 1917. So the Jewish resettlement of Palestine began. From that day onward it has proceeded slowly but steadily. The land available was not of the best. Prejudices and fears had to be negotiated. Anything in the nature of wholesale expropriation of Arab cultivators, even for cash, had to be carefully avoided. The Jews were, therefore, often driven to settle on barren sand dunes and malarial swamps. The result can best be given by quoting from an article written by Mrs. Fawcett, the famous woman leader. She visited Palestine in 1921 and again in 1922, and this is her account of the Jewish settlements:

"So far from the colonies and the colonists draining the country
of its resources they have created resources which were previously
non-existent; they have planted and skilfully cultivated desert
sands and converted them into fruitful vineyards and orange
and lemon orchards; in other parts they have created valuable
agricultural land out of what were previously dismal swamps
producing nothing but malaria and other diseases. The colonists
have not shrunk from the tremendous work and the heavy sacrifices
required. Many of the early arrivals laid down their lives over
their work; the survivors went on bravely, draining the swamps,
planting eucalyptus trees by the hundred thousand so that at
length the swamp became a fruitful garden, and the desert once
more blossomed like the rose."

Everywhere the Jew cultivator produces heavier and richer crops than his Arab neighbour. He has introduced into Palestine more scientific methods of cultivation, and his example is producing a beneficent effect on the crude tillage of the Arab peasant. It will be long ere Canaan becomes once more a land flowing with milk and honey. The effects of the neglect and misrule of centuries cannot be effaced by the issue of a declaration. The cutting down of the trees has left the soil unprotected against the heavy rains and the rocks which were once green with vineyards and olive groves have been swept bare. The terraces which ages of patient industry built up have been destroyed by a few generations of Turkish stupidity. They cannot be restored in a single generation. Great irrigation works must be constructed if settlement is to proceed on a satisfactory scale. Palestine possesses in some respects advantages for the modern settler which to its ancient inhabitants were a detriment. Its one great river and its tributaries are rapid and have a great fall. For power this is admirable. Whether for irrigation, or for the setting up of new industries, this gift of nature to Palestine is capable of exploitation only made possible by the scientific discoveries of the last century. The tableland of Judea has a rainfall which if caught in reservoirs at appropriate centres would make of the "desert of Judea" a garden. If this be done Arab and Jew alike share in the prosperity.

There are few countries on earth which have made less of their possibilities. Take its special attractions for the tourist. I was amazed to find that the visitors to Palestine in the whole course of a year only aggregate 15,000. It contains the most famous shrines in the world. Its history is of more absorbing interest to the richest peoples on earth, and is better taught to their children, than even that of their own country. Some of its smallest villages are better known to countless millions than many a prosperous modern city. Hundreds of thousands ought to be treading this sacred ground every year. Why are they not doing so? The answer is: Turkish misrule scared away the pilgrim. Those who went there came back disillusioned and disappointed. The modern "spies" on their return did not carry with them the luscious grapes of Escol to thrill the multitude with a desire to follow their example. They brought home depressing tales of squalor, discomfort, and exaction which dispelled the glamour and discouraged further pilgrimages. Settled government gives the Holy Land its first chance for 1900 years. But there is so much undeveloped country demanding the attention of civilisation that Palestine will lose that chance unless it is made the special charge of some powerful influence. The Jews alone can redeem it from the wilderness and restore its ancient glory.

In that trust there is no injustice to any other race. The Arabs have neither the means, the energy, nor the ambition to discharge this duty. The British Empire has too many burdens on its shoulders to carry this experiment through successfully. The Jewish race with its genius, its resourcefulness, its tenacity, and not least its wealth, can alone perform this essential task. The Balfour Declaration is not an expropriating but an enabling clause. It is only a charter of equality for the Jews. Here are its terms:

"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in
Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will
use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this
object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done
which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political
status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

The declaration was subsequently endorsed and adopted by President Wilson and the French and Italian foreign ministers.

The Zionists ask for no more. It has been suggested by their enemies that they are seeking to establish a Jewish oligarchy in Palestine that will reduce the Arab inhabitant to a condition of servitude to a favoured Hebrew minority. The best answer to that charge is to be found in the memorandum submitted by the Zionist Association to the League of Nations.

"The Jews demand no privilege, unless it be the privilege of
rebuilding by their own efforts and sacrifices a land which, once
the seat of a thriving and productive civilisation, has long been
suffered to remain derelict. They expect no favoured treatment
in the matter of political or religious rights. They assume, as
a matter of course, that all the inhabitants of Palestine, be
they Jews or non-Jews, will be in every respect on a footing of
perfect equality. They seek no share in the government beyond that
to which they may be entitled under the Constitution as citizens
of the country. They solicit no favours. They ask, in short, no
more than an assured opportunity of peacefully building up their
national home by their own exertions and of succeeding on their
merits."

It is a modest request which these exiles from Zion propound to the nations. And surely it is just that it should be conceded, and if conceded then carried out in the way men of honour fulfil their bond. There are fourteen millions of Jews in the world. They belong to a race which for at least 1900 years has been subjected to proscription, pillage, massacre, and the torments of endless derision--a race that has endured persecution, which for the variety of torture, physical, material and mental, inflicted on its victims, for the virulence and malignity with which it has been sustained, for the length of time it has lasted, and more than all for the fortitude and patience with which it has been suffered, is without parallel in the history of any other people. Is it too much to ask that those amongst them whose sufferings are the worst shall be able to find refuge in the land their fathers made holy by the splendour of their genius, by the loftiness of their thoughts, by the consecration of their lives, and by the inspiration of their message to mankind?

XXVIII

THE TREATY OF LAUSANNE[12]

The vanquished have returned to their spiritual home at Angora throwing their fezzes in the air. The victors have returned with their tails well between their legs. All tragedies have their scenes of comedy, and the Lausanne Conference is one of those amusing episodes interpolated by fate to relieve the poignancy of one of its greatest tragic pieces--the Turk and civilisation.

The Turk may be a bad ruler, but he is the prince of anglers. The cunning and the patience with which he lands the most refractory fish once he has hooked it is beyond compare. What inimitable play we have witnessed for six months on the shores of Lake Leman! Once the fish seemed to have broken the tackle--that was when the first conference came to an abrupt end. It simply meant, however, that the wily Oriental was giving out plenty of line. Time never worries him, he can sit and wait. He knew the moment would come when they would return with the hook well in their gullets, and the play begin once more--the reeling in and the reeling out, the line sometimes taut and strained but never snapping. Time and patience rewarded him. At last the huge tarpon are all lying beached on the banks--Britain, France, Italy, and the United States of America--high and dry, landed and helpless, without a swish left in their tails, glistening and gasping in the summer sun.

It is little wonder that Ismet had a smile on his face when all was over. Reports from Angora state that the peace is hailed there as a great Turkish triumph; and so it is. The Turk is truly a great fisherman. If he could govern as well as he angles, his would be the most formidable Empire in the world. Unfortunately he is the worst of rulers, hence the trouble--his own and that of those who unhappily have drawn him as governor in the lottery of life.

The able correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_ at the Lausanne Conference has supplied us from time to time with vivid pen pictures of the four greatest Powers of the world struggling in the toils of the squalid and broken remains of an Empire with an aggregate population equal to that of a couple of English counties that I could name. This is what he wrote about this conference, which constitutes one of the most humiliating incidents in the history of Western civilisation:--

"The records of the present Conference present an even more
marvellous series of concessions and surrenders. What was frayed
before is threadbare now. The Allies have whittled away their
own rights with a lavish hand in the cause of peace. They have
also--and this is a graver matter, for which it seems they will
have to give an account in the not distant future--gone back on
their promises to small races, which are none the less promises
because the small races have not the power to enforce their
performance. The figure that the European delegates are cutting in
Lausanne, and the agents of the _concessionnaires_ in Angora--all
alike representatives of the West--has been rendered undignified
as much by the manner as the matter of their worsting."

Since those distressing words were written the Powers have sunk yet deeper into the slough of humiliation.

_The Times_ correspondent wiring after the agreement writes in a strain of deep indignation at the blow inflicted on the prestige of the West by this extraordinary Treaty. In order to gauge the extent of the disaster to civilisation which this Treaty implies it is only necessary to give a short summary of the war aims of the Allies in Turkey.

They were stated by Mr. Asquith with his usual succinctness and clarity in a speech which he delivered when Prime Minister at the Guildhall on November 9th, 1914:--

"It is not the Turkish people--it is the Ottoman Government that
has drawn the sword, and which, I venture to predict, will perish
by the sword. It is they and not we who have rung the death-knell
of Ottoman dominion, not only in Europe but in Asia. With their
disappearance will disappear as I, at least, hope and believe, the
blight which for generations past has withered some of the fairest
regions of the earth."

In pursuance of the policy thus declared by the British Premier on behalf of the Allies a series of Agreements was entered into in the early months of 1915 between France, Russia, and ourselves, by which the greater part of Turkey, with its conglomerate population, was to be partitioned at the end of the War. Cilicia and Syria were allocated to France; Mesopotamia to Britain; Armenia and Constantinople to Russia. Palestine was to be placed under the joint control of Britain and France. Arabia was to be declared independent and a territory carved largely out of the desert--but including some famous cities of the East, Damascus, Homs and Aleppo--was to be constituted into a new Arab State, partly under the protection of France and partly of Britain. Smyrna and its precincts were to be allotted to Greece if she joined her forces with those of the Allies in the war. The Straits were to be demilitarised and garrisoned. When Italy came into the war later on in 1915, it was stipulated that in the event of the partition of Turkey being carried out in pursuance of these agreements, territories in Southern Anatolia should be assigned to Italy for development.

What was the justification for breaking up the Turkish Empire? The portions to be cut out of Turkey have a population the majority of which is non-Turkish. Cilicia and Southern Anatolia might constitute a possible exception. In these territories massacres and misgovernment had perhaps succeeded at last in turning the balance in favour of the Turk. But in the main the distributed regions were being cultivated and developed before the war by a population which was Western and not Turanian in its origin and outlook. This population represented the original inhabitants of the soil.

The experiences, more especially of the past century, had demonstrated clearly that the Turk could no longer be entrusted with the property, the honour, or the lives of any Christian race within his dominions. Whole communities of Armenians had been massacred under circumstances of the most appalling cruelty in lands which their ancestors had occupied since the dawn of history. And even after the war began 700,000 of these wretched people had been done to death by these savages, to whom, it must be remembered, the Great Powers so ostentatiously proffered the hand of friendship at the first Lausanne conference. Even while the conference was in session, and the handshaking was going on, the Turks were torturing to death scores of thousands of young Greeks whom they deported into the interior. As "a precautionary measure" 150,000 Greeks of military age, of whom 30,000 were military prisoners, were last year driven inland to the mountains of Anatolia. On the way they were stripped of their clothes, and in this condition were herded across the icy mountains. It is not surprising that when an agreement was arrived at for the exchange of military prisoners, the Turks found the greatest difficulty in producing 11,000, and of the total 150,000 it is estimated that two-thirds perished. The Allied Powers had every good reason for determining, as they hoped for all time, that this barbarian should cease to shock the world by repeated exhibitions of savagery against helpless and unarmed people committed to his charge by a cruel fate.

Apart from these atrocities the fact that great tracts of country, once the most fertile and populous in the world, have been reduced by Turkish misrule and neglect to a condition which is indistinguishable from the wilderness, alone proves that the Turk is a blight and a curse wherever he pitches his tent, and that he ought in the interests of humanity to be treated as such. When a race, which has no title to its lands other than conquest, so mismanages the territories it holds by violence as to deprive the world of an essential contribution to its well-being, the nations have a right--nay, a duty--to intervene in order to restore these devastated areas to civilisation. This same duty constitutes the reason and justification for the white settlers of America overriding the prior claims of the Indian to the prairies and forests of the great West.

On the shores of the Mediterranean are two races with a surplus population of hard-working, intelligent cultivators, both of them belonging to countries which had themselves in the past been responsible for the government of the doomed lands covered by the Turkish Empire. Greece and Italy could claim that under their rule this vast territory throve and prospered mightily. They now pour their overflow of population into lands far away from the motherland. Yet they are essentially Mediterranean peoples. The history of the Mediterranean will for ever be associated with their achievements on its shores and its waters. The derelict wastes of Asia Minor need them. Valleys formerly crowded with tillers are now practically abandoned to the desert weeds. Irrigation has been destroyed or neglected. The Italian engineers are amongst the best in the world, and once they were introduced into Asia Minor would make cultivation again possible. There is plenty of scope in the deserts of Anatolia for both Italian and Greek. I was hoping for a peace that would set them both working. Had such a settlement been attained, a generation hence would have witnessed gardens thronging with happy men, women, and children, where now you have a wilderness across which men, women, and children are periodically hunted down into nameless horror.

Yet another reason for the Allied decision was the bitter resentment that existed at the ingratitude displayed by the Turk towards Britain and France. They were naturally indignant that he should have joined their foes and slammed the gate of the Dardanelles in their face, and by that means complicated and prolonged their campaign and added enormously to their burdens, their losses, and their dangers. But he had not the thankfulness even of the beast of prey in the legend towards the man who had cured his wounded limb. France and Britain had many a time extracted the thorn from the Turkish paw when he was limping along in impotent misery. They had done more. They had often saved the life of that Empire when the Russian bear was on the point of crushing it out of existence; and yet without provocation, without even a quarrel, he had betrayed them to their enemies.

I have set out shortly what the war policy of the Allies was in reference to Turkey. The Treaty of Sèvres considerably modified that policy in many vital aspects. By that Treaty, Constantinople, Cilicia, and Southern Anatolia were left to the Turk; Armenia was created into an independent State. There were many objections which could be raised to the original proposals of 1915, as it might be argued that they contemplated handing over in Cilicia and Southern Anatolia populations which in the main were Turkish and Moslem to Christian rulers. But in substance the modified plan of Sèvres was sound, and if carried out would have conduced to the well-being of the millions to be liberated by its terms for ever from Turkish rule. The world at large also would have benefited by the opportunity afforded to the industrious and intelligent Armenian and Greek populations of Turkey to renew the fertility of this land, once so bountiful in its gifts, thus enriching man's store of good things. The barbarian invasion which withered that fertility was pushed back into the interior by the Treaty of Sèvres. The Treaty of Lausanne has extended and perpetuated its sway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. I have explained the why and wherefore of Sèvres. But why Lausanne? It is a long and painful story--a compound of shortsightedness, disloyalty, selfishness, and pusillanimity amongst nations and their statesmen. And more than all, Fate happened to be in its grimmest mood when dealing with this problem. The Russian Revolution eliminated that great country from the solution of the problem on the lines of protection for the oppressed races of Turkey, and instead cast its might on the side of the oppressor. President Wilson was inclined to recommend that the United States of America should undertake the mandate for the Armenians. Had he succeeded, what a different story would now have been told! What a different story the generations to come would also tell! But his health broke down at the vital moment and America would have none of his humanitarian schemes. Then came the departure of Sonnino from the Quirinal. With him went for a momentous while the old dreams of Italian colonisation, which in the past had done so much to spread civilisation in three continents. His successors were homelier men. I have still my doubts as to whether they served Italy best by the less adventurous and more domesticated policy they pursued. The future may decide that issue. But whatever the decision, the time for action passed away, and unless and until there is another break up in Turkey, the chance Italy has lost since 1919 will not be recovered. Will it ever come back?

There followed the French check in Cilicia, and the negotiations at Angora with Mustapha Kemal, which were both single-handed and under-handed; for the Allies were not even informed of what was going on. This was a fatal step, for it broke up the unity which alone would enable the Western Powers to deal effectively with the Turk. This unity was never fully re-created. There can be no reunion without confidence. There can be no trust in the West that is broken in the East. Much of the recent mischief in the Entente came from the clandestine negotiations at Angora.

The last fatal change was the Greek revolt against Venizelos. It is often said that he is the greatest statesman thrown up by that race since Pericles. In all he has undertaken he has never failed his people. Disaster has always come to them when they refused to follow his guidance. When King Alexander was killed by a monkey, the Greeks were called upon to decide between Constantine and Venizelos. Their choice was ruinous to their country. No greater evil can befall a nation than to choose for its ruler a stubborn man with no common sense. Before the advent of Constantine, Greece, with no aid and little countenance from the Powers, was able to hold the forces of Mustapha Kemal easily at bay and even to drive him back into the fastnesses of Anatolia. In encounter after encounter the Greek army, led by men chosen for their military gifts and sufficiently well equipped, inflicted defeat after defeat on the armies of Angora. But with Constantine came a change. In the Greek army, courtiers were substituted for soldiers in the high command. French, British and Italian public opinion, with the memory of Constantine's treachery during the war still fresh in their minds, altered their attitude towards the Greeks who had elevated him to the throne in defiance of Allied sentiment. Indifferent Powers became hostile; hostile Powers became active. The final catastrophe began with the heroic but foolish march of the Greek army into the defiles of Asia Minor, followed by the inevitable retreat. It was consummated when Constantine for dynastic reasons appointed to the command of the troops in Asia Minor a crazy general whose mental condition had been under medical review. The Greeks fight valiantly when well led, but like the French, once they know they are not well led, confidence goes, and with confidence courage. Before the Kemalist attack reached their lines the Greek army was beaten and in full retreat. With attack came panic, with panic the complete destruction of what was once a fine army. With the disappearance of that army vanished the last hope for the salvation of Anatolia. That the history of the East, and probably the West, should have been changed by the bite of a monkey is just another grimace of the comic spirit which bursts now and again into the pages of every great tragedy.

All that could be done afterwards was to save the remnants of a great policy. Western civilisation put up its last fight against the return of savagery into Europe, when in September and October of last year British soldiers and sailors, deserted by allies and associates alike, saved Constantinople from hideous carnage. The Pact of Mudania was not Sèvres, but it certainly was better than Lausanne. From Sèvres to Mudania was a retreat. From Mudania to Lausanne is a rout.

What next? Lausanne is not a terminus, it is only a milestone. Where is the next? No one claims that this Treaty is peace with honour. It is not even peace. If one were dealing with a regenerated Turk, there might be hope. But the burning of Smyrna, and the cold-blooded murders of tens of thousands of young Greeks in the interior, prove that the Turk is still unchanged. To quote again from the correspondent of _The Times_ at Lausanne:--

"All such evidence as can be obtained here confirms the belief
that the new Turk is but the old, and that the coming era of
enlightenment and brotherly love in Turkey, for which it is the
correct thing officially to hope, will be from the foreigners'
point of view at best a humiliating, and at worst a bloody, chaos."

The amazing legend that the Turk is a gentleman is dying hard. That legend has saved him many a time when he was on the brink of destruction. It came to his aid in October last when the policy of this country was changed by the revolt of the Turcophile against the Coalition. The Turk has massacred hundreds of thousands of Armenians, and dishonoured myriads of Christian women who trusted to his protection. Nevertheless the Turk is a gentleman! By his indolence, his shiftiness, his stupidity, and his wantonness, he has reduced a garden to a desert. What better proof can there be that he is a real gentleman? For a German bribe he sold the friends who had repeatedly saved his wretched life. All the same, what a gentleman he is! He treated British prisoners with a barbarous neglect that killed them off in hundreds. Still, he is such a gentleman! He plunders, he slays, and outrages those who are unable to defend themselves. He misgoverns, cheats, lies, and betrays. For all that, the Turk is a gentleman! So an agitation was engineered with perverse tenacity to save this fine old Oriental gentleman from the plebeian hands that sought his destruction. Hence the black Treaty of Lausanne.

_London, July 25th, 1923_

FOOTNOTE:

[12] London, July 25th, 1923. The Treaty of Lausanne, between the Allies and the Turks, was signed on July 24th, 1923.

XXIX

THE SIGNING OF THE IRISH TREATY

When a few days ago I was half-way through the speech I delivered in the House of Commons on the land system the faithful Commons were summoned in the manner consecrated by centuries of tradition to the bar of the House of Lords to hear the royal assent being given to the bill for the constitution of the Irish Free State. Notwithstanding a natural preoccupation with my interrupted speech two scenes came to my mind during my short journey to and from the upper chamber.

The first was the spectacle of a crowded House of Commons nearly thirty years ago. When the doors were opened for prayers there was the unwonted sight of a throng of hustling M.P.'s pressing through the swing doors to secure seats. I need hardly say this was not the symptom or the outcome of any religious revival amongst our legislators. It was entirely due to the ancient custom that confers upon a member occupying a seat at prayers the unchallengeable right to that seat for the rest of the sitting. Rows of chairs were arrayed on the floor of the House. That was an innovation never since followed. What was it all about? There sat in the middle of the Treasury bench huddled up and almost hidden by more stalwart and upright figures an old man of 83 years, to all appearances in the last stage of physical decrepitude and mental lassitude. His name was William Ewart Gladstone, the greatest parliamentary gladiator of all time. The lifelong champion of oppressed nationalities was to-day to inaugurate his final effort to give freedom to the Irish race trodden for centuries by ruthless force. The last remnant of his strength was to be consecrated to the achievement of Irish liberty, and hundreds of eager legislators to whom Peel and Russell, Palmerston and Disraeli were but historical names, were avid competitors for seats from which they could better listen to a man who had sat in governments with the first three and crossed swords with the fourth. It was a memorable sight.

The preliminary questions which precede all parliamentary business were by common consent postponed, and a deep and solemn silence thrilling with expectancy fell upon the humming assembly as Mr. Speaker Peel in his sonorous voice called out "the Prime Minister." The inert heap which was the centre of all gaze sprang to the table an erect and alert figure. The decrepitude was cast off like a cloak--the lassitude vanished as by a magician's wand, the shoulders were thrown back, the chest was thrown forward, and in deep, ringing tones full of music and force the proposed new Irish charter was expounded for three unwearying hours by the transfigured octogenarian rejuvenated by the magic of an inspired soul. I had a seat just opposite the great orator. I was one of the multitude who on that occasion listened with marvel to that feat of intellectual command and physical endurance. It was more than that. It was an unrivalled display of moral courage, rare in political conflict. Mr. Gladstone had only just emerged out of a general election where, in spite of six years of his eloquent advocacy, the voice of Great Britain had declared emphatically against his Irish policy, and the poor parliamentary majority at his back was made up out of the preponderating Irish vote in favour of Home Rule. He was confronted with the most formidable parliamentary opposition ever ranged against a minister, redoubtable in debating quality, still more redoubtable in its hold on British pride. He was eighty-three years of age, but he never quailed, and through the sultry summer months of 1893 he fought night by night with mighty strokes the battle of Irish emancipation. He did not live to carry the cause through to victory, but he planted the banner so firmly in the soil that no assault could succeed in tearing it down, and on the day when I stood with Mr. Bonar Law at the bar of the House of Lords I saw this banner flourished in triumph from the steps of the throne by a Unionist Lord Chancellor. That was the first memory that flashed through my brain.

The next was of a dreary December night just one year ago when on one side of the Cabinet table in 10 Downing Street sat four representatives of Great Britain and on the other five Irish leaders. It was the famous room wherein British cabinets have for generations forged their Irish policies. Coercion and concession alike issued from that chamber. Pitt's Act of Union was discussed there, and so were Gladstone's Home Rule bills, the decision to use British soldiers to throw Irish tenants out of their houses with battering ram and torch and equally the bill which made every Irish tenant lord and master of his home at the expense of the British treasury--all issued forth from this simple and unadorned council chamber. And now came the final treaty of peace. Would it be signed? It was an anxious moment charged with destiny for the two great races who confronted each other at that green table.

The British representatives who were associated with me on the occasion were Mr. Austen Chamberlain; [I recall now how he sat by the side of his doughty father, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, in 1893, during the famous nightly duel between him and Mr. Gladstone. How strangely little thirty arduous years have changed his personal appearance!] Lord Birkenhead, who, in 1893 was carving for himself a brilliant career as a student at Oxford and as a debater in the Union; Mr. Winston Churchill who was then a cadet at Sandhurst whilst his father was engaged in the last great parliamentary struggle of his dazzling but tragic career; Sir Gordon Hewart, now Lord Hewart, the man who has risen on the pinions of a powerful intelligence to the height of Lord Chief Justice of England. My recollection is that the other two British delegates--Sir Laming Worthington-Evans and Sir Hamar Greenwood--were stricken with illness and were unable to be present. After weeks of close investigation the climax of decision had been reached. Britain had gone to the limit of concession. No British statesman could have faced any assembly of his countrymen had he appended his signature to a convention that placed Ireland outside that fraternity of free nations known as the British Empire or freed her from that bond of union which is represented by a common fealty to the sovereign. It is not easy to interpret the potency of this invisible bond to those who are brought up to venerate other systems. It is nevertheless invincible. Would the Irish leaders have the courage to make peace on the only conditions under which peace was attainable--liberty within the Empire?

Opposite me sat a dark, short, but sturdy figure with the face of a thinker. That was Mr. Arthur Griffith, the most un-Irish leader that ever led Ireland, quiet to the point of gentleness, reserved almost to the point of appearing saturnine. A man of laconic utterance, he answered in monosyllables where most men would have considered an oratorical deliverance to be demanded by the dignity of the occasion. But we found in our few weeks' acquaintance that his yea was yea and his nay meant nay. He led the Irish deputation. He was asked whether he would sign. In his abrupt, staccato manner he replied, "Speaking on my own behalf I mean to sign."

By his side sat a handsome young Irishman. No one could mistake his nationality. He was Irish through and through, in every respect a contrast to his taciturn neighbour. Vivacious, buoyant, highly strung, gay, impulsive, but passing readily from gaiety to grimness and back again to gaiety, full of fascination and charm--but also of dangerous fire. That was Michael Collins, one of the most courageous leaders ever produced by a valiant race. Nevertheless he hesitated painfully when the quiet and gentle little figure on his left had taken his resolve. Both saw the shadow of doom clouding over that fateful paper--their own doom. They knew that the pen which affixed their signature at the same moment signed their death-warrant. The little man saw beyond his own fall Ireland rising out of her troubles a free nation and that sufficed for him. Michael Collins was not appalled by the spectre of death, but he had the Irishman's fear of encountering that charge which comes so readily to the lips of the oppressed--that of having succumbed to alien wile and betrayed their country. Patriots who cheerfully face the tyrant's steel lose their nerve before that dread accusation. It was the first time Michael Collins ever showed fear. It was also the last. I knew the reason why he halted, although he never uttered a word which revealed his mind, and I addressed my appeal to an effort to demonstrate how the treaty gave Ireland more than Daniel O'Connell and Parnell had ever hoped for, and how his countrymen would be ever grateful to him not only for the courage which won such an offer, but for the wisdom that accepted it.

He asked for a few hours to consider, promising a reply by nine o'clock. Nine passed, but the Irish leaders did not return. Ten. Eleven, and they were not yet back. We had doubts as to whether we should see them again. Then came a message from the secretary of the Irish delegation that they were on their way to Downing Street. When they marched in it was clear from their faces that they had come to a great decision after a prolonged struggle. But there were still difficulties to overcome--they were, however, difficulties not of principle but of detail. These were discussed in a businesslike way, and soon after one o'clock in the morning the treaty was complete. A friendly chat full of cheerful goodwill occupied the time whilst the stenographers were engaged in copying the draft so disfigured with the corrections, interpolations and additions, each of which represented so many hours of hammering discussion.

Outside in the lobby sat a man who had used all the resources of an ingenious and well-trained mind backed by a tenacious will to wreck every endeavour to reach agreement--Mr. Erskine Childers, a man whose slight figure, whose kindly, refined and intellectual countenance, whose calm and courteous demeanour offered no clue to the fierce passions which raged inside his breast. At every crucial point in the negotiations he played a sinister part. He was clearly Mr. de Valera's emissary, and faithfully did he fulfil the trust reposed in him by that visionary. Every draft that emanated from his pen--and all the first drafts were written by him--challenged every fundamental position to which the British delegates were irrevocably committed. He was one of those men who by temperament are incapable of compromise. Brave and resolute he undoubtedly was, but unhappily for himself he was also rigid and fanatical. When we walked out of the room where we had sat for hours together, worn with tense and anxious labour, but all happy that our great task of reconciliation had been achieved, we met Mr. Erskine Childers outside sullen with disappointment and compressed wrath at what he conceived to be the surrender of principles he had fought for.

I never saw him after that morning. Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith I met repeatedly after the signature of the treaty, to discuss the many obstacles that surged up in the way of its execution, and I acquired for both a great affection. Poor Collins was shot by one of his own countrymen on a bleak Irish roadside, whilst he was engaged in restoring to the country he had loved so well the order and good government which alone enables nations to enjoy the blessings of freedom. Arthur Griffith died worn out by anxiety and toil in the cause he had done so much to carry to the summit of victory. Erskine Childers was shot at dawn for rebellion against the liberties he had helped to win.

Truly the path of Irish freedom right up to the goal is paved with tragedy. But the bloodstained wilderness is almost through, the verdant plains of freedom are stretched before the eyes of this tortured nation. Ireland will soon honour the name of the Green Isle, and I am proud to have had a hand in erecting the pillar which will for ever mark the boundary between the squalor of the past and the hope of the future.

_London, December 16th, 1922._

XXX

PROHIBITION

Four years ago the United States of America, by a two-thirds majority, voted prohibition of the sale of alcoholic liquors. The British House of Commons have just voted down a bill for the same purpose by a majority of 236 to 14. America treats prohibition as one of its greatest moral triumphs. Britain treats it as a joke.

What accounts for this remarkable disparity in the attitude of the two great English-speaking communities towards one of the most baffling and elusive problems civilisation has to deal with? It cannot be a fundamental difference in temperament or in moral outlook. The men who engineered prohibition in America are of our own race and kind, bred in the Puritan traditions that came originally from our shores.

If the evils of excessive drinking had been more apparent in America than in Britain I could understand the States of the Union deciding to take more drastic action than has been thought necessary in our country. But the facts are exactly the reverse. The consumption of alcohol in the United Kingdom some years before the war per head of the population was higher than that of the United States. The poverty, disease, and squalor caused by alcohol was much greater in Britain than in America.

What, then, accounts for the readiness of America to forbid the sale and the reluctance of Britain even seriously to restrict it?

I would not care to dogmatise on the subject, but I will hazard two or three possible explanations.

I set aside the suggestion that property owners are frightened by the sequel to prohibition in Russia. I have heard it argued that the prohibition ukase of the tsar was responsible for the Russian revolution. That is probably true, for a people stupefied by alcohol will stand anything. The inefficiency and corruption of the tsarist régime was so appalling that no sober nation could have tolerated it without rebellion for a single year, and when the fumes of vodka ceased to muddle and blind the _moujik_, he rebelled against the autocracy that had betrayed his country into disaster. The Russian experiment in drink, therefore, contains no warning against prohibition, except a very limited one, that those who wish to misrule a country in safety must first of all drench it with alcohol.