TURKS PROCLAIM BANISHMENT EDICT TO 1,000,000 GREEKS
Ismet, in Lausanne Conference, Gives Those Remaining in Turkey Two Weeks' Grace.
ALLIES ACCEPT THE DICTUM
Proceed to Discussion of Means of Evacuation -- Greeks in Constantinople
Included.
CONFERENCE RECESS SOON
Leaders, Despairing of Agreement Now, Plan for an Adjournment About Dec.15
Sunday, December 3, 1922
New York Times Editorial
Page 6, Col. 2, Section 2,
A BLACK FRIDAY.
There have been many Black Fridays in recent history. Most of them have
been days of financial panic. There has been none of blacker foreboding
than last Friday. And the blackness is not loss or fear of loss in
stocks and bonds. It is the blackness of loss of home, the blackness of
exile and suffering and the peril of death. But that which deepens the
darkness that has come upon the earth in the broad daylight of the
twentieth century is civilization's prompt acceptance of the Turks'
decree of banishment not only of a million Greeks, but incidentally of
all Christian minorities within the Turkish realm beyond the
Hellespont, which the Aryan crossed over three thousand years ago.
Light blackens such a blot. Lord Curzon but urged that the Greeks be
gotten out as
quickly as possible in order to escape massacre. For the rest there was,
so far as reported, only quiet acquiescence.
Meanwhile, the dispatches from Washington of the same date report that
the Administration believes that the United States "is not without
influence at Lausanne," that not only the Allies but the Turkish
representatives appear to be "wholly satisfied" with the part that the
United States is playing at Lausanne, and that the very latest reports
from Ambassador Child enable the Department of State to draw the
conclusion that the work of the "gathering" at Lausanne is "proceeding
satisfactorily." Let us assume that the "very latest reports" do not
include the happenings of Friday. If the government were knowingly
"wholly satisfied" with that day's record, then black were white. It is
inconceivable that the American people can be as "wholly satisfied"
with our part as the Turks are reported to be.
Is this to be the end of the Christian minorities in Asia Minor--that
land where, thirteen centuries and more before the Turk came first to
rule it, Paul had journeyed as a missionary through its length and
breadth, and where the first "seven churches that are in Asia stood," to
which the messages written in the Book of Revelation were sent?
December 4, 1922
The New York Times
Page 16, Col. 3
THE STATESMANSHIP OF EXTERMINATION.
What The Times thinks about the morality of the Turkish plan to drive
every Greek and Armenian out of Turkey--which means that a great many
of them will die or be murdered on the way, and that others will fall
victims to famine or pestilence in their places of refuge--has already
been said. It has been pointed out, too, that the serious thing is not
so much the morality of the Turk, which has been fairly well known to
the world for several centuries but that of the so-called Christian
Powers which stood by and were consenting.
The British Government protested in the name of humanity when the Greek
revolutionaries shot a group of ex-Ministers and Generals. But when the
Turks announce that a million Greeks are to be expelled from the
country where they have lived since two thousand years before the Turks
were heard of, and driven out to die, Lord Curzon's moral scruples are
satisfied with a request for two weeks delay. Politicians it seems can
be knocked by killings only when the victims are other politicians.
Even granting that this eviction on a grand scale will be
successful--as apparently it will--what is to become of Turkey? What
will become of the deported Greeks and Armenians is, unhappily plain
enough. What of the Turks who will be left to undisturbed enjoyment of
the country which has been somewhat inexactly called their homeland?
Their friends make much of their "racial vitality" which has been
demonstrated by the national revival. But racial vitality which
exhausts itself in a capacity for
fighting diplomatic intrigue and a low grade of agriculture is poor
equipment for a nation in the twentieth century, especially for a
nation occupying a country of enormous strategic and military
importance. Already there is trouble in Smyrna. The expulsion of the
Greeks and Armenians has ruined the town. What has happened in Smyrna
will happen in Constantinople if the Christian population is expelled.
Turkey will be left a nation of peasants, and the business which was
formerly done by Greeks and Armenians will have to be done by somebody
other than the Turks.
It is too much to suppose that the world will leave the Turks to till
their fields and enjoy the pleasant spectacle of deserted and ruined
cities undisturbed by the complications of modern business. Somebody is
going after the iron and the oil. The great cultured nations of Western
Europe which watch calmly the annihilation of some of the oldest stocks
of European culture may be calm because they think they will get a
bigger share of the business with resident business men out of the way.
But business there must be: even the Turks will need it. And the
killing off of the races that have done the business hitherto will
merely widen the field for that foreign intrigue which the Near East
has known for centuries and will continue to know so long as weak or
incompetent States lie in the zone between Asia and Europe.
There is some justice in the Turkish complaint that the Christian
minorities were used as pawns in foreign diplomatic games: but the
games will go on with other pawns. The Turks will not be let alone, nor
will the Near East cease to be a breeding ground of European wars. The
Turks have found themselves unable to get along with races whose
collaboration was essential if Turkey was to continue to exist under
modern conditions. They knew no way to solve that problem but the
extermination of the minorities. Yet this murder of hundreds of
thousands of men, women and children will in the long run bring no
profit either to the Turks who do it or to the European Powers which
are apparently going to allow it.
December 9, 1922
The New York Times
Letter to the Editor