Germany should choose her own way of meeting this annual charge. He would modify or rearrange the conditions about coal in such a way as to permit the continuance of Germany's industrial life. He would establish a Free Trade Union under the auspices of the League of Nations, and compel Germany, Poland, the new states which formerly composed the AustroHungarian and Turkish Empires, and the mandated states to join this union for ten years.

These proposals, he considers, would 'do something appreciable to enable the industrial populations of Europe to continue to earn a livelihood.' But more than this is needed. Inter-Allied

debts should be forgiven. This is asking a sacrifice of the United States, but her sacrifices in the war have been conspicuously lighter than those of her European allies. Further, for the immediate needs of Europe he proposes an international loan. But all this programme depends on the abandonment of the spirit and policy that have brought Europe to the brink of ruin. Mr. Keynes's book should be studied with care by all the politicians who may find themselves called on in a year or two to rescue the world from the consequences of the catastrophe of Paris. It gives a definite and reasoned policy to the forces of democracy in this country, in America, and in Europe as a whole.

We are not yet informed of the outcome of the negotiations initiated in London by Clemenceau, and continued by Berthelot, upon the ultimate fate of Turkey; but of course we are well aware that the question of the Dardanelles is of first importance. Mr. Lloyd George has given the view of the British Government to Parliament: the Sultan proved an untrustworthy porter, so we deprived him of the office which he had proved incompetent to fill, or, better said, which he had betrayed.

This settles the purely negative aspect of the question. But how are we to deal with the positive aspect? In other words, if the Sultan is to lose

VOL. 17-NO. 854

his territorial sovereignty and cease to be the guardian of the Straits, who is to take his place?

This question has remained unsolved ever since the Turks established themselves in Europe, and Russia extended its borders to the Black Sea. Its general importance to all nations makes this question the axis upon which the whole problem of the Far East revolved. Considered solely as a question of territory, it runs tangent to the entire Balkan problem. In its relation to the continent of Asia, it is a vital factor in the foreign policy of the whole civilized world. Considered as a purely maritime problem, it determines control of

ocean traffic throughout the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. The Straits are an indispensable link in the great water route which has its beginning at the sources of the Danube, Dnieper, and the Don, and extends to the point where the Red Sea joins the Indian Ocean.

Any decision affecting this great international highway is a matter of vital interest to Russia, AustriaHungary, Czecho-Slovakia, Bulgaria, European Turkey (if it survives), Asiatic Turkey, and all the nations of the Levant and Northern Africa. We may even say that our present decisions will affect profoundly the future of every country bordering on the Mediterranean.

England and France are called upon to take the initiative in a problem of such importance. In the first place, ever since the Crimean War, France and England have assumed heavy responsibilities and incurred great risks in order to protect the freedom of the Straits. In the second place, France and England after their recent victories in Europe and Asia represent a union of authority and responsibility which makes it their duty to the whole civilized world to settle once for all this problem.

Allowing for all this, however, it would violate other principles, for which we fought during the war and which we have defended during the peace negotiations, were we to disregard the other Powers, large and small, who are interested, like ourselves, in the commerce controlled by the Straits.

This is a point upon which Mr. Venizelos has made the facts plain, with a frankness and definiteness that are characteristic of his direct and forceful temper. He says in an interview which has all the weight of a diplomatic communication.

Mr. Lloyd George has already said that the Turks have been unfaithful porters. The Greeks are more interested than any others in having a competent and faithful guardian at Constantinople. You are well aware that Greece wants an international commission. The control of the portal to the countries of the Near East should be shared by all the parties interested.

It is hardly likely that Mr. Venizelos would have been so explicit, had he not taken the usual precaution of consulting beforehand with the other ing an international commission, he is governments interested. In demanddoubtless voicing the wishes of other powers. A matter of such importance for the Mediterranean countries surely could not be disposed of without consulting Italy. The Giornale d'Italia says, not without humor:

France will come back to us sometime, smiling as graciously as she did in 1914-15, and again intoning a chant to a Latin alliance. In the interval, however, the fate of Constantinople, of Asia Minor, and of Syria is being settled without consulting Italy, and we are called upon to sacrifice all our aspirations in that region.

Let us not attach too much seriousness to this hint, nor shape our government policies in accordance with a political whim. However, we are placing our finger right here upon one of those imponderable influences in international affairs that ought never to be neglected. It is hardly necessary to say that we are encroaching upon a field that is not exclusively our own.

France is deeply interested in defending the rights of the smaller Powers without losing sight of its good relations with those more powerful allies to whom it is bound by considerations affecting its own existence.

Here is the difficulty. As the whole world knows, the friendship between France and Britain must be our first consideration: that determines everything. But this friendship is not neces

sarily incompatible with our good relations to other Powers. In a word, we ought to consider the situation from all its aspects.

Without making any assumptions as to what the negotiations of our statesman may ultimately reveal, I am moved to ask if an equitable and practicable solution of the problem of the Dardanelles cannot be found in a proposal which I made a long time ago, concerning which memoranda ought to exist in the archives of the Russian and Roumanian governments. Appreciating that the question was insoluble so long as the Sultan possessed exclusive suzerainty over the Straits, I attempted to discuss this as a separate question from the general problem of the Near East. What I proposed was an arrangement similar to that adopted to regulate the navigation of the mouth of the Danube. In other words, I proposed an international agreement enforced by an international commission, following closely the precedents that had proved successful in the instance just cited.

I suggested that the powers entrusted to the Danube Commission should be amplified and extended to the Bosporus and Dardanelles. I urged that history, like nature, should do nothing by leaps. I proposed a simple adaptation and development of a method that had already stood the

test.

I hardly need add that, in making such an arrangement, we should take into account the relative importance of various national interests. England,

occupying a unique position as a maritime power, and charged with the government of vast territories interested in this commerce, and vitally dependent as she is upon her naval predominance, should have a correspondingly influential place on the commission. In any question of this sort England must take precedence. We must allot authority throughout in accordance with the obligations and power of the different parties to the agreement.

But the other governments should also have their places in the sun. It is prudent, just, and proper that we should not permit resentment, bitterness, discontent, and disappointment in regard to ambitions directed toward perfectly legitimate objects, to impair the future good feeling of nations. If we do, there will unavoidably come a day when these repressed forces will produce a disastrous explosion. I have no doubt but that our diplomats have pondered all these things. Their portfolios are stuffed with solutions of the Near East problem - they are as numerous as the good intentions that pave the path to the nether regions.

It is now time that we should address ourselves to a solution in which France shall assume its natural rôle of a sagacious and reasonable mediator. It has never had a more favorable opportunity. Furthermore, if we are to believe history, the peace of the Mediterranean, which is the same as saying the peace of the world, depends upon a just and final solution of the question of the Dardanelles.

[Frankfurter Zeitung, November 4, 1919] THE NEW NATIONAL MOVE

MENT IN TURKEY

THE cabinet of Ali Riza Pasha is the fifth within less than a year, or since the Entente concluded an armistice with Turkey. The new Grand Vizier has speedily learned that in spite of the solemn ceremonial with which he was inducted into office in the historical palace of the High Port, his real authority is naught. No Turkish opposition party such as he represents has real strength or an effective organization. The only reason it is nominally in power is because the rifles of the Entente soldiers and the cannon of the Entente navy are behind it. Beyond the range of these guns, the present Turkish government has no authority. It is a silly fiction to suppose that the Young Turk party vanished from the face of the earth as soon as the allied troops made their triumphal entry into Constantinople. Although most of the prominent leaders were speedily arrested and immured in Engglish prisons at Malta, or else escaped to foreign countries, the party is just as well disciplined and just as determined as ever. Blunders of the victors, who are utterly ignorant of Turkish psychology, quickly made the Ottoman people forget the mistakes of the Young Turks.

The national movement, which began to crystallize little by little in Anatolia early in the year, has become exceedingly powerful and now involves practically the whole Mohammedan population. We must regard this renaissance of an unjustly depreciated nation with mingled envy and respect. It rejects resolutely the terms dictated by the Entente, which contemplated the annihilation of the Ottoman Empire. The extraordinary success of the revolt in Anatolia, led by General

Mustafa Kemel and Captain Ref Bey, would be incomprehensible were it not for the support of practically the entire population of Asia Minor. The repeated fulminations of the Sultan against the Anatolian rebels fall on deaf ears. Or, rather, they have deprived the Sultan of much of the prestige he formerly enjoyed, and have made his influence negligible.

Mustafa Kemel is directing his first attention to the Greeks. This reacts upon the European provinces of Turkey where the Greeks have been exposed to serious attacks. Right under the eyes of the Entente, a vendetta has started which is visiting vengeance on the resident Greek population, in retaliation for the ambitious pretentions to Turkish territories advanced by Venizelos. Assassinations in Thrace are reported daily. They have become so numerous recently that the Greek bishops presented themselves in Constantinople asking Entente protection for their people.

The complaints of the Greeks, whose barbarous proceedings when they occupied Smyrna were the first cause for the passionate hatred which the Turks now bear them, seem to have enlightened the Entente as to the true inwardness of the situation. The allied authorities at Constantinople are no longer captivated with the Utopian plans of the Athenian politicians, which looked so glorious to them a year ago. The recent change of ministry is sufficient proof of that. The old cabinet was devoted to France and indirectly favorable to Greece. It fell in spite of that. When the Turkish delegation to the Peace Conference at Paris came back practically in disgrace, the days of the old cabinet were numbered. France was not able to keep its friends in power. Now that country has sacrificed what little popularity it retained by its attitude

toward the pretentions of Venizelos. This is the situation behind the recent change in the Turkish cabinet. It was due to the increasing power of General Mustafa Kemel, who insisted on the retirement of the old premier. To be sure, the new cabinet does not consist of active champions of the young Turk party. But it is composed of men at heart in sympathy with them. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is very pro-English, will probably bridge over the gulf between the Allies and the new movement.

We have already pointed out that General Mustafa Kemel will not consider negotiating unless Turkey's wishes in regard to the occupation of the Province of Smyrna are complied with. London pretends to find this condition impossible; but those who are most intimate with the situation, and with English politics, are not greatly impressed by that attitude. The English are always guided by practical considerations. They would have to bear the entire expense of a war in Anatolia; for America shows no disposition to accept the Armenian mandate. Mustafa Kemel would, consequently, force England to increase its armies on every front in Asiatic Turkey and on the Dardanelles, without any prospect of gaining practical advantages in return. The English have not yet decided what path they will take to escape from the Greek dilemma. The tone of the Greek press is far less confident than it was a few months ago - a fact which indicates that England is considering a reconciliation with the Anatolian insurgents.

[Corriere della Sera, December 19, 1919] AUSTRIA IN EXTREMIS

It is no secret that the Austria created by the Treaty of Versailles and Saint-Germain was from the outset an

abortion. This republic of Germans forbidden to call themselves Germans, this imperial Capital without an empire, this highway without entrance or exit, this marketplace without merchandise, was merely a fiction of the cartographers- a dead dummy of the diplomats. If the Supreme Council had recalled that we fought the war in order that nations might determine their own destiny, they would have solved the problem justly and easily by permitting the Germans of Austria to join the Germans of the North. But the Supreme Council fancied that as soon as the solemn ceremonies were over it could deride the saints to its heart's content, and that the ideals and principles it had previously professed might be treated like a sword, with the hilt in the hand of the conqueror and the point at the throat of the vanquished. This was a tragic

error.

The proof in case of Austria is so dramatic as to verge on the grotesque. That country does not rebel nor threaten. It signs anything you place before it with a sardonic good nature that has tested to the limit the wisdom. of the Supreme Council. The one thing certain is that the Austria thus created cannot survive. It is an artificial creation imposed on the world in defiance of history, geography, economic necessity and common sense. You can ask anything of Austria except that it exist. The Supreme Council forced upon it Article 80 of the Treaty of Versailles which prevented its uniting with Germany. Austria accepted the condition but refuses to live. The Supreme Council forces it to accept Article 88 of the Treaty of Saint Germain which forbids its joining any other government and compels it to languish in monastic isolation. Austria signs, but it refuses to exist. So, little by little, one after