their point of view

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16157, 11 March 1918, Page 6

their point of view

Thero is a certain grim humour about tho action of the Philosophical Faculty of Constantinople, which was reported in January to have nominated Lenin, the Russian Bolshevik Prime Minister, for the Nobel Peace Prize. This is ono of tho five prizes given annually for eminence and notable work in chemistry, physics, medicine, literature, and the promotion of pcaee respectively, lv the administrators of what is known as tho Nobel Foundation, established under tho will of Dr. Alfred E. Nobel, the Swedish chemist and inventor of dynamite, who diod in 1896. Tho capital of the Foundation is close on two millions, and each prize is worth some £8000. The Peace Prize is awarded by a committee of tho Norwegian Parliament. It is quite safe to say that its donor never contemplated tliat its recipients should include a man like Lenin, under whoso regime the streets of Petrograd havo run red with blood, and whoso administration has so relaxed the bonds of law and discipline that murder has bccomc so common in Russia as to attract no notice, while civil war rages over large areas of tho land. Lenin, for his own purposes, has preached peaco until he has placed Russia under the heel of Germany. Tho real peacemakers to-day arc men like Ilaig and his colleagues at the head of tho armies of our Allies.

Among tho documents of tho war which have something more than an historic interest aro the proclamations which tho late General Sir Stanley Maude and General Sir Edmund Alienby read to the assembled residents of Bagdad and Jerusalem respectively, after the occupation of those cities. There was about both these proclamations a touch of Oriental rhetoric admirably adapted to tho tasto of the peoples to whom they wero addrossed. Especially was this the case with the message to the people of Bagdad, which contained passages obviously composed by someone who knew the Eastern mind. One of these attracted wide attention. It began: "0 people of Bagdad! Remember that for twenty-six generations you have ettfferod under strango tyrants who have ever endeavoured to set one Arab house against another in order that they might profit by your dissensions.'' And it doclared that this policy was abhorrent to Great Britain and her Allies, "for there can bo neither peace nor prosperity where there is enmity and misgovornmcnt."

General Maudo was recognised as a fine soldier, but no ono credited him with being a skilled Orientalist, and the suspicion that the author was not a plain soldier becaiiio strongor when the proclamation to the people of Jerusalem was published. Tho suggestion was inado that both were the work of Colonel Sir Stark Sykes, M.Pa noted traveller in the Eastj and this guess has just been proved to bo correct. 13y his own admission, Sir Mark has bosn "in aiid out of tho Near East sincc he was nine years old." He has refreshed his memories of the wavs and thoughts of tho East by visiting Mesopotamia during the war, and he was thus in a position to stress the conditions of the Arabs under their Turkish oppressors. Both proclamations, it js interesting to learn, wore written, and ready for delivery, some little time before they were actually needed, a fact which makes ono wonder whether, in the days of long ago, some British Government official, skilled in the German language and sharing the optimism too sadly common it the outset of the war, did not prepare an address to tho people of Berlin, assuring them that the victorious Allies would treat them . fairly and courteously.

The supplementary treaty or treaties entered into by Germany and Russia include, according to a cablo published last week, an agreement permitting Germany "to organise Spitsbergen." The only meaning to be extracted from this vague statement is that Germany is to have a free hand to do as i=he likes with the group. The Spitsbergen islands are, of course, not Russia's to give away. Curiously enough, despite their actual and potential valuta they belong to no one —they i>re a 110 man's land, to parts of wlii?h several countries base claims which apparently rest on nothing more than occupation. At one time, it is true, thev were under the English flag, for about three centuries ago an Order-in-Council authorised the Muscovy Company to "uphold the King's Right in Spitzbergen." The ownership, however, was never effectually carried out, the "Right" apparently lapsed, and Spitzbergen has up to tho present been one of the few places on the earth's surface which remained to be annexed.

This may be due, in part, to us forbidding character and the rigour of its Arctic climate. The interior cf the largest island, which has an ;.rea of some 15,000 square miles, lies under a sheet of eternal ice. The Gulf Stream, however, makes tho western const habitable, and the coal beds that give the island some value are worked by British, Norwegian, Russian, r»mi American companies, the American

concern having in its best year produced more than 60,000 tons. Britain claims some 3500 square miles, Norway 770. Sweden 445, Russia SO, :tr.d Germany 23, but these areas constitute only a small proportion of the area of the whole groups, which amounts to some 20.G00 square miles. Germany is stated, in an article on ihe subject in "Engineering," to liave occupied her claim mainly for meteorological purposes, but the other nations are there mainly for coal. No one, probably, contemplated the possibility of this remote ice-covered group of islands in the Arctic Ocean being involved in the war, but in view of Germany's latest action the ownership of Spitsbergen must be dealt with in Ihe final settlement.