The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 1913. SIDELIGHTS ON THE WAR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 9, 9 January 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, JANUARY 9, 1913. SIDELIGHTS ON THE WAR.

Speaking on the progress of the Balkan War at a gathering of the Aberdeen University Club recently, Sir William Ramsay said it was remarkable how little progress Europe seemed to make, or to be capable of making, without the medium of some terrible war. Turkey had played a great part in the history of the Continent for live and a half centuries; but though she had conquered her Balkan provinces by force of arms, conquest alone did not confer upon the conqueror the right to the possession of the soil—that had to be won by the subsequent behaviour of the conquerors; they had to make their possession good for the country conquered and good for the world as a whole before their right of possession became permanent. Turkey had failed in the present war largely because she was under the necessity of feeding her army from outside the country in which it was fighting, and that necessity was forced upon her as the result of the character of her government in Macedonia and Thrace. Turkey’s failure was probably tine to three main causes—at any rate, it appeared so from a hasty view of the situation. The first was her inability to use the resources of civilisation in the supply and distribution of her army’s food; the second her inability to move with precision and success great bodies of troops; and the third, and worst of all, the want of moral power and determination. In considering the past on which the reputation of the Turks was based they would find that these causes had not always existed. In former wars they had been able to live upon the countries they occupied, and they had never had to guide the movements of such large forces of men. In former wars, too, the moral of their army had been supplied by pride of race and pride of conquest, by couternpt for the peoples the conquered, and by religious feeling. But for the last forty years the Turks had no belief in their own cause, and it was a remarkable thing that the Mahometan races in general had a deep-hidden feeling that in Europe and even in Western Asia they were ‘ntruders, not fully authorised to be there. In their very superstitions there was always the idea of some expiation that must be offered to the older owners of the land, and all sorts of prophecies had been going about ever since he had known the Turks that their Empire would perish with Abdul Hamid. At the beginning of the Young Turkish regime there was practically no array

on tlio northern frontier; it was a mere mob, without cohesion, without discipline, arms, or ammunition, and the whole conduct cf their affairs had been conditioned by the fact that they could not fight. The army had been ruined under Abdul Hamid, and the Young Turks had not had time in which to re-create it. The Turkish de-| feat was certainly not the fault of the Young Turks; it was produced by deeper causes for which they were not responsible. Sir William Eamsay’s utterances, in some regards at least, throw new and interesting side-lights on the Balkan War.