The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1913. TURKEY’S PLIGHT.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 66, 26 March 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1913. TURKEY’S PLIGHT.

Turkey’s reluctance to agree to a termination of the war on the terms 'offered is explained, to some extent, by Mr Ashmead-Bartlett, a noted correspondent at the front. In his book “With the Turks in Thrace,” writing before the renewal of hostilities, lie expressed the view that Adrianoplo must soon fall, but that the Turks behind the Chataldja lines were invincible, so long as they remained entrenched there. Their annihilation would only be possible if, trusting to their superior numbers, they took the offensive against the besieging army. “Both armies, if they endeavoured to take the offensive, have the same difficulties to overcome, and both have the same advantages if they remain on the defensive. They are facing one another in a narrow peninsula, very mountainous, which offers no room for the deployment of a large army on attack. Both would have to advance over a narrow front, which renders it impossible for a general to bring anything like an army of one hundred thousand men into action at the same time.” At the same time he viewed the Turkish situation generally as quite hopeless, but arrives at the conclusion that it is fear and not patriotism or sentiment that keeps the Turks fighting fiercely. “I do not think sentiment accounts for much among the Turks in this age, and I know there are a great many Turks who, even before I left Constantinople, realised that Adrianople was lost to them for ever. The Turkish Government is holding out, because they stand in wholesome dread of the army at Chataldja. Soldiers do not think like statesmen. The ignorant private cannot look far enough ahead to grasp the fact that his country may lose more in the end by refusing to give up a beleaguered fortress. Probably more than two-thirds of the Turkish army, which is now occupying the lines, have never tired a shot during the war. They do not know what defeat and starvation mean, and, with a pride natural in any army they do not relish the idea of returning to their homes to announce that all the European provinces of the Empire have been lost to the faith, and then to have to admit that they themselves never fired a shot.” And so the Turks bold on, hoping for better things as in the

past when, after crushing defeat at| Russia’s hands, the Empire was saved by the intervention of the Powers.