The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1919. END OF OTTOMAN EMPIRE.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 June 1919, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1919. END OF OTTOMAN EMPIRE.

The occupation of Smyrna Is regarded by French newspapers as the end of the Ottoman Empire, just as the capture of Damascus was looked upon by the Turks themselves as the beginning of the end. It is somewhat remarkable that the fall of the Turkish Empire should have been the subject of a prophecy in its palmiest days, this prophecy "Damascus is the beginning of the end" being handed down from generation to generation and verified when General Allenby, after marching over a bare and desolate distance, captured the last Turkish stronghold in Palestine and paved the way to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which, for five hundred j years had disgraced civilisation by I misrule, cruelty, rapine and pilII age. The sway of the Turks was «pvead by murder and bloodshed,

but their wise men saw that an em]- founded on murder and pillage must come to an end., and their vision has been justified. At the same time the atrocities committed on the Turks by the Greeks at Smyrna, in bayoneting, clubbing and flinging into the sea defenceless Turks who had surrendered, shows there is very little difference between Greek and Turkish fiendiskness, and augurs badly for the future of Greece. It was a wanton and utterly -unjustifiable outrage, committed at a time when the partition of Turkey was still in the melting pot, and likely to prejudice the Greek claim to Smyrna by emboldening Italy to press for an extension of territory in that direction. There has never been anything but bad feeling between the Turks and the Greeks, or between the Turks and the Armenians, and duiing the recent war the Turks relentlessly persecuted both these peoples on every possible occasion with a ferocity without parallel. Of the two million Greeks scattered throughout Turkey it u estimated that the number now remaining does not amount to more than a million, 450,000 having been deported and died, 150,000 died while workihg in the labor battalions, and 250,000 fled to Greece. Apparently there was a determined effort to exterminate all Greeks, and it is more than likely that the Kaiser festered this policy in spite of his hold over King Constantine, who, however, appears to have been absolutely callous as to protecting his people in Thrace and Asia Minor, refusing to do anything more than to advise his subjects to do their best to live on good terms with the Turks—eminently characteristic advice, but foredoomed to failure. All things considered it is not surprising that when the Greeks got the chance to let loose their vengeance on the Turks that they took every advantage of the opportunity, for they knew their victims were out and under. The greater part of Turkey's European provinces were lost to her as the result of the Balkan war, the area being reduced from 65 350 square miles to 10,882, and the population from over six millions" to under two millions. Armenia, the cradle of the human race, has also at last been freed from Turkish cruelty and oppression, while Palestine has passed into the hands of the Allies, and Constantinople together with Gallipoli is in Allied occupation. There is no result of the war which will cause more relief to civilisation, • apart from thj crushing- of Prussian militarism, than the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. This _ event was long overdue, and its consummation should be so thorough and complete that there will be no chanee of a new empire arising from the ashes of the old. "We can view with equanimity the lois of whatever picturesqueness there was outwardly about the Turk, knowing that within was to be found the worst form of corruption, fan aticism, cruelty, ferocity and craft. The remnants of the nation may find an abiding place in Asia, but no more will tbey be able to startle the world with their horrible atrocities and campaigns of extermination. The Crescent has been dethroned by the Cross and the faithful have been put to the sword by infidels. The passing of the Ottoman Empire will allow Christendom, to breathe freely, and the place on the map occupied by Turkey will be given over to more humane nation,s, much to the advantage of the peace of the world