THE DANGER IN THE EAST.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 July 1919, Page 11

THE DANGER IN THE EAST.

RESTLESSMSSS IN ISLAM. (By John Peel, in the Daily Chronicle.) 1 want to say exactly what is in my mind about this peace business and about the dangers which threaten the prospects of a permanent settlement. Those who think that When the treaties are signed wo are all going to sit down and live happily ever afterwards are living in a fool's paradise. I am firmly convinced that the risks which menace! the allied Powers in general, and Great Britain in particular, lie not only in Europe, but far more in the Near and Middle East. Ido not believe for a moment that the Peace Conference are lessening these Oriental dangers. Their policy is rather stimulating them and bringing them nearer. Mind, I am not attacking the Big Four. I believe they are trying to frame the best peace possible under very difficult conditions. Many of their decisions may not be ideal, some of them may be quite wrong; but their trouble is that instead of dealing with nations which look for a world-peace they are handling' a swarm of races intent upoi obtaining as much territory as they can.

The Big Pour try to strike a rough balance of justice, and can do not more. FORGOTTEN ASIA. • Where they have gone astray is that they have thought too ttnuch about Europe and not quite enough about Asia. The glimpses we gain of their deliberations lead me to the conclusion that they are not being well advised about Asia, and do not appreciate the basic character of its problems. They are seeking to settle the futurs of Asiatic Turkey and Syria arid Mesopotomia and other hot and uncomfortable places upon the basis of supposed racial and geofrraphical distinctions. But these considerations are of iriinor importance. The one big, broad factor which dominates all these regions is religion—the Mohammedan religion. Unless the Conference think constantly of the religious factor they will never bring pence to the Middle East, Groat Britain is the biggest Mohammedan Power in the world, and yet when we frame an Eastern policy we pay no more attention to Mohammedanism than we do to the people ni Mars il there are people in the red planet. The world of Islam is in a very strange position. Mohammedanism is rot a dying faith. It sains no grourtd in Asia, and is slowly disappearing from Europe; but in Africa it is steadily making converts. On the other hand, the temporal power of Islam, which is closely intermingled with The faith in the Crescent, is rapidly vanishing. The downfall of Turkey means the overthrow of the last of its strongholds. Consider what the defeat of Turkey means to more than two hundred millions of Mohammeclans in Asia and Africa, mostly with ji strain of fanaticism implanted by their religiovs beliefs. To them it seems that the Christian Powers have dealt a mortal blow at Islam, that the last of the Crusaders lias destroyed the successors of Saladin. They are thinking of that and nothing else. .

A NETWORK OF CONSPIRACY. They do not care a straw about the crimes of Germany. They are not moved because the Gcsmans menaced thn stability r.nd freedom of Western civilisation, which they themselves despise and reject. The one thought which fillu their minds is that the Crescent flag. which they watched with pride floating over the Golden Horn, is likely to bo thrust into comparative oblivion. Wo fancy that because Allenby drove the Turks headlong in his brilliant sweep through Syrja the issue is determined The Turks do not, take that view. All Islam believes otherwise. Tj'o mind of tl'w East moves sideways, like a ernh. The very Egyptian peasants, who beat Brißtish officers to death in that Nile Valley, had got it into their silly heads that the Turks were victorious. When Rushdi Pasha, the Prime Minister of Egypt, resigned for the second time the other day, what did he do? He holds a British knighthood, and is ordinarily a man of moderate views. Yet he went straight off to Constantinople, the borne of the defeated. He went where his sympathies lay. Turkey was crushed upon the battlefield, and the members of the Committee of Union and Progress scattered. They are fugitives, but they would intrigue with their dying breath. They aro intriguing now. All <iirough the Mohammedan world run* a vast and perplexing network of conspiracy. Islam is awake, and anything but acquiescent. It is not going to take defeat lying down. The Constantinople gang who pocketed bribes from the Germans are as active as ever. Their agents arc at work from Paris to Decca. r * The first fruits are already visible. Local grievances do not suffice to account for the rising in Egypt. Turkish influence lay at the back of that startling revolt, as was clearly proved by the attacks on Armenians in Cairo. The men who gave the signal for the early outbreaks were students from the great Mohammedan university of El-Azhar. They whirled through the alnd on motqr cycles, and the motor horn was their toscin. Though the East despises the West, it eagerly uses its devices.

THE AFGHAN MENACE. So, too, with the mysterious invasion of the Khybcr region of British India by Afghan regular troops. J)o you suppose that the young Ameer at Kabul supplied the original impulse which led the Arghans to crown the heights overlooking the little British station of Lundi Kotal? If you could trace the threads far enough you would find them extending to some rabbit warren in old Stamboul, to men lurking in the Caucasus, to sleek semi-Luropeanisod Orientals sitting quietly in Geneva and Berlin. We are barely at. the begiuning of very widespread trouble in the Middle East. Allenby and Marshall have scythed and bound the (sheaves of victory, bn,t fire is running amid the stubble. Whether the Allies will succeed in preserving peace in Europe none can tell. Our best hope lies in the League of Nations, which is still an empty shell. But lulam in its heart cares no more for the League than it would for the mooing of a cow. It is resentful and implacable. Here, then; aro the principal factors in the situation, though to them must be added the question of the Khalifat*. The Sultan of Turkey claims to be the Khalifa, the spiritual head of Islam. Technically, his claim is questionable; actually, it is recognised throughout the Mohammedan nations. If the sultan is to be reduced to the status of a tribal chief, who in to be Khalifa? All Moslems await an answer, and they are quite wrongly apprehensive that Paris may try to nominate a new wearer of the mantle of the j tiophet. J

The Paris Conference are going wrong on two main .points in" its Eastern policy, as well as on numberless minor issues. With, the best intentions, but with eyes blind-folded, it is setting a torch to the inflammable! material heaped up in Mohammedan countries.

PAMPERING THE ARABS. Its two cardinal errors are that it has made too much of the Arabs and ii is giving too much to Armenia. To the iioharamedaus of India and Egypt and Turkey and Persia, tße King of tlio Hcdjaz is a minor Arab chieftian. They cannot understand the extraordinary prominence accorded to his son, the Einir Eeisul, at the Conference. They are amazed at the prospect that tho Arab flag will float over anciejt Damascus. They know, as I know, that the force and lire of the tfedjjaz tribes burned itself 1 out iu the splendid er,i that followed the meteoric appearance of Mohammed. They know that the modem Arabs have no cohesion. They know that an Arab State in Mesopotamia cannot stand upon its own feet. And the Egyptian and Turkish pashas, the nobles of Uudh, the princely families of Persia, arc consumed by the very human pftsnibn of |ealoU9y, The Armenian Statf. is to be an immense block of territory stretching from the Mediterranean near Alexandretta to the shore of ihe Black Sea beyond Trebizond. It is too big and too ambitious. It can never exist alone. Th« Allies will have to garrison it for evermore. And meanwhile, what of the Turkl The sovereignty of Turkey is to be obliterated in Europe, including Constantinople. With that I concur. For SOO years the Turks have brought nothing but misery and degradation to SouthEastern Europe. They have defaced the Balkans and have been at the root of three-fourths of the wars. But they art now to be hemmed in on the uplands of Anatolia, and that ij Where the danger lies. Bereft of Constantinople, of Smvrna, of Erzernm, of Bagdad, of Damascus, and of Mecca, they are" to he left to tend goats on the windy plateaux where their ancestors waxed in' strength until they swept westward and thundered at th? gales of Vienna. I know the Turks, and I 3t not see them accepting per petnal internment without a struggle, and without incessant efforts to Bet Is lam ablaze.;

THE FATE OF CHINA. I hold no I>rief for Turkey. I regard Turkish rule a* an evil thing, and worse than stanghnnt. But, in common with others, I hold n humble watching brief for the myriads who long for the futuro peace of the world, and 1 realise that in the Near and Middle East we are not going the right way to attain it. The peace is necessarily a patchwork of com. promises. The Allies have to do many things they do not like, in the hope of attaining a lasting settlement. They are handing,oyer Chjna to the not too tendef mercies of the Japanese, although none of the Big Four can in their hearts approve of such, a mistaken step. * Thoroforc t say, not for the sake of Turkey, but in the hope of preserving peace in Islam, give the Turks elbowroom on the Asiatic mainland. They are not getting jt Even such a course may not avert strife,, but at least it should help to postpone it. f