recall the police officer who so solemnly enquired if I was sure I was not an American.
"Perfectly sure," I replied.
"How then," said he, "has that impossibility—an Englishwoman in Angora—become possible?"
"Your Government," I answered, "has made it possible. As you have no one else here from my country, I have given myself this mission. . . . An old friend of the Turks, a woman who loves her own country! Can she not do something for that peace between us, which is a supreme necessity to both? That is why I am here."
I do not forget that Turks were our "enemies" in the war. But they came back, beaten to the dust—and penitent. Then was the moment for us to have made our own terms. In that mood Turkey would have accepted—anything, but the one thing we imposed on her—the Greeks at Smyrna! That policy of sheer folly has transformed the veneration of her people into fear and distrust, if not hate.
Unjustly and unreasonably as we have behaved towards our old ally, we were not, indeed, alone in this mischievous exalting of Greek aggressions. Dare we not now own our mistake? We are great enough, and strong enough, to be generous, to mend our ways!
To-day, surely, it is the duty of English patriots to pour oil on the troubled waters, to explain to Turkey what can be explained, and to paint our countrymen, at least, less "black" than they have been made to seem by our rivals' pen!
Lausanne Palace Hotel,
Lausanne,
January, 1923.
