Afghanistan in Angora for two years. He tells me that any communications with his Government seem almost as difficult as with Persia, whose Ambassador has now returned to his own country.
The personality of Colonel Mougin has done much for the important commercial interests of his country, but he is far too wise to imagine that France is the Power on whom M. Kemal ultimately counts to save Constantinople from the Russians.
Mr. Imbrie, the American commercial attaché, has been entrusted with the double duty of protecting concession-hunters from the States and organising the "American Near East Relief Workers in Anatolia," administered in Angora by Mr. Compton and his charming wife, who must have stepped out of the frame of a dainty miniature. Mr. Imbrie, by the way, lives in a railway salon, and when his wife arrives we hope that her rugs and cushions and curtains may be as pretty as Mrs. Compton's.
It is very unfortunate that all relief work has been so wickedly hampered by friends of Armenia in the States. Their ridiculously unjust, anti-Turkish, propaganda must have been inspired by the American version of Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday!
Moreover, Americans never give relief which they cannot themselves administer. Maybe the implied affront to Turkish competency is unintentional, but Kiazim Kara Békir Pasha (who looks after five hundred orphans without a penny from the State, and has established many "professional" schools) has a right to resent it. His compatriots are often tempted to exclaim, "Keep your dollars," for American charities are always administered with a business manner that scarcely conciliates the recipient; and one must wonder, for example, how the Armenian priest can provide for his flock of seventy on four hundred liras (3,000 francs) a month. They do not evangelise with much tact, and Turkey can hardly be expected not to sense the Armenian behind the missionary.
Nevertheless, America has done a great deal for education, and one sincerely hopes that her colleges
