Page:Englishwomaninan00elli.pdf/348

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distinction between "neighbours," hardly consistent with the teaching of our faith.

The "pick-pocketing" habit of confiscating enemy property—Turkish, German, or Austrian—is surely beneath an Empire with our reputation; and the plea from France and Italy's example does not strike one as a dignified defence. As a matter of fact, France emphatically denies ever having taken a penny from the Turks.

Is not such flagrant injustice an obvious case for the League's authority to intervene? When visiting the "League of Nations" headquarters in Geneva the other day, Sir Eric Drummond asked me why Turkey should be so suspicious of the League? I could only refer him to the public speeches of our most responsible statesmen. When Mr. Lloyd George hurled insults at Islam, it only meant one more item in the big bill of Moslem grievances against England; when Lord Balfour and Lord Robert Cecil speak in similar strains, Islam listens. While they refuse justice and mercy, Turkey mistrusts the League.

Because the League stood aside, and left the Greeks in Smyrna, as Britain refused discussion with Turkish emissaries, Mustapha Kemal was driven to arms, which gave Turkey, indeed, the victory, but spread ruin throughout Anatolia.

Should not a careful consideration for the feelings of all nations be an outstanding characteristic of the League, which is the expression of the world-brotherhood? Yet it suggested that a man, a Mr. Pitt, should be allowed to search the harems for enslaved Greeks and Armenians! An incomprehensible insult that, if Turkey ever forgives, she cannot forget. The Turks are a proud and aristocratic race, with venerable traditions, which, if we will not understand, we should, at least, respect. To them, home-life is a sealed and sacred book.

Why, again, was the preparation of a full report on "harems" entrusted to a Roumanian poetess, rather than to such a woman as Halidé Hanoum, of tried experience and world-wide reputation for liberal broad-