Page:Gandhi - Freedom's battle.djvu/72

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deputation. Mr. Lloyd George's speech is more definite and therefore more disappointing than H.E. the Viceroy's reply to the deputation here. He draws quite unwarranted deductions from the same high principles on which he had based his own pledge only two years ago. He declares that Turkey must pay the penalty of defeat. This determination to punish Turkey does not become one whose immediate predecessor had, in order to appease Muslim soldiers, promised that the British Government had no designs on Turkey and that His Majesty's Government would never think of punishing the Sultan for the misdeeds of the Turkish Committee. Mr. Lloyd George has expressed his belief that the majority of the population of Turkey did not really want to quarrel with Great Britain and that their rulers misled the country. In spite of this conviction and in spite of Mr. Asquith's promise, he is out to punish Turkey and punish it in the name of justice.

He expounds the principle of self-determination and justifies the scheme of depriving Turkey of its territories one after another. While justifying this scheme he does not exclude even Thrace and this strikes the reader most, because this very Thrace he had mentioned in his pledge as predominantly Turkish. Now we are told by him that both the Turkish census and the Greek census agree in pointing out the Mussulman population in Thrace is in a