Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/229

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General Milne in 1920 and had brought the Nationalist deputies from Angora to Constantinople, but that action landed him behind British barbed wire on Malta. Is it a matter of wonder that the great tradition which generations of Englishmen had built up in Constantinople, has now disappeared? No Turk has fought harder for the British than Rauf Bey, and few countries have ever more consistently wounded their own friends in Turkey than the England over which Mr. Lloyd George presided. Rauf Bey's tragic experience at the hands of their country is one which Englishmen might do well to ponder during these new days, when Turkish tugs are piloting British merchantmen into the Gulf of Smyrna.

Ali Fethy Bey, a mild, almost shy, Macedonian Turk whose modest bearing gives no hint of the strength he has contributed to Angora, returned with Rauf and a long list of other deputies in the late Parliament at Constantinople. Here were the civilian brains of which Angora stood in the greatest need and it now became possible for the Grand National Assembly to begin the erection of a civilian administration. Winter was coming on and the military situation would necessarily remain at a stand-still. The Assembly gave its War Office (the Ministry of National Defense is its official title) an immediate shake-up. Rafet Pasha fell and the Ministry of the Interior was separated out and given to Ali Fethy Bey. Here he encountered the same difficulty as so many of the Nationalist leaders encountered—he knew nothing of Anatolia and it required most of the winter merely to learn the ins and outs of his department. Rauf Bey was given