all henceforth be for the Turks: she shall no more be in
'danger' from the defenceless nations, who at present exist within her
borders. The Sultan of Turkey, in some year of grace now not far
distant, will find that his Ottomanisation has been done for him, and,
though his realm is curtailed, he will have his rest broken no more by
the thought of Arab risings, nor will he have to devise measures that
will solve the Arab question. Except for a strip along the west and
south coast, all Asia Minor and Anatolia will be his from the Black Sea
to the Mediterranean, but Syria, Armenia, the coast of Asia Minor,
Palestine, and Mesopotamia shall have passed from him. It is no
dismemberment of an Empire that the Allies contemplate, for they cannot
dismember limbs that never belonged to the real trunk. It was a despotic
military control that the Osmanlis had established, they always regarded
their subject peoples as aliens, whom they did not scruple to destroy if
they exhibited symptoms of progress and civilisation. Henceforth the
Turkish Government shall govern Turks, and Turks alone. That for many
years has been its aim, and, by the disastrous dispensation of fate, it
has been largely able to realise its purpose. Now, though by different
methods, the Allies will see thorough accomplishment of it. There will
be no question, of course, of turning out or of deporting Turks who live
in Syria, in Armenia, in Constantinople, for the ways of the Allies are
not those of Talaat and Enver and Jemal the Great. Where to-day Turks
dwell, there shall they continue to dwell, but they must dwell there in
peace in equal liberties and rights with the once-subject peoples whom
the Allies shall have delivered. If they do not like that they can
migrate, not by forced marches and under the guardianship of murderous
Kurds, but in protection and security, to the lands where they can still
enjoy the beneficent sway of their own governors, and be Ottomanised to
the top of their bent. But Syrians and Armenians and Greeks and Jews
will be Ottomanised no longer.
The Turk was always a fighter, disciplined and courageous, and he has
never lost that virtue of valour. But he has been a fighter because he
has always lived under a military despotism which demanded his services,
and it is much to be doubted whether his qualities in this regard will
for the future be exercised as they have been in the past. For the
Turkish armies, in so far as they have consisted o
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