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Bryce.

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President Wilson, in his note to all the belligerent governments, called upon both parties to state in the full light of day the aims they have set themselves in prosecuting the War. The Allied Nations, in their joint response made public on January 11th, 1917, explain that they find no difficulty in meeting this request, and make good their words by stating a series of definite conditions. Among them are:—

“The liberation of the peoples who now lie beneath the murderous tyranny of the Turks; and

“The expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman Empire, which has proved itself so radically alien to Western Civilisation.”

The plan of the Allies for the settlement of Turkey is thus communicated to the world without reserve, and it is worth examining what it involves, and why it is right.

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Who are the peoples in Turkey whom the Allies are determined to liberate? The Ottoman Empire contains somewhat more than 20,000,000 inhabitants, and of these only about 8,000,000—less than 40 per cent. of the whole—are Turks.[1] There are 7,000,000 Arabs; there are 2,000,000 Armenians (or, rather, there were, before the atrocities of 1915); the Greeks, too, number little short of 2,000,000, and there are probably the same number of non-Turkish mountaineers—Kurds, Nestorians, Druses, Maronites and so on. The non-Turkish peoples thus amount to more than 60 per cent. of the population of Turkey. They were all of them settled in the country before the Turks arrived—the Turks conquered Asia Minor about the time the Normans conquered England, while several of the conquered races have lived there from time immemorial—and all these races have been at their lowest ebb since and so long as they have been under Turkish Government.