Great Game Update
Thus reports the mainstream media:
In effect, the Lausanne Settlement turned Europe bag and baggage out of Turkey instead of turning Turkey bag and baggage out of Europe. It signified the complete shipwreck of Lloyd George's five years' nursing of Greek ambitions. Flouting the conservative policy of seven decades, it exposed Turkey to intrigue and direct military pressure from Britain's perennial foe, Russia. It excluded France, Italy and Great Britain from exploitation of the spoils of war. It practically abandoned all pretence on the part of the Great Powers to protect the Christians in Turkey, cardinal point of Gladstone's eastern policy. The terms of the Straits Convention reduced British opportunities to checkmate Russia or bring naval pressure to bear on Turkish ambitions, cardinal point of British naval-political strategy. ...
In a stormy three-hours discussion at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Manhattan, James W. Gerard, former U. S. Ambassador to Germany, attacked the Treaty, contending that "Christian civilization was crucified at Lausanne and the Stars and Stripes were trailed in the mire in the interest of a group of oil speculators." He characterized the Turks as murderers and the Kemalist Government as a group of adventurers whose régime was on its last legs. His position received needed dignity from the support of Professor A. D. F. Hamlin of Columbia University and Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard, who wrote a letter saying that the Treaty was worthless and the Turks untrustworthy.
Feeling ran so high that blows impended on several occasions when the Turks and their Treaty were defended by Prof. Edward Meade Earle of Columbia, Dr. James J. Barton, Secretary of the Foreign Department of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and the Rev. Albert W. Staub, American Director of Near East colleges.
--Time magazine, April, 1924.
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Re: Great Game Update
It is not wise to underestimate the Turks.
Aug '10
Re: Great Game Update
That's about when I stopped reading Time as well.