The Temps published last week the text of an agreement
said to have been made by Italy with the envoy of Mustapha Kemal, the Turkish insurgent leader who is trying to upset the Turkish Peace Treaty. It provides that Italy shall receive large economic concessions in Western Asia Minor, as far north as Afium Kara, hisser, and that in return she shall use her influence to secure the return of Smyrna and Thrace to the Turks. If this document is authentic, Italy is accepting bribes—to put it plainly—so that sho may upset the Turkish Treaty which she helped to draft and which she signed a few months ago. We confess our inability to believe, without further proof, that our Italian friends can have entered into so nefarious a transaction. The Allies must act together in the Near East as well as in Central Europe if the peace settlement is to hold. If one Ally breaks away and makes separate bargains with the enemy, the return of peace will be indefinitely postponed. The Turks maintained their evil power for generations because Europe was disunited. Of course the Western Allies are not going to revert to that miserable state of things.
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