4 NOVEMBER 1932, Page 22

Mustafa Kemal

Grey Wolf : An Intimate Study of a Dictator. By H. C. Armstrong. (Arthur Barker. 9s.) Tnis is in all respects a remarkable book. The publishers are to be congratulated on issuing at so low a .price a volume of 329 well-printed pages, even though the odd 29 happen to be blank ; the author on having had the courage to write a frank and honest study of one of the most remarkable if, to western eyes, the least attractive figures of our time.

Mr. Armstrong knows Turkey and the Turks well : he does not seek to minimize the savage ferocity which has marked the career of his hero ; nor does he, in the manner of too many professors of history, drift into apologetics. Massacres and murders are so described, and not referred to as "a process of elimination of hostile elements." Lechery, drunkenness and cruelty are enjoyable factors in the life "of the object of his study. He simply records the fact, explaining (p. 300) that, to the Turks "he was their ideal of a ruler ; he might be cruel, vicious, brutal and spiteful, but he was strong and decided. His vices were national vices. Lechery had been the oldest boast of their ancestors ; they preferred his robust virility to the placid domestic virtues."

Mustafa Kemal, we learn, has no morals, nor any beliet in women or in virtue ; he has debased himself in uncleanness and grown coarse-fibred. When told that the cloud of dust behind a village was caused by Turkish women stoning to death a Turkish girl who had played harlot for the Greek troops, or that a Greek was being crucified and another tortured at leisure,

"he snarled with savage pleasure. Neither pity nor sentiment touched him at alL Through them all he saw himself standing out supreme" (p. 196).

This, and much else, Mr. Armstrong records without bias, not judging nor condemning, but as a matter of history. The book, we may be sure, will not displease Mustafa Kemal, nor will it cause pain or annoyance to the Turks, who will no doubt see that it is translated into their tongue. But it may well give pause to those pacifists, headed by Lord Cecil, who believe that disarmament is less dangerous than armaments, and that armies are a cause of war, and that its horrors may be minimized by qualitative disarmament. In Turkey, as elsewhere, the bloodiest wars have been fought with little aid from modern weapons. Turkey has indeed joined the League of Nations, but, like certain other eastern nations, with mental reservations, for the Turks as a race do not accept but reject the ethical standards on which the Covenant, and the Kellogg Pact, and similar instruments are based. Odin, Thor and Freya, the old gods of tyranny, force and lust are not dead. The perennial conflict between light and darkness must go on between nations, as between and within individuals.

Mustafa Kemal is indeed the reincarnation of Tamerlane or Chinghiz Khan, born not, as Mr. Armstrong suggests, out of due time but to fulfil a nation's need. After a long period of internecine strife men look, not in vain, for a Man of Power, who will sweep away Legislative Assemblies and other fond things vainly invented by cosmopolitan doctrinaires. The mass of mankind wish not to rule but to be ruled, Pre' ferably by one of their own kidney, according to their lights. Those who, like Mustafa Kemal in Turkey and Riza Shah in Persia, not to mention others nearer home, who in the last ten years have realized this fact, and have had the courage to seize power and the wisdom to use it, have given to their countrymen not indeed progress, as we 'in the west under- stand it, but pride ; not plenteousness, but the will to endure poverty : • "I will lead my people 'by the hand along +.1,

road iill their

feet are sure and they know the vay. Then theyr may choose for themselves and rule themselves. Then my work wilt be done."

Thus says Mustafa Kemal, and thus said Moses and every subsequent dictator, and With equally small support from history. It has been said that the ultimate justification for democracy is the laek of an effective substitute. The observa- tion is, in Asia at all events, equally true of autocracy. When General Smuts says that the consent of the governed is the only secure and lasting basis of government he is going beyond the facts, for history shows that the consent of the governed has not, in fact, insured secure or lasting forms of government, and that the only liberty that is open to men— and that but-at rare intervals—is to choose a new master. Mustafa Kemal has abolished the Caliphate ; he has changed the alphabet ; he has abolished polygamy ; and revolu- tionized the sartorial and family habits of a nation. He had no " mandate " for any of these things : he willed them, and they were accepted. In the whole course of human history no single man has done so much. The achievement is a prodigy