As regards the Greeks in Eastern Thrace, we only wish
it were possible for them, as Christians, to remain there. But obviously it is not possible, and they are as much to blame for the impossibility as anybody else. When one is faced by a disagreeable or even a cruel fact, it-is useless to appeal wildly to sentiment and humanity if one has not the power to alter- the fact. Lord Salisbury once remarked that the British Navy could not sail over the mountains of Asia Minor and he has often been called a cynic, for saying it. Nevertheless it was true. In the domain of Nature one has continually to accept facts because there is no possibility of remedying them. If a stoat is seen attacking some defenceless animal the instinct of every man is to beat off the stoat with a stick. But isolated and rare achievements of that kind do not make it possible for mankind continually to search all the woods and hedgerows in order to prevent stoats preying upon other animals. The necessity, much though we may deplore it, of coining to an understanding with the French and of handing back Eastern Thrace to Turkey is like a fact of Nature.
