A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
ACONVERSATION about Turkey with one of the few English- men who really knows and understands that increasingly important country has raised the question whether we-are doing full justice to an ally whose attitude towards us has throughout the war been beyond reproach. So officially has ours to her, and we have sup- plied Turkey with commodities of one kind and another, including warships, which we should have been glad enough to keep for our- selves ; the delivery of a new submarine was recorded only this week. But the Turks see and hear us speculating about contingencies which ought to be ruled out altogether. Can we rely on Turkey? Will von Papen get round the Turkish Foreign Office? Von Papen, I am assured, is as completely and accurately sized up, and as cordially disliked, in Turkey as everywhere else where he has conducted his consistently unsuccessful missions. And as for Turkey standing firm, if she did that in t94o after Dunkirk, when the Battle of France had been lost and the Battle of Britain not yet fought, what reason has she for yielding an inch today? There are no Goeben ' and ' Breslau' lying off Stamboul, with their guns trained shorewards, as there were in 1914. There seems no doubt, in fact, that, as it was put to me, the first German that puts his nose across the Turkish frontier will get it badly knocked. On every ground we shall be wise to show that we take that for granted, and that we appreciate to the full the services a friendly but technically neutral Turkey is doing us.
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