Turkey and the Straits The Turkish Foreign Minister is expected
to propose at the Disarmament Conference that Turkey should be allowed to re-fortify the areas on both sides of the Dardanelles. The suggestion is one which ought not to be .countenanced for a moment' by this country, which took a leading part among the Allies at the Lausanne conference in securing the demilitarization of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles and a zone of territory along the frontiers between Turkey and Greece and Bulgaria. It is true that the Turkey of today is no longer the Sick Man of Europe whose existence was a menace to peace. She has observed the letter and the spirit of the Treaty of Lausanne in an exemplary manner. But there are two reasons why a revision of the Treaty in this sense cannot be contemplated. Firstly, the freedom of the Straits is a sound principle which ought to be maintained. Secondly, and more important still, is the fact that the Treaty achieved a great measure of disarmament, in frontier zones and at the Straits, which was unfair to no one. It was pure gain for every country concerned and, so far as it went, for the cause of international peace. What the world needs is the extension, not the repudiation, of the principle of demilitarized zones and internationalized waterways.
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