Lord Bryce raised the question of Turkey in the. House
of Lords on Thursday week and drew from Lord Curzon an import- ant statement. Lord Curzon said that the Turks were deliberately trying to make the execution of the Peace Treaty impossible. The Allies, however, would not allow themselves to be flouted by the Turks. Mustapha Kemal, who slaughtered the Armenians at Marash, was the Turkish Governor of Erzurum ; the Turkish Ministry, as Lord Curzon pointed out, could not disown responsi- bility for the massacres. Lord Curzon did not discuss the question of Constantinople. He merely said that the majority of the Cabinet and the majority of the Allies had decided to leave the Turk there. Yet his whole speech went to show that the decision was utterly wrong, if only because it had made the Turk mom, truculent than ever. Lord Curzon said that the majority of the Crlician people were not Armenians ; he omitted to say that the former Armenian majority had been exterminated by the Turks. He hinted that an independent Armenia might be placed under the League of Nations. He spoke as if the Turks still disposed of formidable armies, with which the victorious Allies could hardly cope,. We fear that it is want of will rather than want of power that hampers the Allies, although it is true that, by waiting idly for America to assume the responsibility, they have given the Turks time to recover from their crushing defeats.
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