A Success for Geneva At the beginning of this week
a new State, the autonomous Sanjak of Alexandretta, came into being, with the blessing of both Turkey and France, which earlier this year had come into bitter conflict over the territory and its inhabitants. The new State is a compromise between the Turkish demand that the Sanjak, with its Turkish minority, should' become an independent State on the expiry of the French mandate in Syria, and the French demand that Syria should assume responsibility for its government. By this compromise the Sanjak has complete autonomy in internal affairs, and Turkish rights are thus protected against possible oppression from Syria when it becomes a sovereign State ; but it has a common monetary and customs system with Syria and its foreign policy is controlled by Syria. It is difficult to believe that such a solution could have been reached in any other way than through the machinery of discussion and com- promise provided by the League of Nations at Geneva. It is common today to belittle the " Gen ova system " : but Alexandretta is yet another illustration of the success it can achieve when, like Turkey and France, both parties to a dispute accept sincerely the principles and methods on which Geneva is founded. If other disputants adopted the same attitude, the German minority in Czechoslovakia would be, like the Turkish minority in Alexandretta, not an almost insoluble problem of prejudice and prestige but a matter for informed and dispassionate discussion at Geneva.
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