these affairs
are, after all, none of our concern, and that, by every one save the
Turks and the Armenians, our attempted dictation is resented. In the
language of the frontier, we have butted into a game in which we are not
wanted. It is no game for up-lifters or amateurs. England, France, Italy
and Greece are not in this game to bring order out of chaos but to
establish "spheres of influence." They are not thinking about
self-determination and the rights of little peoples and making the world
safe for Democracy; they are thinking in terms of future commercial and
territorial advantage. They are playing for the richest stakes in the
history of the world: for the control of the Bosphorus and the Bagdad
Railway--for whoever controls them controls the trade routes to India,
Persia, and the vast, untouched regions of Transcaspia; the commercial
domination of Western Asia, and the overlordship of that city which
stands at the crossroads of the Eastern World and its political capital
of Islam.

In order better to appreciate the subtleties of the game which they are
playing, let us glance over the shoulders of the players, and get a
glimpse of their hands. Take England to begin with. Unless I am greatly
mistaken, England is not in favor of a complete dismemberment of Turkey
or the expulsion of the Sultan from Constantinople. This is a complete
_volte face_ from the sentiment in England immediately after the war,
but during the interim she has heard in no uncertain terms from her
100,000,000 Mohammedan subjects in India, who look on the Turkish Sultan
as the head of their religion and who would resent his humiliation as
deeply, and probably much more violently, than the Roman Catholics would
resent the humiliation of the Pope. British rule in India, as those who
are in touch with Oriental affairs know, is none too stable, and the
last thing in the world England wants to do is to arouse the hostility
of her Moslem subjects by affronting the head of their faith. England
will unquestionably retain control of Mesopotamia for the sake of the
oil wells at the head of the Persian Gulf, the control which it gives
her of the eastern section of the Bagdad Railway, and because of her
belief that scientific irrigation will once more transform the plains of
Babylonia into one of the greatest wheat-producing regions in the world.
She may, and probably will, keep her oft-repeated promises to the Jews
by erecting Palestine into a Hebrew king