be taken away from them, then I
imagine that they would vigorously oppose any mandatary whatsoever. And
they could make a far more effective opposition than is generally
believed, for, though Constantinople is admittedly at the mercy of the
Allied fleet in the Bosphorus, the Nationalist are said to have
recruited a force numbering nearly 300,000 men, composed of well-trained
and moderately well equipped veterans of the Gallipoli campaign, which
is concentrated in the almost inaccessible regions of Central Anatolia.
Moreover, Enver Pasha, the former Minister of War and leader of the
Young Turk party, who, it is reported, has made himself King of
Kurdistan, is said to be in command of a considerable force of Turks,
Kurds and Georgians which he has raised for the avowed purpose of ending
the troublesome Armenian question by exterminating what is left of the
Armenians, and by effecting a union of the Turks, the Kurds, the
Mohammedans of the Caucasus, the Persians, the Tartars and the Turkomans
into a vast Turanian Empire, which would stretch from the shores of the
Mediterranean to the borders of China. Though the realization of such a
scheme is exceedingly improbable, it is by no means as far-fetched or
chimerical as it sounds, for Enver is bold, shrewd, highly intelligent
and utterly unscrupulous and to weld the various races of his proposed
empire he is utilizing an enormously effective agency--the fanatical
faith of all Moslems in the future of Islam. Neither England nor France
have any desire to stir up this hornet's nest, which would probably
result in grave disorders among their own Moslem subjects and which
would almost certainly precipitate widespread massacres of the
Christians in Asia Minor, for the sake of dismembering Turkey and
ousting the Sultan.

I have tried to make it clear that there is nothing which the Turks so
urgently desire as for the United States to take a mandate for the whole
of Turkey. Those who are in touch with public opinion in this country
realize, of course, that the people of the United States would never
approve of, and that Congress would never give its assent to such an
adventure, yet there are a considerable number of well-informed, able
and conscientious men--former Ambassador Henry Morgenthau and President
Henry King of Oberlin, for example--who give it their enthusiastic
support. And they are backed up by a host of missionaries, commercial
representatives, concessionaires and specia