o a morbid degree: they belong to a
different category from the profound antagonisms under consideration.
These--whatever the philosopher may think of a struggle for
domination--present a problem which British statesmen must face
frankly. It is not a new problem; but it now appears under a new form
and in a more acute phase than it has ever possessed in the
past--thanks to the success of the "knock-out blow" policy which
governed the latter stages of the War.

With the German power replaced by the French, the Russian for the
moment in abeyance, French and Italian influences competing in Turkey,
French and British aims clashing in the Arab regions wrested from
Turkey--while indignation at Occidental interference surges in the
minds of all the peoples of the Orient--the Eastern Mediterranean
offers a situation which tempts one to ask whether the authors of that
policy have not succeeded too well? Whether in pursuing the success of
the day--to which their personal reputations were attached--they did
not lose sight of the morrow? Whether they have not scattered the seed
without sufficiently heeding the crop? However that may be, unless
this situation was clearly foreseen by its creators and provided for--a
hypothesis {237} which, with the utmost goodwill towards them, does not
appear very probable--they have an anxious task--a task that, under
these conditions, demands from British statesmanship more thinking
about the Near Eastern question and the Greek factor in it than was
necessary before 1914.

As a first aid to an appreciation of the problem by the public--which
the present crisis found utterly unprepared--it would have been well if
the fundamental differences between the respective attitudes of France
and England towards each other and towards the peoples concerned had
been candidly acknowledged, and all pretence of Franco-British
co-operation in the Near East abandoned. Lasting co-operation cannot
be where there is neither community of interests nor consonance of
ideas: where the loss of one party is welcomed as gain by the other,
and the wisdom of the one in the eyes of the other is folly. Pious
talk of a common Allied mission in the Near East has only served to
obscure issues and to render confusion in the public mind worse
confounded. It was idle to make a mystery of the support given by
France to the Turks and of her insistence on the revision of the Sevres
Treaty--preliminary steps to her demand for th