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Show v MGITlffi ! WOULD BE MISTAKE i I Dr. James L. Barton, Mis-! sionary Secretary, Vrites j to Senator Lodge. ! BOSTON", Dec. It'. Dr. James E. Bar- ton, secretary of the American board of j commissioners for foreign missions, to- ; day mad public a loiter which he wrote : to Senator Jodge, senior Republican member of the foreign relations commit- ' tee, on the occasion of the senator's re- ; cent speech in favor of a declaration of ', war on Turkey hit! Bulgaria. Speaking! with the authority of many ye;irs' resi - ! ilence in Turkey. Dr. Barton set forth ! reasons against such action by tho ! L'nited States. j lb declares that both Turkey and Bui- j nana are under the military rule of Eer- ' many and unable to throw off that rule . and that there lias been an almost universal uni-versal protest h motif? the Mohammedans of Turkey against the alliance of Turkey with Germany and an absolutely universal univer-sal protest spa i nst such an alliance by the non -Moslems. He says recent re- ports make it clear the Turkish officials A are increasingly friendly toward the ' United States. He declares if the l'nited States should deolare war on Turkey German officials 1 probably would seize large plants of American colleges and institutions and put them to militnrV" uses, materially increasing in-creasing their military equipment. Dr. Barton also asserts that if a declaration should be made there would be jyrnve danger that the remaining non-Moslem population under German insistence would be savagely mistreated if not niHSsacred. Dr. Barton says it would be impossible for the United States to send an expeditionary expe-ditionary force against Turkey or Bulgaria Bul-garia under present conditions. The letter let-ter concludes: "Whatever may be the necessity for the future, a. large number of patriotic friends of our country who believe in the necessity of prosecuting this war to its logical and final conclusion are of the opinion that to declare war upon Bulgaria Bul-garia and Turkey now would not only be or' no aid in the prosecution of the European Euro-pean war and no help whatever to our allies or to the c;iuse of America-in this conflict, but would be destructive to American interests in Turkey and to the innocent people, who are suffering at the hands of their overlord almost as much as the people of Belgium, Serbia and German Poland suffer." s |