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Show RACIAL TANGLE IN NEAR EAST PUZZLING 2S & ,33 gAITSVITH FALSE STATISTICS ABOUND f ...." .. , f k tfvW. AV.4. WViW :WS& -.Sk-W "-:? s--- ;:-', : ,. jg jj"1"" v ' w a . 4 .... i ""XSv' .". - '-r'- : No Boundary Can Separate i; V' ' r H Intermixtures of the u Z ' ? , i ropulations. r ;ttt; rr x I'-s f By WILLIAM T. ELLIS. v:,.v:.,. ; : " s' which are paramount here. Where the nations impinge there are no solid blocks ! of population that can be treated as , unities. 1 Except by vast migrations, it is out of the question to enable each man or village to dwell under the sovereignty of his or its choice. Some strong overlordship will have to be interposed to give everybody justice where he now is, irrespective of his past or his predilections. That suzerain, suze-rain, or mandatory, will have as an important im-portant part of its work the difficult task of teaching people how to get along amicably one with the other. For the old state of affairs breeds only suspicion, fear, antipathy, disorder and statistics. mingled. A few square miles may contain distinctive villages of four or five contending con-tending nations or groups. A snake would break its back trying to mark a boundary between 'them. Much more is it impossible simply impossible im-possible for the Paris commission or any other body to erect a lino of division that will respect the racial and religious claims No Boundary Can Separate Intermixtures of the Populations. By WILLIAM T. ELLIS. (Copyright. Canada, bv the rsew 1 ork Herald Company.) (Copyright, 1919. by the New York Herald Company All Rights Reserved.) (Special to The Salt Lake Tribune and New York Herald.,) CONSTANTINOPLE, May 10 (delayed). "Figures cannot lie, but liars, can figure," fig-ure," is a cynicism perhaps too bald to apply to the diplomatic use of statistics in the near east, but anything less definite would not state the facts which confront an investigator. Bedrock to any permanent settlement of the near eastern question Is the determination deter-mination of what raced and religions oc- ' cupy a given area and their relative proportions. pro-portions. If Greeks predominate in Thrace and western Anatolia they have a basis of claim to be awarded sovereignty there. So the Greek official figures show in great detail the numerical superiority of Hellenic population. No room is left for doubt or discussion. The case is closed, settled "Feenish Johnny," as they say in Saloniki. . , . , Along come the Turkish claims, official also, mark you, and supported by various disinterested authorities. At once one wonders at the mendacity of the Greeks who would dare to make such false and unfounded claims. At least, one mighL wonder if this were his first experience Willi near eastern statistics. For the Turks demonstrate utterly that the Greeks are so small a minority as to be insignificant. insig-nificant. t ' . Ee it remembered, tnese are not the idle flgurinxs of irresponsible zealnls. They are prepared by responsible governments for presentation to the Paris commission. Yet each discredits the other. And the traveler himself who goes over the ground in question is likely to discredit dis-credit both. For a population claimed as Greek or Turkish may really he Lulgarian. So a district which Armenians and Turks each call theirs may be Georgian. Kurr.isn. Greek or Syrian. A lover 01 euphemism rould safely say that the orient is toe region re-gion of the inexactitude. When the Turks put forth their prlnted-in-Germanv tables they effect a fine show of impartiality by proving that the Population Popula-tion of two or three islands-including Cyprus, which belongs to Great brltain is predominantly Greek. Were Turks Massacred? Credulity is taxed, however, when the official memorial addressed to the powers by the Ottoman government undertakes to show bv statl.stlcs that the Armenians have within five years nfassnered mo e than a million Innocent Moslem men, women and children! In private . 'vcr, -tier, with me Turkish o,,,e,als free,, translate this into "n" " . " " 1 flatly told Rustim Per, the one-time ambassador am-bassador to W ashington, tuat I did not believe these figures he was apparently astonished and took on such an air of affronted af-fronted dignity that a challenge to a duel would have been quite In atmosphere. Aa an aside upon this matter it Is to be said that most Turks either deny or minimize mini-mize the reports of the Armenian atrocities. atroci-ties. Their attitude is of injured innocence, inno-cence, victims of propaganda and of their own lack of opportunity to be heard abroad. It is the complaint of adolescence, "Nobody understands me." If the truth were known, runs the- reasoning, the Turks would be seen in the light of long suffering victims of oppressive minorities! minori-ties! "No Turk ever massaered an unarmed un-armed man or a woman or child." declared-an English-speaking Turk to me, with the fire of conviction in his eye, as we sat at lunch in the Cercle d'Orient. On my table at the moment as I write are two albums and a big, thick book showing by text and photographs, all evidently evi-dently prepared somewhere near the northern terminus of the Berlin-Bagdad railway, that the Armenians plotted, conspired, con-spired, robbed, raped and massacred, and there are the portraits of the slain to prove it. The text attached to the picture pic-ture in the albums is in four languages, a pit of propaganda done with characteristic character-istic Teutonic thoroughness, although stamped with a Turkish seal. Provocation Is Great. Practically all these atrocities charged against the Armenians are located in the Caucasus and in regions where I myself have traveled since the date of their alleged al-leged perpetration. A few other Americans Amer-icans consuls and relief workers, have been in the same region, and by a coincidence coinci-dence these men during the last few days have been In Constantinople; and I have talked with them about the charges made by the Turkish government. Likewise Like-wise I 'have inquired of the L'ritish experts. ex-perts. There aro always ono or more British experts upon every bit of the earth's surface, if one may only get at Ynthis case the extreme figures to be debited against the Armenians are unofficially un-officially IP'ilish: namely, that not more than li:000 Moslems have been massacred by Armenians within the last f;ve jears. Fven that is rather an appalling total, but it must be set over against the provocation provo-cation and tho fact that nearly a million Armenians were slain, and perhaps as many more survive, starving, in exile, by the "fiendish cruelty of the Turkish gov-eminent. gov-eminent. "You're nnether" is a poor answer an-swer for the Turro-Teutonie cabal to 'make to the Armen'ans. Some day an independent inlernatlonal commission will give us the facts, in balance and proportion. propor-tion. , ...... To return to the theme of stat::-ti"s. One of the cruel and inhuman weapons th;,t has enme iute general use in this wnr is the ethnographic chart. ThTs is meant to show who's who and where In the disputed regions of the earth, like Ai-ace-Urr!nc. the Palkans and Turkey. Ilv colored dots, su'iarc. Mars, circle-, it" ptitpcrts to tell the location and size ,,f each racial grutip. The first of these v;vi 1 charts one enco, inters is most im-pr,-ssie. The fairness of it carries one away. Hero is the truth at a glance: Charts Are Abundant. Mas that is only a first impression. For toe verv next ethnographic chart .that t poked under one s nose bv some nealous virti-in proves diametrically the opp sue of the first. There ev.11 may he a tlurd. to make oloer that the two olhc-s were entirely wrong. Apparently It is nil mere-I- a natter of access to a color pres. new and fl.ahiatc an,-) beautiful etr-:,ogr.iPhlo etr-:,ogr.iPhlo charts "are flashed hur? :r. Ihev leave me slope cold. T attach i-,,re ve:ght to the opinion of an honest p-m who has visltc l the re-inns in question than to all the ethnographic charts ever "ciiartsV tables, maps and observers ali iitrte in 'making clear one basic condition In the near east. This must be unrtor-st.-od before a student can get nr.y.v.-.ere wlth'a solution of the problem. It is that races and religions are inextricably inter- |
