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Show THE CHANGING NEAR EAST By JOHN W. MACE j Field Director of the Near East Relief j The observance in December of Golden Rule Sunday on behalf of the overseas work of the Near East Relief, aj sponsored by President Coolidge, tails again to public attention the importance and significance signifi-cance of this humanitarian enterprise. In the current number of the Review of Reviews, Mr. Mace reviews what America has aonc for the nrople of Bible Lands. This extract Is given by special permission j the publishers. r A 'IE Near East la a true topsyturvy topsy-turvy la.nd, where things ;j. . are not. what they aeem nor V. as you expect them to he. Everything that the American Ameri-can thinks he knows ahout the Near East turns out to be different when he gets there. For example, nothing Is more definite to the American mind before the American leaves home than the well-established fact that Turkey achieved a tremendous victory vic-tory over Greece three years ago, crushing the power of tho Greek nation na-tion -tterly and securing to Itself an Asia Minor, although it meant the herculean hazard of absorbing a mil- j lion new inhabitants into a population of five millions on a limited and thin-soiled thin-soiled area. It was a task and risk from which the strongest and richest nation on earth might excusably have shrunk. Huge borrowings and desperate expedients expe-dients were necessary in order to feed and shelter this horde of fugitives. Inevitably there was great loss of lite among the -sick, infirm, and aged; only the strongest survived. But today to-day that undesired immigration is fast 1 - ' .M'fcv :v:-:v:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:.:vX--.:-: V is: sMMMfmMiimnia Empty Bowl, Formed by Children of an American Orphanage in Syria. Indisputable ascendency in all the t'TKi-on nnd Anatolian region. But visit tli.-- Near Fast and what is your d'si-m-ory'' 'Vhi.ri' yon r;M!'.7e that fir- . looks vastly more like a victor, vic-tor, uow, than Turkey. Shabby Constantinople The Turk holds Constantinople, of course, by virtue of scaring Europe's peace negotiators when he came down to the Bosphorus with the big, insolent inso-lent army that had driven all Greeks, y c.'tt! civil, out of Asia Minor. -.-o is i-'iave question about how ;,....h glory there is in holding the Constantinople of today. The cUy looks meaner and shabbier than it ever did before. Try as one will to wish well to the modernized Turk in his professional reformations, one has to acknowledge that if the appearance of the city of Constantinople is any sign, the Turk is still the sick man of the Orient. And he has lost Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia forever. Prosperous Athens On the other hand, in startling contrast, con-trast, Athens is a city on a boom. By the same token the present-day Greek is In lusty health. Greece's comeback come-back since 1922 is amazing. Not only in the capital and in other cities, but la towns and in country districts there abound evidences of a sound and growing prosperity. Ail this has happened as the direct result of Greece's great "defeat." The stupidity of the Turks in driving out their Greek-Christian subjects, after their Bupposird triumph at Smyrna, is proving an incalculable enrichment to Greece. After the fall of Smyrna the Greek nation in Europe, with rare generosity and faith, opened its doors to receive the refugees of Grecian stock who were being expelled from proving an asset to Greece. It brought into the nation a host of clever, thrifty, enterprising people the sort especially that had made Smyrna the richest city of its size on earth a great army of producers and business organizers. Athens is vibrant with energy, distinctly dis-tinctly American in spirit. Its population popu-lation has doubled since the beginning of the World War. The pro-American feeling of Athens is not exhausted by its imitative energies; ener-gies; a great spring of gratitude wells out of the national heart. Greece has not forgotten that America, through the medium of the Near East Relief and other benevolent agencies, sent her inestimable assistance in monoy and in experienced social workers when refugees from across the Aegean three years ago were pouring in on her by hundreds of thousands-sick, thousands-sick, hungry and dying. I took much comfort in thinking of that while I was in Athens, for there is no satifaction deeper than in helping help-ing those who help themselves. Watching the crowd, it pleased me to reflect that some, at least, of those happy folk were among the exiles whom America had fed and helped to keep alive until they could stand on their own feet again. And ii is pleasant pleas-ant to record that the Greek public authorities never let down any of their own efforts because. Americans v?r? I there helping. They shouldered the utmost., of their own burden, and cooperated co-operated besides in everything that the American organizations asked; and it should be remembered that more than half of the ware's of th-Near th-Near East orphanages are Armenian ehildren, with absolutely no claim except the paramount claim of human ity for refuge on Greek soil. |