OCR Text |
Show AMERICA SHOWS ITS MORAL FIBRE Rejection of the Turkish treaty by the Senate, although awkward for the State department, undobtedly meets with general public approval. What-fver What-fver may have been the motives of individual Senators, the famous "man in the street" sees the whole Turkish qupstion from a purely moral viewpoint. view-point. He heartily disapproves of the past record of the old Turk, and he distrust the new Turk's facile promises promi-ses and assurances of reform. "The more he changes, the more he is the same thing," say the French. The proposed treaty offered no real guarantees of protection either for American interest or for the larger humanitarian interests of the much-abused much-abused Christian minorities. The history of the Lausanne negotiations which have now been rejected, will not be remembered as a bright page in American displomacy. The American negotiators placidly accepted what the Turk saw fit to offer, and made no serious attempt to enforce historic American pVinciplos. It is easier for the average American Ameri-can to believe that the leopard can change his spots than that the Turk has suddenly become a gentleman. For six centuries he has maintained his precarious power solely by force of arms, trickery and the cultivation of old hatreds. His dominion has never been civilized. He has built no roads, he has developed neither his people nor his tiatural resources. War-weary Europe was content to make its patched-up peace with Turkey on a basis similar to that which was offered to the United States in the Lausanne treaty. But America has now, by the voice of its representative body, declined to renounce re-nounce its traditional views and principles prin-ciples merely from commercial and diplomatic opportunism. Rejection of this treaty may cause our diplomats some temporary inconvenience, but it is a worth-while demonstration that America possesses moral fibre in international in-ternational affairs. The precepts of American leaders, from Ben Franklin to Woodrow Wilson, were not mere words, and they are backed by a national conscience and a righteous indignation that the world must reckon reck-on with. . a. |