MEDICINE FOR THE SICK MAN

It is a bit distressing to those used to the orderly conduct of the hospital ward to have the patient, quietly opiated and under the surveillance of the most illustrious physicians, suddenly jump up, ram his medicine down the doctor's throat and escape, in spite of the organized efforts of the strong-arm squad to detain him.

This in brief is the situation which causes War and rumors of more War to fill the daily papers. The opiate, the unsigned Treaty of Sevres which was intended to mark the end of the Turk in Europe,--has been treated most irregularly by Mustapha Kemal Pasha, who from all indications is doing his best to re-carve the boundaries of the Near East to suit his Angora. In the meantime the strong-arm squad,--the Greeks under a recently recrowned and still more recently un-crowned Constantine,--undertook to enforce the provisions of the treaty, feeling the inheritance of Alexander lay within their reach, as legitimate recompense for their efforts in the cause of peace. Severely repulsed, in a way that would have caused Alexander to turn in his grave, by the now fully roused Kemalists, they fell back on Smyrna, which in turn they evacuated to the advancing Turks. At this point the "strong arm squad" passes out of the picture, absorbed in mutinying against its chief.

The patient,--Mustapha Kemal and his Nationalist movement,--flushed with success over the heirs of Alexander, has advanced upon the town of Chanak and Kum Kale, both on the Dardanelles, and even, within two days deliberately entered the prescribed neutral zone about the passageway from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. The doctors all this while,--the Allies,--have been on the borders of hysteria. Ultimatums have passed from Britain to Kemal, and, height, of insolence, Kema! has demanded Eastern Thrace. Moreover, the Nationalist leader, accepting the Allied terms, has added the proviso that be shall continue military operations during the proposed conference and that Red Russia, Persia, and Bulgaria be included on the commission!

What is the outcome? Constantine has apparently been tumbled out from Greece once more and probably Venizelos, supported by the rebellious navy, will return to power. The plaster-of-Paris Sultan at Constantinople is reported on the verge of abdication. But the grave question is whether a reorganized Greece can hold off the Turkish re-entry into Thrace if the Allies stand by their intention to hand it over to the Angora government.

At all events, whether the Sick Man returns to Europe or not, the situation indicates for the future that more care must be used in any attempt to adjust a strait-jacket to the Terrible Turk.