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A Historical Review of Conditions During the Four
Weeks Ended March 19, 1919

[PERIOD COVERED FEB. 16 TO MARCH 19, 1919]

BELGIUM

ELGIUM during this period was slowly adjusting itself to postbellum conditions. The jubilation over the armistice, which had a beneficial economic effect by placing in active circulation a large amount of money, gradually gave way to normal habits. Belgium's territorial claims upon the Netherlands, including the southern littoral of the Scheldt, were less acrimoniously conducted by the press.

Of the credit of $22,000,000 obtained from the United States $10,000,000 was to be spent for army clothing and food, and $12,000,000 for feeding the population, of whom there were 2,300,000 still destitute. The total number of consumers was 8,000,000, including 220,000 soldiers still in the ranks.

Belgium's chief needs were factory machinery of various sorts, farm implements, raw materials, and cattle. She began negotiating with the Netherlands for the last, but as 100 tons of coal were demanded for every three cows, little progress was made.

Much satisfaction was expressed by the press over the act of the Commission on Belgian Affairs advising the Council of the five great powers on March 7 that the three treaties of 1839, establishing the status of Belgium and Holland, be revised as they are now useless and disadvantageous to Belgium." These treaties are identical except as to their signatories. Belgium and Holland signed one with Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, three of which

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March 12 Premier Delacroix announced in the Brussels Chamber of Deputies that the Council had decided to revise the treaties.

M. Cooremans, first secretary of the Minister of Arts and Sciences, was condemned to fifteen years forced labor by a court-martial. He accepted, on the invitation of Berlin, during the period of occupation, the post of chief secretary to the separatist Flemish Ministry.

In the Senate, also on March 12, the Premier took umbrage at the criticisms some of the Senators had made concerning the alleged indifference of the Allies to Belgium. He said:

"When we shall have fully computed the exact amount of our damages there is every reason to believe that the figure will be accepted. Even though the total indemnity Germany must pay be reduced, you may be sure that the reduction will not be at the expense of Belgium."

PORTUGAL

The end of the Royalist revolt in Portugal was noted in these columns last month. It was reported (March 3) that its picturesque and romantic leader, Henrique de Paiva Couceiro, had committed suicide. Why the revolt failed is now being feverishly discussed by the Portuguese press and in such an open manner that it precludes the idea that the failure will be followed by reprisals.

The late Royalist Civil Governor of Oporto, Count de Mongualde, stated that the failure was due to a lack of arms and munitions. Count d'Azavedo, who for two weeks held the Royalist portfolio of Agriculture, said it was due to a lack of men. Mongualde wrote:

It was when we failed to take Lisbon that I knew the game was up. Two days before the end came I told Colonel Paiva Couceiro that it was all up with us, and he agreed. What settled our fate was the desertion of the Republican Guard, which had become our Guarda Real. When the Guard and the cavalry attacked us, I telephoned to headquarters for assistance, and prepared to resist; but no help came, and soon a message advised me to hoist the white flag. This was repugnant to me, but when the Republican officer guaranteed my personal security and that of

my followers, I consented. Now, I demand that this guarantee be respected. D'Azavedo reported:

The Monarchists had sufficient arms and munitions, and hoped to obtain recognition as belligerents. The difficulty was that they had only from 7,000 to 8,000 troops armed. Oporto and the north were whole-heartedly Monarchist.

While the Royalist leaders were in jail the Republican Minister of Justice reassured them in the following proclamation:

The Government will liquidate as rapidly as possible the individual responsibilities of the accused persons in order to restore a normal condition without any unnecessary delay. The Portuguese Criminal Code does not admit of imprisonment or deportation for life, but only for a term not exceeding 30 years. Monarchist prisoners are being treated in conformity with the dictates of humanity, and if there is anything wanting, the fault lies in the fact that we have not sufficient accommodations to give the prisoners every convenience.

TURKEY

What seemed to be passing in political and social Constantinople took little note of what occurred in remote parts of the dominions of the Turks or reckoned how the puzzling questions in those parts might be adjusted at the Paris Peace Conference. The burning question at the capital among the leaders and the rank and file of all the political parties seemed to be how they could wash their hands of the stains of the atrocities committed against the Greeks and Armenians, and retain the booty, both human and material, of which they robbed them, as well as the bribes received from the Germans.

Mohammed VI. rid himself of Enver Pasha and Talaat Bey, placing the aged Tewfik Pasha back in power as Grand Vizier and by a coup d'état backed up by French and English bayonets dissolved Parliament on the eve of a reactionary coup projected by the Young Turks, whose political organization is better known as the Committee of Union and Progress.

On March 7 a third stroke swept away from the responsible Government all old men, all old influences, whether progressive or reactionary, and established a

new Cabinet with Damad Pasha as Grand Vizier and Foreign Secretary, and the following:

Sheik-ul-Islam-Mustapha Sabri Effendi. Minister of War-Ahmed Abouk Pasha. Minister of the Interior-Djemed Bey. Minister of Marine-Shakri Pasha. Minister of Finance-Tewfik Bey. Minister of Education-Ali Kemal Bey. Minister of Posts and Telegraphs-Mehmed Ali Bey.

Minister of Public Works-Avni Pasha. Minister of Agriculture-Edhem Bey. Minister of Justice-Ismail Ildke Bey. President of the Council of State-Abdulbadu Effendi.

The dissolution of Parliament was made necessary by the fact that the Entente had refused to have any dealings with its representatives, and the new election which then became necessary must be conducted by a Government which had the approval of the Entente, even though its claim to popular representation still had to be decided at the polls.

The new Government at once set to work and both General Allenby, the conqueror of Palestine, and General Franchet d'Esperey, the conqueror of Bulgaria and the Commander in Chief of the allied forces in European Turkey, were present at the inauguration on March 5. The first work that Damad Pasha, through Djemed Bey, set out to accomplish was to remove over 500 officials which Tewfik Pasha had inherited from the old régime and which continued to be the chief vehicle of reactionary propaganda under the new.

The ousting of these officials cleared the air. A score or so were Under Secretaries of State who were busily engaged in preparing the defense of the “men higher up" against the charges being formulated by the allied commission. Among the dossiers thus interrupted was one being prepared by Ikmet Bey, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, to show that the Armenians themselves were responsible for the troubles in Armenia, their Revolutionary Committees having been invited to massacre the Turks by Russian and English agents. The naïveté of the documents is revealed in one instance by references to the savagery of Lord Kitchener in "Lower Egypt, dramatic events in India,

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"the extermination of the brave Boers, "and the massacres of the unfortunate "Irish, whose situation is just as un"fortunate as that of the Armenians."

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Another document which came to light and bore, according to experts, the signs of being a forgery was A Treaty Between Turkey and Georgia," said to have been signed in September, 1914, by which treaty Georgia, "having been generously promised by Turkey to support her claims to independence," undertook:

1. To organize a Georgian legion to fight on the side of the Turks.

2. To aid Turkish troops and to assure them a friendly reception in Georgia.

3. To facilitate the transportation and concentration of Turkish troops during the military operations.

Turkish financial history, under the guidance of Western Europe, has drifted through two stages, and is now on the eve of a third and apparently final one. The first stage opened with the Crimean War, in the 50s, and lasted for about twenty years, until the bankruptcy of 1876. It was one of complete freedom, both of borrowing and spending European money, which was devoted mainly to amusement. Its visible traces still survive in the marble palaces of succeeding Sultans on the Bosporus. Then came the "Bismarckian stage," one of restricted borrowing and spending, the money being mainly used for the development of the Turkish Army and strategic railways —all an immediate sequel to the Berlin Congress of 1878, where Russia was robbed of her spoils of war. During this period Germany was the financial agent, but the money she used was French and English. During the first two years of the war this money flowed back to Germany in payment for war supplies, and, when there was no more, Germany flooded the country with paper money, based upon specie loans which, however, never materially left the German Imperial Bank.

Djavid Bey had a scheme for redeeming this paper: Either the Entente or the United States, or both, were to grant Turkey a credit of $500,000,000. He argued that the associated nations would run no risk, as they always had the

means of enforcing payment from Germany, that the investment would be a good one, as they would obtain $850,000,000 worth of paper money for $500,000,000 in cash, and besides would have the satisfaction of knowing that they had rehabilitated Turkey commercially, industrially, and financially. The Young Turks had so much faith in the success of this project that their leaders, the discharged officials, even put on record what they intended to do with the money after they got it. It would have been used for revolutionary purposes. Hence a sharp watch is being kept over the retained clerks of Djavid's administration as they clear up their accounts under the eyes of the French, British, and Greek auditors.

The political line of cleavage reveals the committee on one side and the anticommittee on the other. But the latter is much stronger than it was in 1912, and Ahmed Riza, one of the founders of the committee, when it established a Parliamentary Government and overthrew Abdul Hamid a year later, is now one of its most bitter opponents. Aside from the two principal groups there are innumerable factions and leagues, all concerned with separate economic, ethnic, civic, and even personal interests.

One faction may serve as an example for all: The "Party of the Principles of President Wilson" is bidding especially for America's support in the regeneration of Turkey. It is composed of Dönmés (crypto-Jews) and others who until three months ago were either notorious as Germanophiles or as Neo-Turanians. Its principal organ, Vakit, advocates a purely Turkish Armenia on the principle of self-determination and by classing all Kurds, Lazzes, and Circassians as "Turks." Even so this majority is massacre-made.

SYRIA

While the problematical status of Syria was unfolded at the Peace Conference—the claims of the King of the Hedjaz as submitted by his son, the protectorate asserted by France and Great Britain, and the zones of influence demanded by Italy and Greece, and finally the aspirations of the Zionists-little has come to light as to what is going on in

the country itself. In Syria there are three great forces at work: The propaganda carried on by native Syrians educated in the French-subsidized schools, principally Roman Catholic, for a French protectorate, (ever since the days of Napoleon French influence has been the guiding culture;) the propaganda of the Arabs among the Jews and Syrians, teaching the former that they owe their industrial independence, and the latter that they owe their regeneration as Moslems, to Hedjaz; the propaganda of "New Syria," which desires an autonomous State under the protection of the American Government.

The first two would welcome the Zionists and allow them industrial and even political communal rights-an expansion of the rights which many Jewish communities enjoyed under the Turkish régime. But the New Syrians are for "Syria for the Syrians," and their propaganda is conducted by several highly educated natives on historical, neo-ethnic, and literary grounds. A few extracts from their propaganda bulletins reveal how they regard the Zionist movement:

Zionism to the Syrian is a vital economic and political danger which threatens to drive him from his home, and which runs directly against his national aspirations. *** It is an effort to settle in a country already settled and develop a country already developed or being developed by the people themselves. We do not object to a Jew coming to Syria to become a Syrian and to adopt the Arabic language and observe the laws of the country. We do not object to a Jew emigrating to Palestine for natural economic reasons. object strongly, however, to a Jew backed up by a corporation which has a permanent fund, (the Jewish National Fund, an English corporation,) which will give him an unfair advantage over the native Syrian; which will buy and improve the land for him and then sell it to him on the condition that he will not sell it again, because, they affirm, such a land is a permanent unalienable inheritance for all Jewry.

GEORGIA

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The Republic of Georgia in Transcaucasia established a bureau of information in Berne, Switzerland. The first phases of its propaganda were to rectify certain misstatements in regard to the republic

which had gone forth through "irresponsible news bureaux, whose agents are either unconsciously ignorant of facts or in the pay of the imperial or Bolshevist interests."

The republic wishes to go on record as having declined to take part in the PanRussian Convention at the Princes' Islands, not because it was not in sympathy with the endeavors of the Paris Peace Conference to restore law and order in Russia, but because it no longer considered itself a part of that empire, but a fully independent State conscious of its proclaimed and established rights.

In regard to the alleged treaty between Georgia and Turkey said to have been found in the archives of Talaat Bey in Constantinople by the High Commission of the Allies, Constantin J. Djakelly, in denying its authenticity, demonstrates for the first time what the Georgians have done in the great war:

The Georgians have fought on all Russian fronts in a greater proportion to their number than that of any other nationality save perhaps Serbia. Georgian public opinion has well understood the meaning of this war and the principles involved, and it was a Georgian leader-Tsrethelli -who, after his return from Siberia during the first months of the revolution, visited the Russian western front and, as you perhaps recollect, appealed to the Russian armies to continue to fight, warning them and the revolutionaries that the conclusion of a separate peace with Germany would mean a great blow to the cause of mankind and an irreparable disaster for Russia.

As to Georgia's relationship with Turkey, it was the unfortunate lot of Georgia to have to fight this restive and insatiable neighbor for many centuries from the very day they approached her frontiers until today. Besides having sent regular soldiers to fight the enemies of the Entente on different fronts, Georgia formed a legion of volunteers, not to fight on the side of the Turks, but against the Turks, and the legion fought so well that its commander, SubLieut. Prince Nijaradze, was made Colonel by the late Emperor Nicholas and attached to the person of the Grand Duke Nicholas.

After the signature of the BrestLitovsk Treaty, when a great majority of the Georgian regular soldiers were still scattered along the Russian western front, before they had time to return to Georgia, that country had to continue to fight the Turks, and did it as

well as she could, and, in spite of insufficient arms and ammunition, she prevented further penetration of the Turkish Army in Georgian territory.

One of the first acts of the Georgian Government was to issue a proclamation saying that Georgia had three enemiesthe Bolsheviki, the Turks, and the antirevolutionists.

After the dissolution of the Russian Empire and the failure of the Kerensky Government to keep it together five independent States were formed in the southeast: The Republic of the Cossacks of the Caucasus, the Union of the Circassians and Daghestani, and the Republics of Georgia, Tartar, and Armenia. Georgia occupies the centre of Transcaucasia-the basins of the Koura, the Rion, and the Tchorok, and the littoral of the Black Sea, being composed of the former Russian Governments, or provinces, of Tiflis, Koutafs, Batoum, and the districts of Zakatala, Soukhoum, and Ardahan-Olty. The territory claimed by the republic includes about 85,000 square miles and a population of 3,400,000, 75 per cent. of whom are Georgians.

Georgia is essentially an agricultural community. Its farmers, trained in the discipline of old Russia, have driven out the Bolsheviki and tamed the Turks. It has hopes of a great harvest, but it needs immediately agricultural implements to gather it. "In a word," one of its official manifestoes closes, " Georgia is becoming more and more a radical peasant and bourgeoise republic, and its methods can be studied with profit by the Muscovites of the north who are now in the throes of anarchy and bloodshed."

ALBANIA

Fear that Albania may be lost sight of in the reconstruction of the Balkans, and particularly in the way the frontiers of Greece and Serbia are to be reconstructed, and the rights of the Italians on the eastern littoral of the Adriatic adjusted, has inspired renewed efforts for national recognition on the part of the de facto Albanian Government, which is represented in America by the PanAlbanian Federation.

In one of the recent manifestoes issued by its organ Vatra (The Hearth). it proves that the old feudal system has

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