From the prologue (November 20, 1922) to the second
edition of Toynbee's "The Western Question in Greece and Turkey"
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The following are, I think, the chief points on which, in the first
edition, I anticipated developments which have come to pass -- or, more
frequently, have merely come into notoriety -- in the interval, and in
regard to which, changes in the text therefore seem unnecessary.
Throughout (e.g. on pp. 44, 104, 106), I maintained that the ancient
Anglo-French rivalry in the East was not only still in full vigour,
but that it was one of the dominant and most dangerous factors in the
present situation. I need not amplify this by describing here the tension
between the two countries over Eastern Thrace and Chanak in the earlier
stages of the present crisis.
I emphasised (e.g. on pp. 56-60) the
profound repugnance of the Western public (a repugnance which transcends
the geographical frontiers between Italy, France, and Great Britain)
towards fighting on in the East when once the fighting had ceased in
Europe. At the time when I wrote, this repugnance had already produced
the Franklin-Bouillon Agreement; since then it has made it good business
for English newspapers to conduct a "stop-the-war" agitation and has
clouded the political prospects of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston
Churchill. While the British Government, in a half-hearted way, have been
taking the French to task for treachery, and the French the British for
war-mongering, the public in the two countries has been actuated (and
itself actuating the Governments, whenever it has come to the point) by
the same fundamental determination to preserve the peace. The only
difference is that the French became conscious earlier than we did of our
common state of mind -- and this not at all because they are a cleverer or
more logical nation, but simply because the Turkish Nationalist Army made
hostile contact with the French garrisons in Cilicia and Syria as early as
January 1920, while the Greeks kindly interposed between them and the
British garrisons at Chanak and Constantinople until September 1922. When
the question "Will you fight?" was put in this concrete form, the British
"No" proved as emphatic as the French "No" had been. There is not much to
choose between our two nations in respect of common-sense, or between our
two Governments touching the lack of it.
I also prophesied that the game
of using the local nationalities as pawns, to which both our Governments
have had recourse, would prove very poor economy (p. 62). In the light of
what has happened, would we not eagerly cancel the services which the
Greek Army has rendered to us during the last four years, if only we could
at the same time avoid the damage which the Turkish Army has inflicted or
still may inflict upon us? It were better indeed for the British Empire
that the Greek Army had never set foot in Anatolia rather than that the
Turkish Army should thereby be restored (as it has been) to life; and it
were better for the French Republic, with her economic interests in Turkey
and her Islamic provinces in Africa, that Great Britain should have
established her ascendency at the Straits rather than that both Powers
should be bundled out of Constantinople, bag and baggage, by the victorious
*protege* of one of them.
The danger that Western civilization may be frozen out of Anatolia (p.
155) has only given place to the actualities of a more rapid destruction
by fire. The fate of Smyrna hangs over Constantinople, and the
Capitulations are laid upon the conference-table at Lausanne.
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My readers are likely to agree with me now, if not before, that the
Turkish National Pact is a more interesting -- and, I may even venture to
add, more important -- document than the Treaty of Sevres (p. 188); and
that the failure of the Greek campaign in Anatolia in the autumn of 1921
marked a turn in a tide which had been flowing for over 200 years (p. 211).
On the technical military question, I conjectured that the Graeco-Turkish
war would not be terminated by a military decision, but either by
diplomatic intervention or by a break-down of *moral*, and that, in the
latter event, the Greeks' *moral* would break down first (pp. 212 and
239-46). This conjecture has, I think, been borne out. At any rate, my
information is to the effect that the sudden expulsion of the Greek Army
from Anatolia in the course of August and September 1922 was due to a
failure of nerve and will rather than to inferiority in numbers,
equipment, positions, generalship, or any other military factor.
I also prophesied (p. 299) that the Greek forces (regular and irregular)
would eclipse their previous record of atrocities and devastations if they
left the country under such conditions, and that -- under the same
conditions -- a civilian Greek population numbering at least half a
million would leave with them (pp. 241-2), partly in order to escape
reprisals, and partly because national antipathies in the Near and Middle
East have reached a point at which no nationality can go on living under
the government of its neighbours. These two forecasts, the most melancholy
of all, have unhappily been more than fulfilled. The climax of misery has
come at the end, and the philanthropists of the West are staggering under
the burden which the statesmen of the West have cast upon their shoulders.
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All the same, the criticisms that gave me the greatest pleasure were two
private letters from a Turkish and a Greek friend of mine respectively. My
Turkish correspondent, writing from the Italian Consulate at Smyrna, in
which he had taken sanctuary, on the 4th September 1922, a few days before
the end of the Greek occupation, said:
"Your book, it may seem strange to you, has more nearly made me a
Nationalist than ever, and at the same time has done much to inculcate
sympathy and esteem for the courageous and self-sacrificing side in the
enemy [i.e. Greek] effort."
My Greek friend corroborated my theory of the "spiritual pauperisation"
inflicted on Greece by the West (pp. 349-52), and was generous enough to
tell me that though he disagreed violently with some of my book, he agreed
so strongly with my general conclusions and with my moral of toleration
and charity that his chief feeling was one of gratitude. His central
criticism is so much to the point that I shall quote it:
"Where I think you have done some avoidable injustice to the Greeks", he
wrote, "is in failing to exercise on their behalf the sympathetic
imagination with which you have analysed so well the position and
mentality of the modern Turk".
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