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 XXI

THE REBIRTH OF TURKEY

With the rebirth of Turkey, this narrative approaches its end. With the coming of a probable peace, the passions which have been raised in the Near and Middle East need sorely to be allayed, and there would be small usefulness in this narrative of the destruction they have worked, if the past did not contain its element of useful guidance for the future.

We in the West are heavily in debt to England. It is England which has slowly and laboriously fashioned our Western tradition of democratic government and that tradition has placed us all incalculably in England's debt. That tradition is still evolving and England is still, as it has always been, the scene of its evolution. But in acknowledging our debt to England, we need to think clearly, to distinguish sharply between the British democracy and the British Foreign Office. Between the two, there is no effective connection. The Foreign Office is outside the British Constitution and is not subject to the effective control of the British Parliament. British foreign policy in the Near and Middle East neither originates in Parliament nor is controlled by Parliament. This is a state of things which has been at once a source of enormous