Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/269

 they had lived for four peaceful centuries under the rule of the Ottoman Caliph, and for this truly colossal achievement the thanks of a grateful Christendom are due to Mr. Lloyd George, who attempted to impose alone upon Islam that fate which Sir Edward Grey had agreed in 1907 to impose in conjunction with Czarist Russia.

The disestablished Oecumenical Patriarchate still remains in Constantinople and the departure of Meletios IV on July 10, 1923, may open its doors to the new Turkish Orthodox Church of Anatolia. The day seems to be at hand when the remnant of the Turkish Christians, welded firmly into the Turkish State by the flame of nationalism, may restore the Patriarchate to those exclusively religious functions which in the Western view are the only proper functions of a Church.

Nationalism which proposes to substitute its new Eastern regime of law for the old lawlessness of Western imperialism, is the driving force of Turkey today and Turkey happens to be the key country of the world. Nationalism in Turkey today welds and does not divide. Its cry strikes a sound and healthy note. I heard it in its purest form at Adana. It was in a theatre, filled to overflowing with Turkish officers, Turkish townsmen and Turkish peasants. Beyond the footlights, framed in the little proscenium of the theatre, stood the plump figure of the poet, Mehmed Emin Bey, now an old man of seventy-two, his voice hoarsened to a whisper, the perspiration streaming from beneath his kalpak, as he intoned his verse in liquid Turkish. Once a lonely cry in the wilderness, his voice that night was punctuated with quick applause. For