Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/372

 destroy the great prestige which America now possesses in the Levant by reason of disinterested social and educational service. To yield will be to forfeit the trust which Turkish nationalists have put in American hands. To yield will be to intrench the system of economic imperialism which has been the curse of the Near East for half a century. To yield will be to involve the United States in foreign entanglements more portentous than those connected with the League of Nations, or the International Court of Justice, or any other plan which has yet been suggested for American participation in the reconstruction of a devastated Europe and a turbulent Asia.

The Chester concessions may be either promise or menace. They will give promise of a new era in the Near East insofar as they contribute to the development and the prosperity of Asia Minor, without infringing upon the integrity and sovereignty of democratic Turkey, and without involving the Government of the United States in serious diplomatic controversies with other Great Powers. They will be a menace—to Turkey, to the United States, and to the peace of the world—if, unhappily, they should lead republican America in the footsteps of imperial Germany.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES*