SIR AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN has gone to Geneva mainly in connexion with the dispute with Turkey concerning the northern frontier of Iraq, and the pro-Turkish Press, entirely indifferent to the sufferings of the Nestorian and the Chaldean Christians, is again urging that Great Britain shall throw over the responsibility that she has assumed and decline any longer to carry out the Mandate that she accepted from the League of Nations. . . The Daily Chronicle has done well to point out that Turkey has a population smaller than that of Belgium, that her people are poverty-stricken and the State coffers empty. The threats of war, even when backed by whispers of alliance with Soviet Russia, are sheer bluff which cannot have the smallest effect with responsible statesmen. None the less, the official indifference to the woes of the Assyrian Christians is a sad commentary on the spirit of the times. The Under Secretary for the Colonies admitted in the House of Commons on Tuesday that at least three thousand refugees, who have escaped from the hands of the Turks, will die this winter in Iraq unless beneficent individuals come to their aid. The Iraq administration can do nothing, and the great nation that can cheerfully lose a million pounds in an exhibition at Wembley cannot afford a tenth of that sum to keep alive the remnant of a people whose present troubles are largely due to the fact that they were Great Britain’s allies during the war.
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