Foreign News: Mosul

Attempts to settle the question as to whether Turkey or Great Britain shall dominate Mosul (TIME, Oct. 5 et ante) were featured last week by a modicum of practical action and the continuance of heated bluffing at Angora and London.

Action was confined to two definite announcements. The Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague set Oct. 22 as the date to decide (at the request of the Assembly of the League of Nations) whether the League Council has authority to adjudicate the Mosul matter. Meanwhile the Council of the League despatched General Laidoner, onetime Commander-in-Chief of the Esthonian Army, at the head of a League commission to investigate British charges that the Turks have been deporting Christians over the Mosul frontier.

Bluffing on the part of the Angora Government began by calling four more classes to the Turkish colors, the massing of four divisions of cavalry at Jezire-ibn-Omar, 20 miles behind the Mosul frontier, and mild efforts to prepare the Dardanelles against a possible naval threat from Britain. The Jumhuiet, famed Turkish Government journal, announced: “They are merely measures of national defense . . . since the emasculate League of Nations wallows as a mere servile instrument of British dictatorship. A recourse to arms remains as our only means of defending our rights.”

From London it was announced that “merely by coincidence” a strong British fleet will soon be maneuvering in Near Eastern waters. L. C. M. S. Amery, Secretary of State for the Colonies, who precipitated the break with the Turks at Geneva (TIME, Sept. 28), almost paraphrased Turkish utterances: “I can imagine no action more fatal to the honor of Britain than for us to abandon our rights in Mosul.”

From the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate, went a strongly worded letter to Premier Baldwin asserting that “there would be a widespread sense of shame among Englishmen if the Government were to abandon Christians in a British protectorate to the Turks.”