Turk Leader Back to Save Homeland

Tewfik Pasha Deplores ‘Excesses’ Of Past Thirty Years

London, March 18.- Tewik Pasha in nearly 80, but has made a long journey to come here to save the remnants of the Turkish empire.

He has been grand vizier of Turkey four times and is that capacity heads the present Turkish delegation to the London conference.

I asked for an interview, saying that Americans had no desire to grab Turkish territories, but for religious and humanitarian reasons were tremendously exercised over Armenian massacres.

“I admit that for the past 20 years there have been excesses,” Pasha told me “I deplore and condemn them just as you do.”

For many centuries the Armenians lived under Turkish rule at peace with their Turkish neighbors.

“Remember that Koran speaks of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed alike as prophets and forbids hostility to followers of prophets.

“Remember that in the era of Mohammedan rule in Spain that country was one of the centers of world civilization, science and literature. Armenia enjoyed practical liberty of religion, language and education under Turkish rule. Better business men then Greeks or Jews, the Armenians came to control commerce, fill legal posts and enter our diplomacy.

“A Change came in 1895, when the Armenian revolutionaries in Russia, Switzerland and elsewhere plotted against the existing order in Tarkey.

“That year they threw bombs in Constantinople, killing men, women and children.  I was foreign minister and escaped injury only because a bomb was thrown by mistake into the wrong chamber.

“The late Sultan Abdul-Hamid had a great fear of attempts on his life and began restrictions in Armenian territory. Likewise the Kurdish neighbors of Armenia, savage and more or less uncontrolled, seized upon the Armenian outrages as an excuse for outrages of their own.

“In the recent war, when the Turkish armies were facing Russia, the Armenians sought to attack us from the air. The result would have been the same in any country under like conditions.

“We went to hold Thrace and Smyrna for the Turkish empire.

“We want to conserve our empire, reform it, modernize it, and work out a salvation in pace with all the world.”