(1) The liberation of the peoples who now lie beneath the murderous tyranny of the Turks.

(2) The expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman Empire, which has proved itself so radically alien to Western civilisation.

For a century that most inharmonious of orchestras called the Concert of Europe has, owing to the exigencies of the Balance of Power, kept Turkey together, and in particular has maintained the centre of its government at Constantinople simply because the Balance of Power would be upset if anybody else held the key of the straits that separate Russia from the Mediterranean.  England, above all others, was instrumental in preserving that precarious Balance, and England now must confess the utter failure of her policy there throughout a century.  It is humiliating to acknowledge the complete collapse of that which for so many decades has been the keystone of our ruling with regard to our Eastern Empire, but the arch has collapsed; Germany pulled the keystone out, and all our efforts to exclude Russia from free access to the Mediterranean have only resulted in letting Germany in.  To-day she holds Constantinople, and the bitter pill must be swallowed.  The situation, as it stands at this moment, is infinitely worse than it could have been for a century back, if at any moment during those hundred years we had done what we always ought to have done, and declared that the anachronism of Turkey being in Europe was more intolerable than anything that could happen in consequence of her expulsion.  But we have acknowledged that now.  We have also acknowledged the even greater anachronism of Turkey being allowed to dispose of the destinies of any of those peoples who inhabit the territories of the Ottoman Empire, for the Allies, in their joint Note, have declared that the remedy of these two monstrous abuses forms an essential part of their aim in the war, which in costliness of life and of treasure has already far exceeded any cataclysm that could have come to Europe through its doing its clear and Christian duty with regard to Turkey during the preceding hundred years.  And among the benefits which eventually mankind will reap in the fields that have been sown by the blood of the slain will be the fact that the Confusion of Europe will have accomplished a task which the Concert of Europe was too craven of consequences to undertake; and Constantinople and the subject peoples of the Turks will have passed from the yoke of that murderous tyranny for ever.

We will take these two avowed aims of the Allies in order, and first try to draw (though with diffident pencil) some sketch of what will be the confines of the Ottoman Empire, when we pluck the fruits of the great crusade against the barbarism of Turkey and of Germany.  It is quite useless to attempt to keep the map as it was, and peg out claims within the Empire where we shall proclaim that Arabs and Greeks and Armenians shall live in peace, for it is exactly that plan which has formed a century’s failure.