WELL MET, ISHMET!

A sense of humor is one faculty not generally included in the list of amiable qualities that form the make-up of the Turk, but for once he has played his reputation false. The Nationalist leader, Mustafa Kemal has as his representative at the present conference at Lausanne, the general Ishmet Pasha. Now Ishmet's great usefulness lies not so much in the distinction of his services,--though they have been many and great, Allah is witness! for he is a trained diplomat and his recent victories over the Greeks in a military way are credited to strategy of the highest order,--but his greatest usefulness at the conference, from the Turkish point of view at least, lies in the fact that he is almost stone deaf. His hearing, writes a correspondent, is so poor that he never goes anywhere without an aide-de-camp to rebellow into Ishmet's ear everything that has been shouted at him. Add to this handicap the point that Ishmet, though understanding French, is the "least proficient of all Turks in speaking it"--and his value at a conference where all the official business is conducted in French can hardly be underestimated.

Here is Turkish humor with a vengeance. Kemal suggests to the rest of Europe with shrewd wit: "You may debate, and argue, and bargain, but I shall neither hear nor understand you." And this is exactly the attitude which the Turkish Nationalists have assumed since they burst in through Europe's back door by means of the Mudania Pact in October.

If the powers at Lausanne can see through Kemal's little joke, they will be better prepared to form a united policy. It was failure on the part of England and France to smooth down the irritating roughness in their conflicting interests that has given Kemal his present advantage. If now again, British and French statesmen fail to present a united front, the Nationalist leader and his hard-of-hearing plenipotentiary (whose other senses are keen enough) are headed for a signal victory at Lausanne.