Paladin Departs

That snapping-jawed, tight-lipped fighter, that paladin in sailor's pants, Rear Admiral Mark Lambert Bristol, for eight years U. S. High Commissioner to Turkey, put a period last week to the most imposing paragraph of hard, successful work which any American has done in the Near East since the World War.

"Admiral Bristol is the only pearl in our yoke of thorns!" cried the official Turkish newspaper Milliet last week, and its editor declared himself "inflamed with consuming anguish at the departure of our Great Friend." What has Mark Lambert Bristol, hard-swearing quarterdeck-man, done to draw such a halo of fulsome Turkish affection around his trim Admiral's cap?

Mark Bristol's good offices in Turkey began when the Allies occupied Constantinople after the War. The French, the English, the Italians and the defeated Turks were perpetually rowing with one another&$151;usually at the expense of the Turks. Admiral Bristol, fair-play fighter, settled a good many of the rows by the intervention of his keen, strong personality-very often on the side of underdog Turks.

When the Young Turk Party seized the Government (1922) and (1923) transferred the Turkish Capital to Angora in Asia Minor, out of range of Allied warships, Admiral Bristol immediately sensed that the new regime of President-Dictator Mustafa Kemal Pasha was healthy, and, in any case, unshakable. While the U. S. Department of State was beginning to wonder whether it would recognize the Young Turk Government, Admiral Bristol strode into the office of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, and two fighting men shook hands (1924). Up to that time no Allied representative had called on Kemal. Soon or late, all took the trail blazed by Admiral Bristol.

During his eight years in Turkey, Mark Bristol has repeatedly "advised" the Young Turks, with a smile or a turtle-snap of his jaw, as occasion warranted. They took his advice in the matter of easing up on the Armenians--now no longer apt to be massacred like rats by Turks. They yielded when Admiral Bristol was grimly defending U. S. interests at the-- drafting of the Treaty of Lausanne (TIME Aug. 6, 1923 et ante).* They wondered at his prodigious activities in directing U. S. relief among Baron Wrangel's shattered "White Russians" in Constantinople, and at Smyrna after the great fire. All Turks are sure, with proved reason, that Admiral Bristol is their inflexible, understanding friend.

The Young Turks are not at all sure that they will find a second High Commissioner Bristol in his successor, the first U. S. Ambassador to be sent to Angora--Joseph C. Grew (TIME, May 30). Ambassador Grew is no salty sailor-paladin, but a Department of State "career man," until now Under Secretary of State.

Last week Rear Admiral Bristol said, reassuringly, at Constantinople, as he took the Simplon Orient Express for Paris: "Turkey has now become a robust nation with no fear of her most promising future."

*Never ratified by the U. S. Senate.