Sea Battle As Conferees Meet.

New York Times 100 years ago today, December 17, 1912:
Greek and Turkish Fleets in Battle Outside Dardanelles — Result in Doubt.
ENVOYS ARE NOT HOPEFUL
Fear Peace Is Impossible Unless Powers Mediate — May Look to America.
REFUSE TO ADMIT GREEKS
Turks Say They Cannot Confer with Them — Adrianople Seems the Greatest Bone of Contention.
By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to The New York Times.
    LONDON, Tuesday, Dec. 17.— While the peace delegates were holding their first meeting here yesterday a naval engagement between the Turkish and Greek fleets was taking place outside the Dardanelles.
    According to The Daily Telegraph's Constantinople correspondent the Turkish fleet left the Dardanelles at 8:20 A.M., and a combat lasting until 1:30 P.M. ensued with the Greek fleet off the Island of Lemnos.
    The fortunes of war apparently favored the Turks. The Greek armored cruiser Giorgios Averoff was hit by four shells, and her guns were quickly reduced to silence. The other Greek vessels steamed away and the battle continued with the Giorgios Averoff alone, which subsequently withdrew in the direction of Piraeus. It is stated that the Turkish fleet suffered no damage.
    Under these circumstances it is not surprising, as Dr. E. J. Dillon asserts in an article in to-day's Telegraph on the peace conference, that pessimism prevails among the delegates. They are deeply impressed, he says, by the difficulties confronting them, and see no way of reconciling their differences.
    Dr. Dillon says one passage in Sir Edward Grey's speech in which he alluded to the difficulties of negotiating suggested a train of thought in the minds of the delegates very different from that which it was intended to awaken. The passage was this:
    "There can be no nobler task than to overcome those difficulties and to accomplish peace as a result of your own efforts and your own work."
    One of the most influential delegates, referring to these words, said to Dr. Dillon:
    "Unless all the symptoms are wholly misleading, we shall not achieve the feat in question as an outcome of our own efforts. It is beyond our power. At least, that is my own impression. Perhaps I am unduly pessimistic, but I assure you that I am employing words and phrases which seem warranted by the facts."
    "Then you believe the conference will break up without having attained its end and that hostilities will be resumed?" asked Dr. Dillon.
    "I fear rather than believe it," was the reply. "The Bulgarians and Turks are hopelessly at loggerheads. What each demands the other refuses, and there is no bridge to span the chasm that sunders them."
    The delegate added that the only hope for the conference was a bridge-builder from without, saying:
    "Let the powers employ their good offices to smooth away the obstacles that hinder us from drawing near each other and joining hands. Mediation is the unique plank of safety. If united Europe will lend us a helping hand we shall accomplish our noble task, not, indeed, as our own exclusive work, but as a result of our best endeavors, seconded by the friendly support of the older mightier nations under whose auspices we have thriven. If you could only realize how sorely we need the good offices of the powers you, too, would assist us to obtain them."
    As anticipated in The New York Times dispatches, the conference's first stumbling block was the question of the admission of the Greek delegates. The Ottoman delegates at the first meeting announced that it was impossible for them to treat with the Greeks unless the latter first signed the armistice. The decision, they explained, was not reached by themselves, but was due to the wording of their powers. They were not authorized to negotiate with the Greeks.