blacks, and a machine-gun was turned on a crowd in the streets of
Frankfort.

It is impossible to overestimate the effect in Germany of these events.
Public opinion was convinced that France was seeking, not reparations,
but the destruction of Germany. How else explain her unwillingness to
allow the German Government to put down the Ruhr insurrection, whose
success would have rendered any payments on the reparations account
impossible? How else explain the refusal of France, a fortnight later,
to accept the suggestion of Premiers Lloyd George and Nitti that the
German Government be invited to confer with the Allied Governments on
reparations and disarmament at San Remo? We have seen elsewhere how
the British and Italians at San Remo agreed to stiffen their attitude
toward Germany in return for concessions to Great Britain in the Near
East and to Italy in the Adriatic.

The Weimar Assembly had outlived its usefulness. A new General Election
was held on June 6 to choose the first Reichstag under the new
constitution. While the Center parties still had a majority, it was
greatly reduced, both the Right and Left gaining. The moderates were
drifting to the two extremes. The Nationalist vote increased by three
millions and the Minority Socialist vote by two and a half millions.
This made more unstable than ever the authority of the Government,
especially as the Allies at the Spa conference in July insisted upon
the reduction of the German army to the treaty figure of one hundred
thousand by January 1, 1921. In vain did the Germans plead that an
army of one hundred thousand would make impossible the maintenance
of authority and the insistence upon strict fulfilment of the treaty
obligations. The Government pointed out that the only way to secure
the arrest and trial of the “war criminals”--lists of whom, well up
in the thousands, contained the most prominent names in the army and
navy--would be for the Entente Powers to occupy militarily the whole
of Germany and to take over the running of the country. For no German
Government would have the means to obey this behest.

During the three weeks following the Spa Conference a tremendous effort
was made to fulfil the disarmament clauses of the treaty, which it had
been clearly shown at Spa had thus far been evaded. More than four
thousand heavy guns and field-guns were destroyed, and a systematic
effort was begun to disarm the civilian population. The deliveries
of live stock to France and Belgium were made, and Germany began to
attempt to meet the new schedule of coal deliveries, amounting to two
million tons a month. The Supreme Court at Leipzig was entrusted with
the trial of a few of the minor officers charged by the victors with
violation of the laws of war. Some of these received prison sentences.
The British representatives at the trials reported that they had been
fairly conducted. The French, on the other hand, declared that the
trials were a farce. Exasperated and despairing as they were over
the failure to secure any modification of the Treaty of Versailles,
the German people supported the Government in the efforts it made to
comply with the orders of the Entente Powers. Food and raw materials
the German people simply had to have to continue to exist. So a deaf
ear was turned to the extreme Nationalists. The Germans were equally
adverse to Bolshevism, whose horrors in Russia were described minutely
in the press.

The year 1921, while not so perilous for the new Government from
within, was marked by successive steps on the part of the Entente
Powers that rendered still more difficult than before the return of
Germany to economic health and political stability. On the last day
of 1920 the French Government notified the German Government that the
disarmament stipulation of the treaty had not been fulfilled, the
principal complaint being that the Civic Guards (_Einwohnerwehr_) had
not been disbanded in East Prussia and Bavaria. A few weeks later the
Allies issued an ultimatum, fixing eight dates for the fulfilment of
all disarmament demands, using the occupation of the Ruhr as a threat.
The Disarmament Commission reported on June 30 that its work was over.

But the French Government declared that the surrender of existing war
material and the disbanding of irregular organizations were only a
part of the disarmament problem.[19] Measures had to be taken, by
continuing the control, to prevent future infractions of the treaty,
and it was also essential to supervise and limit the manufacture
of anything in Germany that might conceivably be used for warlike
purposes, such as chemicals, Diesel motors, and a host of other things.
It was maintained that all factories should be dismantled that might be
easily converted into war production. This, of course, was a question
that never could be settled. If carried out to its logical conclusion,
it would mean the stoppage of all large-scale industrial activities in
Germany, and entail the emigration of from ten to twenty-five million
Germans. At the same time that disarmament was introduced as a factor
in industrial control, Germany was hit by two new and crushing blows:
the loss of the industrial portion of Upper Silesia; and the fixing of
the total indemnity at an amount which unbiased experts of all nations
declared meant inevitable default, followed immediately by the collapse
of the economic life of Central Europe.

During all the reparations discussion, Germany had always maintained
that the retention of Upper Silesia was indispensible to the fulfilment
of reparations obligations. But the plebiscite, as provided for
in the treaty, was held on March 20, 1921. The result was an
overwhelming victory for Germany, who received 717,122 votes against
483,514 for Poland. All the towns in the plebiscite territory and
most of the villages gave German majorities. All the urban districts
of the central industrial region--Beuthen, Hindenburg, Kattowitz,
and Königshütte--returned German majorities. This was a tremendous
surprise to the Poles, who with the aid of General Le Rond, head of the
Interallied Commission, and the French army of occupation (my authority
for this statement is the British commissioner and British and Italian
officers), rose in insurrection under Korfanty. The Germans tried to
defend themselves and began to introduce volunteers in arms from the
outside, as the Poles were doing. But the French Government demanded at
Berlin the immediate prohibition of recruiting for the defense of Upper
Silesia. No similar demand was made at Warsaw.

The Allies could come to no agreement in regard to the disposition of
Upper Silesia. The question was turned over to the League of Nations,
which awarded the most valuable industrial part of the territory to
Poland.[20] This was the most severe blow Germany had received since
signing the fateful armistice that ended the World War. It marked the
end of the hope of Germany getting on her feet and resuming her place
in the family of nations by the payment of adequate reparations. But
the blow to Germany was not as great as that to Upper Silesia, which
was artificially divided, leaving large industrial German towns in
the inexperienced hands of Poland, against whom they had voted. A new
irredentist question was born.

The German cabinet resigned, but Herr Wirth consented to head a
new ministry. He made clear, however, his attitude and that of his
colleagues in regard to Upper Silesia in the following declaration:

  The German Government sees in the territorial and economic dictates
  of the Entente not only an injustice which the German people has
  no power to oppose, but also an infringement of the Treaty of
  Versailles, an upsetting of the decision arrived at in Geneva and
  accepted by the chief Allied Powers. Against this injustice with
  the situation which it creates the German Government makes the
  solemn protest in the name of international law, the shield of the
  oppressed. It is only on account of the threats expressed in the
  note, and the desire to avoid as far as possible the misery which
  would otherwise light upon the Upper Silesian industrial district
  that the German Government consents to nominate the delegates [for
  arranging the partition with the Poles] as required by the dictate
  of the Powers, without thereby abandoning its previous standpoint.

The “economic dictates” were no less disastrous than the territorial
ones of 1921. At the end of January a conference at Paris formulated a
plan by which Germany was to pay 226 billion gold marks in forty-two
fixed annuities from May 1, 1921, to May 1, 1963, and in addition
forty-two varying annuities each equal to 12 per cent of German
exports. This demand was communicated to Germany, with the threat
that non-acceptance would involve the occupation of the Ruhr. The
foreign minister, Herr Simons, told the Reichstag that these demands
were impossible of fulfilment, infringed the Treaty of Versailles,
foreshadowed the dismemberment of Germany, and meant the economic
enslavement of the German people. Germany refused to entertain them.
Seeing that economists the world over, in France as well as in other
countries, regarded the proposal as absurd, the German refusal was not
answered by military steps, but a new conference was called in London,
at which the Germans were to be allowed to submit counter-proposals.
These were unsatisfactory, and the occupation of Duisburg, Ruhrort,
and Düsseldorf by French, British, and Belgian troops followed. Germany
protested to the League of Nations, but without effect.

Appeals were made for intervention at Washington and the Vatican,
but they were received coldly. The American Government pointed out
that Germany should “at once make directly to the Allied Governments
clear, definite, and adequate proposals which would in all respects
meet its just obligations.” There is no doubt that Germany at this
juncture ought to have recognized the inevitability of making supreme
sacrifices in order to live up to her obligations. Whether the effort
to do this was possible under existing conditions was another matter.
The cabinet evidently thought that there was nothing to be done, and
presented to President Ebert its resignation. In the meantime the
Reparations Commission had fixed the indemnity at 132 billion gold
marks, this sum coming due, as provided for in the treaty, on May 1,
1921; and a further sum of twelve billion gold marks was demanded for
the reconstruction of demolished industrial works. As a guarantee, the
German Government was to send immediately into occupied territory the
gold reserve of the Reichsbank and other banking-houses.

The Entente Powers issued an ultimatum giving Germany until May 12,
under threat of occupation of the Ruhr Valley, to accept unreservedly
all the demands of the Reparations Commission and to obey its orders
without delay. Allied armies were massed on the Rhine with headquarters
at Düsseldorf.

After many efforts a new cabinet was formed on May 10 under Herr Wirth,
a man of great ability, who gathered good men around him. It was just
in time to accept the ultimatum and prevent the further invasion of
Germany.

But the payment of the first billion marks in gold caused the mark to
depreciate one third in value. The Wirth Government seemed unable to
raise more money. An attempt to borrow money abroad failed. In December
the Government told the Reparations Commission that it could not pay
the January and February instalments. The burden under which Germany
was resting was the payment of two billion gold marks annually plus
an amount equal to 26 per cent of her exports. In addition she had to
face deliveries in kind, of which the most important was twenty million
tons of coal per annum. She had to find the money to pay for this
coal, and to buy coal abroad to make up her deficiency resulting from
this loss plus her loss from the alienation of Upper Silesia. How the
reparations crisis developed to the breaking-point, as a result of the
developments of 1922, is related in another chapter.

It is difficult, almost impossible, one must confess, to make a
categorical statement or pass a definitive judgment upon the financial
policy of successive German cabinets since the World War. In every
discussion the assertion of what Germany might have done is based upon
the assumption that there existed ability but not the will to do it.
Just as on the Allied side reparations demands have never been based
on an impartial expert estimate of German capacity to pay, and the
Reparations Commission has been political and not judicial in all its
decisions, on the German side the budget has not taken into account
treaty obligations, and enormous sums seem to have been spent on
railroads and other public work and on shipping. The industrial life
of Germany was not harmed by the war. Her plants and mines remained
intact. She was ready to resume business; and her industrialists
succeeded, despite all the moral and political confusion related in
this chapter, in keeping things going. There has been virtually no
unemployment, no shutting down of factories and mines, no suspension
of transportation service, in a word, no outward sign to indicate
that the country was hard up and unable to pay reparations. On the
other hand, one noted in Germany in 1922 an orgy of spending, a
feverish industrial activity, and the incredible return to bustling
prosperity of ports like Hamburg.[21] Export and import trade seemed
to be thriving. In a dozen cities the Government and private concerns,
principally banks, were undertaking extensive new building.

One was tempted to ask last summer, “Why does not Germany pay?”
Mutilated and buffeted about as she has been since 1918, her people
certainly seem to have kept their spirit, and very largely to have
recovered from the starvation days following the World War. And yet,
as is very clearly shown by the figures, her finances have become
more and more involved until the Government faces bankruptcy. The
first billion gold marks paid under the arrangement of 1921 caused a
violent downward movement in German exchange. Each successive payment
accentuated this movement until the paper mark became virtually
worthless. Before the end of 1922 economists were of the opinion that
Germany would never be able to pay the sums her own experts suggested
in their counter-proposals at Versailles in 1919.

As an economic problem, the reparations issue boils itself down to
three questions: How much is Germany’s surplus per annum? How much
of that surplus can be taken for reparations? How can the amount
taken be transferred abroad? This is the practical side of the
reparations question. To find the answers it was necessary to take into
consideration basic economic laws and internal conditions in Germany.
Only a healthy goose lays golden eggs. Only a strong government can tax
adequately a nation that has representative institutions.

Here the moral factors enter in. The people must have the willingness
to make sacrifices, and must consent to the measures adopted by the
Government. In the matter of reparations, for instance, nothing could
be accomplished unless the German people had impressed upon them that
their moral rehabilitation and the return of Germany to the family
of nations on terms of equality depended upon making the tremendous
sacrifices necessitated by adopting the policy of paying the piper for
what they had done in the World War. But we all know that “the people”
have to be shown the path of duty and honor and interest. Nations are
run by men of large means, with the help of the bourgeois class. Public
opinion is created by the press, pulpit, and platform.

In Germany, ever since the armistice, and much more so during the last
two years, the governing class has had a desperate fight on its hands
simply to prevent the German people from embracing one or the other
of the mad alternatives of despair, extreme Nationalism and extreme
Socialism. The governing class has been successful in appealing to the
instincts of order and conservation of property. But the policy of
the Allies has given the capitalists no incentive or encouragement to
make tremendous sacrifices. Good faith has been lacking on the side
of the victors. Could it be expected on the side of the vanquished?
The bourgeois class was morally sick and physically exhausted. The
insistence of the Allies in calling for gold payments has ruined the
salaried and investing classes throughout Germany. Until the invasion
of the Ruhr reawakened national spirit, the screws put down on the
Germans at French insistence had brought the country to the verge of
social paralysis.

There has been loose talk of rich German industrialists evading
taxation, and when the French and Belgians went into the Ruhr it was
confidently expected that these industrialists would pay up rather
than see their sources of wealth ruined. Public opinion in the United
States, wrongly informed, thought the rich Germans had been “welching”
and would now pay up promptly. Events have proved this belief wrong.
But a study of the fiscal measures of the German Government would have
demonstrated the absurdity of the assumption that the men who had a
stake in the Ruhr had not been paying their taxes and that if they did
so they would furnish ample means for the German Government to pay
whatever the French demanded.

The German tax on fixed incomes--salaries, wages, and
pensions--includes directors of companies in the Ruhr and all their
high-salaried staff, officers in the army, and ministers of state.
Laborers pay only 10 per cent, but the tax goes up to 60 per cent.
As it is paid at the source, evasion is impossible. As for the
capitalists, besides the income tax, they have been subjected to so
many different levies that it would have been impossible for them to
escape heavy taxation during the last four years. On top of the war
profits tax came the emergency law of 1921, which put the Government
in possession of 65 per cent of the largest fortunes. The forced loan
law of 1922 took 10 per cent of all fortunes above a million marks, on
which no interest was to be paid for three years. The legacy duty goes
as high as 70 per cent and cannot be evaded by presents made by the
living, which are taxed up to 60 per cent. Increment-values pay 30 per
cent, and public companies are subjected to a foundation capital tax
of 7½ per cent. Then, there are dividend and corporation profit taxes.
The figures would seem to show that the propertied classes in Germany
are paying 90 per cent of the taxes, and could not, if they would, give
more to meet reparations demands.[22]

Successive Cabinets since the war have been criticized for swelling the
budget with enormous sums for railways and public works, for not taxing
the people to the limit, for allowing the capitalists to send money out
of the country. This policy, or lack of policy, has been interpreted
as proof of dishonesty. But when a business Government, headed by Herr
Cuno, the able shipping man, came into office in 1922, there was no
longer doubt in the minds of impartial observers that Germany was ready
to consent to any practicable reparations program and to put her house
in order so that it could be carried out. The new Cuno Government,
backed by Germany’s leading industrialists, received the support of the
people and was ready to talk business with the Entente Powers.

But all the negotiations proved that the reparations problem was a
political and not an economic one. France wanted reparations if she
could get them; but she wanted security more than reparations. Public
opinion in France had come to believe that the economic recovery of
Germany spelled the ruin of France. Therefore, there could be peace
in Europe only when the Germans became again “the modest Germans of
1848,” that is, a disunited people, content to be in a position of
inferiority, military and economic, to their neighbors.

France may not have cherished these ideas at all. But the German people
believed that she had them. So long as the French refrained from
entering the Ruhr, the uncertainty of the situation demoralized the
Germans completely. They seemed during the latter part of 1922 to be
disintegrating socially, through the ruin of the bourgeois class. Then
came the events of January, 1923, confronting Germany squarely with the
issue, “To be or not to be.”

The blow of the Ruhr invasion fell upon Germany despite every effort
made at home and abroad to stave it off. Herr Cuno had raised postal
tariffs twice, and had made a third increase of 100 per cent on January
1, 1923. On the same date a second substantial increase was made in
passenger-fares and freight-rates. By removing the control of rents,
which had ruined landlords and prevented payment of taxes on land, Herr
Cuno revived an involuntary body of tax defaulters. Rents now stood
at twenty-seven times the 1914 rate. Taxes on small incomes rose from
1.6 to 9.3 per cent during 1922, and were promptly collected because
employers used stamps. But it was estimated at the beginning of 1923
that these increases, which brought all prices to pre-war level, while
wages were only half the pre-war level, would necessarily result in so
radical an increase in wage scales that Germany could no longer put
cheap goods on world markets. This would bring about a collapse of the
fictitious prosperity.

Writing before the Ruhr invasion, the Dutch economist, Dr. Stuart, of
the University of Utrecht, put the root of Germany’s problem in one
short paragraph:

  The cause of the desperate condition in which Germany finds herself
  is the impossibility of balancing her budget. The key to the
  inflation of the currency does not lie in the first place in the
  indemnity liabilities but in the further contents of the Treaty
  of Versailles. The reparations demands intensify the process of
  impoverishment and hasten the crisis to which it leads, but they
  are not the real cause of the impoverishment and of the crisis. The
  real cause is that an amputated Germany has been deprived of the
  possibility of feeding and maintaining its population of 63,000,000
  souls, and the importance of the crisis which is upon us is that it
  will prove the awful truth of the words attributed to Clemenceau:
  “There are twenty million Germans too many.”

Professor Stuart believes that Germany cannot exist in her present
condition, even if she pays no reparations at all! He points out, with
a masterly array of figures, what has been said over and over again by
the foremost British economists, that the territorial losses of Germany
and the export of reparations coal have made it necessary for Germany
to buy more food-stuffs than she did before the war in outside markets,
and, instead of exporting coal, she has had to buy coal. On the other
hand, she has lost most of her shipping. The means she formerly had
of overcoming an adverse balance of trade are gone, and the adverse
balance of trade is greater than ever.

Inflation warded off the collapse. But Germany’s depreciated mark
has not helped her abroad, as some people think, because she has had
to buy foreign currencies to meet the adverse trade balance and the
reparations payments, and to pay for food-stuffs and raw materials.

Less than five years have proved that the Treaty of Versailles has
deprived the German people of the possibility of a normal economic
existence. With the Rhineland and the Ruhr cut off, it is clear that
the Germans can not in the long run do otherwise than submit to the
demands of the French. But the whole problem remains. Unless there is a
radical revision of the Treaty of Versailles, the Germans may have to
emigrate in large numbers or die or fight again.

CHAPTER XXI

THE EXPANSION AND DEBACLE OF GREECE

None can understand the tragedy that was enacted in Asia Minor in 1922,
none is fitted to pass judgment upon it, none has the right to venture
an opinion on the rôle the Greeks will still play in the settlement
of the Near Eastern question, without having made a serious and
sympathetic attempt to follow the Hellenic national movement through
the century of struggle that culminated in the collapse of the Greek
armies in Asia Minor and the burning of Smyrna in September, 1922. The
legend has grown that Greece is the victim of the imperialistic folly
of her greatest statesman, who involved his people in ambitious dreams
of conquest that were impossible of fulfilment. Admirers of Venizelos,
to refute this legend, have launched another legend. They have tried
to make the world believe that Greece’s disasters and humiliation
are due to a pro-German king, supported by an unscrupulous group of
politicians, who almost ruined his country during the World War through
intrigues with Germany, and whose dramatic return to the throne in
1920 robbed Greece of the advantages Venizelos had secured for her in
the Treaty of Sèvres.

The rival legends are based upon a threefold misapprehension of the
connection between the Greek people and the little Kingdom of Greece,
of the relations of the great powers with the Kingdom of Greece and the
Greek people, and of the significance, internally and internationally,
of the Venizelist movement since 1910.

It has been assumed by most writers that the Kingdom of Greece, as
constituted after the War of Independence, marked the resurrection of
the nation, and was the natural and logical outcome of a struggle for
emancipation. This error came from a confusion of classical Greece with
historic Greece. Up to this day it has not been realized in Occidental
Europe and America that the Greek national movement does not have its
inspiration in the ancient glory of Athens and Sparta, of Corinth and
Thebes. The Peloponnesus and Attica and the coast-lands of the Gulf of
Corinth never formed a united country, inhabited by a people enjoying a
common nationhood.

The Kingdom of Greece, at the tip of the Balkan peninsula, was an
artificial country, brought into being after the War of Independence,
by a compromise of interests and jealousies on the part of Russia,
France, and Great Britain. The dream of the Greeks who raised the
banner of revolt against the Turks was the restoration of the Byzantine
Empire, which endured for a thousand years, and not of the Greece
we study about in school, which never existed as a united country.
National movements are inspired by historic traditions, nurtured by
religion, and grouped around a language. The connection between the
Greek nation of the nineteenth century and ancient pagan Athens and
Sparta is remote. Constantinople and Smyrna have been the _foyers_ of
Hellenism. The leaders in the War of Independence, who started and
directed the revolt against the Turks, came from Epirus, Macedonia, the
islands of the Ægean Sea, and Asia Minor.

The Kingdom of Greece was a makeshift of European diplomacy. The powers
were determined to maintain, in so far as it is humanly possible to do
so, the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. They feared the preponderant
influence, each of the others, in the Near East. Every time a Christian
subject people arose against the Turks, their efforts were directed
toward preventing the success of national movements. They made use of
expedients to bolster up the decaying Ottoman Empire by opposing where
they could, and limiting where they could not successfully oppose, the
separation of Balkan provinces from Turkey. This policy, justified
by the consideration of keeping the peace among themselves, has been
followed in every conference of European statesmen from Vienna in 1815
to Lausanne in 1923. The rising tide of nationalism in the Balkans,
encouraged by the intrigues of single great powers, has been frowned
upon when the great powers came together to adjust their rivalry.

More than Serbians, Rumanians, and Bulgarians, have the Greeks been
victims of this policy. For the triumph of Hellenism would have meant
not simply the detachment of outlying provinces but a blow struck at
the heart of the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks have never had a fair
chance, either by themselves or in alliance with the other Balkan
peoples, to work out their own salvation. At times the great powers
have intervened directly; on other occasions they have aimed to keep
the Balkan peoples weak by setting them against one another. For a
hundred years it has been a game of bullying, bribing, fishing in
troubled waters.

Venizelos was born and won his spurs in Crete under the Ottoman yoke.
He was a leader in revolutions, and his first experiences with European
diplomacy convinced him that the powers were determined, for the sake
of their own interests, to keep his native island under Ottoman
sovereignty. He left Crete and entered into the political life of
the little kingdom of Greece to make the kingdom a Piedmont for the
unification of Hellas. The Venizelist movement from the beginning,
therefore, was not interested primarily in the internal affairs
of independent Greece. The Venizelists set out to regenerate and
strengthen the Kingdom of Greece for the purpose of using Athens as the
starting-point in a campaign to emancipate the Greeks still under the
Ottoman yoke. It is impossible to call Venizelos an imperialist, who
conceived grandiose schemes and wrecked his country trying to put them
through. The Kingdom of Greece was not “his country.” Of the 7,000,000
Greeks in the coast-lands and islands of the Ægean, hardly more than a
fourth were inhabitants of the kingdom of Greece. The movement to which
Venizelos gave his name was a movement to liberate as many as possible
of the 5,000,000 Greeks still under Turkish rule, beginning with his
own island of Crete.

The ideas of King Constantine and his great premier were radically
antagonistic; they could not be reconciled. Constantine accepted
joyfully the partial liberation that came through the Balkan wars at
the beginning of his reign. But he looked upon his kingdom as a country
whose internal interests were paramount. His policy during the war was
to steer Greece through difficult years by maintaining neutrality. The
policy of Venizelos was to involve Greece in the war on the side of the
enemies of Turkey in order that, as a result of their victory (in which
he believed implicitly), Greece might be enabled to free as many as
possible of the Greeks still under the yoke of Turkey. When the Allies
deposed King Constantine in 1917, Venizelos brought Greece into the war
to fight for the redemption of the Ottoman Greeks and the completion of
the unification of the nation.

At the Peace Conference no representative of a smaller state had a
stronger case than Venizelos. In taking territories away from Germany
and Austria and Hungary the Conference went back to the Middle Ages
to allow historic claims. Ports were taken from the vanquished
on ethnological grounds, even when the hinterland was of another
character; and where the inhabitants were not of the nationality of
the claimant state, ports were taken away on economic grounds, the
self-determination argument being justified by the hinterland! In the
changes in Europe there could not be adduced the additional argument of
Venizelos, that liberation from the vanquished meant security of life
and property and a greater degree of prosperity. And yet the Entente
Powers, at one in their determination to despoil Germans, Austrians,
and Hungarians, hesitated a little about the Bulgarians and a long
time about the Turks. In the atmosphere of the Peace Conference none
dared say a word in favor of mitigating the harshness and injustice of
the terms imposed upon Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians. But a strong
current in favor of the Turks set in; and, had there not been the
necessity of placating the Serbians to reconcile them to the Italian
demands, the Bulgarians would have got off more easily than they did.

Venizelos was an outstanding figure among the statesmen gathered at
Paris. He had the ear of Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson. The
American President eagerly enlisted his support in drafting and forcing
the adoption of the League of Nations Covenant. Orlando, worried to
the breaking-point by the Adriatic question, intimated his willingness
to meet the Greeks half-way or more in the questions of Epirus and the
Dodecanese. Resisting the evident intention to put him off until after
Germany and Austria were dealt with, Venizelos succeeded in getting
before the Council of Ten and later the Big Four the aspirations of
Hellenism.

What little measure of success the Greek premier attained, however,
was due to his personal influence and not to affection for Greece,
nor to gratitude or confidence. French intrigues against Greece were
second only to those of the Italians, who had a natural reason for
opposing Greater Greece with as much energy as Greater Serbia. The
latter was a more real danger for Italy, as it would bring the Slavs
to the Adriatic; but the former was viewed with alarm as a commercial
and naval rival in the eastern Mediterranean. Despite the Saloniki
revolution and the tardy entrance of Greece into the war, the French
were not ready to forgive the so-called massacre of December 1, 1916,
when their marines, entering Athens, were greeted by a rain of bullets.
Powerful influences at work in British as well as French diplomatic
circles, were felt at the Conference, to prevent the despoiling of
Turkey at the expense of Greece, for fear of offending Mohammedan
sentiment in India and North Africa.

The withdrawal of the Italians in a huff after Wilson’s sensational
Fiume declaration gave the Greeks an unexpected opportunity to
anticipate the formal decision of the Conference on their claims in
Asia Minor. Lloyd George heard that the Italian Government was planning
to send an expeditionary corps to Smyrna in order that the Peace
Conference might be confronted with a _fait accompli_. He persuaded
Clemenceau and Wilson that the only way of preventing the contemplated
Italian _coup_ would be to have Greece occupy Smyrna and the immediate
hinterland in the name of the Allied and Associated Powers. Venizelos
was summoned suddenly to the Quai d’Orsay, and the proposal was put
before him. Lloyd George urged its acceptance. Venizelos agreed. The
plans were secretly worked out by the British, French, American, and
Greek military advisers.

Greek troops were landed at Smyrna on May 14, 1919, and, after seven
weeks of disorders and some severe fighting, the Greek army was in
possession of the Smyrna region and had extended its occupation along
the railway lines to the limits of the province of Aïdin. The press
was fed with lurid stories of massacres by both Greeks and Turks, for
which, on both sides, there seemed unfortunately to be substantial
foundation. The Greek army asserted that it was fired upon in Smyrna,
and had to retaliate. The soldiers undoubtedly got out of hand. But
order was quickly restored. Most of the atrocities in the province
seemed to have been due to the local native population, Mohammedan and
Christian.

After the occupation of Smyrna a whole year passed before Venizelos
was able to get the Entente Powers to agree upon the terms of peace
to be imposed upon Turkey. In the meantime, as is recorded in the
next chapter, a formidable Turkish Nationalist movement was allowed
to get under way, in the interior of Asia Minor, which added to the
difficulties of the negotiations and began to menace the Greek hold
on Smyrna. The Paris Conference adjourned in November, 1919, without
having adopted a draft for the Turkish treaty. Holders of Turkish
bonds, actual and expectant holders of concessions in Constantinople
and Asia Minor, and British and French officials interested in the
Mohammedan colonies, brought constant pressure to bear to prevent the
partition of the Ottoman Empire. After a brief visit home, Venizelos
was compelled to return to Europe to participate in the continuation
conferences.

Not because they were agreed or believed they had discovered a
satisfactory solution of the Turkish question, but because it was
impossible to delay decisions further, the Entente premiers adopted at
San Remo, in April, 1920, a draft treaty that had been over a year in
the making. The Turkish treaty terms had become a matter of bargaining.
France and Italy assented to the draft, which seemed to favor Great
Britain, because Lloyd George promised to back France in putting the
screws down on Germany both as to disarmament and reparations and to
let Italy settle the Adriatic question by direct negotiations with
Jugoslavia. The Treaty of Sèvres, whose main terms we gave in an
earlier chapter, was signed on August 10, 1920, after much haggling.

The Nationalists had refused to recognize the authority of the
Constantinople Government to enter into a treaty in the name of the
Turkish people, and had for several months been defying both the
Sultan and the Entente Powers. They had attacked the British, who
were occupying and running the Anatolian Railway from Constantinople
to Eski Sheïr, and had driven the British troops back to the Gulf of
Ismid, within sight of Constantinople. In this emergency the Entente
Powers called upon Greece, who was to be the principal beneficiary of
the treaty. In June the Greeks marched northeast from Smyrna and, in
a short campaign, came to the aid of the British. They occupied Brusa
on July 8. The Turkish Nationalists were also defying the Entente in
Thrace. After the victories in Asia Minor, the Greeks moved part of
their army across the Ægean Sea and occupied all of Eastern Thrace.
King Alexander entered Adrianople on July 25.

By the Treaty of Sèvres the Greeks were awarded Smyrna, with a generous
hinterland, and Thrace almost up to the defenses of Constantinople.
Constantinople and the Straits were to enjoy a special status, under
international protection, with only the nominal suzerainty of the
Sultan. Greece was confirmed in possession of all the islands of the
Ægean, except those at the mouth of the Dardanelles. Italy retained
only Rhodes, with the proviso that a plebiscite should be held fifteen
years after the cession of Cyprus by Great Britain to Greece. Since the
British had made no promise to cede Cyprus, however, the main object of
the Greek fight for the Dodecanese was not attained.

The Treaty of Sèvres, had it been maintained, would have been a great
step forward in the realization of the Greek dream to revive the
Byzantine Empire. What it actually gave Greece was not, however, as
much as the Treaties of St.-Germain, Trianon, and Neuilly had given
her Balkan allies, Serbia and Rumania. If the awards to Greece were
absurdly generous and unjustified and ought not to have been made at
the expense of a vanquished nation, what shall we say of the awards to
Serbia, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland? If the Treaty of Sèvres
had been applied, neither in territory and mineral and other wealth nor
in alien population would Greece have received nearly as much as these
other smaller states.

Greece’s titles, as recognized by the Treaty of Sèvres, were not only
more just but better earned than the titles of the other states under
the other treaties. What Greece received she had actually conquered by
her own efforts. And if the titles were to prove valid and permanent
it would also be by her own efforts. As early as March 6, 1920,
Venizelos reported to his Government that no British military support
would be available to keep Greeks either in Thrace or Asia Minor,
and that no assistance could be expected from France or Italy. If or
when the Treaty of Sèvres was signed, the Greeks would have to rely
upon themselves to enforce it. On June 15, two months before the
Treaty of Sèvres was accepted by the Constantinople Government, Lloyd
George again asked Venizelos if he thought Greece could take over
the territories in question and defend them from the Nationalists.
The Greek premier’s answer was the triumphant march on Brusa and the
expulsion of the Nationalists from Thrace.

Two days after the Treaty of Sèvres was signed, an attempt was made to
assassinate Venizelos as he was taking the train in Paris to return
to Greece. He was in poor physical condition when he got back to
Athens and found internal conditions in a very bad state. The head of
a Government cannot be away two years on an end and have things run
smoothly at home. His subordinates had abused their authority. There
was profound dissatisfaction, which was not allayed when the Greek
people discovered that the net result of the treaty was the Entente
Powers’ permission for Greece to work out her own salvation in Asia
Minor. Several classes in the army had already been in active service
for eight years. A wave of war weariness swept the country, of which
the partizans of the banished Constantine took full advantage. When
Venizelos was struggling against these handicaps, which were enough
to tax his ability and enthusiasm to the utmost, King Alexander
suddenly died. His younger brother Paul refused to return and take
the throne. The issue at the General Election thus became a personal
one between Constantine and Venizelos. The ex-king’s party won at the
polls on November 14, 1920. Venizelos left Greece. On December 19 King
Constantine and Queen Sophie, sister of ex-Kaiser Wilhelm, returned to
Athens.

Before the return of the King the British, French, and Italian
Governments issued a proclamation stating that the recall of King
Constantine could only be regarded as ratification by the Greek people
of the actions of the King, which had been hostile to the Allies, and
that the recall of the King would create an unfavorable situation
between Greece and the Entente Powers. After this proclamation a
plebiscite was held on December 5. There were a million votes,
virtually all in favor of the King.

Great Britain, France, and the United States refused to recognize
Constantine.[23] Notwithstanding the fearful handicap the return
of Constantine imposed upon Greece in her struggle to retain what
the Treaty of Sèvres had given her, Constantine persisted in his
determination to remain on the throne. Only after the revolution that
followed the collapse of the Greek armies in Asia Minor in September,
1922, did Constantine withdraw. Then he abdicated in favor of his
oldest son, George, who had recently married Princess Elizabeth of
Rumania, and went into exile in Sicily, where he died a few months
later.

Speculation as to what would have happened in Greece had Venizelos
remained in power is profitless. Therefore, we shall limit ourselves to
the story of what actually happened.

On January 4, 1921, in the absence of all Liberal or Venizelist
members, King Constantine opened the newly elected Chamber of Deputies
and stated that the war in Asia Minor would continue. As a matter
of fact, the Greeks could not have withdrawn; and at the same time,
in order not to withdraw, they had to go forward. On January 10,
the Greeks advanced over the mountains to Biledjik on the Anatolian
Railway, cutting off Angora from the Bosphorus. In a conference at
London on March 9, the Athens Government rejected a proposal of the
British and French Governments to modify the Treaty of Sèvres by the
Greek evacuation of Asia Minor in return for Turkish Nationalist assent
to the cession of Thrace to Greece. A new offensive was launched on
March 23, which succeeded in giving the Greeks possession of two
important junction-points of the Anatolian Railway, Afium-Karahissar
and Eski Sheïr, which they were afterward compelled to abandon. In the
early part of July, however, they returned to the attack, reoccupied
the ground lost in the spring, and won decisive victories at Kutahia
and Eski Sheïr. Encouraged by these victories, the Greek General Staff
made the mistake of believing that it was possible to march on to
Angora and put an end to Turkish resistance. The offensive was renewed
in the middle of August, was carried along the Sakaria River nearly to
Angora, but could not be maintained on the last lap of a march that had
cost them dear. The Greeks retreated to positions east of the Anatolian
Railway and dug themselves in for the winter in strong natural
positions.

Several efforts were made to mediate between Greece and Turkey by
the Supreme Council, the League of Nations, and the Conference of
Ambassadors. The last proposal, formulated in March, 1922, was
virtually the same as that of March, 1921, i. e., that the Turks should
have Asia Minor, while the Greeks should keep Thrace. In recognition
of the growing power of the Turkish Nationalists, the Entente
Powers offered modifications in the Sèvres provisions concerning
Constantinople and the Straits that would salve the pride of the Turks
and leave them nominal masters in their own house. The Turks were also
offered membership in the League of Nations.

The successive efforts of the Entente Powers to bring about a peaceful
liquidation of the Greek venture in Asia Minor by a voluntary revision
of the Treaty of Sèvres proved that the San Remo agreement of 1920
had failed, and that the victorious powers, unable to arrive at an
understanding, preferred to sacrifice the aspirations of Hellenism
and to allow the Turks to go unpunished rather than risk seeing one
of themselves best the others in a division of the Turkish spoils.
Other factors also entered into the Near Eastern question to make it
as complicated in 1922 as it had always been. The rôle of Russia at
Angora was disquieting. The Turkish Nationalists were menacing Great
Britain and France in Mesopotamia and Syria. London was suspected by
Paris and Rome of planning to use the Greeks as agents to hold Western
Asia Minor and the Straits in the interest of the mistress of the
seas. French statesmen felt that backing the Turks might prove to be
an excellent means of keeping the British in line to continue putting
the screws down on Germany. In vain the Greek Government protested that
the Treaty of Sèvres was an integral part of the Paris settlement and
as sacred as the other treaties. Had not the Greeks acted in good faith
in going into Asia Minor at the request of the great powers? Could
they be expected to withdraw and leave the Anatolian Christians, the
Circassians, and the anti-Kemalist Turks, who had coöperated in the
occupation, at the mercy of the Angora Nationalists?

From a purely military point of view the Greeks were in an excellent
position in Asia Minor. Behind most of their front lay railway lines.
They had had a year in which to fortify their front and organize lines
of communication. The Turks had not molested them. They had been able
to pick out the strongest natural defenses. But they had no money. The
boycott of the Constantine Government prevented them from contracting
loans or obtaining large credits for supplies abroad. They knew that
France and Italy had made treaties with the Turks and were supplying
them with artillery and munitions. They knew, too, that Soviet Russia
was giving substantial aid to their enemies. France and Italy did
not allow the Greeks to establish an effective blockade of the coast
of Asia Minor. The blockade rules which the French and Italians had
proclaimed in the Mediterranean, when they were fighting Turkey, and
had imposed upon Greek commerce, were declared intolerable when Greece
tried to use them to prevent the Turks from receiving war materials.

The Athens Government grew desperate. Every month the Turks were
becoming stronger, and yet it seemed impossible to order the evacuation
of Asia Minor. The British Government, and British public opinion in
general, encouraged the Greeks but only with words! In July the Greek
Government transferred 40,000 of its best troops from Asia Minor to
Thrace, and massed them, together with the Thracian army of occupation,
near Constantinople. A note was sent to the Entente Governments,
demanding permission to occupy Constantinople. It was a grand-stand
play, conceived as a supreme effort to avert impending disaster. The
Entente Powers refused to accede to the Greek request.

At the end of August, realizing that they could not last through
another winter in their positions east of the Anatolian Railway, the
Greeks prepared to fall back on a line within the limits of the zone
defined in the Treaty of Sèvres. The Turks got wind of the plan and
attacked at the most vulnerable point in the Greek front, where the
railway from Smyrna joined the Anatolian Railway at Afium-Karahissar.
Panic started and spread, as panic always does. The Greeks became
demoralized and abandoned their strong positions without fighting. They
retreated to the Ægean coast, burning towns and villages as they went.
Most of the army got away to the Ægean islands and to Thrace. But they
lost all their artillery and stores, and left the native Christians and
Mohammedan Circassians, who had made common cause with the Greeks, to
the mercy of the Turkish Nationalists. The demoralization of the Greek
army was not so great as that of the Italian army at Caporetto, and,
in numbers of troops affected, no greater than that of the British and
French in the last German offensive in France in the spring and early
summer of 1918. Had there been reserves to fall back upon, had there
been strong allies to come to the rescue, the Greeks could easily have
retrieved their fortunes. We must remember this in judging them. But
years of facing great odds alone, with no hope of a change, had ended
by taking the heart completely out of them.

The events of September, 1922, proved to be a greater blow to
Hellenism than the fall of Byzantium in 1453 or any other of the
vicissitudes suffered by the Greeks in the original Turkish conquest of
Asia Minor and the Balkans; for the Turks resolved this time to stamp
out Hellenism for good and all. The burning of Smyrna was accompanied
by wholesale massacres. The expulsion of the Greeks from Asia Minor
and Eastern Thrace followed the signature of an armistice at Mudania
on October 10. The negotiations were carried on between the Entente
Powers and the Turks. Greece, by her defeat, had been eliminated and
was forced to accept the loss of Eastern Thrace in order to secure the
armistice.

Before the Mudania Conference, when it was learned that the Entente
Powers had sent a note to Kemal Pasha, leader of the Turkish
Nationalists, offering to restore Eastern Thrace to Turkey as one
of the conditions of peace, a revolution broke out among the Greek
soldiers who had found refuge on the island of Mytilene. The troops
demanded that they be escorted to Athens. Under the joint leadership of
Colonels Gonatas and Plastiras, they arrived in Greece on September 26,
forced the abdication of Constantine, and accepted Crown Prince George
as King, on condition that he promise to regard his father’s abdication
as final and to place the Government in the hands of the revolutionary
committee they had formed. The first act of the revolutionaries was
the arrest of former premiers and ministers whom they regarded as
responsible for the Asia Minor disasters. These, they asserted, would
be tried for high treason. The new masters of Greece declared that they
would not give up Eastern Thrace. Only on this condition, however,
could they secure the intervention of Venizelos, who knew the futility
of attempting to renew the war and further indispose the Entente Powers.

After the evacuation of Eastern Thrace in October, Venizelos consented
to represent Greece at the new peace conference, which was to open at
Lausanne on November 20. The evacuation of Adrianople, which began on
October 15, created immediate difficulties for the new Government.
Had it not made the revolution for the avowed purpose of saving
Thrace? Martial law had to be proclaimed. Then, to appease popular
excitement, the revolutionary leaders began the investigation of the
causes of the disaster. A committee reported on November 8 that all the
anti-Venizelist Governments, from 1915 to 1922, were guilty of high
treason because they had alienated the sympathies of the Entente Powers
during the World War and since, because they had blindly supported
Constantine, because they had neglected to comply with the requests
and demands of the Entente Powers in regard to Asia Minor, because
they had concealed from the people the successive warnings as to the
impracticability of holding their foothold in Asia Minor, and because
they had permitted an occult government to exist in Greece under
Prince Nicholas, in defiance of the constitution. Another brother of
the ex-king, Prince Andrew, was arrested on the charge that he was
immediately responsible for the recent disaster. The report demanded
that six ex-premiers and ex-ministers, Admiral Goudas, and General
Hadjianestis, commander-in-chief of the Greek army in Asia Minor, be
tried for high treason before a special court martial.

Greek statesmen, including Premier Krokidas, who had consented to serve
under the revolutionary Government, begged that before the sentence
was announced there be granted right of appeal to a National Assembly,
which was to be elected in the near future. Krokidas resigned when
the plea was rejected. On November 25 Colonel Gonatas, unable to get
a civilian to take the office, assumed the premiership himself. Three
days later former Premiers Gounaris, Stratos, and Protopapadakis,
former Foreign Minister Baltazzi, former War Minister Theotokis, and
General Hadjianestis were condemned to death and fined sums amounting
to the confiscation of their private fortunes. A few hours later
they were shot. Prince Andrew escaped the death sentence; but he was
banished after military degradation.

The execution of the former ministers aroused a storm of protest in
Greece and abroad. The British minister left Athens, and the Greek
minister at Washington cabled his resignation. But Colonel Plastiras,
Chief of the Revolutionary Committee, not only assumed responsibility,
in the name of the committee, for what had happened, but declared that
all persons, civilian and military, connected with the Asia Minor
disaster would be brought to trial. He denied the charge that the court
martial was not a proper means of decreeing punishment. He announced,
moreover, that the General Election would be indefinitely postponed.

It was feared that the political executions, coming at the beginning
of the Lausanne Conference, would increase the already unfavorable
international situation of Greece. But Venizelos stuck at his task,
fought hard to save what he could, and through both periods of the
conference, lasting weary months, he watched for every opportunity to
profit by the resentment aroused among all the Entente delegates by the
unreasonableness and insolence of the Turks. Other patriotic Greeks
abroad, following the example of Venizelos, accepted and supported,
even where they could not defend, the Revolutionary Committee. They
felt that the debacle of Hellenism would be rendered complete if there
were a new outbreak of civil war in their unhappy country. There had
been too much of political strife during the years of miraculous
expansion.

The two preoccupations of Greece in 1923 have been the care of refugees
and the reorganization and strengthening of the army.

The refugee problem became acute immediately after the retreat.
Hundreds of thousands of Greeks, Circassians, and Armenians, and
a large number of non-Kemalist Turks fled pell-mell to the coast,
overcrowded Chios, Mytilene, and Samos, and flowed over to Athens and
Saloniki in a never ceasing stream. To these were added refugees from
Thrace. Then came the Christians expelled from the Black Sea littoral.
The Turks had retained, and deported into the interior for labor
battalions, the able-bodied men and boys. The Greek refugee situation
developed much the same as the earlier Armenian problem--countless
thousands of women, children, and old people, incapable of earning
their own living, even were there a chance to do so.

As virtually all the Christian population of Asia Minor and Thrace had
fled or had been exiled, Greece within a few weeks saw her population
increased by between 1,200,000 and 1,300,000 wholly dependent
immigrants, bringing disease with their poverty. They came at the
beginning of winter. All needed shelter, food, clothing, bedding, and
medical attention. The problem was appalling, and it still threatens to
overwhelm Greece in the summer of 1923. There is little hope of these
refugees’ being able to return to their homes. How can a country, not
self-supporting, bankrupt, and without credit abroad, take care of a
20 per cent increase in its population, not of able-bodied men, but of
dependents? Charity, notably that administered by the Near East Relief,
has kept the refugees from starving and freezing. It cannot continue
indefinitely, however, and very many Greeks believe that salvation lies
in a new test at arms with the Turks. They are by no means convinced of
the military superiority of the Angora Nationalists, unless they are
helped, as they were last time, from the outside. The Greeks still have
their fleet, which gives them mastery of the sea. If not interfered
with, they can blockade the Turks.

The lesson of the protracted and fruitless negotiations at Lausanne
seems to be that force alone counts for anything in international
relations. Throughout the discussions the attitude of the Turks
was that of defiance, and only military threats brought them to a
compromise. The best argument Venizelos had was the fact that 150,000
Greeks were still under arms, most of them in Western Thrace, with
their morale restored, and ready to try again. This prevented the Turks
from prodding him too hard, and this alone made the Entente Powers
willing to consider that, despite the debacle of 1922, there might
still be a promising future for Hellenism, and some profit to be had
for friends of the Greeks.

CHAPTER XXII

THE TURKISH NATIONALIST MOVEMENT

No armies were so decisively defeated in the closing months of the
World War as those of Turkey. The British retrieved their reverses
in Mesopotamia, while General Allenby, in the Palestinian campaign,
succeeded in striking a death-blow to Turkish military domination
over the Arabic-speaking portions of the Ottoman Empire. When it was
realized at Constantinople that Germany had come to the end of her
resources, Talaat and Enver, who had been in the saddle throughout the
war, resigned and got away. A new cabinet immediately entered into
negotiations for an armistice, but tried to delay capitulating in order
that Turkey might have the advantage of the conditional surrender
Germany was manœuvering to make. This proved to be impossible. On
October 30, 1918, the Sultan’s delegates agreed at Mudros to Allied
occupation of the Straits and Constantinople, as well as of the
Taurus tunnel system on the Bagdad Railway, and to the immediate
demobilization of the Turkish army, the surrender of the fleet, the
withdrawal of Turkish armies from the Caucasus, Persia, and Cilicia,
and the capitulation of Turkish garrisons and officers with indigenous
troops in Arabia, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Tripolitania.

After the armistice British armies entered the Caucasus, penetrated
Mesopotamia to Mosul, and passed through Syria into Cilicia. Entente
fleets appeared in the Bosphorus; garrisons were disembarked for
Constantinople; and Allied contingents took possession of the
Dardanelles forts. The British extended their control from the Asiatic
side of the Bosphorus along the Anatolian Railway to Eski Sheïr.

A prompt peace settlement, such as was imposed upon Germany, would have
compelled the Turks to yield to every demand of the Entente Powers.
But, as we have seen elsewhere, suspicions and rivalries of the Entente
Powers delayed the presentation of a treaty to Turkey. Nearly two years
passed before the Turks were forced to sign the Treaty of Sèvres. In
the meantime, the Entente Powers had invited Greece to occupy Smyrna
and to drive the Turks out of Thrace. The Greek expedition to Asia
Minor met with opposition from the beginning, and to break it down the
Greeks were gradually drawn into the interior of the country. Syria and
Cilicia were handed over to the French, and the British were compelled
to abandon the Caucasus and northern Persia to Soviet Russia.

Before the summer of 1920 there was already a wide divergence of
opinion on the Near Eastern question among the Entente Powers, and the
Turks, under Mustafa Kemal Pasha, had reorganized an army and were
defying the Sultan’s authority in the interior of Asia Minor. These
significant changes did not deter the Entente Powers, however, from
rejecting the pleas of the Turks for mitigation of the peace terms in
much the same language they had used to Germany a year before.

In view of what has happened since, it is interesting to observe that
the Supreme Council, in June, 1920, told Turkey that the Allies were
quite unable to agree that Turkey had any less responsibility for the
war than the countries to which she had been allied. In fact, they
declared that she was “guilty of peculiar treachery to Powers which for
more than half a century had been her steadfast friends,” and that she
had entered the war “without the shadow of excuse of provocation.” The
Allied note went on to say:

  Not only has the Turkish Government failed to protect its subjects
  of other races from pillage, outrage, and murder, but there is
  abundant evidence that it has been responsible for directing and
  organizing savagery against people to whom it owed protection.
  For these reasons the Allied powers are resolved to emancipate
  all areas inhabited by non-Turkish majority from Turkish rule. It
  would neither be just nor would it conduce to lasting peace in the
  Near and Middle East that large masses of non-Turkish nationality
  should be forced to remain under Turkish rule. The Allies can make
  no modification in the clauses of the treaty which detach Thrace
  and Smyrna from Turkish rule, for in both areas the Turks are in
  a minority. The same considerations apply to the frontiers fixed
  between Syria and Turkey. For the same reason they can make no
  change in the provisions which provide for the creation of a free
  Armenia within boundaries which the President of the United States
  will determine as fair and just.

The Entente Powers pointed out that they had been generous in leaving
the Turks in Constantinople and that, “in view of the misuse made by
the Turks of their power in the past, the Allies have had grave doubts
as to the wisdom of this step.” A threat and ultimatum ended the
discussion:

  If the Turkish Government refuses to sign the peace, still more, if
  it finds itself unable to reëstablish its authority in Asia Minor,
  or to give effect to the treaty, the Allies, in accordance with the
  terms of the treaty, may be driven to reconsider this arrangement,
  by ejecting the Turks from Europe once and for all.

The sudden change in the attitude of the Entente Powers toward
Turkey, beginning only a few months after these words were uttered,
demonstrates their insincerity. They were not inspired by moral
indignation, by a desire to liberate subject peoples, or by a knowledge
of or belief in the ability or willingness of the three Powers, acting
together, to coerce the Turks. The British hoped that the Greeks by
their own efforts would be able to crush the rising Turkish Nationalist
movement. The French thought that if they yielded to the British, and
agreed to give the Greeks a chance, they would have British approval
and probably British aid in the policies they wanted to adopt in regard
to Turkey.

Beyond the reach of the guns of the Entente fleets, a group of virile
Turkish military men, which included most of the officers of the
partly disbanded army, was issuing manifestos, appealing to the people
against the Government and warning the Sultan and his ministers not
to sign the Treaty of Sèvres. When the Turkish delegation at Paris
put their names to the treaty, the Turkish Nationalists pronounced it
null and void, just as the German junkers have pronounced the Treaty
of Versailles null and void. The difference between the Turkish and
German Nationalists is that the latter have not yet come to the point
of repudiating their Government and starting a revolution. The Turkish
Nationalists severed their allegiance to the Constantinople Government
and held elections for a National Assembly. This body met at Angora,
formally denounced the Treaty of Versailles, and set forth their
program in a National Pact, for the realization of which they swore
solemnly to fight, and, if necessary, to die.

Because this document has been the “irreducible minimum” in the
negotiations with the powers at Lausanne, it is important to have a
clear knowledge of its terms. The Pact contains six articles:

  1. The fate of the portion of the Ottoman territory which was under
  enemy occupation at the time of the conclusion of the armistice
  in October, 1919, will inevitably be regulated by plebiscite, the
  territory in question being inhabited by an Arab majority. Those
  portions of the Ottoman territory within as well as outside the
  armistice line which are inhabited by Ottoman Mussulman majorities,
  united among themselves by religion and racial ties and by a common
  ideal as well as by sentiments of mutual respect, constitute an
  indivisible whole, division whereof is impossible, either in theory
  or in practice.

  2. We accept a new plebiscite, if necessary, for the three
  districts, Kars, Ardahan and Batum, which joined themselves to the
  mother-country by vote of their inhabitants just as soon as they
  recovered their liberty.

  3. The adjustment of the question of Western Thrace, which has been
  disputed with Turkey up until the conclusion of peace, will be made
  the subject of a plebiscite executed with the fullest liberty to
  its inhabitants.

  4. The safety of Constantinople, headquarters of the Mussulman
  caliphate and capital of the Ottoman Empire, as well as that of
  the Sea of Marmora, must be assured. This condition once complied
  with, Turkey must then treat with the Allied authorities the
  subject of opening the Straits to world commerce.

  5. The rights of minorities will be guaranteed by us in the hope
  that the same rights will be granted to the Mussulman populations
  in contiguous territories. The question of guarantees will be
  subject to the same laws and principles which have been established
  between the Entente and its enemies and between the Entente and
  some of its allies.

  6. Our highest and most vital principle is to have entire
  independence, with which, as in the case of all other countries, we
  shall be able to develop ourselves both socially and economically.
  We are opposed to all restrictions which are but obstacles to our
  political, judicial, and economic development. The terms of the
  payment of our debts, which will certainly be settled, must not be
  contrary to the spirit of this principle.

The terms of the Pact are in essence a declaration of independence
from foreign control. They ignore the fact that Turkey lost the war,
and should therefore expect to share the humiliations of her allies
by being subjected to penalties and indemnities. As the Entente
Powers have discovered at Lausanne, the Angora Government repudiates
responsibility for the World War, and the logical consequences of
defeat. The Turks who gathered for the adoption of a program of
resistance to the Entente Powers and Greece in the autumn of 1920
assumed that their revolutionary government was the rightful heir to
all the titles and privileges of the old Ottoman Empire, but to none
of its treaty obligations and its responsibilities in connection with
the lost war or the horrible massacres and deportations of Greeks and
Armenians during the war.

The four territorial articles of the Pact in no sense constitute a
confession of the altered position of Turkey because of her defeat.
The Arabic-speaking portions of the Empire are not given up. They are
to decide their future by a plebiscite, regardless of the mandates
of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations. The result of
the plebiscite might well be a decision to remain within the Ottoman
Empire. Aside from the Arabs, there is no question of a plebiscite,
except for the three provinces of the Caucasus which Turkey held in the
last year of the war. “Portions of the Ottoman territory within as well
as outside the armistice line ... constitute an indivisible whole.”
This means the flat denial of Kurdish, Armenian, and Greek aspirations.
Article 3 calls into question the line agreed upon in the Treaty of
London with the Balkan states in May, 1913. Article 4 admits in regard
to the Straits only what had always been an international privilege,
the “opening of the Straits to world commerce.”

Article 5, dealing with minorities, establishes the principle of
reciprocity. The Turks hope for reciprocal guarantees with neighboring
states, and they refuse to assent to any more specific guarantees than
those the Entente Powers cause to be inserted in the treaty with enemy
states and the smaller countries that were to profit by the dissolution
of the Hapsburg Empire.

The Nationalists rightly call “our highest and most vital principle”
the abolition of the capitulatory régime that had been in force, in
the relations of Turkey with Occidentals, since the beginning of the
Empire. Article 6 asserts the intention of the Turks to insist upon
full economic and social independence in their own country, which means
the abolition of the capitulations, tariff control, and the mortgage of
the Imperial Ottoman Debt upon certain monopolies and revenues.

How was a defeated country, whose capital and regularly constituted
government were at the mercy of the enemy, whose principal port and
the railways leading to it were in the hands of the Greeks, and which
had no fleet to challenge the Greek and Allied mastery of the sea,
to realize this ambitious program? The declarations of Mustafa Kemal
Pasha and his followers seemed to be absurd, in view of the military
situation. The Nationalists were well officered, and the Turks are
natural fighters. But they had no artillery and no airplanes, and
lacked both transportation facilities and factories to manufacture war
materials. Certainly the Angora Government could hope for no miracles
of valor to offset the handicap of a lack of the tools of modern
warfare. The era had passed when the willingness and ability to fight
and the possession of fighting men could influence, without other
contributing factors, the course of history. Had the Turks been treated
by the Entente Powers as the other enemies were treated, the Angora
movement would have had no significance, and the National Pact would
never have been important enough to be quoted in full in an English
book. The star of Turkish Nationalism arose and attracted attention,
and was able finally to twinkle impudently at every one at Lausanne,
because Russia, France, and Italy were quick to see the opportunity the
Mustafa Kemal Pasha group afforded for advancing their own interests in
the Near East and in world politics generally.

Russian emissaries appeared at Angora soon after the movement
started, and the Nationalist leaders found how much they really had
in common with the Bolshevists: bitter hatred of the capitalist
countries whose exploitation of Turkey had led to her enslavement and
virtual dismemberment. The Turks joined the Bolshevists in invading
Armenia. Russian Armenia had to accept a Soviet form of government,
and renounce the hope of annexing any part of the Ottoman Armenian
provinces. The Turks recognized Soviet Armenia and the Soviet Republic
of Adjaristan. The latter were nothing more than the port of Batum and
its immediate hinterland. The Turkish frontier was twelve miles from
Batum, which became the principal port for Moscow aid to Angora.

With Russian help the Nationalists were able to attack the French in
Cilicia. The French were driven out of Marash, and, after a pitched
battle on the Bagdad Railway, north of Alexandretta, the French
retired from Cilicia altogether, leaving to the mercy of the Turks
the Armenians, whom they had formed in battalions to help them fight,
and abandoning enormous war supplies of every kind. Charges have been
made that the French left these supplies purposely, and also that they
abandoned the Armenians when the military situation did not necessitate
their doing so. Color was given to the accusation by the fact that the
French were already in secret negotiations with the Nationalists and by
the statements later made at Angora by M. Franklin Bouillon that the
Nationalists had reason to appreciate the good will France had shown in
Cilicia.

The Nationalist successes in the Caucasus and Cilicia occurred in
March, 1921. One month earlier the Angora Government had sent a
delegation to the London conference, authority of which was recognized
by the Constantinople Turks, who joined their delegation with that
of Angora, and acknowledged the Nationalist leader, Bekir Sami Bey,
as head of the joint delegation. Little progress was made at the
London Conference, as we have seen elsewhere, in the solution of the
Near Eastern question. But Bekir Sami Bey concluded at London secret
treaties with France and Italy. The Italian treaty gave Italy important
economic concessions, and promised the withdrawal of Italian troops
from Turkish territory, in return for Italian support to secure the
restitution of Smyrna and Thrace to Turkey. The Angora assembly was not
satisfied with the French treaty and refused to ratify it, pending the
outcome of the military operations in Cilicia.

On March 16, 1921, the Nationalists concluded a treaty with Soviet
Russia, according to which each contracting party pledged itself not
to recognize any treaty or other agreement imposed upon the other
party by force, and the Russians promised to ignore the Constantinople
Government. On July 30 the Angora National Assembly ratified by 202
votes against 1 the treaty with the Bolshevists.

Angora’s relations with Moscow, and the humiliation inflicted upon her
in Cilicia and by the refusal of Angora to ratify the treaty concluded
in London, did not deter France from continuing to seek favors at
Angora. M. Franklin Bouillon, who was president of the Foreign
Relations Committee of the French Senate, made two visits to Angora in
June and September. The second proved more fruitful than the first, for
in the meantime the Greeks had won notable victories and had extended
their occupation in Western Asia Minor. It is a sad commentary upon the
fundamental heartlessness and cynicism of international politics that
France, who profited greatly in Syria by the Greek victories of the
summer of 1921, should have used the advantage they gave her to help
her enemies against her ally.

On October 20, 1921, Mustafa Kemal Pasha and M. Franklin Bouillon
signed a treaty, which was ratified by the French Government ten days
later. The convention was elaborate. France not only gave back to
the Nationalists Cilicia (which she had received from Great Britain)
without any stipulation for the protection of the unfortunate Armenians
to whom the French authorities in Cilicia had appealed three years
earlier to help France against the Turks, but returned to Turkish
rule a strip of northern Syria that had been included in the mandate
entrusted to France by the League of Nations. The section of the
Bagdad Railway up to the Tigris was restored to Turkey. In return
for extensive and exclusive economic concessions and preferential
commercial treatment, France agreed to make the same promise that Italy
had made, i. e., to support the Angora Government in ousting Greece
from Smyrna and Thrace. The news of the treaty, leaking out almost
immediately, caused a great outcry against France in Great Britain.
Parliament and press united in denouncing the French act as a blow to
the Entente alliance, a disloyal and underhand proceeding, and the
betrayal of France’s glorious and traditional rôle as protector of the
Christians in the Levant.

The success of the Kemalists in 1921 had as great an effect at
Constantinople as at Athens. At the beginning of the year Mustafa Kemal
Pasha had officially notified the Constantinople Grand Vizir that the
Angora Nationalist Government was the only government in Turkey, and
that no measures passed or decrees issued in Constantinople would
thereafter be considered as valid. This was a warning to all the world.
Gradually during the year Angora increased in prestige among the Turks,
and the Sultan’s authority diminished. Despite the unfavorable military
situation of the Kemalists in Western Asia Minor, the great mass of
the Turks in Constantinople believed that salvation would come to
Angora. On November 1, 1921, the Angora Government declared itself
constitutional, with the cabinet fully responsible to parliament. A
commission was appointed to suggest modifications to the Constitution
of 1908. Mustafa Kemal Pasha announced that when his Government
returned to Constantinople the power of the Sultan would be strictly
limited.

In 1922 Angora became the Mecca of concession-hunters, Bolshevist and
anti-Bolshevist agitators, and European agents for the sale of war
materials. Because of the refusal of France and Italy to tolerate a
Greek blockade, the Kemalists were able to import all the supplies they
could buy for cash or on credit. In the spring they began to use the
same means they had employed against the Armenians to exterminate the
several hundred thousand Greeks living in the Black Sea regions, mostly
in the old kingdom of Pontus, whose medieval capital was Trebizond.
News of the massacres and deportations was carefully concealed; for the
Turks knew that the principal misgiving Entente diplomacy had in the
matter of the restoration of Western Asia Minor to Turkish rule was the
fear of massacres of Christians, which would perturb public opinion.

The Nationalists seemed to have become friends with all the world
except the British. Lloyd George and Curzon were rightly suspected
of secretly encouraging the Greeks and of hostility to the Kemalist
movement. Nationalism always being akin to fanaticism, it was not
surprising that anti-British feeling should become one of the cardinal
points of Kemalism. The British seemed to stand between the Turks and
their escape from the consequences of the World War, while the French
and Italians were willing to let them off scot-free. The British also
were the opponents of Nationalism throughout the Mohammedan world,
in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Persia, and India. The attitude of
the Nationalists toward Great Britain is illustrated by extracts from
an article published in the spring of 1922 in the “Peyam Sabah,” an
Angora newspaper, over the signature of one of Kemal Pasha’s leading
satellites, Aka Goundouz:

  One thing stands out definite, unshakable, eruptive like a volcano,
  stable and firm like the faith in God, infinite like time and
  darkness: hatred against the British.

  The Mohammedan who really feels the need of purity of spirit in
  support of his religious convictions needs something else: hatred
  against the British.

  It is the British who sow trouble and discord amongst you,
  O servants of Christ. You should therefore know that if the
  commandments of the Holy Spirit are ten in number, the eleventh
  should be hatred against the British.

  There is a certain force which blows up civilization, kicks at
  virtue, and opposes humanity: it is England.

  There is a typhoon which soaks with blood the cradles of the
  innocent, devastates the hearths, and causes foams of blood to
  cover lips that wish to smile: it is England.

  And you, army of the Creator and Just One! Every time you massacre
  a Greek you are pulling down one of the corner-stones of the
  British Empire. So, for God’s sake, massacre. For the love of your
  country, massacre. O army of righteousness, on the day of your
  victory everybody will spit on the shameless face of the British.

In May and June the British press made much of reports of massacres,
and the question of the responsibility of the Entente Powers was
brought up in Parliament. Because the Kemalists had answered by
blanket denials and by counter-charges against the Greeks, which were
supported by the French and also by American concession-hunters, the
British Government proposed a commission of investigation in which
the United States was invited to participate. The commission was to
visit the regions occupied by the Greeks as well as those over which
the Kemalists held sway, and report to the Supreme Council. Secretary
Hughes accepted the proposal. So did the Greek Government. But the
Angora Government refused, on the ground that the commission would be
made up of those who were technically still the enemies of Turkey. At
the closing session of Parliament, on August 5, 1922, Lloyd George made
a stirring speech against the claims of the Turkish Nationalists.

Then followed the attack against the Greek front at the end of August,
the panic in the Greek army, and the sensational collapse of the
Greeks. The victory was as easy for the Turks, virtually unopposed, as
it was sudden and unexpected. Within a few weeks the Nationalists had
overrun all the territories the Greeks had taken two years to conquer,
and were marching on Constantinople. The Italians had already got out
of Asia Minor. Paris wired orders to the commander of the French troops
in Constantinople to withdraw to the European side of the Bosphorus.
The British Government, however, decided that the armistice of Mudros
must be respected until a new treaty was made to replace the Treaty
of Sèvres. Reinforcements, naval and military, were hurried to the
Dardanelles. General Harington was given full powers to prevent the
violation of the armistice terms. Chanak, on the Asiatic side of the
Bosphorus, was hastily fortified. Lloyd George appealed to the British
dominions for support and warned Mustapha Kemal Pasha that an overt act
on the part of the Nationalists would mean war.

The French Government, alarmed at the turn events had taken, and
urged by French holders of Turkish bonds not to allow the Kemalists
to provoke the British, tried to persuade Lloyd George and Curzon to
meet the Turks half-way. London answered that His Majesty’s Government
was willing to recognize the new conditions created by the Turkish
victories in Asia Minor and to agree to let the Turks have back Eastern
Thrace after the new treaty was signed, but no concession could be
made in regard to the Straits. Poincaré then sent Franklin Bouillon
to convince Kemal Pasha of the folly of attacking the British; for
by this action he would certainly lose all he had gained. After days
of suspense during which the British held firm, the Turks agreed to
meet the Entente Powers and the Greeks in an armistice conference at
Mudania, on the Sea of Marmora.

The Turks wanted to reoccupy Constantinople and Thrace immediately.
The British refused. After long discussion a compromise was made.
The Greeks should evacuate Eastern Thrace; and Turkish gendarmes,
with civilian functionaries, should be allowed to take over the
administration of Thrace, pending the decision of the Peace Conference.
The Nationalists might also send functionaries to Constantinople. But
the Entente Powers should remain in control of the Straits, and the
garrisons at Constantinople should not be withdrawn until after peace
was signed. This was the situation when the delegates of the Entente
Powers, the Little Entente, Greece, and Turkey--all of whom had signed
the defunct Treaty of Sèvres--met at Lausanne on November 20, 1922, to
try again to establish peace in the Near East.

The Turkish Nationalists had numerous friends in Europe and America
ever since the beginning of the movement. It is not open to question
that the Treaty of Sèvres was as bad a treaty as the other four
treaties of the Paris peace settlement. It transferred Turks and other
Moslems to the rule of their former subjects. It contained economic
fetters and intolerable limitations of sovereignty. But there is no
objection to the Treaty of Sèvres that would not hold with equal force
in regard to the other treaties. In fact, its injustices were less,
and the provocation for its punishments and guarantees for the future
were as great as that which explained the Treaty of Versailles, if not
greater. Morally or logically speaking, protagonists for the Turks have
no more ground to stand upon than protagonists for the Germans.

The movement for the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres, which was begun
before the treaty was signed, had its origin in the economic rivalry
and the mutual suspicions of the victors. Had not this conflict of
interests, which we attempt to explain in discussing the question of
the Straits, became acute enough for Italy and France to decide to give
encouragement and aid to the Turkish Nationalist movement, there need
not have been a Lausanne Conference.

The sentimentalists, who see in Mustapha Kemal Pasha “the George
Washington of his country,” had not studied the Young Turk movement
of a decade ago and experienced its bitter disillusionment. The
influences that are contributing to the success of Mustapha Kemal Pasha
are as numerous and seemingly contradictory as those that brought
to the fore Lenin and Mussolini. Because of the ignorance of the
Anatolian Turks, their lack of knowledge and appreciation of Occidental
political institutions, and their indifference or actual hostility to
the economic and social impulses guiding and directing European and
American life, the attempt to find an analogy between the Turks and
ourselves in similar circumstances is futile.[24]

All we can safely do is to point out that the Kemalists are
inexperienced in the art of governing and are military masters of the
situation only in a defensive sense. They live in a country without
roads and railways, into which, as the Greeks learned, penetration is
costly and dangerous. The Nationalists seem to realize this advantage,
and talk of making Angora the capital of New Turkey. Constantinople
and Brusa, as recent events have proved, are so situated that any
Turkish Government would be at the mercy of the Greeks, not to mention
the great powers. Despite the threats at Mudania and Lausanne, the
Kemalists were not in a position to break off the negotiations. Such a
course would have again lost them Eastern Thrace. Lacking sea-power,
they would not have been able to take the offensive against the Greeks
in Europe. Even if they had succeeded in doing so, they would have had
the Little Entente to reckon with. As potential foes, however, they
worried the Entente Powers because of the uncertainty of the attitude
of Russia and the apprehension of Mohammedan unrest in British, French,
and Italian colonies.

The strength of the Turkish Nationalist movement has not been, as some
people have imagined, in the invincible patriotism of the Turkish
people, the leadership of the Mohammedan world, or the threat of
Mustafa Kemal Pasha to band together the Turanian peoples of Western
and Central Asia against European overlordship. Volumes have been
written on each of these supposed sources of strength. None of them is
convincing.

There are hardly more than 6,000,000 Turks, scattered over a vast
territory and living under primitive conditions. That they know
what patriotism is in our Occidental connotation of that term is
impossible. The educated younger generation of Turks are patriots, and
sincerely love and believe in their country. But they are a handful.
Caught between the older generation of the upper class, which is
still Hamidian in spirit and methods, and the apathetic and ignorant
Anatolian peasantry, there is something pathetic about the enthusiasm
and incredible credulity of earnest and highminded young people of both
sexes.

The Turkish Nationalist movement, like most nationalist movements, is
anti-clerical. The Angora Turks have gone as far as they dared, in view
of the advantages of religious fanaticism in their internal policy and
of Mohammedan solidarity in their foreign policy, to put the worship
of race and country in the place of the worship of God through the
intermediary of the Mohammedan faith and practice. The decree of the
National Assembly on November 1, 1922, terminating the temporal power
of the House of Osman, and assuming the right of the Angora Assembly
to elect a new Khalif for the Mohammedan world, illustrates how the
Nationalists regard their internal interests and the triumph of their
party as transcending religious considerations and the sentiments of
the Mohammedan world. The assumption that “the Turkish Government will
be the principal rampart of the Khalifate” (to quote the decree) is a
revelation of the state of mind of the Nationalist leaders, obsessed
by the idea that a few million Turks, having destroyed the historic
Sultanate, could expect to dominate Islam and to capitalize it for
their particular interests. The Sultan fled from Constantinople to
Malta on a British warship, and later proceeded to Mecca, where he was
received as Khalif by the Arabs. He has not abdicated and refuses to
recognize the validity of the Angora Assembly’s decree abolishing the
temporal power of the House of Osman and removing him from his position
as spiritual head of those who profess the orthodox Mohammedan faith.

There have been surface indications, however, of a seeming Mohammedan
solidarity, which have deceived the casual newspaper reader and have
undoubtedly powerfully helped the Turkish Nationalist cause. A sacred
flag of Islam was sent by the Turks to the Mohammedans of India in
February, 1923, when the first Lausanne Conference broke up. It was
used as a symbol in processions in Bombay and other cities, which
ended in mass meetings of Mohammedans in which sympathy and support
for Turkey were voted. Along with these demonstrations there has been
a recruiting movement in Northern India, which has been supplying
the Turks with Indian and Afghan volunteers. Assurances have been
given that Angora can rely on 200,000 trained volunteers and an
insurrectionary movement in India as well, should war come as a result
of the failure of the Lausanne Conference.

These indications must be interpreted as moves in the Nationalist
trouble against the British in India, and not as a recognition of the
importance of the Turks in the Mohammedan world. The whole Turkish race
in Asia Minor numbers less than one-tenth of the Moslems of India!
While the Indian Moslems are backing the Turks they are also interested
in gauging the strength of Arabic opposition to Great Britain, and
have accepted the Arabic determination to remain from now on free
from Turkish domination. Angora was ignored at the April Lucknow
Conference, on the question of the administration of Mohammedan Holy
Lands and regulations for the Mecca pilgrimage. There was no reference
to Constantinople or Angora, and it was decided to send a deputation
to the rulers of Hedjaz and Irak, for the purpose of anti-British
agitation.

If it is difficult to see how the Turkish Nationalist movement is
going to control the Mohammedan world, it is still more difficult to
accept the idea that there is such a movement as pan-Turanianism, of
which the Nationalists make so much. In the days of its glory, the
Ottoman Empire included the Caucasus and the entire coast of the Black
Sea. The Ottoman Turks were masters of a part of the Turanian race and
neighbors of the Turanians of Central Asia. During the latter part of
the World War, and for a brief moment in the early part of 1921, the
Ottoman Turks partly restored the old contacts. But these were broken
again by the Bolshevists, who have proved themselves in Asia tenacious
inheritors of traditional Russian foreign policy. Half a century ago
the Ottoman Turks lost to Russia the last of the Turanian regions in
the Caucasus. In 1921 they were compelled again to relinquish the dream
of leading the Turanians. The Ottoman Turks are incapable of coping
with the Russians, whatever form of government Russia may have. A
pan-Turanian movement, deriving its inspiration from Turkey and giving
power to Turkey, does not need to be reckoned with as a probability in
world politics.

The strength of the Turkish Nationalists is in the geographical
position of their country, from the outlet of the Black Sea to the
sources of the Mesopotamian rivers, where Russia and Great Britain
fear they will some day meet in a struggle for the control of India,
and from which France, Italy, and Germany are determined not to be
excluded. If we realize this, we shall see that governmental backing
of oil, mining, railway, and port concessions have a political as well
as a commercial motive. Fear is the incentive to greed. The success
that has attended the Turkish Nationalist movement is due to the
recognition of this fact by Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his associates;
their own political future--and the importance of the New Turkey--will
depend upon their ability to make good use of it.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE ENTENTE POWERS AND THE QUESTION OF THE STRAITS

Shortly before the debacle of the Greek army in Asia Minor I was
discussing the question of war weariness with English friends at
luncheon in a London club. Aware that good fortune had thrown me
with men who knew--if any did--the state of the public mind in Great
Britain, I was trying to find out whether the British would be ready to
back by force of arms the French reparations demands upon Germany. My
informants were unanimous in the belief that no Government could lead
the English people into a new war. “Not a chance in the world, any more
than there is in your country,” declared a Foreign Office man. “We know
that so well that we got out of Ireland, compromised with Egypt, put
up with a makeshift in Mesopotamia, stalled on the Zionist business in
Palestine, and are constantly warning the Government of India to avoid
trouble internally and with Afghanistan.”

“You mean that the people are not behind you in support of traditional
policies abroad, unless you can work them into feeling that pride and
honor are involved.”

“As for pride, we’d swallow a lot before we would allow the income tax
to go higher, and that honor business depends upon the press. Well, our
press is as pacifist now as it was jingo a few years ago. We are not
in a fire-eating mood. I do not think of any problem in international
politics that could involve our people in war.”

“How about the Straits?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, the Straits; that’s different,” admitted my friend. “We
should have to fight for the freedom of the Straits. No alternative
there if the Greeks should lose out and the Turks push us.”

“Having been incited to push you,” I commented.

“Having been incited to push us,” he repeated gravely. And the others
bowed assent.

This took me back to the previous week in Paris, when I had twice
secured modifications of sweeping statements from men in the highest
position by the same simple question. When one statesman told me that
France would never extend the hand of fellowship to the Bolsheviki, I
asked, “How about the Straits?” And when another statesman declared
that France and Great Britain must and would see eye to eye in perfect
solidarity “for the sake of the future of civilization,” I asked, “How
about the Straits?” In both instances there was the admission that
making up with Lenin and destroying the Entente were lesser evils to
France than seeing the English, either openly or indirectly through
Greece as a tool, installed at Constantinople, and, _ergo_, in control
of the Straits.

Without going into history further than the Conference of San Remo
in the spring of 1920, we see that the determination of France to
oust Great Britain from Constantinople and of Italy to prevent Greece
from profiting by her intervention in the World War has made strange
political bedfellows, has split the Entente alliance, has given Russia
her chance to get back into the councils of the great powers, has
made possible the repetition of massacres of Christians by the Turks,
has jeopardized the advantages granted in the Treaty of Sèvres to the
Entente Powers as well as to Greece, and has created the dangerous
precedent and example in allowing one of the enemy states, to whom a
victors’ treaty had been dictated, to tear up the treaty and turn the
tables by dictating a new treaty to the erstwhile victors.

It is not too much to say that the quarrel among the Entente Powers
over the disposition of the Straits has ended in robbing them of
virtually all the spoils of their victory over the Central Empires,
in damaging their prestige, and in undermining still further their
authority in the Mohammedan world, already seriously impaired during
the World War and the Peace Conference. The Conference of San Remo
came to an agreement that saved the Entente from dissolution. But the
failure of the three contracting parties--Great Britain, France, and
Italy--to live up to the agreement and to enforce the Treaty of Sèvres
revealed a house divided against itself and demonstrated the fact
that treaties imposed upon the vanquished by force would be upset the
moment the force was dissipated. When the Entente generals met the
representatives of Kemal Pasha at Mudania, they were confronted with
demands the acceptance of which meant the first step in the inevitable
surrender of all that had been gained by the World War. It was an
hour of supreme danger when Ismet Pasha demanded the surrender of
Constantinople before the terms of a new peace settlement in the Near
East had been arranged. And yet France dared to support this demand,
which Great Britain and Italy opposed, risking everything on playing
the card that would get the British out of Constantinople.

Why did the triumph of their respective points of view in regard to
the Straits seem of such vital importance to the British and French
statesmen that they were willing to sacrifice friendship, alliance,
and the war aims in the defense and furtherance of which they fought
to a glorious and successful end the most stupendous and costly war of
history? Both nations professed to be defending “the freedom of the
Straits” and to be working to avert “a more horrible war than we have
yet known,” as Lloyd George put it. But they acted toward one another
more like enemies than friends, and their premiers, with the support of
Cabinets and the press, advanced diametrically opposite opinions as to
the best way to prevent the war they dreaded.

If the sorry mess in the Near East is settled without war, we shall be
told that a dreadful calamity has only been postponed; and for this
doubtful victory France will have paid the price of loss of British
support in wringing money out of Germany. If it leads to war, Great
Britain fears the entry of Soviet Russia against her and uprisings in
her Mohammedan possessions.

The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, so narrow that you can shoot an
ordinary rifle from one continent to the other, so winding that cannon
can rake a ship fore and aft as well as shell broadside at many places,
afford the only outlet to the outside world for Bulgaria, Rumania,
southern Russia, the Caucasus republics, and some of the largest and
richest _vilayets_ of Turkey. For all Russia these waterways are the
sole ice-free passage. They are the nearest and most practicable
outlet for northern Persia and the khanates of central Asia. A
considerable portion of the wheat supply of many European countries
comes in normal times from southern Russia, while Europe learned to
count upon the regular appearance on the market of the vast petroleum
output of the Baku region of the Caucasus. The major portion of the
trade of a region inhabited by one and a half times the population of
the United States is carried through Black Sea ports. So important
to the world’s well-being was the free passage between the Black Sea
and the Mediterranean considered before the World War that Italy and
the Balkan States, in their wars with Turkey, had to yield to the
remonstrances of other nations and forego the advantage of bringing
pressure to bear upon Turkey by attacking and blockading the Straits.

Although during the nineteenth century the danger to the British Empire
of the control of the Straits by an enemy power in time of war was
never given a practical demonstration, it was vividly enough imagined
for the British to have fought once (the Crimean War) and to have been
ready to fight on two other occasions (Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, 1833,
and Treaty of San Stefano, 1878) to prevent Russia from dominating the
Straits.

A practical demonstration of this danger was given during the recent
World War. The disastrous effects to the Entente Powers of Turkey’s
alliance with their enemies, which closed the Straits for four precious
years, have not yet been fully measured. By handing over to Germany the
control of the Straits the Turks are directly responsible for (1) the
length of the war, (2) the collapse of Russia, (3) the year of grace
during which the Bolshevist régime got itself thoroughly established
in Russia, (4) the menace to the Suez Canal during the war, and (5)
the unchecked spread of anti-British propaganda in northwest India,
Afghanistan, Persia, Arabia, and Egypt. The Dardanelles expedition,
which was a holocaust for Australians and New Zealanders as well
as British, was entered upon and persisted in because the British
Government realized that the Straits ought to be forced, if possible,
regardless of cost, for the sake of vital imperial interests. Using
Turkey and the Holy War, Germany was in a fair way to cut England’s
communications with India, the Far East, and Australasia. In 1916 the
British were saved by their success in fomenting a rebellion of Mecca
against Constantinople, which was possible because of the tactlessness
of the Turks toward the Arabs and the cruel repressions of Djemal Pasha
in Damascus and Beirut. In 1917 they were saved by the entry of the
United States into the war. American credits and supplies, the moral
effect of America’s entry, and the American contribution to the Entente
armies on the western front in the spring and early summer of 1918
alone made possible the retention of the British armies in Mesopotamia,
Egypt, and Macedonia. But to the wise man a menace successfully
confronted is not a menace forgotten. The Islamic belt stretches around
the Black Sea, across the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, and across the
Suez Canal. The British Empire is defended by the British fleet. If the
fleet is powerless to exercise pressure upon the enemies of the Empire
in the interests and defense of the Empire, the Empire will crumble to
pieces in short order.

Breathing a sigh of relief when the armistice was signed, the
British Foreign Office, aware of the vital importance of the Black
Sea region to the future of British rule in Asia, sent troops not
only to Constantinople but also to the Caucasus and northern Persia.
Pressure was once more brought to bear upon Afghanistan; and,
despite interpellations in Parliament on the ground of expense, the
Mesopotamian army was reinforced and extended its occupation northward
and eastward. The powerful sympathies of international Jewry were
enlisted to create a buffer region on the Asiatic side of the Suez
Canal.

Gradually, however, it was realized that tax weariness and war
weariness at home must be reckoned with. This meant abandonment of the
Caucasus, Persia, and Afghanistan to the undisputed influence of Soviet
Russia, whose propaganda it was planned to call off by trade agreements
and the lifting of the economic blockade. The Mohammedan world, not
being interested in trade and not being vitally vulnerable to any form
of economic or food blockade, could best be watched and intimidated by
a British fleet at Constantinople, holding Stambul and the Sultan’s
palace of Dolmabagché under its guns, and able to cruise at will in the
Black Sea. As the tax-payers accept the burden of maintaining the fleet
without complaint, the freedom enjoyed in the Straits since 1918 has
been a boon to the British Government in exercising pressure without
spending too much money!

The Treaty of Sèvres is a splendid illustration of the vicious methods
of world politics, which make agreements between nations unsound
and insincere: unsound because they are not arrived at after a fair
consideration of the issues at stake and because they represent
makeshift compromises; insincere because the contracting parties do not
intend to keep them if contingent agreements--or rather bargains--are
not lived up to. The British point of view prevailed in the Treaty
of Sèvres. But Italy expected to gain from this concession British
support against the Jugoslavs in the Adriatic, and France expected
British support for extreme measures against Germany in the reparations
collection. Both nations looked to Great Britain either to forgive or
forget their indebtedness to her or at least to grant them the priority
already acknowledged to Belgium in reparations payments.

Before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Sèvres, France and Italy
realized that the British could not be depended upon to help them
out of their troubles, political or financial; and the return of
Constantine gave an excellent excuse to two of the three makers of
the treaty not only to consider it null and void but actually to work
against it. We must not lay too much stress upon the concessions
featured in the secret treaties negotiated by Italy and France
with the Angora Government. Considerations of foreign policy were
paramount. Italy plotted the ruin of a potential commercial competitor
in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. France was bent on
destroying the country she believed Great Britain had picked to hold
Constantinople and the Straits as agent for British political and
commercial interests. The Nationalist Turks had the luck to be a good
weapon to be used by two members of the Entente alliance to strike the
third; and the Greeks had the misfortune to be lacking in endurance to
play through to the end of the game the British expected them to play
alone, for the British Government was not prepared to risk Mohammedan
difficulties by coming out openly on the side of the Greeks.

Great Britain did not feel uneasy about the Turks on the Dardanelles
and the Bosphorus until after the Young Turk revolution. The new régime
had not been long installed before foreign observers began to see that
the Young Turks were smitten with megalomania. They had an inordinate
confidence in their own strength and in their ability to impose their
cultural and political hegemony, _in a constitutional state_, upon the
non-Turkish elements, Moslem as well as Christian. Abdul Hamid and his
predecessors had been past masters in the art of knowing how far to go
in pitting one European Power against another, in collecting taxes from
Christians and oppressing them, and in extending administrative control
over non-Turkish Moslems and conscripting for the army among them.
The Young Turks provoked Albanians and Arabs to rebellion, alienated
Circassians and Kurds, and goaded the Balkan States to the point of
desperation where they were able to forget their own rivalries long
enough to combine and drive the Turks out of Macedonia and Thrace. How
could a British Liberal Government, relying upon the Nonconformist
vote, continue to aid the Turks in maintaining their domination over
subject peoples who had proved their ability to free themselves? After
the first year of enthusiasm and generous impulse ended in the horrible
Adana massacre, the Young Turks were thoroughly discredited in the eyes
of the electors to whom Messrs. Asquith and Lloyd George had to appeal
in two bitterly contested General Elections.

Turkey was weakened both by fruitless efforts to put down the
rebellions among Mohammedan subject peoples that her new masters
foolishly provoked and by the Young Turk policies in Tripoli and
Macedonia, which were heading directly toward wars that could end only
disastrously. Her leaders looked to Europe for some powerful ally.
Abandoning Abdul Hamid’s safe policy of pitting one against another,
the Young Turks deliberately chose Germany as their friend, put their
army and the control of the Straits in Germany’s hands a year before
the World War broke out, and during the months of August and September,
1914, so critical to the Entente Powers, deceived the British and
French by protestations of friendship and neutrality. But as soon as
the engineer officers of their German allies advised them that the
Dardanelles could not be forced by a fleet, they threw in their lot
with the Central Powers. During the years since the armistice the
Turks have been in close touch with Soviet Russia and have assisted
materially in the anti-British propaganda of the Bolshevists in Asia.

The difference between the Young Turks and the Old Turks is that
the régime since 1908 purports to represent a people conscious of
its nationhood and power, while the Hamidian régime was a system
that had existed for centuries upon the threefold foundation: a
theocratic absolutist Government, centralized at Constantinople, for
the Turkish element and other Mohammedan elements near the sea or in
lowlands; virtual autonomy, on the principle of non-intervention or
_laisser-faire_, for non-Turkish Mohammedan peoples of the mountains
or hinterland; and separate communities under their hierarchies for
the Christian peoples of the empire. Old Turkey could be the enemy
of no country except one that invaded her, and during the nineteenth
century intervention of other powers was always invoked against an
aggressor power. Abdul Hamid’s pan-Islamic movement was a political
one, with a limited appeal. The autocrat did not allow it to get out
of hand through the awakening of a national consciousness. Until 1908
it never occurred to the British that Turkey was a country that might
at any time, without provocation upon the part of Great Britain, join
the enemies of the British Empire in time of war, close the Straits,
and proclaim a Holy War against the greatest Mohammedan power in the
world (for the British Empire is that). But since 1908 Great Britain
has had to reckon with Turkey as a potential enemy, and, since 1914, as
an actual enemy. As a military menace the Turks are negligible to the
British. But the Turks handing the key to the Straits to an enemy of
Great Britain in time of war--that has happened once, and the British
know that if it is allowed to happen again the death-knell of the
British Empire may sound.

The freedom of the Straits, from the British point of view, means the
insertion of guarantees in the peace settlement in the Near East of
such a nature that a repetition of 1914 will be impossible. The Straits
must be open to British warships in time of war as in time of peace,
open in such a way that nothing can close them. It is unnecessary to
make any provisions concerning merchant ships. The British undertake to
have a fleet large enough to look out for their merchant marine in war
and peace!

What are these guarantees? First of all, prohibition of any form of
fortification along the Straits or in the Sea of Marmora. Second, a
neutral zone, whose inviolability will be under the vigilant control
of an international commission on both sides of the Dardanelles and
Bosphorus. Third, the absence of armies and armaments in the neutral
zone. When Mr. Lloyd George declared that never again should the
Straits be closed against the British, his political opponents (except
the Labor men) agreed that the French needed to be told bluntly that
the Straits guarantees meant as much to the British as the Rhine
guarantees meant to the French, and that it was a case of _quid pro
quo_. Great Britain’s future policy toward German guarantees was going
to be contingent upon France’s policy toward Turkish guarantees.

The British warning to France was heeded by Premier Poincaré. When Lord
Curzon called at the Quai d’Orsay on October 6, he was informed that
instructions had been sent to Constantinople for the French to agree
with General Harington in rejecting the Kemalist demand that Eastern
Thrace be turned over to Turkey immediately. But the attitude of M.
Franklin Bouillon, negotiator of the Angora Treaty, at the Mudania
conference the previous day showed that what France really wanted was
the return of Constantinople and Eastern Thrace to the Nationalist
Turks without serious or effective guarantees.

The French have a clarity of vision that Teutons and Anglo-Saxons do
not possess. If they seem more selfish and cynical and hard-hearted
than ourselves it is only because they do not possess our comfortable
faculty of deceiving ourselves into believing that motives are mostly
actuated by altruism rather than self-interest. The intellectual
honesty of the French people shocks us when they apply it to their own
actions, for we have never learned how to be honest with ourselves. To
the Anglo-Saxon mind naked motives are like nude women; we know there
are such things but our modesty clothes them!

The French look at the freedom of the Straits as something akin to the
freedom of the seas. It is a comfortable formula without any meaning.
For is not freedom that which one enjoys through the exercise of
superior strength? And is it possible to enjoy freedom without denying
it to others? The seas are free to the British, and the affirmation
of this freedom for themselves is the negation of it to others. The
British (I am still presenting the French point of view) would think
that they had lost the freedom of the seas unless they were able to go
where they pleased and do what their interests dictated in time of war.
Now for the Straits. Although Italy is wholly and France partly and
Great Britain not at all a Mediterranean power, the one of the three
possessing no littoral in the Mediterranean controls both entrances to
it. The French and Italians have never heard the British advocating
the dismantling of Gibraltar and the application to the Suez Canal of
the Sèvres Treaty provisions for the Dardanelles and Bosphorus. From
the point of view of her allies, what does Great Britain mean by the
freedom of the Straits? They believe that she conspired with the Greeks
to close the Straits, which necessitated drastic counter-moves. And now
that these counter-moves have succeeded, why all this great fuss over
neutral zones? At the bottom of it (_au fond_, as the French love to
say in summarizing the discussion of a problem or an argument), what
the British want is immunity for their fleet from the inconveniences
created by nature to free movement in and out of the Black Sea. Once
this immunity is granted them, they will be in a position, owing to
their naval superiority, to make it valueless to any other nation.
By the treaty negotiated at Washington, France and Italy were asked
to agree to a naval ratio of 1.75 to 1.75 in proportion to Britain’s
5. Together they are asked to accept 3.5 to Britain’s 5. As long as
this naval proportion holds by treaty, the freedom of the Straits is
valuable only for Great Britain and the United States.

Let us take a concrete illustration. Let us say that the treaty
settlement does have guarantees that are effective, that the neutral
zone is established and controlled, and that the Bosphorus and
Dardanelles are without fortifications. The British fleet is able to
pass at will from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and vice versa.
Its cruising-radius, and hence its power, is extended to the vast
Black Sea regions. But does that freedom work out in the same way
for Russia and France and Italy? The Straits are free, yes, but the
mistress of the seas, _for that very reason_, would be able to attack
the Russians in their own waters, and then, backed up against the
“free” Straits, oppose at either end to any comer (except the United
States, who is not interested in that part of the world) a floating
barrier of fortifications more powerful than any that ever could be
erected at the mouth of the Bosphorus on the Black Sea or the mouth of
the Dardanelles on the Ægean Sea. Again, in case of war, if the Straits
are free, only the British merchant marine could pass freely in and out
of the Black Sea.

One objects that we must consider the good faith of England; and the
Anglophile declares that England never abuses her power and that her
word is as good as her bond. Yes, that is a powerful argument for
us Americans, now that we have our 5 to 5 ratio. It was a powerful
argument before, because we were neither trade nor political rivals
of our cousins across the sea. But we must get it into our heads that
the French and Italians and Russians do not look upon the British
as most of us do. The British are a potential enemy. History has
demonstrated that nations change alliances bewilderingly. The foreign
policy of France (and of Italy) in the Near East always takes into
consideration the superiority of the British fleet and the possession
by Great Britain of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, and Malta. Whatever
steps can be taken to lessen the menace of British sea-power, or,
at least, to prevent its becoming a greater menace, are justifiable
and worth risking much. As they do not believe Bolshevism will last
for ever, French and Italians look upon Russian influence dominating
Constantinople as less of a danger in war and far, far less of a
stumbling-block to commerce in peace than British control there.

Since Italy has got over her fear of an internal Bolshevist movement,
and since France has become convinced that Poland will never replace
her old Muscovite ally as the “guardian of civilization against German
barbarism” on the eastern marches, there has been a marked tendency
in Rome and Paris to talk about the obligations of the Entente secret
treaty of 1915. The French, especially, are apprehensive of the moment
when a regenerated but thoroughly nationalistic Russia, upon whom
France will be able to depend far more than upon Great Britain and
the United States for aid against a German recovery, will ask how
her friends looked after her interests abroad during the years of
misfortune and humiliation. They want to be able to say that they
had prevented Great Britain from corralling Constantinople. In Greek
hands it might not have been possible to consider Constantinople as a
tempting morsel to bait the imperialistic ambitions of convalescent
Russia. With an international neutral zone established and the freedom
of the Straits guaranteed, the new Russia (although realizing even more
bitterly than the two Mediterranean powers the exclusive advantage of
this régime to Great Britain) would have her hands tied and would owe
nothing but resentment to France. With the Turks back on both sides
of the Straits, France can make a secret treaty with Russia by which
Turkey will follow Greece as a sacrifice to the exigencies, to the
superior interests, of European powers. Why not? France has much less
reason to regard Turkey than Greece with a feeling of affection or
obligation. Greece was trussed and delivered up as a victim to Kemal
Pasha. If ever betrayal of the Turks is the price of winning back
Russia in an offensive and defensive alliance against Germany, who
would be foolish enough to protest on the score of honor?

I hold no brief for British or French, for Italian or Russian, for Turk
or Greek. I have tried not to wander into by-paths but to present here
the facts concerning the Straits. It is true that these facts present a
sorry picture of international morality. But is it not important for
us to analyze the motives actuating the principals in this stupendous
diplomatic battle? For only in this way shall we come to understand how
futile would be the solution proposed so glibly, i. e., that the League
of Nations control the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. For, from the
world point of view, there is no separate problem called the Question
of the Straits, unless we decapitalize Straits, and cut out the
definite article. There is a question of straits, by which we mean all
international waterways. The League of Nations can rightly be suspected
of being an agent of particular interests, plotting in the interests of
some nations against other, until its champions are able to convince
themselves and public opinion in the nations whose representatives sit
on the League Council that the League can exist and function only as an
instrument of impartial administration and justice.

If the United States is willing to give up the Panama Canal to the
League, and Great Britain is willing to give up Gibraltar and the
Suez Canal to the League, we have the right to criticize French and
Italian policy on the Bosphorus, on the ground that these powers
have less faith in the League than ourselves! But by what right do
we expect these two powers to entrust their interests in the Eastern
Mediterranean and the Black Sea to the League of Nations when we
neither have given the example nor will promise to follow it? And what
can we possibly find to say to Russia or Turkey, the countries most
interested?

CHAPTER XXIV

THE EASTERN QUESTION BEFORE THE LAUSANNE CONFERENCE

The conference agreed upon at the time of the signing of the Mudania
armistice opened at Lausanne on November 20, 1922. The Turks had been
defeated in the World War. Their capital was still occupied by Entente
soldiers and sailors. Within a decade the Ottoman Empire had suffered
the most crushing humiliations on the field of battle in all its long
history, followed by the loss of more than half its territory. Italy
had taken Tripoli; the Balkan States had divided up the European
provinces; Italy and Greece were in possession of the Ægean islands,
including Rhodes and Crete; France held Syria; and Great Britain was
organizing a new political status for Palestine, Mesopotamia, Arabia,
Egypt, and Cyprus. The Sublime Porte had gone out of business, and the
House of Osman had ceased to rule over what was left of Turkey. And
yet the Turks came to Lausanne, inspired by their easy victory over
the Greeks, to negotiate a treaty to take the place of the Treaty of
Sèvres, which had been dictated to them as a conquered nation two
years earlier by the victors of the World War.

Why the Treaty of Sèvres was going to be revised and how the Turks were
able to demand a new treaty on the footing of equality we have already
shown. We have pointed out, too, certain reasons, in connection with
the problems of the Near East, that explain the failure of the Entente
to enforce the peace settlement with Turkey in the same way that it was
trying to enforce the other treaties of the Paris settlement.

The attitude of the Turkish Nationalist during the Mudania armistice
negotiations and the six weeks that intervened until the peace
conference opened was significant. It should have been a warning to
Entente statesmen that they would never be able to make peace in
the Near East, much less arrive at some practicable solution of the
problems, unless they succeeded in getting together, and unless they
were determined to lay down a common program of peace, rather than
abandon which they would coerce Turkey. The Turks came to Lausanne
assuming that the expulsion of the Greeks from Asia Minor and the
reoccupation of Eastern Thrace put them in the position of victors,
whose appeal to force to escape the consequences of their coöperation
with Germany had been successful. They brought with them a mandate from
the Angora Assembly to make a new treaty in conformity with the six
articles of the National Pact of 1920. In the discussions with the
Entente delegates and the American “unofficial observers” they referred
constantly to this Pact and declared that they had no authority to
accept any clauses in a new treaty contrary to the stipulations of the
Pact.

No arguments or pleas could move them. Every modification of the
original proposals of the Entente Powers was accepted as a matter of
course. The Turkish delegates were pleased to observe, whenever the
Entente delegates yielded a point, that the principles of the National
Pact were being at last recognized.

The first test of the conference came on December 1, when Ismet
Pasha, questioned about the reports from Asia Minor of an exodus of
Christian minorities, admitted that these unfortunates had been given
one month to quit the country. If they were dying on the roads from
hunger or cold, it was because they were “unnecessarily panicky”; and
if horrible conditions existed in Black Sea ports, it was because the
Greek Government had not sent ships enough to transport the refugees.
Venizelos, who was representing Greece, replied that it was a physical
impossibility for Greece either to transport hundreds of thousands or
take care of them on Greek soil. Greece had already some six hundred
thousand refugees on her hands. Then Ismet Pasha proposed an exchange
of Christians and Mohammedans between Turkey and the Balkan States.
Had not Venizelos himself offered this solution to the Bulgarians at
Bucharest when the Macedonian boundary-line was being fixed?

Lord Curzon spoke strongly in behalf of the Christians. He pointed
out that the Turks had already done away with more than one million,
that the Greeks of the interior of Asia Minor and the Black Sea
coast could not suddenly find means of livelihood in a new country,
that crossing the mountains in winter meant freezing to death, and
that public opinion in Great Britain would react unfavorably to the
deportation. The French and Italian delegates made no comment. Ismet
Pasha calmly replied that the security of Turkey demanded the expulsion
of revolutionary elements, that the country might have a homogeneous
population. The new policy was a sane one, and the Turks would not
yield their right to make their country secure. Had not Greece invoked
the presence of a Christian population as her excuse for invading
Turkey and attempting to detach the richest territories of the Turkish
fatherland? A durable peace could not come until that temptation was
removed! Ismet Pasha was naturally sorry for the sufferings of the
Christians, but they had brought this measure upon their own heads by
conspiring against Turkey. He was, however, willing to telegraph Angora
recommending that a fortnight longer be given the remaining Christians
to get out.

The protection of Christian minorities, which the European Powers
had made a diplomatic issue with Turkey for a hundred years, was the
first point yielded. Immediately the Turks announced that the Greek
Patriarchate would have to be removed from Constantinople, and that
probably measures would be adopted to expel the 400,000 Greeks and
Armenians of the capital. Would not this be the best way to settle the
minorities question?

When the various commissions of the conference got down to business and
began to draft the clauses of the treaty, Entente experts discovered
that the Turks refused point-blank to accept anything which, in
their opinion, would imply a limitation upon Turkish sovereignty.
Ismet Pasha and the other delegates proceeded on three assumptions:
(1) Turkey has a right to equality; (2) Turkey is capable of ruling
without limitations of any sort and of handling her own affairs; (3)
Turkey has the force to resist any treaty stipulation, territorial or
economic, that violates the terms of the National Pact. The National
Assembly had instructed its delegates to proceed with the negotiations
on the ground of non-recognition of past treaties and agreements and