IV TURKEY AND THE CONFERENCE

As early as 1916 the Allies seem to have come to an agreement over the principle of the partition of the Ottoman Empire. In their answer to President Wilson they mentioned among their war aims “to enfranchise the populations enslaved to the sanguinary Turks,” and “to drive out of Europe the Ottoman Empire, which is decidedly alien to Western civilisation.”

According to the conventions about the impending partition of Turkey concluded between the Allies in April and May, 1916, and August, 1917, Russia was to take possession of the whole of Armenia and Eastern Anatolia, Constantinople, and the Straits. In virtue of the treaty signed in London on May 16, 1916, fixing the boundaries of two zones of British influence and two zones of French influence, France and England were to share Mesopotamia and Syria, France getting the northern part with Alexandretta and Mosul, and England the southern part with Haïfa and Baghdad. According to the treaty of August 21, 1917, Italy was to have Western Asia Minor with Smyrna and Adalia. Palestine was to be internationalised and Arabia raised to the rank of an independent kingdom.

But, following the breakdown of Russia and the entrance of America into the war, the conventions of 1916 and 1917 were no longer held valid. President Wilson declared in the fourteenth of his world-famous points that: “The Turkish parts of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured of secure sovereignty, but the other nations now under Turkish rule should be assured security of life and autonomous development.”

It follows that the partition of Turkish territories such as Mesopotamia or Syria between Powers that had no right to them, as was foreshadowed in the conventions of 1916, was no longer admitted; and the Conference in February, 1919, decided, at Mr. Wilson’s suggestion, that all territories that belonged to the Ottoman Empire before should be put under the control of the League of Nations, which was to assign mandates to certain Great Powers.

According to the decisions taken at that time, and at the special request of M. Venizelos, the Greeks obtained all the western coast of Asia Minor between Aivali and the Gulf of Kos, with Pergamus, Smyrna, Phocœa, Magnesia, Ephesus, and Halicarnassus, and a hinterland including all the vilayet of Aidin, except the sanjak of Denizli and part of that of Mentesha (Mughla).

The Italian delegation thought fit to make reservations about the assignment of Smyrna to Greece.

It seems that in the course of the conversations at St-Jean-de-Maurienne—Greece being still neutral at the time—M. Ribot asked Baron Sonnino whether Italy, to facilitate the conclusion of a separate peace with Austria-Hungary, would eventually consent to give up Trieste in exchange for Smyrna. The Italian delegation had merely noted down the offer, without giving an answer. The Italian diplomats now recalled that offer as an argument, not so much to lay a claim to Smyrna—as their subsequent attitude showed—as to prevent a change to Italy’s disadvantage in the balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean, and an infringement of the London treaty that guaranteed her definite possession of the Dodecanese.

Moreover, according to Article 9 of the London treaty, in case of a partition of Asia Minor, or merely in case zones of influence should be marked out in it, Italy was to have the same share as the other Powers and receive, together with the province of Adalia, where she had acquired a paramount influence and obtained a recognition of her rights from Turkey in 1912, the neighbouring regions. In accordance with this article, the Conference seemed inclined to give Italy an international mandate for all the part of Asia Minor that was to be left to the Turks—namely, all the Anatolian plateau, including the vilayets of Kastamuni, Brusa, Angora, Konia, and Sivas. It is obvious that the difficulties raised by the assignment of Smyrna to Greece could not but be aggravated by the new political situation in case this mandate should be given to the Italians.

Consequently, when the Italians saw Smyrna assigned to Greece, they were all the more anxious to give to their new zone of influence in Asia Minor an outlet to the sea that should not depend on the great port of Western Asia Minor. After considering Adalia, Makri, and Marmaris, which are good harbours but do not communicate with the interior and are not connected with the chief commercial routes of the continent, their attention was drawn to Kush-Adassi, called by the Greeks New Ephesus and by themselves Scala Nuova, a port that numbered about 6,000 souls before the war, lying opposite to Samos, in the Gulf of Ephesus, about ten miles from the ruin of the old town of the same name and the Smyrna-Aidin railway.

This port, which is situated on the mouth of the Meander, might easily be connected by a few miles of railroad with the main railway line to the south of Ayasaluk which brings towards the Ægean Sea all the produce of Asia Minor; then it would divert from Smyrna much of the trade of Aidin, Denizli, and the lake region. To the merchants of Asia Minor—who deal with Syria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and all Western Europe, excepting those who trade with the Black Sea—the Kush-Adassi line would be both faster and cheaper, if this port was as well equipped as Smyrna.

But, as Kush-Adassi happened to be in the zone which at first had been assigned to Greece and whose frontier goes down to the south as far as Hieronda Bay, Italy endeavoured in every way to carry farther to the north the boundaries of the Italian zone, in order to include this port in it. For this purpose, Italy took advantage of the troubled condition of the area round Aidin, Sokia, and Cape Mycale to send a police force up the Meander and the railway line along it, in order to carry her control up to the Gulf of Ephesus. Of course the territory lying between Hieronda and Kush-Adassi still remained part of the Greek zone of occupation, but, all the same, Italy set foot in it. Her diplomats soon turned this fact into a right of possession.

M. Tittoni soon after agreed to play the part of arbiter in the question of the southern frontier of Bulgaria; and in July, 1919, it was announced that after some conversations between M. Venizelos and M. Tittoni an understanding had been reached about Thrace and Northern Epirus, whereby Greece agreed to enlarge the northern part of the Italian zone of occupation in Asia Minor, and gave up to Italy the valley of the Meander. So, though on the whole M. Tittoni’s arbitration was in favour of Greece, Italy obtained the territorial triangle included between Hieronda, Nazili, and Kush-Adassi, the control over the Meander, and to a certain extent over the railway. In return for this, Italy promised to cede to Greece the Dodecanese except one, captured by Italy in 1912 during her war with Turkey, together with the Isle of Rhodes, though she had a right to keep the latter for at least five years. In case England should grant the inhabitants of Cyprus the right to pass under Greek sovereignty, Italy was to hold a plebiscite in Rhodes and let the native population become Greeks if they wished. By supporting the Greek claims in Thrace, Italy won the sympathies of Greece at a time when the latter both consolidated the rights of Italy on the continent and strengthened her own situation in the Dodecanese.

The control over the eastern part of Asia Minor which was to fall to the lot of the Armenians and included the vilayets of Erzerum, Van, Bitlis, Kharput, Diarbekir, and probably Trebizond—the population of the latter vilayet consisting chiefly of Moslems with a Greek minority—was to be assumed, so the Great Powers thought, by the United States.

It should be remembered that the question of the eastern vilayets was raised for the first time by the Tsars of Russia, and gave them a pretext for intervening in the domestic affairs of Turkey and thus carrying out their plans of expansion in Asia Minor. As a matter of fact, those vilayets were not really Armenian. The Armenians were in a minority there, except in two or three districts where, as throughout the Ottoman Empire, they were mixed up with Turks. They had lived peaceably together till the Powers thought fit to support the claims of the Armenians and incite them to rebel, in order to further their own aims in Turkey, by a misuse of the privileges granted them by the Capitulations.

Constantinople and the Straits seemed likely to be internationalised.

Lastly, the Arabian part of the Turkish Empire was to be cut off from it, though nobody could tell expressly in what manner, but in a way which it was easy to foresee.

We shall deal later on with the negotiations that took place during the war between the British Government and Hussein, Grand Sherif of Mecca, the Emir Feisal’s father, and we have already mentioned the help given to the British army by the Emir Feisal’s troops, after the aforesaid negotiations. These facts throw a light on the policy pursued by England later on; and besides, immediately after the hostilities, in a speech made in London on Friday, November 1, 1918, Mr. Barnes, a Labour member of the British Cabinet, while speaking on the armistice with Turkey, acknowledged:

“We could have signed it before, for we held the Turks at our discretion. For the last fortnight the Turks had been suing for peace, but we were on the way to Aleppo, which is to be the capital of the future independent Arab State, established in an Arab country and governed by Arabs. So we did not want to have done with the Turks till we had taken Aleppo.”

Such was the condition of the Turkish problem when the Peace Conference took it in hand for the first time.

Rivalries naturally soon arose.

The Emir Feisal, supported by England, laid claim not only to the whole of Arabia, but also to Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia to make up a huge Arab Empire, under his father’s rule. France, who opposed that plan, convened a Syrian Congress in Marseilles, to raise a protest against the partition of Syria as had been laid down by the Franco-English agreement of 1916.

Soon after the landing of Greek troops in Smyrna on the morning of May 15, 1919, brought about a serious conflict.

It is noteworthy that after General Allenby’s victories in Palestine and the resignation and flight of Talaat, Enver, and Jemal, General Izzet Pasha, who had been appointed Grand Vizier, had signed, on October 31, 1918, a convention of armistice, which put Turkish ports and railways under the Allies’ provisional control and allowed them “in case things should become alarming for them” to occupy “all strategic points.” This armistice had been concluded on the basis of Mr. Wilson’s principle that “to the Turkish regions of the Ottoman Empire an unqualified sovereignty should be ensured.” In no respect had the Turks broken the agreement when the Allies infringed it by allowing the Greeks to occupy Smyrna. This occupation, carried on in spite of France, who was not energetic enough, and one might almost say in spite of Italy, created a very serious situation.

Indeed, no good reason could be given in support of this decision. By the help of misleading or false information cleverly worded and widely distributed by a propaganda which overwhelmed the Press—and was only equalled by the propaganda carried on by Poland—political manœuvres induced the Allies to allow Greece, who wished to become “Greater Greece” and wanted Epirus, Thrace, Constantinople, Smyrna, Trebizond, and Adana, to occupy a region belonging to Anatolia, where the Turkish element predominates more than in all the rest of the Ottoman Empire, for there are only 300,000 Greeks against about 1,300,000 Turks. This permission granted to Greece was the more surprising as it seems to have been obtained because the Greek Government had informed the Supreme Council that the disorder prevailing in the vilayet of Smyrna was a danger to the non-Turkish populations.

Now the report of the Inter-allied Commission about the Greek occupation of Smyrna and the neighbouring territories which was sent later on and was dated from Constantinople, October 12, 1919, began as follows:

“The inquiry has proved that since the armistice the general condition of the Christians of the vilayet of Aidin has been satisfactory, and their security has not been threatened.

“If the occupation of Smyrna was ordered by the Peace Conference owing to inaccurate information, the primary responsibility lies with the individuals or governments that gave or transmitted inconsiderately such information as is mentioned in No. 1 of the established facts.

“It is obvious, therefore, that this occupation was not at all justifiable, and violated the terms of the armistice concluded between the Powers and Turkey.”

Moreover, to quote the very words of that report, the Greek occupation, “far from appearing as carrying out a civilising mission, has immediately put on the aspect of a conquest and a crusade.”

This inquiry, on the one hand, acknowledged that the responsibility for the events that took place at Smyrna on May 15 and 16 and in the immediate neighbourhood during the first days following the landing, lay with the Greek headquarters and some officers who did not perform their duty. On the other hand it stated that part of the responsibility rested with the Turkish authorities at Smyrna, who took no step to prevent the escape and arming of common law prisoners before the coming of the Greeks. Then it went on as follows:

“In the person of the high civil authority that represents it at Smyrna, the Greek Government is responsible for the serious disturbances that ended in bloodshed in the interior of the country during the advance of the Greek troops.... The Greeks alone are responsible for the bloodshed at Menemen.... The Greek officers who were at Menemen quite neglected their duty.”

And the Commission wound up its report with this:

“In the occupied region, putting aside the towns of Smyrna—where the number of Christians is high, but the number of Greek Christians much inferior to that of the Turks—and Aivali, the predominance of the Turkish element over the Greek element is undeniable.”

So we easily understand the violent and justifiable indignation felt by the Turks when the Greek troops landed, for they could not forget that now there were no Turks in Thessaly, where they numbered 150,000 in 1878, or in the Morea, where there had once been 300,000, and that in Greece only about 20,000 were left of the 100,000 that had once lived there.

M. Venizelos, in a letter addressed on May 29 to the President of the Conference, thought it his duty to give particulars about the way the occupation had been effected. After setting right what he styled “the wrong and misleading information given by newspapers,” he stated that the Greeks had “arrived at Aidin, on the southern side, east of Nymphaton and north of the River Ermos.” The Great Powers having asked the Greek Government, as he said expressly in his letter, “to occupy Smyrna and its environs” without stating exactly how far the environs of Smyrna reached, he thought he had a right to look upon this operation—which had been attended with a few incidents and had not been received everywhere with unmixed joy—as the outcome of a settled policy. After this occupation public meetings of protest took place in Constantinople.

An important Crown Council was held in the afternoon of May 26 at Yildiz-Kiosk, in order to enable the various political groups to express their opinion concerning the recent events.

The Sultan, attended by the princes of the Imperial Family, opened the meeting, and stated it had been thought necessary to call together the most eminent men of Turkey that they might express their opinion about the critical condition of the country.

The Grand Vizier, after recalling the events that had taken place in Turkey since the beginning of the war, asked the audience to let him have their opinions.

The Unionist group said they were dissatisfied with the composition of the Ministry, and demanded a Coalition Government, in which all parties should be represented.

Another political group asked the Crown Council to form itself into a National Assembly.

Somebody else showed the inanity of such suggestions and proposed to entrust the mandate of the administration of Turkey to a Great Power—without mentioning which Power. He added: “Otherwise Turkey will be dismembered, which would be her ruin.”

As the assembly had merely consultative powers, no decision was reached.

At the beginning of June, 1919, the Ottoman League sent from Geneva to Mr. Montagu, British Secretary for India, the following note:

“The Ottoman League has examined the statements which your Excellency was so kind as to make at the Peace Conference, regarding the subsequent fate of the Ottoman Empire.

“We have always been convinced that His Britannic Majesty’s Government in its relations with our country would resume its traditional policy, which was started and advocated by the most famous English statesmen, and that, after obtaining the guarantees required for the safety of its huge dominions, it would refuse to countenance any measure aiming at the oppression and persecution of Moslems.

“The British Government can realise better than any other Power the disastrous consequences that would necessarily follow throughout Islam on the downfall of the Ottoman Empire and any blow struck at its vital parts, especially at its capital, the universally revered seat of the Khilafat, where the best works of Moslem civilisation have been gathered for centuries.

“We feel certain that your Excellency will also realise better than anybody else of what importance would be to Great Britain the loyalty, not only of the Ottoman Moslems without any distinction of race, but of all the Mohammedans whose destiny is presided over by His Britannic Majesty.”

At last, about the end of the month, the treaty with Turkey was drafted by the Conference, and on June 11 the Turkish representatives were brought to France on board the French ironclad Démocratie.

The delegation included Tewfik Pasha, Riza Tewfik Bey, with Reshid Bey, former Minister of the Interior, as adviser. At its head was Damad Ferid Pasha, the Sultan’s brother-in-law, who, after the resignation of the Tewfik Pasha Cabinet at the beginning of March, 1919, had formed a new Ministry.

As was stated in the Allies’ answer to the Porte in the letter addressed to the Turkish Premier, Damad Ferid Pasha, Turkey had not attempted in the memorandum handed to the Conference to excuse the Germano-Turkish intrigues which had paved the way for her to take part in the war on the side of the Germans; neither had she attempted to clear herself of all the crimes she was charged with. Damad Ferid Pasha had simply pleaded that only the “Young Turks” of the Committee of Union and Progress were responsible for the Ottoman policy during the last five years, and that, if they had governed the Empire, as it were, in the name of the Germans, the whole Turkish nation could not be held responsible for this.

The Allies pointed out in their reply that they could not accept the distinction which cast all the blame on the Government and alleged the misdeeds were not imputable to the Turkish people merely because these misdeeds were abhorrent to Turkish ideas, as shown in the course of centuries. So the Allies informed the delegation they could not grant their request to restore Ottoman sovereignty over territories that had been taken away from them before.

Yet the Council, though they declared they could not accept such views or enter upon such a controversy, launched into considerations on Turkish ideas and Turkish influence in the world which, to say the least, were most questionable, as will be seen later on.

They stated, for instance, that no section of the Turkish people had ever been able to build up a lasting political organisation, the huge Empires of the Hioung-nous, the Ouigours, and the Kiptchaks having been of short duration. The Supreme Council also asserted that the lack of stability of the Ottoman Empire—which was represented as unable to develop—was due to the various origins of its elements. But other influences were laid aside, which have been at work, especially during the modern period, since the beginning of the decline. It should be borne in mind that three centuries ago the civilisation and prosperity of the Ottoman Empire were not inferior to those of the Western nations, and its inferiority appeared only nowadays, when Germany and Italy founded their unity, while the European States did not do anything in Turkey to improve—or even did much to aggravate—a condition of things that left to Turkey no possibility of recovery. If Moslem civilisation is quite different from Western civilisation, it does not follow necessarily that it is inferior to it. For several centuries its religious and social ideals safeguarded and ruled, to their satisfaction, the lives of numerous populations in the Levant, whereas more modern ideals in the West have not yet succeeded in bringing about conditions of life that can meet the requirements of man’s mind and physical nature. As to the so-called combativeness of the Turks and their supposed fanaticism—which may be only due, considering they were nomads at first, to their quick and headstrong nature—they both were certainly lessened by their intercourse and especially intermarriages with the Mongols, a quiet and peaceful people largely influenced by Buddhism and Lamaism, which they all profess, except a few Bouriate tribes that are still Shamanist. Moreover, even if such suppositions were true, their mixing with Western people could only have a good influence in soothing their original nature, whereas their eviction to Asia, by depriving them of any direct and close contact with Europe, would have the effect of reviving their former propensities.

Finally, the aforesaid document, though it was really superficial and rather vague on this point, purposed to give a crushing answer to the arguments of the Ottoman memorandum about the religious rivalries; yet these arguments were well grounded and most important, as appeared when the Protestant campaign broke out and Anglo-American opinion demanded the ejection of the Turks.

On June 27, 1919, the President of the Peace Conference in Paris addressed a second letter to Damad Ferid Pasha to inform him that the solution of the Turkish problem was postponed.

After stating that the declarations made before the Peace Conference by the Ottoman delegation “have been, and will continue to be, examined most attentively, as they deserve to be,” the letter went on to say that “they involve other interests than those of Turkey, and raise international questions, the immediate solution of which is unfortunately impossible; and it ended thus:

“Therefore, though the members of the Supreme Council are eager to restore peace definitely and fully realise it is a dangerous thing to protract the present period of uncertainty, yet a sound study of the situation has convinced them that some delay is unavoidable.

“They are of opinion, therefore, that a longer stay in Paris of the Ottoman delegation, which the Ottoman Government had asked to be allowed to send to France, would not be conducive to any good.

“Yet a time will come when an exchange of views will be profitable again; then the Allied and Associated Powers will not fail to communicate with the Ottoman Government as to the best means to settle the question easily and rapidly.”

One of the reasons given for this adjournment was the protest handed to Mr. Montagu, Secretary of State for India, by the Maharaja of Bikanir in the name of the Moslems of India, a protest which is supposed to have shaken the decisions already taken by the British Government.

At any rate, instead of maintaining the negotiations on a sound basis, and dealing squarely with the difficulties of the Turkish question, which would have made it possible to reach a better and more permanent solution, the Allies seemed to wish to break off the debates, or at least to postpone the discussion, in order to manœuvre and gain time. Perhaps they did it on purpose, or the negotiations came to an untimely end because, among the men who had assumed the charge of European affairs, some meant to intervene in them all the more eagerly because they did not know anything about them. They were not aware or had forgotten that in dealing with Eastern affairs or in pursuing negotiations with people of ancient civilisation, a great deal of delicacy, discretion, and shrewdness is required at the same time, and that generally diplomatists must expect plenty of haggling and procrastination, must avoid clashing with the adversary, and be able repeatedly to drop and resume a discussion smoothly, sometimes after long delays.

Somebody then quoted the words of the well-known French traveller Chardin in regard to Chevalier Quirini who, about 1671, carried on negotiations in Constantinople with the Vizier Ahmed Küprüli on behalf of the Republic of Venice:

“I heard M. Quirini say, when I had the honour of calling upon him, that the policy of the Turks far excelled that of the Europeans; that it was not restrained by maxims and regulations, but was wholly founded on, and regulated by, discernment. This policy, depending on no art or principles, was almost beyond anybody’s reach. So he candidly confessed that the vizier’s conduct was an utter mystery to him, and he was unable to fathom its discrimination, depth, secrecy, shrewdness, and artfulness.”

It is noteworthy that the same vizier was also able to cope successively with three ambassadors of Louis XIV.

The direction taken from the outset by the deliberations of the Conference, and the standpoint it took to settle the Turkish question, showed it was about to give up the traditional policy of the French kings in the East, which had been started by Francis I, and the last representatives of which had been the Marquis de Villeneuve, Louis XV’s ambassador, and the Comte de Bonneval.

As early as the end of the eighteenth century Voltaire, though he extolled Turkish tolerance throughout his “Essai sur la tolérance,” and wrote that “two hundred thousand Greeks lived in security in Constantinople,” advocated quite a different policy in his “Correspondance,” and took sides with the Russians against the Turks. After confessing that “he had no turn for politics,” and stating in “Candide” that he only cared for the happiness of peoples, he wrote to Frederick II:

“I devoutly hope the barbarous Turks will be driven out of the land of Xenophon, Socrates, Plato, Sophocles, and Euripides. If Europe really cared, that would soon be done. But seven crusades of superstition were once undertaken, and no crusade of honour will ever be undertaken; all the burden will be left to Catherine.”

He did not conceal how highly pleased he was with the events of 1769-71, and he wrote to the “Northern Semiramis,” as he styled her:

“It is not sufficient to carry on a fortunate war against such barbarians; it is not enough to humble their pride; they ought to be driven away to Asia for ever. Your Imperial Majesty restores me to life by killing the Turks. It has always been my opinion that if their empire is ever destroyed, it will be by yours.”

Indeed, some people maliciously hinted at the time that Voltaire’s opinion of the Turks was due to his disappointment at the failure of his play “Mahomet, ou le fanatisme,” and that it was for the same reason he wrote in his “Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations” while he was Madame du Chatelet’s guest:

“Force and rapine built up the Ottoman Empire, and the quarrels between Christians have kept it up. Hardly any town has ever been built by the Turks. They have allowed the finest works of antiquity to fall to decay; they rule over ruins.”

It seems that the members of the Supreme Council, in their answer to the Turkish delegation, only harped upon this old theme, and amplified it, and that in their settlement of the question they were inspired by similar considerations, evincing the same misunderstanding of Turkey and the same political error. The Supreme Council might have remembered J. J. Rousseau’s prophecy in his “Contrat Social,” which might very well be fulfilled now: “The Russian Empire will endeavour to subjugate Europe, but will be subjugated. The Tatars, its subjects and neighbours, will become its masters and ours too.”15

The negotiations which had just been broken off could only have been usefully carried on if the Allies had quite altered their policy and had realised the true condition of the Ottoman Empire and the interests of the Western nations, especially those of France.

The condition of the Ottoman Empire, as will be seen later on, when we shall dwell upon the slow and deep disintegration which had taken place among the Turkish and Arabian populations, was on the whole as follows: The Young Turk revolution, on which great hopes were built, had ended lamentably: the Austrians had wrested Bosnia-Herzegovina from Turkey; the Turco-Italian war had taken from her another slice of her territory; then the coalition of the Balkan States had arisen, which seems to have been prepared and supported by England and by the other nations which followed her policy. Finally, the treaty of Bukharest confirmed the failure of the principle—once solemnly proclaimed by France and England—of the territorial integrity of Turkey. So the Turks no longer had any confidence in Europe, and, being sacrificed once more in the Balkan war, and as they could no longer trust England, they were necessarily thrown into the arms of Germany.

After Abdul Hamid, Mehmed V, with his weak, religious mind, allowed himself to be led by Enver, and his reign, disturbed by three wars, cost Turkey huge territorial losses. Mehmed VI, being more energetic and straightforward, tried to restore order in the State, and to put an end to the doings of the Committee of Union and Progress.

Then, too, the Crown Prince, Abdul Mejid, a man about fifty, who speaks French very well, evinces the same turn of mind. After seeing what Germany could do with the Turkish Empire, such men, who had not kept aloof from modern ideas, and to whom European methods were not unfamiliar, had made up their mind that the Turks should not be driven out of Europe. But Mejid Effendi was soon deprived of influence through intrigues, and henceforth engaged in his favourite hobby, painting, in his palace on Skutari Hill, and kept away from politics.

Mustafa Kemal, who had been sent to Amasia as Inspector-General of the Eastern army, had secretly raised an army on his own account, with the help of Reouf Bey, once Minister of Marine in the Izzet Cabinet. When recalled to Constantinople by the Turkish Government in July, 1919, he had refused to obey, and had proclaimed himself his own master. Though he had once gone to Berlin with the Sultan, who was only Crown Prince at the time, the latter degraded him and deprived him of the right of wearing his decorations—which could only have been a political measure intended to show that the throne and the Government could not openly countenance the movement that was taking place in Anatolia.

Mustafa Kemal, brought up at Salonika, had only become well known in Constantinople during the Revolution of 1908. During the war in the Balkan Peninsula he had distinguished himself at Chatalja, and after being promoted colonel he was sent as military attaché to Sofia, and then charged with a mission in Paris. He came back to Constantinople in 1914, a short time before war broke out.

Of course, when he had started his career a long time previously, Mustafa Kemal had been connected indirectly with the Union and Progress party, as he was at the head of the revolutionary group in which this association originated, but he was never a member of the Merkez-i-Oumimi, the central seat of the Committee of Union and Progress. He was a good officer, very fond of his profession, and, as he loathed politics, he had soon kept away from them, and consequently never played any part in them, and was hardly ever influenced by them. Yet the supporters of the Committee of Union and Progress, who have made great mistakes, but have always been patriots, have necessarily been compelled lately to co-operate with him, though they did not like to do so at the outset.

Mustafa Kemal was undoubtedly the real leader of the movement which had already spread over the whole of Anatolian Turkey. As his influence was enormous and he had an undeniable ascendancy over the Turkish troops he had recruited, his power was soon acknowledged from Cartal, close to Constantinople to the Persian frontier. He had compelled Liman von Sanders to give him command of a sector at a moment when the Turks seemed to be in a critical situation during the attack of the Anglo-French fleet in the Dardanelles, and by not complying with his orders he had saved the Turkish army by the victory of Anafarta, and perhaps prevented the capture of Constantinople, for two hours after the Allies, whose casualties had been heavy, retired.

But he had soon come into conflict with Enver Pasha. Their disagreement had begun during the war of Tripoli; it had increased during the Balkan war, and had now reached an acute state. The chief reason seems to be that they held quite different opinions about the organisation of the army and the conduct of the war operations. Mustafa Kemal having always refused to take part in politics after the Young Turk revolution of 1908, it seems difficult to believe this hostility could be accounted for by political reasons, though the situation had now completely changed. As to Mustafa Kemal’s bickerings and petty quarrels with several German generals during the war, they seem to have had no other cause than a divergence of views on technical points.

In consequence of this disagreement Mustafa Kemal was sent to Mesopotamia in disgrace. He came back to Constantinople a few weeks before the armistice. After the occupation of Smyrna he was appointed Inspector-General of Anatolia, where he organised the national movement.

By Mustafa Kemal’s side there stood Reouf Bey, once Minister of Marine, who, during the Balkan war, as commander of the cruiser Hamidié, had made several raids in Greek waters, had then been one of the signatories of the Moudros armistice, and now was able to bring over to the Anatolian movement many naval officers and sailors, and General Ali Fuad Pasha, the defender of Fort Pisani at Janina during the Balkan war, who had a great prestige among the troops.

Bekir Sami Bey, once Governor-General, and Ahmed Rustem Bey, formerly ambassador at Washington, were the first political men of note who joined the nationalist movement. On Mustafa Kemal’s arrival at Erzerum, Kiazim Karabekir, together with the other commanders, acknowledged him as their chief, and pledged themselves to support him against Constantinople.

Mustafa Kemal openly charged the Government with betraying Turkey to the Allies, and asked all those who wanted to defend their country and their religion to join him. At that time he only had at his disposal two divisions of regular troops; he sent an appeal to the populations of Sivas and Ushak, and many volunteers joined his colours. Colonel Bekir Sami, who commanded the Panderma-Smyrna line and all the district, also rebelled against the Constantinople Government, and soon his 10,000 soldiers joined the troops of Mustafa Kemal, who assumed the general command of all the insurgent troops. On the other hand, Kiazim Bey threatened to resume hostilities, in case too heavy conditions should be forced on Turkey. Mustafa Kemal, as he refused to make any concessions to the victors of Turkey, and opposed any separatist idea or the cession of any Ottoman territories, of course had with him a large section of public opinion, which was roused by the Allies’ threat to take from Turkey half her possessions, Thrace, Smyrna, and Kurdistan, and to drive the Sultan into Asia.

On July 23, a Congress of the committees which had been established in various parts of the Empire for the defence of the national rights was held at Erzerum.

The proceedings were secret, but at the end of the congress an official report was sent to the High Commissioners of the Allies in Constantinople.

An “Anatolian and Rumelian League for the Defence of the National Rights” was formed, which later on was called the “National Organisation.” According to what has become known about the sittings of the Congress, the principles that were to control the action of the National Organisation and to constitute its programme were the following: (1) Grouping of the various Moslem nationalities of the Empire into a whole politically and geographically indivisible and administered so as to ensure the respect of their ethnic and social differences. (2) Equality of rights for non-Moslem communities so far as consistent with the principle of the political unity of the State. (3) Integrity of the Empire within the boundaries of Turkish sovereignty as they were in September, 1918, when the armistice was concluded—which are almost the same as the ethnic boundaries of Turkey. (4) No infringement whatever on the sovereignty of the Turkish Empire. A special article expressed the sincere wish on the part of the Turkish nation, with a view to the general restoration of Turkey, to accept the support of any Western country, providing the latter did not aim at an economic or political subjection of any kind.

This programme was sanctioned in the course of a second Congress which was held at Sivas at the beginning of September, 1919, to allow the local committees which had not been able to send delegates to Erzerum to give their approbation to it and to adhere to the national movement.

The executive functions of the Congress were entrusted to a representative committee presided over by Mustafa Kemal, and consisting of members chosen by the Congress, who were: Reouf Bey, Bekir Sami Bey, Hoja Raif Effendi, Mazhar Bey, once vali of Bitlis, and later on Ahmed Rustem Bey, once Turkish ambassador at Washington, Haidar Bey, once vali of Kharput, and Hakki Behij Bey.

The local militias which had been raised took the name of national forces; and when they had been linked with the regular army, they were put by Mustafa Kemal under the command of Kara Bekir Kiazim Pasha, who became commander-in-chief in Eastern Anatolia, and Ali Fuad Pasha, who had the command of the forces of Western Anatolia.

Two delegates of the “Liberal Entente,” some leaders of which group seemed open to foreign influence, were sent to Constantinople to ask the Central Committee what attitude was to be taken, and were prudently ordered to enjoin the supporters of the Liberal Entente to be most careful.

But though part of the Constantinople Press seemed to deny any importance to the Anatolian movement, the Stambul Government deemed it proper to send missions to Trebizond, Angora, and Eskishehr, headed by influential men, in order to restore order in those regions. It also directed two of its members to go to the rebellious provinces to see how things stood, and come to terms with Mustafa Kemal. Some of these missions never reached the end of their journey; most of them had to retrace their steps, some did not even set out. In September, 1919, Marshal Abdullah Pasha, who had instructions to reach Mustafa Kemal at Trebizond, and enjoin him to give up his self-assumed command, did not stir from Constantinople. The Government also sent General Kemal Pasha, commander of the gendarmerie, to scatter the nationalist irregular troops, but nothing was heard of him after a while, and he was supposed to have been taken prisoner by, or gone over to, the rebels. The Anatolian valis and commanders who had been summoned to Constantinople did not come, protesting they could not do so or were ill.

On the other hand, Mustafa Kemal sent back to Constantinople Jemal Bey, vali of Konia, and a few functionaries, who had remained loyal to the Stambul Government. Ismaïl Bey, vali of Brusa, one of the most important leaders of the Liberal Entente, was driven out of office by both Governments.

In addition, the cleavages already existing in the Ottoman Empire, which since 1913 only included the prominently Moslem provinces, had widened, and endangered the unity of the Empire. In the provinces where the Arabic-speaking Moslems were in a majority the authority of the Turkish Government dwindled every day; they meant to shake off the Ottoman yoke, and at the same time to keep off any Western influence; they also wished more and more eagerly to part from the provinces where the Turks and Ottoman Kurds—who aim at uniting together—are in a majority.

For the last four centuries France had enjoyed an exceptional situation in Turkey. Her intellectual influence was paramount; French was not only known among the upper classes, but it was also in current use in politics and business, and even a good many clerks in post-offices and booking-offices at Constantinople understood it.

French schools, owing to their very tolerant spirit, were very popular among nearly all classes of the Turkish population, and the sympathies we had thus acquired and the intellectual prestige we enjoyed were still more important than our material interests. Nearly 25,000 children attended the French elementary schools, most of them religious schools, which bears witness both to the confidence the Mahommedans had in us, and the tolerance they showed. The Grammar School of Galata-Serai, established in 1868 by Sultan Abdul Aziz with the co-operation of Duruy, French Minister of Public Education, and several other secondary schools which are now closed, diffused French culture and maintained sympathy between the two peoples. The Jesuits’ school of medicine at Beyrut also spread our influence.

The material interests of France in Turkey were also of great importance; and it was, therefore, a great mistake for France to follow a policy that was bound to ruin the paramount influence she had acquired. The other Western States had as important interests as France; and it was necessary to take all these facts into account if an equitable settlement of the Turkish question was to be reached.

France, England, and Germany were, before the war, the three Powers that owned the most important financial concerns in Turkey, France easily holding the premier position, owing to the amount of French capital invested in Turkish securities, Government stocks, and private companies.

From 1854 to 1875 thirteen loans—almost one every year—were issued by the Ottoman Government, ten being entrusted to the care of French banks or financial establishments controlled by French capital.

These thirteen loans have only an historical interest now, except the three loans issued in 1854, 1855, and 1871, secured on the Egyptian tribute, which still exist with some modifications, but may be looked upon as Egyptian or rather English securities, and were not included in the settlement effected in 1881 which converted them into new bonds, and the 1870-71 loan, styled “Lots Turcs,” the whole of which at the time was subscribed by Baron Hirsch in return for the concession of railways in Europe. To them let us add another financial operation effected about 1865, consisting in the unification of the various bonds of the interior debt and their conversion into bonds representing a foreign debt.

Most of these operations were controlled by the Imperial Ottoman Bank, founded by the most influential English and French financial groups, to which the Ottoman Government by its firmans of 1863 and 1875 granted the privilege of being the State bank. It thus has the exclusive right of issuing banknotes, and has the privilege of being the general paymaster of the Empire and the financial agent of the Government, both at home and abroad.

The financial activity of the French companies was only interrupted by the 1870 war. The only competition met with was that of a few English banks, which no doubt intended to second the views of the British Government in Egypt, and of an Austrian syndicate for the building of the Balkan railways which, later on, furthered the penetration of Austria-Hungary in Eastern Europe.

In 1875 the nominal capital of the Ottoman debt rose to 5,297,676,500 francs. The Ottoman Government, finding it impossible to pay the interest on the Government stocks, announced its decision on October 6, 1875, to give only one-half in cash in the future. The Imperial Ottoman Bank, which was practically under French control owing to the importance of the French capital invested in it, raised a protest on behalf of the bondholders.

The Porte then agreed to make arrangements with the French, the Italians, the Austrians, the Germans, and the Belgians. The claims of the bondholders were laid before the plenipotentiaries who had met at Berlin to revise the preliminaries of San Stefano, and were sanctioned by the Berlin treaty signed on July 13, 1878. They had three chief objects: First, to secure the right of first mortgage which the creditors of the Empire held from the loans secured on the Russian war indemnity; secondly, to appoint the contributive share of the Ottoman debt incumbent on the provinces detached from the Empire; thirdly, to decide what was to be done to restore Turkish finance.

After the conversations with the plenipotentiaries assembled at Berlin, and chiefly owing to the intervention of the French representative, M. Waddington, the Congress embodied the following clauses in the treaty in order to protect the interests of the bond-holders: Bulgaria was to pay the Sultan a tribute; part of the revenue of Eastern Rumelia was to be assigned to the payment of the Ottoman Public Debt; Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro were to assume a part of the Ottoman debt proportionately to the Turkish territories annexed by each of them; all the rights and duties of the Porte relating to the railways of Eastern Rumelia were to be wholly maintained; finally, the Powers advised the Sublime Porte to establish an international financial commission in Constantinople.

In this way the Berlin treaty laid down the principles on which every financial reorganisation was to be based whenever a province should be detached from the Ottoman Empire.

Then the mandatories of the bondholders began to negotiate directly with the Ottoman Empire, but as the various schemes that were proferred failed, the Imperial Ottoman Bank, supported by the Galata bankers, proposed an arrangement that was sanctioned by the Convention of November 10 to 22, 1879. In this way the administration of the Six Contributions was created, to which were farmed out for a period of ten years the revenues derived from stamp duties, spirits in some provinces, the fisheries of Constantinople and the suburbs, and the silk tax within the same area and in the suburbs of Adrianople, Brusa, and Samsun; it was also entrusted with the collection and administration of the revenues proceeding from the monopolies in salt and tobacco.

At the request of the Imperial Ottoman Bank the revenues of this administration, first allocated to the Priority Bonds, of which she owned the greater part, were divided later on between all the bondholders.

In this way the important agreement known as the decree of Muharrem, in which the French played a paramount part, was made possible (December 8 to 20, 1881), according to which the original capital of the foreign Turkish loans was brought down to the average price of issue, plus 10 per cent. of this new capital as a compensation for the interest that had not been paid since 1876. The old bonds were stamped, converted, and exchanged for new bonds called Bonds of the Unified Converted Debt, except the “Lots Turcs,” which, being premium bonds, were treated separately.

The interest of the Converted Debt was fixed at from 1 to 4 per cent. of the new capital.

As to the amortisation, the decree divided the various foreign loans into several series according to the value of the mortgage; this classification stated in what order they would be subject to amortisation.

The outcome of these negotiations, the decree of Muharrem, also established a set of concessions which could not be revoked before the extinction of the debt, and organised the administration of the Ottoman Public Debt, which was to collect and administer, on behalf of the Ottoman bondholders, the revenues conceded as guarantee of the debt.

The Ottoman Government pledged itself to allocate to the payment of the interest and to the amortisation of the reduced debt till its extinction the following revenues: the monopolies in salt and tobacco; the Six Contributions (tobacco, salt, spirits, stamps, fisheries, silk); any increase in the customs duties resulting from the modification of the commercial treaties; any increase of the revenues resulting from new regulations affecting patents and licences (temettu); the tribute of the principality of Bulgaria; any surplus of the Cyprus revenues; the tribute of Eastern Rumelia; the produce of the tax on pipe tobacco (tumbeki); any sums which might be fixed as contributions due from Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro for the service of the debt.

The administration of the Ottoman Public Debt was entrusted to “the Council for the Administration of the Ottoman Public Debt,” commonly known as “the Public Debt,” consisting of delegates of Ottoman bondholders of all nations. The French owned by far the greater part of the debt. The English represented the Belgians in the Council, the shares of these two countries in the debt being about equal.

This international council, who attended to the strict execution of the provisions of the decree, deducted all the sums required for the interest and the sinking fund, and made over the balance to the Imperial treasury.

The decree of Muharrem also entrusted to the Public Debt the control of the cultivation and the monopoly of the sale of tobacco throughout the Turkish Empire. Later on, in 1883, the Public Debt farmed out its rights to an Ottoman limited company, the “Régie Co-intéressée des Tabacs de l’Empire,” formed by a financial consortium including three groups: the Imperial Ottoman Bank, which was a Franco-English concern; the German group of the B. Bleichröder Bank; and the Austrian group of the Kredit Anstalt with a capital of 100 million francs. Only one-half of this capital was paid up—i.e., 50 million francs—which was cut down to 40 million francs on November 28, 1899, to make up for the losses of the first three years. It is thought in French financial circles that half this capital—viz., 20 million francs—is French, and the rest chiefly Austrian.

The “Régie,” whose activities extend throughout the Empire, may be looked upon as one of the most important financial concerns of the Ottoman Empire. It has branches in all the chief centres, controls the cultivation of tobacco, records the production, buys native and foreign tobaccos, issues licences for the sale of tobacco, and advances money to the growers; its chief factories are at Samsun, Aleppo, Adana, Smyrna, etc. In return for the monopoly it enjoys, it owes the Public Debt a fixed yearly payment, and has to divide a fixed proportion of its net profits between the Public Debt and the Ottoman Government.

The share of France in the Council of the Public Debt, in which French was the official language, gave her a paramount influence and prestige in the Ottoman Empire. Owing to the importance and extent of the part played by the Council of the Debt, in which the influence of France was paramount, the latter country indirectly acquired an influence in the administration of the Malié—i.e., in the administration of the Turkish treasury—and in this way Turkey was obliged on several occasions to call for the advice of French specialists for her financial reorganisation.

But the Ottoman Government, in order to consolidate its floating debt, which had not been included in the previous liquidation, was soon compelled to borrow money abroad. Besides, it wanted to construct a system of railways at that time.

The loan guaranteed by the customs duties in 1886, the Osmanie loan in 1890, the 4 per cent. Tombac preferential loan in 1893, the Eastern Railway loan in 1894, the 5 per cent. 1896 loan, and the 4 per cent. 1901 loan, were all floated in France, and the English had no share in the financial operations between 1881 and 1904.

During the same period Germany, through the Deutsche Bank, took up the Fishery loan in 1888 and the 4 per cent. Baghdad Railway loan in 1903. Later on the German financial companies, together with the Deutsche Bank, gave Turkey as much support as the French banks, in order to promote Pan-Germanism in the East and oust French influence. The chief financial operations carried on by these companies were the Baghdad Railway loan, the Tejhizat loan for the payment of military supplies, and the 1911 loan, which were both a guarantee and an encouragement for the German policy of penetration in Turkey, and paved the way to a Germano-Ottoman understanding.

France continued to subscribe all the same, from 1903 to 1914, to six of the twelve Turkish loans raised by the Ottoman Government; four others were taken up by Germany, another by England, and the sixth—the 4 per cent. 1908 loan—was issued one-half in France, one-fourth in Germany, and one-fourth in England. In 1914, as a reward for issuing a loan of 800 million francs in Paris—the first slice being 500 million—France obtained the settlement of several litigious cases and new concessions of railways and ports.

At the outbreak of the war, the external debt of Turkey, including the Unified Debt and other loans, amounted to 3½ milliards of francs, whereas the Turkish revenue hardly exceeded 500 million francs. One-third of this sum went to the sinking fund of the external debt, of which, roughly speaking, France alone owned nearly 60 per cent., Germany nearly 26 per cent., and England a little more than 14 per cent.

In addition to this, in the sums lent to Turkey by private companies, the share of France was about 50 per cent.—i.e., over 830 million francs; that of Germany rose to 35 per cent.; and that of England a little more than 14 per cent.

Foreign participation in the great works and the various economic or financial concerns in Turkey may be summed up as follows:

	France.	England.	Germany.
Banks	37·7	33·3	28·0
Railways	46·9	10·4	46·6
Ports and wharves	67·9	12·2	19·7
Water	88·6	—	11·3
Mines	100·0	—	—
Various concerns	62·8	24·1	13·0
Total per cent.	50·5	14·3	35·0
Capital (million Francs)	830	235	575

Not only had France an important share in the organisation of Turkish finances, but had opened three banks while the English established but one, the National Bank of Turkey, which holds no privilege from the State, and is merely a local bank for business men. Two German banks—the Deutsche Orient Bank and the Deutsche Palästina Bank, founded almost as soon as Germany began to show her policy regarding Turkish Asia—had turned their activity towards Turkey, as we have just seen.

France incurred an outlay of 550 million francs—not including the sums invested in companies which were not predominantly French, such as the Baghdad Railway—for the building of 1,500 miles of railway lines, while the Germans built almost as many, and the English only 450 miles; and France spent 58 million francs for the ports, whereas the English only spent 10 million francs.

The railway concessions worked by French capital included the Damascus-Hama line, which afterwards reached Jaffa and Jerusalem; the tramways of Lebanon; the Mudania-Brusa line; the Smyrna-Kassaba railway; the Black Sea railways which, according to the 1914 agreement, were to extend from Kastamuni to Erzerum, and from Trebizond to Kharput, and be connected with the Rayak-Ramleh line—viz., 1,600 miles of railway altogether in Syria; the Salonika-Constantinople line.

Before the London treaty, the Eastern railways in European Turkey, representing 600 miles, were worked by Austro-German capital, and the Salonika-Monastir line, 136 miles in length, had a German capital of 70 million francs.

The concessions with German capital in Asia Minor formed a complete system of railways, including the Anatolian railways, with a length of 360 miles and a capital of 344,500,000 francs; the Mersina-Tarsus-Adana line, 42 miles, capital 9,200,000 francs; the Baghdad Railway, whose concession was first given to the Anatolian railways but was ceded in 1903 to the Baghdad Railway Company, and which before the war was about 190 miles in length.

Map of the Railways of the Ottoman Empire and the Chief Mining Concerns under Foreign Control before the War.

Larger image (191 kB)

As the building of this system of railways closely concerned the French companies of the Smyrna-Kassaba and Beyrut-Damascus railways and the English company of the Smyrna-Aidin railway, the French companies and the Ottoman Imperial Bank concluded arrangements with the holders of the concessions to safeguard French interests as much as possible. Thus a French financial group took up a good many of the Baghdad bonds (22,500 and 21,155 bonds) and numerous shares of the “Société de construction du chemin de fer” established in 1909. On the whole, the share of the French consortium before the war amounted to 4,000,000 francs on the one hand, and 1,950,000 francs on the other; the share of the German consortium was 11,000,000 and 8,050,000 francs.

The concessions controlled by English capital were the Smyrna-Aidin line, 380 miles long, with a capital of 114,693,675 francs, and the Smyrna-Kassaba line, which was ceded later on to the company controlled by French capital which has already been mentioned. They were the first two railway concessions given in Turkey (1856 and 1863).

In Constantinople the port, the lighthouses, the gasworks, the waterworks, and the tramways were planned and built by French capital and labour.

The port of Smyrna, whose concession was given in 1867 to an English company and two years after passed into the hands of some Marseilles contractors, was completed by the “Société des quais de Smyrne,” a French limited company. The diversion of the Ghedis into the Gulf of Phocea in order to prevent the port being blocked up with sand was the work of a French engineer, Rivet.

The Bay of Beyrut has also been equipped by a French company founded in 1888 under the patronage of the Ottoman Bank by a group of the chief French shareholders of the Beyrut-Damascus road and other French financial companies.

Moreover, according to the 1914 agreements, the ports of Ineboli and Heraclea on the Black Sea, and the ports of Tripoli, Jaffa, and Haïfa in Syria, were to be built exclusively by French capital. So it was with the intended concessions of the ports of Samsun and Trebizond.

At Beyrut a French group in 1909 bought up the English concession for the building of the waterworks and pipelines, and formed a new company. French capital, together with Belgian capital, also control the Gas Company, Tramway Company, and Electric Company of Beyrut. Only at Smyrna, where the gasworks are in the hands of an English company and the waterworks are owned by a Belgian company has France not taken part in the organisation of the municipal services.

Only the port of Haïdar-Pasha, the terminus of the Anatolian Railway, has been ceded by this company to a financial company whose shares are in German hands.

To these public establishments should be added such purely private industrial or commercial concerns as the Orosdi-Back establishments; the Oriental Tobacco Company; the Tombac Company; the “Société nationale pour le commerce, l’industrie et l’agriculture dans l’Empire ottoman”; the concession of Shukur-ova, the only French concession of landed property situated in the Gulf of Alexandretta on the intended track of the Baghdad Railway, including about 150,000 acres of Imperial land, which represent an entirely French capital of 64 million francs; the Oriental Carpet Company, which is a Franco-British concern; the Joint Stock Imperial Company of the Docks, Dockyards, and Shipbuilding Yard, which is entirely under British control, etc.

During the war, the share of France and that of England were increased, as far as the Public Debt is concerned, by the amount of the coupons which were not cashed by the stockholders of the Allied countries, while the holders of Ottoman securities belonging to the Central Powers cashed theirs.

Beyond this, Turkey borrowed of Germany about 3½ milliards of francs. An internal loan of 400 million francs had also been raised. To these sums should be added 2 milliards of francs for buying war supplies and war material, and the treasury bonds issued by Turkey for her requisitions, which cannot be cashed but may amount to about 700 million francs. As the requisitions already made during the Balkan wars, which amounted to 300 or 400 million francs, have not yet been liquidated, the whole Turkish debt may be valued at over 10 billion francs.

Finally, in the settlement of the Turkish question, the war damages borne by the French in Turkey should also be taken into account, which means an additional sum of about 2 milliards of francs.

The French owned in Turkey great industrial or agricultural establishments, which were wholly or partly destroyed. At Constantinople and on the shores of the Marmora alone they had about fifty religious or undenominational schools, which were half destroyed, together with everything they contained, perhaps in compliance with the wishes of Germany, who wanted to ruin French influence for ever in that country.

In order to keep up French influence in the East, the High Commissioner of the Republic had, in the early days of the armistice, warned his Government it was necessary to provide a fund at once to defray the expenses of the schools and other institutions established by the French in Turkey in pre-war time—which sums of money were to be advanced on the outstanding indemnity. For want of any existing law, this request could not be complied with; but, as will be seen later on, the Peace Treaty, though it says nothing about this urgent question, states that the indemnities due to the subjects of the Allied Powers for damages suffered by them in their persons or in their property shall be allotted by an inter-Allied financial commission, which alone shall have a right to dispose of Turkish revenue and to sanction the payment of war damages. But all this postpones the solution of the question indefinitely.

In the settlement of the Turkish question, the chief point is how Turkey will be able to carry out her engagements, and so, in her present condition, the policy which England and America, followed by Italy and France, seem to advocate, is a most questionable one.

Javid Bey has even published an account of the condition of Turkey, in which he finds arguments to justify the adhesion of his country to the policy of Germany.

Nevertheless it seems that Turkey, where the average taxation is now from 23 to 25 francs per head, can raise fresh taxes. The revenue of the State will also necessarily increase owing to the increase of production, as a tithe of 10 to 12 per cent. is levied on all agricultural produce. Finally, the building of new railway lines and the establishment of new manufactures—to which, it must be said, some competing States have always objected for their own benefit but to the prejudice of Turkey—would enable her to make herself the manufactured goods she bought at a very high price before, instead of sending abroad her raw materials: silk, wool, cotton, hemp, opium, etc.

The soil of Turkey, on the other hand, contains a good deal of mineral and other wealth, most of which has not been exploited yet. There is a good deal of iron in Asia Minor, though there exists but one iron-mine, at Ayasmat, opposite to Mitylene, the yearly output of which is only 30,000 tons. The most important beds now known are those of the Berut Hills, north of the town of Zeitun, about fifty miles from the Gulf of Alexandretta, which may produce 300,000 tons a year. Chrome, manganese, and antimony are also found there.

There is copper everywhere in the north, in thin but rich layers, containing 20 per cent. of metal. The chief mine, which is at Argana, in the centre of Anatolia, is a State property. A French company, the Syndicate of Argana, founded for the prospecting and exploitation of the copper concessions at Argana and Malatia, and the concessions of argentiferous lead at Bulgar-Maden, had begun prospecting before the war.

Lead, zinc, and silver are found, too, in the Karahissar area, where is the argentiferous lead mine of Bukar-Dagh, once a State property. Before the war a French company of the same type as the one above mentioned, the Syndicate of Ak-Dagh, had obtained the right to explore the layers of zinc and argentiferous lead in the vilayet of Angora. The mines of Balia-Karaidin (argentiferous lead and lignite) lying north-east of the Gulf of Adramyti in the sanjak of Karassi, are controlled by French capital. The English syndicate Borax Consolidated has the concession of the boracite mines in the same sandjak.

The range of Gumich-Dagh, or “Silver Mountain,” contains much emery. At Eskishehr there are mines of meerschaum, and in the Brusa vilayet quarries of white, pink, and old-blue marble, lapis-lazuli, etc.

A few years ago gold layers were being exploited at Mender-Aidin, near Smyrna, and others have been found at Chanak-Kale, near the Dardanelles. Some gold-mines had been worked in Arabia in remote ages.

There are oil-fields throughout the peninsula, lying in four parallel lines from the north-west to the south-east. The best-known fields are in the provinces of Mosul and Baghdad, where nearly two hundred have been identified; others have also been found near the Lake of Van, and at Pulk, west of Erzerum, which are not inferior to those of Mesopotamia; and others fifty miles to the south of Sinope.

There are almost inexhaustible layers of excellent asphalt at Latakieh, on the slopes of the Libanus, and others, quite as good, at Kerkuk, Hit, and in several parts of Mesopotamia.

Finally, some coal-mines are being worked at Heraclea which are controlled by French capital, and coal outcrops have been found lately in the Mosul area near the Persian frontier, between Bashkala and Rowanduz and Zahku, close to the Baghdad Railway. But the treaty, as will be shown later on, is to deprive Turkey of most of these sources of wealth.

Among the other products of Turkey may be mentioned carpets, furs (fox, weasel, marten, and otter), and, particularly, silks. The silks of Brusa are more valuable than those of Syria—the latter being difficult to wind; their output has decreased because many mulberry-trees were cut down during the war, but the industry will soon resume its importance.

Turkey also produces a great quantity of leather and hides, and various materials used for tanning: valonia, nut-gall, acacia. It is well known that for centuries the leather trade has been most important in the East, numerous little tanyards are scattered about the country, and there are large leather factories in many important towns. The Young Turks, realising the bright prospects of that trade, had attempted to prohibit the exportation of leathers and hides, and to develop the leather manufacture. During the summer of 1917 the National Ottoman Bank of Credit opened a leather factory at Smyrna, and appointed an Austrian tanner as its director. Owing to recent events, it has been impossible to establish other leather factories, but this scheme is likely to be resumed with the protection of the Government, for the leather industry may become one of the chief national industries.

The Peace Conference, by postponing the solution of the Turkish problem indefinitely, endangered not only French interests in Turkey, but the condition of Eastern Europe.

The consequences of such a policy soon became obvious, and at the beginning of August it was reported that a strong Unionist agitation had started. The Cabinet of Damad Ferid Pasha, after the answer given by the Entente to the delegation he presided over, was discredited, as it could not even give the main features of the forthcoming peace, or state an approximate date for its conclusion. He could have remained in office only if the Allies had supported him by quickly solving the Turkish problem. Besides, he soon lost all control over the events that hurried on.

In the first days of summer, the former groups of Young Turks were reorganised in Asia Minor; some congresses of supporters of the Union and Progress Committee, who made no secret of their determination not to submit to the decisions that the Versailles Congress was likely to take later on, were held at Erzerum, Sivas, and Amasia, and openly supported motions of rebellion against the Government. At the same time the Turkish Army was being quickly reorganised, outside the Government’s control, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal and Reouf Bey. An openly nationalist, or rather national, movement asserted itself, which publicly protested both against the restoration of the old régime and the dismemberment of Turkey.

Even in Constantinople the Unionist Committee carried on an unrestrained propaganda and plotted to overthrow Damad Ferid Pasha and put in his place Izzet Pasha, a shrewd man, who had signed the armistice with the Allies, and favoured a policy of compromise.

This movement had started after the resignation of the Izzet Pasha Cabinet, when the prominent men of the Unionist party had to leave Constantinople. First, it had been chiefly a Unionist party, but had soon become decidedly national in character. Everywhere, but chiefly in Constantinople, it had found many supporters, and the majority of the cultured classes sympathised with the leaders of the Anatolian Government.

Moreover, the Allies, by allowing the Greeks to land in Smyrna without any valid reason, had started a current of opinion which strengthened the nationalist movement, and raised the whole of Turkey against them.

At the beginning of October, 1919, the Sultan replaced Damad Ferid Pasha by Ali Riza Pasha as Prime Minister. Reshid Pasha, formerly Minister of Public Works and ambassador at Vienna, who had been ambassador at Rome till the revolution of 1908, and had been first Turkish delegate in the Balkan Conference in London in 1912-13, became Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Grand Vizier General Ali Riza had been Minister of War, and Reshid Pasha Foreign Minister in the Tewfik Cabinet, which had come into office in December, 1918, at a time when the Porte was anxious to conciliate the Allies. Ali Riza had led the operations on the Balkan front in 1912 and 1913, but had refused to assume any command during the Great War, as he had always opposed the participation of Turkey in this war. As he was rather a soldier than a diplomat, his policy seemed likely to be led by his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Reshid Pasha, who was said to be a friend of France.

General Jemal Pasha Kushuk, who became War Minister, was quite a Nationalist. He was called Jemal Junior, to distinguish him from the other Jemal who had been Commander-in-Chief of the Fourth Turkish Army during the war. He, too, had commanded in Palestine. He was popular in the army and among the Unionists. Rightly or wrongly, he was supposed to be in correspondence with Kemal, the leader of the Nationalist movement in Asia Minor, and his appointment intimated that Ali Riza did not want to break off with Kemal, whose rebellion had brought about Damad Ferid’s resignation.

Said Mollah, Under-Secretary of Justice, a friend of England, edited the newspaper Turkje Stambul, in which he carried on a strong pro-English propaganda. It was said he was paid by Abdul Hamid to spy upon a former Sheik-ul-Islam, Jemal ed Din Effendi, his uncle and benefactor. It seems that by appointing him the Sultan wished to create a link within the new Government between the supporters of England and those of France, in order to show that in his opinion Turkey’s interest was, not to put these two nations in opposition to each other, but, on the contrary, to collaborate closely with them both for the solution of Eastern affairs.

Sultan Mehemet VI, by doing so, endeavoured to restore calm and order in Turkey, and also to enhance his prestige and authority over the Nationalist rebels in Anatolia who, at the Congress of Sivas, had plainly stated they refused to make any compromise either with the Porte or the Allies. The choice of the new Ministers marked a concession to the Nationalist and revolutionary spirit.

About the end of 1919 there were serious indications that the Nationalist movement was gaining ground in Cilicia, and in January, 1920, disturbances broke out in the Marash area.

In September, 1919, some armed bands, wearing the khaki uniform of the regular Turkish Army, had been recruited at Mustafa Kemal’s instigation. A French officer had been sent to Marash for the first time to watch over the Jebel Bereket district, which commands all the tunnels of the Baghdad Railway between Mamurah and Islahie. In December one of those armed bands, numbering about 200 men, occupied the road leading from Islahie to Marash, and intercepted the mail.

As the conditions that were likely to be enforced upon Turkey were becoming known, discontent increased. General Dutieux, commanding the French troops of Cilicia, determined to send a battalion as reinforcement. The battalion set off at the beginning of January and arrived at Marash on the 10th, after some pretty sharp fighting on the way at El Oglo. As the attacks were getting more numerous and the Nationalist forces increased in number, a new French detachment, more important than the first, and provided with artillery, was dispatched to Islahie, which it reached on the 14th. This column met with no serious incident on the way from Islahie to Marash; it reached Marash on the 17th, at which date it was stated that all the district of Urfa, Aintab, Antioch, Marash, and Islahie was pacified.

That was a mistake, for it soon became known that the chiefs of Bazarjik, a place lying halfway between Marash and Aintab, had gone over to the Kemalists, and had just sent an ultimatum to the French commander demanding the evacuation of the country.

On February 3 the French troops at Marash were attacked by Turkish and Arabian troops coming from the East, who intended to drive them away, and join the main body of the Arabian army.

A French column under the command of Colonel Normand reached Marash, and after a good deal of hard fighting with the Nationalists, who were well armed, relieved the French. But Armenian legionaries had most imprudently been sent; and after some squabbles, which might have been foreseen, between Moslems and Armenians, the French commander had bombarded the town, and then had been compelled to evacuate it. These events, later on, led to the recall of Colonel Brémond, whose policy, after the organisation of the Armenian legions, had displeased the Moslem population.

Two months after the Marash affair on February 10 the tribes in the neighbourhood of Urfa, which the French, according to the Anglo-French agreement of 1916, had occupied at the end of 1919 after about a year of British occupation, attacked the stations of the Baghdad Railway lying to the south, and cut off the town from the neighbouring posts. The French detachment was first blocked up in the Armenian quarter, was then attacked, and after two months’ fighting, being on the verge of starvation, had to enter into a parley with the Turkish authorities and evacuate the town on April 10. But while the French column retreated southwards, it was assailed by forces far superior in number, and had to surrender; some men were slaughtered, others marched back to Urfa or reached the French posts lying farther south of Arab Punar or Tel-Abiad.

On April 1—that is to say, nearly at the same time—the Turks attacked the American mission at Aintab. French troops were sent to their help as soon as the American consul-general at Beyrut asked for help. They arrived on April 17, and, after resisting for eighteen days, the few members of the American mission were able to withdraw to Aleppo, where they met with American refugees from Urfa, with the French column sent to relieve them.

In a speech made in the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies about the validation of the mandate of the members for Adana, Mersina, and other districts of Asia Minor, Reouf Bey, a deputy and former Minister of Marine, maintained that the occupation of Cilicia had not been allowed in the armistice, and so the occupation of this province by the French was a violation of the treaty.

In the middle of February the Grand Vizier and the Minister of Foreign Affairs handed the Allied representatives a memorandum drawn up by the Government to expound the situation brought about by the postponement of the conclusion of the Peace Treaty, and chiefly requested:

(1) That the Turkish inhabitants, in the districts where they were in a majority, should be left under Turkish sovereignty, and that their rights should be guaranteed.

(2) That the position of the regions occupied by the Allies should be altered.

(3) That the Turkish delegation should be heard before irrevocable decisions were taken.

The Allies, too, felt it was necessary to come to a settlement; and as they had waited too long since they had dismissed the Turkish delegation in July of the previous year, the situation was getting critical now. As the United States, which took less and less interest in European affairs, did not seem anxious to intervene in the solution of the Eastern problem, Mr. Lloyd George, on Thursday, December 18, 1919, in an important speech in which he gave some information about the diplomatic conversations that were taking place in London, came to the Turkish question and stated that the terms of the treaty would soon be submitted to Turkey.

“My noble friend said: Why could you not make peace with Turkey, cutting out all the non-Turkish territories, and then leaving Constantinople and Anatolia to be dealt with?’ I think on consideration he will see that is not possible. What is to be done with Constantinople? What is to be done with the Straits?... If those doors had been open, and if our fleet and our merchant ships had been free to go through ... the war would have been shortened by two or three years. They were shut treacherously in our faces. We cannot trust the same porter. As to what will remain much depended on whether America came in.... Would America take a share, and, if so, what share? France has great burdens, Britain has great burdens, Italy has great burdens. Much depended on whether America, which has no great extraneous burdens, and which has gigantic resources, was prepared to take her share.... But until America declared what she would do, any attempt to precipitate the position might have led to misunderstandings with America and would have caused a good deal of suspicion, and we regard a good understanding with America as something vital. That is the reason why we could not make peace with Turkey....

“We are entitled to say now: ‘We have waited up to the very limits we promised, and we have waited beyond that.’ The decision of America does not look promising.... Therefore we consider now, without any disrespect to our colleagues at the Peace Conference, and without in the least wishing to deprive the United States of America of sharing the honour of guardianship over these Christian communities, that we are entitled to proceed to make peace with Turkey, and we propose to do so at the earliest possible moment. We have had some preliminary discussions on the subject. As far as they went they were very promising. They will be renewed, partly in this country, partly probably in France, in the course of the next few days, and I hope that it will be possible to submit to Turkey the terms of peace at an early date.”

But as the Allies, instead of dictating terms of peace to Turkey at the end of 1918, had postponed the settlement of the Turkish question for fourteen months, as they had dismissed the Ottoman delegation after summoning it themselves, and as the question was now about to be resumed under widely different circumstances and in quite another frame of mind, the Paris Conference found itself in an awkward situation.

About the end of the first half of February, 1920, the Peace Conference at last resumed the discussion of the Turkish question.

The task of working out a first draft of the treaty of peace with Turkey had been entrusted by the Supreme Council to three commissions. The first was to draw up a report on the frontiers of the new Republic of Armenia; the second was to hold an inquiry into the Ottoman debt and the financial situation of Turkey; and the third was to examine the claims of Greece to Smyrna.

It had been definitely settled that the Dardanelles should be placed under international control, and the Conference was to decide what kind of control it would be, what forces would be necessary to enforce it, and what nationalities would provide these forces. There remained for settlement what the boundaries of the Constantinople area would be, and what rights the Turks would have over Adrianople.

The discussion of the Turkish question was resumed in an untoward way, which at first brought about a misunderstanding. The English wanted the debate to be held in London, and the French insisted upon Paris. Finally it was decided that the principles should be discussed in London, and the treaty itself should be drawn up in Paris.

At the first meetings of the Allies concerning Constantinople, the English strongly urged that the Turks should be turned out of Europe, and the French held the contrary opinion. Later on a change seems to have taken place in the respective opinions of the two Allies. The English, who were far from being unanimous in demanding the eviction of the Turks, gradually drew nearer to the opinion of the French, who now, however, did not plead for the Turks quite so earnestly as before.

This change in the English point of view requires an explanation.

The English, who are prone to believe only what affects them, did not seem to dread the Bolshevist peril for Europe, perhaps because they fancied England was quite secure from it; on the contrary, they thought this peril was more to be dreaded for the populations of Asia, no doubt because it could have an easier access to the English possessions. The success of Bolshevism with the Emir of Bokhara, close to the frontiers of India, seemed to justify their fears. Bolshevism, however, is something quite special to the Russian mind; other nations may be led astray or perverted by it for a time, but on the whole they cannot fully adhere to it permanently. Besides, it appears that Bolshevism has been wrongly looked upon as something Asiatic. Of course, it has been welcomed by the Slavs on the confines of Europe, and seems to agree with their mentality; but in fact it does not come from Asia, but from Europe. Lenin and Trotsky, who were sent by Germany from Berlin to St. Petersburg in a sealed railway-carriage and had lived before in Western Europe, imported no Asiatic ideas into Russia. They brought with them a mixture of Marxist socialism and Tolstoist catholicism, dressed up in Russian style to make it palatable to the moujik, and presented to the intellectual class, to flatter Slav conceit, as about to renovate the face of Europe.

The English did not realise that their own policy, as well as that of their Allies, had run counter to their own aims, that they had actually succeeded in strengthening the position of the Soviets, and that if they kept on encroaching upon the independence and territorial integrity of the heterogeneous Eastern populations of Russia and the peoples of Asia Minor, they would definitely bring them over to Bolshevism. Of course, these peoples were playing a dangerous game, and ran the risk of losing their liberty in another way, but they clung to any force that might uphold them. Mustafa Kemal was thus induced not to reject the offers the Moscow Government soon made him, but it did not seem likely he would be so foolish as to keep in the wake of the Soviets, for the latter are doomed to disappear sooner or later, unless they consent to evolution, supposing they have time to change. The Allies, on the other hand, especially the English, forgot that their policy risked giving Constantinople indirectly to Russia, where Tsarist imperialism had been replaced by Bolshevist imperialism, both of which are actuated by the same covetous spirit.

The fear of Bolshevism, however, had a fortunate consequence later on, as it brought about in 1920 a complete change in British ideas concerning Turkey and Constantinople. The London Cabinet realised that the Turks were the first nation that the Bolshevist propaganda could reach, and to which the Moscow Government could most easily and effectually give its support against British policy in Asia Minor, which would make the situation in the East still more complicated. So, in order not to drive the Ottoman Government into open resistance, England first showed an inclination to share the view, held by France from the outset, that the Turks should be allowed to remain in Constantinople.

So the British Government instructed Admiral de Robeck, British High Commissioner in Constantinople, to bring to the knowledge of the Turks that the Allies had decided not to take Constantinople from them, but also warn them that, should the Armenian persecutions continue, the treaty of peace with Turkey might be remodelled.

The Turkish Press did not conceal its satisfaction at seeing that Constantinople was likely to remain the capital of the Empire, and was thankful to France for proposing and supporting this solution. Meanwhile a new party, “the Party of Defence and Deliverance of the Country,” to which a certain number of deputies adhered, and which was supposed to be accepted and supported by the whole nation, had solemnly declared that no sacrifice could be made concerning the independence of the Ottoman Empire, and the integrity of Constantinople and the coast of the Marmora, merely recognising the freedom of passage of the Straits for all nations. This party now held great demonstrations.

At the end of February the Minister of the Interior at Constantinople addressed to all the public authorities in the provinces the following circular:

“I have great pleasure in informing you that Constantinople, the capital of the Khilafat and Sultanate, will remain ours, by decision of the Peace Conference.

“God be praised for this! This decision implies that, as we earnestly hope, our rights will be safeguarded and maintained.

“You should do the utmost in your power and take all proper measures to prevent at all times and especially at the present delicate juncture untoward incidents against the non-Moslem population. Such incidents might lead to complaints, and affect the good dispositions of the Allies towards us.”

In the comments of the Ottoman Press on the deliberations of the Peace Conference regarding the peace with Turkey, the more moderate newspapers held the Nationalists responsible for the stern decisions contemplated by the Powers, and asked the Government to resist them earnestly.

Great was the surprise, therefore, and deep the emotion among the Turks, when, after the aforesaid declarations, on February 29, the English fleet arrived and a large number of sailors and soldiers marched along the main streets of Pera, with fixed bayonets, bands playing, and colours flying.

A similar demonstration took place at Stambul on the same day, and another on the following Wednesday at Skutari.

A sudden wave of discussion spread over Great Britain at the news that the Turks were going to keep Constantinople, and made an impression on the Conference, in which there were still some advocates of the eviction of the Turks.

A memorandum signed by Lord Robert Cecil and Mr. J. H. Thomas, requiring that the Turks should be driven out of Europe, raised some discussion in the House of Commons. In answer to this memorandum some members sent a circular to their colleagues, to ask them to avoid, during the sittings of the Peace Conference, all manifestations that might influence its decisions concerning foreign affairs. Another group, in an appeal to Mr. Lloyd George, reminded him that in his declaration of January 5, 1918, he had stated that the English did not fight to wrest her capital from Turkey, and that any departure from this policy would be deeply resented in India.

Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Bryce proved the most determined adversaries of the retention of the Turks in Europe.

According to the Daily Mail, even within the British Cabinet widely different views were held about Constantinople. One section of the Cabinet, led by Lord Curzon, asked that the Turks should be evicted from Europe; and another, led by Mr. Montagu, Indian Secretary, favoured the retention of the Turks in Constantinople, provided they should give up their internal struggles and submit to the decisions of the Allies.

The Times severely blamed the Government for leaving the Turks in Constantinople; it maintained it was not too late to reconsider their decision; and it asked that Constantinople should in some way be placed under international control.

The Daily Chronicle also stated that it would have been better if the Turks had been evicted from Constantinople, and expressed the hope that at any rate public opinion would not forget the Armenian question. At the same time—i.e., at the end of February, 1920—American leaders also asked that the Turks should be compelled to leave Constantinople, and a strong Protestant campaign started a powerful current of opinion.

On Sunday evening, February 29, a meeting of so-called “non-sectarians” was held in New York, with the support of the dignitaries of St. John’s Cathedral.

The Bishop of Western Pennsylvania, after holding France responsible for the present situation because it owned millions of dollars of Turkish securities, declared: “Though I love England and France, we must let these two countries know that we will not shake hands with them so long as they hold out their hands to the sanguinary Turk.”

Messages from Senator Lodge, the presidents of Harvard and Princeton Universities, M. Myron, T. Herrick, and other Americans of mark were read; asking President Wilson and the Supreme Council that the Ottoman rule in Constantinople should come to an end. Motions were also carried requesting that the Turks should be expelled from Europe, that the Christians should no longer be kept under Moslem sway, and that the Allies should carry out their engagements with regard to Armenia.

Another movement, similar in character to the American one, was started in England at the same time.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, with the other Anglican bishops and some influential men, addressed a similar appeal to the British Government.

Twelve bishops belonging to the Holy Synod of Constantinople sent a telegram to the Archbishop of Canterbury, entreating his support that no Turk might be left in Constantinople. In his answer, the Archbishop assured the Holy Synod that the Anglican Church would continue to do everything conducive to that end.

The Bishop of New York also telegraphed to the Archbishop of Canterbury on behalf of about a hundred American bishops, to thank him for taking the lead in the crusade against the retention of the Turks in Constantinople. The Archbishop replied that he hoped America would assume a share in the protection of the oppressed nationalities in the East.

The personality of the promoters plainly showed that religious interests were the leading factors in this opposition, and played a paramount part in it, for the instigators of the movement availed themselves of the wrongs Turkey had committed in order to fight against Islam and further their own interests under pretence of upholding the cause of Christendom.

So, in February, after the formidable campaign started in Great Britain and the United States, at the very time when the treaty of peace with Turkey was going to be discussed again, and definitely settled, the retention of the Turkish Government in Constantinople was still an open question.

On February 12 the Anglo-Ottoman Society addressed to Mr. Lloyd George an appeal signed by Lord Mowbray, Lord Lamington, General Sir Bryan Mahon, Professor Browne, Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall, and several other well-known men, referring to the pledge he had made on January 5, 1918, to leave Constantinople to the Turks. The appeal ran as follows:

“We, the undersigned, being in touch with Oriental opinion, view with shame the occupation of the vilayet of Aidin, a province ‘of which the population is predominantly Turkish,’ by Hellenic troops; and have noticed with alarm the further rumours in the Press to the effect that part of Thrace—and even Constantinople itself—may be severed from the Turkish Empire at the peace settlement, in spite of the solemn pledge or declaration aforesaid, on the one hand, and, on the other, the undeniable growth of anti-British feeling throughout the length and breadth of Asia, and in Egypt, owing to such facts and rumours.

“We beg you, in the interests not only of England or of India but of the peace of the world, to make good that solemn declaration not to deprive Turkey of Thrace and Asia Minor, with Constantinople as her capital.”

The next week a memorandum was handed to Mr. Lloyd George and printed in the issue of The Times of February 23. It was signed by, among others, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishop of London, Lord Robert Cecil, Mr. A. G. Gardiner (late editor of the Daily News), the socialist leader Hyndman, Lord Bryce (formerly ambassador to the United States), the well-known writer Seton-Watson, Dr. Burrows, Principal of King’s College, Professor Oman, and many professors of universities. In it the same desires lurked behind the same religious arguments, under cover of the same social and humanitarian considerations—viz., that the Turks should no longer be allowed to slaughter the Armenians, and that they should be expelled from Constantinople.

“As to Constantinople itself, it will be a misfortune and indeed a scandal if this city is left in Turkish hands. It has been for centuries a focus of intrigue and corruption; and it will so continue as long as the Turkish Government has power there. If Constantinople were transferred to the control of the League of Nations, there would be no offence to genuine Moslem sentiment. For the Khilafat is not, and never has been, attached to Constantinople. The Sultan, if he retains the Khilafat, will be just as much a Khalifa, in the eyes of Moslems all over the world, at Brusa or Konia, as at Stambul.”

Now the absurdity of such arguments is patent to all those who know that “the focus of intrigue and corruption” denounced in this document is the outcome of the political intrigues carried on by foreigners in Constantinople, and kept up by international rivalries. As to the exile of the Sultan to Brusa or Konia, it could only have raised a feeling of discontent and resentment among Moslems and roused their religious zeal.

Such a movement was resented by the Turks all the more deeply as, it must be remembered, they have great reverence for any religious feeling. For instance, they still look upon the Crusades with respect, because they had a noble aim, a legitimate one for Catholics—viz., the conquest of the Holy Places; though later on behind the Crusaders, as behind all armies, there came all sorts of people eager to derive personal profit from those migrations of men. But they cannot entertain the least consideration or regard for a spurious religious movement, essentially Protestant, behind which Anglo-Saxon covetousness is lurking, and the real aim of which is to start huge commercial undertakings.

Moreover, the Greek claims which asserted themselves during the settlement of the Turkish question partly originated in the connection between the Orthodox Church, not with Hellenism in the old and classical sense of the word, as has been wrongly asserted, but with Greek aspirations. For the Œcumenical Patriarch, whose see is Constantinople, is the head of the Eastern Church, and he still enjoys temporal privileges owing to which he is, in the Sultan’s territory, the real leader of the Greek subjects of the Sultan. Though the countries of Orthodox faith in Turkey have long enjoyed religious autonomy, their leaders keep their eyes bent on Constantinople, for in their mind the religious cause is linked with that of the Empire, and the eventual restoration of the Greek Empire in Constantinople would both consolidate their religious faith and sanction their claims.

In spite of what has often been said, it seems that the Christian Church did not so much protect Hellenism against the Turks as the Orthodox Church enhanced the prosperity of the Greeks within the Turkish Empire. The Greek Church, thanks to the independence it enjoyed in the Ottoman Empire, was a sort of State within the State, and had a right to open and maintain schools which kept up moral unity among the Greek elements. So it paved the way to the revolutionary movement of 1821, which was to bring about the restoration of the Greek kingdom with Athens as its capital; and now it serves the plans of the advocates of Greater Greece. Let us add that nowadays the Greek Church, like the Churches of all the States that have arisen on the ruins of Turkey, has its own head, and has freed itself from the tutelage of the Patriarch for the administration of its property.

Lord Robert Cecil, who had taken the lead in that politico-religious movement, wrote on February 23 in the Evening Standard a strong article in which he said something to this purpose: “Constantinople is a trophy of victories, not the capital of a nation. From Constantinople the Turks issue cruel orders against the Christian population. From the point of view both of morality and of prudence, the Stambul Government must not be strengthened by such an exorbitant concession on the part of the Allies.”

In the debate which took place on Wednesday, February 25, 1920, in the House of Commons regarding the retention of the Turks in Constantinople, after a question of Lord Edmund Talbot, Sir Donald Maclean, who spoke first, urged that if the Turks were not expelled from Constantinople all the worst difficulties of the past would occur again, and would endanger the peace of the world.

“The decision of the Peace Conference was a great surprise to most people. We owed nothing to the Turks. They came into the war gladly and without any provocation on our part. They became the willing and most useful ally of Germany. If the Turks were left in the gateway of the world, they would be at their old game again.”16

Sir Edward Carson said just the reverse:

“It was suggested that we should drive the Turks out of Constantinople.... If the Allies wanted to drive the Turks out of Constantinople, ... they would have to commence another war, and it would not be a small war. You must not talk of cutting down the Army and the Navy, and at the same moment censure the Government because they had not settled the question of driving the Turks out.”17

Mr. Lloyd George, speaking after them both, began thus:

“This is not a decision, whichever way you go, which is free from difficulty and objection. I do not know whether my right hon. friend is under the impression that if we decided to expel the Turk from Constantinople the course would be absolutely clear. As a matter of fact, it is a balancing of the advantages and the disadvantages, and it is upon that balance and after weighing very carefully and for some time all the arguments in favour and all the arguments against, all the difficulties along the one path and all the difficulties you may encounter on the other, and all the obstacles and all the perils on both sides, that the Allied Conference came to the conclusion that on the whole the better course was to retain the Turk in Constantinople for achieving a common end.”

Then he explained that the agreement concerning the substitution of the Russians for the Turks in Constantinople had become null and void after the Russian revolution and the Brest-Litovsk peace, and that at the present date the Bolshevists were not ready to assume such a responsibility, should it be offered to them.

“I will deal with two other pledges which are important. My right hon. friend referred to a pledge I gave to the House in December last, that there would not be the same gate-keeper, but there would be a different porter at the gates.... It would have been the height of folly to trust the guardianship of these gates to the people who betrayed their trust. That will never be done. They will never be closed by the Turk in the face of a British ship again....

“The second pledge, given in January, 1918, was given after full consultation with all parties, and the right hon. member for Paisley and Lord Grey acquiesced. There was a real desire to make a national statement of war aims, a statement that would carry all parties along with it, and they all agreed. It was a carefully prepared declaration, which I read out, as follows: ‘Nor are we fighting to destroy Austria-Hungary, or to deprive Turkey of its capital, or of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace, which are predominantly Turkish in race. Outside Europe we believe that the same principle should be applied.... While we do not challenge the maintenance of the Turkish Empire in the homeland of the Turkish race, with its capital in Constantinople, the passage between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea being internationalised and neutralised’ (as they will be), ‘Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine are in our judgment entitled to recognition of their separate national conditions.’ That declaration was specific, unqualified, and deliberate. It was made with the consent of all parties in the community....

“The effect of the statement in India was that recruiting went up appreciably from that very moment....

“Now we are told: ‘That was an offer you made to Turkey, and they rejected it, and therefore you were absolutely free.’ It was more than that. It was a statement of our war aims for the workers of this country, a statement of our war aims for India. It is too often forgotten that we are the greatest Mohammedan Power in the world. One-fourth of the population of the British Empire is Mohammedan.... We gave a solemn pledge and they accepted it, and they are disturbed at the prospect of our not abiding by it.... There is nothing which would damage British power in Asia more than the feeling that you could not trust the British word. That is the danger. Of course it would be a fatal reputation for us....

“When the peace terms are published there is no friend of the Turk, should there be any left, who will not realise that he has been terribly punished for his follies, his blunders, his crimes, and his iniquities. Stripped of more than half his Empire, his country under the Allied guns, deprived of his army, his navy, his prestige—the punishment will be terrible enough to satisfy the bitterest foe of the Turkish Empire, drastic enough for the sternest judge. My right hon. friend suggested that there was a religious issue involved. That would be the most dangerous of all, and the most fatal. I am afraid that underneath the agitation there is not only the movement for the expulsion of the Turk, but there is something of the old feeling of Christendom against the Crescent. If it is believed in the Mohammedan world that our terms are dictated by the purpose of lowering the flag of the Prophet before that of Christendom, it will be fatal to our government in India. It is an unworthy purpose to achieve by force. It is unworthy of Britain, and it is unworthy of our faith.

“Let us examine our legitimate peace aims in Turkey. The first is the freedom of the Straits. I put that first for two reasons, which I shall refer to later on. It was put first by my right hon. friend, and I accept it. The second is the freeing of the non-Turkish communities from the Ottoman sway; the preservation for the Turk of self-government in communities which are mainly Turkish, subject to two most important reservations. The first is that there must be adequate safeguards within our power for protecting the minorities that have been oppressed by the Turk in the past. The second is that the Turk must be deprived of his power of vetoing the development of the rich lands under his rule which were once the granary of the Mediterranean....

“You can get the great power of Constantinople from its geographical situation. That is the main point. It is the main point for two reasons. The first is, when you consider the future possibilities of the Black Sea. You have there six or seven independent communities or nations to whom we want access. It is essential that we should have a free road, a right-of-way to these countries, whatever the opinion of the Turk may be. His keeping of the gates prolonged the war, and we cannot have that again. Therefore, for that reason, it is coming to an end. The second reason why the guardianship of the gates is important is because of its effect upon the protection of minorities. How do we propose that that should be achieved? Turkey is to be deprived entirely of the guardianship of the gates. Her forts are to be dismantled. She is to have no troops anywhere within reach of these waters. More than that, the Allies mean to garrison those gates themselves.... I was going to say that we have been advised that, with the assistance of the Navy, we shall be able to garrison the Dardanelles and, if necessary, the Bosphorus, with a much smaller force because of the assistance to be given by the Navy for that purpose. Turkey will not be allowed a navy. What does she want with a navy? It was never of the slightest use to her when she had it. She never could handle it. That is the position in regard to the Straits.

“What is the alternative to that proposal? The alternative to that proposal is international government of Constantinople and the whole of the lands surrounding the Straits. It would mean a population of 1,500,000 governed by the Allies—a committee representing France, Italy, Great Britain, and, I suppose, some day Russia might come in, and, it might be, other countries. America, if she cared to come in. Can anyone imagine anything more calculated to lead to that kind of mischievous intriguing, rivalry, and trouble in Constantinople that my right hon. friend deprecated and, rightly, feared? How would you govern it? Self-government could not be conferred under those conditions. It would have to be a military government.... It would require, according to every advice we have had, a very considerable force, and it would add very considerably to the burdensome expenditure of these countries, and it would be the most unsatisfactory government that anyone could possibly imagine.

“We had hoped that two of the great countries of the world would have been able to help us in sharing the responsibility for the government of this troubled country; but for one reason or another they have fallen out. There was first of all Russia. She is out of the competition for a very unpleasant task. Then there was America. We had hopes, and we had good reason for hoping, that America would have shared these responsibilities. She might probably have taken the guardianship of the Armenians, or she might have taken the guardianship of Constantinople. But America is no claimant now, and I am not going to express an opinion as to whether she ever will be, because it would be dangerous to do so; but for the moment we must reckon America as being entirely out of any arrangement which we contemplate for the government of Turkey and for the protection of the Christian minorities in that land.... I ask my noble friend, if he were an Armenian would he feel more secure if he knew that the Sultan and his Ministers were overlooked by a British garrison on the Bosphorus, and that British ships were there within reach, than if the Sultan were at Konia, with hundreds of miles across the Taurus Mountains to the nearest Allied garrison, and the sea with its great British ships and their guns out of sight and out of mind? I know which I would prefer if I were an Armenian with a home to protect.”18

The Prime Minister concluded his speech by saying that the Allies chiefly desired to take from the Turks the government of communities of alien race and religion, which would feel adequately protected when they knew that their former persecutors must sign the decree for their liberation under the threat of English, French, and Italian guns. Yet he could not dissemble his own misgivings.

In the discussion that followed Lord Robert Cecil said that, in any settlement with regard to Armenia, he trusted there would not only be a considerable increase in the present area of the Armenian Republic, but that Armenia would be given some access to the Black Sea in the north. Without that he was satisfied that the Armenian Republic would have the greatest difficulty in living. He earnestly hoped that every influence of the British Government would be used to secure that Cilicia should be definitely removed from Turkish sovereignty. He repeated once more that he was sorry the Turks were going to be retained in Constantinople, but that—

“No one wished to turn the Sultan out; the central thing was to get rid of the Sublime Porte as the governor of Constantinople. That did not mean turning anybody out; it merely meant that we were not to hand back Constantinople to the Turkish Government.”

He had the greatest regard for the feelings of the Indians in that matter, but was surprised they insisted upon the retention of the Sultan in Constantinople. He thought that there was not the slightest ground for maintaining the Sultan as Caliph of Mohammedanism, and, even if there were, there was nothing at all vital about his remaining in Constantinople. So far as the Turks were concerned, what was Constantinople? It was not a national capital; it had been occupied by the Turks as their great trophy of victory. He entirely approved of the statement of 1918, and, in the same circumstances, he would make it again. It seemed to him perfectly fantastic to say that ever since 1918 we had held out to our Indian fellow-subjects an absolute undertaking that Constantinople should remain in the hands of the Turks.

Then Mr. Bonar Law rose, and declared that it would be easier to have control over the Turkish Government if it was left in Constantinople, instead of transferring it to Konia,

“Our fleet at Constantinople would be a visible emblem of power. The Allies believed that the pressure they would be able to exercise would have an effect throughout the Turkish Empire, but it would not be so if we sent the Turks to Konia. An hon. member had said that some Armenians had told him that they desired the Turks to be sent out of Constantinople. Let the Armenians consider the facts as they now were.

“If there was one thing which more than another was likely to make the League of Nations a failure it was to hand over this question to them. In 1917 it was arranged that if we were victorious in the war, Russia would become the possessor of Constantinople. But all that fell to the ground, and in 1918 a new situation arose, and a solemn document was put before the British people in which it was stated that one of our war aims was not to turn the Turks out of Constantinople. Overwhelming reasons were required to justify departure from that declaration, and those overwhelming reasons had not been forthcoming. When it was hoped and expected that America would accept a mandate in regard to Turkey there was no question of turning the Turks out of Constantinople.”19

The debate, which came to an end after this statement by Mr. Bonar Law, was not followed by a vote.

Mr. Montagu, Secretary for India, stated in an interview printed in the Evening Standard, February 25:

“If one of the results of the war must needs be to take away Constantinople from the Turks, I should take the liberty of respectfully telling Lord Robert Cecil, as president, of the Indian delegation in the Peace Conference, that we ought not to have asked Indians to take part in the war against Turkey. Throughout India, all those who had to express their opinion on this subject, whatever race or religion they may belong to, are of opinion that Constantinople must remain the seat of the Khilafat if the internal and external peace of India is to be preserved.

“The Turks, who are the chief part of the population in Constantinople, have certainly as much right as any other community to the possession of that city. So we have to choose between the Turks and an international régime. Now in the history of Constantinople examples have occurred of the latter régime, and the results were not so good that it cannot be said a Turkish government would not have done better.”

This opinion was upheld by a good many British newspapers, notwithstanding Lord Robert Cecil’s campaign.

Yet under the pressure of a section of public opinion and the agitation let loose against Turkey, England seemed more and more resolved to occupy Constantinople, and The Times, though it had never been averse to the eviction of the Turks from Constantinople, now showed some anxiety:

“We cannot imagine how the greatest lovers of political difficulties in Europe should have ever dreamt that Constantinople should be occupied exclusively by British troops, or that such a decision may have been taken without previously taking the Allies’ advice.

“As things now stand, we are not at all surprised that such stories may have given birth to a feeling of distrust towards us. These are the fruits of a policy tainted with contradiction and weakness. The Allied countries refuse to sacrifice any more gold or human lives, unless their honour is concerned. They will not consent to go to war in order to safeguard the interests of a few international financiers, who want to dismember Turkey-in-Asia.”

This movement was brought about by the explosion of very old feelings which had been smouldering for nearly forty years, had been kept alive by the Balkan war, and had been roused by the last conflict. Even at the time of Catherine II the merchants of the City of London merely looked upon Russia as a first-rate customer to whom they sold European and Indian goods, and of whom in return they bought raw materials which their ships brought to England. So they felt inclined to support the policy of Russia, and, to quote the words of a French writer in the eighteenth century, the English ambassador at Constantinople was “le chargé d’affaires de la Russie.” So a party which took into account only the material advantages to be drawn from a closer commercial connection with Russia arose and soon became influential. William Pitt inveighed against this party when, in one of his speeches, he refused to argue with those who wanted to put an end to the Ottoman Empire. But the opinion that England can only derive economic advantages from the dismemberment of Turkey in favour of Russia soon found a new advocate in Richard Cobden, the leader of the Manchester school, who expounded it in a little book, Russia, by a Manchester Manufacturer, printed at Edinburgh in 1835. This dangerous policy was maintained, in spite of David Urquhart’s campaign against the Tsarist policy in the East in a periodical, The Portfolio, which he had founded in 1833, and, notwithstanding the strenuous efforts made by Blacque, a Frenchman, editor of The Ottoman Monitor, to show that Europe was being cheated by Russia, and was going the wrong way in her attitude towards Turkey. And the same foolish policy consistently pursued by Fox, Gladstone, and Grey towards Tsardom is still carried on by Britain towards Bolshevism. The same narrowly utilitarian views, the typical economic principles of the Manchester School, linked with Protestant ideas, and thus strengthened and aggravated by religious feeling, seem still to inspire the Russian policy of Britain as they once inspired the old “bag and baggage” policy of Mr. Gladstone, the “Grand Old Man,” that the Turks should be expelled from Constantinople with bag and baggage. Indeed, this policy may be looked upon as an article of faith of the English Liberal party. Mr. Gladstone’s religious mind, which was alien to the Islamic spirit, together with the endeavours of the economists who wanted to monopolise the Russian market, brought about an alliance with Holy Orthodox Russia, and within the Anglican Church a movement for union with the Holy Synod had even been started.

That campaign was all the more out of place as the Turks have repeatedly proclaimed their sympathy for England and turned towards her. Just as after the first Balkan war the Kiamil Cabinet had made overtures to Sir Edward Grey, after the armistice of November 11 Tewfik Pasha, now Grand Vizier, had also made open proposals. England had already laid hands on Arabia and Mesopotamia, but could not openly lay claim to Constantinople without upsetting some nations with whom she meant to keep on good terms, though some of her agents and part of public opinion worked to that end. Generally she showed more diplomacy in conforming her conduct with her interests, which she did not defend so harshly and openly.

But religious antagonism and religious intolerance were at the bottom of that policy, and had always instigated and supported it. The Anglicans, and more markedly the Nonconformists, had taken up the cry, “The Turk out of Europe,” and it seems certain that the religious influence was paramount and brought on the political action. Mr. Lloyd George, who is a strong and earnest Nonconformist, must have felt it slightly awkward to find himself in direct opposition to his co-religionists on political grounds. Besides, the British Government, which in varied circumstances had supported contradictory policies, was in a difficult situation when brought face to face with such contradictions.

It also seems strange at first that the majority of American public opinion should have suffered itself to be led by the campaign of Protestant propaganda, however important the religious question may be in the United States. Though since 1831 American Protestant missionaries have defrayed the expenses of several centres of propaganda among the Nestorians (who have preserved the Nazarene creed), paid the native priests and supported the schools, America has no interests in those countries, unless she thus means to support her Russian policy. But her economic imperialism, which also aims at a spiritual preponderance, would easily go hand in hand with a cold religious imperialism which would spread its utilitarian formalism over the life and manners of all nations.

At any rate, the plain result of the two countries’ policy was necessarily to reinforce the Pan-Turkish and Pan-Arabian movements.

Of course, Mr. Wilson’s puritanism and his ignorance of the complex elements and real conditions of European civilisation could not but favour such a movement, and on March 5 the New York World, a semi-official organ, plainly said that Mr. Wilson would threaten again, as he had already done about Italy, to withdraw from European affairs, if the treaty of peace with Turkey left Constantinople to the Turks, and gave up all protection of the Christian populations in Turkey.

The traditional hostility of America towards Turkey—one of the essential reasons of which has just been given—demanded that Turkey should be expelled from Europe, and the Empire should be dismembered. President Wilson, in Article 12 of his programme, had mentioned the recognition of the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire; yet the American leaders, though they pointed out that a state of war had never existed between the United States and Turkey, were the first to demand the eviction of the Turks; and the Chicago Tribune of March 8 hinted that an American cruiser might be sent to the Bosphorus. On March 6 Senator Kling criticised in the Senate the Allies’ proposals aiming at tolerating Turkish sway in Asia Minor. The United States even backed the Greek claims, and on the same day Mr. Lodge moved that the Peace Conference should give to Greece Northern Epirus, the Dodecanese, and the western coast of Asia Minor.

Mr. Morgenthau, too, criticised the terms of the settlement which allowed Constantinople to remain a Turkish city; he maintained that such a solution could only be another inducement for America to keep away from European affairs, and declared that Europe would fail to do her duty if she did not punish Turkey. Yet at the same time America, and shortly after England, were endeavouring to mitigate the responsibility of Germany, objecting, not to her punishment, which had never been demanded by France, but to the complete execution of the most legitimate measures of reparation, and made concessions on all points that did not affect their own interests. In fact, they merely wanted to resume business with Germany at any cost and as soon as possible.

English newspapers printed an appeal to French and British public opinion drawn up by some eminent American citizens, asking for the eviction of the Turks from Constantinople and the autonomy of Armenia.

The British Press, however, remarked that it was not sufficient to express wishes, and it would have been better if the Americans had assumed a share of responsibility in the reorganisation of Asia Minor.

Now, why did a section of British and American public opinion want to punish Turkey, whereas it refused to support the French and Belgian claims to reparation? In order to form an impartial judgment on Turkey, one should look for the motives and weigh the reasons that induced her to take part in the war, and then ascertain why some members of her political parties most preposterously stood by the side of Germany. If the latter pursued such a policy, perhaps it was because Germany, who aimed at extending her influence over the whole of Eastern Asia, displayed more ability and skill than the Allies did in Turkey, and because the policy of the Powers and their attitude towards the Christians raised much enmity against them.

On such a delicate point, one cannot do better than quote the words of Suleyman Nazif Bey in a lecture delivered in honour of Pierre Loti at the University of Stambul on January 23, 1920:

“When we linked our fate with that of Germany and Austria, the Kaiser’s army had already lost the first battle of the Marne. It is under such untoward and dangerous circumstances that we joined the fray. No judicious motive can be brought forward to excuse and absolve the few men who drove us lightheartedly into the conflagration of the world war.

“If Kaiser Wilhelm found it possible to fool some men among us, and if these men were able to draw the nation behind them, the reason is to be found in the events of the time and in the teachings of history. Russia, who, for the last two and a half centuries has not given us a moment of respite, did not enter into the world war in order to take Alsace-Lorraine from Prussia and give it back to France. The Muscovites thought the time had come at last to carry out the dream that had perpetually haunted the Tsars ever since Peter the Great—that is to say, the conquest of Anatolia and the Straits.

“It is not to Europe but to our own country that we must be held responsible for having entered into the war so foolishly, and still more for having conducted it so badly, with so much ignorance and deceit. The Ottoman nation alone has a right to call us to account—the Great Powers had paid us so little regard, nay, they had brought on us such calamities, that the shrewd Kaiser finally managed to stir up our discontent and make us lay aside all discretion and thoughtfulness by rousing the ancient legitimate hatred of the Turks.

“Read the book that the former Bulgarian Premier, Guéchoff, wrote just after the Balkan war. You will see in it that the Tsar Nicholas compelled, as it were by force, the Serbs and Bulgars, who had been enemies for centuries, to conclude an alliance in order to evict us from Europe. Of course, Montenegro followed suit. France approved, then even urged them to do so; and then one of the leading figures of the times intervened to make Greece join that coalition intended to drive the Turks out of Europe. The rest is but too well known. The Bulgarian statesman who owns all this is noted for his hatred of Turkey.

“Let us not forget this: so long as our victory was considered as possible, the Powers declared that the principle of the status quo ante bellum should be religiously observed. As soon as we suffered a defeat, a Power declared this principle no longer held good; it was the ally of the nation that has been our enemy for two and a half centuries, and yet it was also most adverse to the crafty policy that meant to cheat us....

“Every time Europe has conferred some benefit upon us we have been thankful for it. I know the history of my country full well; in her annals, many mistakes and evil doings have occurred, but not one line relates one act of ingratitude. After allowing the Moslems of Smyrna to be slaughtered by Hellenic soldiers and after having hushed up this crime, Europe now wants—so it seems at least—to drive us out of Constantinople and transfer the Moslem Khilafat to an Anatolian town, as if it were a common parcel, or shelve it inside the palace of Top-Kapu (the old Seraglio) like the antique curios of the Museum. When the Turks shall have been expelled from Constantinople, the country will be so convulsed that the whole world will be shaken. Let nobody entertain any doubt about this: if we go out of Constantinople a general conflagration will break out, that will last for years or centuries, nobody knows, and will set on fire the whole of the globe.

“At the time when Sultan Mohammed entered the town of Constantinople, which had been praised and promised by Mohammed to his people, the Moslem Empire of Andalusia was falling to decay—that is to say, in the south-east of Europe a Moslem State arose on the ruins of a Christian State, while in the south-west of Europe a Christian State was putting an end to the life of a Moslem State. The victor of Constantinople granted the Christian population he found there larger religious privileges than those granted to it by the Greek Empire. The ulcer of Phanar is still the outcome of Sultan Mohammed’s generosity. What did Spain do when she suppressed the Moslem State in the south-west of Europe? She expelled the other religions, burning in ovens or sending to the stake the Moslems and even the Jews who refused to embrace Christianity. I mention this historical fact here, not to criticise or blame the Spaniards, but to give an instance of the way in which the Spaniards availed themselves of the conqueror’s right Heaven had awarded them. And I contrast the Christians’ cruelty with the Turks’ gentleness and magnanimity when they entered Constantinople!”

To adopt the policy advocated by Anglo-American Protestants was tantamount to throwing Islam again towards Germany, who had already managed to derive profit from its defence. Yet Islamism has no natural propensity towards Germanism; on the contrary, Islam in the sixteenth century, at the time of its modern development, intervened in our culture as the vehicle of Eastern influences. That policy also hurt the religious feelings of the Mussulmans and roused their fanaticism not only in Turkey, but even in a country of highly developed intellectual life like Egypt, and in this respect it promoted the cause of the most spirited and most legitimate Nationalism.

Besides, in the note which the Ottoman Minister of Foreign Affairs handed in January, 1920, to the High Commissioners of the Allies, together with a scheme of judicial reforms, it was said notably:

“The Ottoman Government fully realises the cruel situation of Turkey after the war, but an unfortunate war cannot deprive a nation of her right to political existence, this right being based on the principles of justice and humanity confirmed by President Wilson’s solemn declaration and recognised by all the belligerents as the basis of the peace of the world. It is in accordance with these principles that an armistice was concluded between the Allied Powers and Turkey. It ensues from this that the treaty to intervene shall restore order and peace to the East.

“Any solution infringing upon Ottoman unity, far from ensuring quietude and prosperity, would turn the East into a hotbed of endless perturbation. Therefore the only way to institute stability in the new state of things is to maintain Ottoman sovereignty.

“Let us add that, if the reforms Turkey tried to institute at various times were not attended with the results she expected, this is due to an unfavourable state of things both abroad and at home.

“Feeling it is absolutely necessary to put an end to an unbearable situation and wishing sincerely and eagerly to modernise its administration so as to open up an era of prosperity and progress in the East, the Sublime Porte has firmly resolved, in a broadminded spirit, to institute a new organisation, including reforms in the judicial system, the finance, and the police, and the protection of the minorities.

“As a token that these reforms will be fully and completely carried out, the Ottoman Government pledges itself to accept the co-operation of one of the Great Powers on condition its independence shall not be infringed upon and its national pride shall not be wounded.”

As soon as it was known in what spirit the treaty of peace with Turkey was going to be discussed between the Powers, and what clauses were likely to be inserted in it, a clamour of protest arose throughout the Moslem world.

That treaty could not but affect the most important group of Mohammedans, the Indian group, which numbers over 70 million men and forms nearly one-fourth of the population of India. As soon as the conditions that were to be forced on Turkey were known in India, they roused deep resentment, which reached its climax after the Amritsar massacre. Some of the clauses which the Allies meant to insert in the treaty plainly ran counter to the principles of Mohammedanism; and as they hurt the religious feelings of the Moslems and disregarded the religious guarantees given to the Hindus and all the Moslem world by the present British Cabinet and its predecessors, they could not but bring on new conflicts in the future. Besides, the blunders of the last five years had united Hindus and Mohammedans in India, as they united Copts and Mohammedans in Egypt later on, and it was also feared that the Arabs, whose hopes had been frustrated, would side with the Turkish Nationalists.

At the end of 1918, Dr. Ansari, M.D., M.S., chairman of the Committee of the All-India Muslim League, in the course of the session held at Delhi at that time, set forth the Muslim grievances. But the address he read could not receive any publicity owing to the special repressive measures taken by the Government of India.

In September, 1919, a Congress of Mohammedans, who had come from all parts of India and thus represented Muslim opinion as a whole, was held at Lucknow, one of the chief Muslim centres. In November another congress for the defence of the Caliphate met at Delhi; it included some Hindu leaders, and thus assumed a national character. Next month a third congress, held at Amritsar, in the Punjab, was presided over by Shaukat Ali, founder and secretary of the Society of the Servants of the Ka’ba, who had been imprisoned like his brother Mohammed Ali and released three days before the congress; it was attended by over 20,000 Hindus and Mussulmans.

This meeting confirmed the resolution taken by the previous congress to send to Europe and America a delegation from India for the defence of the Caliphate. On January 19, 1920, a deputation of Indian Mussulmans waited upon the Viceroy of India at Delhi, to request that a delegation might repair to Europe and America, according to the decision of the congress, in order to expound before the allied and associated nations and their governments the Moslems’ religious obligations and Muslim and Indian sentiment on the subject of the Caliphate and cognate questions, and to be their representatives at the Peace Conference.

The non-Mussulman Indians supported the claims which the 70 millions of Indian Mussulmans, their fellow-countrymen, considered as a religious obligation. In an address drawn up by the great Hindu leader, the Mahatma Gandhi, and handed on January 19, 1920, by the deputation of the General Congress of India for the Defence of the Caliphate to His Excellency Baron Chelmsford, Viceroy and Governor of India, in order to lay their aims before him, they declared they raised a formal protest lest the Caliphate should be deprived of the privilege of the custody and wardenship of the Holy Places, and lest a non-Muslim control, in any shape or form whatever, should be established over the Island of Arabia, whose boundaries, as defined by Muslim religious authorities, are: the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, thus including Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, beside the Peninsula of Arabia.

This General Congress of India, according to the manifesto it adopted during its sittings at Bombay on February 15, 16, and 17, 1920, gave to the delegation sent to Europe the following mandate, with respect to the Muslim claims regarding the Caliphate and the “Jazirat-ul-Arab”:

“With respect to the Khilafat it is claimed that the Turkish Empire should be left as it was when the war broke out; however, though the alleged maladministration of Turks has not been proved, the non-Turkish nationalities might, if they wished, have within the Ottoman Empire all guarantees of autonomy compatible with the dignity of a sovereign State.”

And the manifesto continued thus:

“The slightest reduction of the Muslim claims would not only hurt the deepest religions feelings of the Moslems, but would plainly violate the solemn declarations and pledges made or taken by responsible statesmen representing the Allied and Associated Powers at a time when they were most anxious to secure the support of the Moslem peoples and soldiers.”

The anti-Turkish agitation which had been let loose at the end of December, 1919, and had reached its climax about March, 1920, had an immediate repercussion not only in India, where the Caliphate Conference, held at Calcutta, decided to begin a strike on March 19 and boycott British goods, if the agitation for the expulsion of the Turks from Constantinople did not come to an end in England.

At Tunis, on March 11, after a summons had been posted in one of the mosques calling upon the Muslim population to protest against the occupation of Constantinople, a demonstration took place before the Residency. M. Etienne Flandin received a delegation of native students asking him that France should oppose the measures England was about to take. The minister, after stating what reasons might justify the intervention, evaded the question that was put him by declaring that such measures were mere guarantees, and stated that even if France were to take a share in them, the Mussulmans should feel all the more certain that their religious creed would be respected.

The measures that were being contemplated could not but raise much anxiety and indignation among the Moslem populations and might have had disastrous consequences for France in Northern Africa. This was clearly pointed out by M. Bourgeois, President of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, in his report read to the Senate when the conditions of the peace that was going to be enforced on Turkey came under discussion.

“We cannot ignore the deep repercussions which the intended measures in regard to Turkey may have among the 25 million Moslems who live under our rule in Northern Africa. Their reverence and devotion have displayed themselves most strikingly in the course of the war. Nothing must be done to alter these feelings.”

Indeed, as M. Mouktar-el-Farzuk wrote in an article entitled “France, Turkey, and Islam,” printed in the Ikdam, a newspaper of Algiers, on May 7, 1920—

“If the French Moslems fought heroically for France and turned a deaf ear to the seditious proposals of Germany, they still preserve the deepest sympathy for Turkey, and they would be greatly distressed if the outcome of the victory in which they have had a share was the annihilation of the Ottoman Empire.

“That sympathy is generally looked upon in Europe as a manifestation of the so-called Moslem fanaticism or Pan-Islamism. Yet it is nothing of the kind. The so-called Moslem fanaticism is a mere legend whose insanity has been proved by history. Pan-Islamism, too, only exists in the mind of those who imagined its existence. The independent Moslem populations, such as the Persians and the Afghans, are most jealous of their independence, and do not think in the least of becoming the Sultan’s subjects. As to those who live under the dominion of a European Power, they have no wish to rebel against it, and only aim at improving their material and moral condition, and of preserving their personality as a race.

“The true reasons of the Moslems’ sympathy for the Ottoman Empire are historical, religious, and sentimental reasons.”

The delegation of the Moslems of India for the defence of the Caliphate sent to the Peace Conference was headed by Mohammed Ali, who, in 1914, on behalf of the Government of India, had written to Talaat, Minister of the Interior, to ask him not to side with the Central Empires, and to show him how difficult the situation of the Indian Mussulmans would be if Turkey entered into the war against England. On landing in Venice, he told the correspondent of the Giornale d’Italia that the object of his journey was to convince the Allies that the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire would be a danger to the peace of the world.

“The country we represent numbers 70 million Mohammedans and 230 million men belonging to other religions but agreeing with us on this point. So we hope that if the Allies really want to establish the peace of the world, they will take our reasons into account. Italy has hitherto supported us, and we hope the other nations will follow her example.”

This delegation was first received by Mr. Fisher, representing Mr. Montagu, Indian Secretary, to whom they explained the serious consequences which the carrying out of the conditions of peace contemplated for Turkey might have in their country.

Mr. Lloyd George, in his turn, received the delegation on March 19, before it was heard by the Supreme Council. Mohammed Ali, after pointing to the bonds that link together the Mohammedans of India and the Caliphate, because Islam is not only a set of doctrines and dogmas but forms both a moral code and a social polity, recalled that, according to the Muslim doctrine, the Commander of the Faithful must always own a territory, an army, and resources to prevent the aggression of adversaries who have not ceased to arm themselves; he maintained, therefore, that the seat of the Sultan’s temporal power must be maintained in Constantinople; that Turkey must not be dismembered; and that Arabia must be left under Turkish sovereignty.

“Islam has always had two centres, the first a personal one and the other a local one. The personal centre is the Caliph, or the Khalifa, as we call him—the successor of the Prophet. Because the Prophet was the personal centre of Islam, his successors, or Khalifas, continue his tradition to this day. The local centre is the region known as the Jazirat-ul-Arab, or the ‘Island of Arabia,’ the ‘Land of the Prophets.’ To Islam, Arabia has been not a peninsula but an island, the fourth boundary being the waters of the Euphrates and the Tigris....

“Islam required temporal power for the defence of the Faith, and for that purpose, if the ideal combination of piety and power could not be achieved, the Muslims said, ‘Let us get hold of the most powerful person, even if he is not the most pious, so long as he places his power at the disposal of our piety.’ That is why we agreed to accept Muslim kings, the Omayyids and the Abbasids, as Khalifas, now the Sultans of Turkey. They have a peculiar succession of their own. We have accepted it for the time being because we must have the strongest Mussulman Power at our disposal to assist us in the defence of the Faith. That is why we have accepted it. If the Turks agreed with other Muslims, and all agreed that the Khalifa may be chosen out of any Muslim community, no matter who he was, the humblest of us might be chosen, as they used to be chosen in the days of the first four Khalifas, the Khulafa-i-Rashideen, or truly guided Khalifas.

“But of course we have to make allowances for human nature. The Turkish Sultan in 1517 did not like to part with his power any more than the Mamluke rulers of Egypt liked to part with their power when they gave asylum to a scion of the Abbasids after the sack of Baghdad in 1258.”

It follows that “the standard of temporal power necessary for the preservation of the Caliphate must obviously, therefore, be a relative one,” and—

“Not going into the matter more fully, we would say that after the various wars in which Turkey has been engaged recently, and after the Balkan war particularly, the Empire of the Khalifa was reduced to such narrow limits that Muslims considered the irreducible minimum of temporal power adequate for the defence of the Faith to be the restoration of the territorial status quo ante bellum....

“When asking for the restoration of the territorial status quo ante bellum, Muslims do not rule out changes which would guarantee to the Christians, Jews, and Mussulmans, within the scheme of the Ottoman sovereignty, security of life and property and opportunities of autonomous development, so long as it is consistent with the dignity and independence of the sovereign State. It will not be a difficult matter. We have here an Empire in which the various communities live together. Some already are sufficiently independent and others hope—and here I refer to India—to get a larger degree of autonomy than they possess at the present moment; and consistently with our desire to have autonomous development ourselves, we could not think of denying it to Arabs or Jews or Christians within the Turkish Empire.”

He went on as follows:

“The third claim that the Mussulmans have charged us with putting before you is based on a series of injunctions which require the Khalifa to be the warden of the three sacred Harams of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem; and overwhelming Muslim sentiment requires that he should be the warden of the holy shrines of Nejef, Kerbela, Kazimain, Samarra, and Baghdad, all of which are situated within the confines of the ‘Island of Arabia.’

“Although Muslims rely on their religious obligations for the satisfaction of the claims which I have specified above, they naturally find additional support in your own pledge, Sir, with regard to Constantinople, Thrace, and Asia Minor, the populations of which are overwhelmingly Muslim. They trust that a pledge so solemnly given and recently renewed will be redeemed in its entirety. Although the same degree of sanctity cannot be claimed for Constantinople as for the three sacred Harams—Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem—Constantinople is nevertheless held very sacred by all the Muslims of the world, and the uninterrupted historic tradition of nearly five centuries has created such an overwhelming sentiment with regard to Islambol, or the ‘City of Islam’—a title which no city has up to this time enjoyed—that an effort to drive the Turks out ‘bag and baggage’ from the seat of the Khilafat is bound to be regarded by the Muslims of the world as a challenge of the modern Crusaders to Islam and of European rule to the entire East, which cannot be taken up by the Muslim world or the East without great peril to our own Empire, and, in fact, to the Allied dominions in Asia and Africa. In this connection, Sir, I might mention one point, that the Muslims cannot tolerate any affront to Islam in keeping the Khalifa as a sort of hostage in Constantinople. He is not the Pope at the Vatican, much less can he be the Pope at Avignon, and I am bound to say that the recent action of the Allied Powers is likely to give rise in the Muslim world to feelings which it will be very difficult to restrain, and which would be very dangerous to the peace of the world.”

With regard to the question of the Caliphate and temporal power, on which the Indian delegation had been instructed to insist particularly, M. Mohammed Ali, in order to make the Moslem point of view quite clear, wrote as follows:20

“The moment this claim is put forward we are told that the West has outgrown this stage of human development, and that people who relieved the Head of a Christian Church of all temporal power are not prepared to maintain the temporal power of the Head of the Muslim Church. This idea is urged by the supporters of the Laic Law of France with all the fanaticism of the days of the Spanish Inquisition, and in England, too. Some of the most unprejudiced people wonder at the folly and temerity of those who come to press such an anachronistic claim. Others suggest that the Khalifa should be ‘vaticanised’ even if he is to retain Constantinople, while the Government of India, who should certainly have known better, say that they cannot acquiesce in Muslim statements which imply temporal allegiance to the Khilafat on the part of Indian Muslims, or suggest that temporal power is of the essence of the Khilafat. Where such criticisms and suggestions go astray is in misunderstanding the very nature and ideal of Islam and the Khilafat, and in relying on analogies from faiths which, whatever their original ideals, have, for all practical purposes, ceased to interpret life as Islam seeks to do.”

As he had said in the course of his official interview with the British Premier, as Islam is not “a set of doctrines and dogmas, but a way of life, a moral code, and a social polity,”—

“Muslims regard themselves as created to serve the one Divine purpose that runs through the ages, owing allegiance to God in the first place and acknowledging His authority alone in the last resort. Their religion is not for Sabbaths and Sundays only, or a matter for churches and temples. It is a workaday faith, and meant even more for the market-place than the mosque. Theirs is a federation of faith, a cosmopolitan brotherhood, of which the personal centre is the Khalifa. He is not a Pope and is not even a priest, and he certainly has no pretensions to infallibility. He is the head of Islam’s Republic, and it is a mere accident, and an unfortunate accident at that, that he happens to be a king. He is the Commander of the Faithful, the President of their Theocratic Commonwealth, and the Leader of all Mussulmans in all matters for which the Koran and the Traditions of the Prophet, whose successor he is, provide guidance.”

Therefore, according to the Moslem doctrine—

“There is no such theory of ‘divided allegiance’ here, as the Government of India consider to be ’subversive of the constitutional basis on which all Governments are established.’ ‘There is no government but God’s,’ says the Koran, ‘and Him alone is a Mussulman to serve,’ and since He is the Sole Sovereign of all mankind, there can be no divided allegiance. All Governments can command the obedience of the Muslims in the same way as they can command the obedience of other people, but they can do so only so far as they command it, as Mr. H. G. Wells would say, in the name of God and for God, and certainly no Christian Sovereign could expect to exercise unquestioned authority over a Muslim against the clear commandments of his Faith when no Muslim Sovereign could dream of doing it. Mussulmans are required to obey God and His Prophet and ‘the men in authority from amongst themselves,’ which include the Khalifa; but they are also required, in case of every dispute, to refer back to the Holy Koran and to the Traditions of the Prophet, which are to act as arbitrator. Thus the Khalifa himself will be disobeyed if he orders that which the Faith forbids, and if he persists in such unauthorised conduct, he may not only be disobeyed, but also be deposed.

“But whatever he could or could not do, the Khalifa was certainly not a pious old gentleman whose only function in life was to mumble his prayers and repeat his beads.

“The best way to understand what he is and what he is not is to go back to the Prophet whose Khalifa or Successor he is. The Koran regards man as the vicegerent of God on earth, and Adam was the first Khalifa of God, and free-willed instrument of divine will. This succession continued from prophet to prophet, and they were the guides of the people in all the affairs of life. The fuller and final revelation came with Mohammed, and since then the Commanders of the Faithful have been his Khalifas or Successors. But as religion is not a part of life but the whole of it, and since it is not an affair of the next world but of this, which it teaches us to make better, cleaner, and happier, so every Muslim religious authority has laid it down unequivocally and emphatically that the allegiance which Muslims owe to the Khalifa is both temporal and spiritual. The only limits recognised to his authority are the Commandments of God, which he is not allowed to disobey or defy....

“The Mussulmans, therefore, do not believe that Christ, for instance, could have said that His was the kingdom not of this earth but of Heaven alone; or that men were to render to Cæsar what was due to Cæsar, and to God what was due to God. Cæsar could not share the world with God or demand from mankind any allegiance, even if only temporal, if he did not demand it for God and on behalf of God. But the ordinary Christian conception has been that the kingdom of Christ was not of this world, and no Pope or priest could, consistently with this conception, demand temporal power. It is doubtful if the Papacy is based on any saying of Christ Himself. At any rate, the Pope has always claimed to be the successor of St. Peter and the inheritor of his prerogatives. As such he has been looked upon as the doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven, his office being strictly and avowedly limited to the spiritual domain. A study of history makes it only too apparent that the doctrine of the Papacy grew in Christianity by the application to the Popes of the epithets which are applied to St. Peter in the Gospels. Just as St. Peter never had any temporal authority, so the Papacy also remained, in the first stages of its growth, devoid of temporal power for long centuries. It was only by a very slow development that the Popes aspired to temporal power. Thus, without meaning any offence, it may be said that the acquisition of temporal power by the Popes was a mere accident, and they have certainly been divested of it without doing the least violence to the religious feelings of one half of the Christian world.

“On the contrary, the temporal power of the Khilafat in Islam is of the very essence of it, and is traceable not only to the earliest Khalifas, but to the Prophet himself. This is obviously not the religious belief of Christian Europe or America; but equally obviously this is the religious Muslim belief, and after all it is with the Muslim belief that we are concerned....”

So, considering the ever-increasing armaments of European and American nations, “even after the creation of a nebulous League of Nations,” he asked himself:

“How then can Islam dispense with temporal power? Others maintain armies and navies and air forces for the defence of their territories or their commerce, because they love these more than they hate armaments. To Islam, its culture and ethics are dearer than territory, and it regards faith as greater than finance. It needs no army or navy to advance its boundaries or extend its influence; but it certainly needs them to prevent the aggression of others.”

Then M. Mohammed Ali dealt separately with the chief clauses of the Turkish treaty in the course of his interview with Mr. Lloyd George, and made the following remarks:

“As regards Thrace, it is not necessary to support the Turkish claim for the retention of Thrace by any further argument than that of the principle of self-determination. Its fair and honest application will ensure the satisfaction of that claim.

“As regards Smyrna, the occupation of Smyrna by the Greeks, who were not even at war with Turkey, under the auspices of the Allies, has shaken to a great extent the confidence which Muslims reposed in the pledges given to them, and the atrocities perpetrated in that region have driven them almost to desperation. Muslims can discover no justification for this action except the desire of Greek capitalists to exploit the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor, which are admittedly the homelands of the Turks. If this state of affairs is allowed to continue, not only will the Turk be driven out, ‘bag and baggage,’ from Europe, but he will have no ‘bag and baggage’ left to him, even in Asia. He would be paralysed, commercially and industrially, in a land-locked small Emirate in Asia Minor, the speedy bankruptcy of which is certain. The application of the principle of self-determination would entirely rule out the Greek claim in this fertile region, which obviously tempts the greed of the capitalist and the exploiter.

“As regards Cilicia, reasons similar to those that have promoted the action of Greeks in Smyrna seem clearly to prompt the outcry of the Christian population in Cilicia, and obviously it is the Gulf of Alexandretta which is attracting some people as the Gulf of Smyrna is attracting others.”

Afterwards, coming to the question of the massacres, M. Mohammed Ali declared:

“The Indian Khilafat delegation must put on record their utter detestation of such conduct and their full sympathy for the sufferers, whether they be Christian or Muslim. But, if the Turk is to be punished as a criminal, and populations of other races and creeds are to be released from their allegiance to the Ottoman Sovereign on the assumption that the Turks have been tyrants in the past and their rule is intolerable, then the delegation claim that the whole question of these massacres must be impartially investigated by an International Commission on which the All-India Khilafat Conference should be adequately represented.”

Moreover, the delegation had already said something similar in a telegram sent to Mr. Lloyd George:

“Where casualties have in fact taken place, not only should their true extent be ascertained, but the Commission should go fully into the so-called massacres and the intrigues of Tsarist Russia in Asia Minor after the success of similar intrigues in the Balkans; it should go into the question of the organisation of revolutionary societies by the Christian subjects of the Sultan, the rebellious character of which was subversive of his rule; it should go into the provocation offered to the Muslim majority in this region, and the nature of the struggle between the contending parties and the character of the forces engaged on either side....”

He went on:

“I have no brief for them; I have no brief for the Turks; I have only a brief for Islam and the India Muslims. What we say is this, as I said to Mr. Fisher: let there be a thorough inquiry, and if this thorough inquiry is carried out, and if it establishes to the satisfaction of the world that the Turks really have been guilty of unprovoked murders, and have been guilty of these atrocities and horrible crimes, then we will wash our hands of the Turks.

“To us it is much more important that not a single stain should remain on the fair name of Islam. We want to convert the whole world to our way of thinking, but with what face could we go before the whole world and say we are the brethren of murderers and massacrers?

“But we know the whole history of these massacres to some extent. It is only in Armenia that the Turk is said to be so intolerant; there are other parts of the world where he deals with Christian people, and where he deals with the Jewish community. No complaints of massacres come from those communities. Then the Armenians themselves lived under Turkish rule for centuries and never complained. The farthest back that we can go to discover any trace of this is the beginning of the last century. But in reality the ‘massacres’ begin only in the last quarter of the last century.

“It is pretty clear that they begin after the success of efforts like those made in the Balkans by Russia, which has never disguised its desire to take Constantinople since the time of Peter the Great. It has always wanted to go to Tsargrad, as it called it—that is, the city of the Tsars. They wanted to go there. They tried these things in the Balkans, and they succeeded beyond their expectation, only probably Bulgaria became too independent when it became Greater Bulgaria. But in the case of the Armenians, they had people who were not very warlike, who had no sovereign ambitions themselves, and who were also to a great extent afraid of conversion to another branch of the Orthodox Church, the Russian branch, so that they were not very willing tools. Still, they were egged on, and plots and intrigues went on all the time. These people were incited, and they understood that if they made a compromise with Tsarist Russia they would get something better. It was then that these massacres came on the scene. No doubt there have been several outcries about them; some evidence has been produced; but there has been no thorough international inquiry which would satisfy the entire world, Muslim as well as Christian. It is in that connection that we earnestly appeal to you, to the whole of Christendom, to the whole of Europe and America, that if the Turk is to be punished on the assumption that he is a tyrant, that his rule is a blasting tyranny, and that he ought to be punished, in that case the evidence should be of such a character that it should be absolutely above suspicion.”

Mr. Lloyd George in his reply upbraided Turkey with fighting by the side of the Central Powers though Great Britain had never fought against her, and protracting the hostilities by closing the Black Sea to the British fleet; but he did not seem to realise that the Russian policy of the Allies partly accounted for Turkey’s decision. Only at the end of the interview, in answer to a remark of the leader of the Indian delegation, he pleaded in defence of England “that she had made no arrangement of any sort with Russia at the expense of Turkey at the beginning of the war.” Then, before coming to the various points M. Mohammed Ali had dealt with, Mr. Lloyd George, who had kept aloof for a long time from the policy of understanding with France, said:

“I do not understand M. Mohammed Ali to claim indulgence for Turkey. He claims justice, and justice she will get. Austria has had justice. Germany has had justice—pretty terrible justice. Why should Turkey escape? Turkey thought she had a feud with us. What feud had Turkey with us? Why did she come in to try and stab us and destroy liberty throughout the world when we were engaged in this life-and-death struggle? Is there any reason why we should apply a different measure to Turkey from that which we have meted out to the Christian communities of Germany and Austria? I want the Mohammedans in India to get it well into their minds that we are not treating Turkey severely because she is Mohammedan: we are applying exactly the same principle to her as we have applied to Austria, which is a great Christian community.”

As to Arabia—which will be dealt with later on together with the Pan-Arabian movement—though M. Mohammed Ali had declared that “the delegation felt no anxiety about the possibility of an understanding between the Arabs and the Khalifa,” and that the Moslems “did not want British bayonets to subject the Arabs to Turkey,” Mr. Lloyd George answered:

“The Arabs have claimed independence. They have proclaimed Feisal King of Syria. They have claimed that they should be severed from Turkish dominion. Is it suggested that the Arabs should remain under Turkish dominion merely because they are Mohammedans? Is not the same measure of independence and freedom to be given to Mohammedans as is given to Christians? Croatia has demanded freedom, and we have given it to her. It is a Christian community. Syria has demanded it, and it is given to her. We are applying exactly the same principles in Christian places, and to impose the dominion of the Sultan upon Arabia, which has no desire for it, is to impose upon Arabs something which we certainly would not dream of imposing upon these Christian communities.”

With regard to Thrace, after owning it was difficult to give reliable figures and saying that according to the Greek census and the Turkish census, which differ but little, the Moslem population was in “a considerable minority,” Mr. Lloyd George stated that “it would certainly be taken away from Turkish sovereignty.” As to Smyrna, he asserted that according to his information “a great majority of the population undoubtedly prefers the Greek rule to the Turkish rule.”

Concerning the temporal power of the Khalifa, he seemed to have forgotten the difference which had just been pointed out to him between the Christian religion and Islam on this point, for he declared:

“I am not going to interfere in a religious discussion where men of the same faith take a different view. I know of Mohammedans—sincere, earnest, zealous Mussulmans—who take a very different view of the temporal power from the one which is taken by M. Mohammed Ali to-day, just as I know of Catholics who take one view and other Catholics who take a very different view of the temporal power of the Pope. That is a controversy into which I do not propose to enter.”

And as if M. Mohammed Ali’s remarks had quite escaped him, he added:

“All I know is this. The Turk will exercise temporal power in Turkish lands. We do not propose to deprive him of Turkish lands. Neither do we propose that he should retain power over lands which are not Turkish. Why? Because that is the principle we are applying to the Christian communities of Europe. The same principles must be applied to the Turk.”

Finally, without thoroughly investigating the question of the massacres, he concluded that the responsibility lay with the Ottoman Government, which “cannot, as it is now constituted, protect its own subjects”; that Turkey is a “misgoverned country”—a reproach that might be applied to many other countries, though nobody would think of declaring they must be suppressed on that account; and that as the Turks “have been intolerant and have proved bad and unworthy rulers,” the solutions proposed by the Allies are the only remedy and therefore are justified.

And so the old argument that Turkey must be chastised was recapitulated once more, and, through the mouth of her Prime Minister, England resorted to threats again, whereas she did not mean to compel Germany to carry out her engagements fully. This attitude seems to be accounted for by the fact that Turkey was weak, and was not such a good customer as Germany. England, while pretending to do justice and to settle accounts, merely meant to take hold of the Straits.

Islam has instituted a social polity and culture which, though widely different from British and American civilisations, and leading to different methods of life, is not necessarily inferior to them; and all religious sects, whether Protestant or Catholic, are wrong when they look upon their own moral conception as superior, and endeavour to substitute it for that of Islam.

If we refer to the letter which was written to Damad Ferid Pasha, president of the Ottoman delegation, in answer to the memorandum handed on June 17, 1919, to the Peace Conference, and which lacks M. Clémenceau’s wit and style though his signature is appended to it, we plainly feel a Puritan inspiration in it, together with the above-mentioned state of mind.

One cannot help being sorry to find in so important a document such a complete ignorance or total lack of comprehension of the Muslim mind, and of the difference existing between our modern civilisation and what constitutes a culture. For instance, we read in it the following:

“History records many Turkish victories and also many Turkish defeats, many nations conquered and many set free. The memorandum itself hints at a loss of territories which not long ago were still under Ottoman sovereignty.

“Yet, in all these changes not one instance occurs in Europe, Asia, or Africa when the establishment of Turkish sovereignty was not attended with a decrease of material prosperity or a lower standard of culture; neither does an instance occur when the withdrawal of Turkish domination was not attended with an increase of material prosperity and a higher standard of culture. Whether among European Christians or among Syrian, Arabian, or African Mussulmans, the Turk has always brought destruction with him wherever he has conquered; he has never proved able to develop in peace what he had won by war. He is not gifted in this respect.”

This stagnation, which to a certain extent has been noticed in modern times, may proceed from the fact that the old Turkish spirit was smothered and Islam was checked by the growth of foreign influence in Turkey. This is probably due, not chiefly to foreign intrusion in the affairs of the Ottoman State—for the latter needed the help of foreign nations—but rather to the selfish rivalries between these nations and to the mongrel solutions inherent in international régimes by which Turkish interests were sacrificed.

It is well known that the decadence of the Arabic-speaking countries had begun long before they were subjected by the Turks. It has even been noticed that Turkish domination in Arabia in 1513 checked the decline of Arabian civilisation, and roused the Syrians, who were in a similar predicament.

Besides, the prevailing and paramount concern for material prosperity which asserts itself in the above-mentioned document, together with the way in which business men, especially Anglo-Saxons, understand material prosperity, would account for the variance between the two civilisations, for it enhances the difference between their standpoints, and proves that the superiority conferred by spiritual eminence does not belong to the nations who consider themselves superior to the Turks.

The Turkish mind, enriched both by Islamic ethics and by Arabian, Persian, and Byzantine influences, has risen to a far more definite and lofty outlook on life than the shallow Anglo-Saxon morality. There is as much difference between the two as between the architecture of the Yeshil-Jami, the green mosque of Brusa, the dome of the Suleymanie, or the kiosk of Baghdad, and the art to which we owe the “sky-scrapers,” the “flat-iron” buildings, the “Rhine bridges,” and the “Leipzig buildings,” or between the taste of the man who can appreciate “loukoums” or rose-jam, and the taste of the man who prefers “chewing-gum” or the acidulated drops flavoured with amyl acetate, or even the sweets flavoured with methyl salicylate provided by the American Government for its army. In the same manner, a similar confusion is often made between comfort—or what vulgar people call comfort—and true ease and real welfare; or again between a set of practical commodities inherent in the utilitarian conception of modern life, and what makes up culture. The quality of culture evidently does not depend on the percentage of water-closets or bath-rooms, or the quantity of calico used per thousand of inhabitants, in a country where the walls of the houses were once decorated with beautiful enamels, where the interior courts were adorned with marble fountains, and where women wore costly garments and silk veils.

Before throwing contempt on Islam, despising the Arabian and Turkish civilisations, and hoping that the Moslem outlook on life will make way for the modern Anglo-Saxon ideal, Mr. Lloyd George and all those who repeat after him that the Turks have no peculiar gift for governing peoples, ought to have pondered over Lady Esther Stanhope’s words, which apply so fittingly to recent events. Being tired of Europe, she had travelled in the East, and, enticed by the beauty and grandeur of the Orient, she led a retired life in a convent near Said, dressed as a Moslem man. One day she was asked by the “Vicomte de Marcellus” whether she would ever go back to Europe, and she answered in some such words as these—we quote from memory:

“Why should I go to Europe? To see nations that deserve to be in bondage, and kings that do not deserve to reign? Before long the very foundation of your old continent will be shaken. You have just seen Athens, and will soon see Tyre. That’s all that remains of those noble commonwealths so famed for art, of those empires that had the mastery of the world’s trade and the seas. So will it be with Europe. Everything in it is worn out. The races of kings are getting extinct; they are swept away by death or their own faults, and are getting more and more degenerate. Aristocracy will soon be wiped out, making room for a petty, effete, ephemeral middle class. Only the lower people, those who plough and delve, still have some self-respect and some virtues. You will have to dread everything if they ever become conscious of their strength. I am sick of your Europe. I won’t listen to its distant rumours that die away on this lonely beach. Let us not speak of Europe any more. I have done with it.”

Besides, all religions accord with the character of the people that practise them and the climate in which they live. Most likely Islam perfectly fitted the physical and moral nature of the Turkish race, since the latter immediately embraced Mohammed’s religion, whereas it had kept aloof from the great Christian movement which, 500 years before, had perturbed a large part of the pagan world, and it has remained faithful to it ever since.

If the Allies tried to minimise the part played by that religion, which perfectly suits the character and conditions of life of the people who practise it, and attempted to injure it, they would really benefit the domineering aims of Rome and the imperialistic spirit of Protestantism. In fact, the Vatican tries to avail itself of the recent Protestant effort, as has already been pointed out, and as various manifestations will show, to bring about a Christian hegemony which would not be beneficial either to the peoples of the East or to the civilisation of the world.

By doing so, the Allies would drive those peoples towards Germanism, though they have no natural propensity for it, for they are averse both to the Lutheran spirit and to the Catholic spirit; yet Germanism has succeeded in finding its way and even gaining sympathy among them, because it pretended to come in a friendly spirit.

It cannot be denied that before the war the Turks endeavoured to find support among other nations to counterbalance German influence. But as, above all things, they dreaded the Russian sway—not without reason, as the latter had already grasped several Turkish provinces in Asia Minor and represented its advance as the revenge of Orthodoxy over Islamism—they had turned towards Germany, who, though it secretly favoured Tsardom, yet pursued an anti-Russian policy.

Of course, they could not have any illusion about what a German Protectorate might be to Turkey, for at a sitting of the Reichstag a German deputy had openly declared: “In spite of our sympathy for Turkey, we must not forget that the time of her partition has come.” As early as 1898 the Pan-German League issued a manifesto under the title Deutschlands Ansprüche an das Türkische Erbe (The Rights of Germany to the Heritage of Turkey). “As soon as the present events shall bring about the dissolution of Turkey, no other Power will seriously attempt to raise a protest if the German Empire lays a claim to a share of it, for it has a right to a share as a great Power, and it wants it infinitely more than any other great Power, in order to maintain the national and economic life of hundreds of thousands of its emigrants.” In the same manner, at the time of the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, von Aerenberg did not scruple to say: “The opening to economic life of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia will always be looked upon as a high deed of German enterprise.” And, alluding to the new field of activity which was thus opened to Austria-Hungary, he added: “The possession of Bosnia has made us a Balkan Power; it is our task and duty to discern when the time shall come, and to turn it to account.”

But if the Turks chose to side with Germany, it was because the Emperor “Guilloun” represented himself as the protector of Islam, and promised to leave the Ottoman Empire its religious sovereignty and the full enjoyment of Muslim civilisation. Now, as the Turks acknowledge only Allah’s will, it is foolish to ask a Christian sovereign or a Christian community to exercise authority over them in order to ensure peace; and yet the Western Powers, urged on by religious interests, have continued to interfere in Ottoman affairs from the Christian point of view and in order to further Christian interests.

Now we see why Germany, in order not to lose the benefit of her previous endeavours, readily welcomed the Central Committee for the Defence of Islam, whose seat was in Berlin, whence it carried on a vigorous propaganda throughout the Muslim world.

At the beginning of December, 1919, that committee held a meeting in Berlin; among the people present were: Talaat Pasha, representing the Turanian movement; Hussein Bey Reshidof, representing the “Eastern Central Committee” instituted by the Moscovite Foreign Commissariat for the liberation of Islam—which is at the head of all the organisations at work in Persia, the Transcaspian areas, Anatolia, Afghanistan, and India; Kutchuk Talaat, a representative of the Union and Progress Committee; Nuri Bedri Bey, representing the Anatolian Kurds; and delegates from Persia and Afghanistan. There they discussed what measures should be taken and what means of action should be resorted to in Muslim countries, especially in Algeria, Tunis, and Morocco.

It must be owned, on the other hand, that the Catholics in Turkey had refused—as they have always tried to do in all countries—to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Turkish Government, and had looked upon themselves as above the laws of the land, though they laid a claim at the same time to a share in the government of the country; in short, they wanted to be both Roman legates and Turkish governors.

All this does not suffice to justify the measures of oppression the Turks resorted to, but explains how they were driven to take such measures, and accounts for the state of mind now prevailing in Turkey, which has brought about the present troubles. For the foreign Powers, urged by the Eastern Christians, kept on meddling with Turkish home affairs, which caused much resentment and anger among the Turks, and roused religious fanaticism on both sides.

If the liberal Western Powers carried on that policy—that is to say, if they continued to support the Christians against the Moslems—they would make a dangerous mistake.

At the present time the Holy See, which has never given up its ever-cherished dream of universal dominion, plainly shows by its growing activity that it means to develop its religious influence and avail itself of the war to strengthen and enlarge it.

For some time the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, though always a staunch supporter of the Papacy, restrained that tendency and became a moderating influence in Rome; but now the Holy See aims at playing a more important part than ever in all the affairs of Southern Germany and the countries that have broken loose from the former dual monarchy.

In order to strengthen the Church and to realise Catholic unity, the Vatican at the present juncture is exerting all its power in Central Europe and the Slavonic countries; and is doing its best at the same time to get in touch with the Protestant world in order to reinforce its own action by coupling it with the Protestant propaganda.

Benedict XV has revived the scheme of the longed-for Union of the Churches in order to win over to Catholicism part or the whole of the former Orthodox Empire.

In New Germany the Holy See is endeavouring to bring about an understanding between Catholics and Protestants, with a view to a common Christian—rather than strictly Catholic—action. In Austria, after upholding all the elements of the old régime so long as a monarchist movement seemed likely to triumph, it now gives its support to Christian Democracy. In Hungary, where the Jesuits and the Cistercians first worked hand in hand together with an Allied mission in Budapest to maintain Friedrich, or at least a clerical government, in power, the Primate, Mgr. Csernoch, and the Lutheran bishop, Mgr. Sandar Raffaï, have now agreed to work for the same purpose. The Polish Schlachta, of course, supports these schemes and intrigues, which are being carried on at Fribourg, in Switzerland, where certain princes connected with the Imperial House and Prince Louis of Windisch-Graetz used to meet Waitz, Bishop of Innsbrück.

Uniatism, or the rite of the United Greek Church, which, though retaining the Slavonic liturgy, acknowledges the Pope as the supreme head of the Church, and is paramount in the Carpathian Mountains, Eastern Galicia, and the Ukraine, favours the extension of the Pope’s sovereignty over these territories, and naturally the Holy See takes advantage of this movement to support and reinforce the Church and bring Orthodox countries under the dominion of Rome.

Till these great schemes have been carried out, and in order to further them, the Holy See means to establish between the Orthodox and the Catholic world an intermediary zone which would be a favourable ground for its penetration and conquest. To this intent Father Genocchi has been sent as apostolic visitor to the Ukraine by Cardinal Marini, prefect of the congregation newly established for the propaganda in the East, with full powers over both Latin and Greek Catholics, or Uniates. Father Genocchi is to act in close union with Mgr. Ratti, and both stand out as powerful agents of the great scheme of the Roman Church.

While pursuing this direct conquest, Rome endeavours in all countries to gain the support of all believers in Christ, even the Protestants, in order to be able to exert an influence on the policy of the Governments, and thus serve Christian interests.

At a recent conference of the Czecho-Slovak Catholics, Mgr. Kordatch, Archbishop of Prague, declared the Catholics would go so far as to resort to public political action and hold out the hand to the Protestants, who believe, like them, in the Divinity of Christ and the Decalogue.

So any undertaking against Islam or any other Eastern religion cannot but reinforce the power of Rome, for it aims at destroying the power of the other creeds which, as well as Catholicism, gratify the aspirations of the various peoples, and thus legitimately counterbalance its dream of hegemony.

Finally, though any communist conception is abhorrent to the Moslem spirit, which is essentially individualist and so has an aristocratic trend, and though Bolshevism, as we have already pointed out, is a specific doctrine which suits only the Russian mind, the attitude of the Western nations threatened to drive Islam towards Bolshevism, or at least to create a suitable ground for its expansion. In spite of the enlightened leaders of Islam, the attitude of the Powers risked inducing the Moslem masses to lend a willing ear to Bolshevist promises and to adopt Bolshevism in order to defend the Moslem creed and customs. Besides, Bolshevism, which was undergoing an evolution, and was growing more wily, less brutal, but all the more dangerous, no longer required other nations to adopt its social ideal. In order to serve a political purpose, it now turned its efforts towards the Caspian Sea to communicate with Asia Minor and create disturbances in Central Asia, while, on the other side, it advanced as far as Mongolia.

After the conclusion of the Anglo-Persian agreement forced by Great Britain upon Persia, which, in spite of what was officially said to the contrary, deprived Persia of her independence, Bolshevism saw what an easy prey was offered to it by the English policy, and concentrated its efforts on Asia Minor, where it could most easily worry England. It carried on a very active propaganda in all Asiatic languages in Turkistan and even in Afghanistan—the result being that the latter country sent a mission of inquiry to Moscow.

According to the statement of a Persian reproduced in the Journal des Débats of April 4, 1920, the representatives of the Soviet Government made advances to the Persian patriotic organisations and told them:

“England despises your rights. Your Government is in her hand. To organise your resistance, you need a help. We offer it to you, and ask for nothing in return, not even for your adhesion to our social doctrine. The reason that urges us to offer you our support is a political one. Russia, whether she is Bolshevist or not, cannot live by the side of an England ruling over nearly the whole of the East. The real independence of your country is necessary to us.”

Such suggestions could not but attract the attention of the Persians at a time when, without even waiting for the opening of the Chamber that had been elected under the influence of British troops in order to sanction the Anglo-Persian agreement, some English administrators had already settled in Teheran.

The same Persian, in agreement with the main body of Persian opinion, went on:

“Shall we have to submit to that shameful régime? Nobody thinks so in our country. Even those who were not bold enough to protest openly against the deed of spoliation which the Anglo-Persian agreement is, are secretly opposed to that agreement. But in order to avail ourselves of that discontent, to concentrate our forces, and chiefly to act fast and well, we need help from abroad, at least at the outset. The Bolshevists offer it to us. I do not know why we should discard the proposition at once. What makes us hesitate is their communist doctrine; yet they declare they do not want at all to ‘bolshevikise’ Persia. As soon as their promise seems to be quite genuine, it will be our national duty to accept their help.

“Whether the Red Dictator’s action in Russia was good or bad is a question that concerns the Russians alone. The only question for us is how to find an ally. Now we have not to choose between many.

“We should have been only too pleased to come to an understanding with Great Britain, even at the cost of some concessions, provided our independence were respected. But the British leaders have preferred trampling upon our rights. Who is to be blamed for this?”

In the same manner as the Kemalist movement, a Nationalist movement was gaining ground in Persia, like the one which had already brought on the Teheran events from 1906 to 1909.

Now, while the Bolshevists, in order to expand and strengthen their position, did their utmost to convince the Eastern nations that Bolshevism alone could free them, the Germans, on the other hand, seized the new opportunity that was given them to offer the Mohammedans their help, and sent them German officers from Russia. In this way, and through our fault, Bolshevism and Germanism united to foment disturbances in the East, and join with it against us. That is why Mr. Winston Churchill said, at the beginning of January: “New forces are now rising in Asia Minor, and if Bolshevism and Turkish Nationalism should unite, the outlook would be a serious one for Great Britain.”

Footnotes:

15 Chapter “Le Peuple.”

16 The Times, February 27, 1920, p. 8, col. 4.

17 The Times, February 27, 1920, p. 8, col. 4.

18 The Times, February 27, 1920, p. 9.

19 The Times, February 27, 1920.

20 India and the Empire, reprinted from Foreign Affairs, July 1, 1920 (Orchard House, Great Smith Street, Westminster, London, S.W. 1), pp. 3 f.