THE CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO minutes

THE CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO minutes

XIII & THE CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 

BY THE TIME the Supreme 

Council reconvened at San Remo on April 18, 1920, most of the 

basic decisions regarding the Turkish peace treaty had long since 

been made, and a nearly complete draft of the treaty was in existence. 

What remained for the Allied representatives to settle was, on the 

whole, a series of relatively minor and specific issues that the various 

expert commissions and the Committee of Foreign Ministers and 

Ambassadors had failed to resolve during the Conference of London. 

In general, this was accomplished rapidly and amicably; what tension 

existed at the conference was engendered by European questions, 

particularly the enforcement and fulfillment of the reparations provi-

sions of the German peace treaty. 

The Turkish State 

When the statesmen at San Remo reviewed systematically all the 

agreements reached during the London conference, they found little 

to alter. The provisions relating to Turkey's European frontier, the 

Straits Commission, and financial control of Turkish Anatolia were 

approved with only a few minor changes. In the same way, the French 

reluctantly accepted what had basically been the British position 

regarding the probable dissolution of the Ottoman Debt Council 

when its term expired in 1923.' 

292 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

Smyrna 

The draft provisions regarding the boundaries of the Smyrna area 

were approved without discussion, and only one significant change 

was made in the political clauses governing the administration of 

the territory. At the insistence of Curzon and the French, the waiting 

period prior to application for a League plebiscite, which might lead 

to Greek annexation of the territory, was extended from two to five 

years. This decision was the only real rebuff suffered by Venizelos 

during the entire Peace Conference, for he had sought to have the 

waiting clause removed entirely. However, Venizelos accepted the 

decision calmly, and three days later wrote Lloyd George thanking 

him effusively for all he had done to further Greek aims, the achieve-

ment of which Venizelos recognized was due primarily to Lloyd 

 2

George's "powerful and effective support." Rarely had such praise 

been more richly deserved. 

Heraclea Coal Fields 

Only one question regarding the spoils envisaged by the powers 

in the separate, "self-denying" Tripartite Pact provoked any discord 

at San Remo. In addition to a sphere of economic priority in Anatolia, 

the draft of the Tripartite Pact gave Italy the right to exploit the 

coal resources in the vicinity of Heraclea. For the previous twenty-five 

years, a French company had been developing a concession there 

of some sixty-five square kilometers, which it had received from 

the Turkish government. By the draft terms of the Tripartite Pact, 

the company was to keep its original concession, but was denied 

3 

any rights of further expansion.

At San Remo, Millerand vehemently protested this provision. 

Instead he asked that France be accorded all concessions granted 

or asked for by the French up to the time of the signing of the 

treaty and that the remaining area should be developed equally by 

France and Italy. This, of course, was unacceptable to Nitti, and 

after some intense bargaining a compromise was reached. Conces-

sions held or asked for by France were to be allowed, but the terminal 

date was to be that of the signing of the Armistice of Mudros. Italy 

CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 293 

would be allowed unrestricted development of the remaining area 

until its rate of production equalled that of the other foreign conces-

sions on January 1, 1920. When this occurred, the French would 

be allotted a one-fourth share of the remaining concessions and 

4 

interests. This agreement was embodied in the Tripartite Pact.

The Tripartite Pact was signed by France and Italy on May 11, 

1920. Though the British had indicated they would sign as well, 

Curzon changed his mind at the last moment on the ground that 

there was no point in signing in advance a pact that could neither 

take effect nor be published until the Turkish peace treaty was signed. 

It was always possible, Curzon maintained, that significant modifi-

cation of the treaty might be considered in the final negotiations 

with the Turks, particularly given the unstable political situation in 

Turkey. If this did happen, the Tripartite Pact would have to be 

altered as well. Although the Italians were not happy with Curzon's 

decision, there was little they could do about it; in contrast, Mil-

lerand, Derby reported, "was, I think, much relieved at our not 

5 

signing."

Non-Turkish Territories 

In contrast to questions relating directly to the Turkish state, issues 

involving territories that were to be separated from Turkey provoked 

some controversy at San Remo. Yet even here, there was little that 

approached crisis proportions, and, in general, all problems were 

resolved swiftly and amicably. 

A rmenia 

At London, the powers had decided to place Armenia under the 

protection of the League of Nations and had hopefully asked the 

League what measures it was prepared to take to assist the new 

state militarily and financially. The reply of the League Council, 

which was received just before the opening of the San Remo confer-

ence, pointed out that League protection meant little, that a mandate 

was necessary, and that the League possessed no military means 

2 9 4 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

of assisting the Armenians. Although the League might appeal to 

its members to subscribe to and guarantee a loan for Armenia, this 

would take time. The council inquired whether the Allies could 

6 

provide the necessary credits during the interim period.

This reply did not please the heads of state at San Remo, for 

it effectively tossed the Armenian question back to the Supreme 

Council. Neither the French nor the Italians were prepared to supply 

military or financial assistance; in fact the Italians stated emphatically 

that aside from fulfilling obligations in the Straits zone, Italy would 

not undertake military action to uphold the treaty provisions in any 

7

part of Asia Minor. The British likewise were unwilling to send 

troops to Armenia, but thought that the Allies could undertake to 

8

supply equipment and officers. As to a loan, Lloyd George became 

rather vehement: 

He was told that Armenia would require about £10,000,000. Who was 

prepared to advance such a sum? America, he was told, could easily find 

it. Why did the League of Nations not appeal to America? Why did they 

refer their difficulties to the Supreme Council, which was already overbur-

dened by its own tasks? The League of Nations did not discharge its whole 

duty by making pious speeches. He believed an appeal from the League 

of Nations to America would be successful. At least it might have the 

effect of stopping President Wilson from addressing any further notes to 

the Supreme Council. He thought the League of Nations was quite able 

9 

to negotiate a loan and to find a mandatory.

To this Lord Curzon rather testily replied that he "deprecated ridicule 

of the League of Nations, seeing that the Council, whenever it found 

itself in a perplexity, referred its difficulties to the League of Na-

10 

tions."

The conference thus found itself squarely faced with the problem 

of Armenian protection and finance. Though the French agreed to 

the proposal to send officers and equipment, this assent still did 

not solve the problem of providing funds to keep the new state going. 

In desperation, the statesmen again turned their thoughts toward 

the United States. Lloyd George in particular sought to create a 

situation that would force America to take a stand on the Armenian 

situation. It was decided to ask the United States to provide the 

necessary financial aid for Armenia." 

CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 295 

Ensuring the enforcement of the Armenian settlement was the 

most difficult problem of all. An Armenian army as such still re-

mained to be equipped and organized, and it was estimated by the 

British that the Turks "might well be able to concentrate a force 

 12

of close on 40,000 men in this area." Much of the territory allotted 

to Armenia at the London conference was in Turkish hands and 

had a predominantly Moslem population. Both Curzon and Marshal 

Foch, the head of the inter-Allied Committee of Military and Naval 

Experts, were doubtful as to whether acceptance of the proposed 

boundaries could be enforced. Moreover, it was evident that available 

Allied forces were so limited that any attempts to enforce the Turkish 

treaty provisions in the rest of Anatolia would preclude the sending 

13 

of Allied contingents to Armenia, and vice versa.

In a special report to the conference, the committee of military 

experts stated that in order to enforce the treaty provisions a total 

of nineteen divisions would be needed for the occupation of Thrace, 

Smyrna, Armenia, the Straits, northern Syria, and Mesopotamia, 

while an additional eight would be necessary to enforce the general 

14

disarmament and minority provisions. If, however, protection and 

guarantees to Armenia were excluded, the total number of divisions 

could be reduced from twenty-seven to twenty-three. The Allies had 

nineteen divisions available for duty in the Near East, and Venizelos 

promised that he could provide three more. The powers therefore 

decided that they could readily enforce the treaty provisions in the 

occupied territories and withstand any attack by Kemalist forces so 

long as no attempt was made to advance into the interior. Turkey 

could be "strangled" by seizing her "vital parts, . . . her capital 

and . . . her ports on the seacoast. . . . If they could cut off . . . 

the source of revenue which Turkey had received from Smyrna and 

elsewhere, Turkey could not hold out very long. Her main arteries 

 15 

would be cut and she would be compelled to give in."

In this way the Conference of San Remo blithely disposed of the 

enforcement and Turkish Nationalist problems in one easy decision, 

but did so at Armenia's expense. None of the European states had 

ever intended to become heavily involved in Armenia, despite all 

their pious pronouncements. Now, finally faced with the necessity 

of making a decision, they coldly and ruthlessly pushed aside the 

296 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

Armenians and their newborn state. At the same time they attempted 

to salve their consciences by agreeing to officer and equip an Ar-

menian military force, which supposedly would be able to defend 

16 

Armenia by itself.

The decision was realistic. The powers had long since recognized, 

as Nitti put it, that "it would not be necessary . . . to declare war 

on Turkey to have the treaty executed [in Armenia], but in effect 

 17

it would be necessary to wage it." By forgetting Armenia, the 

enforcement problem was greatly simplified. All the other territories 

to be taken from Turkey were already in Allied hands and could 

easily be reached. Aside from the Armenians, the large minority 

elements in Turkey all lived near the seacoast, where their rights 

could be protected relatively easily. Therefore, once Armenia was 

excluded from plans for the disposition of Allied forces, problems 

of disarmament of the interior and guarantees for minorities became 

less important. 

In the light of the decision not to send Allied troops to Armenia, 

Nitti suggested that it might be wise to reconsider the proposed 

Armenian-Turkish boundary. He pointed out that "Erzerum was at 

present the centre of the Turkish nationalists. Someone would have 

to drive the Turks out. If this were done there would be a massacre 

 l8

of A r m e n i a n s . " Lloyd George immediately came to Nitti's support: 

Before the war, and before any massacres took place, the population was 

emphatically Mussulman. Consequently, by no principle which had been 

laid down by the Allied Powers could they defend surrendering the place, 

which had a preponderant majority of Mussulmans, to the Armenians. 

. . . He strongly deprecated encouraging illusive hopes in the breasts of 

poor creatures who had been persecuted for centuries, when the Allied 

Powers were perfectly well aware that they could not justify those hopes. 

It was quite possible that the cession of Erzerum might not be the one 

thing which would prevent the Turks from signing the treaty, but the Turks 

might think and say that "the other parts of our Empire which you have 

taken away are regions of which you are already in possession, but we 

know that Erzerum is a place where you cannot touch us." He would not, 

however, put his case on that ground but would put it to the Supreme 

Council that it was not honorable to the Armenians to cede Erzerum on 

false pretensions, as the Allied Powers had no intention to do anything 

except to write letters to President Wilson, or to assemble conferences, 

CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 297 

or to address appeals to the League of Nations. He could say this: that 

no one in Great Britain would take the responsibility of asking for even 

£1,000,000 in order to send troops to conquer Erzerum. The Armenians 

could not conquer it themselves, and its cession to Armenia would be a 

purely provocative measure. . . . It was not fair to the Armenians to give 

them on paper a territory which we had no intention of assisting them 

19 

to secure.

In opposition to this point of view, Curzon, Millerand, and Berthe-

lot argued that Erzerum was so located geographically as to make 

its inclusion within the Armenian state a necessity, not only for 

military reasons but as the terminus of the railway from Erivan and 

the center of Armenia's road system. Moreover, the Armenians had 

been told that they could have Erzerum, and the Allies could not 

honourably go back on their word. It was very important "to consti-

 20 

tute a frontier up to which Armenia could work in the future."

Retaining Erzerum would not make the Turks any more willing to 

21 

sign the treaty, since it would hardly make up for the loss of Smyrna.

In an effort to resolve this deadlock, the Armenian delegates to 

22

the Peace Conference were questioned regarding Armenia's ability 

to fend for itself. They appeared extremely confident that Armenia 

could raise an army that not only could defend the territory it held, 

but that would be able to establish itself in Erzerum as well. All 

23 

that would be needed was equipment and Allied officers.

The Armenian attitude only served to increase the boundary dis-

pute within the conference. The French maintained that the question 

must be decided in the treaty and that the best way out of a bad 

24 

situation was to adhere to the decision of the Conference of London.

Moreover, it was all important that Armenia be given legal title 

to Erzerum, for "the law had some force of realization in its very 

 25

nature." This argument Lloyd George refused to accept: 

The real danger in conferences was that they lived in a world of illusions 

and did not face facts. Conferences were inclined to think when they had 

framed resolutions and adopted clauses they had solved difficulties. M. 

Berthelot seemed to think that the ownership of Erzerum could be decided 

in the conference. It could not. If six representatives round the table ordered 

the Drafting Committee to declare Erzerum Armenian, would this be giving 

Erzerum to Armenia in M. Berthelot's sense? Erzerum would have to be 

298 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

taken by force, and blood spilt in the taking. . . . The Allied Powers had 

decided that they could not send troops to take the place. . . . Could the 

Armenian republic take Erzerum unaided? Marshal Foch's report and that 

26 

of all the military experts gave an unhesitating answer in the negative.

As an alternative, Lloyd George proposed that the United States 

should be asked to assume the responsibility for expelling the Turkish 

Nationalists from the larger Armenian state denned in the draft terms 

of the treaty. If it refused, a smaller Armenia should be constituted. 

This proposal was accepted by Millerand who suggested that it be 

extended to include a definite request for an American mandate. 

If America declined, Wilson should be asked to arbitrate the question 

27 

of Erzerum. To this Lloyd George readily assented.

Ultimately, despite the protests of Curzon that the frontiers of 

Armenia should be at least hypothetically defined in the treaty, it 

was decided that the treaty should provide for Turkish, Armenian, 

and Allied acceptance of whatever boundary President Wilson might 

28

draw in the vilayets of Trebizond, Erzerum, Van, and Bitlis. This 

was going far beyond the original proposition, which had concerned 

only Erzerum and its immediate vicinity. To give Wilson the author-

ity to decide the whole Turkish-Armenian frontier meant reopening 

questions involving the Lake Van area and the towns of Erzinjan 

and Trebizond. 

It may be asked why Lloyd George so readily supported Mil-

lerand's arbitration proposal, especially when it must have been 

obvious to all that Wilson was almost certain to grant Armenia more, 

rather than less, territory than had been provided for in the draft 

treaty framed in London. It may be that Lloyd George, opposed 

by his own foreign minister and the entire French delegation, saw 

a way of backing down without a great loss of face. But it is also 

true that the proposal provided several benefits that were pleasing 

to Lloyd George. First, even if the United States refused to take 

the mandate, it would become involved in Armenia, and this had 

been a long-time goal for Lloyd George. Second, American arbitra-

tion would remove from the Allies the unpleasant task of creating 

a boundary that inevitably would please neither side. Third, British 

and French responsibility for enforcing a territorial division that they 

had not created would be far less than if they had drawn it them-

CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 299 

selves. As a result, blame for the probable future failure of Armenia 

to obtain any Turkish territory would be diverted at least partly 

29 

from Great Britain and, more directly, from Lloyd George himself.

A special message was dispatched to Wilson asking the United 

States to accept the mandate as denned by the London conference. 

Whether or not America took the mandate, Wilson was invited to 

redefine the Armenian-Turkish boundary as he saw fit. As expected, 

the United States Senate refused the mandate, but Wilson undertook 

to draw the boundary, which he eventually did in late November, 

1920. Although the southern line corresponded roughly with that 

drawn by the Allies at London, in the center and north Wilson's 

boundary gave both Erzinjan and Trebizond, as well as Erzerum, 

to Armenia. But by that time events in Turkey and the Caucasus 

30 

had made the problem an academic one.

Batum 

Directly connected with the Armenian question and the problem 

of enforcing the treaty was the future of the city of Batum. At the 

Conference of London it had been decided that Batum should go 

to Georgia, with the proviso that it would be a free port under either 

League or Allied guarantee, and that a garrison of three battal-

ions—British, French, and Italian—would be kept in the city at least 

31 

temporarily to enforce these provisions.

By the time the San Remo conference convened, matters had taken 

a turn for the worse. Russian Bolshevik forces had decisively defeated 

the White Russian troops under General Denikin and were advanc-

ing rapidly along the Black Sea littoral toward Batum. Instead of 

enforcing free port requirements on the Georgians, it appeared more 

probable that an Allied garrison at Batum would find itself defending 

the city against the Russian Bolshevik army. The Allies so far had 

avoided any direct military contact with the Bolsheviks; Batum was 

hardly the ideal spot for such a conflict to begin. Not only could 

the Georgian national army not be relied on, but Bolshevik sympathy 

ran high in the city itself. Any defense would have to be undertaken 

32

by the Allies alone. Yet the abandonment of Batum would probably 

mean the end of Allied influence and control in the Caucasus. This 

3 0 0 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

not only would hurt Armenia but it would affect oil-pipeline and 

railroad connections with Baku, the capital of the newly constituted 

state of Azerbaijan. 

No final decision was reached at San Remo. Instead, the Allies 

asked the British high commissioner, Admiral de Robeck, who was 

in Batum, to report on the situation. De Robeck's reply was highly 

pessimistic. Stating that Georgia itself could not be held, he asserted 

that it would require at least two divisions to prevent Batum from 

falling into Bolshevik hands. Since the British were loath to maintain 

their single battalion that was already there, and the French and 

Italian contingents had not yet arrived, defending the city seemed 

33 

out of the question.

On April 27, the Bolshevik party in Azerbaijan executed a coup 

d'etat, well coordinated with an almost simultaneous invasion of 

Azerbaijan by Russian Bolshevik forces. In two days the affair was 

over. Although the state remained officially independent, it was 

completely subservient to the wishes of the Russian Bolsheviks. The 

fall of Baku completely changed the situation regarding the Baku-

Batum rail and pipeline communications. The basis of self-interest 

that had done much to hold the Allies in Batum was gone. As a 

result, the Italian battalion never was sent, and on July 7 the British 

and French officially turned the city over to the Georgian government 

and evacuated their troops. Although the Georgians accepted the 

provision of maintaining Batum as a free port for Armenia, Azer-

baijan, and Persia, the lack of any outside supervision and the sub-

sequent Russian takeover of Georgia and Russian Armenia soon 

34 

made this provision meaningless.

Kurdistan 

In December, Berthelot had agreed to a British suggestion for 

the creation of an independent state or federation of tribes in Kurdis-

tan that would not officially be under the supervision of any power. 

However, since the British had taken charge of what had been done 

since the war in that area, there was little question of whose influence 

would predominate. In fact, during the negotiations of the Tripartite 

CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 301 

Pact in London, the British proposed that the French and Italians 

should agree not to compete with the British for special concessions 

in the area of Kurdistan outside of the territory originally granted 

outright to France in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Moreover, as Cur-

zon admitted, the Indian government was interested in Kurdistan, 

for Indian troops had been in service there. Realizing that under 

these circumstances an independent Kurdistan meant British control, 

at London the French had reverted to their former advocacy of 

Turkish sovereignty over Kurdistan. Having already given up much 

in Mosul, they were not anxious to see British control expanded 

further. The issue had remained unresolved throughout the course 

35 

of the Conference of London.

The solution ultimately reached at San Remo constituted a French 

diplomatic victory. Britain forsook its long-standing advocacy of an 

independent state with no mandate, and accepted the French plan 

calling for Turkish retention of the area subject to provisions guaran-

teeing a degree of local autonomy. The exact terms that would 

implement this decision were to be formulated by a joint French-Bri-

tish-Italian commission within six months of the signing of the treaty. 

The Kurds would have the right to appeal within a year to the League 

of Nations for full independent status. The responsibility for deciding 

whether or not to grant this, and the problem of aiding and protecting 

the new state would thus devolve upon the League and not directly 

on the Allies. The British renounced all claim to areas outside the 

Mosul vilayet and specifically excluded such territory from their 

36 

sphere of economic priority in the tripartite agreement.

This settlement reflected a basic change in British policy, which 

now took the position that Britain should in no way become involved 

in Kurdish affairs. The rebellious attitude of the various tribes and 

their opposition to any outside authority undoubtedly had much to 

37

do with this. Lloyd George summed up the situation when he said: 

He himself had tried to find out what the feelings of the Kurds were. 

After inquiries in Constantinople, Bagdad and elsewhere, he had found it 

impossible to discover any representative Kurd. No Kurd appeared to 

represent anything more than his own particular clan. . . . On the other 

hand, it would seem that the Kurds felt that they could not maintain their 

existence without the backing of a great Power. . . . But if neither France 

302 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

nor Great Britain undertook the task—and he hoped neither would—they 

appeared to think it might be better to leave them under the protection 

of the Turks. The country had grown accustomed to Turkish rule, and 

it was difficult to separate it from Turkey unless some alternative protector 

38 

could be discovered.

Lloyd George thus abandoned a position he had held since the 

beginning of the Peace Conference. 

Syria and Mesopotamia 

The negotiators at San Remo formally approved the allocation 

of mandates in Syria and Lebanon to France and in Mesopotamia 

and Palestine to Britain. No pretense was made of consulting with, 

or working through, the League. The boundary between the French 

and British areas as it had previously been agreed upon was routinely 

confirmed. It was evident that each nation was free to carry out, 

39 

without restriction, any policy it wished in the mandated territories.

That this would be the case had been evident for some time, and 

as a consequence Arab unrest in Syria, and to a lesser extent in 

Mesopotamia, increased considerably. In Syria, reaction to the an-

nouncement of the French mandate was bitter. Arab-French clashes 

in the no-man's-land between territory held by the Arabs and that 

occupied by the French continued with unabated intensity. It was 

obvious that a military showdown between the Arabs and the French 

was only a matter of time. Nevertheless, these problems could have 

been nonexistent for all the consideration they received at San 

40 

Remo.

Palestine 

In the discussion of the clauses concerning the administration of 

Palestine, one major difficulty arose. The French government had 

long been recognized as the protector of Roman Catholicism in the 

Near East, and as such was under considerable pressure from the 

Roman Church and from many French legislators not only to assert 

CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 303 

this right but to undertake a mandate in Palestine. The French 

government had no intention of doing the latter. It was obvious, 

moreover, that to preserve French control over Roman Catholic 

affairs in a British mandate would be an insult to the British and 

would constitute an obstacle to the successful administration of the 

41 

mandate.

Palestine was an area in which Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mos-

lems, and Orthodox Christians all had an interest. To meet this 

situation, Nitti suggested that establishment of regulations for the 

Holy Places and methods of adjudicating disputes between the 

various sects should be handled by a special commission of all faiths, 

headed by a president chosen by the League of Nations. He recom-

mended that all previous privileges and prerogatives held by the 

various religious communities, or by other nations in relation to them, 

42 

should be rescinded.

Lloyd George immediately agreed to this proposal. "Great Britain 

would prefer not to have to decide this question herself. . . . Great 

Britain would infinitely sooner have these questions referred to an 

authoritative and impartial body whose decisions Great Britain would 

 43

scrupulously carry out." For Millerand, however, the solution was 

not so simple. Although he was perfectly willing to agree to Nitti's 

scheme in practice, and secretly to commit himself to the renunciation 

of the French religious protectorate, a public renunciation would 

be political dynamite, and he firmly refused to incorporate such 

a declaration in the formal treaty. A solution was reached through 

agreement to excise any reference to the religious protectorate from 

the treaty. Instead, a formal resolution was incorporated in the secret 

minutes of the conference as a corollary to Allied acceptance of 

the rest of the treaty clauses. The resolution read as follows: 

To accept the terms of the mandates article . . . with reference to Pales-

tine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the proces-verbal an 

undertaking by the mandatory Power that this would not involve the 

surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities 

in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious 

protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous 

afternoon by the undertaking given by the French government that they 

44 

recognized this protectorate as being at an end.

304 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

North Africa 

The only other outstanding issue dealt with at San Remo was 

the Franco-British conflict over the Egyptian clauses. The French 

objection was not to the clauses as such, but rather to their inclusion 

in the treaty, for they feared that such action would upset the balance 

of the unsigned Franco-British convention relative to Morocco and 

45

Egypt, which had been pending for some time. The British, in turn, 

refused to sign the convention because of French insistence that 

it be revised to include prior British consent to any future Franco-

Spanish agreement on French claims to Spanish Tangier. 

At San Remo, the issue was quickly settled when Millerand in-

dicated willingness to resume negotiations on the Egypt-Morocco 

convention, which had almost been signed in Paris, and to do so 

without extending them beyond issues involving Egypt and Morocco. 

Having received this assurance, the British in turn agreed to withdraw 

the offending Egyptian articles from the Turkish treaty, with the 

proviso that if the convention were signed before the treaty was 

given to the Turks, they should again be included. However, this 

did not occur, and the final treaty did not include the controversial 

46 

clauses.

Oil Rights 

The question of the distribution of oil resources did not provoke 

any time-consuming negotiations or serious misunderstandings at San 

Remo. Millerand did make a feeble effort to claim the 50 percent 

participation that Clemenceau had sought in December, 1919. Meet-

ing a solid wall of opposition, he quickly dropped the demand, and 

the revised agreement brought forward by by the experts was quickly 

47 

approved.

In its final form, the San Remo Oil Agreement was basically the 

same as the earlier Long-Berenger and Greenwood-Berenger Agree-

48

ments. A comparison indicates only a minor amount of editorial 

revision, mainly in an effort to meet British objections to the mention 

of private individuals or companies. Though the provision that 

France should receive 25 percent of the stock in any private oil 

CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 305 

company in Mesopotamia was retained, the April agreement also 

provided an alternative that called for the sale to France of 25 percent 

of all crude oil produced in the Mesopotamian oil fields "in the 

 49

event of their being developed by Government action." Thus the 

contingency of either private or public development was covered. 

The only completely new provision in the San Remo agreement 

was an additional clause giving the French government the right 

to purchase up to 25 percent of any oil produced by the Anglo-Persian 

Company and piped from Persia to the Mediterranean through 

pipelines that went across French mandated territory. 

This settlement was officially approved on April 24, 1920, by the 

prime ministers of France and England. Its acceptance by the British, 

where similar proposals had previously been rejected, stemmed from 

two major considerations. The first was that, as Greenwood put it, 

"The leading feature of our petroleum policy for a number of years 

has been the endeavor to secure British control of the Royal Dutch 

 50

Shell group." The bait for the Shell group was the granting of 

the Mesopotamia concession to the Turkish Petroleum Company 

in which Shell held a 25 percent interest. This in turn necessitated 

the signing of the Anglo-French accord, since its major provision 

called for France's receiving a 25 percent share in the Turkish Petro-

leum Company. Without the Anglo-French agreement, it was evident 

that British control of Shell would not be achieved, and France would 

51 

most likely ally itself with the American firm of Standard Oil.

Even more important, was the fact that agreement had now been 

reached on other political and territorial issues such as France's role 

in Syria, the boundary between Syria and Palestine, the fate of 

Constantinople, and the disposition of Anatolia, Armenia, and Kur-

distan. Therefore, the British at last were willing formally to approve 

the pact. 

With the San Remo accord, which was essentially a confirmation 

of previous Anglo-French agreements, negotiations concerning oil 

rights were at an end. Instead of dominating the Near East settlement, 

the question of oil and oil resources had played a surprisingly minor 

role in the negotiation of a Turkish peace treaty, taking a very definite 

52

back seat to other political and territorial issues. Never had its terms 

provoked any lengthy or serious disagreement. Although formal 

306 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

ratification of the settlement, originally drawn up in February and 

March, 1919, was postponed for over a year, the pact was among 

the earliest and most easily attained of all the agreements centering 

on the Near East, and from the beginning was solely a Franco-British 

affair in which neither the Italians nor the Americans played a role 

53 

of any import.

The San Remo Conference and the United States 

At San Remo, as in London, the United States played no official 

role, although the American ambassador in Rome was authorized 

to attend the Supreme Council sessions during the latter half of 

54

the conference. The attitude of the negotiators toward the United 

States, however, was anything but amicable. On April 26, the Allied 

Powers approved a reply to President Wilson's critical note to the 

55

Conference of London. In it they pointed out that they had sought 

United States participation, had waited for it, and had been inconven-

ienced by the waiting. Politely but firmly, the United States was 

told that the treaty was none of its business, and that as a nonsignatory 

America could not ask that guarantees regarding American interests 

56 

should be inserted in the treaty.

This attitude of irritation was even more apparent in the debates 

preceding the dispatch of the note. Berthelot remarked that "it was 

impossible that the Allies should waste time explaining to the United 

States why they took this action or proceeded on such-and-such lines. 

. . . The treaty could not be subordinated to the whims of the 

 57

American President." In this Lloyd George concurred. "He thought 

it was intolerable that the Allies should continue to conduct corre-

 58 

spondence with the United States on the subject."

The powers were obviously disgusted with what they considered 

to be unjustified and unwarranted interference by a nation that 

refused to take part in the negotiations and to assume responsibilities 

59

in the Near East. Even the appeal by the Allies to America for 

help in Armenia brought forth a caustic comment from Lloyd 

George: 

CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 307 

He could not see that there was any harm in making an appeal of this 

nature. If America refused to assist, the Allies would be no worse off, 

and, in one respect, they would be better off. President Wilson could 

continue to lecture the Allies about the way they were handling the Turkish 

question, but if the Allies could retort that they had asked America to 

come in and assist, and that America had refused, the United States could 

60 

not continue to complain of the inability of the Allies to protect Armenia.

Thus by the time the negotiations of the Turkish peace treaty 

were concluded, the influence of the United States on the powers 

was nonexistent, and in the final analysis it must be said that the 

treaty as drafted manifested little or no evidence of American atti-

tudes or aims regarding a N e a r East Settlement. 

The San Remo Conference and the Turkish Nationalists 

The role played by the Nationalist threat in the final formulation 

of the treaty is harder to ascertain. Certainly the Allies were con-

cerned about the Kemalists in a military sense. They were obviously 

skeptical about Allied ability to enforce the treaty terms in the interior 

of Anatolia. Without question, the decisions taken at San Remo 

regarding Armenia were due to anxieties about the strength of the 

Nationalist movement. 

However, regarding the coastal regions there was little concern. 

The Allied military experts were agreed that all territories except 

Armenia which were to be separated from Turkey or occupied by 

the Allies could easily be held. The Allied occupation of Constan-

tinople on March 16, 1920, had brought the Straits area totally under 

Allied control. This had been followed by the arrest and deportation 

of some forty members of the Turkish parliament, which was dis-

solved by the sultan at the insistence of the Allies on April 11. On 

the same day, Damad Ferid, who was once again grand vizier, 

proclaimed the Nationalists as rebels, and a fetva was issued in the 

name of the sultan as caliph, stating that it was religiously permissible 

61 

to kill all those supporting the Nationalist cause.

For Mustapha Kemal, the occupation of Constantinople served 

as a signal for a total break with the Constantinople regime. On 

308 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

the day of the occupation, he sent a message to all civil and military 

authorities urging them to remain calm and promising that action 

would be forthcoming shortly. At the same time, he addressed a 

sharply worded protest to the diplomatic representatives of the Allied 

powers and the United States in Constantinople, the foreign ministers 

of neutral nations, and the legislatures of Britain, France, and Italy. 

Three days later he issued a manifesto calling for the election of 

delegates to a new "Extra-Ordinary" Assembly and inviting members 

62 

of the old parliament to attend.

The Grand National Assembly, as it called itself, convened on 

April 22 in Ankara with the express purpose of "securing the inde-

pendence of the country and the deliverance of the seat of the 

 63

Caliphate and Sultanate from the hands of our enemies." Within 

a matter of hours it adopted the following resolution: 

1. The founding of a government is absolutely necessary. 

2. It is not permissible to recognize a provisional chief of state nor to 

establish a regency. 

3. It is fundamental to recognize that the real authority in the country 

is the national will as represented by the Assembly. There is no power 

superior to the Grand National Assembly. 

4. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey embraces both the Executive 

and the Legislative functions. A council of state, chosen from the mem-

bership of the Assembly and responsible to it, conducts the affairs of the 

state. The president of the Assembly is ex officio president of the Council. 

Note: The Sultan-Kalif as soon as he is free from the coercion to which 

he submits shall take place within the constitutional system in the manner 

64 

to be determined by the Assembly.

This was nothing less than a declaration of political revolution and 

independence. The next day the Assembly elected Mustapha Kemal 

as its president and created an executive commission and a parlia-

mentary commission. On April 30, the Allied Powers were officially 

notified of the creation of the new government and its claim to 

65 

represent the will of the people.

By that time the Conference of San Remo had closed. Yet during 

the conference the powers must have been aware that the Grand 

National Assembly was meeting in Ankara, and they undoubtedly 

CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 309 

recognized the purpose and intent of Kemal in convening the assem-

66

bly. Kemal later maintained that even by the time of the occupation 

of Constantinople, he was receiving "private assurances from French 

and Italian officials that British policy was not theirs—that Millerand 

 67

and Nitti did not agree with Lloyd George." If this were the case, 

it was hardly evident in the talk and actions of Millerand and Berthe-

lot at San Remo. Nitti, it is true, was more cautious than the others, 

and several times spoke of the necessity of drafting a treaty that 

68

the Turks would accept and that could then be enforced. But at 

no time during the whole course of the conference was any mention 

made of the political action then taking place at Ankara. Aside from 

recognizing the Nationalist forces as a military annoyance, the nego-

tiators at San Remo seemed unconcerned about the Kemalist move-

69

ment and totally indifferent to Kemalism as a political force. In-

stead, a delegation from the Constantinople government was in-

structed to come to Paris. On May 11, 1920, the treaty was presented 

to the members of this delegation, and they were given a month 

70 

in which to formulate a reply.

Until quite recently, historians regarded the San Remo conference 

as the time when the major negotiations and drafting of the Turkish 

peace treaty took place. In retrospect, it is now evident that such 

was not the case. Aside from the decision taken in January, 1919, 

to create mandates in the Arab portion of the old Ottoman Empire, 

the general principles on which the treaty was based (with the excep-

tion of the Armenian issue) were agreed upon during and shortly 

after the bilateral Anglo-French discussions in December, 1919. On 

the basis of these principles a draft treaty was hammered out in 

conjunction with the Italians at the meetings in London during 

February and March, 1920. In addition, many policy decisions relat-

ing to specific problems were arrived at in London. As far as the 

Turkish peace is concerned, the Conference of San Remo, apart 

from the decision regarding Allied noninvolvement in Armenia, dealt 

almost, if not entirely, with routine matters involving final approval 

and minor revisions of clauses already drafted during the Conference 

of London. 

3 1 0 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

1. See Br. Doc, 8:45-143, 172-95, passim, 4/20/20^4/23/20, 4/25/20. 

2. Lloyd George Papers, F55/1/28, Venizelos to Lloyd George, 4/26/20. See also Br. 

Doc, 8:123-26, S.C., 4/23/20; p. 130, App. 1. 

3. Br. Doc, 7:165-66, S.C., 2/20/20; p. 384, 3/3/20; p. 391, App. 2; 8:134-36, 4/23/20; 

pp. 141-43, App. A. See also Sonnino Papers, Reel 51, Memorandum on Heraclea Coal Fields, 

1/30/19. 

4. Br. Doc, 8:134-36, S.C., 4/23/20; p. 143, App. B; pp. 211-14, 4/26/20, and n.2. The 

final text of the Tripartite Pact may be found in Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1920, 

Cmd. 963, "Tripartite agreement between the British empire, France and Italy respecting 

Anatolia. Signed at Sevres, August 10, 1920"; "The Secret Treaty Dividing Turkey," Nation 

3 (December, 1920): 697-99; R.F.P.: Political Review, 5/14/20; Bulletin periodique de la presse 

Italienne, no. 136. 

5. Foreign Office, F.O. 608/278/301/310, Derby to Curzon, 5/11/20; See also ibid., 301, 

Vansittart to Curzon, 5/10/20; 308, Tripartite Pact text as signed by French and Italians; 

310, Curzon to Derby, 5/11/20; 315, Curzon to Derby, 5/10/20; Br. Doc, 13:74-76, Curzon 

to Buchanan (Rome), 5/17/20. 

6. Cabinet Papers, Cab. 29/32, A.J. 156, Memorandum agreed to by the Council of the 

League of Nations, "Future Status of Armenia," 4/11/20; A.J. 185, Draft reply of Supreme 

Council of League of Nations, 4/26/20; League of Nations, Official Journal, 1920, Fourth 

Council Session, pp. 3-7, 4/19/20; pp. 11-13, 15, 4/10/20; pp. 19-21, Annex 30A; pp. 27-29, 

Annex 30B; Fifth Council Session, p. 15, 5/14/20; p. 19, 5/15/20; pp. 149-59, Annex 43, 

43A; Br. Doc, 8:46-51, S.C., 4/20/20. It is interesting to note that Venizelos led those supporting 

League responsibility for Armenia in the League Council, conversely it was the British and 

French delegates, Balfour and Bourgeois, who successfully opposed any League action. 

J. Bassett, The League of Nations, A Chapter in World Politics, pp. 40-42; Times (London), 

4/28/20; Mandelstam, Probleme armenien, pp. 64-69; "The Tangled Turkish Question," pp. 

323-30. 

7. Br. Doc, 8:90-91, S.C., 4/21/20. 

8. The British General Staff was emphatic in its assertion that it "could not point to 

any sources from which the necessary expeditionary force for Armenia can be found," especially 

given the industrial unrest in England and the condition of affairs in Ireland. Br. Doc, 13:37, 

General Staff memorandum on the situation in Turkey, 3/15/20; p. 55, General Staff memo-

randum on the Turkish Peace Treaty, 4/1/20; 8:46-50, S.C., 4/20/20. 

9. Ibid., 8:50, S.C., 4/20/20. At San Remo, rumors were circulating that Norway might 

be willing to accept an Armenian mandate, and the conferees indicated they would be more 

than willing to agree to such an idea. Ibid., pp. 47-48. 

10. Ibid., p. 50. The Times (London), expressed an opinion similar to Curzon's on April 

5. 

11. Br. Doc, 8:57-58, S.C., 4/20/20; pp. 61-64. 

12. Ibid., 13:35, General Staff memorandum on the situation in Turkey, 3/15/20. 

13. Ibid., 8:58-60, S.C., 4/20/20; p. 92, 4/21/20. 

14. Cabinet Papers, Cab. 24/103, Foch to Lloyd George, report of the military repre-

sentatives, 3/30/20. 

15. Br. Doc, 8:56, S.C., 4/20/20. See also ibid., pp. 54-58, and pp. 66-67, App. 4; Baron 

Riddell, Lord Riddell's Intimate Diary at the Peace Conference and After, p. 186, 4/22/20. 

16. Callwell, Henry Wilson, 2:233-34, 4/20/20. See also, Br. Doc, 2:295, Allied Conference, 

1/19/20. 

17. Br. Doc, 8:48, S.C., 4/20/20. 

18. Ibid., p. 94, 4/22/20. 

19. Ibid., pp. 108, 111-12. 

CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 3 1 1 

20. Ibid., p. 111. 

21. Ibid., pp. 109-11, 113. 

22. Boghos Nubar Pasha and Avetis Aharonian. 

23. Br. Doc, 8:117-19. S.C., 4/22/20; pp. 120-21, 4/23/20. 

24. Ibid., pp. 114-15, 4/22/20. 

25. Ibid., pp. 138-39, 4/23/20. 

26. Ibid., p. 139. See also ibid., pp. 122-23 and p. 131, App. 3. 

27. Ibid., pp. 112-13, S.C., 4/22/20; p. 140, 4/23/20, pp. 145, 156-57, 4/24/20; Callwell, 

Henry Wilson, 2:235, 4/23/20. 

28. Br. Doc, 8:157-58, S.C., 4/24/20. 

29. The American high commissioner in Constantinople, Admiral Bristol, took this view. 

On September 18, 1920, he commented in a dispatch to Colby that since Armenia would 

receive only the Turkish territory allotted it by the president, "this would seem to impose 

upon him the responsibility of enforcing the Turkish evacuation of territory given to Armenia," 

U.S. Doc, 1920, 3:788. 

30. Br. Doc, 8:177-78, S.C., 4/25/20; pp. 217-20, 4/26/20; U.S. Doc, 1920, 3:779-83, 

Johnson to Sec. State, 4/27/20; p. 783, Colby to Wallace, 5/17/20; pp. 789-804, 11/24/20, 

enclosures 1 and 2; also map at back of volume; Br. Doc, 13:66, Geddes to Curzon, 4/29/20; 

pp. 70-71, 5/11/20; pp. 71-72, 5/16/20; p. 76, 5/18/20; p. 77, Curzon to Geddes, 5/21/20; 

Gidney, Mandate, chap. 10; Kazemzadeh, Transcaucasia, pp. 262-63. See generally Kazem-

zadeh, Transcaucasia, chaps. 18-21; Times (London), 6/3/20; International Conciliation 151 

(June 1920): 13-16. 

31. See above, Chapter 12; also Br. Doc, 8:51, S.C., 4/20/20. 

32. Kazemzadeh, Transcaucasia, p. 201; Br. Doc, 8:129-30, S.C., 4/23/20; p. 131, App. 

4; 12:594-95, Hardinge to Curzon, 4/21/20. 

33. Br. Doc, 8:51-52, S.C., 4/20/20; pp. 129, 136-38, 4/23/20; 12:596, Curzon to Hardinge, 

4/24/20; p. 597, Wardrop to Curzon, 4/25/20; pp. 597-99, Robeck to Curzon, 4/27/20. 

34. Kazemzadeh, Transcaucasia, pp. 202, 283-85, and generally chaps. 18-21. Carnegie 

Endowment for International Peace, The Treaties of Peace, 1919-1923, vol. 2, "Treaty of Sevres," 

Articles 349-51; Times (London), 5/10/20; Br. Doc, 12:599-633, passim. For the British Cabinet 

discussions regarding the evacuation, in which the War Office pressed for such action and 

the Foreign Office dragged its feet, see Cabinet Papers, Cab 23/21, C. 24 (20), 5/5/20; C. 

30 (20), 5/21/20; C. 33 (20). 6/7/20; C. 35 (20), 7/11/20. 

35. Br. Doc, 7:106, 2/17/20; p. 159, 2/20/20; p. 185, 2/21/20; pp. 256-58, 2/26/20; Foreign 

Office, F.O. 406/43/127, Robeck to Curzon, 3/2/20, enclosure, Ryan memorandum, 2/24/20; 

Le Temps, 3/2/20; A. T. Wilson Papers, MSS 52455, Montagu to Wilson, 3/25/20; Wilson 

to Montagu, 3/25/20; Hirtzel to Wilson 4/15/20. The India Office and the Mesopotamian 

administration wanted Kurdistan included in the British Mesopotamian mandate. The French 

would not agree. 

36. Br. Doc, T.43-44, S.C., 4/19/20; pp. 44-45, App. 5; p. 77, 4/21/20; pp. 132-34, 4/23/20; 

13:65-66, Curzon to Robeck, 4/24/20. 

37. See above, Chapter 9. 

38. Br. Doc, 8:43, 4/19/20. 

39. Ibid., p. 9, S.C., 4/18/20; p. 159, 4/24/20; pp. 172-77, 4/25/20. The mandates decision 

was not stated in the peace treaty, but rather was incorporated in a separate agreement. Article 

94 of the Treaty stated simply, "The selection of the Mandatories will be made by the Principal 

Allied Powers." Carnegie Endowment, Treaties, vol. 2, "Treaty of Sevres." 

40. Br. Doc 13:251-52, Curzon to Hardinge, 4/26/20; pp. 252-53, Allenby to Curzon, 

4/27/20; pp. 257-58, 5/13/20; pp. 270-73, Curzon to Cambon, 5/18/20; pp. 278-82, Cambon 

to Curzon, 5/31/20, enclosures; pp. 282-83, Feisal to Lloyd George, n.d.; Foreign Office, 

3 1 2 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

F.O. 608/274/77/267, Hedjaz Delegation to S.C., 4/30/20; State Department, Turkey, 867.00/ 

1261, Bristol to Sec. State, 5/11/20; Kedourie, England and the Middle East, chaps. 6 and 

7; Longrigg, Syria and Lebanon, pp. 99-100; idem, Iraq, 1900 to 1950, pp. 119-21; Zeine, 

Arab Independence, chap. 7; Times (London), 5/11/20, 5/17/20. 

41. Br. Doc, 8:163-64, S.C., 4/24/20; Stein, Balfour Declaration, pp. 656-60. 

42. Br. Doc, 8:162, S.C., 4/24/20; pp. 176-77, 4/25/20. 

43. Ibid., p. 164, 4/24/20. 

44. Ibid., pp. 165-71; p. 176, 4/25/20. 

45. For details of this dispute, see above, Chapter 12. 

46. Br. Doc, 8:83-89, S.C., 4/21/20; Carnegie Endowment, Treaties, vol. 2, "Treaty of 

Sevres," Articles 101-12. 

47. Br. Doc, 8:9-10, Lloyd George-Millerand conversation, 4/18/20; pp. 144-45, 4/24/20; 

E. H. Davenport and S. R. Cooke, The Oil Trusts and Anglo-American Relations, pp. 54-55, 

63. 

48. For the texts of the Long-Berenger and Greenwood-Berenger Agreements, see Br. Doc, 

4:1089-92, 1114-17. For the text of the San Remo Agreement, see Foreign Office, F.O. 

406/43/196, Berthelot-Cadman Oil Agreement, 4/25/20; Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 

1920, Cmd. 675, "Memorandum of Agreement (San Remo, April 24, 1920) between M. Phillipe 

Berthelot and Prof. Sir John Cadman"; Davenport and Cooke, Oil Trusts, pp. 202-7; Hurewitz, 

Diplomacy, 2:75-77. 

49. Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1920, Cmd. 675, "San Remo Oil Agreement," Article 

7. 

50. Cabinet Papers, Cab. 24/104, C.P. 1118, Greenwood memorandum, 4/22/20. 

51. Ibid.; also Cab. 24/101, C.P. 903, Long memorandum, 3/18/20. 

52. A good example of the nonconcerned attitude regarding oil may be seen in the Times 

(London) editorial of June 1, 1920, which advocated that Britain not undertake a Mesopotamia 

mandate. The editorial stated that it would be too expensive, that only oil interests could 

hope to benefit from it, and that they would want a government subsidy as well. C. J. Edmonds, 

who was liaison officer between the Mosul Investigation Commission of the League of Nations 

and the British Mandate Government in 1924 has commented, "It is interesting to look back 

and recall how very little oil figured in our calculations. . . . I do not remember a single 

document in which oil was mentioned as a factor of outstanding importance" Edmonds, Kurds, 

p. 398. 

53. The agreement was officially published on July 24, 1920. Neither the Italians nor the 

Americans were at all happy with the agreement when they learned of it. For the Italian 

reaction, see Br. Doc, 13:342, 346-47, 363-65. For the American reaction, see ibid., pp. 66, 

256-57, 273-74, 314-15, 322-23, 324-25; Lloyd George Papers, F60/4/1, Geddes to Lloyd 

George, 6/4/20; U.S. Doc, 1920, 2:651-59, 663-73; Evans, U.S. and Partition, pp. 297-305; 

De Novo, American Interests, pp. 176-84. 

54. U.S. Doc, 1920, 1:1, Davis to Lansing, 2/6/20; Lansing to Davis, 2/9/20; pp. 1-2, 

Jay to Polk, 3/13/20; p. 2, Polk to Jay, 3/16/20; Colby to Johnson, 4/20/20; p. 3, Johnson 

to Colby, 4/24/20; Br. Doc, 8:161, 165, S.C., 4/24/20. 

55. For a discussion of Wilson's note of March 24, see above, Chapter 12. 

56. For text, see U.S. Doc, 1920, 3:753-56, Johnson to Colby. For an earlier draft, see 

Br. Doc, 8:31-35, S.C., 4/19/20, App. 2. See also ibid., pp. 217-19, 4/26/20. 

57. Ibid., p. 21, S.C., 4/19/20. 

58. Ibid. 

59. This irritation was enhanced, no doubt, by continued American support of Yugoslav 

claims in the Adriatic at a time when the Italians were ready to accept a compromise proposal 

CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 3 1 3 

that had been put forward by France and Britain the previous December. Ibid., vols. 7 and 

8 passim. 

60. Ibid., 8:63, S.C., 4/20/20. 

61. Ibid., 13:57-58, Robeck to Curzon, 4/3/20; p. 59, 4/5/20; pp. 61-62, 4/11/20; p. 62, 

4/15/20; Correspondance d'Orient, pp. 416-18, 420, 5/15/20; Davison, "Turkish Diplomacy," 

p. 181; Adivar, Turkey Faces West: A Turkish View of Recent Changes and Their Origin, 

p. 178; Karpat, Turkey's Politics, pp. 35-36; Lloyd George, Truth, p. 1292; Pech, Allies et 

Turquie, p. 120, 3/19/20; pp. 120-21, 3/27/20; pp. 123-24, 4/5/20; p. 127, 4/12/20; Smith, 

Turkey, pp. 26-28, 34-36; Webster, Turkey of Ataturk, pp. 83, 85; Times (London), 3/27/20, 

4/5/20, 4/14/20. 

62. Adkisson, Britain and the Kemalist Movement, pp. 235-38; Davison, "Turkish Diplo-

macy," p. 181; Gaillard, Turks and Europe, p. 187; B. Georges-Gaulis, La Question Turque, 

p. 95; Karpat, Turkey's Politics, p. 36; Kemal, Speech, pp. 359-61. Smith, Turkey, pp. 32-33, 

and 155-57, Apps. C, D; Webster, Turkey of Ataturk, pp. 84-85; Kinross, Ataturk, p. 243. 

63. Kemal, as quoted in Karpat, Turkey's Politics, p. 36. 

64. Webster, Turkey of Ataturk, p. 86; also Smith, Turkey, pp. 38-39. 

65. Br. Doc, 13:67-68, Kemal to Curzon, 4/30/19; Adkisson, Kemalist Movement, pp. 

245-47; Davison, "Turkish Diplomacy," p. 182; Adivar (Edib), Turkey Faces West, pp. 179-86; 

Kinross, Ataturk, pp. 248-57; Webster, Turkey of Ataturk, p. 86. 

66. As early as April 15, the Times published reports that Kemal planned to form a new 

separate Anatolian government and state. 

67. Davison, "Turkish Diplomacy," p. 181. 

68. Br. Doc, 8:36-37, S.C., 4/19/20; p. 48, 4/20/20; pp. 74, 90, 4/21/20; p. 94, 4/22/20. 

69. The prevailing attitude at the San Remo conference was best summed up by Lloyd 

George when he commented that "no one believed that Mustapha Kemal would be able 

to drive the Greeks out of Asia Minor." Ibid., p. 92, 4/21/20. 

70. Ibid., 13:68, Curzon to Webb, 5/5/20; pp. 68-70, Webb to Curzon, 5/11/20; p. 70, 

Derby to Curzon, 5/11/20; Current History 12 (April, 1920):64; (June, 1920):435; Sforza, 

Diplomatic Europe, p. 60; Times (London), 5/7/20. 

XIV * THE TREATY OF SEVRES 

w,ITH THE conclusion of the 

San Remo conference, the work pertaining to the formulation of 

the Turkish treaty was complete. When the treaty was presented 

to the Turkish delegation on May 11, a general summary of the 

1

terms was given to the press. Although lacking in detail, it clearly 

stated the main provisions of the treaty. 

Press Reaction to the Treaty 

 2

Reaction of the press in Great Britain was basically favorable. 

It was generally agreed that the terms were harsh, yet most publica-

tions took the position that the treaty was no more than what the 

Turks should have expected, or than they deserved. Only a handful 

opposed the treaty. The Manchester Guardian regarded the peace 

terms as impossible; the Westminster Gazette called it an "oratorical 

formula, destined to mask the problems which the Allies have not 

been able to resolve." The Observer bluntly called it "artificial," 

"precarious" and "transitory," while Outlook disliked seeing the 

League used as a "dustbin" for all the problems the Supreme Council 

3 

could not handle.

Yet, even among the majority that regarded the treaty as just, 

there ran a strong current of uneasiness and doubt as to the ability 

TREATY OF SEVRES 315 

of the powers to enforce the terms of the treaty. The Times, Daily 

Telegraph, Morning Post, and New Statesman all voiced concern over 

this issue. The press was unanimous, however, in regarding the treaty 

4 

as a triumph for Venizelos and Greece.

The French and Italian press saw the treaty as a tremendous 

victory, not so much for Greece as for Great Britain. The Italian 

press bitterly condemned the treaty. Newspaper editorials particu-

larly castigated the French, whom the Italians regarded as having 

sold out to the British in the Near East in return for British support 

for some of their continental policies. So great was Italian hostility 

to the treaty that Nitti was obliged to state publicly that Italy would 

play no role in any "fatal war" that might ensue. Nevertheless, the 

Italians did take some comfort from the sphere of economic influence 

allotted to them and saw in it good opportunities for economic and 

5 

commercial development.

Nor was there any enthusiasm in France for the treaty, where 

the Italian interpretation of the French role in the negotiations met 

6

with general acceptance. Tardieu used this argument in defending 

the government's policy in the Chamber of Deputies and Le Temps 

commented that the treaty had been negotiated at a time when Britain 

had France at a disadvantage, for France was completely absorbed 

in German affairs. The newspaper went so far as to discuss the 

position of the unfortunate Turkish delegates and to express the 

7 

sympathy of France for them.

Turkish reaction was one of shock, dismay, and indignation, but 

hardly resignation. Upon receiving the terms on May 11, Tewfik 

Pasha telegraphed home that there was no hope of getting the Greeks 

out of Asia Minor and that the treaty terms were "incompatible 

 8

with the principles of independence." When knowledge of the terms 

reached Constantinople the press unanimously rejected them, saying 

that they cast a "sentence of death" upon Turkey, and the grand 

vizier told de Robeck that it would be almost "impossible" to impose 

9

the treaty on the Nationalists. Mustapha Kemal immediately called 

on all to resist, and the next few weeks witnessed a large-scale Turkish 

exodus from Constantinople to Asia Minor and a great increase in 

10 

the number of recruits rallying to the Kemalist cause.

316 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

The Nationalist-French Cease-Fire Agreement 

Suddenly it became apparent that the treaty might not be signed. 

A Nationalist attack was launched toward Constantinople, and by 

the middle of June, Kemalist forces controlled Brusa and Panderma, 

dominating all but the immediate coastline on the Asiatic side of 

the Sea of Marmara. Moreover, they were in direct contact with 

British troops garrisoning a line across the Ismid peninsula." During 

this same period the French, hard pressed by a series of incidents 

in Syria and by continued fighting in Cilicia, sent Robert de Caix, 

General Gouraud's right-hand man, to negotiate a truce in Cilicia 

with Mustapha Kemal in order that France might effect a partial 

withdrawal of its troops. In this he was successful and a twenty-day 

cease-fire went into effect on May 30. De Caix was hopeful that 

this was only the first step toward better relations with Kemal, and 

commented that a "complete and general entente of the nationalists 

 12

with France appeared very possible to him." In these hopes he 

was far too sanguine, for the truce was broken by the Kemalists 

13 

even before the twenty-day period was over.

Nevertheless, the signing of the cease-fire was of real significance. 

The very fact that a great power had made an agreement with the 

Nationalists was a victory for Kemal and constituted a type of unan-

nounced de facto recognition. Certainly it was viewed in this light 

not only by the Nationalists but by many in the Constantinople 

government. Tewfik Pasha, who headed the Turkish delegation at 

Paris, saw in the cease-fire a sign of possible Franco-British dis-

agreement, and he consequently sought to prolong the negotiations 

with the Allies as much as possible. It was this tactic that led to 

his replacement in Paris on June 25 by the grand vizier, Damad 

14 

Ferid Pasha.

Greek Intervention 

By the middle of June it was obvious to all concerned that the 

treaty could never be put into force in the circumstances then prevail-

ing. Two alternatives remained: either a thorough revision of the 

TREATY OF SEVRES 317 

treaty or decisive military action against the Nationalists. Both the 

Italians and French leaned toward the former solution and made 

15

it clear that they would take no part in any military action. To 

prevent the possibility of revision, Lloyd George decided to take 

the initiative. He knew that Britain could not undertake any extensive 

16

military action. However, influenced by his admiration for Veni-

zelos, and oblivious to all but his vision of a Greek empire doing 

Britain's work in the eastern Mediterranean, Lloyd George fully 

believed that Greece could undertake a limited campaign that would 

humble the Kemalists and force the government at Constantinople 

to sign the treaty. His determination in this matter was such that 

he rode roughshod over the protests of Churchill and Field Marshal 

Sir Henry Wilson, both of whom were thoroughly opposed to such 

action and saw little hope of its success. He dismissed all opposition 

from within the British government as merely political and of Tory 

origin, for at this time the ties that held the coalition government 

together were becoming quite strained, especially over the question 

17 

of Irish home rule.

Even the military, however, had to admit that there was no other 

possible solution if enforcement of the treaty were desired. At a 

conference of ministers held on June 18 Field Marshal Wilson 

conceded that assistance was desperately needed; he reluctantly 

concluded that Greece was the only available source from which 

such help could come. But he added that "his own opinion was 

that the operations would continue for several years and although 

it would be a great help to get the Greeks to come to our assistance 

now he did not think that such a move would really solve the prob-

 18

lem." In his personal diary Wilson was even more emphatic: "All 

this means war with Turkey and Russia, and will end in our being 

 l9

kicked out of Constantinople." Wilson was convinced the Greek 

 20 

campaign would fail, and "then we shall be in the soup."

Venizelos, however, was in London at the time and was invited 

to meet with the British ministers. He expressed a readiness, even 

eagerness, to undertake a Greek campaign, stating, as he had many 

times in the past, that Greek troops could easily take care of the 

Nationalists without any outside aid except in the form of trans-

21

portation and materiel. The conference of ministers, which had 

318 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 

already agreed that a withdrawal from Constantinople before a 

"bandit like Mustapha Kemal" would constitute an intolerable blow 

to British prestige and that it therefore would be in Britain's best 

interest "definitely to support the Greeks," welcomed Venizelos's 

assurances and authorized Field Marshal Wilson to meet with Veni-

22 

zelos to plan the campaign.

It was now necessary to gain the concurrence of the other powers 

(or, as the minutes of the conference of ministers more bluntly put 

it, "to notify" them). The prime ministers were scheduled to meet 

at Boulogne on June 21. Lloyd George arranged to meet privately 

with Millerand at Hythe the day before. In a series of informal talks, 

the French agreed to the scheme, and orders were dispatched to 

the Greek commander approving the immediate start of the cam-

paign. As usual, the Italians were informed after the fact the next 

day at Boulogne, with many apologies and explanations that there 

23 

had not been time to consult with them.

This decision for Greek military action taken by the political 

leaders against the express advice of their top military advisors can 

be understood only in terms of the status of the peace treaty in 

June, 1920. That the plan had its dangers was admitted even by 

Lloyd George, who stated that there was no question but that "if 

this venture should fail . . . then a new situation would arise" that 

would have to be "squarely faced . . . . The next three or four weeks 

 24

would determine this." There was little the Italians or the French 

could do but grant Lloyd George his way, for this was the only 

action that could possibly bring about acceptance and enforcement 

of a treaty that had been so painfully hammered out between the 

Allies. To have refused to allow the Greeks to go ahead would have 

been tantamount to open admission that the treaty needed total 

revision. Instead, the powers decided to refuse all requests for revision 

of the treaty; and the Turks, who had already been granted one 

time extension in which to formulate their reply regarding the terms, 

were refused another. When the reply was received, the only alter-

ation of any import that was conceded was the addition of Turkey 

to the list of nations that would be granted representation on the 

Straits Commission. Otherwise, any and all protests of the Turks 

25 

were dismissed without discussion.

XIII & THE CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO B>Y THE TIME the Supreme Council reconvened at San Remo on April 18, 1920, most of the basic decisions regarding the Turkish peace treaty had long since been made, and a nearly complete draft of the treaty was in existence. What remained for the Allied representatives to settle was, on the whole, a series of relatively minor and specific issues that the various expert commissions and the Committee of Foreign Ministers and Ambassadors had failed to resolve during the Conference of London. In general, this was accomplished rapidly and amicably; what tension existed at the conference was engendered by European questions, particularly the enforcement and fulfillment of the reparations provisions of the German peace treaty. The Turkish State When the statesmen at San Remo reviewed systematically all the agreements reached during the London conference, they found little to alter. The provisions relating to Turkey's European frontier, the Straits Commission, and financial control of Turkish Anatolia were approved with only a few minor changes. In the same way, the French reluctantly accepted what had basically been the British position regarding the probable dissolution of the Ottoman Debt Council when its term expired in 1923.' 292 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES Smyrna The draft provisions regarding the boundaries of the Smyrna area were approved without discussion, and only one significant change was made in the political clauses governing the administration of the territory. At the insistence of Curzon and the French, the waiting period prior to application for a League plebiscite, which might lead to Greek annexation of the territory, was extended from two to five years. This decision was the only real rebuff suffered by Venizelos during the entire Peace Conference, for he had sought to have the waiting clause removed entirely. However, Venizelos accepted the decision calmly, and three days later wrote Lloyd George thanking him effusively for all he had done to further Greek aims, the achievement of which Venizelos recognized was due primarily to Lloyd George's "powerful and effective support." 2 Rarely had such praise been more richly deserved. Heraclea Coal Fields Only one question regarding the spoils envisaged by the powers in the separate, "self-denying" Tripartite Pact provoked any discord at San Remo. In addition to a sphere of economic priority in Anatolia, the draft of the Tripartite Pact gave Italy the right to exploit the coal resources in the vicinity of Heraclea. For the previous twenty-five years, a French company had been developing a concession there of some sixty-five square kilometers, which it had received from the Turkish government. By the draft terms of the Tripartite Pact, the company was to keep its original concession, but was denied any rights of further expansion.3 At San Remo, Millerand vehemently protested this provision. Instead he asked that France be accorded all concessions granted or asked for by the French up to the time of the signing of the treaty and that the remaining area should be developed equally by France and Italy. This, of course, was unacceptable to Nitti, and after some intense bargaining a compromise was reached. Concessions held or asked for by France were to be allowed, but the terminal date was to be that of the signing of the Armistice of Mudros. Italy CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 293 would be allowed unrestricted development of the remaining area until its rate of production equalled that of the other foreign concessions on January 1, 1920. When this occurred, the French would be allotted a one-fourth share of the remaining concessions and interests. This agreement was embodied in the Tripartite Pact.4 The Tripartite Pact was signed by France and Italy on May 11, 1920. Though the British had indicated they would sign as well, Curzon changed his mind at the last moment on the ground that there was no point in signing in advance a pact that could neither take effect nor be published until the Turkish peace treaty was signed. It was always possible, Curzon maintained, that significant modification of the treaty might be considered in the final negotiations with the Turks, particularly given the unstable political situation in Turkey. If this did happen, the Tripartite Pact would have to be altered as well. Although the Italians were not happy with Curzon's decision, there was little they could do about it; in contrast, Millerand, Derby reported, "was, I think, much relieved at our not signing." 5 Non-Turkish Territories In contrast to questions relating directly to the Turkish state, issues involving territories that were to be separated from Turkey provoked some controversy at San Remo. Yet even here, there was little that approached crisis proportions, and, in general, all problems were resolved swiftly and amicably. A rmenia At London, the powers had decided to place Armenia under the protection of the League of Nations and had hopefully asked the League what measures it was prepared to take to assist the new state militarily and financially. The reply of the League Council, which was received just before the opening of the San Remo conference, pointed out that League protection meant little, that a mandate was necessary, and that the League possessed no military means 294 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES of assisting the Armenians. Although the League might appeal to its members to subscribe to and guarantee a loan for Armenia, this would take time. The council inquired whether the Allies could provide the necessary credits during the interim period.6 This reply did not please the heads of state at San Remo, for it effectively tossed the Armenian question back to the Supreme Council. Neither the French nor the Italians were prepared to supply military or financial assistance; in fact the Italians stated emphatically that aside from fulfilling obligations in the Straits zone, Italy would not undertake military action to uphold the treaty provisions in any part of Asia Minor.7 The British likewise were unwilling to send troops to Armenia, but thought that the Allies could undertake to supply equipment and officers.8 As to a loan, Lloyd George became rather vehement: He was told that Armenia would require about £10,000,000. Who was prepared to advance such a sum? America, he was told, could easily find it. Why did the League of Nations not appeal to America? Why did they refer their difficulties to the Supreme Council, which was already overbur­ dened by its own tasks? The League of Nations did not discharge its whole duty by making pious speeches. He believed an appeal from the League of Nations to America would be successful. At least it might have the effect of stopping President Wilson from addressing any further notes to the Supreme Council. He thought the League of Nations was quite able to negotiate a loan and to find a mandatory.9 To this Lord Curzon rather testily replied that he "deprecated ridicule of the League of Nations, seeing that the Council, whenever it found itself in a perplexity, referred its difficulties to the League of Nations."10 The conference thus found itself squarely faced with the problem of Armenian protection and finance. Though the French agreed to the proposal to send officers and equipment, this assent still did not solve the problem of providing funds to keep the new state going. In desperation, the statesmen again turned their thoughts toward the United States. Lloyd George in particular sought to create a situation that would force America to take a stand on the Armenian situation. It was decided to ask the United States to provide the necessary financial aid for Armenia." CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 295 Ensuring the enforcement of the Armenian settlement was the most difficult problem of all. An Armenian army as such still remained to be equipped and organized, and it was estimated by the British that the Turks "might well be able to concentrate a force of close on 40,000 men in this area." 12 Much of the territory allotted to Armenia at the London conference was in Turkish hands and had a predominantly Moslem population. Both Curzon and Marshal Foch, the head of the inter-Allied Committee of Military and Naval Experts, were doubtful as to whether acceptance of the proposed boundaries could be enforced. Moreover, it was evident that available Allied forces were so limited that any attempts to enforce the Turkish treaty provisions in the rest of Anatolia would preclude the sending of Allied contingents to Armenia, and vice versa.13 In a special report to the conference, the committee of military experts stated that in order to enforce the treaty provisions a total of nineteen divisions would be needed for the occupation of Thrace, Smyrna, Armenia, the Straits, northern Syria, and Mesopotamia, while an additional eight would be necessary to enforce the general disarmament and minority provisions.14 If, however, protection and guarantees to Armenia were excluded, the total number of divisions could be reduced from twenty-seven to twenty-three. The Allies had nineteen divisions available for duty in the Near East, and Venizelos promised that he could provide three more. The powers therefore decided that they could readily enforce the treaty provisions in the occupied territories and withstand any attack by Kemalist forces so long as no attempt was made to advance into the interior. Turkey could be "strangled" by seizing her "vital parts, . . . her capital and . . . her ports on the seacoast. . . . If they could cut off .. . the source of revenue which Turkey had received from Smyrna and elsewhere, Turkey could not hold out very long. Her main arteries would be cut and she would be compelled to give in." 15 In this way the Conference of San Remo blithely disposed of the enforcement and Turkish Nationalist problems in one easy decision, but did so at Armenia's expense. None of the European states had ever intended to become heavily involved in Armenia, despite all their pious pronouncements. Now, finally faced with the necessity of making a decision, they coldly and ruthlessly pushed aside the 296 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES Armenians and their newborn state. At the same time they attempted to salve their consciences by agreeing to officer and equip an Armenian military force, which supposedly would be able to defend Armenia by itself.16 The decision was realistic. The powers had long since recognized, as Nitti put it, that "it would not be necessary .. . to declare war on Turkey to have the treaty executed [in Armenia], but in effect it would be necessary to wage it." 17 By forgetting Armenia, the enforcement problem was greatly simplified. All the other territories to be taken from Turkey were already in Allied hands and could easily be reached. Aside from the Armenians, the large minority elements in Turkey all lived near the seacoast, where their rights could be protected relatively easily. Therefore, once Armenia was excluded from plans for the disposition of Allied forces, problems of disarmament of the interior and guarantees for minorities became less important. In the light of the decision not to send Allied troops to Armenia, Nitti suggested that it might be wise to reconsider the proposed Armenian-Turkish boundary. He pointed out that "Erzerum was at present the centre of the Turkish nationalists. Someone would have to drive the Turks out. If this were done there would be a massacre of Armenians." l8 Lloyd George immediately came to Nitti's support: Before the war, and before any massacres took place, the population was emphatically Mussulman. Consequently, by no principle which had been laid down by the Allied Powers could they defend surrendering the place, which had a preponderant majority of Mussulmans, to the Armenians. .. . He strongly deprecated encouraging illusive hopes in the breasts of poor creatures who had been persecuted for centuries, when the Allied Powers were perfectly well aware that they could not justify those hopes. It was quite possible that the cession of Erzerum might not be the one thing which would prevent the Turks from signing the treaty, but the Turks might think and say that "the other parts of our Empire which you have taken away are regions of which you are already in possession, but we know that Erzerum is a place where you cannot touch us." He would not, however, put his case on that ground but would put it to the Supreme Council that it was not honorable to the Armenians to cede Erzerum on false pretensions, as the Allied Powers had no intention to do anything except to write letters to President Wilson, or to assemble conferences, CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 297 or to address appeals to the League of Nations. He could say this: that no one in Great Britain would take the responsibility of asking for even £1,000,000 in order to send troops to conquer Erzerum. The Armenians could not conquer it themselves, and its cession to Armenia would be a purely provocative measure. .. . It was not fair to the Armenians to give them on paper a territory which we had no intention of assisting them to secure.19 In opposition to this point of view, Curzon, Millerand, and Berthelot argued that Erzerum was so located geographically as to make its inclusion within the Armenian state a necessity, not only for military reasons but as the terminus of the railway from Erivan and the center of Armenia's road system. Moreover, the Armenians had been told that they could have Erzerum, and the Allies could not honourably go back on their word. It was very important "to constitute a frontier up to which Armenia could work in the future." 20 Retaining Erzerum would not make the Turks any more willing to sign the treaty, since it would hardly make up for the loss of Smyrna.21 In an effort to resolve this deadlock, the Armenian delegates to the Peace Conference22 were questioned regarding Armenia's ability to fend for itself. They appeared extremely confident that Armenia could raise an army that not only could defend the territory it held, but that would be able to establish itself in Erzerum as well. All that would be needed was equipment and Allied officers.23 The Armenian attitude only served to increase the boundary dispute within the conference. The French maintained that the question must be decided in the treaty and that the best way out of a bad situation was to adhere to the decision of the Conference of London.24 Moreover, it was all important that Armenia be given legal title to Erzerum, for "the law had some force of realization in its very nature." 25 This argument Lloyd George refused to accept: The real danger in conferences was that they lived in a world of illusions and did not face facts. Conferences were inclined to think when they had framed resolutions and adopted clauses they had solved difficulties. M. Berthelot seemed to think that the ownership of Erzerum could be decided in the conference. It could not. If six representatives round the table ordered the Drafting Committee to declare Erzerum Armenian, would this be giving Erzerum to Armenia in M. Berthelot's sense? Erzerum would have to be 298 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES taken by force, and blood spilt in the taking. . . . The Allied Powers had decided that they could not send troops to take the place. . . . Could the Armenian republic take Erzerum unaided? Marshal Foch's report and that of all the military experts gave an unhesitating answer in the negative.26 As an alternative, Lloyd George proposed that the United States should be asked to assume the responsibility for expelling the Turkish Nationalists from the larger Armenian state denned in the draft terms of the treaty. If it refused, a smaller Armenia should be constituted. This proposal was accepted by Millerand who suggested that it be extended to include a definite request for an American mandate. If America declined, Wilson should be asked to arbitrate the question of Erzerum. To this Lloyd George readily assented.27 Ultimately, despite the protests of Curzon that the frontiers of Armenia should be at least hypothetically defined in the treaty, it was decided that the treaty should provide for Turkish, Armenian, and Allied acceptance of whatever boundary President Wilson might draw in the vilayets of Trebizond, Erzerum, Van, and Bitlis.28 This was going far beyond the original proposition, which had concerned only Erzerum and its immediate vicinity. To give Wilson the authority to decide the whole Turkish-Armenian frontier meant reopening questions involving the Lake Van area and the towns of Erzinjan and Trebizond. It may be asked why Lloyd George so readily supported Millerand's arbitration proposal, especially when it must have been obvious to all that Wilson was almost certain to grant Armenia more, rather than less, territory than had been provided for in the draft treaty framed in London. It may be that Lloyd George, opposed by his own foreign minister and the entire French delegation, saw a way of backing down without a great loss of face. But it is also true that the proposal provided several benefits that were pleasing to Lloyd George. First, even if the United States refused to take the mandate, it would become involved in Armenia, and this had been a long-time goal for Lloyd George. Second, American arbitration would remove from the Allies the unpleasant task of creating a boundary that inevitably would please neither side. Third, British and French responsibility for enforcing a territorial division that they had not created would be far less than if they had drawn it them­ CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 299 selves. As a result, blame for the probable future failure of Armenia to obtain any Turkish territory would be diverted at least partly from Great Britain and, more directly, from Lloyd George himself.29 A special message was dispatched to Wilson asking the United States to accept the mandate as denned by the London conference. Whether or not America took the mandate, Wilson was invited to redefine the Armenian-Turkish boundary as he saw fit. As expected, the United States Senate refused the mandate, but Wilson undertook to draw the boundary, which he eventually did in late November, 1920. Although the southern line corresponded roughly with that drawn by the Allies at London, in the center and north Wilson's boundary gave both Erzinjan and Trebizond, as well as Erzerum, to Armenia. But by that time events in Turkey and the Caucasus had made the problem an academic one.30 Batum Directly connected with the Armenian question and the problem of enforcing the treaty was the future of the city of Batum. At the Conference of London it had been decided that Batum should go to Georgia, with the proviso that it would be a free port under either League or Allied guarantee, and that a garrison of three battalions—British, French, and Italian—would be kept in the city at least temporarily to enforce these provisions.31 By the time the San Remo conference convened, matters had taken a turn for the worse. Russian Bolshevik forces had decisively defeated the White Russian troops under General Denikin and were advancing rapidly along the Black Sea littoral toward Batum. Instead of enforcing free port requirements on the Georgians, it appeared more probable that an Allied garrison at Batum would find itself defending the city against the Russian Bolshevik army. The Allies so far had avoided any direct military contact with the Bolsheviks; Batum was hardly the ideal spot for such a conflict to begin. Not only could the Georgian national army not be relied on, but Bolshevik sympathy ran high in the city itself. Any defense would have to be undertaken by the Allies alone.32 Yet the abandonment of Batum would probably mean the end of Allied influence and control in the Caucasus. This 300 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES not only would hurt Armenia but it would affect oil-pipeline and railroad connections with Baku, the capital of the newly constituted state of Azerbaijan. No final decision was reached at San Remo. Instead, the Allies asked the British high commissioner, Admiral de Robeck, who was in Batum, to report on the situation. De Robeck's reply was highly pessimistic. Stating that Georgia itself could not be held, he asserted that it would require at least two divisions to prevent Batum from falling into Bolshevik hands. Since the British were loath to maintain their single battalion that was already there, and the French and Italian contingents had not yet arrived, defending the city seemed out of the question.33 On April 27, the Bolshevik party in Azerbaijan executed a coup d'etat, well coordinated with an almost simultaneous invasion of Azerbaijan by Russian Bolshevik forces. In two days the affair was over. Although the state remained officially independent, it was completely subservient to the wishes of the Russian Bolsheviks. The fall of Baku completely changed the situation regarding the BakuBatum rail and pipeline communications. The basis of self-interest that had done much to hold the Allies in Batum was gone. As a result, the Italian battalion never was sent, and on July 7 the British and French officially turned the city over to the Georgian government and evacuated their troops. Although the Georgians accepted the provision of maintaining Batum as a free port for Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Persia, the lack of any outside supervision and the subsequent Russian takeover of Georgia and Russian Armenia soon made this provision meaningless.34 Kurdistan In December, Berthelot had agreed to a British suggestion for the creation of an independent state or federation of tribes in Kurdistan that would not officially be under the supervision of any power. However, since the British had taken charge of what had been done since the war in that area, there was little question of whose influence would predominate. In fact, during the negotiations of the Tripartite CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 301 Pact in London, the British proposed that the French and Italians should agree not to compete with the British for special concessions in the area of Kurdistan outside of the territory originally granted outright to France in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Moreover, as Curzon admitted, the Indian government was interested in Kurdistan, for Indian troops had been in service there. Realizing that under these circumstances an independent Kurdistan meant British control, at London the French had reverted to their former advocacy of Turkish sovereignty over Kurdistan. Having already given up much in Mosul, they were not anxious to see British control expanded further. The issue had remained unresolved throughout the course of the Conference of London.35 The solution ultimately reached at San Remo constituted a French diplomatic victory. Britain forsook its long-standing advocacy of an independent state with no mandate, and accepted the French plan calling for Turkish retention of the area subject to provisions guaranteeing a degree of local autonomy. The exact terms that would implement this decision were to be formulated by a joint French-British-Italian commission within six months of the signing of the treaty. The Kurds would have the right to appeal within a year to the League of Nations for full independent status. The responsibility for deciding whether or not to grant this, and the problem of aiding and protecting the new state would thus devolve upon the League and not directly on the Allies. The British renounced all claim to areas outside the Mosul vilayet and specifically excluded such territory from their sphere of economic priority in the tripartite agreement.36 This settlement reflected a basic change in British policy, which now took the position that Britain should in no way become involved in Kurdish affairs. The rebellious attitude of the various tribes and their opposition to any outside authority undoubtedly had much to do with this.37 Lloyd George summed up the situation when he said: He himself had tried to find out what the feelings of the Kurds were. After inquiries in Constantinople, Bagdad and elsewhere, he had found it impossible to discover any representative Kurd. No Kurd appeared to represent anything more than his own particular clan. . . . On the other hand, it would seem that the Kurds felt that they could not maintain their existence without the backing of a great Power. . . 
But if neither France 302 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES nor Great Britain undertook the task—and he hoped neither would—they appeared to think it might be better to leave them under the protection of the Turks. The country had grown accustomed to Turkish rule, and it was difficult to separate it from Turkey unless some alternative protector could be discovered.38 Lloyd George thus abandoned a position he had held since the beginning of the Peace Conference. Syria and Mesopotamia The negotiators at San Remo formally approved the allocation of mandates in Syria and Lebanon to France and in Mesopotamia and Palestine to Britain. No pretense was made of consulting with, or working through, the League. The boundary between the French and British areas as it had previously been agreed upon was routinely confirmed. It was evident that each nation was free to carry out, without restriction, any policy it wished in the mandated territories.39 That this would be the case had been evident for some time, and as a consequence Arab unrest in Syria, and to a lesser extent in Mesopotamia, increased considerably. In Syria, reaction to the announcement of the French mandate was bitter. Arab-French clashes in the no-man's-land between territory held by the Arabs and that occupied by the French continued with unabated intensity. It was obvious that a military showdown between the Arabs and the French was only a matter of time. Nevertheless, these problems could have been nonexistent for all the consideration they received at San Remo.40 Palestine In the discussion of the clauses concerning the administration of Palestine, one major difficulty arose. The French government had long been recognized as the protector of Roman Catholicism in the Near East, and as such was under considerable pressure from the Roman Church and from many French legislators not only to assert CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 303 this right but to undertake a mandate in Palestine. The French government had no intention of doing the latter. It was obvious, moreover, that to preserve French control over Roman Catholic affairs in a British mandate would be an insult to the British and would constitute an obstacle to the successful administration of the mandate.41 Palestine was an area in which Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Moslems, and Orthodox Christians all had an interest. To meet this situation, Nitti suggested that establishment of regulations for the Holy Places and methods of adjudicating disputes between the various sects should be handled by a special commission of all faiths, headed by a president chosen by the League of Nations. He recommended that all previous privileges and prerogatives held by the various religious communities, or by other nations in relation to them, should be rescinded.42 Lloyd George immediately agreed to this proposal. "Great Britain would prefer not to have to decide this question herself. . . . Great Britain would infinitely sooner have these questions referred to an authoritative and impartial body whose decisions Great Britain would scrupulously carry out." 43 For Millerand, however, the solution was not so simple. Although he was perfectly willing to agree to Nitti's scheme in practice, and secretly to commit himself to the renunciation of the French religious protectorate, a public renunciation would be political dynamite, and he firmly refused to incorporate such a declaration in the formal treaty. A solution was reached through agreement to excise any reference to the religious protectorate from the treaty. Instead, a formal resolution was incorporated in the secret minutes of the conference as a corollary to Allied acceptance of the rest of the treaty clauses. The resolution read as follows: To accept the terms of the mandates article . . . with reference to Pales­ tine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the proces-verbal an undertaking by the mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous afternoon by the undertaking given by the French government that they recognized this protectorate as being at an end.44 304 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES North Africa The only other outstanding issue dealt with at San Remo was the Franco-British conflict over the Egyptian clauses. The French objection was not to the clauses as such, but rather to their inclusion in the treaty, for they feared that such action would upset the balance of the unsigned Franco-British convention relative to Morocco and Egypt, which had been pending for some time.45 The British, in turn, refused to sign the convention because of French insistence that it be revised to include prior British consent to any future FrancoSpanish agreement on French claims to Spanish Tangier. At San Remo, the issue was quickly settled when Millerand indicated willingness to resume negotiations on the Egypt-Morocco convention, which had almost been signed in Paris, and to do so without extending them beyond issues involving Egypt and Morocco. Having received this assurance, the British in turn agreed to withdraw the offending Egyptian articles from the Turkish treaty, with the proviso that if the convention were signed before the treaty was given to the Turks, they should again be included. However, this did not occur, and the final treaty did not include the controversial clauses.46 Oil Rights The question of the distribution of oil resources did not provoke any time-consuming negotiations or serious misunderstandings at San Remo. Millerand did make a feeble effort to claim the 50 percent participation that Clemenceau had sought in December, 1919. Meeting a solid wall of opposition, he quickly dropped the demand, and the revised agreement brought forward by by the experts was quickly approved.47 In its final form, the San Remo Oil Agreement was basically the same as the earlier Long-Berenger and Greenwood-Berenger Agreements.48 A comparison indicates only a minor amount of editorial revision, mainly in an effort to meet British objections to the mention of private individuals or companies. Though the provision that France should receive 25 percent of the stock in any private oil CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 305 company in Mesopotamia was retained, the April agreement also provided an alternative that called for the sale to France of 25 percent of all crude oil produced in the Mesopotamian oil fields "in the event of their being developed by Government action." 49 Thus the contingency of either private or public development was covered. The only completely new provision in the San Remo agreement was an additional clause giving the French government the right to purchase up to 25 percent of any oil produced by the Anglo-Persian Company and piped from Persia to the Mediterranean through pipelines that went across French mandated territory. This settlement was officially approved on April 24, 1920, by the prime ministers of France and England. Its acceptance by the British, where similar proposals had previously been rejected, stemmed from two major considerations. The first was that, as Greenwood put it, "The leading feature of our petroleum policy for a number of years has been the endeavor to secure British control of the Royal Dutch Shell group." 50 The bait for the Shell group was the granting of the Mesopotamia concession to the Turkish Petroleum Company in which Shell held a 25 percent interest. This in turn necessitated the signing of the Anglo-French accord, since its major provision called for France's receiving a 25 percent share in the Turkish Petroleum Company. Without the Anglo-French agreement, it was evident that British control of Shell would not be achieved, and France would most likely ally itself with the American firm of Standard Oil.51 Even more important, was the fact that agreement had now been reached on other political and territorial issues such as France's role in Syria, the boundary between Syria and Palestine, the fate of Constantinople, and the disposition of Anatolia, Armenia, and Kurdistan. Therefore, the British at last were willing formally to approve the pact. With the San Remo accord, which was essentially a confirmation of previous Anglo-French agreements, negotiations concerning oil rights were at an end. Instead of dominating the Near East settlement, the question of oil and oil resources had played a surprisingly minor role in the negotiation of a Turkish peace treaty, taking a very definite back seat to other political and territorial issues.52 Never had its terms provoked any lengthy or serious disagreement. Although formal 306 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES ratification of the settlement, originally drawn up in February and March, 1919, was postponed for over a year, the pact was among the earliest and most easily attained of all the agreements centering on the Near East, and from the beginning was solely a Franco-British affair in which neither the Italians nor the Americans played a role of any import.53 The San Remo Conference and the United States At San Remo, as in London, the United States played no official role, although the American ambassador in Rome was authorized to attend the Supreme Council sessions during the latter half of the conference.54 The attitude of the negotiators toward the United States, however, was anything but amicable. On April 26, the Allied Powers approved a reply to President Wilson's critical note to the Conference of London.55 In it they pointed out that they had sought United States participation, had waited for it, and had been inconvenienced by the waiting. Politely but firmly, the United States was told that the treaty was none of its business, and that as a nonsignatory America could not ask that guarantees regarding American interests should be inserted in the treaty.56 This attitude of irritation was even more apparent in the debates preceding the dispatch of the note. Berthelot remarked that "it was impossible that the Allies should waste time explaining to the United States why they took this action or proceeded on such-and-such lines. . . . The treaty could not be subordinated to the whims of the American President." 57 In this Lloyd George concurred. "He thought it was intolerable that the Allies should continue to conduct correspondence with the United States on the subject." 58 The powers were obviously disgusted with what they considered to be unjustified and unwarranted interference by a nation that refused to take part in the negotiations and to assume responsibilities in the Near East.59 Even the appeal by the Allies to America for help in Armenia brought forth a caustic comment from Lloyd George: CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 307 He could not see that there was any harm in making an appeal of this nature. If America refused to assist, the Allies would be no worse off, and, in one respect, they would be better off. President Wilson could continue to lecture the Allies about the way they were handling the Turkish question, but if the Allies could retort that they had asked America to come in and assist, and that America had refused, the United States could not continue to complain of the inability of the Allies to protect Armenia.60 Thus by the time the negotiations of the Turkish peace treaty were concluded, the influence of the United States on the powers was nonexistent, and in the final analysis it must be said that the treaty as drafted manifested little or no evidence of American attitudes or aims regarding a Near East Settlement. The San Remo Conference and the Turkish Nationalists The role played by the Nationalist threat in the final formulation of the treaty is harder to ascertain. Certainly the Allies were concerned about the Kemalists in a military sense. They were obviously skeptical about Allied ability to enforce the treaty terms in the interior of Anatolia. Without question, the decisions taken at San Remo regarding Armenia were due to anxieties about the strength of the Nationalist movement. However, regarding the coastal regions there was little concern. The Allied military experts were agreed that all territories except Armenia which were to be separated from Turkey or occupied by the Allies could easily be held. The Allied occupation of Constantinople on March 16, 1920, had brought the Straits area totally under Allied control. This had been followed by the arrest and deportation of some forty members of the Turkish parliament, which was dissolved by the sultan at the insistence of the Allies on April 11. On the same day, Damad Ferid, who was once again grand vizier, proclaimed the Nationalists as rebels, and a fetva was issued in the name of the sultan as caliph, stating that it was religiously permissible to kill all those supporting the Nationalist cause.61 For Mustapha Kemal, the occupation of Constantinople served as a signal for a total break with the Constantinople regime. On 308 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES the day of the occupation, he sent a message to all civil and military authorities urging them to remain calm and promising that action would be forthcoming shortly. At the same time, he addressed a sharply worded protest to the diplomatic representatives of the Allied powers and the United States in Constantinople, the foreign ministers of neutral nations, and the legislatures of Britain, France, and Italy. Three days later he issued a manifesto calling for the election of delegates to a new "Extra-Ordinary" Assembly and inviting members of the old parliament to attend.62 The Grand National Assembly, as it called itself, convened on April 22 in Ankara with the express purpose of "securing the independence of the country and the deliverance of the seat of the Caliphate and Sultanate from the hands of our enemies." 63 Within a matter of hours it adopted the following resolution: 1. The founding of a government is absolutely necessary. 2. It is not permissible to recognize a provisional chief of state nor to establish a regency. 3. It is fundamental to recognize that the real authority in the country is the national will as represented by the Assembly.

There is no power superior to the Grand National Assembly. 4. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey embraces both the Executive and the Legislative functions. A council of state, chosen from the mem­ bership of the Assembly and responsible to it, conducts the affairs of the state. The president of the Assembly is ex officio president of the Council. Note: The Sultan-Kalif as soon as he is free from the coercion to which he submits shall take place within the constitutional system in the manner to be determined by the Assembly.64 This was nothing less than a declaration of political revolution and independence. The next day the Assembly elected Mustapha Kemal as its president and created an executive commission and a parliamentary commission. On April 30, the Allied Powers were officially notified of the creation of the new government and its claim to represent the will of the people.65 By that time the Conference of San Remo had closed. Yet during the conference the powers must have been aware that the Grand National Assembly was meeting in Ankara, and they undoubtedly CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 309 recognized the purpose and intent of Kemal in convening the assembly.66 Kemal later maintained that even by the time of the occupation of Constantinople, he was receiving "private assurances from French and Italian officials that British policy was not theirs—that Millerand and Nitti did not agree with Lloyd George." 67 If this were the case, it was hardly evident in the talk and actions of Millerand and Berthelot at San Remo. Nitti, it is true, was more cautious than the others, and several times spoke of the necessity of drafting a treaty that the Turks would accept and that could then be enforced.68 But at no time during the whole course of the conference was any mention made of the political action then taking place at Ankara. Aside from recognizing the Nationalist forces as a military annoyance, the negotiators at San Remo seemed unconcerned about the Kemalist movement and totally indifferent to Kemalism as a political force.69 Instead, a delegation from the Constantinople government was instructed to come to Paris. On May 11, 1920, the treaty was presented to the members of this delegation, and they were given a month in which to formulate a reply.70 Until quite recently, historians regarded the San Remo conference as the time when the major negotiations and drafting of the Turkish peace treaty took place. In retrospect, it is now evident that such was not the case. Aside from the decision taken in January, 1919, to create mandates in the Arab portion of the old Ottoman Empire, the general principles on which the treaty was based (with the exception of the Armenian issue) were agreed upon during and shortly after the bilateral Anglo-French discussions in December, 1919. On the basis of these principles a draft treaty was hammered out in conjunction with the Italians at the meetings in London during February and March, 1920. In addition, many policy decisions relating to specific problems were arrived at in London. As far as the Turkish peace is concerned, the Conference of San Remo, apart from the decision regarding Allied noninvolvement in Armenia, dealt almost, if not entirely, with routine matters involving final approval and minor revisions of clauses already drafted during the Conference of London.

31 0 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES 1. See Br. Doc, 8:45-143, 172-95, passim, 4/20/20^4/23/20, 4/25/20. 2. Lloyd George Papers, F55/1/28, Venizelos to Lloyd George, 4/26/20. See also Br. Doc, 8:123-26, S.C., 4/23/20; p. 130, App. 1. 3. Br. Doc, 7:165-66, S.C., 2/20/20; p. 384, 3/3/20; p. 391, App. 2; 8:134-36, 4/23/20; pp. 141-43, App. A. See also Sonnino Papers, Reel 51, Memorandum on Heraclea Coal Fields, 1/30/19. 4. Br. Doc, 8:134-36, S.C., 4/23/20; p. 143, App. B; pp. 211-14, 4/26/20, and n.2. The final text of the Tripartite Pact may be found in Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1920, Cmd. 963, "Tripartite agreement between the British empire, France and Italy respecting Anatolia. Signed at Sevres, August 10, 1920"; "The Secret Treaty Dividing Turkey," Nation 3 (December, 1920): 697-99; R.F.P.: Political Review, 5/14/20; Bulletin periodique de la presse Italienne, no. 136. 5. Foreign Office, F.O. 608/278/301/310, Derby to Curzon, 5/11/20; See also ibid., 301, Vansittart to Curzon, 5/10/20; 308, Tripartite Pact text as signed by French and Italians; 310, Curzon to Derby, 5/11/20; 315, Curzon to Derby, 5/10/20; Br. Doc, 13:74-76, Curzon to Buchanan (Rome), 5/17/20. 6. Cabinet Papers, Cab. 29/32, A.J. 156, Memorandum agreed to by the Council of the League of Nations, "Future Status of Armenia," 4/11/20; A.J. 185, Draft reply of Supreme Council of League of Nations, 4/26/20; League of Nations, Official Journal, 1920, Fourth Council Session, pp. 3-7, 4/19/20; pp. 11-13, 15, 4/10/20; pp. 19-21, Annex 30A; pp. 27-29, Annex 30B; Fifth Council Session, p. 15, 5/14/20; p. 19, 5/15/20; pp. 149-59, Annex 43, 43A; Br. Doc, 8:46-51, S.C., 4/20/20. It is interesting to note that Venizelos led those supporting League responsibility for Armenia in the League Council, conversely it was the British and French delegates, Balfour and Bourgeois, who successfully opposed any League action. J. Bassett, The League of Nations, A Chapter in World Politics, pp. 40-42; Times (London), 4/28/20; Mandelstam, Probleme armenien, pp. 64-69; "The Tangled Turkish Question," pp. 323-30. 7. Br. Doc, 8:90-91, S.C., 4/21/20. 8. The British General Staff was emphatic in its assertion that it "could not point to any sources from which the necessary expeditionary force for Armenia can be found," especially given the industrial unrest in England and the condition of affairs in Ireland. Br. Doc, 13:37, General Staff memorandum on the situation in Turkey, 3/15/20; p. 55, General Staff memorandum on the Turkish Peace Treaty, 4/1/20; 8:46-50, S.C., 4/20/20. 9. Ibid., 8:50, S.C., 4/20/20. At San Remo, rumors were circulating that Norway might be willing to accept an Armenian mandate, and the conferees indicated they would be more than willing to agree to such an idea. Ibid., pp. 47-48. 10. Ibid., p. 50. The Times (London), expressed an opinion similar to Curzon's on April 5. 11. Br. Doc, 8:57-58, S.C., 4/20/20; pp. 61-64. 12. Ibid., 13:35, General Staff memorandum on the situation in Turkey, 3/15/20. 13. Ibid., 8:58-60, S.C., 4/20/20; p. 92, 4/21/20. 14. Cabinet Papers, Cab. 24/103, Foch to Lloyd George, report of the military representatives, 3/30/20. 15. Br. Doc, 8:56, S.C., 4/20/20. See also ibid., pp. 54-58, and pp. 66-67, App. 4; Baron Riddell, Lord Riddell's Intimate Diary at the Peace Conference and After, p. 186, 4/22/20. 16. Callwell, Henry Wilson, 2:233-34, 4/20/20. See also, Br. Doc, 2:295, Allied Conference, 1/19/20. 17. Br. Doc, 8:48, S.C., 4/20/20. 18. Ibid., p. 94, 4/22/20. 19. Ibid., pp. 108, 111-12. CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 311 20. Ibid., p. 111. 21. Ibid., pp. 109-11, 113. 22. Boghos Nubar Pasha and Avetis Aharonian. 23. Br. Doc, 8:117-19. S.C., 4/22/20; pp. 120-21, 4/23/20. 24. Ibid., pp. 114-15, 4/22/20. 25. Ibid., pp. 138-39, 4/23/20. 26. Ibid., p. 139. See also ibid., pp. 122-23 and p. 131, App. 3. 27. Ibid., pp. 112-13, S.C., 4/22/20; p. 140, 4/23/20, pp. 145, 156-57, 4/24/20; Callwell, Henry Wilson, 2:235, 4/23/20. 28. Br. Doc, 8:157-58, S.C., 4/24/20. 29. The American high commissioner in Constantinople, Admiral Bristol, took this view. On September 18, 1920, he commented in a dispatch to Colby that since Armenia would receive only the Turkish territory allotted it by the president, "this would seem to impose upon him the responsibility of enforcing the Turkish evacuation of territory given to Armenia," U.S. Doc, 1920, 3:788. 30. Br. Doc, 8:177-78, S.C., 4/25/20; pp. 217-20, 4/26/20; U.S. Doc, 1920, 3:779-83, Johnson to Sec. State, 4/27/20; p. 783, Colby to Wallace, 5/17/20; pp. 789-804, 11/24/20, enclosures 1 and 2; also map at back of volume; Br. Doc, 13:66, Geddes to Curzon, 4/29/20; pp. 70-71, 5/11/20; pp. 71-72, 5/16/20; p. 76, 5/18/20; p. 77, Curzon to Geddes, 5/21/20; Gidney, Mandate, chap. 10; Kazemzadeh, Transcaucasia, pp. 262-63. See generally Kazemzadeh, Transcaucasia, chaps. 18-21; Times (London), 6/3/20; International Conciliation 151 (June 1920): 13-16. 31. See above, Chapter 12; also Br. Doc, 8:51, S.C., 4/20/20. 32. Kazemzadeh, Transcaucasia, p. 201; Br. Doc, 8:129-30, S.C., 4/23/20; p. 131, App. 4; 12:594-95, Hardinge to Curzon, 4/21/20. 33. Br. Doc, 8:51-52, S.C., 4/20/20; pp. 129, 136-38, 4/23/20; 12:596, Curzon to Hardinge, 4/24/20; p. 597, Wardrop to Curzon, 4/25/20; pp. 597-99, Robeck to Curzon, 4/27/20. 34. Kazemzadeh, Transcaucasia, pp. 202, 283-85, and generally chaps. 18-21. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Treaties of Peace, 1919-1923, vol. 2, "Treaty of Sevres," Articles 349-51; Times (London), 5/10/20; Br. Doc, 12:599-633, passim. For the British Cabinet discussions regarding the evacuation, in which the War Office pressed for such action and the Foreign Office dragged its feet, see Cabinet Papers, Cab 23/21, C. 24 (20), 5/5/20; C. 30 (20), 5/21/20; C. 33 (20). 6/7/20; C. 35 (20), 7/11/20. 35. Br. Doc, 7:106, 2/17/20; p. 159, 2/20/20; p. 185, 2/21/20; pp. 256-58, 2/26/20; Foreign Office, F.O. 406/43/127, Robeck to Curzon, 3/2/20, enclosure, Ryan memorandum, 2/24/20; Le Temps, 3/2/20; A. T. Wilson Papers, MSS 52455, Montagu to Wilson, 3/25/20; Wilson to Montagu, 3/25/20; Hirtzel to Wilson 4/15/20. The India Office and the Mesopotamian administration wanted Kurdistan included in the British Mesopotamian mandate. The French would not agree. 36. Br. Doc, T.43-44, S.C., 4/19/20; pp. 44-45, App. 5; p. 77, 4/21/20; pp. 132-34, 4/23/20; 13:65-66, Curzon to Robeck, 4/24/20. 37. See above, Chapter 9. 38. Br. Doc, 8:43, 4/19/20. 39. Ibid., p. 9, S.C., 4/18/20; p. 159, 4/24/20; pp. 172-77, 4/25/20. The mandates decision was not stated in the peace treaty, but rather was incorporated in a separate agreement. Article 94 of the Treaty stated simply, "The selection of the Mandatories will be made by the Principal Allied Powers." Carnegie Endowment, Treaties, vol. 2, "Treaty of Sevres." 40. Br. Doc 13:251-52, Curzon to Hardinge, 4/26/20; pp. 252-53, Allenby to Curzon, 4/27/20; pp. 257-58, 5/13/20; pp. 270-73, Curzon to Cambon, 5/18/20; pp. 278-82, Cambon to Curzon, 5/31/20, enclosures; pp. 282-83, Feisal to Lloyd George, n.d.; Foreign Office, 31 2 FROM PARIS TO SEVRES F.O. 608/274/77/267, Hedjaz Delegation to S.C., 4/30/20; State Department, Turkey, 867.00/ 1261, Bristol to Sec. State, 5/11/20; Kedourie, England and the Middle East, chaps. 6 and 7; Longrigg, Syria and Lebanon, pp. 99-100; idem, Iraq, 1900 to 1950, pp. 119-21; Zeine, Arab Independence, chap. 7; Times (London), 5/11/20, 5/17/20. 41. Br. Doc, 8:163-64, S.C., 4/24/20; Stein, Balfour Declaration, pp. 656-60. 42. Br. Doc, 8:162, S.C., 4/24/20; pp. 176-77, 4/25/20. 43. Ibid., p. 164, 4/24/20. 44. Ibid., pp. 165-71; p. 176, 4/25/20. 45. For details of this dispute, see above, Chapter 12. 46. Br. Doc, 8:83-89, S.C., 4/21/20; Carnegie Endowment, Treaties, vol. 2, "Treaty of Sevres," Articles 101-12. 47. Br. Doc, 8:9-10, Lloyd George-Millerand conversation, 4/18/20; pp. 144-45, 4/24/20; E. H. Davenport and S. R. Cooke, The Oil Trusts and Anglo-American Relations, pp. 54-55, 63. 48. For the texts of the Long-Berenger and Greenwood-Berenger Agreements, see Br. Doc, 4:1089-92, 1114-17. For the text of the San Remo Agreement, see Foreign Office, F.O. 406/43/196, Berthelot-Cadman Oil Agreement, 4/25/20; Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1920, Cmd. 675, "Memorandum of Agreement (San Remo, April 24, 1920) between M. Phillipe Berthelot and Prof. Sir John Cadman"; Davenport and Cooke, Oil Trusts, pp. 202-7; Hurewitz, Diplomacy, 2:75-77. 49. Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1920, Cmd. 675, "San Remo Oil Agreement," Article 7. 50. Cabinet Papers, Cab. 24/104, C.P. 1118, Greenwood memorandum, 4/22/20. 51. Ibid.; also Cab. 24/101, C.P. 903, Long memorandum, 3/18/20. 52. A good example of the non-concerned attitude regarding oil may be seen in the Times (London) editorial of June 1, 1920, which advocated that Britain not undertake a Mesopotamia mandate. The editorial stated that it would be too expensive, that only oil interests could hope to benefit from it, and that they would want a government subsidy as well. C. J. Edmonds, who was liaison officer between the Mosul Investigation Commission of the League of Nations and the British Mandate Government in 1924 has commented, "It is interesting to look back and recall how very little oil figured in our calculations. .. . I do not remember a single document in which oil was mentioned as a factor of outstanding importance" Edmonds, Kurds, p. 398. 53. The agreement was officially published on July 24, 1920. Neither the Italians nor the Americans were at all happy with the agreement when they learned of it. For the Italian reaction, see Br. Doc, 13:342, 346-47, 363-65. For the American reaction, see ibid., pp. 66, 256-57, 273-74, 314-15, 322-23, 324-25; Lloyd George Papers, F60/4/1, Geddes to Lloyd George, 6/4/20; U.S. Doc, 1920, 2:651-59, 663-73; Evans, U.S. and Partition, pp. 297-305; De Novo, American Interests, pp. 176-84. 54. U.S. Doc, 1920, 1:1, Davis to Lansing, 2/6/20; Lansing to Davis, 2/9/20; pp. 1-2, Jay to Polk, 3/13/20; p. 2, Polk to Jay, 3/16/20; Colby to Johnson, 4/20/20; p. 3, Johnson to Colby, 4/24/20; Br. Doc, 8:161, 165, S.C., 4/24/20. 55. For a discussion of Wilson's note of March 24, see above, Chapter 12. 56. For text, see U.S. Doc, 1920, 3:753-56, Johnson to Colby. For an earlier draft, see Br. Doc, 8:31-35, S.C., 4/19/20, App. 2. See also ibid., pp. 217-19, 4/26/20. 57. Ibid., p. 21, S.C., 4/19/20. 58. Ibid. 59. This irritation was enhanced, no doubt, by continued American support of Yugoslav claims in the Adriatic at a time when the Italians were ready to accept a compromise proposal CONFERENCE AT SAN REMO 313 that had been put forward by France and Britain the previous December. Ibid., vols. 7 and 8 passim. 60. Ibid., 8:63, S.C., 4/20/20. 61. Ibid., 13:57-58, Robeck to Curzon, 4/3/20; p. 59, 4/5/20; pp. 61-62, 4/11/20; p. 62, 4/15/20; Correspondance d'Orient, pp. 416-18, 420, 5/15/20; Davison, "Turkish Diplomacy," p. 181; Adivar, Turkey Faces West: A Turkish View of Recent Changes and Their Origin, p. 178; Karpat, Turkey's Politics, pp. 35-36; Lloyd George, Truth, p. 1292; Pech, Allies et Turquie, p. 120, 3/19/20; pp. 120-21, 3/27/20; pp. 123-24, 4/5/20; p. 127, 4/12/20; Smith, Turkey, pp. 26-28, 34-36; Webster, Turkey of Ataturk, pp. 83, 85; Times (London), 3/27/20, 4/5/20, 4/14/20. 62. Adkisson, Britain and the Kemalist Movement, pp. 235-38; Davison, "Turkish Diplomacy," p. 181; Gaillard, Turks and Europe, p. 187; B. Georges-Gaulis, La Question Turque, p. 95; Karpat, Turkey's Politics, p. 36; Kemal, Speech, pp. 359-61. Smith, Turkey, pp. 32-33, and 155-57, Apps. C, D; Webster, Turkey of Ataturk, pp. 84-85; Kinross, Ataturk, p. 243. 63. Kemal, as quoted in Karpat, Turkey's Politics, p. 36. 64. Webster, Turkey of Ataturk, p. 86; also Smith, Turkey, pp. 38-39. 65. Br. Doc, 13:67-68, Kemal to Curzon, 4/30/19; Adkisson, Kemalist Movement, pp. 245-47; Davison, "Turkish Diplomacy," p. 182; Adivar (Edib), Turkey Faces West, pp. 179-86; Kinross, Ataturk, pp. 248-57; Webster, Turkey of Ataturk, p. 86. 66. As early as April 15, the Times published reports that Kemal planned to form a new separate Anatolian government and state. 67. Davison, "Turkish Diplomacy," p. 181. 68. Br. Doc, 8:36-37, S.C., 4/19/20; p. 48, 4/20/20; pp. 74, 90, 4/21/20; p. 94, 4/22/20. 69. The prevailing attitude at the San Remo conference was best summed up by Lloyd George when he commented that "no one believed that Mustapha Kemal would be able to drive the Greeks out of Asia Minor." Ibid., p. 92, 4/21/20. 70. Ibid., 13:68, Curzon to Webb, 5/5/20; pp. 68-70, Webb to Curzon, 5/11/20; p. 70, Derby to Curzon, 5/11/20; Current History 12 (April, 1920):64; (June, 1920):435; Sforza, Diplomatic Europe, p. 60; Times (London), 5/7/20.