Peaceless Europe

by Francesco Saverio Nitti

Every programme has ignored Turkey except when the Entente has had opportunity to favour Greece. The Greece of Venezelos was the ward of the Entente almost more than Poland itself. Having participated in the War to a very small extent and with almost insignificant losses, she has, after the War, almost trebled her territory and almost doubled her population. Turkey was put entirely, or almost so, outside Europe; Greece has taken almost everything. Rejected was the idea of fixing the frontier on the Enos Medea line, and the frontier fixed at Ciatalgia; Constantinople was under the fire of the Greek artillery, and Constantinople was nominally the only city which remained to Turkey. The Sanjak of Smyrna, in Asia Minor, was the true wealth of Turkey; it represented forty-five per cent. of the imports of the Turkish Empire. Although the population of the whole vilayet of Audin and the majority of the Sanjak of Smyrna was Mussulman, Greece had the possession. The whole of Thrace was assigned to Greece; Adrianople, a city sacred to Islam, which contains the tombs of the Caliphs, has passed to the Greeks.

The Entente, despite the resistance of some of the heads of governments, always yielded to the requests of Greece. There was a sentiment of antipathy for the Turks and there was a sympathy for the Greeks: there was the idea to put outside Europe all Mussulman dominion, and the remembrance of the old propaganda of Gladstone, and there were the threats of Wilson, who in one of his proposals desired exactly to put Turkey outside Europe. But above all there was the personal work of Venezelos. Every request, without being even examined thoroughly, was immediately justified by history, statistics, ethnography. In any discussion he took care to solliciter doucement les textes as often the learned with few scruples do. I have met few men in my career who united to an exalted patriotism such a profound ability as Venezelos. Every time that, in a friendly way, I gave him counsels of moderation and showed him the necessity of limiting the requests of Greece, I never found a hard or intemperate spirit. He knew how to ask and obtain, to profit by all the circumstances, to utilize all the resources better even than the professional diplomats. In asking he always had the air of offering, and, obtaining, he appeared to be conceding something. He had at the same time a supreme ability to obtain the maximum force with the minimum of means and a mobility of spirit almost surprising.

He saw no difficulty, convinced as he was, of erecting a Greek Empire on the remnants of Turkey. Every time that doubts were expressed to him, or he was shown data which should have moderated the positions, he denied the most evident things, he recognized no danger, and saw no difficulty. He affirmed always with absolute calm the certainty of success. It was his opinion that the Balkan peninsula should be, in the north, under the action of the Serb-Croat-Slovene State and of Rumania, and in the south of Greece. But Greece, having almost all the islands of the Aegean, a part of the territory of Turkey and all the ports in the Aegean, and having the Sanjak of Smyrna, should form a littoral Empire of the East and chase the Turks into the poorer districts of Anatolia.

In the facility with which the demands of Greece were accepted (and in spite of everything they were accepted even after the fall of Venezelos) there was not only a sympathy for Greece, but, above all, the certainty that a large Greek army at Smyrna would serve principally towards the security of those countries which have and wished to consolidate great interests in Asia Minor, as long as the Turks of Anatolia were thinking specially about Smyrna and could not use her forces elsewhere. For the same motive, in the last few years, all the blame is attributed to the Turks. If they have erred much, the errors, even the minor ones, have been transformed into crimes. The atrocities of the Turks have been described, illustrated, exaggerated; all the other atrocities, often no less serious, have been forgotten or ignored.

The idea of a Hellenic Empire which dominates all the coast of the Aegean in Europe and Asia encounters one fundamental difficulty. To dominate the coast it is necessary to have the certainty of a large hinterland. The Romans in order to dominate Dalmatia were obliged to go as far as the Danube. Alexander the Great, to have a Greek Empire, had, above all, to provide for land dominion. Commercial colonies or penetration in isolation are certainly possible, but vast political organizations are not possible. It is not sufficient to have territory; it is necessary to organize it and regulate the life. Mankind does not nourish itself on what it eats, and even less on what it digests, but on what it assimilates.

Historians of the future will be profoundly surprised to learn that in the name of the principle of nationality the vilayet of Adrianople, which contains the city dearest to the heart of Islam after Mecca, was given to the Greeks. According to the very data supplied by Venezelos there were 500,000 Turks, 365,000 Greeks, and 107,000 Bulgarians; in truth the Turks are in much greater superiority.

The Grand Vizier of Turkey, in April, 1920, presented a note to the ambassadors of the Entente to revindicate the rights on certain vilayets of the Turkish Empire. According to this note, in Western Thrace there were 522,574 inhabitants, of which 362,445 were Mussulmans. In the vilayet of Adrianople, out of 631,000 inhabitants, 360,417 were Mussulmans. The population of the vilayet of Smyrna is 1,819,616 inhabitants, of which 1,437,983 are Mussulmans. Perhaps these statistics are biased, but the statistics presented by the opposing party were even more fantastic.

After having had so many territorial concessions, Greece—who during the War had enriched herself by commerce—is obliged, even after the return of Constantine, who did not know how to resist the pressure, to undertake most risky undertakings in Asia Minor, and has no way of saving herself except by an agreement with Turkey. In the illusion of conquering the Turkish resistance, she is now obliged to maintain an army twice as big as that of the British Empire! The dreams of greatness increase: some little military success has given Greece the idea also that the Treaty of Sèvres is only a foundation regulating the relationship with the Allies and with the enemy, and constituting for Greece a title of rights, the full possession of which cannot be modified. The War determines new rights which cannot invalidate the concessions already given, which, on the contrary, are reinforced and become intangible, but renders necessary new concessions.

What will happen? Whilst Greece dreams of Constantinople, and we have disposed of Constantinople and the Straits, Turkey seems resigned to Constantinople itself, to-day a very poor international city rather than a Turkish city. The Treaty of Sèvres says that it is true that the contracting States are in agreement in not offending any of the rights of the Ottoman government on Constantinople, which remains the capital of the Turkish Empire, always under the reserve of the dispositions of the treaty. That is equivalent to saying of a political regime that it is a controlled "liberty," just as in the time of the Tsars it was said that there existed a Monarchie constitutionnelle sous un autocrate. Constantinople under the Treaty of Sèvres is the free capital of the Turkish Empire under the reserve of the conditions which are contained in the treaty and limit exactly that liberty.

The force of Turkey has always been in her immense power of resistance. Win by resisting, wear out with the aid of time, which the Turks have considered not as an economic value, but as their friend. To conquer the resistance of Turkey, both in the new territories of Europe and in Asia Minor, Greece will have to exhaust the greater part of her limited resources. The Turks have always brought to a standstill those who would dominate her, by a stubborn resistance which is fanaticism and national dignity. On the other hand, the Treaty of Sèvres, which has systematized in part Eastern Europe, was concluded in the absence of two personages not to be unconsidered, Russia and Germany, the two States which have the greatest interest there. Germany, the War won, as she could not give her explanations on the conclusions of peace, was not able to intervene in the solutions of the question of the Orient. Russia was absent. Worn out with the force of a war superior to her energies, she fell into convulsions, and is now struggling between the two misfortunes of communism and misery, of which it is hard to say whether one, or which of the two, is the consequence of the other.