Greece pledged herself also to present for the approval of the League of Nations within a year a scheme of organisation of Adrianople, including a municipal council in which the various races should be represented. All the clauses of the treaty for the protection of minorities were under the guarantee of the League of Nations. Greece also pledged herself to give the Allies the benefit of the “most favoured nation” clause till a general commercial agreement had been concluded, within five years, under the patronage of the League of Nations.
All these delays and incidents bore witness to the difficulty of arriving at a solution of the Eastern question in the way the Allies had set to work, and to the frailty of the stipulations inserted in the treaty.
They also testified to the lack of skill and political acuteness of Mr. Lloyd George. Of course, the British Premier, owing to the large concessions he had made to Greece, had managed to ensure the preponderance of British influence in Constantinople and the zone of the Straits, and by seeking to set up a large Arabian Empire he had secured to his country the chief trunk of the Baghdad Railway.
But the laborious negotiations which had painfully arrived at the settlement proposed by the Conference did not seem likely to solve the Eastern question definitely. It still remained a burning question, and the treaty signed by the Ottoman delegates was still most precarious. Accordingly Count Sforza, in the Chamber of Deputies in Rome, made the following statement with regard to Anatolia:
“Everybody asserts the war has created a new world; but practically everybody thinks and feels as if nothing had occurred. The Moslem East wants to live and develop. It, too, wants to have an influence of its own in to-morrow’s world. To the Anatolian Turks it has been our wish to offer a hearty and earnest collaboration on economic and moral grounds by respecting the independence and sovereignty of Turkey.”
The signatures of plenipotentiaries sent by a Government which remained in office merely because its head, Damad Ferid, was a tool in the hands of England, were no guarantee for the future, and the failure of the revolutionary movement indefinitely postponed the settlement of the Eastern question which for half a century has been disturbing European policy.
Islam remains, notwithstanding, a spiritual force that will survive all measures taken against the Sublime Porte, and the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire does not solve any of the numerous questions raised by the intercourse of the various races that were formerly under the Sultan’s rule. Russia has not given up her ambitious designs on the Straits, and one day or another she will try to carry them out; and it is to be feared that German influence may benefit by the resentment of the Turkish people. These are some of the numerous sources of future conflicts.
On the day that followed the signature of the treaty all the Turkish newspapers in Constantinople were in mourning and announced it as a day of mourning for the Turkish nation.
At Stambul all public entertainments were prohibited, all shops and public buildings were closed. Many Turks went to the mosques to pray for the welfare of the country, the people who seek nothing but peace and quietude looked weary and downcast.