As the Allied troops were not sufficient to take decisive action, and as a large part of the Ottoman Empire had been assigned to Greece, England herself soon asked why the latter should not be called upon to pay for the operation if she insisted upon carrying it out.
About June 20 the situation of the British troops became rather serious, as General Milne did not seem to have foreseen the events and was certainly unable to control them.
The Nationalist troops, which met with but little resistance, continued to gain ground, and after marching past Ismid occupied Guebze. The Government forces were retreating towards Alemdagh.
By this time the Nationalists occupied the whole of Anatolia, and the English held but a few square miles near the Dardanelles. The Nationalists, who had easy access to both coasts of the Gulf of Ismid, attempted to blow up the bridges on the Haïdar-Pasha-Ismid railway line. Though the English were on the lookout, four Turkish aeroplanes started from the park of Maltepe, bound for Anatolia. One of them was piloted by the famous Fazil Bey, who had attacked English aeroplanes during their last flight over Constantinople a few days before the armistice in October, 1918.
Indeed, the Government forces only consisted of 15,000 specialised soldiers, artillerymen or engineers, with 6 light batteries of 77 guns and 2 Skoda batteries; in addition to which 20,000 rifles had been given to local recruits. The Nationalists, on the contrary, opposed them with 35,000 well-equipped men commanded by trained officers. Besides, there was but little unity of command among the Government forces. Anzavour Pasha, who had been sent with some cavalry, had refused to submit to headquarters, and at the last moment, when ordered to outflank the enemy and thus protect the retreat of the Government forces, he had flatly refused to do so, declaring he was not going to be ordered about by anybody.
So, considering how critical the situation of the British troops was in the zone of the Straits, England immediately made preparations to remedy it and dispatched reinforcements. The 2nd battalion of the Essex Regiment was held in readiness at Malta, and the light cruiser Carlisle kept ready to set off at a few minutes’ notice. All available destroyers had already left Malta for the Eastern Mediterranean, where the first and fourth squadrons had already repaired. Besides, the cruiser Ceres, which had left Marseilles for Malta, received orders on the way to steam straight on to the Ægean Sea. All the Mediterranean fleet was concentrated in the East, while in the Gulf of Ismid the English warships, which were already there, carefully watched the movements of the Turkish Nationalist forces.
Such a state of things naturally brought about some anxiety in London, which somewhat influenced Mr. Lloyd George’s decisions.
During the Hythe Conference, after some conversations on the previous days with Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Curzon, and Mr. Philip Kerr, in which he had offered to put the Greek Army at the disposal of the Allies, M. Venizelos, accompanied by Sir John Stavridi, a rich Greek merchant of London, who had been his intimate adviser for several years, went on Saturday evening, June 18, to the Imperial Hotel at Hythe, where were met all the representatives and experts whom Sir Philip Sassoon had not been able to accommodate at his mansion at Belcair, to plead the cause of Greek intervention with them.
M. Venizelos, on the other hand, in order to win over the British Government to his views, had secured the most valuable help of Sir Basil Zaharoff, who owns most of the shares in the shipbuilding yards of Vickers and Co. and who, thanks to the huge fortune he made in business, subsidises several organs of the British Press. He, too, has been a confidential adviser of M. Venizelos, and has a great influence over Mr. Lloyd George, owing to services rendered to him in election time. So it has been said with reason that M. Venizelos’ eloquence and Sir Basil Zaharoff’s wealth have done Turkey the greatest harm, for they have influenced Mr. Lloyd George and English public opinion against her.
According to M. Venizelos’ scheme, which he meant to expound before the Conference, the Turkish Nationalist army, concentrated in the Smyrna area, could be routed by a quick advance of the Greek forces, numbering 90,000 fully equipped and well-trained men, who would capture the railway station of Afium-Karahissar. This station, being at the junction of the railway line from Smyrna and the Adana-Ismid line, via Konia, the only line of lateral communication Mustafa Kemal disposed of, would thus be cut off, and the Nationalist leader would have to withdraw towards the interior. His resistance would thus break down, and the British forces on the southern coast of the Sea of Marmora that M. Venizelos offered to reinforce by sending a Greek division would be at once freed from the pressure brought to bear on them, which, at the present moment, they could hardly resist.