“Naturally. As practical men, is that your idea of a protest?”
“One of our biggest men, Mr. Patterson, went to the Paris Conference on our behalf.”
“Did he make himself heard? I assure you, if I had one hundred pounds invested in this country, instead of the hundreds of thousands your Scotsman holds, the world would have heard something of my visit to Paris!
“You saw financial disaster and ruin ahead, yet allowed yourselves to be talked into silence by M. Venizelos!”
Somehow, these men could not excite my pity. They were themselves more to blame than Mr. Lloyd George. With their huge financial backing, and vast interests in Smyrna, it was actually in their power, and theirs alone, to have kept out the Greeks.
It is a quaint result of my sense of justice that, in the French Secret Service, I am known as “a niece of Mr. Lloyd George.” When the brilliant one-time chef de Cabinet of Monsieur Briand published his violent attacks on Lord Robert Cecil and our late Premier, he also printed my replies. “He did not,” he kindly explained, “consider there was a word of truth in what I said, but he was unwilling to thwart an Englishwoman!”
Shortly after the appearance of my “defence,” the correspondent of a big newspaper in Chicago spoke of “my uncle,” Mr. Lloyd George. I protested, “not because I should not be proud of the relationship, but because I happen to have no such claim.”
“Dear lady,” he replied, “don’t think I shall ever want to spoil your little game.”
Such a remark did not merit a serious answer, and I allowed the matter to slide. I knew very well Mr. Lloyd George would never lift a finger to help “his niece,” for have I not four times appealed to him in vain on matters of the greatest national importance? Yet “his niece” will continue to defend him against “unjust” attacks, and criticise him also.
The Smyrna capitalists also did not love me because I wrote: “The day is past when financiers can obtain ‘concessions’ for 500 Turkish pounds backshish and then complain of the Turks for being amenable to bribes. The happy day will never return when the foreigner lived in Turkey without taxation, with next to nothing to pay in rent, was charged one and sixpence for a shooting licence, and had full control of money and trade.”