The conference resumed its sessions at Lausanne on April 22 in an atmosphere that had not changed during the recess. Quite the contrary! During the fortnight preceding the reopening, several events had complicated the diplomatic situation in the Near East. The Greeks had seemingly been able to reconstitute an army of 100,000, mobilized on the Thracian frontier. On April 15 the deposed sultan, who, through British aid, had gone to the Hedjaz, issued a proclamation from Mecca, declaring null and void the decree of the Angora Assembly, deposing him from the double office of sultan and khalif and naming a new khalif. On April 10 the Turkish Government announced that it had granted a sweeping concession in Asia Minor to a supposedly American group, headed by Admiral Chester, U. S. Navy, retired. More than a thousand miles of railways, with ports, and a modern city at Angora, were to be built by the Chester group at an estimated cost of $300,000,000, in return for which the right to minerals and oil was granted the Americans from Mosul to Samsun, a country believed to be abounding in undeveloped wealth.
Although the Chester group did not seem to have financial backing to cope with a concession of this magnitude, and was not taken seriously by financiers in New York, London, and Paris, the French Government made a vigorous protest, through General Pellé at Constantinople, refusing to recognize the validity of the part of the concession relating to the railway outlet to the Black Sea. The French claimed that the Samsun Railway concession had already been granted to a French group in 1914, before the outbreak of the war, in return for a loan on which heavy instalments had been paid by Paris to Constantinople. The British Government declared that Turkey had no authority to grant a concession involving the oil and minerals and projected railways of the Mosul region. The feeling aroused over the Chester concession, and the subsequent attempt of British and French bankers to have it set aside and a trade monopoly in Asia Minor granted to them, indicated that the negotiators of the Entente Powers at Lausanne were primarily representing the commercial interests of their countries.
The Turks fished so well in these troubled waters that they secured many more modifications of the proposed treaty—until it came to the point that Mustafa Kemal Pasha, through the greed of the European Powers, was securing their acquiescence on every point that did not involve directly their pocketbooks. Only on the capitulations—or rather the underlying principle of the capitulations—did the Entente Powers hold out. They wanted some sort of protection for foreign business interests in Turkey. France waived every moral issue. She stood firm only on the one point that French holders of the Ottoman public debt should receive interest in gold, not paper as the Turks insisted.
Because of the new Greek army Venizelos was able to win the abandonment by Turkey of claims to a war indemnity. Greece agreed to admit that she owed an indemnity, and to give Turkey control of the railway station of Adrianople at Karagatch on the left bank of the Maritza; in return, Turkey admitted that Greece was too poor to pay an indemnity. It was a typical Oriental bargain.
But the Eastern Question was not solved. The Lausanne Conference did not even mark a distinct forward step. This was seen when the Bulgarians overthrew Stambulisky. The Turks are back in Thrace.
CHAPTER XXV
THE DISARMAMENT QUESTION BEFORE THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE
Observers of European politics invariably write that the verdict of General Elections is the result of a number of causes, and that it is difficult to assert how a so-called paramount issue would have been decided had not other considerations entered in to confuse and influence the judgment of the electors. If this be true in European countries enjoying representative institutions, how much more true is it of the United States, where elections are held at stated intervals, and where great issues can never be brought before the country as they are in Europe? The American executive is vested with great powers, is not dependent upon Congress, and enjoys office for a fixed period. Midway in the Presidential term a national election is held that has no power to change the policies of the administration. When Presidential year arrives, the outs are determined to become the ins. A moot question is found—it is sometimes a question of secondary importance—around which the campaign centers. Is it safe to assume that the people cast their votes upon the merits of this question, throwing aside all other issues?
When Mr. Wilson, returning from Paris with the Treaty of Versailles, failed to secure its ratification without reservations by the Senate, he appealed directly to the people and declared that the Presidential election of 1920 would be a “solemn referendum” on the question of our entry into the League of Nations. Eminent Republicans who were convinced pro-Leaguers announced their intention of sticking by their party, and begged others to do so, on the ground that a vote for Mr. Harding was not a vote against American participation in world affairs. They deplored the attitude of politicians in both parties, who had never considered the League issue on its merits, and expressed their belief that the cause of international coöperation would gain more by the election of Mr. Harding than by the election of Mr. Cox. They based this opinion upon the Republican platform, which did not reject the idea of international coöperation, but only opposed the League of Nations without reservations, as Woodrow Wilson would have it. Give the Republican administration the chance, and we should be in the League more quickly than if the Democrats remained in power, they argued.
It is true that the Republican candidate stood on a platform, binding us to take the initiative in bringing the nations of the world together. As was so frequently said during the campaign, none was opposed to the attainment, with the coöperation of the United States, of a new world order through a properly constituted and properly functioning League of Nations. “We are not against a league of nations, and we should even have entered the Versailles League, had we been allowed to make the strictly necessary reservations,” said the Republicans. “The issue is the Versailles Covenant without reservations safeguarding the liberty of action of the United States.”