THE ENTENTE POWERS AND THE QUESTION OF THE STRAITS
Shortly before the debacle of the Greek army in Asia Minor I was
discussing the question of war weariness with English friends at
luncheon in a London club. Aware that good fortune had thrown me
with men who knew--if any did--the state of the public mind in Great
Britain, I was trying to find out whether the British would be ready to
back by force of arms the French reparations demands upon Germany. My
informants were unanimous in the belief that no Government could lead
the English people into a new war. “Not a chance in the world, any more
than there is in your country,” declared a Foreign Office man. “We know
that so well that we got out of Ireland, compromised with Egypt, put
up with a makeshift in Mesopotamia, stalled on the Zionist business in
Palestine, and are constantly warning the Government of India to avoid
trouble internally and with Afghanistan.”
“You mean that the people are not behind you in support of traditional
policies abroad, unless you can work them into feeling that pride and
honor are involved.”
“As for pride, we’d swallow a lot before we would allow the income tax
to go higher, and that honor business depends upon the press. Well, our
press is as pacifist now as it was jingo a few years ago. We are not
in a fire-eating mood. I do not think of any problem in international
politics that could involve our people in war.”
“How about the Straits?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, the Straits; that’s different,” admitted my friend. “We
should have to fight for the freedom of the Straits. No alternative
there if the Greeks should lose out and the Turks push us.”
“Having been incited to push you,” I commented.
“Having been incited to push us,” he repeated gravely. And the others
bowed assent.
This took me back to the previous week in Paris, when I had twice
secured modifications of sweeping statements from men in the highest
position by the same simple question. When one statesman told me that
France would never extend the hand of fellowship to the Bolsheviki, I
asked, “How about the Straits?” And when another statesman declared
that France and Great Britain must and would see eye to eye in perfect
solidarity “for the sake of the future of civilization,” I asked, “How
about the Straits?” In both instances there was the admission that
making up with Lenin and destroying the Entente were lesser evils to
France than seeing the English, either openly or indirectly through
Greece as a tool, installed at Constantinople, and, _ergo_, in control
of the Straits.
Without going into history further than the Conference of San Remo
in the spring of 1920, we see that the determination of France to
oust Great Britain from Constantinople and of Italy to prevent Greece
from profiting by her intervention in the World War has made strange
political bedfellows, has split the Entente alliance, has given Russia
her chance to get back into the councils of the great powers, has
made possible the repetition of massacres of Christians by the Turks,
has jeopardized the advantages granted in the Treaty of Sèvres to the
Entente Powers as well as to Greece, and has created the dangerous
precedent and example in allowing one of the enemy states, to whom a
victors’ treaty had been dictated, to tear up the treaty and turn the
tables by dictating a new treaty to the erstwhile victors.
It is not too much to say that the quarrel among the Entente Powers
over the disposition of the Straits has ended in robbing them of
virtually all the spoils of their victory over the Central Empires,
in damaging their prestige, and in undermining still further their
authority in the Mohammedan world, already seriously impaired during
the World War and the Peace Conference. The Conference of San Remo
came to an agreement that saved the Entente from dissolution. But the
failure of the three contracting parties--Great Britain, France, and
Italy--to live up to the agreement and to enforce the Treaty of Sèvres
revealed a house divided against itself and demonstrated the fact
that treaties imposed upon the vanquished by force would be upset the
moment the force was dissipated. When the Entente generals met the
representatives of Kemal Pasha at Mudania, they were confronted with
demands the acceptance of which meant the first step in the inevitable
surrender of all that had been gained by the World War. It was an
hour of supreme danger when Ismet Pasha demanded the surrender of
Constantinople before the terms of a new peace settlement in the Near
East had been arranged. And yet France dared to support this demand,
which Great Britain and Italy opposed, risking everything on playing
the card that would get the British out of Constantinople.
Why did the triumph of their respective points of view in regard to
the Straits seem of such vital importance to the British and French
statesmen that they were willing to sacrifice friendship, alliance,
and the war aims in the defense and furtherance of which they fought
to a glorious and successful end the most stupendous and costly war of
history? Both nations professed to be defending “the freedom of the
Straits” and to be working to avert “a more horrible war than we have
yet known,” as Lloyd George put it. But they acted toward one another
more like enemies than friends, and their premiers, with the support of
Cabinets and the press, advanced diametrically opposite opinions as to
the best way to prevent the war they dreaded.
If the sorry mess in the Near East is settled without war, we shall be
told that a dreadful calamity has only been postponed; and for this
doubtful victory France will have paid the price of loss of British
support in wringing money out of Germany. If it leads to war, Great
Britain fears the entry of Soviet Russia against her and uprisings in
her Mohammedan possessions.
The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, so narrow that you can shoot an
ordinary rifle from one continent to the other, so winding that cannon
can rake a ship fore and aft as well as shell broadside at many places,
afford the only outlet to the outside world for Bulgaria, Rumania,
southern Russia, the Caucasus republics, and some of the largest and
richest _vilayets_ of Turkey. For all Russia these waterways are the
sole ice-free passage. They are the nearest and most practicable
outlet for northern Persia and the khanates of central Asia. A
considerable portion of the wheat supply of many European countries
comes in normal times from southern Russia, while Europe learned to
count upon the regular appearance on the market of the vast petroleum
output of the Baku region of the Caucasus. The major portion of the
trade of a region inhabited by one and a half times the population of
the United States is carried through Black Sea ports. So important
to the world’s well-being was the free passage between the Black Sea
and the Mediterranean considered before the World War that Italy and
the Balkan States, in their wars with Turkey, had to yield to the
remonstrances of other nations and forego the advantage of bringing
pressure to bear upon Turkey by attacking and blockading the Straits.
Although during the nineteenth century the danger to the British Empire
of the control of the Straits by an enemy power in time of war was
never given a practical demonstration, it was vividly enough imagined
for the British to have fought once (the Crimean War) and to have been
ready to fight on two other occasions (Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, 1833,
and Treaty of San Stefano, 1878) to prevent Russia from dominating the
Straits.
A practical demonstration of this danger was given during the recent
World War. The disastrous effects to the Entente Powers of Turkey’s
alliance with their enemies, which closed the Straits for four precious
years, have not yet been fully measured. By handing over to Germany the
control of the Straits the Turks are directly responsible for (1) the
length of the war, (2) the collapse of Russia, (3) the year of grace
during which the Bolshevist régime got itself thoroughly established
in Russia, (4) the menace to the Suez Canal during the war, and (5)
the unchecked spread of anti-British propaganda in northwest India,
Afghanistan, Persia, Arabia, and Egypt. The Dardanelles expedition,
which was a holocaust for Australians and New Zealanders as well
as British, was entered upon and persisted in because the British
Government realized that the Straits ought to be forced, if possible,
regardless of cost, for the sake of vital imperial interests. Using
Turkey and the Holy War, Germany was in a fair way to cut England’s
communications with India, the Far East, and Australasia. In 1916 the
British were saved by their success in fomenting a rebellion of Mecca
against Constantinople, which was possible because of the tactlessness
of the Turks toward the Arabs and the cruel repressions of Djemal Pasha
in Damascus and Beirut. In 1917 they were saved by the entry of the
United States into the war. American credits and supplies, the moral
effect of America’s entry, and the American contribution to the Entente
armies on the western front in the spring and early summer of 1918
alone made possible the retention of the British armies in Mesopotamia,
Egypt, and Macedonia. But to the wise man a menace successfully
confronted is not a menace forgotten. The Islamic belt stretches around
the Black Sea, across the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, and across the
Suez Canal. The British Empire is defended by the British fleet. If the
fleet is powerless to exercise pressure upon the enemies of the Empire
in the interests and defense of the Empire, the Empire will crumble to
pieces in short order.
Breathing a sigh of relief when the armistice was signed, the
British Foreign Office, aware of the vital importance of the Black
Sea region to the future of British rule in Asia, sent troops not
only to Constantinople but also to the Caucasus and northern Persia.
Pressure was once more brought to bear upon Afghanistan; and,
despite interpellations in Parliament on the ground of expense, the
Mesopotamian army was reinforced and extended its occupation northward
and eastward. The powerful sympathies of international Jewry were
enlisted to create a buffer region on the Asiatic side of the Suez
Canal.
Gradually, however, it was realized that tax weariness and war
weariness at home must be reckoned with. This meant abandonment of the
Caucasus, Persia, and Afghanistan to the undisputed influence of Soviet
Russia, whose propaganda it was planned to call off by trade agreements
and the lifting of the economic blockade. The Mohammedan world, not
being interested in trade and not being vitally vulnerable to any form
of economic or food blockade, could best be watched and intimidated by
a British fleet at Constantinople, holding Stambul and the Sultan’s
palace of Dolmabagché under its guns, and able to cruise at will in the
Black Sea. As the tax-payers accept the burden of maintaining the fleet
without complaint, the freedom enjoyed in the Straits since 1918 has
been a boon to the British Government in exercising pressure without
spending too much money!
The Treaty of Sèvres is a splendid illustration of the vicious methods
of world politics, which make agreements between nations unsound
and insincere: unsound because they are not arrived at after a fair
consideration of the issues at stake and because they represent
makeshift compromises; insincere because the contracting parties do not
intend to keep them if contingent agreements--or rather bargains--are
not lived up to. The British point of view prevailed in the Treaty
of Sèvres. But Italy expected to gain from this concession British
support against the Jugoslavs in the Adriatic, and France expected
British support for extreme measures against Germany in the reparations
collection. Both nations looked to Great Britain either to forgive or
forget their indebtedness to her or at least to grant them the priority
already acknowledged to Belgium in reparations payments.
Before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Sèvres, France and Italy
realized that the British could not be depended upon to help them
out of their troubles, political or financial; and the return of
Constantine gave an excellent excuse to two of the three makers of
the treaty not only to consider it null and void but actually to work
against it. We must not lay too much stress upon the concessions
featured in the secret treaties negotiated by Italy and France
with the Angora Government. Considerations of foreign policy were
paramount. Italy plotted the ruin of a potential commercial competitor
in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. France was bent on
destroying the country she believed Great Britain had picked to hold
Constantinople and the Straits as agent for British political and
commercial interests. The Nationalist Turks had the luck to be a good
weapon to be used by two members of the Entente alliance to strike the
third; and the Greeks had the misfortune to be lacking in endurance to
play through to the end of the game the British expected them to play
alone, for the British Government was not prepared to risk Mohammedan
difficulties by coming out openly on the side of the Greeks.
Great Britain did not feel uneasy about the Turks on the Dardanelles
and the Bosphorus until after the Young Turk revolution. The new régime
had not been long installed before foreign observers began to see that
the Young Turks were smitten with megalomania. They had an inordinate
confidence in their own strength and in their ability to impose their
cultural and political hegemony, _in a constitutional state_, upon the
non-Turkish elements, Moslem as well as Christian. Abdul Hamid and his
predecessors had been past masters in the art of knowing how far to go
in pitting one European Power against another, in collecting taxes from
Christians and oppressing them, and in extending administrative control
over non-Turkish Moslems and conscripting for the army among them.
The Young Turks provoked Albanians and Arabs to rebellion, alienated
Circassians and Kurds, and goaded the Balkan States to the point of
desperation where they were able to forget their own rivalries long
enough to combine and drive the Turks out of Macedonia and Thrace. How
could a British Liberal Government, relying upon the Nonconformist
vote, continue to aid the Turks in maintaining their domination over
subject peoples who had proved their ability to free themselves? After
the first year of enthusiasm and generous impulse ended in the horrible
Adana massacre, the Young Turks were thoroughly discredited in the eyes
of the electors to whom Messrs. Asquith and Lloyd George had to appeal
in two bitterly contested General Elections.
Turkey was weakened both by fruitless efforts to put down the
rebellions among Mohammedan subject peoples that her new masters
foolishly provoked and by the Young Turk policies in Tripoli and
Macedonia, which were heading directly toward wars that could end only
disastrously. Her leaders looked to Europe for some powerful ally.
Abandoning Abdul Hamid’s safe policy of pitting one against another,
the Young Turks deliberately chose Germany as their friend, put their
army and the control of the Straits in Germany’s hands a year before
the World War broke out, and during the months of August and September,
1914, so critical to the Entente Powers, deceived the British and
French by protestations of friendship and neutrality. But as soon as
the engineer officers of their German allies advised them that the
Dardanelles could not be forced by a fleet, they threw in their lot
with the Central Powers. During the years since the armistice the
Turks have been in close touch with Soviet Russia and have assisted
materially in the anti-British propaganda of the Bolshevists in Asia.
The difference between the Young Turks and the Old Turks is that
the régime since 1908 purports to represent a people conscious of
its nationhood and power, while the Hamidian régime was a system
that had existed for centuries upon the threefold foundation: a
theocratic absolutist Government, centralized at Constantinople, for
the Turkish element and other Mohammedan elements near the sea or in
lowlands; virtual autonomy, on the principle of non-intervention or
_laisser-faire_, for non-Turkish Mohammedan peoples of the mountains
or hinterland; and separate communities under their hierarchies for
the Christian peoples of the empire. Old Turkey could be the enemy
of no country except one that invaded her, and during the nineteenth
century intervention of other powers was always invoked against an
aggressor power. Abdul Hamid’s pan-Islamic movement was a political
one, with a limited appeal. The autocrat did not allow it to get out
of hand through the awakening of a national consciousness. Until 1908
it never occurred to the British that Turkey was a country that might
at any time, without provocation upon the part of Great Britain, join
the enemies of the British Empire in time of war, close the Straits,
and proclaim a Holy War against the greatest Mohammedan power in the
world (for the British Empire is that). But since 1908 Great Britain
has had to reckon with Turkey as a potential enemy, and, since 1914, as
an actual enemy. As a military menace the Turks are negligible to the
British. But the Turks handing the key to the Straits to an enemy of
Great Britain in time of war--that has happened once, and the British
know that if it is allowed to happen again the death-knell of the
British Empire may sound.
The freedom of the Straits, from the British point of view, means the
insertion of guarantees in the peace settlement in the Near East of
such a nature that a repetition of 1914 will be impossible. The Straits
must be open to British warships in time of war as in time of peace,
open in such a way that nothing can close them. It is unnecessary to
make any provisions concerning merchant ships. The British undertake to
have a fleet large enough to look out for their merchant marine in war
and peace!
What are these guarantees? First of all, prohibition of any form of
fortification along the Straits or in the Sea of Marmora. Second, a
neutral zone, whose inviolability will be under the vigilant control
of an international commission on both sides of the Dardanelles and
Bosphorus. Third, the absence of armies and armaments in the neutral
zone. When Mr. Lloyd George declared that never again should the
Straits be closed against the British, his political opponents (except
the Labor men) agreed that the French needed to be told bluntly that
the Straits guarantees meant as much to the British as the Rhine
guarantees meant to the French, and that it was a case of _quid pro
quo_. Great Britain’s future policy toward German guarantees was going
to be contingent upon France’s policy toward Turkish guarantees.
The British warning to France was heeded by Premier Poincaré. When Lord
Curzon called at the Quai d’Orsay on October 6, he was informed that
instructions had been sent to Constantinople for the French to agree
with General Harington in rejecting the Kemalist demand that Eastern
Thrace be turned over to Turkey immediately. But the attitude of M.
Franklin Bouillon, negotiator of the Angora Treaty, at the Mudania
conference the previous day showed that what France really wanted was
the return of Constantinople and Eastern Thrace to the Nationalist
Turks without serious or effective guarantees.
The French have a clarity of vision that Teutons and Anglo-Saxons do
not possess. If they seem more selfish and cynical and hard-hearted
than ourselves it is only because they do not possess our comfortable
faculty of deceiving ourselves into believing that motives are mostly
actuated by altruism rather than self-interest. The intellectual
honesty of the French people shocks us when they apply it to their own
actions, for we have never learned how to be honest with ourselves. To
the Anglo-Saxon mind naked motives are like nude women; we know there
are such things but our modesty clothes them!
The French look at the freedom of the Straits as something akin to the
freedom of the seas. It is a comfortable formula without any meaning.
For is not freedom that which one enjoys through the exercise of
superior strength? And is it possible to enjoy freedom without denying
it to others? The seas are free to the British, and the affirmation
of this freedom for themselves is the negation of it to others. The
British (I am still presenting the French point of view) would think
that they had lost the freedom of the seas unless they were able to go
where they pleased and do what their interests dictated in time of war.
Now for the Straits. Although Italy is wholly and France partly and
Great Britain not at all a Mediterranean power, the one of the three
possessing no littoral in the Mediterranean controls both entrances to
it. The French and Italians have never heard the British advocating
the dismantling of Gibraltar and the application to the Suez Canal of
the Sèvres Treaty provisions for the Dardanelles and Bosphorus. From
the point of view of her allies, what does Great Britain mean by the
freedom of the Straits? They believe that she conspired with the Greeks
to close the Straits, which necessitated drastic counter-moves. And now
that these counter-moves have succeeded, why all this great fuss over
neutral zones? At the bottom of it (_au fond_, as the French love to
say in summarizing the discussion of a problem or an argument), what
the British want is immunity for their fleet from the inconveniences
created by nature to free movement in and out of the Black Sea. Once
this immunity is granted them, they will be in a position, owing to
their naval superiority, to make it valueless to any other nation.
By the treaty negotiated at Washington, France and Italy were asked
to agree to a naval ratio of 1.75 to 1.75 in proportion to Britain’s
5. Together they are asked to accept 3.5 to Britain’s 5. As long as
this naval proportion holds by treaty, the freedom of the Straits is
valuable only for Great Britain and the United States.
Let us take a concrete illustration. Let us say that the treaty
settlement does have guarantees that are effective, that the neutral
zone is established and controlled, and that the Bosphorus and
Dardanelles are without fortifications. The British fleet is able to
pass at will from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and vice versa.
Its cruising-radius, and hence its power, is extended to the vast
Black Sea regions. But does that freedom work out in the same way
for Russia and France and Italy? The Straits are free, yes, but the
mistress of the seas, _for that very reason_, would be able to attack
the Russians in their own waters, and then, backed up against the
“free” Straits, oppose at either end to any comer (except the United
States, who is not interested in that part of the world) a floating
barrier of fortifications more powerful than any that ever could be
erected at the mouth of the Bosphorus on the Black Sea or the mouth of
the Dardanelles on the Ægean Sea. Again, in case of war, if the Straits
are free, only the British merchant marine could pass freely in and out
of the Black Sea.
One objects that we must consider the good faith of England; and the
Anglophile declares that England never abuses her power and that her
word is as good as her bond. Yes, that is a powerful argument for
us Americans, now that we have our 5 to 5 ratio. It was a powerful
argument before, because we were neither trade nor political rivals
of our cousins across the sea. But we must get it into our heads that
the French and Italians and Russians do not look upon the British
as most of us do. The British are a potential enemy. History has
demonstrated that nations change alliances bewilderingly. The foreign
policy of France (and of Italy) in the Near East always takes into
consideration the superiority of the British fleet and the possession
by Great Britain of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, and Malta. Whatever
steps can be taken to lessen the menace of British sea-power, or,
at least, to prevent its becoming a greater menace, are justifiable
and worth risking much. As they do not believe Bolshevism will last
for ever, French and Italians look upon Russian influence dominating
Constantinople as less of a danger in war and far, far less of a
stumbling-block to commerce in peace than British control there.
Since Italy has got over her fear of an internal Bolshevist movement,
and since France has become convinced that Poland will never replace
her old Muscovite ally as the “guardian of civilization against German
barbarism” on the eastern marches, there has been a marked tendency
in Rome and Paris to talk about the obligations of the Entente secret
treaty of 1915. The French, especially, are apprehensive of the moment
when a regenerated but thoroughly nationalistic Russia, upon whom
France will be able to depend far more than upon Great Britain and
the United States for aid against a German recovery, will ask how
her friends looked after her interests abroad during the years of
misfortune and humiliation. They want to be able to say that they
had prevented Great Britain from corralling Constantinople. In Greek
hands it might not have been possible to consider Constantinople as a
tempting morsel to bait the imperialistic ambitions of convalescent
Russia. With an international neutral zone established and the freedom
of the Straits guaranteed, the new Russia (although realizing even more
bitterly than the two Mediterranean powers the exclusive advantage of
this régime to Great Britain) would have her hands tied and would owe
nothing but resentment to France. With the Turks back on both sides
of the Straits, France can make a secret treaty with Russia by which
Turkey will follow Greece as a sacrifice to the exigencies, to the
superior interests, of European powers. Why not? France has much less
reason to regard Turkey than Greece with a feeling of affection or
obligation. Greece was trussed and delivered up as a victim to Kemal
Pasha. If ever betrayal of the Turks is the price of winning back
Russia in an offensive and defensive alliance against Germany, who
would be foolish enough to protest on the score of honor?
I hold no brief for British or French, for Italian or Russian, for Turk
or Greek. I have tried not to wander into by-paths but to present here
the facts concerning the Straits. It is true that these facts present a
sorry picture of international morality. But is it not important for
us to analyze the motives actuating the principals in this stupendous
diplomatic battle? For only in this way shall we come to understand how
futile would be the solution proposed so glibly, i. e., that the League
of Nations control the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. For, from the
world point of view, there is no separate problem called the Question
of the Straits, unless we decapitalize Straits, and cut out the
definite article. There is a question of straits, by which we mean all
international waterways. The League of Nations can rightly be suspected
of being an agent of particular interests, plotting in the interests of
some nations against other, until its champions are able to convince
themselves and public opinion in the nations whose representatives sit
on the League Council that the League can exist and function only as an
instrument of impartial administration and justice.
If the United States is willing to give up the Panama Canal to the
League, and Great Britain is willing to give up Gibraltar and the
Suez Canal to the League, we have the right to criticize French and
Italian policy on the Bosphorus, on the ground that these powers
have less faith in the League than ourselves! But by what right do
we expect these two powers to entrust their interests in the Eastern
Mediterranean and the Black Sea to the League of Nations when we
neither have given the example nor will promise to follow it? And what
can we possibly find to say to Russia or Turkey, the countries most
interested?