A Peace to End all Peace

by David Fromkin

  Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes replied that

  he would say that he could not for a moment assent to the view that this Government was in any way responsible for the existing conditions…The United States had not sought to parcel out spheres of influence…had not engaged in intrigues at Constantinople…was not responsible for the catastrophe of the Greek armies during the last year and a half…diplomacy in Europe for the last year and a half was responsible for the late disaster.22

  Behind the mutual recrimination was the fundamental shift in American foreign policy that occurred when President Woodrow Wilson was replaced by Warren Gamaliel Harding. A principal object of President Wilson’s Middle Eastern policy had been to support Christianity and, in particular, American missionary colleges and missionary activities; but President Harding did not share these interests. When the Turks advanced on Smyrna, such American church groups as the conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church called for the American government to send troops to stop the massacre of Christians; but President Harding told Secretary of State Hughes, “Frankly, it is difficult for me to be consistently patient with our good friends of the Church who are properly and earnestly zealous in promoting peace until it comes to making warfare on someone of the contending religion…”23

  The other principal object of Woodrow Wilson’s Middle Eastern policy had been to ensure that the peoples of the region were ruled by governments of their choice. President Harding did not share these concerns either. He limited his administration’s efforts to the protection of American interests. In the Middle East, that mostly meant the protection of American commercial interests which were primarily oil interests. In Turkey the Kemalist government was prepared to grant oil concessions to an American group, and seemed likely to be able to provide the internal security and stable business environment that oil companies require. Turkish willingness to open the door to American companies was welcomed by the Department of State and may well have colored its perception of the Kemalist regime.

  The plight of Greek, Armenian, and other Christians in the wake of Smyrna’s destruction was addressed by the Secretary of State in a speech he delivered in Boston in October. “While nothing can excuse in the slightest degree or palliate the barbaric cruelty of the Turks,” he said, “no just appraisement can be made of the situation which fails to take account of the incursion of the Greek army into Anatolia, of the war there waged, and of the terrible incidents of the retreat of that army, in the burning of towns, and general devastation and cruelties.” Having noted that atrocities had been committed by both sides, the Secretary of State rejected the contention that the United States should have intervened. He pointed out that the entire situation was the result of a war to which the United States had not been a party; if the Allies, who were closely connected to the situation, did not choose to intervene, it certainly was no responsibility of America’s to do so. He told his audience that the United States quite properly had limited its efforts to the protection of American interests in Turkey.24

  III

  Constantinople and European Turkey—eastern Thrace—were the next and final objectives on Kemal’s line of march. The supposedly neutral Allied army of occupation stood between him and his objectives. As the Nationalist Turkish armies advanced to their positions, the Allies panicked. Hitherto the war had been far away from them; but if Kemal attacked, they themselves would have to fight.

  In Britain the news was startling for the same reason. As late as 4 September, The Times had reported that “The Greek Army unquestionably sustained a reverse, but its extent is unduly exaggerated.” But on 5 September, a headline read “GREEK ARMY’S DEFEAT” on 6 September, a headline read “A GRAVE SITUATION” and from mid-September on, the headlines “NEAR EAST PERIL” and “NEAR EAST CRISIS” appeared with terribly insistent regularity. Photos of burning Smyrna took the place of society weddings, theater openings, and golf championships. Britons, four years after the armistice, were shocked to be suddenly told that they might have to fight a war to defend far-off Constantinople. It was the last thing in the world that most Britons wanted to do, and an immediate inclination was to get rid of the government that had got them into such a situation.

  But Constantinople and the Dardanelles, because of their world importance for shipping, and eastern Thrace, because it is in Europe, were positions that occupied a special status in the minds of British leaders. Winston Churchill, hitherto pro-Turkish, again came to the rescue of Lloyd George’s policy and told the Cabinet in September that “The line of deep water separating Asia from Europe was a line of great significance, and we must make that line secure by every means within our power. If the Turks take the Gallipoli Peninsula and Constantinople, we shall have lost the whole fruits of our victory…”25 Lloyd George voiced his strong agreement, saying that “In no circumstances could we allow the Gallipoli Peninsula to be held by the Turks. It was the most important strategic position in the world, and the closing of the Straits had prolonged the war by two years. It was inconceivable that we should allow the Turks to gain possession of the Gallipoli Peninsula and we should fight to prevent their doing so.”26

  By mid-September the last Greek troops standing between the Turks and the Allies had disappeared and a direct armed clash seemed imminent. The Cabinet met in a series of emergency sessions commencing 15 September, when Churchill told his colleagues that “The misfortunes of the Allies were probably due to the fact that owing to the delay on the part of America in declaring their position, their armies had apparently melted away.” Armies were needed, in his view, for he “was wholly opposed to any attempt to carry out a bluff without force.”27 He stressed the necessity of securing support from the Dominions* and from France in reinforcing the British troops facing Kemal’s armies.

  On 15 September 1922 the Cabinet instructed Winston Churchill to draft—for Lloyd George’s signature—a telegram to the Dominions informing them of the British decision to defend the Neutral Zone in Turkey and asking for their military aid. Shortly before midnight the telegram, in cipher, was sent to each of the Dominion prime ministers.

  The Cabinet decided that the public also ought to be informed of the seriousness of the situation; and to this end Churchill and Lloyd George prepared a press release on 16 September that appeared that evening in the newspapers. No members of the Cabinet other than Lloyd George and Churchill had seen it prior to publication. The communiqué expressed the desire of the British government to convene a peace conference with Turkey, but stated that no such conference could convene under the gun of Turkish threats. It expressed fear of what the Moslem world might do if comparatively weak Moslem Turkey could be seen to have inflicted a major defeat on the Allies; presumably the rest of the Moslem world would be encouraged to throw off colonial rule. The communiqué made reference to British consultations with France, Italy, and the Dominions with a view toward taking common military action to avert the Kemalist threat.29

  The belligerent tone of the communiqué alarmed public opinion in Britain. The Daily Mail ran a banner headline: “STOP THIS NEW WAR!”30 The communiqué also caused alarm abroad. Furious that the British government appeared to be speaking for him, French Premier Poincaré ordered his troops to be withdrawn from the front line of the Neutral Zone; the Italians followed forthwith, and the British forces were left alone to face the enemy.

  The Dominion prime ministers were also offended. The communiqué—which was of course written in plain English—was published in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand newspapers before the prime ministers had a chance to decode the ciphered cables they had received. It suggested that Churchill and Lloyd George were trying to rush them into something without giving them time to think. In reply, Canada and Australia refused to send troops. A revolution had occurred in the constitution of the British Empire: it was the first time that British Dominions had ever refused to follow the mother country into war. South Africa remained silent. Only New Zealand and Newfoundland responded favorably.<
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  On 22 September Lloyd George called upon Churchill to take charge as chairman of a Cabinet Committee to oversee military movements in Turkey.31 Churchill’s brilliant friend, F. E. Smith, now Lord Birkenhead and serving as Lord Chancellor, had previously been critical of Churchill for changing over to an anti-Turkish position, but at the end of September joined Lloyd George and Churchill as a leader of the belligerent faction. It was a question of prestige, Birkenhead felt; Britain must never be seen to give in to force.32

  In Britain the press campaign against the war continued. Public protest meetings were held. Trade union delegates went to Downing Street to deliver their protest to the Prime Minister personally.

  The Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, crossed over to Paris to attempt to concert a strategy with the Allies. On 23 September he finally agreed with Poincaré and Sforza on a common program that yielded to all of Kemal’s demands—eastern Thrace, Constantinople, and the Dardanelles—so long as appearances could be preserved; it was to appear to be a negotiated settlement rather than a surrender. It was not a happy meeting for the British Foreign Secretary; after being exposed to Poincaré’s bitter denunciations, Curzon broke down and retired to the next room in tears.

  Meanwhile, the British and Turkish armies confronted one another at Chanak (today called Canakkale), a coastal town on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles that today serves as the point of departure for tours to the ruins of Troy. The French and Italian contingents having retired to their tents, a small British contingent stood guard behind barbed wire, with orders not to fire unless fired upon. The first detachment of Turkish troops advanced to the British line on 23 September. The Turks did not open fire, but stood their ground and refused to withdraw. A few days later more Turkish troops arrived. By the end of September, there were 4,500 Turks in the Neutral Zone, talking through the barbed wire to the British, and holding their rifles butt-forward to demonstrate that they would not be the first to fire. It was an eerie and unnerving confrontation. On 29 September British Intelligence reported to the Cabinet that Kemal, pushed on by Soviet Russia, planned to attack the next day. The report, though false, was believed. With the approval of the Cabinet, the chiefs of the military services drafted a stern ultimatum for the local British commander to deliver to Kemal, threatening to open fire.

  The local British commander, disregarding the instructions from London—which could have led Britain into war—did not deliver the ultimatum. Instead he reached an agreement with Kemal to negotiate an armistice—and so brought the crisis to an end. For many reasons—including fear of what Lloyd George and Churchill in their recklessness might do—Kemal was prepared to accept a formula that allowed the Allies to save face by postponing Turkey’s occupation of some of the territories she was eventually to occupy. Had Kemal invaded Europe it would have meant war. The belligerent posture of the British leaders appeared to have stopped him. Given the actual weakness of their position, this represented a brilliant triumph for Lloyd George and Churchill.

  After much hard bargaining, negotiations for an armistice were concluded at the coastal town of Mudanya on the morning of 11 October, to come into effect at midnight, 14 October. Significant substantive issues remained; consideration of them was put off until a peace conference could convene. Essentially, Kemal obtained the terms he had outlined in the National Pact and had adhered to ever since: an independent Turkish nation-state to be established in Anatolia and eastern Thrace. Before long, Kemal’s Turkey took physical possession of Constantinople, the Dardanelles, and eastern Thrace from the departing Allies.

  In November 1922, the Kemalist National Assembly deposed the Sultan. The Sultan fled from Constantinople into exile. Thus in 1922 the centuries-old Ottoman Empire came to an end; and Turkey, which for 500 years had dominated the Middle East, departed from Middle Eastern history to seek to make herself European.

  IV

  Two aspects of the crisis and of the armistice negotiations made an especially marked impression in Britain. One was that the French representative at the armistice conference had played an adversary role by urging the Turks to resist British demands. This proved to be the climax of a line of French conduct throughout the Turkish crisis that was regarded in Britain as treacherous. Just as Britain’s Middle Eastern policy had led France to re-evaluate and eventually to repudiate her alliance with Britain, so now France’s policy caused the leaders of the British Empire to look at France through new and apprehensive eyes. A short time later the Prime Minister of South Africa wrote to the then Prime Minister of Britain that “France is once more the leader of the Continent with all the bad old instincts fully alive in her…The French are out for world power; they have played the most dangerous anti-ally game with Kemal; and inevitably in the course of their ambitions they must come to realise that the British Empire is the only remaining enemy.”33

  Another unnerving aspect of the crisis was the apparently reckless conduct of the inner group in the Cabinet: Lloyd George, Birkenhead, Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Robert Horne, and the Conservative leader Austen Chamberlain. Not merely to the public and to the press, but also to their political colleagues, they gave the impression of being anxious to provoke another war. The First Lord of the Admiralty said that he had the feeling that “L.G., Winston, Birkenhead, Horne, and even Austen positively want hostilities to break out.”34 Maurice Hankey, Secretary to the Cabinet, recorded in his diary on 17 October 1922, that Winston Churchill “quite frankly regretted that the Turks had not attacked us” Lloyd George agreed with Churchill about this, Hankey believed.35

  Attacking the Cabinet ministers as “Rash and vacillating and incapable,” The Times on 2 October had warned that “if this country once begins to suspect them, or any among them, of any disposition to make political capital at home out of a course which would land us in war, it will never forgive them.”

  Stanley Baldwin, a junior Conservative member of the government who privately had come to view the Prime Minister as “demoniacal,” confided to his wife that “he had found out that…L.G. had been all for war and had schemed to make this country go to war with Turkey so that they should have a ‘Christian’…war v. the Mahomedan…On the strength of that they would call a General Election at once…which, they calculated, would return them to office for another period of years.”36 Bonar Law expressed the opposite fear: that the Prime Minister would make peace in order to win the elections, but that once he had been re-elected he would go back to making war.37

  Lloyd George’s friend Lord Riddell told the Prime Minister “that the country will not stand for a fresh war.” “I disagree,” said the Prime Minister. “The country will willingly support our action regarding the Straits by force of arms if need be.”38 Decades later, writing of the Chanak crisis in his memoirs, Lloyd George avowed that “I certainly meant to fight and I was certain we should win.”39

  V

  As the Chanak crisis moved toward its denouement, a military revolution broke out in Greece, launched by a triumvirate of officers in the field: two army colonels and a naval captain. There was much confusion but, in the end, no resistance. The government resigned on 26 September. King Constantine abdicated the following morning; his son mounted the throne as George II that afternoon. The main body of revolutionary troops marched into Athens on 28 September.

  The triumvirate of revolutionary officers assumed authority, and at once ordered the arrest of the leaders of the previous government. Gounaris and several other ex-ministers were brought before a military court martial on 13 November, despite protests from the British government. The lengthy charges, though clothed in legalistic language, were of little legal validity. Essentially, they amounted to a political indictment of Gounaris and his associates for having brought about a national catastrophe.

  At dawn on 28 November the president of the court martial announced its verdict. All eight of the accused persons were convicted of high treason. Two of them were sentenced to life imprisonment. The other six, including
former Prime Minister Gounaris, were sentenced to death. The six condemned men, within hours, were driven to an execution ground east of Athens, in the shadow of Mount Hymettus. Small burial holes had already been dug at intervals of twelve metres. In front of each of the condemned men, at a distance of fifteen paces, stood a firing squad of five soldiers. The execution took place before noon. Having refused to wear bandages, Gounaris and his associates went to their death with their eyes open.40

  VI

  On 8 October 1922 Andrew Bonar Law, the retired leader of the Unionist—Conservative Party, wrote a letter to The Times and the Daily Express—published the next day—in which he appeared to express support for the strong stand the Lloyd George government had taken against Turkey at Chanak. On the other hand, he pointed out that the interests that Britain appeared to be defending, such as the freedom of the Dardanelles and the prevention of future massacres of Christians, were not uniquely British interests but world interests. Therefore, he wrote, “It is not…right that the burden of taking action should fall on the British Empire alone.” He claimed that “We are at the Straits and in Constantinople not by our own action alone, but by the will of the Allied Powers which won the war, and America is one of those Powers.”

  In much-quoted sentences, Bonar Law argued that if the United States and the Allies were not prepared to share the burden of responsibility, Britain should put it down. “We cannot alone act as the policeman of the world. The financial and social conditions of this country make that impossible.” He proposed to warn France that Britain might walk away from enforcing the settlement with Germany, and might imitate the United States in retiring into an exclusive concern with her own national interests, if France failed to recognize that a stand had to be taken in Asia as well as in Europe.41