Papers written by Curzon on the Near and Middle East [‎8r] (15/348)

[ 1371 ] .
[This Document is the Property of His Britannic. Majesty s Government.]
Printed for the War Cabinet. March 1919.
SECRE.
Earl Curzon to the Earl of Derby.
M\°Lord ' Foreign Office, March 12, 1919.
^ ' IN my despatch of the 5th March I narrated at some length an interesting
conversation which I had that day with the French Ambassador on the question of
the future of Constantinople and Turkey; a conversation in which 1 took the hoerty
of expressing certain personal views upon the policy and ambitions of b ranee in
^1. Gambon had evidently been ruminating upon these matters in the interim.
He told me to-day that he had communicated to his Government what 1 had said,
and he now came to let me know the result of his and their joint reflections on the
ubjecC commenced b y say i ng t h at> before our meeting of a week ago, both he and
his Government had held strongly to the view that it would be desirable to leave the
Sultan and his Government in Constantinople, and that in the enforcement, of a farm
control by some European Power or Powers they had hop'd to find the solution of the
Tmkish problem in Europe. He was now convinced as were his Government, that
such a solution was no longer desirable. They had realised that, as long as the Sultan
remained Caliph, and stayed in Constantinople, so long would the Mohammedan
countries of the world look to him, as indeed they were even now looking not only
as their spiritual head, but as chief of a great, powerful, and undefeated State. It
was essential, in these circumstances, to provide for the. expulsion of the lurk from
Europe. This decision, if taken, at once raised the question of what form of adminis
tration should be set up in his place. . Here, too, the. Ambassador said that reflection
had brought him and his Government (he expressly included the latter) to the con
clusion that it was most undesirable that any Great Power should assume control. 1
had assured him last week of the reluctance of Great Britain. He now gave me a
corresponding assurance of the unwillingness of France. . ,
I must own that I received this declaration with no small surprise, because the
whole trend of recent French policy in Constantinople had led me to think that France
was seeking in this direction for the principal outlet of her Eastern ambitions;
and from recent accounts of what had passed in Paris, I had even been led to think
that our representatives at the Peace Conference were contemplating an acquiescence
in the selection of France as the mandatory Power in Constantinople. Such a
solution I should personally have viewed, and would still view, with no small
apprehension. These, however, are my own reflections, and I did not communicate
them to the Annhassador. • r'l j. i
The latter went on to sav that the installation o! a Great 1 ower in <Constantinople
after the disappearance of the Turk was, in his view, mainly to be deprecated, because
it would reproduce there, in another form, the very situation which we desired to end.
All the smaller States in the Balkans, whose ambitions were either not satisfied or only
half satisfied as the result of the war, would collect round the sovereign 1 ower in
Constantinople and resume their career of agitation and intrigue. It would not be a
closing, but a re-opening, of the Eastern question. . , „ ,.
At this point, 1 said that I was very m ich interested to learn that the reflections
of the Ambassador and his Government had led them to form views winch coincided so
closely with those which I had ventured to put forward a week ago ; and there was a
further reason for arriving at that conclusion which I had forgotten to. mention then,
but which L might be permitted to refer to now. Projecting our vision mm the future,
and looking at the inherent weakness of many of the smaller States and gtoups h>
whom Russia would be surrounded, it seemed to me to be inevitable that, at some
future date (it might not be for a quarter of a century, or even half a century), a strong