Papers written by Curzon on the Near and Middle East [‎76r] (151/348)

[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty s Government.]
No. 1.— SECRETARY OF STATE.
EASTERN. [April 19.1
CONFIDENTIAL. Section 2.
[E 4707/1/44] No. 1.
Earl Curzon to Lord llardinge (Paris.)
(No. 1132.)
My Lord Foreign Office, April 19, 1921.
THE French Ambassador having asked to see me this afternoon, in order to
present to me the note which, in my absence, he had handed to the Prime Minister
yesterday, regarding the question of German reparations and the views of the hrench
Government thereon, I took advantage of the occasion to make a few observations to
him about the agreement which his Government had recently 'concluded, without
reference to us, with the Angora Government while Bekir Sami Bey and the delegates
of the latter were in London.
I said that our first knowledge of this agreement, apart from the fact that we
knew that negotiations were proceeding for the cessation of hostilities and the return
of prisoners, had come from a publication, in some French newspaper, of the text ol
the treaty concluded. We had thereupon expressed our great surprise to the Irench
Government that they had come to this arrangement behind our backs and without
any communication to us. Nor did the reply, which we had then received, that
parliamentary reasons had prevented its disclosure to us before it was laid before the
French Chamber, appear to me to be at all an adequate explanation.
Subsequently, the French Government had handed to us the text, and I had now
had an opportunity of carefully perusing this. It seemed to me to raise two points of
some importance.
In the first place, I found it difficult to reconcile the conclusion of any such
agreement with one of our enemies in the recent war with the declaration which had
been signed in London in November 1915 between Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan
and Russia, in which each of the signatory parties engaged not to conclude peace
separately during the war, and, further, that when terms of peace came to be
discussed no one of the Allies would demand conditions of peace without the previous
agreement of each of the other Allies. I thought it difficult to contend that this clause
of the declaration had not been violated in letter as well as in spirit.
Further, I noticed that certain of the provisions of the agreement, notably those
with regard to the frontier line between the Turkish territory and the 1 rench mandated
territory in northern Syria, were in apparent disagreement with, or at' any rate were
departures from, the tripartite'agreement and the Treaty of Sevres; and this added
to my surprise that the French Government had not thought it desirable to consult us
upon a matter which equally affected all the Allies, and which could not become
operative without their consent.
The case was not rendered better by the fact that Count Sforza had taken
advantage of the conference in London to conclude an independent agreement on his
own part with the same enemy. Indeed, the Italian agreement was in some respects in
wider divergence from existing obligations than the French. In neither case did it
seem to me possible to pass by the incident without indicating the anxiety which it had
caused us.
The French Ambassador’s explanation was a mixture of .candour and ingenuity.
He said, in the first place, that everyone knew that the French military position in
Cilicia was so precarious that they were bound to conclude peace with Mustapha Kemal
in order to get out their troops and tg avoid the enormous expenditure of a protracted
campaign. This was as well known to us as to everybody else.
Further, as to our complaint of being kept in the dark, M. Briand claimed that he
had informed Mr Lloyd George at every stage, if not of the actual details, at least of
the lines upon which he was proceeding, and he conceived that he was acting in strict
co-operation with his allies in what he had done.
I remarked that I had heard of no such revelations, and that I could not help
thinking that there had been some exaggeration in the explanations of M. Briand.
Several opportunities had occurred of acquainting the foreign Office with what had
passed, and certainly we had been kept entirely in the dark.
His Excellency then explained that, had the matter been left to him to conduct by
the traditional diplomatic methods, he would have been only too glad to have kept us
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