Papers written by Curzon on the Near and Middle East [‎79r] (157/348)

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[This Document is tile Property of His Britannic Majesty’s Government.]
EASTERN.
[June 13.]
CONFIDENTIAL.
Section 2-
[C 12330/704/22] No. 1 .
Earl Curzon to Sir G. Buchanan (Rome).
(No. 501.)
Sir, Foreign Office, June 13, 1921.
I SAW the Italian Ambassador by appointment yesterday, Sunday.
He had just returned from Home, and he desired to bring me the latest
expression of the policy of Count Sforza. The latter, without being definitely
wedded to the scheme which he had put forward for the territorial solution of the
Silesian frontier question, nevertheless hoped that it would provide a suitable basis
for discussion, and that it would be supported by the British representatives.
However that might be, Count Sforza had instructed the Ambassador to tell me
that, whenever the Supreme Council assembled, he would be found in general
support of the British attitude and policy; that the main object of the Italian
Government was to give a good chance to the new Government of Dr. Wirth; and
that Italian policy was directed now, as it had been throughout, to the early
re-establishment of peace in Europe.
I said that I was very glad to receive these assurances; but I could not help
remembering that they preceded with almost mathematical regularity every Allied
Conference which I had so far attended. I entirely believed that Count Sforza’s
general policy was on the same lines as our own; but I had usually found that, when
a conference met, Count Sforza’s sympathy either evaporated or at any rate was
expressed only in formulas of a very general description; and that on many
occasions, when we had expected his earnest and powerful support, this support had
either been given in a very half-hearted wmy or had been altogether withheld. 1
thought, if I might venture to say so, that the best service Count Sforza could render
to the Allied cause would be by taking a more definite attitude at the meetings of the
Supreme Council on the points concerning which he was never tired of assuring us
that his sympathies were entirely in accord with our own.
I then took advantage of the occasion to make a statement to the Ambassador,
the need for which had long been in my mind, regarding the general policy pursued
by the Italian Government in the Near and Middle East. We all of us knew, I said,
that Italy was animated by a special feeling of regard for the Turks, and that she
had throughout sought to build for herself a position of peculiar influence in Asia
Minor. This had been particularly true of the Italian relations with Mustapha
Kemal, whose delegation had been brought by Italians through Adalia to Europe,
with whom they had kept up close relations, both in Rome and in Angora, and whom
they were, rightly or wrongly, believed to have assisted in even more material ways.
This did not, however, prevent me from regarding with considerable astonishment
the secret treaty which Count Sforza had concluded with Bekir Sami Bey in
London—an agreement concluded without our knowledge and behind our backs, and
the contents of which we learnt only at a later date.
Here Signor de Martino interposed to state his impression that Count Sforza,
while in London, had informed me of what he was doing.
I replied that I had no recollection of Count Sforza’s having mentioned the
matter to me at all, even in the most indirect or general way. Whether he had or
not, he had most certainly not given me any idea of what the contents of the agree
ment turned out to be. It transpired that, although the Italians had no such excuse
for hasty agreement as had the French, who were bent upon recovering their
prisoners and extricating their stricken forces from a dangerous position in Cilicia,
the Italians had sought to conclude an agreement with Angora which not only
provided for their commercial position under the Tripartite Agreement, but also
went so far as to promise future support to the Kemalist Party in pressing for the
abandonment of the main clauses in the Treaty of Sevres, as regards Smyrna and
otherwise, which they themselves—that is, the Italians—had signed. This,
1 thought, was,a most extraordinary position. I did not understand what defence
could possiblv be offered for it. That a party to a treaty which it had signed, and
the ratification of which it had urged, should, behind the backs of its Allies, agree
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