Papers written by Curzon on the Near and Middle East [‎140r] (279/348)

[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty s Government.]
CONFIDENTIAL.
J
MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION WITH M. VENISELOS.
YESTERDAY evening M. Veniselos, having informed me in the course of the
afternoon that he had received the communications which he was expecting from the
new Greek Government, came to the Foreign Office soon after 6 o’clock for the
projected meeting with the Secretary of State for War and myself.
Before the former came in, M. Veniselos had had time to explain to me his
general attitude towards the peace conference. Realising that, so far as Eastern
Thrace was concerned, the case of Greece was lost, he said that, as a statesman, he
would bow to the decisions of the conference, and would tell his countrymen that it
was quite useless to continue a struggle which w T ould end onlv in defeat. He
understood that Eastern Thrace was gone, but there remained much more for which
it was necessary to fight. He then produced from his pocket and read to me some
brief reports from Athens which, although they did not differ substantially from
cur own information as regards the numerical strength of the Greek army still in
existence, contained a wholly different account of its armament, equipment, moral
and capacity to fight.
I had just informed him that our information upon the latter point did not bear
out these statements when the Secretary for War entered the room.
M. Veniselos repeated his Athens reports, and Sir Laming Worthington-Evans
then proceeded to give him the gist of the reports of our officers in Constantinople,
and of the General Staff here, without, however, mentioning the precise allegations
which would have been wounding to Greek pride. M. Veniselos had, however,
previously told me that M Countihs, who had made in Constantinople the damaging
avowal on his return from Thrace last week that, if the Turks reached that country,
nothing but the Gulf of Corinth would stop the Greeks from running, was an officer
of high military reputation in whom he (M. Veniselos) placed much confidence.
Mi. Veniselos appeared to be much astonished at the War Office reports, which he
declined to believe, arguing with much persistence that the revolution in Athens was
not a Veniselist, but a Nationalist revolution, having in view the continuance of the
struggle in Thrace, and that it was incredible that its leaders should be misinformed
as to the actual state of affairs. If, however, matters .were as depicted from Constanti
nople, he more than once repeated that it would be useless, in his judgment, to
continue the struggle.
In the course of our conversation there transpired what M. Veniselos had in
mind. When I explained to him the object of the projected meeting in Mudania,
which was firstly to draw a line behind which the Greek army should be asked to
withdraw in Thrace, and secondly to prepare for the setting-up of some form of
inter-Allied occupation in Eastern" Thrace pending the peace conference, he revealed
at once that that was not at all his idea. He declined to consider the possibility of
the Greek army being withdrawn until the peace conference had given its final judg
ment, and he argued passionately for the necessity of its remaining in occupation,
in order to secure the protection of the Greek inhabitants, and to give Greece some
thing in hand for the safeguarding of her remaining interests when the conference
assembled. How otherwise, he asLed, would his Government be in a position to
retain Western Thrace, to resist the demand for the surrender of the Greek fleet and
the demand for an indemnity, and to recover the Dodecanese from Italy? Was I
prepared to give him absolute and definite guarantees upon this point ?
It was not always easy to follow, and it was physically impossible to interrupt,
M. Veniselos in his declamation, which occupied the best part of an hour, and in
which he appeared at times quite unable to retain his ordinary equanimity.
My colleague and I endeavoured to point out to him that the situation was not quite
as he had described it. When, in all probability within two days’ time, an inter-
Allied decision would be arrived at in Mudania as to the line behind which the
Greek army was to be asked to withdraw—a line which we did not yet know, but
which might be the Maritza—did M. Veniselos mean that, while prepared tc agree
to the decision of the peace conference in a few weeks' time that the Greek array
should withdraw beyond that river, he seriously contemplated fighting to retain the
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