Papers written by Curzon on the Near and Middle East [‎153r] (305/348)

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obvious readiness of two of the Allies to offer further and indefinite concessions,
proceeded at once to put forward demands for concessions on nearly every point of
importance in the treaty. Once more, in order to preserve a united front and to
make a last effort for peace, I yielded on a number of important points, only to find
the Turks obstinately refusing to the last to sign what had already become for the
Allies a peace in many respects of surrender. This was the attitude on the part of
the chief British plenipotentiary, which M. Poincare is good enough to describe as
intransigent and menacing.
11. I now turn to M. Poincare's defence of his action. He refers
in the first place to his telegram to Mustapha Kemal of the ^6th January.
1 do not doubt that that telegram was fully intended to hasten the conclusion
of peace, although at that juncture it might have been held wiser for the heads
of the three Allied Powers to concert in any joint representation to the head of the
Turkish Government. That telegram, however, is not now under discussion. In the
second place, reference is made to the unsolicited rep r esentations made by Adnan Bey
and Reouf Bey to General Pelle and Colonel Mougin regarding their fears of a
rupture and an Allied ultimatum. As I have already explained, His Majesty's
Government have never considered or advocated an ultimatum, and the procedure
agreed upon at Lausanne by the three heads of the Allied delegations explicitly
excluded it. If, however, M. Poincare regarded this expression of Turkish appre
hension as well founded, he might surely have been expected to make representations
accordingly to His Majesty’s Government. The latter could not possibly anticipate
that he would have taken the particular step which he actually did take, and that
the British delegation at Lausanne would have been left to discover it nearly two
days later from the British representative at Constantinople, who had himself only
been informed twenty-four hours after the communication had been made.
12. Thirdly, M. Poincare claims that, not only had his action a most favourable
result for the cause of the Allies, but that it was in conformity with his original
intentions, as explained to me at the several Allied meetings at Paris since March
1922. As regards the first claim, I have already shown that the results, so far from
being favourable, were very nearly calamitous to all the Allies alike. As regards the
second claim, I cannot recall that the idea of separate communications to the Turkish
Government, without prior consultation and agreement between the Allies as to their
terms, was ever either mooted or approved at any meeting in Paris.
13. It is impossible to pass altogether without notice the comments which
M. Poincare has thought fit to make upon my share in the proceedings at Lausanne.
It is not clear what opportunities can have been enjoyed by the French President du
Conseil of forming a personal judgment of those events; and assuredly no one who
was present could have drawn so unkindly a picture of them. The suggestion that
the treaty should be presented at a plenary sitting of the conference with a speech
by one of the leading Allied representatives was concurred in by the first French
plenipotentiary, then M. Barrere; nor did any disagreement manifest itself on the
subject, except when M. Barrere, insisting that I had exhausted my right by
presiding ten weeks earlier at a meeting of the conference which dealt exclusively
with the question of procedure and bore no relation to the treaty at all. claimed
the right for the French representative to occupy the chair for the purpose of
presenting the treaty in the name of the Allies, even although Great
Britain happened to be represented by the Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs. I had already spontaneously offered to accept the French text
as the official text of the treaty. In deference to M. Barrere’s request, I had further
agreed to allow a project which I had put forward at one stage for the conclusion of
peace, to be described as a Franco-British plan. No note of either of these conces
sions, or of the spirit of cordiality which inspired them is taken by M. Poincare.
Nor does he mention that the proposal which was finallv acted upon, that the three
commissions should meet simultaneously, and that the British, French and Italian
presidents should each explain that part of the treaty for which his commission was
specially responsible, emanated from myself. Neither, again, does he draw
from the entire proceedings at Lausanne the conclusion which has elsewhere
met with all but universal recognition, namely, that the methods for which he can
find nothing but condemnation succeeded in procuring the Turkish assent to all
those parts of the treaty to which they related, while the tactics which were
practised, even up to the last moment, by the French delegation, resulted in complete
disappointment. These are, after all, only trivial and ephemeral aspects of the case,
which it would have been unnecessary to mention but for the description of them
given in the note under reply.
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