Foreign News: Lausanne Treaty

The Labor Government submitted to the House of Commons a bill for the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne, which established peace between Greece and Turkey, revised the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) between the Allies and the then Ottoman Empire, and adjusted generally relations between Mustafa Kemal's new nationalist Turkish state and the western world.

A brief debate showed that the attitude of the parties was equivocal. The Conservatives were inclined to support the treaty because it was the work of the former die-hard Foreign Minister, Lord Curzon. The Labor Government submitted the Treaty as a matter of routine in maintaining continuity of foreign policy. The Liberals, led by Sir Edward Grigg, onetime private secretary of Lloyd George, whose rapid anti-Turk policy led to the ruin of British imperial ambitions in the Levant, denounced the Treaty. Sir Edward made the usual plea for Christian minorities. His argument that the Treaty was repugnant to the British Dominions was sunk without a trace when Ramsay MacDonald informed the House that all the Dominion Governments had consented to ratification.

Discussion was adjourned. The Treaty is distasteful* to all parties. The Straits Convention, an annex to the Treaty, leaves Constantinople defenseless. The two powers most interested are Russia and Great Britain. Defense of minorities in Turkey will probably occupy the attention of the House in any further debate.

The Treaty of Lausanne was the first conspicuous failure of British diplomacy in more than a century. Greek troops had been permitted to occupy Smyrna and Anatolia in 1919 and 1920. The Treaty of Sèvres imposed terms so severe that British policy seemed to have succeeded in strangling the sick man of Europe in his sick-bed in Asia Minor.

After two years of guerilla warfare, Mustapha Kemal Pasha and his lieutenant, Ismet Pasha, drove the Greeks into the sea at Smyrna after a thunderbolt campaign in August, 1922. British troops at Chanak, on the Dardanelles and on the Ismid Peninsula, covering Constantinople, were faced by a threatening concentration of victorious Turkish troops. Lloyd George, genius of the Greek policy in Asia Minor and bitterest foe of the Turk in Europe, called on the Dominions to rally to the defense of the Straits and on the Balkan Nations to join in an anti-Turk crusade. The British public decided that this attitude meant war, and Lloyd George was ousted bag and baggage to let "the only party that understands foreign affairs," the Conservatives, led by Curzon in the Foreign Office, make peace.

Curzon's diplomatic bullying had as little effect as Lloyd George's military gestures. In February, 1923, Curzon ended the first session of the Lausanne Conference by ordering the Turks to sign a treaty. His diplomatic antagonist, Ismet, proved tenacious, resourceful, adroit. The Turkish National Assembly refused to ratify. On April 23, 1923, the Conference reassembled. After four long months of wrangling, Ismet forced the plenipotentiaries, Greeks, French, Italian and British, to yield to his stubborn and irreducible demands. The final draft was signed in August, and did little but establish peace, regulate the number of foreign troops in Turkey and Turkish frontiers.