§ Captain WEDGWOOD BENNTurning from the situation in the Ruhr to the Treaty of Lausanne, one cannot help being struck with the satire of the situation. The Germans and the Turks alike 1835 were our enemies. The Debate this afternoon has turned entirely upon extracting reparations from the Germans. The Turks were our enemies, and I have yet to learn from the Government that we intend to extract any reparations from them. It is almost an obsession with the Foreign Office to treat the Russians as pariahs because they refuse to acknowledge their debts. The Turks, however, refuse to acknowledge their debts, and they have put our traders in a position of inferiority in which they have not been for 350 years, but, as to reparations, we never mention them. As to arms, we say: "Pray take back the stores of arms which you have accumulated against us, or even seized from our own Allies. As to ships, by some oversight or excess of zeal on the part of our Navy some of your ships were seized; we beg you to receive them back"; and so far from adopting the attitude we have adopted towards Russia, on account of their treatment of a few of our nationals, the Turks, who have tortured and exterminated a nation, are begged by the Foreign Secretary to remember that old friendship which still burns in our hearts for them, and to come into the League of Nations. It only shows what a great deal of difference our material interests make to the moral attitude that we assume.
I know that the Under-Secretary may say: "This is not the fault of the present Government. We have inherited the difficulties of the Turks, and, if you have any criticism or blame, you must give the criticism or blame to the right hon. Gentleman who has just resumed his seat." That is not a complete answer. It is a complete answer for him as an individual, I admit, because I cannot recollect, in the last Parliament, any particularly cordial assistance that he gave to the late Prime Minister; but it is not an answer to hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House, many of whom entered the House in 1918 on the nomination of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), and, moreover, many of whom rashly pressed on the then Government the very policy which was responsible for the disastrous results which we now see. We have, however, had, at least, a continuity of personnel in the Foreign Office. There is no change there. They have enjoyed one guiding hand for the last three or 1836 four years, and, whatever mutinies, revolts and revolutions have taken place in the party represented on these benches to-day, the Foreign Secretary has never, during that whole time, for one moment forgotten his duty to himself. And so it comes about that the same stately figure which brandished the Treaty of Sevres at the permanently humiliated Turk, came in, if I may be permitted the expression, on all fours to offer the Turks the capitulation of Lausanne. Let me recall for one moment the aims which we ourselves advertised as being those with which we engaged in war with Turkey. When we were asked by the United States what our aims were, we, if I may say so, let ourselves go. We were aiming at setting free the populations subject to the bloody tyranny of the Turks and turning out of Europe the Ottoman Empire as decidedly foreign to Western civilisation. That was the reply of the Government. What have we got? I divide the results under two heads—the material and the moral results. As regards the material results I will say a word about trade and about what is, I believe, contended to be a great achievement, the freedom of the Straits, and on the moral side I want to say a word about the position of the smaller nations, the Greeks, Armenians and Bulgarians. On the material and the moral side—or perhaps some people would call it the material and the immaterial—first about trade. Of course we have only just had the papers. I realise the difficulties and we welcome the papers which have appeared to-day, though they were too late for us really to read them with any care. We have had to rely on newspaper reports and, of course, the earlier and very copious Blue Book which appeared in April. But as regards our traders, they have lost, as we understand, all the juridical privileges which they have enjoyed since 1583 and they find themselves not in a position to carry on trade on what I may call a Western method in Turkey but forced to pursue their ends by methods which I need not enumerate or describe, but which are-more suitable to a barbaric or Oriental country. In fact they have gone back 350 years in their status. I pause to ask the hon. Gentleman this question. What further humiliation could have been inflicted upon the trade of this country if the Turks had won the War instead of 1837 ourselves winning it? I cannot imagine that they could have done any more than to have put us back into that position.
I pass to the second material question—the question of the freedom of the Straits. This freedom of the Straits was a battle cry, or watchword. I do not know who invented it. I think it was invented by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs. So potent was its force that many people accepted it as being an end desirable in itself without examining very closely what it really meant. As I understand it, there are three possible courses. First of all the Straits might be closed. I am speaking, of course, of warships. Commerce is not really concerned. That is the position which we ourselves advocated before the War and have supported even with our arms since 1840 or 1841. The second possibility was that the Black Sea might be demilitarised. That is a suggestion which, I understand, either was or might have been put forward by the Russian delegates at the Conference, and I imagine would have been a policy very grateful to this country, which desires to be rid of the enormous cost of supporting heavy armaments. The third possibility was the freedom of the Straits, or the open Straits, a policy which was forced upon the Turks against the wishes of the Russians, who were then and now are their allies. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will explain precisely what is the advantage which this country gains by the permission granted to our warships to have access to the Black Sea. It is clear that we have a vast tract of water, in addition to all the others, to police, and it is clear that the freedom of the Straits will supply for the First Lord of the Admiralty an argument for further expenditure upon our naval forces, and, of course, if we can go into the Black Sea people can come out of the Black Sea. Although at the present moment the matter is not material, some day we may find that this great boon of the freedom of the States has introduced the powerful naval forces of Russia into the Mediterranean to be a menace to Malta, Egypt or Cyprus. Our further relations with Russia we cannot forecast. The Foreign Secretary, in the course of the negotiations, appears to have done everything in his power to cold shoulder the Russian delegates.
1838 We must put aside the prejudice which we have against the form of government in Russia and remember that, whatever we may think about these persons, they were representatives of a great nation who were our valued allies in the War, and a nation which has, both by land and sea, a far greater interest in the settlement of the Turkish question than any other nation in the world. They complained that they were not consulted. They said our representatives had time to consult everybody, but not to consult them. They even complained about his manner towards them, but that, I suppose, we must attribute to their untutored Muscovite minds. What we have achieved, as the culmination of a policy of four years, is what must have appeared to the students of 40 years ago to be impossible. We have reconciled the Russians and the Turks. The Russians and the Turks are sworn allies by a mutual pact, which they signed very largely as a result of the attitude of ourselves and other European countries. We have gained the right to go into the Black Sea; we have given access to the Mediterranean to the Russian Fleet if and when it becomes powerful; we have set up a new cause of friction with a country ten times the size and power of Turkey, and we have achieved a settlement about which I would like to ask, Does the Foreign Office expect that any settlement of the Near Eastern question can be lasting which is not assented to by Russia? I hope the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will be able to put a better face on the great achievement which has been secured, otherwise I am afraid we must relegate "The freedom of the Straits," along with "Homes for heroes," and "Hang the Kaiser," into the realm of war flapdoodle.
Then I would enter into the other question of the small nations and their moral claims upon us. I will only say one word about Bulgaria. We have a Treaty obligation to Bulgaria to secure her an outlet, and that obligation we have not discharged. The position of Rumania and Bulgaria were urged as being one of the considerations in the mind of the Foreign Secretary when he declined to close the Straits, thereby giving the Russians a naval preponderance in the Black Sea. If any nation has cause to complain of the treatment we have given them, it is 1839 Greece. They have been used as a tool in a policy which has failed. They were sent in 1919, by the desire of all the Allies, to Smyrna. They were encouraged by ourselves to advance. In 1920, the then Prime Minister even went so far as to say that there was not the least doubt they would reach Angora if they were permitted to do so. Almost a year ago to-day, the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, speaking in this House, used words about the Greek Army which represented it as a powerful and victorious force, but within six weeks Smyrna had fallen and the Greeks had to evacuate Asia Minor. This situation not only involved shame on ourselves and ruin for the Greeks, but it involved the greatest danger to the solidarity of the Empire. In September last when the appeal was sent to the Dominions there was the gravest danger of acute disagreement between ourselves and our great Dominions. Apparently, as far as one can learn from the Press, the matter was managed by a small junta consisting of the then Prime Minister, Lord Curzon, the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. Austen Chamberlain), Mr. Churchill and the Postmaster-General. This junta sent out a telegram to the Dominions, in flamboyant terms, to join in a new war with Turkey. Even Mr. Hughes, who is by no means a pacifist, said that Australia had no desire to enter into a filibustering expedition. Mr. Bruce, the present Prime Minister of Australia, said only a month ago:
very nearly a tragedy happened last year when Mr. Lloyd George came appealing to the Dominions to ally themselves with Britain's quarrel with Turkey.What we said at that time was a danger evidently was a very real danger, and a danger only just happily averted. The late Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, apparently is under the impression that he is heir to the Gladstone tradition, but anyone who has followed Mr. Gladstone's career knows perfectly well that he never proposed to impose the moral sense of Europe upon Turkey, except by the concerted action of the European Powers. He said most distinctly that it was never his intention, single-handed, to attempt by force to impose that upon the Turkish Empire. So we find the Greeks used as 1840 the tool of the policy which has failed. She is ruined, and every fifth man in the country is a refugee. Some 500,000 Greeks under this Treaty are due to leave the place where they live, to leave their property, and join the starving throngs of refugees. One or two feeble suggestions were made during the negotiations that, by the League of Nations or some other means, we should provide for the protection of these unhappy people; but anyone who has followed the proceedings knows that any such suggestion had no sooner to be objected to by the Turkish delegate than it was hurriedly withdrawn by our own representative. I have received a letter from some British subjects who were engaged in business in Smyrna, and this is what they say:To-day we are penniless. All we ask is justice. We may add that pioneer Britishers of Smyrna, whose descendants most of us claim to be, helped to build up the British Empire. In 1914 our boys volunteered for the Great War and we are proud to say that they did their share manfully.These correspondents have been, I understand, offered 6d. in the £ in respect of the losses which they incurred owing to the failure of our policy in Asia Minor.Before I sit down I want to say a word about the Armenians. The history of the Armenians during the War is very creditable to that ancient race. At the beginning of the War I understand that they were invited to join actively with the Turks and refused to do so. Later on they engaged on the Caucasus front in the military operations, and at one time there was an Armenian legion formed by the French. I saw something of it myself when I was in those parts. Armenia was actually a signatory to the Treaty of Sevres in 1920. To-day, for what have the Armenians to thank us? Nothing. Such of them as survive have got to make the best terms they can with their Turkish masters. All that they have got from us has been talk from the earliest stage of the proceedings when we began to make war declarations down to the latest moment. After America had refused to accept a mandate, which was in May, 1920, they had assurance after assurance that they would be protected. Sometimes it was Armenian Republic, and sometimes it was a tract set apart for them. There were many promises, but in this Treaty there is nothing. They are simply left to their fate.
1841 The fundamental blunder was to suppose that once Russia had ceased to be an ally for the purpose of imposing peace on Turkey, which was, of course, contemplated when the division of Anatolia was arranged by the various agreements in 1915, you could possibly impose upon the Turks anything like the same terms. Even if we had been in accord with the French and Italians it would have been very difficult for us to impose the same terms without the assistance of Russia. But, so far from there being any unanimity between ourselves and our Allies, there was a policy of intrigue and searching after material interests by the various parties. The Italians had some agreement with the Turks. The terms were never disclosed in Parliament, so far as I know, but their explanation that they had no consideration whatever in return was not convincing. The French sent out the famous envoy, M. Franklin-Bouillon, who made a private agreement with the Turks, putting into Turkish territory lines of railway which made the Mesopotamia frontier accessible, so that they are able without passing through Syrian territory to send troops to the Mesopotamian front.
The criticism which M. Franklin-Bouillon made of the policy of Clemenceau was that he had not profited from the peace sufficiently, particularly in the Near East. He regrets that his country had possessed herself of too few pledges, and had bargained badly. That was the spirit supervening on the old and more ideal conceptions with which we understood the War was fought. Within a few weeks of the time when the late Prime Minister was explaining to the House that, if desired, the Greeks could march victoriously and reach Angora, he met the French Prime Minister at Cannes and there was a communiqué, I have no doubt, with the usual phrase about complete unanimity being reached. But now we hear from the statement of M. Tardieu that even while at Cannes M. Franklin-Bouillon wrote that the following materials of war should be delivered to the Turks—10,000 Mauser rifles, 2,000 horses, 10 aeroplanes and so forth. This material, M. Poincaré said, had actually been delivered. This at the time when the Prime Minister was telling us that Greece, who had gone there at the 1842 invitation of the Allies, could, if they desired, victoriously reach the new Turkish capital. I am very far from saying that the blame, or perhaps the major part of the blame, for this unsatisfactory and humiliating state of affairs lies with ourselves, but we have to bear our share. When we asked why we could do nothing for the Armenians the late Prime Minister replied that we had enough responsibility on our hands, and we could not do everything.
What were those responsibilities? First of all, we were putting down what we were pleased to term a rebellion in Mesopotamia. We were pursuing the Churchill policy of trying to overturn the Soviet Government by giving support in munitions and money to the White generals in 1919–1920. That was a very serious pre-occupation of our Government. We were arming the White generals against the Soviet Republic, and spending a great deal of money. I think it is calculated that, in cash and kind,£100,000,000 was spent in that way. What became of those munitions when the matter was ended? Those White generals all suffered a uniform fate; they were all defeated. In fact, it was almost the hall mark of any military adventure associated with Mr. Churchill that it should be unsuccessful. But when they were defeated, the hon. and learned Gentleman said the Turks seized the munitions which we had sent to the White generals, and used them against the Armenians. I put this statement to the hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary before, and he has not denied it. The Armenians say that we depleted the great arsenal at Kars of supplies which might have kept them fighting—becausethey can fight—for several years in order to hand over the munitions to our White General Allies in Southern Russia. When Sebastopol fell—I have forgotten who was our particular pal at that time—
§ Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYWrangel.
§ Captain BENNWhen Sebastopol fell, the munitions fell into the hands of the Turks, who, of course, employed them both against the Armenians and against ourselves. No wonder that Lord Curzon himself describes the case as
one of the great scandals of the world.I assume that the hon. Gentleman will not deny that the materials, rifles, and 1843 guns, abandoned by the Russian Army of General Yudenitch, fell into the hands of the Turks to be used against ourselves. That was the statement of Marshal Franchet d'Esperey. Further than that, the "Times" stated:The guns, rifles and ammunition and transport captured by the Bolsheviks from Denikin and Wrangel have for the most part gone to Mustapha Kemal. The Turkish troops surrounding Chanak to-day"—That was a year ago, when we were at Chanak—are to a great extent armed by British rifles originally sent by us to the Crimea to fight the Bolsheviks.
§ Captain BENNThe hon. and gallant Member has many sources of information. I am quoting the "Times," and I accept their statements. The hon. and gallant Gentleman says it is untrue, so there is a conflict of evidence. To sum up, the Treaty has at least this advantage, that the Arab races are free and are set up in their States. The hon. Member will doubtless add that, at least, the Treaty is a Treaty of Peace. I will say, as Benjamin Franklin said:
There never was a good war, and there never was a bad peace.The peace at least solves one of the reparation problems which are perplexing the world, but, on the other side, there are Bulgaria, Greece, and Armenia betrayed by the Allies, of whom we are one. Never, I suppose, was the moral prestige of this country lower in the Near East than it is to-day. Since the Armistice, and the great victory over Turkey, in 1918, we have spent over £29,000,000 on maintaining armed forces in that quarter to enforce the terms of peace.The negotiations have been a progressive concession to Turkish demands. The country which we routed, which was littered with our treasure and almost heaped with our dead, has won, and we have negotiated, with a diplomat whom Lord Balfour described at that time as "the head of a band of brigands," what I can only describe as a treaty of humiliation.
§ The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Ronald McNeill)I regret that it is not possible now, within a few minutes of the rising of the House not merely for to-day but for a considerable time to come, to give any complete and coherent account of the Treaty as a whole, and I must content myself with merely taking up a few of the points which the hon. and gallant Gentle-man has raised and indicating, in so far as I disagree with him, my reasons for that disagreement. He said at the outset of his speech that he thought the peace was an unsatisfactory one, and he concluded by saying that it was a humiliating document. He said that no doubt I would defend the Government by laying the blame on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), and he indicated that I personally was free to do so without inconsistency. I have no intention of doing anything of the sort, because I think the real defence of any unsatisfactory features there are in the peace—and I do not in the least deny there are such—lies in quite another direction. I should like to correct one expression of opinion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. He said our prestige had never been lower in the East than at the present time. All my information is that notwithstanding all that has happened our prestige has never been higher. Prestige, after all, is comparative and, I might say, more or less fluid. It may be here to-day and gone to-morrow, but, as a matter of fact, I believe, in comparison with other nations at all events, that at the present moment our prestige stands very high in the Near East, and especially among the Turks themselves.
§ Mr. McNEILLI cannot possibly follow the hon. and gallant Gentleman in his. references to all the aspects of this subject. He said that at an earlier period we had given assistance to various Russian white generals, and that the arms which we supplied to them had by a chain of circumstances, gone into the hands of the Turks. To deal with that would take me too far, but if the hon. and gallant Gentleman and the House will recall the circumstances which existed at that time, I think the action of this country in supporting these generals is susceptible of a very 1845 strong defence, especially if we remember that at that time there was no reason whatever to give preference to one party over another in Russia. The Soviet Government, which is now at all events the de facto Government of Russia, had then no more title to be considered as the Government of Russia than had the various generals whom we supported. So far as some of them are concerned, I think myself that Koltchak, at all events, was a patriot, so far as I am able to judge, and that he represented among the Russians much more accurately those who had been our Allies, and with whom we had fought side by side in the Great War, than the so-called Government which had in the meantime been set up at Moscow. The hon. and gallant Gentleman has pointed out a number of circumstances connected with the peace which he thinks unsatisfactory. I have said that I do not defend it by throwing the blame on any other party or individual. The real reason why the peace is not so satisfactory in some respects as we could have wished is due to all the circumstances which have taken place during the last four years. People forget that four complete years have passed since peace was signed with our principal enemies, that four years have passed before we have succeeded in signing peace with the Turks, and that that circumstance applies with the greatest significance to what has taken place at Lausanne.
The world does not perhaps realise that now, for the first time, the Great War has been brought to an end, so that, really, for the first time since 1914, to put it in other words, the doors of the temple of Janus are shut. That is a matter of very great significance, and I would ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman, when he brings forward these various blots, as he thinks, on the Treaty, to ask himself this question: Would he have considered any one of them of sufficient importance to obtain them by a renewal of war. Hon. Members who, turning over the pages of the Treaty, or interested in one subject or another, complain of what has been done or left undone, must ask themselves whether they would have been content, in order to have it a more wholly satisfactory Treaty, to have seen the recruiting offices reopened, to have seen fresh armies sent overseas. Would they have been ready to vote the necessary 1846 credits in this House? Would they have been content to have seen the casualty lists again day by day? I do not believe they would. I am certain that the hon. and gallant Gentleman himself, and this House, and the country, when they know the facts, will share the conviction of the Government that, however imperfect this instrument may be, there was no point of policy in it which has been sacrificed which would have been worth gaining at the infinitely greater sacrifice which would have led to fresh memorials and cenotaphs.
Remember, that when the actual fighting ended, the Turkish military power was as completely broken as was the German and Austrian power, and if we could then have made peace, no doubt we could have dictated the peace, and that is the peace that the hon. and gallant Gentleman desired to see. As I could easily show him, the complaints that he made could only have been remedied if peace had been a peace dictated to the Turks, and if we could have made peace when the fighting was ended with Germany and Austria, we might have got that result. But our peacemakers were too busy in Paris. That is the real point. I am not attempting by that to throw any blame upon the right hon. Gentleman who was conducting the peace negotiations. I do not see that it was possible under the circumstances for it to have been otherwise. You could not have carried on these negotiations at Paris and you could not have carried on these negotiations with a different personnel. All that time there was the continual hope that the United States would take a Mandate. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we hoped at one time the United States would have taken a Mandate, which would have been the best solution possible with regard to the Armenian question, but that was not possible, and during that period of four years, when our peacemakers were busy in Paris, a great movement was going on, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, namely, the movement which led to setting up a new Nationalist Turk Party in Asia Minor, which was in one sense a rebellious movement against their Government in Constantinople.
§ Mr. McNEILLBut it was a movement which, although as we now know, it was 1847 of vast significance, passed almost un observed in its first phase, and it was only after Kemal had established a very considerable power in Asia Minor, and had organised resistance to the Allies, that the Allied Powers began to realise what had taken place. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] There is nothing in the least wonderful about that.
§ Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYYou drove people to such desperation that they took desperate remedies.
§ Mr. McNEILLEveryone has not, before the event, the wisdom which some have after the event. What is really the result—and this is really more important, if I may say so, than some of the points the hon. Gentleman has raised—what has been the result of that movement, and of the Peace which it has rendered necessary? It means that now, for the first time in history, the Turkish State is a compact nation with a national self-consciousness. For hundreds of years it has been, as I think the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs called it, a ramshackle Empire. Now, for the first time, it is compact in its territory, and, what is more significant, it consists solely of a country whose inhabitants are Turks. That is entirely a new feature in the history of the Turkish Empire, and it is a new phenomenon in the history of the world.
It is from that point of view that this Treaty has its real significance. The hon. Member referred to the very important fact that, however imperfect in other respects this Treaty may be, vast provinces have been knocked off the Turkish Empire. Those provinces, inhabited by Christians and Arabs, have disappeared, and that which is left of the present Turkish State forms a small compact, homogeneous nation—homogeneous both in race and in religion. A new Turkey has been created, and that Turkey it is which has just signed this Peace. It is owing to those circumstances that we were no longer in a position at Lausanne to dictate a Peace, and we had to negotiate a Peace with the Turks on an equal footing, discussing every Clause and line, in the same way as we discuss Bills in this House. That is the reason why—I do not see why we should shrink from admitting it—we were unable to 1848 obtain some of the terms to which the hon. and gallant Gentleman referred, and which I quite agree with him it would have been very desirable to get. Let me take, one by one, other points. I do not understand, I must say, what he says about—
Lieut.-Colonel J. WARDIs there any reason why the hon. Gentleman should not state what is the real cause of the failure, namely, the desertion by France of her Ally?
§ Mr. McNEILLThe only reason for not going further into the matter is that my time is very short, and that I do not want to be drawn unnecessarily into by-paths on this subject which, I am afraid, that might lead me into. But there are one or two points to which I am bound to refer. First of all, I do not understand the hon. and gallant Gentleman that the traders have been remitted to barbaric conditions. I suppose he refers to the abolition of the capitulations. These have come down from mediaeval times, when they used to be the general rule. They have been abandoned by other nations, and the Turks, in the pride of their new spirit of nationality, strenuously objected to them, and said, "We are just as able to carry on our trade, commerce, and social life on modern principles as are other of the nations, and we are not going to submit any longer to this system of capitulations imposed by others upon us." Therefore we have the abolition of the capitulations, both fiscal and otherwise, and in Constantinople and other parts of the country our traders will be on the same footing as they would be in Germany or France, that is, under the ordinary law of the country. I quite agree that it is an experiment, and it remains to be proved whether the Turks really are to be placed upon a footing of equality. It will be the worse for them if they fail in the matter. Their credit will fall, and they will find that foreigners and foreign capital will not be attracted to help them in their commercial developments. If foreigners find that this takes place, and there is no protection to life or property, that the system which has replaced the capitular system does not give equality and protection to the people, then it will be that foreigners will not go to Turkey, will decline to have any dealings with her, and the Turks will suffer. We shall suffer, too, undoubtedly. But 1849 to say that the making of this change is to relegate our traders to barbaric conditions appears to me to be entirely misstating the case.
Then as to the Straits and Russia. Nothing can be further from the truth than to say that we forced the freedom of the Straits on Turkey, although they were supported by the Russians. In point of fact, there was not one single representative at the Conference who supported the Russian plan. The Russians tried to out-Turk the Turks. Their real object, their chief anxiety was to do anything that would be effectively hostile to ourselves and France, and they thought the best way to do that was to prove themselves friends, allies, and supporters of the Turks. But the Turks mistrusted them, and when the hon. Gentleman says we have accomplished this very strange work of making for the first time the Turks and the Russians friends and Allies, I think that was true in a sense, but there has been a growing estrangement, and the Russians have received no support from the Turks in regard to their policy with regard to the freedom of the Straits. If I had more time I could show that the establishment of the freedom of the Straits has always been our aim for merchant shipping. At all events, the regime which is now established is from our point of view entirely satisfactory. We have greater freedom than we had before for merchant shipping by night and by day, and we have sufficient freedom for our warships to go into the Black Sea.
We have also established an International Commission which takes charge of the Straits and undertakes to report infractions of the Treaty to the League of Nations. Certain powers are given to ourselves, France, Italy and Japan to constitute a sort of international police, and they will take what ever action is considered necessary by the Council of the League of Nations in case there is any infraction of the terms of the Treaty. I agree with 1850 my hon. Friend that there has been a complete failure to carry out the promises made to the Armenians to provide them with a national home. That, however, has come about owing to circumstances over which neither we nor anybody else had any control. We believed that we were going to be so victorious that we should have been able to dictate peace. If we had been in that position we should have established a territorial national home for the Armenians. But that was the very cause of the nationalist movement amongst the Turks, and it was the one thing which gave power and influence to Mustapha Kemal, and in the Conference it was the one thing the Turks said that under no consideration, would they submit to.
My Noble Friend Lord Curzon fought from first to last to obtain this national home for the Armenians, and throughout the discussions at Lausanne, wherever humane considerations were under discussion in reference to all sorts of causes, I think this country may take pride that it was our country and especially our Foreign Secretary who was the champion' of those causes. He did not always succeed, but at any rate he did his best. Although it is true that the Armenians have not got all we wanted to give them, there are the minorities provisions which at any rate secure some justice and equality for them. My hon. Friends will also find that throughout the Treaty large use has been made of the League of Nations, and we hope those provisions may do something at all events to mitigate any disappointment that may be caused through our having failed, in the circumstances I have mentioned, to obtain all for which we had hoped.
§ It being Five of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of 1st August, till Tuesday, 13th November, pursuant to the Resolution of the House this day.