admiration. In six or eight months we shall see England back in Turkey, stronger than ever. England is not her government."
I believe he is right. There was a more practical reason for his convictions than his deep affection for his English wife.
Holding no brief for Mr. Lloyd George, I still scorn these men of finance as cowards for their unmeasured abuse of the Premier.
"If you foresaw disaster so plainly," I asked, "why did you not protest?"
"Every Chamber of Commerce sent a petition to Mr. Lloyd George," was the reply, "which he put into his waste-basket."
"Naturally. As practical men, is that your idea of a protest?"
"One of our biggest men, Mr. Patterson, went to the Paris Conference on our behalf."
"Did he make himself heard? I assure you, if I had one hundred pounds invested in this country, instead of the hundreds of thousands your Scotsman holds, the world would have heard something of my visit to Paris!
"You saw financial disaster and ruin ahead, yet allowed yourselves to be talked into silence by M. Venizelos!"
Somehow, these men could not excite my pity. They were themselves more to blame than Mr. Lloyd George. With their huge financial backing, and vast interests in Smyrna, it was actually in their power, and theirs alone, to have kept out the Greeks.
It is a quaint result of my sense of justice that, in the French Secret Service, I am known as "a niece of Mr. Lloyd George." When the brilliant one-time chef de Cabinet of Monsieur Briand published his violent attacks on Lord Robert Cecil and our late Premier, he also printed my replies. "He did not," he kindly explained, "consider there was a word of truth in what I said, but he was unwilling to thwart an English-*woman!"
Shortly after the appearance of my "defence," the
