had abandoned all hope of destroying Turkish power by creating a Greek empire in Asia Minor; Greece was gone from Smyrna for good. But England was determined to maintain her hold in Mesopotamia—particularly in the oilfields of Mosul—and to hold out for neutralization of the Straits. These territorial questions occupied the major part of the first six weeks of the Conference. France had no interest in the decisions regarding the Straits and Mosul; therefore she supported the Turks and placed Lord Curzon in the position of appearing to be the real opponent of Turkish Nationalist ambitions and the principal obstacle in the way of an equitable settlement. Lord Curzon himself strengthened this impression, for many of his utterances were provocative and bombastic in the extreme—apparently he would not give up the idea that the Turks could be bluffed and bullied into submission.
While the conference as a whole was debating territorial questions and problems concerning the rights of minorities, a member of the French delegation was presiding over the sessions of the all-important Committee on Financial and Economic Issues. It was in this committee that questions of the Ottoman Public Debt and of concessions were to be threshed out; therefore it was in this committee that French imperialists hoped to achieve real successes. And while France was framing the economic sections of the treaty, her co-worker Italy was supervising the work of the Committee on the Status of Foreigners in Turkey, to determine the conditions upon which French and Italian schools and missions should continue their activities in Asia Minor. In this manner France hoped to protect adequately her economic and cultural interests in the Near East.
As the work of these committees progressed, the Turks became more and more suspicious of French aims. The
