Anatolian Railway from Constantinople to Angora and Konia for the Deutsche Bank, pending its permanent disposition in the peace treaty.
The collapse of Czarist Russia had enabled the British to establish control not only over Asia Minor but over all its approaches from north, south, east and west, and under the British aegis the secret treaties which had been drawn up during the war for its partition (with the exception of Czarist Russia's share in them) were soon put into application. The French were admitted to Beirut whence they posted detachments to the Syrian and Cilician centers, remaining however under the British high command in Cairo. Italian forces were disembarked at Adalia and rapidly pushed their way into the hinterland as far as Konia, still keeping their eyes on Smyrna, the greatest of the Asia Minor prizes. Smyrna had been made over to Italy in the secret agreement of St. Jean de Maurienne, but the Venizelos Government at Athens had entered the war after that agreement was signed. As for Czarist Russia's share of the spoils, the United States Government might be persuaded to take the eastern provinces under the supposition that in this twentieth century they still constituted Armenia. As for Czarist Russia's right to Constantinople, the High Church Party in the Church of England was soon to transfer the venue of its theological disquisitions with Orthodoxy from the Patriarchate at Moscow to the Oecumenical Patriarchate at the Phanar. Old Greeks and Ottoman Greeks are alike traders and British naval command of the Mediterranean served to reinforce the less worldly influences which moved Greece inevitably into the British orbit.
