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 defense committees and to meet at Sivas where Kemal was to take over the administration of Asia Minor. On the basis of these defense committees, a new political party was to be built up which should compel the Damad Ferid Government to reassemble Parliament and enable the country to consider its future. The beginning of such a party already existed in the capital, but the new National Liberals naturally led a secret existence under the Allied military occupation and it was not until Kemal began building up the party organization in Asia Minor that they openly became the Nationalists.

The surrender of arms to the Allies continued, and in his report to the British War Office on events in Turkey from the time of the Mudros armistice to the signature of the Sevres Treaty, General Milne testifies to the honesty with which disarmament was carried out up to the time of the Greek occupation of Smyrna. The defense committees were not directed against the Allies. Large and small Allied forces, even Allied officers alone, moved freely about the country. The political program with which Kemal was charged, was directed against the Damad Ferid Government, his military program against any partition of the country in favor of Greeks and Armenians. If the Rûm and Ermeni communities of the old Empire attempted a transfer of their historic community life from a religious to a territorial basis, the defense committees would constitute the Turks' reply.

This program was developed in the utmost secrecy, since the Allied occupation had loosed more spies in the capital than Abdul Hamid had ever