Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/241

 Black Sea was all that remained of the vast territories which the collapse of Czarist Russia had vacated before an aggressive British imperialism.

On September 30, Mr. Lloyd George sent General Harington, Allied Commander-in-Chief in Constantinople, a six-hour ultimatum ordering the Turkish forces to withdraw from contact with the British lines behind Chanak. If that ultimatum had been served, it would have precipitated an Anglo-Turkish war and with British reinforcements already streaming to the Straits, it is difficult to see with what other purpose it could have been dispatched from London. Instead of serving it, however, General Harington dropped it into his pocket and went to Mudania on October 3 with his Allied colleagues to negotiate an armistice with Ismet Pasha. At dawn on October 11, the Mudania armistice was signed, the Allies agreeing to evacuate the Greeks from Eastern Thrace immediately and to return it to Turkey up to the Maritza River, admitting the Turkish civil administration, supported by a force of 8,000 gendarmes, within a period of thirty days after the Greek evacuation.

On October 19, Mr. Lloyd George who might have written the Mudania armistice in ink instead of in blood, handed his resignation to the King. In Mr. Bonar Law's Government, however, Lord Curzon remained at the Foreign Office. Preparations were now made for a peace conference, beginning at Lausanne on November 13, for the winding up of hostilities between the Allies and Turkey and between Turkey and Greece. Invitations were issued to, among others, the old Ottoman Government in Constantinople to send delegates to the con