Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/344

 be repeated in the history of the Bagdad Railway? Would Great Britain look with any greater equanimity upon French, than upon German, interests in one of the great highways to India? To answer these questions was but to increase the French feeling of insecurity.

French dissatisfaction with the distribution of the spoils in the Near East and French fear of British imperial power and prestige—these were factors in a new alignment of the diplomatic forces in Turkey during 1920-1922. British imperialists were desirous of keeping Turkey weak. A weak Turkey could never again menace Britain's communications in the Persian Gulf and at Suez; a weak Turkey could be of no moral or material assistance to restless Moslems in Egypt and India. To keep Turkey weak the Treaty of Sèvres had loaded down the Ottoman Treasury with an enormous burden of reparations and occupation costs (to which France could not object without repudiating the principle of reparations); had taken away Turkish administration of Smyrna and Constantinople, the two ports essential to the commercial life of Anatolia; and had made possible a Greek war of devastation and extermination in the homeland of the Turks. France, on the other hand, would have preferred to see Turkey reasonably strong. A strong, prosperous Turkey would the more readily pay off its pre-War debt, of which French investors held approximately sixty per cent; payment of this debt was more important to France than payment of Turkish reparations. A strong Turkey, furthermore, might fortify the French position in the Near East. As Germany had utilized Ottoman strength against Russia and Great Britain, so France might utilize Nationalist Turkey against a Bolshevist Russia which would not pay its debts or an imperial Britain which might prove unfaithful to the Entente.[14]