Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/354

 British and the Turks should seek to effect an understanding. The claims of Great Britain, it appeared, were more easily reconcilable with the Turkish program than were the claims of France. Concessions obtained by British nationals between 1910 and 1914 were largely in areas detached from Turkey during the War—chiefly in Mesopotamia—whereas many of the most important French concessions were in Anatolia, the stronghold of the Turkish Nationalists.[29] To Great Britain, therefore, it was a matter of comparative indifference whether all concessions within Turkey were specifically confirmed; to France it was a matter of the utmost importance. According to the proposed Lausanne treaty the Turkish Government was to expropriate the former German railways in Turkey, with a view to incorporating them into a state-owned system, and was to pay therefor to the Financial Commission, on reparations account, a sum to be fixed by an arbitrator appointed by the League of Nations.[30] It suited British interests thus to prevent a rival Power from obtaining control of the former Bagdad line; it suited French interests not at all to be deprived of a considerable share in a highly important enterprise. In the settlement of questions regarding the Ottoman Public Debt, likewise, the French were more obdurate than the British.

In the closing days of the conference, the question of Mosul and its oilfields—the last question which stood in the way of an Anglo-Turkish agreement—was temporarily settled by a decision to make it the subject of "direct and friendly negotiations between the two interested Powers." But no agreement was possible between Turkey and France on concessions and capitulations. When the first Lausanne Conference broke up, therefore, it was because of the determination of the Turks not to accept economic, financial, and judicial clauses which they