Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/355

 believed menaced their independence. "The treaty," said Ismet Pasha, head of the Turkish delegation, "would strangle Turkey economically. I refuse to accept economic slavery for my country, and the demands of the Allies remove all possibility of economic rehabilitation and kill all our hopes." On the other hand, the refusal of the Turks to sign was characterized by the chief of the French delegates as "a crime."[31]

During the interim between the first and second Lausanne conferences French prestige in the Near East was dealt some severe blows. The Turkish press attacked the French Government for having insisted upon concessions and capitulations which were designed to keep Turkey under foreign domination in the interest of bond-*holders and promoters. Such conduct, it was pointed out, was altogether inconsistent with the terms of the Angora Treaty by which France agreed "to make every effort to settle in a spirit of cordial agreement all questions relating to the independence and sovereignty of Turkey."[32] In the National Assembly hostility to French claims was so pronounced that no further action was taken toward the ratification of the Angora Treaty—and without such ratification the French title to certain sections of the Bagdad Railway would be invalid. The Turkish army on the Syrian frontier was reënforced for the purpose of bringing home to France the determination of the Angora Government to tolerate no foreign interference in its domestic affairs. The situation in Syria became so serious that M. Poincaré saw fit to despatch to Beirut one of Marshal Foch's right-hand men, General Weygand, as commander-in-chief in Syria.

The breach between France and Turkey was widened when, on April 10, 1923, the Angora Government awarded to an American syndicate headed by Admiral Colby M. Chester, a retired officer of the United States