The growing estrangement between England and France as to the enforcement of the German Treaty spread to other questions. In nothing so much as in his dealings with Bolshevist Russia has Mr. Lloyd George displayed what his latest biographer describes as his passion for doing something without rightly apprehending 'the remoter consequences.' He was willing enough to join with France in lending material support to Koltchak and Denikin against the Bolshevists, and yet he burst upon the Paris Peace Conference, in accord only with President Wilson, a proposal for a friendly meeting with the Soviet leaders at Prinkipo. The proposal fell through, because the Bolshevists did not respond. But Mr. Lloyd George still continued to hanker after some sort of rapprochement with them. His instinct was, as often, sound. If peace was to be restored to Europe, Russia, hateful as were the principles and methods of her rulers, could not be permanently left beyond the pale. But France, who had seen many hundreds of millions of her people's savings wiped out, when she could least afford it, by the Russian revolution, heard only the voice of British selfishness when Mr. Lloyd George talked at random about Russia's bursting corn bins' and the need of regaining access to the Russian markets for the benefit of British trade. His pretence of having invited M. Krassin to London as a member of the Russian Co-operative Societies deceived nobody, and Frenchmen were not alone in reading an overwhelming desire to conciliate him and his Soviet Trade Delegation into the British Prime Minister's indifference to the fate of Poland when the Bolshevist armies were at the gates of Warsaw at the end of July 1920.

The Poles are not the wisest of peoples and the new wine of freedom had gone to their heads, but the restoration of Poland's freedom had been as much a British as a French war aim, and was conspicuously implemented in the Treaty of Versailles. Yet Mr. Lloyd George, whilst doing lip-worship to the principle, risked seeing Poland thrown to the Bolshevist wolves, had not France come to her rescue. Still more definitely, but more straight-forwardly, and on much more avowable grounds, did Mr. Lloyd George dissociate himself from France in refusing any form of British countenance to General Wrangel's final and utterly futile attempt to rally the anti-Bolshevist forces of resistance against Moscow. Not till last April, however, did

Mr. Lloyd George succeed in bringing French Ministers to meet the representatives of Soviet Russia at the Genoa Conference. More spectacular than any other since the Paris Conference, it ended in a failure which the British Prime Minister's optimism could scarcely disguise. Even if America had not refused to have anything to do with it, and no cold douche had been thrown upon it by the Treaty of Rapallo concluded just outside Genoa between Russia and Germany, it would still have been bound to end in failure; for, though Mr. Lloyd George had dragged France into it, there had never been any definite understanding between him and the reluctant French Government as to the limits within which they were prepared to act together.

Nowhere has such an appalling Nemesis already overtaken British foreign policy since the Armistice as in the East, and nowhere has Mr. Lloyd George to bear so heavy a share of direct responsibility, though nowhere also can he plead with more reason as an extenuating circumstance the shifty manœuvres of our Allies and especially of France. When, in view of the profound unrest throughout Asia, he was pressed after the Armistice to settle the peace terms with the Turks whilst they were still in the mood of fatalistic resignation to defeat, he preferred to listen to those who told him that the East was never in a hurry.' What need therefore to hurry about Turkey? He decided to 'let Turkey wait.' There were of course other reasons too. President Wilson also wanted to let Turkey wait,' as he hoped ultimately to induce his people to take over the mandate for Armenia. But America had not to take any hand in the peace negotiations with Turkey, as there had never been a state of war between them, and the question of an Armenian mandate for the United States might have been left open, in the same way as the actual designation of the Mandatory Powers for the Arab provinces was omitted two years later in the Treaty of Sèvres. France and Italy also wanted to 'let Turkey wait.' Though their special interests were partially safeguarded by the secret agreements made with England during the war, they felt themselves at a tactical disadvantage in pressing them when the British armies, that had alone brought Turkey to her knees, were still almost alone in possession. But for that very reason, had Mr. Lloyd George been conscious of the immeasurably greater importance to us than to anyone else of restoring peace in the East, he would

have insisted-and been entitled to insist-that the Turkish Peace Mission which actually came to Paris during the Conference to ask for terms of peace should not be sent away empty-handed. Could he have visualised the Turkish question as part of a much larger Asian question in which Western civilisation is at stake, he would not have left such ominous storm signals unheeded as the grave disturbances in Egypt, and immediately afterwards in the Punjab, whilst the Peace Conference was still sitting; nor would he have regarded as a mere matter of bargaining with M. Clemenceau the allocation of mandates for Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia, which the Arab world has ever since resented as a breach of our war-time promises of Arab independence.

In Turkey, the trouble really began when, in obedience to the cry for demobilisation and retrenchment, the bulk of the British forces which had actually defeated Turkey was rapidly withdrawn from the positions which they had occupied after the Armistice in the Caucasus and the maritime provinces of Asia Minor, and the task of maintaining military pressure in Anatolia was almost wholly left to the French and Italian forces, which were only sent out there after the war was over. The temptation to our Allies to seek in the East an opportunity for reprisals for the undue pressure which they held Mr. Lloyd George to have exerted upon them during and after the Paris Peace Conference was too great. Nowhere did inter-allied jealousy have more disastrous results. It was partly to fill up as against Turkey the gap left by the early withdrawal of our own forces that Mr. Lloyd George secured the rather unwilling consent of France and Italy to the Greek occupation of Smyrna on May 15, 1919, but it was partly also because England and France suspected Italy of an intention to occupy Smyrna herself.

Mr. Lloyd George may well have fallen, like everyone else at the Peace Conference, under the spell of M. Venizelos, to whose faith in the Allied cause we owed it that Greece had not been dragged into the war on the side of Germany and converted with all her outlying islands into a most formidable base for German submarine activities in the Mediterranean. The Greek statesman's vision of a greater Hellas as a bulwark once more against Turkish barbarism was just of a nature to appeal to Mr. Lloyd George's quick and sometimes generous imagination, and he has himself claimed for his policy towards Turkey a sort of apostolic

succession to Mr. Gladstone's. In spite of the misgivings of some of his colleagues, he unquestionably pledged himself very deeply to M. Venizelos, and held out the prospect of support in every shape save actual military co-operation in the interior of Asia Minor He did not pause to consider the effect of Greek intervention on the temper of the Turks, for whom the Greeks were still little more than a rebellious subject race, nor how far the aggrandisement of Greece at Turkey's expense could be reconciled with his declaration in January 1918 that we were not fighting 'to deprive Turkey of its capital, or of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace which are predominantly 'Turkish in race-a declaration which he afterwards renewed with added emphasis, though heavy fighting had meanwhile already taken place between the Greek and Turkish armies.

The Turkish Nationalist movement grew by leaps and bounds after the entry of the Greeks upon the scene, but all went fairly well with them for over a year and their successes encouraged the Allies at last to draw up the Treaty of Sèvres and summon the Turks to sign it. The Treaty was severe. Not only did it give practically all Thrace to Greece as well as rights, which fell only nominally short of sovereign rights, over Smyrna and a considerable hinterland; but it provided for the creation of an independent Armenian State, and it placed the whole Turkish administration throughout a much diminished Turkey, and notably in the regions adjoining the Straits, under unprecedentedly strict international tutelage. Yet nearly 50 years ago Lord Salisbury had written that if the Turk is to be allowed to live, his teeth 'must be drawn.' This had become immeasurably more true since 1876, and how else could his teeth be drawn? How else could we fulfil the pledges repeatedly given by Great Britain during the war that never again should the subject races of Turkey-Christian or Mohamedan-be handed back unrestrained Turkish misrule? Those pledges after all may well have ranked in Mr. Lloyd George's eyes as more binding, if only because earlier in date, than his declaration concerning the ' renowned homelands of the Turkish race,' over which, except in Thrace and in the projected Armenian State, Ottoman sovereignty was moreover still to be formally maintained. The Sultan's Government itself subscribed, under pressure, to the Treaty of Sèvres, but the rival and much more vital Angora

to

Government vehemently opposed to it the Turkish National 'Pact,' under which the Turks were sworn to fight to the bitter end for the full restoration of Turkish sovereignty everywhere save in the old Arab provinces of the Empire.

In France and Italy there had been no enthusiasm for the Treaty of Sèvres, but no radical divergence arose between them and Great Britain until the overthrow of M. Venizelos and the return of King Constantine to Athens. There is strong evidence now that Mr. Lloyd George was at first furious and did not spare the Greeks his views as to the magnitude of the blunder they had committed. But all that the British Government did was to refuse to recognise him. France, who had always held him personally responsible for the attack on the French soldiers in the streets of Athens in December 1916, seized the opportunity to renounce more or less openly the cause of Greece, and so did Italy, morbidly jealous of any Greek expansion as an obstacle to her own ambitions on the Eastern coast of the Adriatic. The French and the Italians, left by the premature withdrawal of the British forces in close contact with Angora, succumbed to the temptation of coming to terms on their own account with the Kemalists. There were also powerful financial influences, that had formerly fished with some success in the muddy waters of Constantinople, quite ready to back Turkey against Greece for a sufficient consideration. No definite parting of the ways between Great Britain and her Allies took place until the Greek armies started their great offensive against Angora in the summer of 1921, and even then endeavours were still made to keep up outward appearances of unity. The Allies jointly condemned any forward movement and repudiated at Athens all responsibility for its consequences. They would regard it henceforth as a purely Greco-Turkish war in which they must remain absolutely neutral.

But the Greek Government could not go back. King Constantine's popularity was at stake, and neither Greek finances nor the morale of the Greek armies could stand the protracted strain of remaining indefinitely on the defensive. Moreover it has been asserted in Greece and generally believed not in Greece alone, that she was encouraged to disregard the Allied warning by personal assurances from Mr. Lloyd George that the British Government had not intended to veto any Greek military operations, though they had been compelled to discountenance