Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [232]
In February 1919 it looked as though Venizelos had been right to gamble. The only large question mark was the United States, and Venizelos had every reason to think that he could woo the Americans as successfully as he had wooed the British. He had long talks with House, who assured him that the United States would be helpful. Nicolson arranged for him to meet some of the younger Americans; “he is moderate, charming, gentle, apt. A most successful luncheon.” Venizelos was always good at judging his audience. Seymour, the American expert, described another meeting to his family: “Realizing that his strongest asset would be our belief in his honesty, he determined to lay his cards on the table and speak with absolute frankness, and I think that he did. This policy was almost Bismarckian in cleverness.” The Americans were sympathetic, but not blindly so. They had reservations about Greek claims in Albania and Thrace. When it came to Asia Minor, though, they preferred the Greek claims to the Italian. Even early on, American relations with Italy were deteriorating.28
As the Commission on Greek and Albanian Affairs began to meet in the second week of February, Venizelos kept up the pressure and his hectic pace of activities. He made another presentation: “He is overwhelmingly frank, genial, and subtle,” reported Nicolson. The lunches and dinners went on; the letters and memoranda flowed from his pen. In the United States and Europe his sympathizers organized meetings; in the Balkans and Turkey, his agents stirred up Greek communities to send in petitions to the Peace Conference demanding that they be made part of Greece. Professors urged that Greeks should not be left under the rule of Albanians, “the one race which Europe has not been able to civilise.” (For their part, Albanians begged the United States to take a mandate over their country.) Be careful, warned a member of the government back in Athens: “Trop de zèle can harm us.”29
From its first meeting, the commission fell out on national lines, with the British and the French supporting Greece’s claims, the Americans taking a more detached and moderate view and the Italians for denying virtually everything. Italy did not want a stronger Greece just across the Adriatic. The narrowest part of the Adriatic was at the heel of the Italian boot; sixty miles east, on the Albanian coast, was the superb natural harbor of Vlorë, guarded by the island of Sazan (Italian: Saseno). If Italy held both island and harbor, it could reach across and squeeze shut the entrance to the Adriatic. If an unfriendly power, though, sat on that eastern shore, Italy would always be at its mercy. When Serbia put in its claim for a slice of northern Albania, Italy opposed that as well. Italy had other interests too: the Catholic minority in the north, ministered to by Italian schools and Italian priests. From the Italian point of view, it would have been easiest to take over directly, or at least turn much of Albania into a protectorate.
As February and March wore on, the crisis between Italy and its allies made the commission’s work even more difficult. The two Italian representatives tried to delay the meetings; they quibbled; they threatened to withdraw; they absented themselves, claiming illness (this caused awkward moments when other members met them dining out in Paris). The two, reported Nicolson, “are behaving like children and sulky children at that. They obstruct and delay everything. ”30
The Greek demands on Albania raised the wider issue of whether the little country, so recently created, would survive at all. Greece wanted most of the south