Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [281]
When Venizelos reached out for Smyrna and its hinterland, he was going well beyond what could be justified in terms of self-determination. He was also putting Greece into a dangerous position. Taking the fertile valleys of western Asia Minor as they sloped up toward the dry Anatolian highlands was perhaps necessary, as he argued, to protect the Greek colonies along the coast. From another perspective, though, it created a Greek province with a huge number of non-Greeks as well as a long line to defend against anyone who chose to attack from central Anatolia. His great rival General Ioannis Metaxas, later dictator of Greece, warned of this repeatedly: “The Greek state is not today ready for the government and exploitation of so extensive a territory.”8 Metaxas was right.
The Commission on Greek and Albanian Affairs, which was expected to come up with a rational solution to all the competing claims on Ottoman territory, not surprisingly failed to do so. The Italians opposed Greek claims outright and the British and French were sympathetic. The American experts, who were prepared to admit Greece’s claims in Europe, felt they could not, in good conscience, do so in Asia Minor. The Turks were in the majority in the area as a whole and, even though Smyrna was Greek, it would be wrong on economic grounds to sever it from Turkey. As the American expert William Linn Westermann said, “Smyrna and its harbor are the eyes, the mouth, and the nostrils of the people of Anatolia.” Nor did the Americans accept the argument that the Turks were so backward that they needed outside rule. “It is the consensus of opinion,” said an American expert, “of American missionaries, who know him through and through, of American, British, and French archeologists who have worked for years beside and with him, of British merchants who have traded with him, of British soldiers who have fought against him, that the Anatolian Turk is as honest as any other people of the Near East, that he is a hard-working farmer, a brave and generous fighter, endowed fundamentally with chivalrous instincts.”9
The commission’s report simply presented both views. Wilson might well have backed the position of his own experts if his exasperation with the Italians had not made him willing to listen to Venizelos, who was making sure that the Big Three, as they now were, received alarming reports of dubious veracity of Greeks being massacred by Turks and of the way in which the Italians were, so he said, working hand in glove with the Turks. To Nicolson, one of the British experts on the commission, Venizelos boasted happily, “I have received assurances of comfort and support from Lloyd George and Wilson.” Lloyd George had already agreed that a Greek cruiser should go to Smyrna, and Venizelos saw an opening to send Greek forces into Asia Minor as a counterbalance to the Italians. He and Venizelos had a private dinner in early May. Frances Stevenson, who was present, noted in her diary: “The two have a great admiration for each other, & D. is trying to get Smyrna for the Greeks, though he is having trouble with the Italians over it.” What Venizelos remembered from the evening was that Lloyd George was hopeful he could get Constantinople as well for the Greeks.10
On the morning of May 6, the Allies casually took the decision that set in train the events that destroyed, among many other things, Smyrna itself, Venizelos’s great dream and Lloyd George’s governing coalition. In the Council of Four, Lloyd George pressed for a decision on Smyrna. If they did not act, he said, the Italians would get away with grabbing a piece of Asia Minor. Greek troops were available; they could be told to land wherever there was a danger of disturbances or massacres. “Why not tell them to land now?” replied Wilson. “Do you have any objection?” “None,” said Lloyd George. Clemenceau put in: “I don’t have any either. But must we notify the Italians?” “Not in my opinion,” said Lloyd George. The Italians, who returned to the Peace Conference the following