Gradually, however, it was realized that tax weariness and war weariness at home must be reckoned with. This meant abandonment of the Caucasus, Persia, and Afghanistan to the undisputed influence of Soviet Russia, whose propaganda it was planned to call off by trade agreements and the lifting of the economic blockade. The Mohammedan world, not being interested in trade and not being vitally vulnerable to any form of economic or food blockade, could best be watched and intimidated by a British fleet at Constantinople, holding Stambul and the Sultan’s palace of Dolmabagché under its guns, and able to cruise at will in the Black Sea. As the tax-payers accept the burden of maintaining the fleet without complaint, the freedom enjoyed in the Straits since 1918 has been a boon to the British Government in exercising pressure without spending too much money! The Treaty of Sèvres is a splendid illustration of the vicious methods of world politics, which make agreements between nations unsound and insincere: unsound because they are not arrived at after a fair consideration of the issues at stake and because they represent makeshift compromises; insincere because the contracting parties do not intend to keep them if contingent agreements--or rather bargains--are not lived up to. The British point of view prevailed in the Treaty of Sèvres. But Italy expected to gain from this concession British support against the Jugoslavs in the Adriatic, and France expected British support for extreme measures against Germany in the reparations collection. Both nations looked to Great Britain either to forgive or forget their indebtedness to her or at least to grant them the priority already acknowledged to Belgium in reparations payments. Before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Sèvres, France and Italy realized that the British could not be depended upon to help them out of their troubles, political or financial; and the return of Constantine gave an excellent excuse to two of the three makers of the treaty not only to consider it null and void but actually to work against it. We must not lay too much stress upon the concessions featured in the secret treaties negotiated by Italy and France with the Angora Government. Considerations of foreign policy were paramount. Italy plotted the ruin of a potential commercial competitor in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. France was bent on destroying the country she believed Great Britain had picked to hold Constantinople and the Straits as agent for British political and commercial interests. The Nationalist Turks had the luck to be a good weapon to be used by two members of the Entente alliance to strike the third; and the Greeks had the misfortune to be lacking in endurance to play through to the end of the game the British expected them to play alone, for the British Government was not prepared to risk Mohammedan difficulties by coming out openly on the side of the Greeks.