I hold no brief for British or French, for Italian or Russian, for Turk or Greek. I have tried not to wander into by-paths but to present here the facts concerning the Straits. It is true that these facts present a sorry picture of international morality. But is it not important for us to analyze the motives actuating the principals in this stupendous diplomatic battle? For only in this way shall we come to understand how futile would be the solution proposed so glibly, i. e., that the League of Nations control the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. For, from the world point of view, there is no separate problem called the Question of the Straits, unless we decapitalize Straits, and cut out the definite article. There is a question of straits, by which we mean all international waterways. The League of Nations can rightly be suspected of being an agent of particular interests, plotting in the interests of some nations against other, until its champions are able to convince themselves and public opinion in the nations whose representatives sit on the League Council that the League can exist and function only as an instrument of impartial administration and justice. If the United States is willing to give up the Panama Canal to the League, and Great Britain is willing to give up Gibraltar and the Suez Canal to the League, we have the right to criticize French and Italian policy on the Bosphorus, on the ground that these powers have less faith in the League than ourselves! But by what right do we expect these two powers to entrust their interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea to the League of Nations when we neither have given the example nor will promise to follow it? And what can we possibly find to say to Russia or Turkey, the countries most interested? CHAPTER XXIV THE EASTERN QUESTION BEFORE THE LAUSANNE CONFERENCE The conference agreed upon at the time of the signing of the Mudania armistice opened at Lausanne on November 20, 1922. The Turks had been defeated in the World War. Their capital was still occupied by Entente soldiers and sailors. Within a decade the Ottoman Empire had suffered the most crushing humiliations on the field of battle in all its long history, followed by the loss of more than half its territory. Italy had taken Tripoli; the Balkan States had divided up the European provinces; Italy and Greece were in possession of the Ægean islands, including Rhodes and Crete; France held Syria; and Great Britain was organizing a new political status for Palestine, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, and Cyprus. The Sublime Porte had gone out of business, and the House of Osman had ceased to rule over what was left of Turkey. And yet the Turks came to Lausanne, inspired by their easy victory over the Greeks, to negotiate a treaty to take the place of the Treaty of Sèvres, which had been dictated to them as a conquered nation two years earlier by the victors of the World War.