With all these conflicting aims, motives, and treaty entanglements, is it any wonder that the Peace Conference year brought no agreement as to the terms of the treaty to be imposed upon Turkey? When the Treaty of Versailles and the other treaties were imposed, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria were compelled to sign a blank check, agreeing beforehand to whatever disposition of the Ottoman Empire the Principal Allied and Associated Powers might make. So they were out of it! But these treaties did contain a very definite provision for the peoples of Turkey. Article XXII of the League of Nations Covenant provides a mandatory government “to those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of states which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” The “well-being and development of such people form a sacred trust of civilization,” so the Covenant declared, and they were divided into three classes. The first dealt with the liberated regions of the Ottoman Empire. The text is explicit: Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory. The mandatory idea was seized upon by General Smuts as a way of overcoming Mr. Wilson’s strenuous objection to the _fait accompli_ of the distribution of Germany’s colonies. The American President accepted this in good faith, and agreed to present to the American people the proposal that the United States assume the Armenian mandate. Taking for granted the sincerity of his colleagues, he proposed that an international commission be sent to the Ottoman Empire to ascertain “the wishes of these communities” in regard to the selection of mandatory powers. His colleagues agreed; but they did not send their delegates. The Americans went alone, and brought back a report quite at variance with the mandate distribution as arranged among the Entente Powers.