In the course of the debate on the foreign policy of England which opened on Thursday, March 25, on the third reading of the Finance Bill, Mr. Asquith, speaking of the Turkish problem as leader of the Opposition, urged that the Ottoman Government should no longer hold in Europe the political power that belonged to it before the war. He urged, however, that the Sultan should not be relegated to Asia Minor, where he would quite escape European control. He proposed, therefore, that the Sultan should be, as it were, “vaticanised”—that is to say, he should remain in Constantinople, but should only retain his spiritual power as Caliph, as the Pope does in Rome. The Great Powers or the League of Nations would then be entrusted with the political power in Constantinople, and if the Bosphorus or the Dardanelles were neutralised or internationalised, the presence of the Sultan in Constantinople would not be attended with any serious danger. As to Mesopotamia, Mr. Asquith objected to the _status quo ante bellum_. As the frontiers of that region were not quite definite, sooner or later, he thought, if England remained there, she would be driven to advance to the shores of the Black Sea, or even the Caspian Sea, and she had not adequate means for the present to do so. So it was better for her to confine her action within the Basra zone. The Prime Minister, rising in response, first remarked that the cause of the delays in the negotiations with Turkey and the settlement of peace was that the Allies had thought it proper to wait for the decision of America, as to the share she intended to take in the negotiations. He recalled that the Allies had hoped the United States would not only assume the protection of Armenia properly speaking, but of Cilicia too, and also accept a mandate for the Straits of Constantinople, and went on as follows: “If we had not given time for America to make up her mind it might have suspected the Allies wanted to take advantage of some political difficulty to partition Turkey; and it is only when the United States definitely stated she did not intend to take part in the Conference that the Allies proceeded to take definite decisions with regard to the Turkish peace. I think that it is due to the Allies to make that explanation.” Mr. Lloyd George went on to state that the Allies had contemplated maintaining only the spiritual power of the Sultan, but unfortunately this scheme did not seem likely to solve the difficulties of the situation. For Constantinople had to be administered at the same time, and it is easier to control the Sultan and his Ministers in Constantinople than if they were relegated to Asia Minor.