After the Allies had occupied Constantinople and addressed to the Porte a new collective note requesting the Ministry officially to disown the Nationalist movement, affairs were very difficult for some time. As the Allies thought the Ottoman Cabinet’s answer to their note was unsatisfactory, the first dragomans of the English, French, and Italian commissioners on the afternoon of April 1 again called upon the Ottoman Premier. Owing to the unconciliatory attitude of the English, who made it impossible for it to govern the country, the Ministry resigned. The English required that the new Cabinet should be constituted by Damad Ferid Pasha, on whom they knew they could rely. Indeed, a secret agreement had already been concluded, on September 12, 1919, between Mr. Fraster, Mr. Nolan, and Mr. Churchill, on behalf of Great Britain, and Damad Ferid Pasha on behalf of the Imperial Ottoman Government. The existence of this agreement was questioned at the time, and was even officially denied in the _Stambul Journal_, April 8, 1920, but most likely there was an exchange of signatures between them. According to this agreement,[28] the Sultan practically acquiesced in the control of Great Britain over Turkey within the limits fixed by Great Britain herself. Constantinople remained the seat of the Caliphate, but the Straits were to be under British control. The Sultan was to use his spiritual and moral power as Caliph on behalf of Great Britain, to support British rule in Syria, Mesopotamia, and the other zones of British influence, not to object to the creation of an independent Kurdistan, and to renounce his rights over Egypt and Cyprus. Damad Ferid agreed to do so, with the co-operation of the party of the Liberal Entente. If the information given by the Press is reliable, it seems that the composition of the new Cabinet was endangered at the last moment through the opposition of one of the Allied Powers; yet it was constituted at last.