M. d’Estournelles de Constant, a member of the Senate, wrote to the French Prime Minister on May 25 that, “after asking the Government most guardedly—for months in the Foreign Affairs Committee and the day before in the Senate—to give information about the mysterious military operations that had been carried on for a year and a half in Asia Minor and towards Mesopotamia,” he found it necessary to start a debate in the Senate upon the following question: “What are our armies doing in Cilicia?”[29] Meanwhile the Supreme Council urged the Turkish delegation to sign the treaty that had been submitted for its approval, and the Allies were going to negotiate with the representatives of a Government which, on the whole, was no longer acknowledged by the country. Of what value might be the signature wrested by the Allies from these representatives, and how could the stipulations of that treaty be carried out by the Turks? Most of its clauses raised internal difficulties in Turkey, and such a confusion ensued that the members of the delegation did not seem to agree any longer with the members of the Ottoman Cabinet, and at a certain time even the latter seemed unable to accept the treaty, in spite of the pressure brought to bear on the Ottoman Government by the English troops of occupation. Mustafa Kemal’s Nationalist forces conquered not only the whole of Asia Minor, but also all the Asiatic coast and the islands of the Marmora, except Ismid, which was still held by British posts. The Turkish Nationalists soon after captured Marmora Island, which commanded the sea route between Gallipoli and Constantinople. On June 16 the British forces engaged the Kemalist troops in the Ismid area. About thirty Indian soldiers were wounded and an officer of the Intelligence Department was taken prisoner by the Turks. The civilians evacuated Ismid, and it was hinted that the garrison would do the same. Mustafa Kemal’s aeroplanes dropped bombs on the town, and the railway line between Ismid and Hereke was cut by the Nationalists. The British forces on the southern coast of the Dardanelles withdrew towards Shanak, whose fortifications were being hurriedly repaired. Mustafa Kemal’s plan seemed to be to dispose his forces so as not to be outflanked, and be able to threaten Smyrna later on. To this end, the Nationalist forces advanced along the English sector toward the heights of Shamlija, on the Asiatic coast of the Bosphorus, from which point they could bombard Constantinople.