“My noble friend said: Why could you not make peace with Turkey, cutting out all the non-Turkish territories, and then leaving Constantinople and Anatolia to be dealt with?’ I think on consideration he will see that is not possible. What is to be done with Constantinople? What is to be done with the Straits?... If those doors had been open, and if our fleet and our merchant ships had been free to go through ... the war would have been shortened by two or three years. They were shut treacherously in our faces. We cannot trust the same porter. As to what will remain much depended on whether America came in.... Would America take a share, and, if so, what share? France has great burdens, Britain has great burdens, Italy has great burdens. Much depended on whether America, which has no great extraneous burdens, and which has gigantic resources, was prepared to take her share.... But until America declared what she would do, any attempt to precipitate the position might have led to misunderstandings with America and would have caused a good deal of suspicion, and we regard a good understanding with America as something vital. That is the reason why we could not make peace with Turkey.... “We are entitled to say now: ‘We have waited up to the very limits we promised, and we have waited beyond that.’ The decision of America does not look promising.... Therefore we consider now, without any disrespect to our colleagues at the Peace Conference, and without in the least wishing to deprive the United States of America of sharing the honour of guardianship over these Christian communities, that we are entitled to proceed to make peace with Turkey, and we propose to do so at the earliest possible moment. We have had some preliminary discussions on the subject. As far as they went they were very promising. They will be renewed, partly in this country, partly probably in France, in the course of the next few days, and I hope that it will be possible to submit to Turkey the terms of peace at an early date.” But as the Allies, instead of dictating terms of peace to Turkey at the end of 1918, had postponed the settlement of the Turkish question for fourteen months, as they had dismissed the Ottoman delegation after summoning it themselves, and as the question was now about to be resumed under widely different circumstances and in quite another frame of mind, the Paris Conference found itself in an awkward situation. * * * * * About the end of the first half of February, 1920, the Peace Conference at last resumed the discussion of the Turkish question.