“We had hoped that two of the great countries of the world would have been able to help us in sharing the responsibility for the government of this troubled country; but for one reason or another they have fallen out. There was first of all Russia. She is out of the competition for a very unpleasant task. Then there was America. We had hopes, and we had good reason for hoping, that America would have shared these responsibilities. She might probably have taken the guardianship of the Armenians, or she might have taken the guardianship of Constantinople. But America is no claimant now, and I am not going to express an opinion as to whether she ever will be, because it would be dangerous to do so; but for the moment we must reckon America as being entirely out of any arrangement which we contemplate for the government of Turkey and for the protection of the Christian minorities in that land.... I ask my noble friend, if he were an Armenian would he feel more secure if he knew that the Sultan and his Ministers were overlooked by a British garrison on the Bosphorus, and that British ships were there within reach, than if the Sultan were at Konia, with hundreds of miles across the Taurus Mountains to the nearest Allied garrison, and the sea with its great British ships and their guns out of sight and out of mind? I know which I would prefer if I were an Armenian with a home to protect.”[18] The Prime Minister concluded his speech by saying that the Allies chiefly desired to take from the Turks the government of communities of alien race and religion, which would feel adequately protected when they knew that their former persecutors must sign the decree for their liberation under the threat of English, French, and Italian guns. Yet he could not dissemble his own misgivings. In the discussion that followed Lord Robert Cecil said that, in any settlement with regard to Armenia, he trusted there would not only be a considerable increase in the present area of the Armenian Republic, but that Armenia would be given some access to the Black Sea in the north. Without that he was satisfied that the Armenian Republic would have the greatest difficulty in living. He earnestly hoped that every influence of the British Government would be used to secure that Cilicia should be definitely removed from Turkish sovereignty. He repeated once more that he was sorry the Turks were going to be retained in Constantinople, but that— “No one wished to turn the Sultan out; the central thing was to get rid of the Sublime Porte as the governor of Constantinople. That did not mean turning anybody out; it merely meant that we were not to hand back Constantinople to the Turkish Government.”