During the interim between the first and second Lausanne conferences French prestige in the Near East was dealt some severe blows. The Turkish press attacked the French Government for having insisted upon concessions and capitulations which were designed to keep Turkey under foreign domination in the interest of bondholders and promoters. Such conduct, it was pointed out, was altogether inconsistent with the terms of the Angora Treaty by which France agreed “to make every effort to settle in a spirit of cordial agreement all questions relating to the independence and sovereignty of Turkey.”[32] In the National Assembly hostility to French claims was so pronounced that no further action was taken toward the ratification of the Angora Treaty—and without such ratification the French title to certain sections of the Bagdad Railway would be invalid. The Turkish army on the Syrian frontier was reënforced for the purpose of bringing home to France the determination of the Angora Government to tolerate no foreign interference in its domestic affairs. The situation in Syria became so serious that M. Poincaré saw fit to despatch to Beirut one of Marshal Foch’s right-hand men, General Weygand, as commander-in-chief in Syria. The breach between France and Turkey was widened when, on April 10, 1923, the Angora Government awarded to an American syndicate headed by Admiral Colby M. Chester, a retired officer of the United States Navy, concessions for almost three thousand miles of railway, together with valuable rights to the exploitation of the mineral resources of Anatolia.[33] The Chester concessions conflicted with certain French claims which had been under discussion at the first Lausanne Conference: the concession for a Black Sea railway system, which had been conferred upon French capitalists in 1913; and rights to the Arghana copper mines, to which a French group had been given a kind of priority under the Angora Treaty of 1921.[34] In part, at least, the award of the Chester concessions at this particular time was a shrewd political move on the part of the Nationalist Government. It was designed to serve notice on France that no treaty would be acceptable to Turkey which would require complete confirmation of pre-War concessions; from this decision there could be no departure without infringing upon American rights and without recognizing the acts of a former Sultan as superior to acts of the new government of Turkey. It was intended, also, to win for the Turks a measure of American diplomatic support. That the French Government understood the implications of the Chester concessions is evidenced by the fact that the Foreign Office despatched to Angora a note which characterized the award as “a deliberately unfriendly act, of a nature to influence adversely the coming negotiations at Lausanne.”[35]