Out of the Woods

The curtain fell on the last scene but one in the little drama in the Chateau d'Ouchy at Lausanne.

Mr. Grew, American unofficial observer, permitted the concessions of the British Vickers-Armstrong Syndicate and French Regie Generale des Chemins de Fer, shorn of their obnoxious preferential clauses, to be included in the Treaty. In vain Sir Horace Rumbold argued that the Turkish Petroleum Co. concession for the Mesopotamian oilfields was valid, that his Government considered no other claims when British interests were affected and that any later contradictory agreement (i. e., the Chester Concession) made by the Turks was simply illegal. Mr. Grew icily referred the British representative to the three years' correspondence between the British and American Governments upon the subject. M. Otchiai, Japanese Ambassador to Italy and delegate at Lausanne, came unexpectedly to America's support, announcing that Japan would not sign the Concessions Protocol because it violated the Open Door (so dear to the Japanese in Korea). Ismet, much surprised, said that Turkey would decide her own economic policy without outside interference. But none the less the British claims tumbled out of the Treaty, to be argued directly between London and Washington or New York.

In spite of Mr. Grew's implicit defense of the claims of the Ottoman-American Development Company (the Chester Concession's legal name), the U. S. State Department issued a categorical denial that the U. S. had given the concessionaries promise of moral or political endorsement. Neither the Department nor its officers took any part in the negotiations for the concession. The sole concern of the American Government was for the Open Door.

Orders to prepare for evacuation within six weeks were given the 10,000 British troops at Chanak and Constantinople. Six U. S. destroyers steamed down the blue Marmora and out through the Dardanelles for home.