File 3579/1916 'Turkey: the future of Constantinople' [‎115v] (239/530)

2
India and that all references to the announcement in Reuter’s and other news
telegrams should be suppressed. For experience has shown that news which
merely filters into India in letters and newspapers by mail attracts much less
attention, is robbed of much of its sensational effect and serves gradually to
accustom public opinion to disturbing pronouncements.
4. I shall inform you by telegram whether His Majesty’s Government
approve the course indicated in the last paragraph and also the probable date
of the publication as soon as it is settled. The reception accorded to the news
when it actually reaches India will have to be carefully watched. The
passing of objectionable resolutions and any form of hostile demonstration
cannot, of course, be tolerated, and I am to request that, in order to obviate
such contingencies when the time comes, selected officers may be instructed
to explain the situation tactfully but firmly to leading Moslems and the heads
of Moslem associations. The note accompanying the announcement will, it
is hoped, assist them materially in their conversations.
NOTE.
The action of the Turkish Government at the beginning of the war in
providing refuge for the German ships “ Goeben ” and “ Breslau ” made it
clear to the Allied Powers that there were misguided influences at Constanti
nople which, blinded by a false appreciation of the strength of the Central
Powers, would drag Turkey into the war on the side of Germany, and thereby
themselves deal the final blow to the Turkish Empire, whose welfare the
Allies had so long and so unweariedly laboured to promote.
In spite of the equivocal attitude assumed from the first by the Turkish
Government, the Allies made every effort to induce the Sublime Porte to
hold aloof from the struggle, participation in which could only mean for
Turkey the immediate selling herself into bondage to Germany and the
ultimate disintegration of her Empire, which it had long been foreseen would
occur as soon as Turkey took part in, or became the scene of, a movement of
world forces such as is the present war.
The Allies did not ask Turkey to take part in the war on their side : they
only asked that she should remain neutral in her own interests, and they gave
her the most solemn assurances and guarantees that in this case her territorial
integrity and her independence would be left untouched. A guarantee of
integrity and independence was offered to Turkey : neutrality was all that
the Allies asked of her.
None the less, in the early morning of the 29th October 1914, a treacher
ous and unprovoked attack was made without warning by ships of war under
the Turkish flag on the vessels and harbours of a neighbouring Power, with
whom Turkey was then at peace. Russia, who had suffered this unprecedent
ed violation of the most ordinary rules of international law and usage, had no
course left but to make the only reply to a Power capable of committing such
acts, namely, to treat her as an enemy ; and the Allies of Russia, who had in
the past upheld Ottoman sovereignty and who in this war had done their utmost
to save Turkey from the danger into which German influences were leading her,
seeing now that the Turkish Government had definitely joined their enemies,
adhered to the course taken by Russia. Turkey by her own act had given the
signal for her own destruction. All that the treacherous attack of the Turkish
fleet on the Russian coast had done was to hasten the inevitable end of
Ottoman sovereignty, after a record of continuous failure in the government
and administration of the vast regions which the arms of Turkish troops had
won in the past. Above all it was clear that the forbearance with which
Europe had witnessed the long occupation of Constantinople by the Turks had
been to no purpose and that the day had dawned when that occupation
must end. Constantinople must inevitably come into the possession of the
Power whose development had for centuries been cramped and confined
by the barrier imposed on her outlet to the open sea at the narrow passages