ملف ١٩١٦/٣٥٧٩ "تركيا: مستقبل القسطنطينية" [و‎‎١‎٩‎٧] (٥٣٠/٤٠٢)

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Printed for the use of the Cabinet. October 1916.
SECRET.
[ 186945 ]
No. 1.
4
Viscount Grey to Lord Bertie.
(No. 655.)
My Lord, Foreign Office, October 2, 1916.
IN view of the desirability of publishing in the near future the agreement
arrived at regarding the future of Constantinople, it is of importance that His
Majesty’s Government and the French and Russian Governments should agree in
advance on a formula by which this publication may be made.
With this end in view, I transmit to your Lordship herewith a memorandum,
which has been approved by His Majesty’s Government, setting forth the reasons why
at the end of the war Constantinople and the Straits of the Dardanelles should
inevitably be annexed to the Russian Empire. This document might, in my opinion,
serve as a preamble to any collection of papers which the three - Governments may
decide to publish on the subject.
I request, therefore, that your Lordship will communicate the text to the
President of the Council, and if his Excellency concurs in the terms thereof, I should
he glad if M. Briand would send instructions to the French Ambassador at Petrograd
to concert with Sir G. Buchanan in communicating it to the Russian Minister for
Foreign Affairs for his approval or observations, with a view to its eventual
publication simultaneously with the text of the notes exchanged between the three
Governments.
An alternative procedure would be to abstain from issuing the actual text of the
agreements, but to publish this memorandum with a mere statement of the decision
arrived at by the three Powers with any explanatory details that may be considered
necessary.
I am, &c.
GREY OF FALLODON.
u ;
Enclosure.
lip,
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 Constantinople 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 ber
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 he 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 treacherous 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
!
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