The Winding-Up of the Versailles Treaty

Excerpt from The Winding-Up of the Versailles Treaty: Report to the IV. Congress of the Communist International

British policy of economic control of the Near East had another trump-card, namely, the old connections of British capitalism with the Greeks. Greece possesses in the Near East a relatively strong commercial capital. While the capitalist production of Greece is still in a backward state, she has got for centuries a considerable merchant marine and commercial connections which outstrip by far those of the Armenian merchants. At an early period, British commercial capital penetrated, through Greek channels, into Asia Minor. This was the economic basis of British Philhellenism. The handing over of Smyrna to the Greeks meant practically its annexation by British commercial capital.

However, the Allies at Sevres miscalculated the whole situation. Although the main cadre, on which Kemal Pasha relied in the rising of 1919, came from the old organisation of the Young Turks, he could not fight under their banner, for the Young Turkish Party is discredited, partly in consequence of the defeat in the war, partly through having turned during the war into a clicque of army purveyors and profiteers, who, while they could not yet be called a capitalist party, exhibited all the vices of capitalism. Kemal Pasha, while keeping aloof from them as a Party, could not help seeing that they were the only organised force which Turkey had for her defence. These elements have come, before all, from a section of professional soldiers, typifying the landless gentry who lost cast, then from the old bureaucracy who descended partly from the same class, partly from the popular masses. In old Turkey it was possible for energetic men of the lower strata of society to enter the ruling oligarchy. (it may suffice to mention Talaat Pasha, who, as the son of a railway worker, rose, through his energy and talent from a telegraph operator to the office of a Grand Vizier.) Also inthe army there were many higher officers who had come from the ranks of the people. These conditions made it possible for the decaying upper class to renew the oligarchy and to recruit fresh energies for the reorganisation of the State. These are the forces employed by Kemal Pasha, with so much effect, in his work of organisation of the defence of his country. In view of the fact that Turkey had been undergoing a long series of wars since 1909 and that the peasantry has been well nigh ruined, the success of Kemal Pasha appears to be quite marvellous, but it is,. None the less, comprehensible if we recall to our mind the long past of the Turkish people, its rule for centuries over south-eastern Europe, and its warlike traditions. These traditions are found most pronouncedly among the Anatolian peasants, who are distinguished by their strong attachment to their country and their unfailing readiness to defend it. In addition to this it may be remarked that the Turkish people regard this defence as a struggle against enslavement of the Islamic East by the Christian Occident.

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