and capable of Eastern expansion, there remains one, Italy, whose rights to partake in this Turkish partition we have not yet considered.  In the shifting kaleidoscope of national war-politics, it seems at the moment of writing by no means impossible that Greece, having at length got rid of a treacherous and unstable Reuben of a monarch, may redeem her pledge to Serbia, in which case, no doubt, she too would state the terms of her desired and legitimate expansion.  But these would more reasonably be concerned with the redistribution of the Balkan Peninsula, which does not come within the scope of this book, and we may prophesy without fear of invoking the Nemesis that so closely dogs the heels of seers, that Italy will legitimately claim (or perhaps has already claimed) the protectorate of this valuable littoral.  Certain it is that, when peace returns, the large population of Greeks and Italians once resident (and soon again to be) on these coasts, must be given the liberty and security which they will never enjoy so long as they remain in Turkish hands, and the hands that have earned the right to be protecting Power are assuredly Italian.  Along the south coast a line including the Taurus range would seem to suggest a natural frontier inland from Adana on the east to the south-west corner of Asia Minor, and from there a similar strip would pass up the coast as far as, and inclusive of, Smyrna.  That at least Italy has every right to expect, and there seems no great fear that among the International Councils there will arise a dissentient voice.  The inland boundary on the west coast is the difficult section of this delimitation, and into the details of that it would be both rash and inexpedient to enter.

II

We pass, then, to the second avowed object of the Allies, namely, the expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman rule, which has proved itself so radically alien to Western civilisation.  This must be taken to include not only the expulsion of the Turkish control from Thrace and Constantinople, but from the eastern side as well of the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmora, and the Dardanelles.  At no future time must Turkey be in a position to command even partially a single yard of that momentous channel through which alone our Allies, Russia and Rumania, have access to the Mediterranean.  Though this was not formally stated in the Allies’ reply to President Wilson, it is clearly part and parcel of the object in view, for while the Ottoman Empire retains the smallest control on either side of either of the Straits, she is so far able to interfere in European concerns, in which she must never more have a hand.  The east shore, then, of the Straits and the Sea of Marmora, as well as the west, must be under the control of a Power, or a group of Powers, not alien to Western civilisation.  Germany and her allies therefore, no less than Turkey, must be excluded from the guardianship of the Straits.