The Greek delegation do not think it necessary once more to explain the peaceable and conciliatory motives which have led, them to accept the complete setting off against each other and cancellation of the reparations claimed by Greece and Turkey, although Greece's own claims were considerably higher than those which Turkey has any right to demand. The Greek point of view has been sufficiently explained before the Sub-Commission on Financial Questions, and is moreover summed up in the memorandum which the Greek delegation addressed to the conference on the 20th December last. Nevertheless, the Greek delegation find it necessary to lay stress on certain points in the Turkish memorandum; to disprove those points will be sufficient to shatter the whole crazy fabric of the Turkish claims. In Table No. I annexed to that memorandum there figures a sum of £T. 175,905,108. That sum represents the reparation claimed by Turkey for the 18,865 buildings destroyed by fire in the town of Smyrna. It is hardly necessary to emphasise the extravagance of such a claim. Even if every other proof on this subject failed, it would nevertheless seem strange, to say the least of it, that the Turkish delegation should try to place on Greece the responsibility for a fire which broke out on the fourth day after the occupation of the town by the Turkish regular army and destroyed with significant precision the Greek and Armenian quarters. But if the question of responsibility is set aside, and only the actual facts are taken into account, it is still impossible to find any justification whatsoever for that claim. In fact, everything movable or immovable of any value which existed in the burnt area of the town belonged to Greeks or Armenians (without mentioning the property belonging to foreign nationals). Now all these victims, whether Greeks or Armenians, if they did not perish in the fire itself or in the disturbances which took place at the same time, have taken refuge in Greece or elsewhere outside Turkish territory, where they have been received and helped by the Greek Government and by the charitable institutions of all Christian countries. They were almost all subjects of the Ottoman Empire, to whom Turkey, through the intermediary of her representatives at the conference, absolutely refuses access to her territory, in spite of the repeated requests made by the Greek delegation and strong recommendations on the part of the other delegations. By what rule of equity or right can Turkey claim compensation for damages, caused on her own territory by a fire the origin of which is not open to question, and entirely suffered by populations with which Turkey has never ceased to proclaim that she has now severed all connection? Moreover, this claim is apparently made against the one State which has undertaken the heavy burden of relieving the misfortune of those populations. The Turkish memorandum appears also to father father the responsibility for the depopulation of Turkish territory in Anatolia on Greece. Such an accusation, coming from Turkey, is indeed a surprising one. Since 1914, Turkey has never ceased within her territory to take all those notorious measures the effect and deliberate object of which has been to diminish her own population by 2,000,000 Greeks and Armenians. But in any case it should be noted that the figures given in this connection in the Turkish memorandum do not tally with the facts. Before the last war the actual population of the areas in question amounted to 3,640,000, of whom 1,175,000 were Greeks and Armenians. These two elements in the population having completely or almost completely, disappeared from these provinces, there remain the 2,465,000 Moslems who inhabited these territories before 1914, a figure slightly in excess of that given in the Turkish memorandum. for the present total population of the area. But it seems extremely doubtful whether the Turkish Government can have been in a position, in present circumstances, to collect exact data regarding the population of Anatolia, seeing the difficulties which it used to experience in the collection of such data even in normal times. Even if it be granted, however, that this estimate approaches the truth, not more than 400,000 of the inhabitants of the area would be missing. In these circumstances one is inclined to wonder where the 1,500,000 Moslems can have come from, who are alleged by the Turkish delegation to have been massacred by the Hellenic army. After this it seems somewhat superfluous to insist on the essentially arbitrary character of the allegations contained in the Turkish memorandum. On the other hand, that document contains an allusion to forced emigrations of Moslem inhabitants. The Greek delegation wish to declare formally that at no time during the Greek occupation of Asia Minor was any such measure promulgated or actually applied to the Moslem populations. If the latter were, in certain cases, obliged to move from one district to another, it can only have been under orders received from the Government and from the military authorities of Angora; for as the Greek delegation have already had the honour to state in their memorandum of the 20th December last, the Greek army, during its advance in Anatolia, constantly came across towns and villages which had been entirely deserted and cleared of all movable property. The Turkish army before its retreat systematically ordered the evacuation of the country by the civil population. As regards the valuation of the damage done, which the Turkish delegation have undertaken without the slightest regard for accuracy, it may be pointed out that in Table I, for example, the average value of the buildings destroyed is given as £T. 7,000 for each building, that is to say, about 60,000 fr. Now to anyone who has the barest idea of the primitive condition of the greater part of the towns and villages mentioned in this table, consisting, with few exceptions, of buildings roughly constructed of mud bricks, and lacking every luxury or comfort, this average value of £T. 7,000 per building is glaring evidence of how far the calculations of the Turkish delegation are based on exaggeration. As regards industrial buildings, every one knows how insignificant a part they play in the economic life of this area, the essentially agricultural character of which is notorious. The Turkish delegation attributes to the Greek army all the destruction which has taken place in Anatolia. Now, as the Greek delegation have already pointed out in their memorandum of the 20th December last, a large number of Moslem villages and localities were completely destroyed by the Kemalist army, either because they refused to obey recruiting orders from Angora, or because they received the Greek army in the course of its advance without offering any resistance. Moreover, it is not difficult to show that the number of destroyed houses given by the Turkish delegation is altogether excessive. According to Tables I and II of the memorandum, the destroyed buildings number 160,739. Calculating, on the principle generally accepted in statistics, five persons for each house, there ought to be in Anatolia, to correspond with the 160,739 houses which have disappeared, 803,695 people without shelter. Now the representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and of the International Save the Children Fund, MM. Rodolphe Haccius and Henri Guenod, who were sent to the spot in order to bring relief to the destitute and homeless, estimated the total number of the people who had suffered at about 180,000 (International Review of the Red Cross," No. 47, November 1922, p. 970). It may be noted, as evidence of the accuracy of this figure, that all the information on which these delegates based their calculations was obtained from the Turkish authorities, a fact which is stated in the report itself and further proved by the identity of the figures contained in the above-mentioned report with those given in the Turkish memorandum. It will doubtless be noted that the difference between the figure of 180,000 given by impartial witnesses and that of 803,695 reached by making the necessary calculations from the data furnished in the Turkish memorandum, is too wide to be easily justified. Now it would be particularly edifying to see the results which one would obtain if, assuming that the estimates of the Turkish delegation were correct, one should try to extend them by the application of statistical processes. The total number of buildings given as "destroyed" in the Turkish tables amounts to 160,739, and, counting an average of five persons for each house, they must have sheltered 803,695 people. Further, the value of these buildings is estimated at LT. 658,487,267. That is to say, that the dwellings of 803,695 inhabitants in Anatolia represent a value of £T. 658,487,267; it follows that the dwellings of the 15,000,000 total inhabitants of Anatolia (the figure given in the Turkish memorandum) would represent, by themselves, a value of LT. 12,182,000,000, or about 40 milliards of gold francs. It is clear 2 A [9454] that if all other elements of wealth were valued on the same scale-movable property of all kinds, specie, securities, means of communication, hydraulic power, mines and above all agricultural land, which forms, as is well known, the chief riches of the country-in order to arrive according to ordinary processes at what is called the national wealth of the country, fantastic figures would be reached. Anatolia, inhabited by a population of 15,000,000, would thus possess a national wealth infinitely greater than that of France, which was estimated in 1914, including everything, at 300 milliards of gold francs, or than that of Italy which in 1912 amounted to 85 milliards of gold francs.* The Greek delegation are firmly convinced that the above considerations will be sufficient to furnish irrefutable proof of the unjust and wholly imaginary character of the claims for compensation put forward by the Turkish delegation. No. 39. COMMISSION ON ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL QUESTIONS. Minutes of the Sixth Meeting, January 31, 1923, at 10:30 A.M., under the presidency of M. Bompard. See Minutes of Twenty-fourth Meeting of First Commission (on Territorial and Military Questions), No. 27, p. 426. * Jèze, "Cours de la Science des Finances, 1922," pp. 68 and 69. PART IV. SECTION I. DRAFT TERMS OF PEACE PRESENTED TO THE TURKISH DELEGATION AT LAUSANNE ON JANUARY 31, 1923. NOTE. The instruments drawn up at Lausanne were to be H 1168 2 B |