711.672/135: Telegram
The High Commissioner at Constantinople (Bristol) to the Secretary of State
[Received 3:27 p.m.]
192. I have the honor to submit the following comments on last part of 550 of July 22 from the Mission at Lausanne to the Department:
It seems quite impossible for me to make recommendations upon the questions in dispute at Lausanne since I am not fully acquainted with the course of our negotiations and am not informed of conversations, official and unofficial, which may have taken place.
But it is my very earnest hope that the negotiations will not be broken off. If that is unavoidable they should be merely suspended, and we should exchange declarations with the Turks to the effect that we have postponed negotiations until after the Grand National Assembly shall have ratified the treaty with the Allied Powers, whereupon we shall promptly resume negotiations at some place to be agreed upon between the two Governments. If the negotiations are thus adjourned I see no reason to fear either that our interests in Turkey will be impaired or that Turkey will ask us to withdraw the High Commission. It is my belief that Ismet Pasha has the full support of his Government in refusing to yield anything on the points in dispute, if I have rightly understood those points. But [Page 1123] I also believe that we can arrive in time at satisfactory settlements if we will refrain from bringing sharply to an issue the matters in controversy.