restige and threatening to set the whole East on fire.[185]
In fine, there was a very pretty row on between people who, less than a
year before, had been pledging their "sacred union" for all eternity.
The Arabs were certainly much edified, and the other Eastern peoples as
well.

Largely owing to these bickerings, Allied action in the Near East was
delayed through 1919. But by the spring of 1920 the Allies came to a
measure of agreement. The meeting of the Allied Premiers at San Remo
elaborated the terms of the treaty to be imposed on Turkey, dividing
Asia Minor into spheres of influence and exploitation, while the Arab
provinces were assigned England and France according to the terms of the
Sykes-Picot Agreement--properly camouflaged, of course, as "mandates" of
the League of Nations. England, France, and their satellite, Greece,
prepared for action. British reinforcements were sent to Mesopotamia and
Palestine; French reinforcements were sent to Syria; an
Anglo-Franco-Greek force prepared to occupy Constantinople, and Premier
Venizelos promised a Greek army for Asia Minor contingencies. The one
rift in the lute was Italy. Italy saw big trouble brewing and determined
not to be directly involved. Said Premier Nitti to an English journalist
after the San Remo conference: "You will have war in Asia Minor, and
Italy will not send a single soldier nor pay a single lira. You have
taken from the Turks their sacred city of Adrianople; you have placed
their capital city under foreign control; you have taken from them every
port and the larger part of their territory; and the five Turkish
delegates whom you will select will sign a treaty which will not have
the sanction of the Turkish people or the Turkish Parliament."

Premier Nitti was a true prophet. For months past the Turkish
nationalists, knowing what was in store for them, had been building up a
centre of resistance in the interior of Asia Minor. Of course the former
nationalist leaders such as Enver Pasha had long since fled to distant
havens like Transcaucasia or Bolshevik Russia, but new leaders appeared,
notably a young officer of marked military talent, Mustapha Kemal Pasha.
With great energy Mustapha Kemal built up a really creditable army, and
from his "capital," the city of Angora in the heart of Asia Minor, he
now defied the Allies, emphasizing his defiance by attacking the French
garrisons in Cilicia (a coast district in Asia Minor just north of
Syria), inflict