Note 7 — Chapter IX · THE PROPOSED DEVOLUTION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

The assertion, so often made, that the United States was offered a share in the exploitation of the Ottoman Empire, and that the opportunity to aid effectively in the solution of the Near Eastern problem was rejected by our refusal to accept President Wilson’s mandate scheme, is without foundation. No such offer was ever made by the Entente Powers. It was not their intention to grant us any mandate like their own in Asiatic Turkey. Within narrow limits that excluded the plains, the mines, the timber, and the oil-fields, the British, French, and Italian premiers would have been glad to see created an Armenian state, financed and protected by the Americans, to which they might deport the Armenians remaining in Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and which would serve as a buffer between their sphere of influence and Soviet Russia. This purpose is revealed in a memorandum of General Franchet d’Espérey to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which he summed up the resources of the regions inhabited by the Armenians. Citing the figures of agricultural and mining engineers, military observers, and railway experts, the general advocated the retention by France of Cilicia and the upper valley of the Euphrates, on the ground that this part of Armenia was a rich country that could be profitably exploited and easily defended, while it was geographically accessible from the Gulf of Alexandretta on the Mediterranean. The bare mountains of Armenia he declared to be without economic value and costly from the points of view of defense or the establishment of communications. He recommended that these regions should therefore be given to the United States!