Introduction: The King-Crane Commission Report

• The King-Crane Commission Report
• Appendix: The King-Crane Commission Report
• Map for The King-Crane Commission Report

The Vital Significance of the Report That Follows

Facts are first. The world is askew today because facts have been concealed or perverted. If in 1918-1919, the world had seen the international situation stripped of all camouflage, with every secret treaty opened and every national condition made clear, it would have insisted upon a totally different outcome of events. Today's world tragedy is an illustration of the old teaching that “Where there is no vision the people perish”; and of- the later word, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

One of the great suppressed documents of the peace-making period was the comprehensive King-Crane Report upon conditions in Turkey. This was the work of the official American Commission sent from Paris when the question of mandates in Turkey was up before the “Big Four.” It went out with instructions to report the facts as it found them. The text makes clear why the Report should have been rigorously concealed by a then spineless State Department. Yet if it had been published promptly, as intended, it would completely have altered the current of events in Turkey, and possibly also have changed the whole American attitude toward post-war international responsibilities. Certainly it would have freed us from a flood of unfounded propaganda, and it might easily have saved the lives of possibly a million persons needlessly sacrificed since the war.

There would have been no need of a Lausanne Conference, or of a Graeco-Turkish war, or of a disruption of allied co-operation in the Near East, or of any of the tragic and tremendous events there which now threaten the wreck of civilization, if the King-Crane Report had been published.

Uncolored and authenticated and disseminated facts are more powerful than any of the schemes of statesmen or conclusions of conferences.

Today EDITOR & PUBLISHER gives to the newspaper-makers of the world, and to the general public, as a timely and essential source-book of facts-the facts that have been most needed and least known-the full text of this long-suppressed, much-discussed King-Crane Report.

The document is one that is needed by every editorial writer in the world; every teacher or student of history; every clergyman and friend of missions and education in the Levant; every person doing business in the Near East; every member of Congress; every foreign office everywhere;-in short everybody who, in a propaganda-ridded day, desires a body of uncolored and unquestioned facts concerning the most important present international issue.

Not all the conclusions of the report are today applicable. Alas, the consequences it predicted have come to pass in many respects. The vindication of the value of the findings lies in the calamities which have since overtaken the Near East. Nevertheless, there is a flood of light shed upon present obscurities by this document.

• It tactfully but fearlessly reveals the clashing ambitions of the allies at Constantinople.
• It exposes the evils of the secret treaties.
• It makes clear the glaring contrast between the solemn pledges of the European nations to the peoples of the Near East and their imperialistic course.
• It conservatively portrays the passion of these ancient peoples for America, and their confidence in her integrity, good will and unselfishness.
• It, shows plainly why America should not have taken a mandate for Armenia alone.
• It boldly lays down a project for a Pan-Turkish mandate in three groups, for America; which the allies, who wanted Turkish loot, by no means favored; and which time and events have now made impracticable.
• It sets forth, so that even a wayfaring man may not err, the basic conditions of the Near East.
• It prenounces the doom of Zionism.
• It portrays an incredible co-operation between Moslems and Christians, in pursuit of the goal of “self-determination.”
• It shows, with uncanny prescience, the effect of the Smyrna massacres by the Greeks upon the reawakening of the Turks.
• It proves the untenability of European claims upon Turkish territory.
• Likewise it makes plain the unfitness of the old Ottoman Empire to rule or to continue to live.
• It nullifies the censorship and propaganda which have veiled the facts concerning the Near East from the eyes of the world.

This report, in the highest sense, is a journalistic triumph. For it shows how a small group of American reporters, or investigators, took an assignment to find out the bed-rock facts upon one of the most clouded and intricate international situations in the world. They went about their task with all the canniness, caution and courage of good correspondents. Moreover, they not only fearlessly discovered the facts and clearly set them forth, but they also followed them to their conclusions.

Ignorance, bias and selfish interests, aided by their trusty handmaidens, censorship and propaganda, had brought the Paris Peace Conference to a standstill upon the disposition of Turkey. There was no agreement upon the fundamental facts of the case.

Thereupon President Wilson proposed that a joint allied Commission should be sent to Turkey to ascertain the true conditions, and especially the desires of the peoples concerned, respecting the nations which should become mandatories, as was the oft-expressed intent of the peacemakers. This, be it remembered, was in the days when the principle of “self-determination” and the other allied war aims still retained a degree of sanctity. So obviously right and reasonable was President Wilson's suggestion, that the other three members of the “Big Four” agreed “in principle.”

“In principle” is a venerable and invaluable diplomatic phrase, in this case as so often, it meant the opposite of “in practice.” For the European nations shilly-shallied for a time and then refused to send out commissions. Apparently, the facts were the last things that were desired in some quarters. So the American Commissioners of the International Commission on Mandates in Turkey went alone, fully accredited.

It cannot too often or too strongly be said that the King-Crane Report supersedes all the views and counsel of speakers and writers who are “Near Eastern experts.” Most of the latter, from entirely honorable motives, are partisans of one or more of the many sides of this question which today has the world by the throat.

America is full of propaganda that is perilous. For example, a large body of churchmen, who are apparently quite ignorant of the facts involved in recent events in Anatolia, and who have never heard of atrocities by Greeks, such as are on official record, are clamoring that America send an army and a navy to the Mediterranean to do something or other to the Turks! This is, of course, sheer hysteria, which will break on the granite courage and knowledge and good sense of Secretary of State Hughes; but it is nevertheless an awesome spectacle of the possibility of how an uninformed democracy might precipitate the gravest consequences.

There are many eloquent speakers, and writers with moving pens, who are having an extraordinary effect upon the public opinion of America today, in this pivotal matter of the Near East. Some of them are pro-Turk, some are pro-Greek; many are pro-Armenian; many are pro-Zionist, a few are pro-Syrian, pro-Bulgarian, pro-Arab, or pro-Egyptian. Others, in great number, are pro-British, pro-French, pro-Italian or pro-German. Most of them function from sincere conviction: only a few are mere hirelings.

It is a service of highest value that EDITOR & PUBLISHER does in discrediting and largely nullifying these by presenting the cold, matured facts in the case, as fully gathered and fearlessly stated by a responsible, unbiased American group of investigators.

If the leaders of American thought read this document through carefully, and then file it for future reference, the propagandist may be silenced. And it is the plain duty of the press to do exactly this thing. Try as they may, newspapers cannot always escape the taint of foreign propaganda in news received from abroad. But at least they may combat propaganda at home. The peace of the world. and the safety of our country, require that foreign propaganda be dealt with vigorously by men whose sanity is stronger than their sentimentalism.

Perhaps the post-war cleavage between the policies of the Allies and of the United States, and the basis for the King-Crane Commission, were never more succinctly explained than by President Wilson's first allusion in Paris to the network of secret treaties that there were revealed:

“As the United States of America were not bound by any of the secret treaties in question, they are quite ready to approve a settlement on the basis of facts.”

Secret treaties largely caused the war; they certainly prolonged it; and . they wrecked the peace. Out of secret treaties has grown that international distrust which is probably the gravest factor in a world full of evil forces. Secret treaties have made war-time allies present-day enemies. They have begotten in America a lack of confidence in the nations of the Old World that is the real reason for this country's holding aloof from international obligations. If it were not for the secret treaties, disclosed at Paris, there would have been a different kind of League of Nations, and the United States would have been in it. There is simply no measuring the harm that has been done to humanity by the perpetuation of this first characteristic of the old diplomacy.

Most of these secret treaties concern Turkey, the choicest bit of war loot for the victors. The first of the lot had to do with Constantinople, and the last- so far as the world knows-dealt with Mosul and its oil, and this treaty was drawn up by the British and French in February 1919, a month after the Peace conference, with its pledge of “open covenants, openly arrived at,” had formally opened. Any honest man may be excused for the use of strong language in characterizing this impenitent diplomacy which stultified the soldier dead and the aims for which they died.

Summarized, the principal secret treaties among the allies, or sub-divisions of the allies, are given below. They must be borne in mind if the King-Crane report is to be understood.

Ever since the days of Peter the Great, Russia had coveted Constantinople, so, in March 1915, by a series of three notes exchanged between Russia, France and Great Britain, Constantinople was promised to Russia, after the allies had won the war. The other allies were to have compensations elsewhere in Turkey, and Britain was also to be given the “neutral zone” in Persia, with its rich petroleum perquisites This treaty also provided for independent rule of the Moslem holy cities, and, if possible, the caliphate was to be taken away from the Turks. By it Britain abandoned her historic policy of nursing “The Sick Man of Europe.” When the Revolutionists came into power in Russia they renounced this treaty and made a battle-cry of the phrase, “No annexations and no contributions (indemnities).”

Most sordid and cynical and shameless of all the secret treaties, and described by Mr. Balfour at one of the Peace Conference sessions in a cynical and sardonic speech that is perhaps unmatched in the annals of friendly international negotiations, was “The Treaty of London,” signed in April 1915. This was Italy's price for entering the war. In addition to giving Italy amazing stretches of territory within the Austrian Empire, and the best port in Albania, and making the Adriatic an Italian lake, plus territorial extensions in Africa, the treaty awarded the Italians the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean, off the shore of Turkey, and territory in Turkey equal to what Britain or France would get! Incidentally, the Italians demanded a share of the German indemnity, and a loan from Great Britain of £50,000,000.

By a later secret treaty in April, 1917, Italy was promised a still larger zone in Anatolia, and Smyrna also, if the Russians agreed. Since revolutionary Russia was about to denounce secret treaties it never approved. Consequently, Paris had heated discussions as to Italian rights in Smyrna; and the squabble ended in the Greek expedition of May 15, 1919, to circumvent the Italians. It was this adventure, with its attendant excesses, which called into existence the Turkish Nationalist movement, which has since become victorious over the Christian powers. If there had been no secret treaties there would be no Near Eastern crisis today.

As early as March, 1916, what is known as the Sazanof-Paleologue Treaty between Russia and France, gave to Russia the land lying between Persia and the Black Sea. It extended France's prospective territory in Turkey over a large section of Asia Minor and Syria clear to the Tigris River.

Two months later came the famous and troublesome “Sykes-Picot Agreement,” between France and Great Britain. By this secret treaty, France was to have Syria down as far as the famous Crusader port of Acre. Great Britain was to have Haifa, potentially the best port on the coast. She was also to receive Lower Mesopotamia. The cities of Damascus, Homs and Aleppo were to go to some future “Arab State”—and already King Hussein, of the Hejaz, was on Great Britain's payroll! Explicitly, no other nation—meaning Italy—was to be allowed any rights in the Arabic-speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire.

From the day of its signing until now this agreement has been smeared with oil, and other forms of commercialism and imperialistic exploitation, as the reader of the King-Crane Report has seen. One of the rawest sessions of the plenipotentiaries at Paris was held in Lloyd George's apartment on March 20. It was but of this acrimonious discussion that there was born President Wilson's suggestion for the sending of a commission of inquiry to Turkey, which resulted in the King-Crane Report. He said. [NOTE: See “The Turkish Empire as Booty,” which is Chapter Four of Volume One of Ray Stannard Baker's “Woodrow Wilson and World Set.]

“The point of view of the United States was … indifferent to the claims both of Great Britain and France over peoples, unless those peoples wanted them. One of the fundamental principles to which the United States adhered was the consent of the governed… The present controversy … broadened into a case affecting the peace of the whole world… He would send it (the Commission) with carte blanche to tell the facts as they found them.”

So against the old diplomacy of secret treaties and intrigues, America opposed the basic journalistic principle of the facts, fully and fearlessly stated.

Looking backward, it now seems rather guileless of President Wilson and America and the little nations to have assumed that the facts of international conditions should determine conclusions. We today understand that the secret treaties, and not the war aims that fired the hearts of the allied soldiers, and not the ascertained actualities, fixed the outcome of negotiations. The poison of those bargains and intrigues so vitiated the atmosphere at Paris that all possibility of true faith disappeared. Distrust supplanted confidence and good will.

America's ignorance of the secret treaties, which nullified all of our guiding principles in carrying on the war, was shared by the peoples of the allied nations.

Even when the Bolsheviks made public these documents which rubbed off the glamor of allied idealism, the world gave no real heed. Trustful America was least of all aware of the existence of these secret treaties: President Wilson heard of them first at Paris.

That is why the Americans thought that a Commission to find out and report the facts would be finally determinative. They could not escape from the dominance of those ideals of self-determination” or “consent of the governed” which had come down from Declaration of Independence days. With a rude jolt our people learned, or will learn after reading the King-Crane report, that the peoples released from Turkey's sway by the war got what they did not want.

This fact-finding commission heard the voice of the little peoples clamoring for American leadership and protection: such is the note that prevades the dryest section of the report like an aroma: but their cry fell on deaf ears in Paris.

Throughout the Orient, in thousands of cafes and caravansaries and conferences of neighbor with neighbor, wonderment has been expressed by Turk, Greek, Arab, Armenian, Jew, Syrian, and Druze, not to mention Europeans, as to what has become of the American Mission and its report, which they all dreamed would bring tranquillity and a new order to the troubled Near East. They know the reality of the application of the secret treaties and the strife they have caused; they do not understand the disappearance of the Great Hope which the American Commission represented.

After all, the secret treaties, applied, have had their chance, and failed. They have brought no boon to any one of the covetous European powers that its own people would not gladly now have it surrender. The apparent gains have proved to be only real losses and tragedy. Europe is hated today in the East because her old discredited way prevailed after the armistice, instead of the new way of the welfare of the peoples concerned. It needs only a strong drive by the press of America, and by the liberal press of Europe, to make secret treaties forever outlaw and anathema.

Fancy suggests that perhaps the scimitar of the Turk has severed the Gordian knot of diplomatic entanglements which could not be untied at Paris. It may be that there is anew, in a greatly limited sense, an opportunity for the application of certain of the fair, free, fact-based recommendations of the King-Crane Commission.

The Report given herewith is its findings. EDITOR & PUBLISHER presents the entire document in full, omitting only the tables of contents, substituting instead, where necessary, additional headlines that will indicate the nature of the separate sections. Footnotes are added to bring the story up to date.

In addition to the King-Crane Report, this present publication contains a Summary of the Treaty of Sèvres, the Balfour Declaration upon Zionism, the Turkish Nationalist Pact, the Guarantee given the subject peoples of Turkey by Great Britain and France, and such other documents as may shed light upon the present world crisis around the eastern Mediterranean.

The report of the American Military Mission to Armenia, headed by Major General James G. Harbord, now Chief of Staff of the U. S. Army, dealing with its investigations in Turkey and the Caucasus in the fall of 1919, cannot be published herewith, because of its length. It is available to the public at the Government Printing Office as Senate Document No. 266, and is indispensable to every one who would understand the Armenian situation and America's possible relation thereto. These quotations fairly show the conclusions of this Harbord report and their agreement with the findings of the King-Crane Report:

“A plebiscite fairly taken would in all probability ask for an American mandate throughout the Empire.* * * In its belief that the Armenian problem is only to be solved by a mandatory which should include also Constantinople, Anatolia, Turkish Armenia, and the Transcaucasus, the Mission has the concurrence of many Americans whose views, by reason of long residence in the Near East, are entitled to great weight. Such Americans are practically a unit in believing that the problems of Armenia, Anatolia, Constantinople and Transcancasia must be considered as an inseparable whole.

“No duty of modern times would be undertaken under so fierce a glare of publicity. Such a mandate would hold the center of the international stage with the spotlight from every foreign office and from every church steeple in the world focussed upon it. No nation could afford to fail, or to withdraw when once committed to this most serious and difficult problem growing out of the great war. No nation incapable of united and nonpartisan action for a long period should undertake it.

“We would again point out that if America accepts a mandate for the region visited by this mission, it will undoubtedly do se from a strong sense of international duty, and al the unanimous desire so expressed at least of its colleagues in the League of Nations. Accepting this difficult task without previously securing the assurance of conditions, would be fatal of success. The United States should make its own conditions as a preliminary to consideration of the subject-certainly before and not after acceptances, for there are a multitude of interests that will conflict with what any American would consider a proper administration of the country. Every possible precaution against international complications should be taken in advance. In our opinion there should be specific pledges in terms of formal agreements with France and England, and definite approval from Germany and Russia of the dispositions made of Turkey and Transcaucasia, and a pledge to respect them.”

Turkey has been the acid test of the loyalty of the Allies to their plighted faith. All the world knows what tragic consequences have befallen mankind because Europe was not equal to the opportunity of the new day. At least three governments have fallen in as many separate lands, and the legitimate ambitions of no less than three oppressed nationalities have been thwarted, because, as the report makes clear, the diplomats of Europe could not rise to the level of their soldiers in France.

Whether also the wonderful new spirit and aspiration of the Eastern peoples, called into life by the Allied war aims have been permanently dashed and deadened, only events can tell. Certainly this report was penned at the day of the opportunity of ages.

From a newspaper standpoint, the King-Crane Report may be criticised for its failure to “play up” the sensational zeal for America which it encountered everywhere. By cumulative facts and statistics it does make plain that America is first in the hearts of the people of Bible lands. Modesty and self-restraint doubtless kept it from attempting to tell a tale that is really beyond America's understanding. “They little know of America, who only America know.” General Harbord puts the subject straightforwardly in the conclusion of his report:

“Without visiting the Near East, it is not possible for an American to realize even faintly, the respect, faith and affection with which our Country is regarded throughout that region. Whether it is the world-wide reputation which we enjoy for fair dealing, a tribute perhaps to the crusading spirit which carried us into the Great War, not untinged with hope that the same spirit may urge us into the solution of great problems growing out of that conflict, or whether due to unselfish and impartial missionary and educational influence exerted for a century, it is the one faith which is held alike by Christian and Moslem, by Jew and Gentile, by prince and peasant in the Near East. It is very gratifying to the pride of Americans far from home. But it brings with it the heavy responsibility of deciding great questions with a seriousness worthy of such faith. Burdens that might be assumed on the appeal of such sentiment would have to be carried for not less than a generation under circumstances so trying that we might easily forfeit the faith of the world. If we refuse to assume it, for no matter what reasons satisfactory to ourselves, we shall be considered by many millions of people as having left unfinished the tack for which we entered the war, and as having betrayed their hopes.”

Although it is likened to a great journalistic investigation, the Report differs from a newspaper story in that it masses at the beginning the apparently uninteresting detailed data. These are, however, the essential foundation for the tremendous generalizations that follow. We have omitted nothing from the Report, however “dry” it may appear to a cursory glance. Every line is as submitted, except that the tables of contents are left out, and the detailed Syrian tabulations, which are covered by the summary.

The Commission's spelling of native names is followed, although in some cases it departs from the common usage.

One further explanatory paragraph. Naturally, as is accounted for by the date of its production, this Report assumes that there would be erected by the Paris Conference an effective League of Nations, of which the United States would be a member. It all must be read in terms of what might have been; as well as for its bearing upon present conditions.

The Turkish Nationalist Pact

Frequent allusions, in dispatches from the Near East and from Lausanne, to the “Turkish Nationalist Pact,” have not made clear to the American public the portentousness of Nationalist Turkey's “Declaration of Independence,” adopted by the Angora Assembly in January, 1920. This is the document which the Turks declare is the irreducible minimum of their claims at Lausanne:

“The Members of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies recognize and affirm that the independence of the State and the future of the Nation can be assured by complete respect for the following principles, which represent the maximum of sacrifice which can be undertaken in order to achieve a just and lasting peace, and that the continued existence of a stable Ottoman Sultanate and society is impossible outside of the said principles:

“First Article: – Inasmuch as it is necessary that the destinies of the portions of the Turkish Empire which are populated exclusively by an Arab majority, and which on the conclusion of the armistice of the 30th of October, 1918, were in the occupation of enemy forces, should be determined in accordance with the votes which shall be freely given by the inhabitants, whole of those parts whether within or outside the said armistice-line, which are inhabited by an Ottoman Moslem majority, united in religion, m race and in aim, imbued with sentiments of mutual respect for each other and of sacrifice, and wholly respectful of each other's racial rights and surrounding conditions, form a whole which does not admit of division for any reason in truth or in ordinance.

“Second Article: – We accept that, in the case of the three Sanjaks which united themselves by a .general vote to the mother country when they first were free, recourse should again be had, if necessary to a free popular vote.

“Third Article: – The determination of the juridical status of Western Thrace also, which has been made dependent on the Turkish peace, must be effected in accordance with the votes which shall be given by the inhabitants in complete freedom.

“Fourth Article: – The security of the city of Constantinople which is the seat of the Caliphate of Islam, the capital of the Sultanate, and the headquarters of the Ottoman Government, and of the Sea of Marmora must be protected from every danger. Provided this principle is maintained, whatever decision may be arrived at jointly by us and all other Governments concerned, regarding the opening of the Bosphorus to the commerce and traffic of the world, is valid.

“Fifth Article: – The rights of minorities as defined in the treaties concluded between the Entente Powers and their enemies and certain of their associates shall be confirmed and assured by us-in reliance on the belief that the Moslem minorities in neighboring countries also will have the benefit of the same rights

“Sixth Article: – It is a fundamental condition of our life and continued existence that we, like every country should enjoy complete independence an liberty in the matter of assuring the means of our development, in order that our national and economic development should be rendered possible and that it should be possible to conduct affairs in the form of a more up-to-date regular administration.

“For this reason we are opposed to restrictions inimical to our development in political, judicial, financial, and other matters.

“The conditions of settlement of our proved debts shall likewise not be contrary to these principles.

“January 28, 1920.”

NOTE: This document is not a part of the King Crane Report, but is presented to bring up-to-date the information contained in this supplement.

The Balfour Declaration

Seldom in history has so brief a document been the foundation of so great a world-commotion as the Balfour Declaration upon Zionism. It is merely a single sentence of sixty-eight words addressed by Mr. A. J. Balfour, on November 2, 1917, to Lord Rothschild. Yet the Zionists of every country acclaimed it as the charter of a new state, the assurance of a new day for universal Jewry.

The text has been continuously under a microscope, and the phrase “a national home” is still a matter of controversy. In the bitter struggle that has raged over the Declaration, the Zionists have stressed the first half of the nicely-balanced document; while the Anti-Zionists, especially in Syria, have laid emphasis upon the latter portion. The British tax-payer and the House of Lords has laid anathema upon it all!

Here is the full text of the Declaration:-

“His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

NOTE: This document is not a part of the King Crane Report, but is presented to bring up-to-date the information contained in this supplement.

Originally printed in Editor & Publisher, V.55, No. 27, 2nd Section, December 2, 1922

Note: The URLs below were the addresses of the historical archives which contained these articles that we have been mirroring on the CODOH site since 5/28/98

The Commission Report: http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kansite/ww_one/docs/kncr.htm

Appendix of the Commission Report: http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kansite/ww_one/docs/postkc.htm

Post-1918 Documents: http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1918p.html

NB: A selection of audio recordings of Armenian laments and songs, held at the Library of Congress, is linked here. Part of the Cowell Collection, the songs were sung by Vartan S. Shapazian and Joe Bedresian, and recorded by Sidney Robertson Cowell in Fowler, California on October 30, 1939, and form part of a group of field materials documenting Vartan S. Shapazian performing Armenian and Armeno-Turkish songs on October 30, 1939, collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell. These are in the 'Real Audio' format, and may be played online, or saved to file.

The group includes:

• Derzor chollerenda (Armenian exiles in the desert of Derzor)
• Daki-Tezlana;
• Mountains of Erzeroum; and
• Turkish March (Joe Bedresian, performer).