ABSTRACT
Lloyd George had sprung a suggestion that Venizelos should be allowed to send Greek forces from the Allied army in Macedonia to Turkey for the protection of the Greek inhabitants of Smyrna and other places along the coast and in the hinterland. 'The Greek landing, disgraced by crime, roused all that was fiercest and most determined in the Turkish temper and offered to Mustapha Kemal, "the Saviour of the Dardanelles" and the most brilliant officer in the Turkish army, the chance of creating out of the shattered fragments of the vanquished empire a new and independent Turkish State'. However, almost as an afterthought, Sonnino asked his colleagues quietly to agree to leave things as they were, and not to insist on the withdrawal of the Italian troops. The main result of Orlando's change of attitude on the Italian colonial claims was to direct the attention of the Council of Four more closely to the Adriatic.
