The signing of the Treaty of Sever, the last of the five peace treaties the allies imposed on the defeated central powers, could be seen as the formal end of the Great War.

But although the Sultan's government agreed to the terms, nationalist rebels in the interior of Anatolia, led by Mustafa Kemal, rejected the treaty and vowed to fight on, forcing the allies, more than six years after the July crisis of 1914 to face the prospect of yet more war.

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Music Episode 195, 1919, Turkey and Greece, Part 2.

The Treaty of Severo, on its face, reads like an allied wish list.

It contains just about everything the Allies could have asked for from the Ottoman Empire, but the one thing it does not guarantee is compliance. The Sultan's government

had agreed to it, but the competing provisional government in Angora vowed to fight on. This confronted the Allies with a difficult choice.

It has been almost two years since the armistice,

and over this two-year period,

allied leaders have become accustomed

to the practice of simply dictating terms to their defeated opponents.

They were able to do this because of the implicit and sometimes explicit threat

that the victorious allies could restart the war if they didn't get their way.

And having been forced to restart the war and fight on further

would then demand even more painful concessions.

So if you know what's good for you, you'll give it up right now.

But for the past two years, Allied militaries have been shrinking.

The Allies are Democratic states, with voting publics that are tired of war,

and have been hearing for some time now about

the glorious Allied victory. Allied political leaders would find it difficult to justify

remobilizing their militaries and sending them back into combat. The strains of the war

...