The Cordova daily times., 1923-02-27
Vigorous Insistence on Open Door Policy
 Is Continued
BEGAN THREE YEARS AGO
No Differences With British Government
 Exist Now

much oil on troubled waters," is the way the cynical diplomat diagnosed the Lausanne Conference situation when the statesmen gathered there were at the height of their difficult ties over the question of Mesopotamia. Certainly, from the point of view of the American Government at least, | petroleum was among the most i'm | portant of all the matters discussed there. Secretary of State Hughes is 1 on record as favoring the freedom of ] the Straits, protection of racial and religious minorities in Turkey, and preservation of American rights under | the so-called Capitulations. But he is just as strongly on record for the mainteance of the Open Door, or equal opportunity for American capital in the development of the natural re- sources of former Turkish territory. American BombshelI
 | Ambassador Child, the American Observer" at Lausanne, threw | bombshell into the conference when | he stated Americas attitude toward Mosul, the rich oil region of Mesopo- | tamia. For more than three years | the United States has been waging a fight against European diplomacy for the right to participate in the develop ment of the Mesopotamia fields. It began during the regime of President Wilson, when Secretary of State Bain- bridge Colby indulged in some rather heated exchanges with Lord Curzon, British Foreign Secretary, regarding the principle of the Open Door as ap- piled to British mandated territory in Asia Minor.
 American connection with the oil | fields as Asia Minor goes back even further however, Tn 1899 Rear-Ad- miral Chester, U. s. N, was sent to Constantinople in command of the battleship Kentucky to demand con- pensatiOn for property of American missionaries, which had been de- stroyed in the Armenian massacres of | 1896. On his return to America he interested certain American financiers in the possibility of obtaining conces- sions from Turkey. Going back to Constantinople as the agent of a pow erful group, he obtained promises for extensive railway and mining privi ! leges in Asia Minor, and the right to prospect for oil in Armenia and Meso- potamia The fall of Abdu Hamid in | 1909 interrupted the negotiations, and the Chester interests have since ex perienced difficulty in establishing their claims.
 German Hope Thwarted Then came the discovery by the Germans of oil in paying quantities near Mosul. They reported the dis covery to Berlin, it is alleged, but con- cealed it from the Porte, and the de- ception being discovered their hopes of concessions were blasted. Later, however, German and British groups, with the support of their governments, began negotiations and in 1913 came to some sort of tentative under standing with the Porte.
 The chief argument advanced by Lord Curzon against the American claim for participation in the devel- opment of the Mesopotamia oil fields was based upon the alleged conces- sions of this Turkish Petroleum Com pany, the validity of which have been consistently disputed by the Ameri- can Government.
 At the San Reno conference in 1921 the German shares were assigned to the French Government. Whether it has held them or disposed of them to French investors is not known. I'm mediately upon the announcement of the partition of the oil rights of Meso potamia the American Government