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The period 1919–24 saw fundamental change to the orientations of British foreign policy. In 1919 Britain was effectively at war with Russia: by 1924 a limited trade flowed between the two countries. Britain had fought a war against Germany from 1914 to 1918, imposed a harsh peace settlement upon her in 1919, and then spent the following years trying to revise that settlement. Indeed, by 1923 Britain was trying to curb the excesses of her Entente partner against Germany. Lloyd George and Curzon had been determined to impose the vindictive Treaty of Sevres on a prostrate Turkey in 1920: by 1923 Curzon was trying to negotiate a settlement with Ismet Pasha as an equal party. In 1920 Britain had accepted responsibility for Iraq and Palestine, and had then spent the next three years debating whether those responsibilities could be abdicated. In 1918 the British Empire appeared triumphant and supreme. Her world authority had seemingly been confirmed and enhanced by the defeat of Germany. By 1922 it was apparent that Britain did not possess the means or influence to mould the postwar world to her own desiderata. Moreover, the United States was emerging ever more prominently as the heir to Britain’s global predominance.

The most contentious policy area facing Curzon and Lloyd George in October 1919 was relations with Soviet Russia. The Bolshevik government had signed a Russo-German armistice in December 1917. Three months later, the landing of 130 Royal Marines at Murmansk, to protect vast quantities of war material supplied by the Allies, signalled the start of an Allied intervention in Russian affairs. By December 1918 Anglo-Soviet relations were deteriorating rapidly and, with the collapse of the Central Powers, the intervention had lost its ostensible raison d’etre. Some 30 000 Allied troops were established in north Russia and Siberia, and were developing a presence in Russian Central Asia, where local anti-Bolshevik regimes had emerged. Increasingly these troops were used in support of White Russian forces seeking to overthrow the Bolshevik regime.

On 25 October 1919 Churchill submitted a memorandum to the Cabinet calling into question the vindictive nature of Britain’s policy towards Turkey since the armistice.1 He noted that the signature of a Turkish peace treaty was still a distant prospect. Furthermore, the maintenance of sufficient forces in Egypt, Iraq and Palestine to guard against an attack by the nationalist forces of Mustapha Kemal, the Turkish general who had taken up arms against the Allies and the Sultan’s government at Constantinople in defence of the Anatolian Turkish heartland, was creating a heavy burden on the War Office estimates. Churchill’s bold suggestions would have amounted to a wholesale revision of Allied policy, including the renunciation of their individual territorial claims in favour of the League of Nations. Thus Britain would have given up responsibility for Palestine and Iraq. Rather than implying an earnest desire for moderate treatment of the defeated Turks, Churchill’s ideas reflected his growing suspicion that British policy towards Asia Minor might not ultimately be in her own best interests, and that Kemalist resistance to a harsh peace might lead to renewed warfare.

The area of Europe covering France, Germany and the Low Countries was regarded as the key theatre of postwar British diplomacy. It was on this arena that the eyes of the British government and Foreign Office chiefly focused. As a result of wartime news coverage, the appalling casualty lists and, in many cases, personal experience of service overseas, the British people had acquired a raised awareness and knowledge of foreign affairs which was based on a keen perception that ‘foreign policy kills’. British policy towards western Europe thus had a domestic political dimension which Lloyd George for one appreciated. ‘The man who won the war’ was determined to reap an electoral harvest as ‘the man who won the peace’. Above all, the policy-makers wished to prevent any renewal of armed conflict in western Europe into which Britain might be drawn. Implementation by Germany of the Treaty of Versailles was an important British security concern. Europe, and France in particular, had to be spared a German war of revenge. This danger formed ‘the German problem’, and Franco-German relations constituted an essential issue for the long-term peace of Europe. Maintenance of the Anglo-French Entente and harmony of policy were vital components of the postwar settlement. The retreat of the United States into political isolation in late 1919 placed the burden of upholding the Treaty of Versailles firmly on to the shoulders of Britain and France. By 1921, however, Anglo-French relations had deteriorated to a serious extent.