The Greek army launched what they expected to be their final campaign against the Nationalists in June of 1921. They rapidly advanced as the Turks fell back to a position near their capital, Ankara. There they held the Greeks (Battle of the Sakarya, 23 August to 13 September 1921). The Greeks retreated, badly beaten, but the exhausted Turks were not yet able to press the attack against them. In a memorandum of 7 October 1921, Curzon wrote that the time had come for further mediation between the Greeks and Turks, because both sides were exhausted, a stalemate. He did not foresee that the Greeks could be driven from the positions to which they had fallen back after the Sakarya defeat. Curzon was willing to give very little to the Turks; his proposed terms were similar to those that had been previously on offer: only a slightly increased portion of Eastern Thrace over that allowed in the Sèvres Treaty was to be Turkish, Edirne would remain Greek, Allied ‘advisors’ would oversee Turkish government ministries and an autonomous İzmir would be under a Greek governor. Curzon proposed a purely Allied conference that would set terms to be given to the Greeks and Turks. The Allies would remain in charge, preparing terms for acceptance by the belligerents.

For the Greeks, their failure to defeat the Turkish Nationalists changed everything. The London Accords now looked much better to them. The Greeks told the British in November 1921 that they were now willing to place Greek interests in the hands of Great Britain. They would accept British mediation over İzmir, but not Thrace. Lloyd George met secretly with a Greek delegation in London, assuring Prime Minister Gounaris that he would do all he could for the Greeks in any peace negotiations. In a more public meeting, Curzon told Gounaris that he would work for a solution as close as possible to that arrived at in the previous conference: İzmir to be an autonomous province under a Christian governor, and Thrace to be as provided for in the Sèvres Treaty, with some minor border rectification. Gounaris found that acceptable, as well he might.