Papers written by Curzon on the Near and Middle East [‎29r] (57/348)

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TO
tW&M
[This Docnment is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's GoYemmpn* ]
PERSIA.
[August 18]
CONFIDENTIAL.
Section 1.
[118250 ] * No. 1.
Earl Curzon to Mr. Lindsay.
(No. 477.)
Sir, Foreign Office, August 18, 1919.
I ASKED the American Ambassador to come and see me this afternoon, in
order to acquaint him, as I had previously omitted to do, with the recent conclusion
of the agreement between His Majesty’s Government and Persia. I told him,
however, that his Government had not been kept in entire ignorance of the matter,
because, when I was in Paris some months ago, I had called upon Colonel House,
specially to mention to him the nature of the negotiations in which I was engaged,
and I had asked him to inform President Wilson on the matter, so that the President
might be guided in his attitude towards the Persian Delegation in Paris, should
their claim to be heard at the Peace Conference be entertained. Colonel House had
subsequently told me that he had informed the President. I had no reason,
therefore, to suppose that wfiat had since passed would meet with anything but
American approval,
I went on to tell Mr. Davis that our information was to the effect that the French
were somewhat incensed at our having, as they alleged, stolen a march upon them
in respect of Persia, and that they regarded with a certain amount of wounded
pride our success in Tehran as compared with the failure which had so far attended
their efforts in Syria. The French Minister in Tehran, M. Bonin, was, I had been
informed, doing his best to disparage and belittle the agreement; and it was not
unlikely,- I thought, that he might endeavour to enlist the co-operation of his
American colleague in pursuing that policy. In these circumstances, and assuming
that the American Government would be, generally speaking, in favour of the
agreement now concluded, I asked the Ambassador whether he could see his way to
suggest that the American Minister in Tehran should be advised to facilitate'tihe
acceptance of the agreement and to give it his blessing.
Mr. Davis remarked at once that he saw no objection to doing this: that he
thought the agreement an excellent one (much better, indeed, for the Persians than it
was for ourselves); and that he would gladlv act upon my suggestion.
, Having barely recovered from a conversation lasting an hour and a half with
Mr. Walter Smith, an American gentleman officially interested in the American
effort in Armenia, and deeply concerned at the risk to the Armenian people involved
by our intended evacuation, I mentioned to Mr. Davis, in supplement to our recent
conversations on that subject, two points which I thought ought to be borne in mind-
The first was this. In reality the Powers in Paris and we in London were
waiting for the American people to make up their minds whether they would take
a mandate for Armenia or not. Mr. Davis had himself told me that he thought
the chances were much against their taking it, and this information had been borne
out by what I had heard from America. Were we then to reverse our evacuation
policy, and to incur very heavy expenditure on the chance oif America making up
her mind in three months from now; and, if she did so in favour of taking a mandate,
what, I asked, was the Armenia for which she would make herself responsible? Did
it include or exclude the Caucasus? Was America aware that Armenia could not be
kept alive by dollars only, but would have to be sustained by men, and was she
prepared to mobilise and send to the Black Sea the very considerable'army that would
be required for the purpose? .
The second point was that, if American public opinion was as deeply aroused
as he represented it to be—and I did not deny that this might be the case-—il was
surprised that these representations should come from private individuals rather
than from the American Government; and, if charges were to be made against the
British Government of deserting the Armenians or imperilling their future, it
seemed to me that they ought more properly to come from Government to Government,
in which case those who were really responsible for the delav mKht be able to explain
and justify it.