Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎87v] (174/544)

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each or any of the innumerable and complex questions which the
Committee had to consider. He never had any intention of
permitting, without the Committee’s approval, occasional meetings
in his office of a few departmental officials to develop into a formal
body, such as the permanent sub-committee which was contemplated
and advocated in some of the papers now before the Committee.
He hoped, however, that no restriction would be placed by the
Committee upon the holding of such informal conferences.
The Chairman said that he differed from the Secretary of State
for India in regard to several points raised by the latter, both
in his paper and in the statement he had just made. He himself
had been associated with the handling by His Majesty’s Govern
ment of Middle Eastern affairs ever since the present Cabinet came
into being. He had been Chairman of the Middle East Committee,
which had originally been appointed to deal with questions both of
policy and of action, eg, it had decided the entire course of action
in Mesopotamia, including the Baghdad proclamation, and the
differences of opinion between Sir Stanley Maude and Sir P. Cox.
He had also been a member of the Persian Committee which had ^
been set up subsequently under the Chairmanship of the Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, and had been responsible both for policy
and for action. Subsequently he had been appointed, by a decision of
the War Cabinet, Chairman of the Eastern Committee, wffiich
absorbed the functions of the two earlier Committees, and had been
originally intended to take over the powers of the Russian Com
mittee as well. On the whole he was satisfied, having regard to
the mass of conflicting advice received and the enormous complexity
of the problems submitted to it, that the Eastern Committee had
been a useful and successful experiment, and in this view the
Foreign Office and Mr. Balfour had expressed their concurrence.
He further disputed Mr. Montagu’s postulate that the Eastern
Committee was strictly analogous to other Cabinet Committees.
His own position was not precisely identical with that of other War
Cabinet Chairmen. He assumed that he had been charged with
this duty because his public life had brought him into close contact
with almost every aspect of Middle Eastern affairs ; he had served
as Under-Secretary of State both at the Foreign Office and the India
Office ; he had been Viceroy of India, and there were few of the
countries concerned with which he had not personal acquaintance.
He hoped he was not presumptuous in inferring that these qualifica
tions w'ere thought to be of some value not merely in presiding over ,
an interdepartmental Committee, but in assisting the Committee to
arrive at every-day decisions both as regards policy and action.
He had now' learned, for the first time, that there was a Secretary of
State for Middle Eastern affairs.
Lord Robert Cecil explained that Mr. Montagu’s description of
his own appointment was not strictly or literally accurate. He w'as
under the Foreign Minister in his own department, in charge of all
affairs affecting Middle Eastern countries, China,and western neutrals.
Mr. Montagu did not wish to quarrel about nomenclature. All
that he contended was that Lord Robert Cecil did,' to all intents and
purposes, fill temporarily the position which was implied by the
title of Minister for the Middle East.
The Chairman, proceeding, said that if there w r as a Secretary of
State for the Middle East, it would clearly be his duty, and not that
of the present Chairman, to preside over the Eastern Committee.
Mr. Montagu’s proposal amounted, in fact, to the disbandment of
the present Eastern Committee except for purposes of occasional
reference on matters of high policy. If the Committee accepted
this proposal he did not see that his services were any longer
required. As regards Lord Robert Cecil’s suggestion of day-to-day
action by a sub-committee under his [i.e., Lord R. Cecil’s) chair
manship, he thought that this was unnecessary because, in the
progress of events, the present Committee had gradually developed