Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎89r] (177/544)

7
APPENDIX.
E.C.-718.
The War in the East.
I WRITE the following at the request of the meeting which I was invited to
attend on the 17th June, and 1 write it on one hypothesis which governs all I write.
If this hypothesis is dismissed as improbable, the matter is not worth consideration.
Events in the West do not look as if the Germans will be deprived of all initiative as
the result of this summer’s campaign. It would appear to me that the most our
military advisers are hopeful of obtaining is such a result in the West as would
probably relieve our anxiety in the West for the rest of the war. If that be so, is it
not absolutely certain that the most likely theatre in which the Germans can obtain
military success is the East, and is it not humanly probable that they will naturally
seek to approach peace discussions after the obliterations of our gains of enemy
territory in Mesopotamia and Palestine, and if possible after some threat to our
territories in the East which might produce results comparable, if not equal, to the
position which they have now established in the West? Do not recent developments
in the East, the appearance of the two German divisions at Batoum and Poti, and
the accounts we receive of their activities, point to a probability of this kind? Is
it not possible that considerable results might be looked for by organisation and by
money without necessarily involving much expenditure of personnel?
I have before me as I write a Foreign Office Memorandum, dated the 8 th May,
recording conferences between leading German and Turkish politicians, from which
I quote the following sentences:—
“The general plan evidently is to prepare the ground by propaganda and
to follow this up with military operations when and where local co-operation
can be counted upon. There is no evidence that the despatch of large forces is
contemplated. The idea rather seems to be to send the minimum forces that
will set local movements in motion and to leave these movements to do the rest.
Stress is laid on securing the command of the Black Sea and Trans-Caucasia:
Northern Persia, Russian Central Asia, and Afghanistan are the objectives, and
it is hoped that effects will be produced in China and India.” I
I assert, therefore, that there is room for believing that there is a serious menace,
which will take some months to mature, in the East. These conferences were held
in the winter of last year and the spring of this, and subsequent events point to an
active pursuit of the policy decided upon therein. It would seem to me to be
indicative that in all probability their present efforts are directed towards Trans-
Caspia and Turkestan, that they are, as it were, proceeding northwards of General
Marshall’s activities, with a view to disturbing Afghanistan and threatening India.
I have nothing to add to the comments that I have already made on the attitude
of Afghanistan.
The question to which I would ask the Cabinet to turn their attention is shortly
this: Have we not on the whole neglected the East? Are we now organised to meet
the threat in the East? Ought we not to prepare far more thoroughly to meet that
threat? I propose to confine myself to the piesent and the future and to content
myself with merely asking the question about the past.
The conduct of affairs in the Middle East is now vested in a Committee, of which
I have the honour to be a member, under the Presidency The name given to each of the three divisions of the territory of the East India Company, and later the British Raj, on the Indian subcontinent. of Lord Curzon, dealing
with Middle East affairs, which are entrusted under the supervision of the Com
mittee in their respective spheres to the Foreign Office, the War Office, and the India
Office. I do not think that this is a satisfactory plan. I say nothing about the
India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. , for it is impossible for me to express an unprejudiced opinion about my
own Office. But it is differentiated from the others in that its whole activities are
concerned with the East, with India and its defences, with India and the countries
which border it, whereas the Foreign Office and the War Office have immeasurable
and overwhelming responsibilities in other directions. I can also speak with
certainty when I say that action has been delayed by the necessity for awaiting
decisions of the Eastern Committee. It is no fault of the Committee, which is
composed of men of such preoccupations as those which beset my colleagues, that
they cannot meet often, that they cannot meet in practice at a moment’s notice, and
that when they meet it must take some time to master a situation embodied in sheafs