Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎114r] (227/544)

whether it was not their duty to suggest that Sir Charles Monro
would be available to succeed General Maude pending the arrival of
some officer from home, and that they would be willing that his
Chief of the Staff, General Kirkpatrick, should deputise for him
meanwhile as Commander-in-Chief in India. The proposal had,
however, not been put forward simply because of General Monro’s
expression of the above opinion.
General Smuts said that his proposal was that Sir Charles
Monro should be Commander-in-Chief on the spot in the Middle
East and should replace General Marshall.
(General Wilson said that the whole problem was one of pushing
up troops from Mesopotamia to North-West Persia, and this was a
matter of communication and transport. Whether General Marshall
had proved himself a sufficiently exacting slave-driver in the
matter of road-making might be open to question, but General
Wilson himself did not think that any other man would have been
more successful. He reminded the Committee of the recent difficulty in
regard to the 1,300 Ford vans (30th Meeting, Minute 1) which the
American Government were reluctant to supply. His view that it
would have been impossible for General Marshall to have pushed up
more men into Persia was shared by General Cobbe, who had
recently been in this country. The line of communication consisted
of 500 miles of bad roads, and, in some places, no roads at all. It
was here that a railway was an urgent necessity, but the Indian
Government were pressing instead for an extension of the Seistan
Railway, which, in General Wilson s opinion, was relatively unimpor
tant. He doubted whether anybody, in the circumstances, could be
expected to have a complete strategical appreciation of the situation ;
the immediate problem, however, was a very simple one, namely,
to get troops into Persia and to deny the Eastern route to the
enemy.
General Smuts wished again to emphasise his point that General
Marshall had regarded the Caspian project as unimportant and an
unwelcome diversion. He even contemplated so serious a step as
that of evacuating Enzeli without consulting the Government^.
General Wilson thought General Marshall might have no other
course open to him, unless he wished his force there to be cut in two.
Mr. Montagu asked whether General Wilson could say what he
would do in General Marshall’s place. Would lie not be intent on
capturing Mosul and joining hands with Allenby ? Was not that
the legitimate ambition of anyone with the Mesopotamian victories
behind him ? W'as it not likely that that would be the trend of
General Marshall’s ambition ?
General Wilson replied that he did not think so, that the
policy of the War Office was well known to all commandeis, to
advance steadily northwards with our forces in that theatre spread
out umbrella-wise from Haifa to the Caspian.
Mr. Montagu said that he agreed most cordially with General
Smuts’ premises, and with the arguments which led him to the
conclusions he had formed, but he regarded the remedy he sug
gested as inadequate to the problem. General Smuts said that he
wished to achieve unity of command. All that General Smuts
suggested to this end was to link up Malleson s force with
Marshall’s under a new officer. What the Indian Government
proposed would achieve unity from the North-West frontier Region of British India bordering Afghanistan. to the
Mediterranean. But if the seat of this united command was not
in India, then, in that the defence of India and of the Indian
frontiers’ could only be controlled from India, we could not get unity
of command, but at the most duality of command. W hat seemed
to him to be wanted was a sort of Eastern Foch, taking his orders
from the War Office, and embracing Persia, Mesopotamia, Palestine,
Traus-Caspia, and India, dhis would necessitate that the Com
mander-in-Chief in India, relieved of as much administrative work as
possible by some ad hoc arrangement, should carry out the functions
[365—31] C