Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎130r] (259/544)

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ment. He thought that the case of Mesopotamia might be
brought up for revision, as the reason why the area of hrench
interest was brought across Euphrates and Tigris to the Persian
frontier was the desire felt by Lord Kitchener m 1016 to establish
something m the nature of a buffer-state between the area in
Mesopotamia in which we were mainly interested and the
Russian area in Kurdo-Armenia. Unofficially, he had always
impressed upon M. Picot the impossibility of the French sphere
going to Mosul.
Sir Eyre Crowe pointed out that as far as the ne\\ pro
visional agreement in regard to Syria was concerned, it was
clearly provided in Clause I that it only applied to such parts of
the Ottoman Empire as were occupied by the Egyptian Expedi
tionary Force. This excluded its application to any territory
occupied by the British forces operating from Mesopotamia.
The Chairman urged the Foreign Office to take the oppor
tunity given by the necessity of ratifying the new provisional
agreement in regard to Syria to obtain the concurrence of the
French Government to the exclusion of any part of the Tigris
and Euphrates valley from the blue area.
Mr. Montagu drew attention to the final paragraph of the
new provisional agreement in regard to the proposed declaration,
that neither Great Britain nor France has any intention of
annexing any part of the Arab territories, and he asked whether
this applied to the vilayets of Basra and Baghdad.
Lord Robert Cecil replied that it undoubtedly applied to all
Arab territories, and the paragraph alluded to by Mr. Montagu
was specially inserted at our instance, and not very will
ingly agreed to by the French. He added that the governing
consideration which guaranteed our retention of some control in
the Arab territories was the promise given that these territories
should not again be surrendered to the Turk, and in order to
carry this out we should be compelled to retain some effective
control to prevent the return of the territory.
The Chairman stated that when Sir P. Cox was in .London
in the spring of 1918, the Committee clearly contemplated some
closer form of British rule in Basra than that to be established
in Baghdad.
General Macdonogh drew attention to the recurrence of the
words “civil administration” in the new provisional agreement
in regard to Syria. The.government of occupied enemy territory
during the continuance of the war must be military and not civil,
and he thought it should be made quite clear to General Allenby
that this Convention with the French did not mean that he is m
any way bound to set up a “civil” administration in any. part
of Syria or Palestine. He thought that without some covering
explanation General Allenby might understand paragraph 2 of
the new provisional agreement in the sense that a civil
administration was contemplated in the near future. This was
all the more necessary as last winter M. Picot had urged General
Allenby to establish a joint Anglo-French civil government m
Palestine
Sir Mark Sykes stated that M. Picot’s action in Palestine
last winter had been due to instructions given him by the French
Government, and M. Picot was not responsible for the initiation
of the suggestion.
Lord Robert Cecil said that he would make clear to the
French Government that General Allenby was left absolutely
free to refuse to set up anything in the nature of a “civil”
administration in any occupied territory. The French had,
however, been anxious to know how long military administration
was likely to last. ^ .
General Thwaites stated that the French were anxious to
include m the agreement a statement to the effect that military