Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎169v] (338/544)

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* E.C. 2525. j E-C ^132, 2133, 2157, 2243, 2467, 2556, 2570, 2590, 2632.
ANNEX.
Shorthand Notes of a Meeting of the Eastern Committee held in Lord Curzons Room
ut the Privy Council Office, on Monday, December 2, 1918, at 3 p.m.
THE CAUCASUS AND ARMENIA.
LORD CURZON : Last week we discussed the question of the future of the Arab
States that lie alon^ the Eastern fringe of the great block of territory which we are
examining with a view to making our case for the Peace Conference, and we then agreed
to confine our attention to-day to our policy and our case with regard to the various
States that have sprung into existence in the regions of the Caucasus and Armenia.
As regards Armenia, the case is before us not only in its general aspect this after
noon, but also on the narrower issues that are raised by a number of Papers, some of
which have been circulated to the Committee, relating to American proposals of relief.
These proposals raise what may seem at first sight to be a narrow issue, but the moment
you examine them, and as soon as you attempt to arrive at a decision with regard to
them, you find that you are face to face with the larger problem of policy that lies
behind, and indeed, that it is impossible to arrive at a decision upon the powers or
agencies that are to be employed to give relief to the Armenians in their present
unhappy state without at once raising the big question of the future of Armenia and
the choice of the Great Powers, or the particular Great Power, which is to be charged
with the task of looking after Armenia in the troublesome years that lie before us.
Since we met last week there have been circulated to the Committee a number of
Papers of great importance. We now have been able to read the full statement* of the
case that has been drawn up by the Foreign Office, with maps attached thereto, and,
further, we have the Papersf already before us by Sir Eyre Crowe and other authorities,
in which the future of that part of the world is discussed and suggestions are put
forward. I think it will help us in arriving at a decision if, w r ith regard to Armenia, I
state, as 1 did the other day—I am glad to say it will be much more brief—the
broad features of the situation as it has emerged from the events not merely of the war,
but of the period that has elapsed since the Berlin Treaty.
As the Committee will remember, it was under article 61 of the Ireaty of Berlin
that our special interest in Armenia arose. The Tuiks pledged themselves by that
treaty to introduce ameliorations and reforms into the provinces inhabited by Armenians.
Those w r ere the exact terms of the clause in the treaty to which I refer. \ ou will
observe their general character. It did not say “ the six vilayets inhabited by
Armenians” ; in fact, there was no geographical limitation at all. It said, in the most
general terms, “ the provinces inhabited by Armenians,” a phrase which w T as as fraught
with ambiguity as any that had ever been introduced into international treaties.
Those pledges on the part of the Turks, it is unnecessary to say, were never fulfilled ;
and those of us wdio have been in politics during the last quarter of a century remember
web the Parliamentary troubles that arose out of the series of massacres of Armenians
by the Turks that disfigured the years 1895 to 1897, that were repeated in the year
1909, and that culminated in, perhaps, the most atrocious crime of all, the practical
extermination of the Armenians in many parts of the country in the second year of the
war, 1915. During all this period the Powers have been unable to agree upon military
intervention, and have done little else but address protests, more or less lutile, to the
Tuikish Government. Since the war began our spokesmen have from time to time
indulged in general promises not merely of friendship and succour, but of liberation to
the Armenian peoples. No definite engagements have been entered into, but there
certainly has been a general understanding—to which Lord Robert Cecil has himself on
more than one occasion given utterance, either in the House of Commons or in published
fi tters—that the liberation of Armenians from the Turkish yoke was one of the objects
which we set before ourselves in this war, unless we satisfied wffiich, we should not be
willing to conclude peace.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : There is a statement in the Peace Terms drawn up in
the beginning of 1917, in answer to the joint American note.;
LORD CURZON : I think Lord Robert Cecil is right. We specifically named
the Armenians in the statement drawn up at Downing Street, to which we were all
parties. It therefore has more than the sanction of even any speech by himself in the
House of Commons.