Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎175r] (349/544)

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* E.C. 2525.
LORD CURZON : You will remember this, in passing. You have been talking
about a large Armenia as if it were identical with the six vilayets. Of course, it is not.
The lar^e Armenia is much bigger than the six vilayets, and Trebizond was never one
of the vilayets ; it is a Turkish port and part of Turkish territory. The large Armenia
you are contemplating, therefore, involves giving Armenia Lazistan, the port of which
is Trebizond, the principal port at the eastern end of the Black Sea. That involves
giving to Armenia a district in which Armenians are in a great minority.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : I agree it would be impossible to do it if you did no*'
have some European country to look after it. I do not think that it is arguable. Nor
am I sure that it would woik, even so. On the other hand, I do not see anything which
would be much better. If you give Trebizond back to the Turks, you put the Armenians
under the Turks there. That seems to me to be the objection. On the whole, I do not see
anything much better than making a large Armenia. From our point of view it would
be a great convenience if we could, without injury to ourselves, offer to the French a
great extension of their blue area in a north-easterly direction, including Armenia,
which, for what they are worth, would include Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Daghestan ;
that would be a substantial offer to her. Then you would have to have some
special treatment as to Baku.
LORD CURZON : We are coming to that later. I have some ideas to put
forward with regard to the Caucasus region.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : Whatever you do about it, there is that enormous
difficulty. I do not see at present how we shall be able, to argue it when we sit down
at the Conference. Supposing we got a Conference with the Americans, Italians, and
the French, and the French say, “We will begin the Conference by saying, here is
our Agreement,” then we shall not be able to say anything against that. We shall
have to sit quite quiet, so far as I can see.
L ( )RD CURZON : We are getting back to that wretched Agreement again.
Cannot we take the line at the Peace Conference that these Agreements have necessarily
lapsed ?
LORD ROBERT CECIL : No, not as between us and the French. They are not
binding on the Conference, but I think they are binding on us.
LORD CURZON : You always take a very strong and stiff view about that, and I
am afraid I cannot agree with it.
GENERAL SMUTS : Shall we deal with the Caucasus before w r e decide about
Armenia ?
MR. MONTAGU : Shall we take Kurdistan and Azerbaijan before we decide on
anything else ?
LORD CURZON : I do not want to take Kurdistan at all to-day.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : Shall we take Azerbaijan and Georgia before we deal
with Armenia ?
LORD CURZON : Yes, if you like. The case about the Caucasus is this. Before
the war, the regions on both sides of the Caucasian range were in the hands of the
Russians. Whether they were of Russian or non-Russian nationality, we know that
Russia had taken the best part of a century to conquer some of them. She had to
maintain a great force to keep them in order. I have been at Tifiis two or three times
myself, and other people in this room have been there also, and tbe whole organisation
was one of great military strength, under a Viceroy. When the disruption of Russia
took place tbe Caucasus broke away, and there was for a short time a futile and rather
foolish experiment of a Trans-Caucasian Federal Government, the centre of which was
at Tifiis. We did our best to support that movement. We sent money there, we sent
officers there. The thing had no germs of stability in it, because we were really trying
to fuse into a single whole races and creeds fundamentally opposed to each other, the
Armenians, the Tatars, and the Russians. The experiment of a Trans-Caucasian
Federal Government at Tifiis broke down irretrievably in May 1918. Since then there
have been in existence these four States which are depicted in Sir Eyre Crowe’s map.' ::: *
I should like to say, before we come to the question of those States, that this matter is
one of very great importance to ourselves. It is not a matter really of the rival
ambitions of a number of turbulent tribes existing in the mountains. The whole