Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎187r] (373/544)

13
IVSr
the most awful rows if yon did that, except in certain districts. You should take a
broad view of the evidence of what populations want and should then draw up their
boundaries. That is the only thing to be done. I do think we are entitled to say this
to the French : “We are bound to give you Alsace-Lorraine, and we are not going to
suggest you are not to have it, but you want the 1815 boundary.”
MR. BALFOUR : We are not bound by treaty to give it to them.
LORD ROBERT CECIL: No.; but we could not go back on that. We have never
said anything to the French to the effect that we will give them the 1815 boundary for
which they are clamouring, still less, as some of them want, to go to the left bank of
the Rhine. Therefore, if there is to be anything of that kind—the 1815 boundary is a
real thing, because they think it important from a strategic point of view, and will
insist upon it
MR. BALFOUR: Coal is the point as much as strategy.
LORD ROBERT CECIL: But they will put it on the ground of strategy. If
they are going to do that, and if we are to be asked to support them, then we must
have good terms in Syria.
GENERAL SMUTS : Unless we want to break with America we could not
support them on that.
MR. BALFOUR,: We must be very careful indeed.
LORD PtOBER f CECIL : I agree it will be difficult, but it is a thing we can
remind the French of at intervals, that they want something out of us.
(At this point Mr. Balfour requested that shorthand notes should not he taken.)
(After a short interval)
LORD CURZON : Mr. Balfour, you made a remark just now about putting all
our cards on the table with the French. This question of Syria which we are examining
to-day is not merely a question of the boundaries of Palestine or the future of the
Lebanon, or even of the port of Alexandretta ; it can ies us much further to the East.
As you know, it goes right into the territories of the upper waters of the Euphrates, of
the Tigris, and so on. We shall not get out of that difficulty by the principle of self-
determination nor by the League of Nations ; we must, at some time or another, have
an agreement with the French about it. Am I to deduce from what you have said
that you think it would be wise, at some time or other, to put our cards on the table
about this territory and the others ?
MR. BALFOUR : I think it is quite worth considering ; but, of course, there is
always the difficulty—and it is going to be a very great difficulty facing us in the
next three weeks, and General Smuts knows it will—of why we should be suspected by
the French. The French very much want us to help them against the Americans.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : That is the real point.
(Mr. Balfour asked that his remarks should not he taken down.)
(After a, short interval.)
GENERAL WILSON : There is a sentence in a letter written by Sir Edward Grey
to M. Cambon, dated the 16th May, 1916 (G.T.—368), about the Sykes-Picot Agreement,
which seems to me to have a bearing on the matter. He says : “ I have to inform
your Excellency, in reply that the acceptance of the whole project, as it now stands, will
involve the abdication of considerable British interests, but, since His Majesty’s Govern
ment recognise the advantage to the general cause of the Allies entailed in producing a more
favourable internal political situation in Turkey, they are ready to accept the arrange
ment now arrived at, provided that the co-operation of the Arabs is secured.” Does not
that knock the whole Sykes-Picot Agreement out ?
LORD CURZON: There is a second condition, which the Arabs have fulfilled.
GENERAL WILSON : Yes.
LORD ROBERT CECIL: I do not think it does knock it out.
the co-operation of the Arabs.
[365—40]
We did secure
E