Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎188v] (376/544)

16
* E.C. 2642.
| KC. 2133.
LOUD CURZON : By “partition” I mean leaving the French in the Lebanon
and leaving them again at Alexandretta, and bringing—according to your ideas, which
I understand will be Faisal’s views—the Syrian State down to the coast of Tripoli
between the two enclaves An area of land belonging to one country and entirely surrounded by land of just one other country. of French territory.
COLONEL LAWBENCE : Accept that as a minimum. One port, Tripoli, would
be enough. I would advise the Arabs to carry on with the one port, supposing they,
could get no more.
LOUD BO BERT CECIL : You must remember this. If the new ideas come to
anything, any arrangement come to may have to be reconsidered ; it will not be for
ever and ever. I hope the idea of eternal treaties has gone.
COLONEL LAWBENCE: Self-determination has been a good deal talked about
I think it is a foolish idea in many ways. We might allow the people who have fought
with us to determine themselves. People like the Mesopotamian Arabs, who have
fought against us, deserve nothing from us in the way of self-determination. No doubt
the situation will change again and again.
MB. BALFOUR : That is the privilege of the conquerors.
LORD CUBZON : Have you anything to say about the military aspect of the
case, General Wilson ?
GENERAL WILSON : The Paper* I have written goes into that.
LORD CUBZON : You deal with this country too in your Paper ?
GENERAL WILSON : Y'es, we cannot help it.
LORD CURZON : M culd yon like to say anything about it ?
GENERAL WILSON : I would rather wait until you have read the Paper. It
is not a long Paper, but it deals with the crossed bit of work there.
GENERAL SMUTS : We must have another meeting and come back to the
whole question of the Caucasus, and then get the final conclusions at the next
meeting.
(Mr. Balfour withdrew.)
LORD CURZON : Would you like to say anything, General Macdonogh ?
GENERAL MACDONOGH : I have nothing to add to what is in my Paper.f
GENERAL SMUTS : It incorporates a lot of the material given by Commander
Hogarth and Colonel Lawrence, so that your view is a considered view arrived
at after considering a lot of evidence ?
GENERAL MACDONOGH : Yes.
PALESTINE.
LORD CURZON : There is a general feeling that we had better postpone the
consideration of the Syrian question until we have had General Wilson’s Paper, and
obviously we are not in a position to arrive at conclusions to-day. I suggest that we
should pass on and take the Palestine case, which, I think, as I argued before, is
capable of being considered apart from Syria.
The Palestine position is this. If we deal with our commitments, there is first the
general pledge to Hussein in October 1915, under which Palestine was included in the
areas as to w'hich Great Britain pledged itself that they should be Arab and independent
in the future. When we pass to the Sykes-Picot Agreement we find that it contained
the following provisions, that Acre and Haifa should go to Great Britain, but that those
ports should be free for French and Italian trade to the areas A and B inland.
Further, under that Agreement we are at liberty to build and administer a railway
from Haifa to Baghdad. I will only say about that, in passing, that the idea of building
such a railway across the desert to Baghdad seems to me to be one of the wildest
chimeras that ever entered into the brain of man, and how it entered into the minds of
t
*