Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎200v] (400/544)

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strip in the Lebanon, and when we asked Mr. Balfour’s opinion and your own as to
whether the French, whatever the bribe, would be likely to accept such an arrangement,
the answer was in the negative.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : Yes.
LORD CURZON : You said the French and their Ambassador were mad about it.
MR. BALFOUR : That was Lord Robert, and I advised you to substitute a new
insanity about Armenia.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : We are going to give them Beirut and the Lebanon.
GENERAL SMUTS : I was asking a military question, and I want to have an
opinion from the General Staff. Supposing you take this alternative, that you can
clear the French out of Syria—and you say their presence there is a bad thing for us.
If you can clear them out of Syria you clear them off the Mesopotamia Railway to
Baghdad, you clear them out of the Sykes-Picot area, but you leave them the three
original Armenian vilayets, you give them the other three Turkish vilayets, and you
give them those small States in the north. Would you think that a good bargain,
from our point of view, to clear them out of the south and to transpose them to the
north, supposing you were making a clioice of the two ?
GENERAL WILSON : I must ask the Admiralty about the oil.
GENERAL SMUTS : You would then command completely the Mesopotamia oil ?
GENERAL WILSON : No, because they can get to Enzeli if they like. They
will go to Baku and Enzeli, and you lose the Caspian.
GENERAL SMUTS : We are told the Mesopotamia oilfields are undeveloped.
LORD CURZON : They are. On the other hand Baku is the greatest oilfield in
the world, at any rate in the Eastern Hemisphere; I do not know about America.
MR. BALFOUR : Whenever we discuss this sort of question and it is suggested
that the French should go to a place, we always assume that they are going there for
ever; whenever the proposal is that we should go to a place we assume that we shall
be out of it in two or three years.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : We shall never be out of Baku once we get there.
GENERAL SMUTS: I should not like to go to the Conference undecided,
because the result might be in the end that the French may be all over this area. We
have to make up our mind either to accept the Sykes-Picot Agreement and let France
remain there and for ourselves to be in the north, or clear her out and let her go to
the north.
GENERAL WILSON : Cannot we bribe France in some other way?
LORD ROBERT CECIL: How?
GENERAL WILSON : I do not know ; that is not my part of the business.
LORD ROBERT CECIL: How can we do that if you do not like this arrange-
ment ? B
GENERAL WILSON : That is a Foreign Office affair.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : Then I answer that we cannot. 1 know that if Mr.
Balfour or myself makes any proposition with regard to Africa, we shall be told that
there is an aeroplane station, or a submarine base, or that it is the oldest colony, or it
will bitterly offend some New Zealand politician if we do it, or something of that kind.
It is always the same.
GENERAL WILSON : Quite.
MR. BALFOUR : General Smuts has done two things in the short speech he has
made. He has put a question to the General Staff, and he has also raised, for the first
time to-day, but not for the first time in these conferences which I have not been able
to attend, the question of an exchange. Please let the Conference keep in mind that if
you are dealing with an exchange you must keep Italy in order. You cannot talk as
if this were a question between France and England only, for it is not. It is a
tripartite matter. 1 see in this map things that Italy claims in Asia, which the Prime