Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎231r] (461/544)

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He doubts it for different reasons from what you do. You doubt it because you think
we shall be exposed to the charge of having disabled ourselves by a pledge from declaring
a Protectorate, and yet of doing it in practice. Can we find a better word ? Cou'd we
put it as follows: “ There shall be no annexation of any of these territories by Great
Britain, nor a direct assumption of Biitish rule over them?”
LOBD BOBEBT CECIL: I would stick to your words as they were.
MB. MONTAGU : Would you not leave out “ Protectorate ” altogether ? Do you
want to raise the question of a Protectorate? Why not say simply “ There shall be no
annexation ? ”
MB. BALFOUB : I admit I am becoming tiresome. I am not on Mr. Montagu’s
point at all, but on my own point. The French want, under any name you like, absolute
control of the districts that they are to get. They would like to have complete control
of all the mineral resources, of all the concessions they want to be monopolists, and they
really want to make Syria very much as Algeria or Tunis is. If they do that, then you
get into trouble with the Italians at once. Are you going to allow them to have a sort
of Protectorate ? That is what troubles me.
LOBD BOBEBT CECIL: May I start from a different point of viejv, the point
of view of self-deiermination; that is to sny, what will the populations of these
countries really desire in their own interests? Personally, I should not care a straw
what the French did in Syria, except that the Arabs say they will goto war with them
if they do these things.
MB. BALFOUB: That is most admirable and logical, and wholly consistent with
clause 7. It fits in with all the theories, and with the fourteen points of President
WiLon, but it does not fit in with the Powers we have to deal with—the French and
the Italians. They are not in the least out for self-determination, they are out for
getting whatever they can.
LOBD BOBEBT CECIL : They are Imperialists.
MB. BALFOUB: Exactly. They are Imperialistic, and quite frankly so. In a
speech I mentioned at the Cabinet to-day, they talk quite frankly of the necessity of
Italy getting coal and iron concessions in Anatolia Peninsula that forms most of modern-day Turkey. . The French may not be quite as
frank, but that is exactly what they are thinking "of. Then they will say : “ By all your
arrangements, the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1915, and all the rest of it,, equality is
what we look to ; and if you, the British, under the name of Protectorate, or any other
name you choose, are going to have absolute ownership, or something which is broader,
we mean to have it too.” That is the real trouble. I am obliged to bother about it,
because that is exactly the question which will come before my unhappy self when we
are discussing these things at Paris.
LOBD BOBEBT CECIL : I do not think you are in any diplomatic difficulty,
because of the terms of the Anglo-French declaration, which was drawn expressly for
that purpose; the French drew it up in accordance with what was agreed on in the
Foreign Office meeting. The object of it was to lay down the principle that it must be
the populations who should settle the form of government they could have, and that
we should not propose any form of government they did not approve.
MB. BALFOUB : The French will have a substantial objection to that, if it leads
to quite different treatment, and the Italians will have not only a substantial, but a
formal right to say so.
LOBD BOBEBT CECIL : The Italians are not entitled to the slightest sympathy
of any sort or kind, nor have they any claim. But I agree the French have got a good
contractual claim. The answer to the French is this: “ My dear fellows, if you want
to get the same results from your native populations you must concede the same
opportunities as the English.”
MB. BALFOUB : “ Look at us ! ”
LOBD BOBEBT CECIL : “It is your business to make them like you ; if you
fail, we cannot help that.”
MB. BALFOUB : “This is the way we think you should conduct it.”
LOBD BOBEBT CECIL : I should certainly say that.
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