Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎241r] (481/544)

ANNEX.
Shorthand votes of a Meeting of the Committee held in Lord Curzons Room at the
Privy Council Officey on Thursday, December 19, 1918, at 3 p.m.
PERSIA.
LORD CURZON : We have met to-day to discuss the question of Persia and
the policy which it is desirable to pursue with regard to that distressful country, either
at the Peace Conference or elsewhere. We have had a very able and exhaustive
paper,* prepared for us by the Foreign Office, covering almost every aspect of the
case, and we further have the advantage here of the presence of Sir Charles Marling,
who for so long a time in moments of great emergency, difficulty, and crisis, ably
sustained our interests in that country.
In order to form an opinion as to the policy which we should pursue with regard
to Persia, we ought, I think, to place our policy in due perspective to the facts of the
situation as they exist in that country. A good many of us in this room have been
engaged in the effort to grapple with the Persian problem during the past few years,
and it is one of the most puzzling, and in some respects one of the most discouraging,
with which we have had to deal.
We are face to face, in the first place, with a country, the Government of which
is weak and incompetent, the ruling classes corrupt and extortionate, the monarch
worthless, and the lower clashes in a deplorable condition intellectually, physically and
materially. Persia would be bankrupt if it were not for our money, and she would at
this moment be in a state of revolution if it were not for our troops. Ihese difficulties,
which have been growing steadily for a long time, have become worse instead of better
in the progress of the w r ar. Disorder, chronic in Persia and breaking out afresh at
intervals during the war, has been rampant in almost every part of the land. Her
territory has been invaded from more quarters than one, particularly on the west, and
during the last year or two any semblance of order or government has only existed in
Persia because of the force that w T e have been called upon to deploy in the background.
There is a general consensus of opinion that if we were to withdraw that force at this
moment, which on every a 'priori ground we should he only too delighted to do, there
would be revolution, Bolshevism, and anarchy of a very dangerous description in the
northern provinces and in the whole of the country conditions scarcely distinguishable
from chaos.
What has been our policy towards Persia in these circumstances during the last
four years of war ? Every one of us knows well, although perhaps the Persians would be
reluctant to admit it, that at the bottom we have no other desire, in our own interests as
well as in the interests of the Persians themselves, than to build up, establish and
fortify the independence and integrity of Persia, even although we have been compelled
bv the exigencies of the case to take steps which are capable of being represented as
the very antithesis of that policy atid principle. We have been obliged to embark upon
a military intervention, which three or four years ago many of us at this table would
have deemed not only impracticable, but wrong. Throughout this period we have had
hanging round our necks the unhappy legacy of the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907.
I will not enter into the old question, about which my views are well known, as to the
policy or even as to the details of that arrangement, which from the start I thought
not only unfair but calamitous. No one will, at any rate, dispute that it has entirely
failed of its results. The object of the agreement was to stop the eternal friction and
jealousy that existed in Persia between the Russians and ourselves. The result of the
agreement was that owing to the form in which it was carried out, it outraged the
Persian sentiments of nationality and independence, that so far from putting a stopper
upon the actions of Russia Jay giving her a free bandit encouraged her attitude in the
north of Persia and in TeKeran ; and, most unfortunate of all, that it placed us in the
position—at any rate in Persian eyes—of being tarred with the Russian brush, of being
identified with her policy, and of carrying upon our shoulders the burden ot all the
offences which she had committed.
Thus, owing to these various conditions, you have the position that during the
years of war we have been faced with a Persia—I am speaking of the Government
* E.C.-2772.