Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎263r] (525/544)

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MR. BALFOUR : No, but there are two ways of saying it. You can either say"
what Turkey gives up, or you can say what she retains. If you say what she retains,
everything which you do not say that she retains, she does give up by inference.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : I quite agree. All I meant was this. I sympathise
very much with Lord Curzon’s view. It will he a great nuisance to have the French
raising all sorts of discussions as to the exact relations that we have with each of these
Arab chiefs, and it would be much better if we could keep the discussions out. But
I do not quite see how we could say it was out of order, so to speak, for them to raise
the matter. They evidently can and must rise, and there will be a great deal of
discussion as to our position and the Bowers’ position with reference to the rest of the
Turkish Empire, and I do not quite see how you will be able to exclude these other
things.
MR. BALFOUR : Suppose the process were this. You say to the Turks. “ Your
limits are so-and-so. You shall not go further east than Armenia ; you shall not go further
north t han the Black Sea; you shall not go further south than so-and-so ; you shall not
have European Turkey,” or anything which may ultimately be decided on. That
settles Turkey. Turkey has no more questions to ask. How do the other things
come in ?
LORD CURZON : May I say, in passing, there will be another wav of doing the
same thing. You are suggesting that south of a certain line, or beyond a certain line,
Turkish claims should be renounced or not recognised. You can say, in a sentence
which would be more intelligible to the Eastern world, that all her claims over
Mesopotamia and Arabia—or, if you like to drop Mesopotamia out, over Arabia—are
henceforward abandoned. That covers everything.
MR. BALFOUR : You would have to say Armenia.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : This is the way in which it has been put by Hurst in
making a rough draft of a preliminary treaty in order to see how the thing looked.
MR. BALFOUR : Then, of course, the question does arise that the French may
say, “ Very well, that is all right. Turkey has nothing to do with this. But you
admit that you cannot settle Mesopotamia without the Conference, or Syria without the
Conference, or Armenia without the Conference : how, then, can you settle these other
things ? ”
LORD ROBERT CECIL: That is what I am afraid of. What the French will
want to say is, “ You are getting a lot in Arabia. That must all be counted ”—quite
inaccurately—“ to the British share,” and, of course, if it is going to be put in that kind
of way, if we are going to discuss this territorial question from that point of view and
not from the General Smuts’ point of view, then that will be a powerful factor.
MR. BALFOUR : We alw r ays come up against, and w'e shall throughout all this
Conference, the poverty of our political terminology. We want quite different relations
with these tribes to what we want with Mesopotamia. In the case of Mesopotamia,
we want to see that there is tolerable government there. We do not want that in
regard to these people. We have not got two names to describe two things. There
are other analogous things, and it is going to be most serious, because observe how it has
come up in this particular case. The French will say, “ You want to have a protectorate
over these places, just as you do in Mesopotamia.” We shall have to say “ No, we do
not; we want to keep out everybody else, and we want to see they do not have rela
tions with foreign Powers; but we do not care how they fight among themselves,
within limits, and that is not a protectorate.” We have no word for it.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : Nor is the proposed situation in Mesopotamia a
protectorate.
MR. BALFOUR : It is quite different to Egypt. That is another illustration of
the same thing.
LORD ROBERT CECIL: There is every variation.
MR. BALFOUR : Yes, and only one word for every variation.
LORD ROBERT CECIL: I do not think it would be possible t® have anything
except some such general phrase as “sphere of influence or “sphere of interest,”
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