Papers of the Interdepartmental Conference on Middle Eastern Affairs [‎13r] (25/290)

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division and three battalions. In addition to this, there were on
the way from Salonica three Indian battalions and one brigade oi
artillery ; and from Egypt one Indian pioneer battalion to replace
the British pioneer troops. When these arrived the forces under
General Milne’s command in the Caucasus would amount to two
weak divisions.
With regard to paragraph 3 of the General Staff Note (Appendix)
he understood that the method pursued by General Thomson in
order to stabilise the financial situation at Baku had been to start
the printing press and turn out rouble notes, exactly as the Russian
Bolsheviks were doing. The whole military position had depended
on keeping the railway quiet, and for this end the notes had been
issued. So far as he could gather, General Thomson was not com
mitting us to anything. The costs were to be debited against the
Russian account.
Mr. Montagu said this aspect of the case seemed very serious.
It looked as if we were incurring an indeterminate liability.
General Bartholomew said that the whole matter was rather
obscure. The military authorities had asked that a financial com
mission should be sent out to study the position.
The Chairman said the idea that it was possible to print paper
money without incurring liability involved elementary principles of
political economy that need not be discussed.
General Radcliffe said that, since the note by the General Staff
had been written, the War Office had received a report from General
Milne giving the terms of an agreement drawn up between General
Forrestier-Walkei- and the Government of the province of Kars.
Under one clause of the agreement General Forrestier-Walker had
promised that the Allied Powers would guarantee the financial
position of the administration so long as it was pure and reasonably
economical, and had agreed to make good, if necessary, any adverse
balance between receipt and expenditure. This committed us
financially to an undesirable extent.
The Chairman said General Forrest.ier-Walker appeared to have
acted much as General Maileson had done in Trans-Caspia, and to
have involved us in pledges of which we were completely ignorant.
Until now he had not known that we had reached the stage of
recognising these States, still less of holding the principal centres,
and still less again of financing them.
Mr. Montagu said it might well be that General Milne had
entered into these obligations on the strength of our desire (quoted
in paragraph 5 (c) of the General Staff’s note) to see a strong and
independent State in Georgia.
As to the invitation to Italy to assume our obligations in trooping
the Caucasus, the first he had heard of the matter was at the Quai
d’Orsay. The Prime Minister had been against our remaining in the
Caucasus. He had originally based himself on the facts that we had
hundreds of thousands of troops in the Turkish Empire, and that he
did not wish to maintain all these troops there in view of the
necessity for proceeding with demobilisation. Therefore, he wanted
to decide as soon as possible the peace future of Turkey. A discussion
had then taken place in which it was decided to set up a Military
Committee to apportion the trooping of Turkey. The report of this
Committee had been issued. In it France had agreed to troop Syria
with two divisions, Britain had agreed to troop Mesopotamia, and
Italy had expressed herself willing to put two divisions into the
Caucasus.
He had learned from General Thvraites that the Committee’s
instructions had been to find out how to distribute the burden of
trooping most fairly. The willingness of Italy to undertake the
Caucasus had not surprised the Chairman more than it had done