Letters and Papers Concerning the Trans-Persian Railway and Other Railways in Persia [‎198r] (395/442)

The Trans-Persian Railway. [ 15 July 1912] The Trans-Persian Railway. 472
being formed and of powerful groups
connected with Persia taking part in it
with a view to a concession from Mo-
hammerah to Khoremabad. I hope that
this may be true, and that His Majesty’s
Government may be able to give us some
information about it.
Here in this smaller policy of internal
railways in Persia is a scheme which I
think is practicable, which will not excite
any jealousy, which will not raise any
alarms in India or anywhere else, and which
you may pursue with the knowledge that
all parties are agreed upon it. I hope His
Majesty’s Government will curtail their
ambitions in regard to the larger scheme,
and will devote themselves to the humbler
task which I have dared to suggest to them.
And, above all, I hope that they will not
involve this country or the Government of
India in the great responsibilities that
would result from a change of policy in
regard to the defence of India without
placing before us in the fullest manner the
opinions upon which they propose to act,
and that, whatever views they may enter
tain themselves, they will not proceed to
convert those views into action without
giving both Houses of Parliament an oppor
tunity of expressing an opinion upon them.
I beg to move.
Moved, That an humble Address be
presented to His Majesty for Papers
relating to the project of a Trans-Persian
Railway .—{Earl Curzon of Kedleston.)
The LORD PRESIDENT of the
COUNCIL (Viscount Morley) : My
Lords, the noble Earl expressed the wish I
that the Government might curtail their j
ambitions, but the picture he has drawn !
of the so-called ambitions of the Govern- |
ment is really imaginary and unsupported. I
I am at a loss to know how, after reading !
Sir Edward Grey’s speech in another place,
the noble Earl should have taken up the
attitude that he has done in respect to the
Government. It is no discredit to him at
all that he is not accurately informed as
to the immediate relations of the Govern- j
ment to this Societe d’Etudes. The noble
Earl has fallen into various errors as to the
facts and circumstances connected with
that body and our relations to it, which
I must point out to him and to your Lord-
ships. The proposal—there is no conceal
ment about it—was initiated in Russia.
The promoters of this body were Russian
(I) 375)
promoters in the first instance. They
have had no support whatever from His
Majesty’s Government beyond the negative
refusal to veto their existence and to pro
hibit their operations so far as we could.
Not one atom of money has found its way
from our Exchequer to the chest of that
body. The noble Earl has been entirely
misinformed when he tells your Lordships
that the two Ministers at Teheran, the
Russian Minister and our own, approached
the Persian Government and invited them
to give facilities for the operations of this
commission. There has been no com
munication of that sort.
Then the noble Earl said that we had
encouraged this body and its operations.
That is entirely imaginary. We have not
encouraged it beyond the fact that when
the proposal was presented to us we
examined it—the fact of the proposal, not
the contents of it—and in describing that as
i encouragement and in taxing us with using
diplomatic machinery the noble Earl is
j entirely wide of the mark. The noble Earl
made a point that supposing this body w r ere
to report in favour of some through line of
which we, w r hen the time comes, disapprove,
it would be impossible for us with diploma
tic decency and consistency to withstand
the report of that body. I cannot imagine
anything that has been said by any member
of the Government—certainly not by Sir
Edw r ard Grey, who is the only person, I
think, w'ho has spoken officially—which
could warrant the view^ that we should not
be justified in dealing with perfect freedom
with the report of this body. The noble
Earl talked of the rapidity with which this
proceeding had gone on, and he said that
last year v T hen I had the honour of following
him in debate—in March, I think— I gave
him a sort of assurance that nothing was on
foot. My language does not bear that
*Earl CURZON of KEDLESTON : I
did not say that. I merely read the noble
Viscount’s wmrds. I did not draw any
inference from them.
Viscount MORLEY : The word I used
in that debate was “ immature.” There
was nothing disingenuous in that. There
was no suggestion that there was no project
on foot. I ask the noble Earl, Does he of
all men think that this question of Persian
railways is at all a new one ? He knows
better than anybody in the House, from his
experience in two Government Offices and in
B