Papers written by Curzon on the Near and Middle East [‎4v] (8/348)

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solution, and, if in saying this he represented the views of his Government, 1 imagine
that any such conclusion, if arrived at and advocated by ourselves, would meet wit i
support in Paris. ., ,
In urging the rapid settlement of peace with Germany, the Ambassador said tiiat
he contemplated with genuine alarm the situation in which, alter months had been
spent upon conversations and Commissions, an arrangement should be placed before
the German Government which the latter would absolutely decline to accept. In such
circumstances, he asked, what would be done ? ,
I replied that the principal weapon which would remain in the hands ol the Allie.s
then would be their military strength, and I hoped that as little as possible would be
done to impair it; another weapon would be the military occupation of lierman
territory ; a third would be the influence that could still be exercised by the British
fleet; and the fourth, and probably most effective, would be the continuance of the
blockade.
This led j\I. Gambon to urge, with great emphasis, the policy of not yieldinc to
the pressure of President W ilson and the Americans for the relaxation or raising of
the blockade, but resolutely adhering to it until the conclusion of peace.
I informed him that, in a discussion at the \\ ar Cabinet that morning, the same
view had been expressed and had met with unanimous approval ; that I believed it
was equally the view of our representatives in Paris ; and that, for my own part,
I hoped most strongly that we should keep intact what 1 considered to be the most
powerful of the offensive weapons that remained in our hands.
From these subjects the Ambassador passed on to discuss that which was his 1’eal
preoccupation, namely, the uncomfortable condition of affairs that had arisen between
the French and ourselves out of many incidents in the Middle Fast. He brought
forward, one after another, the numerous cases in which the french Government
complained that their officials or sympathisers or subjects had been treated in the most
arbitrary way by the British civil or military authorities in those regions. He said
that an atmosphere w T as being engendered in which, although the individual incidents
might sometimes be small, in their totality they could not fail to be injurious to
harmonious relations between the tw T o peoples in those countries, w T hile they produced
a situation at home which w r as not without its dangerous features. He mentioned in
turn the refusal by the British military authorities to numerous French subjects and
Syrian merchants under French protection of permission to return to Syria; the
refusal of the Mesopotamian authorities to allow the French consul to take relief to
French subjects in Mosul; the refusal of the same authorities to allow the French
consul at Bagdad to move from Basra to Bagdad ; and the attempt of the British
military authorities in Mesopotamia to turn the French military attache out of the
country. He attributed the greater part of these incidents to the temper and tone of
young officers of the Indian army, who came to Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine
impregnated with the autocratic ideas and manners which they had acquired in
dealing with the natives in India, and who showed an unconcealed hostility to the
French. He could only regard these incidents as a deliberate plot to deprive the
French of the legitimate objects of their ambition in the East. He further instanced
a number of recent incidents in Constantinople, notably the seizure, by the orders of
General Milne, of the Ottoman banks. He said that this step, which had been under
friendly discussion between the Allied Powers in that city, was taken by General
Milne without notice to anyone, even the British High Commissioner (Admiral
Calthorpe), and that it v T as an abuse of the powers entrusted to the British general
officer in command. The Ambassador did not, however, mention the taking over of
the police and sanitary administration of Constantinople by the British High Commis
sioner a few weeks ago.
In reply, I seized the opportunity to tell the Ambassador that there was another
side to the case, which L was quite prepared to place before him, which threw a very
different complexion on several of the incidents to which he referred, and the main
features of which, speaking from memory, I proceeded to outline. I said that General
Allenby seemed throughout not only to have taken up an attitude of rigid impartiality,
but to have shown wherever he could not only reasonable, but exceptional, considera
tion to French claims.
To this the Ambassador did not demur.
1 went on to say that, before I accepted the charge against the young officers of
the Indian army, I should wish to know whether it was these officers who were at fault;
and that, even if the Ambassador were correct in assuming that military service in India
led to an autocratic manner towards natives, I did not see why a British officer of