Papers written by Curzon on the Near and Middle East [‎78r] (155/348)

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CABINET.
[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty s Government.]
No. 1.—SECRETARY OF STATE.
GERMANY.
[June 13.j
CONFIDENTIAL.
Section 1,
[C 12331/92/18] No. 1.
Earl Carzon to Jjord Hardinge {Paris).
(No. 1634.)
My Lord, Foreign Office, June 13, 1921.
THE French Ambassador, having asked to see me with a special message from
his Government, called upon me at my private house yesterday, Sunday, morning.
His first point was with regard to the treatment of mandates at the forthcoming
meeting of the Council of the League of Nations. His Government had, as I knew,
in deference to the objections raised in Washington, proposed that the consideration
of Mandates A should not be taken at the impending meeting of the Council. He
now, however, desired to suggest that this reserve should not apply to Mandates B,
which touched upon no particular American interest, and he hoped that the British
Government would join with the French in representing to Washington that it was
desirable to dispose of these mandates without delay.
His Excellency then commenced a discussion upon the Silesian question, reading
to me a prolonged telegram from M. Briand, containing the latest French version of
affairs, as reported from Silesia two days previously. The telegram contained the
usual complaint against the attitude of the British, upon whom the Irench sought
to place all responsibility for the delays and difficulties that had occurred. It
referred with particular asperity to the recent firing upon and imprisonment of
French soldiers by a portion of the German bands. It threw upon His Majesty s
Government the sole responsibility for the delay in setting up a neutral zone. In
general, it implied that the situation in Silesia—which, it may be remarked in
passing, was largely due in the first place to the deliberate inertia, and has since
been aggravated by the concerted delays, of the French—was exclusively due to the
maleficent activities of the British Government and the British representatives.
I said at once that I resented this tone of insistent complaint and reproach
from the French Government; that there was in fact not a word of justification for
it; that the boot was entirely upon the other leg; and that courtesy alone induced
me to desist from repeating the demonstration which I had previously offered of the
complicity of French soldiers and commanders in the rising, and of the procrastina
tion of the French Government in dealing with the matter at this end. As to the
incident of the French soldiers, I remarked that our information was that it had
been due to a misunderstanding, and that it had been satisfactorily explained in
Silesia. I informed him that a British soldier of the Black Watch had been shot,
presumably by one of the Polish insurgents, in a fracas the day before; but I had
not at once approached the French Government with a complaint about this. Such
incidents were liable to occur in a situation of so much complexity and conflict.
The Ambassador seemed to think that the British were specially responsible
for having allowed the French soldiers to be detained for twenty-four hours.
I declined, however, to discuss the matter further, saying that much larger
issues were at stake.
As regards the neutral zone and the situation in general, his remarks were,
I said, to a certain extent rendered obsolete by the events of the past two days.
T read to him the greater part of a lengthy telegram from Sir Harold Stuart, dated
onlv the day before, in which was explained the plan for a progressive withdrawal
from the disputed area, by the insurgents on the one side and the Germans on the
other : the inference being that the evacuated area would be occupied by the Allied
Commission, using for the purpose the -augmented Allied forces now at their
disposal. The telegram reported that there was fair ground for believing that both
sides would withdraw : the Germans to the left bank of the Oder, the insurgents to
the eastern boundary of “ Kreis."’ The whole object of the Allies should be to create
this vacuum between the opposing forces, to get it effectively occupied by Allied
troops, and to re-establish the authority of the Allied Commission.
It seemed to me, I added, that the appointment of Sir Harold Stuart had
already exercised a most beneficial effect upon the situation. Personally, I had
alwavs held—and here the Ambassador indicated his assent—that it was a great
mistake to place the commission entirely in the hands of military men. If the