A Peace to End all Peace (23 page)

Sykes had concentrated on satisfying what Cairo had told him were Hussein’s claims, and did not see that behind them Cairo was advancing claims of its own. What Sykes did not understand was that when Clayton and Storrs said they wanted inland Syria for the Arabs, they really meant that they wanted it for Britain, and for themselves as Britain’s representatives in the region, advancing behind an Arab façade; and when they said they wanted it to be independent, they meant that they wanted it to be administered by Britain rather than France.

Sykes did not see that Hussein’s Syrian domains would be any the less independent for being advised by French rather than by British officials. In Cairo, however, a world of difference was seen between British and French administration. Not entirely without reason, Clayton and his colleagues believed French colonial administrators to be incapable of allowing a country to retain its own character. What the French termed their “civilizing mission” was seen as annexationism by the British; often it seemed to involve imposing the French language and culture on a native society. The British, on the other hand, in Egypt and elsewhere, kept to themselves, dwelt in their own clubs and compounds, and, apart from supervising the administration of the government, left the country and its people alone. In the eyes of Clayton and his colleagues, this was the greatest degree of independence to which Arabic-speaking peoples could aspire. As one of Clayton’s colleagues told students at a British Military Staff College a few years later, educated Arabs regarded British rule as “the only decent alternative” to Ottoman rule.
¹⁴

Equating, as they did, a French presence with annexation and a British presence with independence, Clayton and his colleagues (though they did not tell Sykes so) regarded the Sykes-Picot Agreement as a betrayal of the pledge to grant independence to the proposed Arab confederation. Kitchener’s followers aspired to rule Syria themselves, and believed that Sykes had let them down. But that is not the way they put it. What they said was: Sykes has let down
the Arabs
(as though it were the Arabs rather than themselves who desired Britain to rule Syria).

For whatever it meant to them politically, and perhaps even personally, Clayton and Storrs saw that Sykes had foreclosed the possibility of their creating a new Egyptian empire. Simla had already staked out a claim to the nearby Mesopotamian provinces, so Baghdad and Basra—the principal British zone in the Sykes-Picot Agreement—would be ruled by their adversary, the Government of India; while Syria, which could have been in Cairo’s sphere, was instead surrendered to France. The agreement allowed Cairo and Khartoum to expand their influence only in arid, inhospitable Arabia. Kitchener, after the war, could go out to India as Viceroy; but Clayton and Storrs were Arabists, tied emotionally and professionally to the fortunes of the Cairo Residency. They could hardly help but be dismayed by what Sykes had done.

Sykes never understood that his friends in Cairo held these views; he thought that he had done what they had asked. He thought he had won inland Syria for the Arabs; he did not realize that they thought he had lost it. He never suspected that Cairo was going to try to undermine the Sykes-Picot Agreement. He was proud of the agreement, and it was ironic that the Arab Bureau which he had created became the center of the plot to destroy it.

His old friend Aubrey Herbert worked with the Arab Bureau in Cairo and so Herbert knew (while Sykes did not) that Clayton bitterly believed that the Sykes-Picot Agreement had reduced Cairo’s Arab policy to tatters. Herbert cast the blame on Picot. He wrote:

IV

The Sykes-Picot Agreement was approved by the British and French Cabinets at the beginning of February 1916. But its terms and even its existence were kept secret; the very fact that the Allies had reached an agreement about the postwar Middle East was not revealed until almost two years later. Some of the few officials in London who knew of the agreement expressed reservations about it. The common British complaint was that it gave away too much to the French.

For Sykes, some of the justification for giving way to the French was soon destroyed. Sykes had wanted to win France’s approval of Cairo’s proposal to invade Syria and thereby spark al-Faruqi’s promised Arab Revolt. But the Prime Minister, deferring to the generals who insisted on concentrating all forces on the western front in Europe, ruled out a new Middle Eastern campaign because of the diversion of resources that it would entail.

A furious Sykes delivered a speech in the House of Commons denouncing Asquith’s leadership as muddled, and demanding the establishment of a four-member Cabinet committee to run the war. Delivered at a time when the Prime Minister was faltering as a leader, the speech attracted wide and favorable publicity. It also led Sykes to two meetings that proved important in his climb up the political ladder: one with Lloyd George, and one with the former proconsul in South Africa, Lord Milner, and his influential coterie, including Geoffrey Robinson, editor of
The Times
.

Despite his failure to win approval for an invasion of Syria, Sykes believed that it was important to conclude the arrangements with France on the basis that had been agreed. The Sykes-Picot Agreement achieved what Kitchener, at least, wanted to achieve: the containment of Russia in the postwar Middle East. Moreover, Sykes seemed to believe that for the Allies to resolve their differences and arrive at a definite agreement was in itself a good thing. Russian ratification was required, so the immediate assignment for Sykes was to join Picot—who was already in Petrograd—to help secure Russian approval of their agreement.

V

There was a curious omission in the agreement Sykes and Picot were bringing to Petrograd. As regards Palestine, the document took account of the interests of France, Britain, the other Allies, and the Moslem Arab leader Hussein of Mecca; but no reference was made to the interests of the people of the Biblical Holy Land—the Jews. Yet political Zionism—the organized Jewish movement aiming at a national return of the Jewish people to Palestine—had been an active force in the world for two or three decades. Jewish resettlement of Palestine had gone on in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and by 1916 there was a substantial Jewish population living and working there.

Before Sykes embarked for Russia, his attention was caught by an observation made about this by Captain William Reginald Hall, the head of intelligence at the Admiralty. Hall objected to the inducements being offered to Hussein’s Arabs, saying that the British should land troops in Palestine, for only then would the Arabs come over to the Allies. “Force is the best Arab propaganda,” claimed Hall, and besides promises to the Arabs might be opposed by Jews, who had “a strong
material
, and a very strong
political
, interest in the future of the country [original emphasis].”
¹⁶
Sykes was struck by the mention of Jews. Until then they had not figured in his calculations. Before leaving for Russia, Sykes therefore contacted Herbert Samuel, the Home Secretary, who was Jewish, hoping to learn about Zionism.

It will be remembered that in their negotiations, Sykes and Picot had compromised their differences about Palestine by agreeing that most of it would be placed under an international regime, the precise form of which would be determined after consultation with the other interested Allies—Russia and Italy—and with Hussein of Mecca. Captain Hall’s comments led Sykes to worry, however, that the compromise at which he and Picot had arrived had left a principal factor out of account: they had not taken into consideration the possibility that Jews might be concerned in the political future of Palestine.

Evidently Sykes was afraid that when he brought this omission to the attention of Picot, the Frenchman would think that he was doing so in order to back out of their agreement. Accordingly, on his arrival in Petrograd he was at pains to establish his good faith. In his innocence he did not know—or even suspect—that the French government had already gone behind his back to renege on the Palestine compromise they had agreed upon. In secret negotiations with the Russians initiated by the French Premier, Aristide Briand, on 25 March 1916, the French secured Russian agreement that an international regime for Palestine—the arrangement Sykes had agreed upon with Picot—would be impractical and that instead a French regime ought to be installed. A secret Franco-Russian exchange of notes on 26 April 1916 outlined an agreement between the governments as to their respective spheres of influence in the Ottoman territories, and embodied a Russian pledge to France “to support in negotiations with the British government the designs of the government of the Republic [France] on Palestine.”
¹⁷

The Russians had no sympathy for Jews or for Jewish claims, and when Sykes arrived in Petrograd, his Czarist hosts persuaded him that Zionist Jews were a great and potentially hostile power within Russia. Thereafter Sykes was seized with the conviction that Jews were a power in a great many places and might sabotage the Allied cause. But unlike the Russians, Sykes believed in attempting to win them over. He reported to the Foreign Office that he had told Picot that, while Britain had no interest in taking possession of Palestine, it was what the Zionists wanted, and that they ought to be propitiated if the Allies were to have a chance of winning the war.
¹⁸
His own notion was to offer the Zionists an incorporated land company in Palestine; his question to the Foreign Office was “Is a land company enough?”—to which the brusque response from the Foreign Office was that he should keep his thoughts to himself.
¹⁹
(Evidently the Foreign Office did not want Sykes to meddle in a matter about which—it was clear—he knew nothing.)

Returning to London in April 1916, Sykes took further steps to learn about Zionism. He again saw Samuel, who introduced him to Dr Moses Gaster, chief Rabbi of the Sephardic Jewish community.
^*
According to Sykes, Gaster “opened my eyes to what Zionism meant.”
²⁰
Sykes then introduced Gaster to the French negotiator, Georges Picot, and suggested to Picot that France and Britain, instead of operating independently of one another in the Middle East, should work together as patrons of Arabs and Jews. Picot was impressed neither by Gaster nor by Sykes’s proposal, and held fast to his territorial designs.

Sykes began to worry, at a time when a decisive Allied victory seemed at best a remote possibility, that Jewish forces would tilt the scales in favor of the Germans and Turks. He attempted to persuade Picot that if the Allies failed to offer Jews a position in Palestine, France might lose the war and, with it, cities and provinces in France herself, of much more consequence to Frenchmen than Palestine. He urged Picot to tell his government that saving Paris and Verdun and regaining Alsace were worth concessions in the Middle East.

While Sykes was in the process of discovering the Zionist issue—before, during, and after his Petrograd trip—so was the Foreign Office in London, prompted by Sykes’s old friend Gerald FitzMaurice. FitzMaurice, who had attended the same public school (Beaumont) and had acquired many of the same views and prejudices as had Sykes, was—it will be remembered—the principal source within the British government of the fallacy that the Sublime Porte had fallen into the hands of Jews. At the Admiralty early in 1916, FitzMaurice hit upon the converse of that proposition: he inspired a Foreign Office colleague—another Old Boy of Beaumont, named Hugh O’Beirne—to suggest that “if we could offer the Jews an arrangement as to Palestine which would strongly appeal to them we might conceivably be able to strike a bargain with them as to withdrawing their support from the Young Turk Government which would then automatically collapse.”
²¹
Just as Cairo believed in powerful, mysterious Arab societies that could overthrow the Young Turks, London believed in powerful, mysterious Jewish societies that could do so, too.

O’Beirne evidently intended to pursue the matter within the Foreign Office himself, but did not get the chance to do so: he died in the spring of 1916. So it was, after all, left to Sykes to raise the issue of Zionism within the British bureaucracy, little though he knew of Jews or their affairs.

Like FitzMaurice, Sykes retained his childhood belief in the existence of a cohesive world Jewish community that moved in hidden ways to control the world. Britain’s foremost academic authority on the Middle East, Edward Granville Browne, Adams Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University, who had known Sykes as a pupil, though he had praise for him in other respects, commented that Sykes “sees Jews in everything.”
²²

VI

Zionism, however, was far from being the chief issue with which Sykes dealt in wintry Petrograd in 1916. The broad outlines of the Middle Eastern settlement were at issue, and when he arrived he found that the Russian leaders—like British officials in London—claimed that France was being promised too much. In response, the French ambassador, Maurice Paléologue, explained to the Russian Foreign Minister that the reason Britain had pushed France to extend her claims so far to the east was to provide Britain with a buffer against Russia.
²³
This was perfectly true, but the Foreign Office in London was furious at being given away, and bombarded Petrograd with official denials. Privately, Foreign Office officials described Paléologue as “really incorrigible.”
²⁴