Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎87r] (173/544)

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The Chairman denied that this was the case, and stated that
he could recall no single instance where delay had occurred either
in assembling a meeting of the Committee or in arriving at a
decision on any point of importance, and he challenged members to
cite such instances. There had been cases where decisions on
matters of policy had been postponed, but always for sufficient
reason ; and the reason had generally been that some member had
asked for time for further consideration by his department.
Mr. Montagu said he would not pursue the point. He was
content to leave it with the agreement that he had received. It
seemed to him inevitable that a Committee which dealt executively
with various points of administration must lead to delay when the
difficulty had to be met of collecting very busy men from different
departments to a meeting. In a single department urgent business
could be disposed of by summoning one or two officials from within
the building, and he contended that the Eastern Committee should
assemble only for the purpose of taking decisions on policy which
might be called Cabinet decisions. All executive action ought to
be taken by the new Minister for the Middle East in consultation
with the other Departments and in pursuance of the policy laid
down by the Committee.
Lord Kobert Cecil agreed with Mr. Montagu that all questions
could be disposed of much more expeditiously by a Department
than by a Committee. For the Committee to meet regularly every
day, for instance, would place a great deal of extra work upon the
members, and also frequentD involve a considerable waste of time ;
on the other hand, to arrange an hour convenient to half-a-dozen
busy men for an occasional meeting, must mean some delay. He
further agreed that a Committee, such as the Eastern Committee,
without any regular staff or secretarial organisation, was not really
the best instrument to deal with matters requiring executive action.
He regarded the existence of a Committee, such as the Eastern
Committee, as essential; and he concurred with the Secretary of
State for India in thinking that it should be the Cabinet for all
Middle Eastern questions. Under the existing system of govern
ment, when Departments could not agree on the line of action, they
carried their disputes either to the Prime Minister direct or to the
War Cabinet. He himself would like to see this arrangement
adopted in the case of all matters affecting the Middle East. He
admitted that most of the questions which came before the Eastern
Committee were those which required a decision by the Committee.
On the other hand, there were a number of day-to-day problems, e.g. %
the Caspian fleet, or the policy to be laid down for General Malleson,
for the consideration of which some lighter machinery was, in the
ffrst instance, desirable. Such matters could more conveniently be
threshed out by a Sub-Committee, as had been advocated in his note,
or, less formally, by assembling at the Foreign Office representatives
of the three Departments concerned to decide on executive action,
or to prepare the way for a discussion by the Eastern Committee.
This latter alternative he had submitted to the Chairman, who had
been unable to accept it. He did not for a moment suggest any
change in the Chairman’s functions. His point was that questions
daily arose which required constant discussion by, and a close
touch between, the departments, and yet were not, in their initial
stages, important enough to necessitate a meeting of the Committee.
At present, in view of the Chairman’s attitude, he confessed that he
felt great diffidence even about inviting one or two officials from
other departments to any informal preliminary discussion; and he
was sometimes disposed to wonder where his own personal
responsibility began and ended. Between each meeting of the
Committee a mass of telegrams and papers were circulated, and it
was practically impossible for individual members to handle them
all satisfactorily—so much so that he personally doubted if any
member knew from day to day exactly where we stood in regard to