Papers of the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee [‎185v] (370/544)

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take up, might decline to accept for themselves. I put the question to the Foreign
Secretary with a view of suggesting that, if President Wilson took that line and if
we could persuade our Allies to take it also and start afresh, we should in some respects
be freed from the main embarrassments of our present situation. If that is impossible,
may I suggest that our line of action probably should be this, to back Faisal and the
Arabs as far as we can, up to the point of not alienating the French, the bent of whose
ambitions turns towards the East and a future French sphere in those regions. For
the safety of our Eastern Empire I would sooner come to a satisfactory arrangement
with the Arabs than I would with the French, but I would not carry the arrangement
with the Arabs to the point of quarrelling with the French. Secondly, if that be our
line of action as regards Faisal, ought we not to play the policy of self-determination
for all it is worth ? When we made the Anglo-French declaration in November last, I
think, as often happens, we hardly realised what its full purport and bearing might be.
Perhaps, I am interested in the matter, perhaps, I am inclined to value the argument
of self-determination, because I believe that most of the people would determine in
our favour.
LORD ROBERT CECIL : I do not think there is any doubt at all as to what
was the object of the declaration. The reason why I was prepared to give great
concessions to the French m order to get that declaration was because I thought it was
of such tremendous value to us to remedy the evil of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
LORD CURZOJN : 1 am glad to hear you say that, because that is the point
of view from which I am regarding it.
LORD ROBERT CECIL: It does not do' more than limit it, but it does
that much.
LORD CURZON : I have now completed my statement. My last remark was,
self-determination having been laid down, if we cannot get out of our difficulties in any
other way we ought to play self-determination for all it is worth wherever we are
involved in difficulties with the French, the Arabs, or anybody else, and leave the case
to be settled by that final argument knowing in the bottom of our hearts that we are
more likely to benefit from it than is anybody else.
MR. BALFOUR : Although I am really an interloper in this Committee, as you
have put a question to me I will make one observation in answer to it before I have to
go and keep my Foreign Office appointments. I am entirely of opinion that self-deter
mination—the broad principle of self-determination—is the one that we should work for.
Nor is there anything new in it. I think the word was used, as far as my memory
serves me, in a despatch that was written before America came into the war, a despatch
rather explaining the war aims from the British point of view, a despatch I wrote,
which I think my colleagues approved, and which remains as a record of the views of
the British Government at that time—that is to say, in January 1917. There you
will see that the general sentiment running throughout it was freedom for the nations
and self-determination, and all that order of ideas. What was true then has become
steadily more true since, and all our declarations to these innumerable competitors for
independence—all the Baltic provinces and the populations which wish to attach them
selves to Roumania, the Czecho-Slovaks, the Yugo-Slavs, and all the rest of these
incipient nationalities—have had as their major premise, so to speak, the wishes of the
populations concerned to be a leading if not the absolutely determining factor in all our
policy. Therefore, for myself, I would accept the statement of Lord Curzon whole
heartedly, re-emphasising, if 1 may, what Lord Robert Cecil has just said, that the
joint declaration of France and Britain, which he engineered, is itself a tribute to that
principle. However, two things must be borne in mind, one of which is that we must
not allow ourselves to be driven by that broad principle into applying it pedantically
where it is really inapplicable, namely, to wholly barbarous, undeveloped, and
unorganised black tribes, whether they be in the Pacihc or Africa. Self-determination
there, I do not say has no meaning, I do not say it has not even a real meaning, but
evidently you cannot transfer formulas more or less applicable to the populations of
Europe to those utterly different races. That is my first observation, although I do
not know that it is of very great importance in connection with this discussion. The
only other observation l have to make is of the utmost importance, with regard to the
dijJomacy of the situation as Lord Curzon has described it to us. I am quite certain
that we ought to be most careful not to give either the French or the Italians the
impression that we are trying to get out of our bargains with them made at an earlier