'Papers relating to transfer of Middle Eastern Affairs to the Colonial Office and creation of a new Department there, 1920-1921, with Cabinet notes of Milner, Montague, Churchill, self, and others' [‎17r] (33/136)

9 WITH reference to the discussion of the Persian situation in the Cabinet on
^^/-A^ Friday last (21st May)/and the Note circulated by the Secretary of State for War
(coverino - four memoranda) on Mesopotamian Expenditure (C.P.—1520), I desire to
submit certain considerations to my colleagues. I here seems to me to be gieat danger
of our mixing up two entirely different questions, viz. .
(a.) The probable future cost of the retention of Mesopotamia as a mandated
territory, and ... . . j i r j-
(b.) The present actual cost of maintaining our position and defending oui inteiests
in Mesopotamia and Persia, as long as the whole of the ^sear East
Transcaucasia, Anatolia Peninsula that forms most of modern-day Turkey. , Syria and now North-Western Persia aieinastate
of raging chaos.
On the one hand inferences are drawn from (b) with regard to (a) which are
entirely unjustifiable. On the other hand, propositions are put forward, which seem to
suggest that we can at once afford to reduce (b), regardless of the great and manifold
dangers which threaten us, as long as all the countries of the Near East are in a
condition of complete political instability.
Something like a panic seems to have seized on the public mind 1 am not sure
that it has not affected our owm minds—at the discovery, that we are incurring a
military expenditure of 18 millions a year in respect of Mesopotamia. In certain
organs of the press an outcry is already being raised about the intolerable burden
which the occupation of that country is supposed to be gqing to entail on us. and the
conclusion is drawn that we ought incontinently to abandon the most valuable part of
it. And certainly, if Mesopotamia were going to impose on us a burden of 18 millions
a year, we should very soon wash our hands of it. But that under normal conditions
the defence of Mesopotamia should cost us anything like that sum, appears to me
absolutely fantastic. I venture to say that one-tenth of that amount is much nearer the
mark, and I don’t know why we should assume that even this expenditure must
permanently fall on the taxpayers of Great Britain.
By “ normal conditions ” 1 do not mean that the surrounding countries need be
entirely peaceful and orderly. Whatever may be the future government of Kurdistan
or of Syria, it is likelv that for years to come the Kurdish mountaineers on the north,
the nomad Arabs on the west of Mesopotamia, will be pretty troublesome neighbours
But in the British Empire we have plenty of experience of the cost of policing and
defending countries quite as large, and exposed to quite as many dangers, internal
and external, as Mesopotamia would be exposed to, if we had nothing to guaid
against but sporadic raids of Kurds or Arabs. 1 he Sudan, a country far larger, in
many of its regions far more inaccessible, and marching on two sides with
semi-civilised or unsettled countries, involves a military expendituie borne by
Eo-ypt—of undei two millions a year. The defence of our vast East African Empire
colts even less. Without attempting at this time to go into the details of a permanent
defence scheme for Mesopotamia—with regard to which the memorandum of Air-
Marshal Trenchard reveals interesting possibilities I will only say that no inferences
whatever as to the cost of such a scheme can be drawn from the cost of the present
Army of Occupation The two things have simply no relation to one another.
On the other hand, the fact that that army is vastly in excess of am thing that
should be permanently required for the defence of Mesopotamia, has no bearing on the
question whether we can afford to begin reducing it right avay. A hue 1 am m
entire agreement with the Secretary of State for V\ ar as to the necessity and the
possibility of holding Mesopotamia, in the long run, with very moderate foices, 1 ^am
frankly alarmed at his idea that “ a prompt and drastic curtailment of expenditure m
that quarter is the paramount necessity of the moment. It may vvell be that the
considerable number of men we have in that country are ill distributed. 1 think
they are. If it was merely a question of Mesopotamia, I dare say a considerable
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