Papers written by Curzon on the Near and Middle East [‎6r] (11/348)

[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty s Government.]
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[March 5.]
Section 1.
[36361] No. 1.
Earl Curzon to the Earl of Derby.
(No. 408.)
My Lord, Foreign Office, March 5, 1910.
THE weekly visit of the French Ambassador to the Foreign Office provided him
with an opportunity of raising several points of minor and one or two of major
importance.
He was concerned with the present position of the Jaffa-Jerusalem Railway, the
French ownership and management of which had been completely set on one side since
the commencement of the war in Palestine, but which he thought might now be safely
reinstated in the general interest. He strongly urged that representations might be
made to General Allenby to this effect.
The next question raised by the Ambassador related to the proposal to send a
French financial adviser to Persia. This the French Government had been requested
by the Persian Government to do, and, in view of their previous connection with the
country, they were not unwilling to responl to the appeal. On the other hand, the
French Government had no political interests or ambitions in Persia, which they frankly
recognise falls within the British sphere of influence, and, if we desired that they should
not comply with the request, they were quite willing to desist. The Ambassador
informed me that he believed that the Persian Government had addressed a
somewhat similar appeal for assistance to America. I replied that I was not in the
least surprised at the information, because it was the fashion of every Oriental Govern
ment to have not merely two strings, but half a dozen strings to its bow, and that the
first object of every Oriental diplomat was to employ one Power against the other.
These various appeals seemed to me, however, to be incompatible both with the attitude
which had been simultaneously taken up by the Persian Government towards His
Majesty’s Government and with the financial position in Persia itself. In view of the
fact that Persia was being kept upon her financial legs exclusively by Great Britain ;
that we were paying for her army ; to some extent for her Government; and even for
the so-called Cossack brigade under Russian officers, it seemed to me that if a foreign
financial adviser was to be appointed, there could be no question of his coming from any
other country than Great Britain. If the French Government asked me, therefore,
whether we thought it desirable that the French should accept the invitation which had
been addressed to them I could only answer in the negative, and would gladly, in reply
to a note which he handed to me, send him a communication to that effect.
His Excellency then proceeded to a discussion of the situation as regards
Constantinople. He said he was not at all clear in his own mind as to what ought
to be the fate of that city, whether the Turks should be expelled or not from
Europe, whether an international administration should, in the former case, be set
up in its place, or whether Constantinople should be handed over to the charge of some
mandatory Power. He was not aware of the opinions of his own Government upon the
matter, and, indeed, he had no information that any decision had been arrived at by
them, but as I had devoted a good deal of my life to a study of the questions of the
East, he would like to discuss the matter with me, and to hear my views with a view to
forming his own. I replied that I could not speak officially on the part of His Majesty’s
Government, for two reasons. In the first place, although the matter had been occasion
ally discussed, no definite decision had been arrived at here owing, in the main, to the
fact that the interests of so many other Powers were involved ; and, secondly, the
matter would be settled, not in London but in Paris, after discussions, the nature of
which I should not be acquainted with until the reports came to hand. On the other
hand, if the Ambassador desired my personal views, and did not attach to them any
wider significance, I was quite prepared to give them.
1 may say, in passing, that my particular reason for desiring to give them, and for
seizing the opportunity thus afforded to me lor doing so, was that I wished to divert the
French from the ambition, of which there have been so many recent indications, to be
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