Miscellaneous correspondence, reports, maps and other papers concerning the Middle East [‎33v] (67/220)

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to be unable either to defend Egypt or to solve the problems without the
aid of an Asiatic ally. On the other hand, about Palestine there can he no
shadow of doubt. To recover from the Turks the Holy City of the
Christian faith by the aid of a non-Christian ally would he universally
regarded as unseemly, if not shocking. The same objection does not apply
to the employment of Indian troops by ourselves or of Senegalese troops
by the French in Palestine, because they fight in the armies of their over-
lords as a natural consequence of their political status.
(hi.) Russia. I need not now discuss the question whether the spectacle of
Japanese armies marching to the rescue of the European Power upon whom
they so recently inflicted a severe defeat would in any case have been
desirable. It has now become impracticable for the reason that to lescue
Russia by military aid is beyond the power of man, and that no Power
would be less likely to undertake the impossible task than Japan herself.
(iv.) Any other European theatre of war. Here, again, the question is one to a large
extent of racial ascendancy and international prestige. I do not suppose
that British or French troops would be unwilling to tight alongside of
Japanese troops, any more than they are of Portuguese, or Indians, or
Annamites, or Pathans. But in Asia itself the impetus that would be given
to Japanese ambitions and to racial jealousies between East and West
would be enormous, and no one who knows Asia and is anxious to maintain
European influence there would lightly run the risk.
The above considerations, if accepted, would appear to confine the possibility of
Japanese military assistance to a somewhat narrow sphere. It must apparently be an
Asiatic sphere, and the points that have already been urged would seem to require that
it shall be a theatre where Japanese intervention cannot be regarded as derogatory to
the valour or capacity of European troops, where it can be satisfactorily represented as
being directed against the common enemy of all the Allies (of whom Japan herself is
one), and where it is invoked at a crowning moment of the conflict when the assistance
of a Japanese army may have a decisive effect, not upon a subordinate campaign, but
upon the capital issues of the war.
I am inclined to flunk that Mesopotamia may answer the above description, and
that the time may come for us seriously to contemplate the desirability of inviting
Japanese military co-operation there.
Let me here say that Japan has, in my opinion, far from pulled her fair weight in
the war. Her assistance, if not grudgingly given, has been, at any rate, narrowly
restricted, and has been qualified at each stage by a most scrupulous regard for her
own interests. Moreover, if has been more than amply repaid, for the promise of the
reversion of the German possessions and rights in Shantung, and of the German
islands in the ^Northern Pacific, which we have made to her, will place her in a position
of great advantage at the end of the war, an advantage which will have been won by
an infinitesimal sacrifice of money or men. Japanese policy towards China in the same
period has been dictated by similarly selfish and calculating considerations, and has
been similarly rewarded.
Should the occasion therefore be deemed suitable, I conceive that there is a very
good case for asking, and if necessary for pressing, Japan to play a much more vigorous
military part in defeating the common enemy than lias yet been proposed by Tier or
considered by us. She might refuse. But such an answer would surely be detrimental
to her own ambitions.
Now what is the position, present and probable, in Mesopotamia ? 1 do not doubt
that a most desperate and determined effort will be made by the Turks and Germans in
combination to turn the British out of the Turkish territories in Asia. The main attack
may be delivered in Palestine or against Baghdad; or an equal attack may be directed
against both. There seems every reason to hope that either attempt or both
attempts will fail. But they may also be renewed, and the recovery of Mesopotamia is
so vital to the future of German plans of world hegemony and the destruction of the
British Empire, that I cannot believe that discomfiture this autumn and winter will
mean an abandonment of the effort (if the war lasts as long) next spring. The Indian
Coinmander-in-Chief clearly contemplates such a possibility, for he speaks of General
Maude as “ certainly requiring reinforcements during 1918,” and he offers nine battalions,
but cannot ofi'er more, for the purpose. the situation may become even more acute if a
simultaneous or corresponding attack of great magnitude is developed against the
British forces in Palestine.