Tuesday Sep. 30. [30 September 1919] Dr. Faris Nimr came to see
me after breakfast and I invited him to dine with me on Friday. He
says that he and all Syrians are in despair over the arrangement
which he believes we have concluded with the French. I went to the
Savoy and read the papers which Col. Meinersthagen [i.e.
Meinertzhagen] had prepared for me; (a) reports of political officers in
Syria, Palestine excluded, (b) the periodical political summaries
which have recently been started, (c) Kurdish papers. (a) would have
no value for us. They are the counterpart of our P.O.s' reports,
dealing with daily details, some of which may be of more than fleeting
interest, but in no case indicative of any general principles or policy.
(b) we should certainly have and Col. M. has promised to send them
to us. (c) probably most of these are to be found at Baghdad. There
was nothing in what I read about the recent difficulties whith Major
Noel. Col. M. said that the accusation against him is that he had
encouraged the Kurds outside occupied territory to throw off Turkish
yoke, refuse to pay taxes to the Turks and declare Kurdish
independence. It must be remembered that Col. M. has nothing to do
with administration. This is the task of the Chief Administrator of each
of the 4 districts, in Palestine an Englishman, in OETA east an Arab
and in OETA N. and W. a Frenchman. A British officer at Haifa is
entrusted with the task of trying to co-ordinate the 4 administrations.
Col. M. knows therefore nothing about such subjects as exchange,
justice, finance, revenue etc. He strikes me as being very rigid, not at
all receptive and as taking no kind of interest in anything outside his
rather narrow job. He used to be a strong Zionist; Gen. Clayton
believes that he had considerably modified his views on this head.
\n\nCol. Gabriel came in to see me. He is financial adviser in OETA
south. He took me round to his office and gave me a copy of his
{report} Budget for 1918-19. These budgets are printed and we
should have copies. He is most anxious to let us have any
information we want and to receive ours about administration which he
does not get from Arbur. He would like to see the various Arab
administrations brought as much as possible into line and would
gladly have been guided himself by our example if he had had
opportunity to know the line we had taken. He is a strong, not to say
violent anti-Zionist and told me he thought it the duty of an officer
opposed to Govt. policy to hold out against it at any rate by protest.
Gen. Clayton tells me that he had gone so far in this direction as to be
a danger. He is also a fervent Catholic and violently anti-French. An
able man withal, says Sir Gilbert. He had much influence with General
Money. He is now going on a month's leave. \n\nCaught the midday
train to Alexandria, travelling with General Clayton. For the first 3
months after the occupation of Jerusalem [(El Quds esh Sherif,
Yerushalayim)] Sir Gilbert combined administrative and political
functions, exactly as our Civil Commissioner combines them. Then
Lord Allenby decided to separate the two, on the ground that with his
advance in prospect he must have Gen. Clayton with him as P.O.
which would not give him time to act as Chief Administrator in
Palestine. Whether this arrangement was judicious is open to
question. In any case Clayton could have exercised nothing but
political functions in the other 3 districts where the Chief Administrator
was in one case an Arab and in the other 2 cases a Frenchman.
Possibly if General Clayton had continued to hold the part in Palestine
he might have checked, to some degree, the Zionist agitation. He
confirmed the impression I had got from the P.O.s' reports, that many
of the local Jews dread an influx of alien Jews which will, they fear,
take from them their inheritance. Already Galician and Polish Jews
are beginning to find their way to Port Said in the hope of being
established in Palestine. As regards Arab administration in OETA
east, General Clayton thinks it has not been as bad as might have
been feared, considering that the Arabs have had no chance. Faisal
frequently asked us for advisers and we were always obliged to
refuse them. Corrupt it certainly is, but no one minds corruption - on
the contrary. At any rate public business is kept going, tramways run
in Damascus [Dimashq (Esh Sham, Damas)], streets are lighted.
Ja'far Pasha in Aleppo [Halab] has done very well and is an honest
man who would be useful to us. The tendency in Damascus has
been not to give him a free enough hand, to interfere too much.
General Clayton pointed this out to Faisal. Yasin Pasha is an
extremist, desiring no foreign guidance of any kind, a dangerous man.
Nuri Pasha Sa'id is probably the best of them, a moderate man of
considerable intelligence. Maulud is an excellent soldier and nothing
else; he would make a good commandant of gendarmerie. General
Clayton admitted that Ja'far Pasha would be a difficult man to use in
Mesopotamia since he has up to now enjoyed complete freedom
from foreign control, like all the Arab administrators. He would make
a good governor of a province. I asked if the Arab Bureau had not
now taken a far smaller position that was intended. It was meant to be
the germ out of which should spring an intelligence department which
in peace time should serve the whole of the Near East but it has
become an appanage of the Residency concerned solely with
Arabian affairs. Sir Gilbert replied that when the original members of it
went to other duties it was not sufficiently well staffed to fulfil the wider
functions for which it had been designed. It had however been useful
and was still of some use. He thinks it would be well not to let the
name disappear entirely as, after the settlement, when civil
government takes the place of military, it may once again develop
into a Near Eastern intelligence department. If, however, we are all
combined under a common head in London, as we should be, its
headquarters should be there and the control there. Meantime, when
he took over the Interior, he found it necessary to have some clearing
house for his own secret information, criticisms of ministers and
matters which could not be dealt with in his own office, and he asked
the military intelligence department to establish for him an M.I.5. To
this he sends his information which is issued to the G.O.C. in C., the
Residency and all concerned. I asked whether parts of this would not
be of use to us, enabling us better to follow the course of events in
Egypt. He agreed and said I could arrange with Captain Garland
(Arab Bureau) to forward to us anything which would be of interest to
us. He gave me an account of the events which led up to the riots.
When we declared a protectorate we had specifically stated that the
position of Egypt would be reconsidered at the end of the war.
(Incidentally, he is of opinion that annexation would have been better.
The name of Protectorate stinks in the nostrils of Egyptians, having to
them a flavour of inequality. Above all he ought to have taken that
opportunity of getting rid of the ruling family who are degenerates. It
would be best for the present not to have a hereditary ruling house.)
The end of the war came, a request for reconsideration was made
and refused. Wingate was then called to London to consult; his going
was looked upon by all Egypt as a sure sign that independence was
near. When he telegraphed to say that he had been unable to alter
the decision there was a toppling down of hopes and the Rushdi
ministry resigned. Cheetham telegraphed home that things looked
menacing and that it might be necessary to arrest some of the
Nationalist leaders. He was told to take any step he thought fit. The
arrests followed and on their heels the outbreak. Nothing like it had
been seen in Egypt; no Englishman was safe in the streets. Allenby
then went to Paris and 3 days after his return released the deported
Nationalists, a necessary measure as the deportations had been a
mistake and it was better to cut our loss than to persist in the error. An
immediate revulsion of feeling resulted, again hopes of
independence rose high and British officials were cheered in the
streets. These sentiments might have been put to good service but
two days later an unfortunate episode occurred. Some Australian
soldiers, in a dense crowd in the Erbekiyah, lost their heads, thought
they were being hustled and that the crowd was menacing, pulled out
their revolvers and fired. General confusion and fighting resulted, in
the course of which some Egyptian policemen were killed. This gave
occasion for a great Nationist display, the funeral procession of the
policemen, admirably organized. The atmosphere was so
inflammable that an explosion might have taken place at any
moment; Mohammadan fanaticism had never run so high. Gradually
Allenby got things in hand and feeling has to some extent quieted
down. \n\nSir Gilbert thinks that Egypt can no longer be regarded as a
nursery for the training of young men in administration. There will be
no posts except for very high placed advisers who, with the exception
of an Adviser on Interior affairs, need not necessarily have local
knowledge or experience. The Egyptian civil service is, in fact, dead.
That of the Sudan will probably last another 20 years, the inhabitants
being so backward. \n\nSir Milne had taken me a room at the
Summer Palace. At 5 I went to tea with him and had an anodyne
conversation. He is a typical F.O. man of the bloodless type.