123057668 a peace to end all peace the fall of the ottoman empire and the creation of the modern...

8/10/2019 123057668 a Peace to End All Peace the Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

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7 0 A T T H E C R O S S R O A D S O F H I S T O R Y

leading prop one nt , the G r a n d Vizier. T h e substa nt ia l Ge rm an mil itary presence in Constant inople , supported by the Goeben and

Breslau, may have played a role in his calculations; but what Enverhad in mind is more likely to have been the course of the Russo-

German war. In July and August his policy had been motivated byfear of Russian seizures of Turkish terr i tory; but in September, inthe wake of the Russian collapse, he seems to have turned to thoughtsof Turkey seizing Russian terri tory. He switched from a defensive toan aggressive policy. His switch was a turning point in Ottoman andMiddle Eastern affa i rs .

I t may be surmised that the spectacular German mil i tary t r iumphsover the Russians at the batt le of Tannenberg at the end of August,and in the ongoing batt le of the Masurian Lakes that began inSeptember, persuaded Enver that , i f Turkey wanted to win a shareof Russian terri tory, she would have to intervene soon, beforeGermany had won an unaided vic tory. Hundreds of thousands ofRussian t roops had been ki l led or captured by the Germans, andeven a less impetuous observer than Enver might have concludedthat Russia was about to lose the war. The German victory train wasleaving the station, and the opportunistic Enver seems to have been

jol ted into believing that i t was his last chance to j u m p a b o a rd . On26 September Enver personal ly ordered the c los ing of the Dardanel lesto all foreign ships (in effect, to Allied shipping) without consultinghis colleagues. A week later he told von Wangenheim that the GrandVizier was no longer in control of the situation.

A bid for power was taking place in Constantinople behind closeddoors. The Brit ish Foreign Office, which knew next to nothing aboutthe internal politics of the C.U.P., took a simplistic view of theaffa i r. Si r Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, la ter rememberedremarking that "nothing but the assassination of Enver would keep

Turkey f rom joining Germany," and adding " that , in t imes of cr is isand violence in Turkey, there were apt to be two classes of personassassins and assassinated, and that the Grand Vizier was more l ikelythan his opponent to belong to the lat ter class." 1 8

Would i t have been possible for a well-informed Brit ish ambassador to have exerted some influence on the evolution of events inConstantinople? Historians continue to debate the question, and ofcourse there is now no way to put the matter to the test. 1 9

Obscure though the details remain, what was going on in theautumn of 1914 was a process in which rival factions and personalitiesmaneuvered for support wi thin the C.U.P. Centra l Commit tee .Enver 's growing influence came from winning over Talaat Bey to hispoint of view, for Talaat headed the principal faction in the party.

Other C.U.P. leaders , whi le shar ing Enver ' s bel ief that Germanywould probably win the war, until now had seen no reason to hazard


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A N I N T R I G U E A T T H E S U B L I M E P O R T E 71

their empire 's future on the accuracy of that prediction. They werepolit icians, while Enver was a warrior, younger and more impetuousthan Churchill but filled with much the same passion for glory. AsWar Minister and Germany's best friend, he stood to benefit per

sonally from the many opportunities to increase his fame and posit ionthat war at Germany's side would offer. A dashing figure who hadenjoyed almost unlimited luck but had demonstrated only l imitedability, he failed to see that bets can be lost as well as won. Inputting his chips on Germany, he thought he was making an investmentwhen he was doing no more than placing a wager.

On 9 October, Enver informed von Wangenheim that he had wonthe support of Talaat and of Halil Bey, President of the Chamber ofDeputies. The next move, he said, would be to try to gain thesupport of Djemal Pasha, Minis ter of the Marine. Fai l ing that , hesaid, he planned to provoke a Cabinet crisis; he claimed, on the basisof his following in the Central Committeewhich, in reali ty, wasTalaat 's followingthat he could install a new pro-interventionistgovernment . Overs ta t ing his pol i t ical s t rength, Enver assured theGermans that he could br ing Turkey into the war by mid-October.All he needed, he told them, was German gold to support thea r m y . 2 0 The Germans, of course , were a l ready aware that theOttoman forces would need money; Liman had reported to theKaiser that they would be in imminent danger of collapse without i t .

On 10 Oct obe r, Dj em al joine d the cons pir acy. On 11 Octo ber ,Enver, Talaat , Hal i l , and Djemal conferred, and informed theGermans that their faction was now committed to war and wouldauthorize Admiral Souchon to a t tack Russia as soon as Germanydeposi ted two mil l ion Turkish pounds in gold in Constant inople tosuppor t the a rmed forces . The Germans responded by sending amillion pounds on 12 October and a further million on 17 October,

shipping the gold by ra i l through neutral Rumania . The secondshipment arrived in Constantinople on 21 October.

Talaat and Halil then changed their minds: they proposed to keepthe gold but, nonetheless, to remain neutral in the war. Enverreported this to the Germans on 23 October, but claimed that i t didnot matter as long as he could still count on the other military serviceminis ter, Djemal . Though he la ter announced that Talaat had swungback again to the pro-interventionist cause, Enver gave up attemptingto persuade his party and his government to intervene in the war. Hecould not get Turkey to declare war on the Allies so he pinned hishopes on a plan to provoke the Allied governments to declare war onTurkey.

Enver and Djemal issued secret orders a l lowing Admiral Souchonto lead the Goeben and Breslau into the Black Sea to attack Russianvessels. Enver 's plan was to claim that the warships had been attacked


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72 A T T H E C R O S S R O A D S O F H I S T O R Y

by the Russians and had been forced to defend themselves. AdmiralSouchon, however, d isobeyed Enver ' s orders and openly s tar ted thef ight ing by bombarding the Russian coast . Once again the Germanadmiral gave history a push. His purpose, he stated later, was "to

force the Turks, even against their will , to spread the war." 2 1 As aresult of his actions, it was all too clear that the Goeben an d Breslauhad struck a premeditated blow; there was now no l ie behind whichEnver could conceal what he had allowed to happen.

The incident led to an open showdown in Constant inople . TheGrand Vizier and the Cabinet forced Enver to cable an order toAdmiral Souchon to cease fire. A poli t ical crisis ensued that lastedfor nearly two days, the details of which were veiled even fromthe normal ly wel l - informed Germans and Austr ians . There weremeet ings of the Ot toman Cabinet and of the C.U.P. Centra lCommittee. Debate was joined, threats were issued, coali t ions wereformed, resignations were tendered, and resignations were withdrawn. Apparent ly the consensus approximated the th inking ofAsquith in Britain just before the outbreak of war: that the firstpriori ty was to maintain party unity. Even though a majority inthe Centra l Commit tee supported the newly formed t r iumvirate ofTalaat , Enver, and Djemal in the view that the Ot toman Empirenow ought to enter the war, it deferred to the views of the minority,led by the Grand Vizier and the Minister of Finance, rather thanallow a party split to occur.

On 31 October Enver reported to the Germans that his colleaguesin the Cabinet insisted on dispatching a note of apology to theRussians . From the German point of view this was a dangerousproposal, but Enver said that , having "duped" his colleagues aboutthe attack on Russia, he now found himself isolated in the Cabinet;his hands, he sa id , were t ied. 2 2

Though Enver and his German co-conspira tors did not yet knowit, there was no need for alarm: in London the Brit ish Cabinet hadalready risen to the bait. The British were unaware of the deep splitin Young Turk ranks and believed the Porte to have been in collusionwith G er ma n y all alon g. Re sp on di ng to Sou cho n's at tack even beforethe Porte drafted i ts apology, the Cabinet authorized the sending ofan ul t imatum requir ing the Turks immediate ly to expel the Germanmili tary mission and to remove the German officers and men fromthe Goeben and Breslau. When the T u r k s did not com ply , C hurc hil ldid not bother to refer the matter back to the Cabinet; on his owninit iat ive he dispatched an order to his forces in the Mediterraneanon the afternoon of 31 October to "Commence hostilities at onceaga in s t Tu rkey. " 2 3

The Brit ish admiral who received Churchil l 's order did not carry i tout immediate ly and, in consequence, Turkey was unaware that


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It was the common view, therefore, that it was Churchill who hadbrou ght abo ut the war wi th Tu rk ey . Ind eed , L lo yd Geo rg e cont inuedto level the charge against him as late as 1921. 2 6 Souchon and Enverhad in fact started the war between Turkey and the Allies, but in the

public imagination of the Brit ish i t was Churchil l who had done so.Churchil l , for his part , began to point out in August 1914and

cont inued to point out thereaf terthat having the Ottoman Empirefor an enemy had i ts advantages. Free at last to cut up the OttomanEmpire and to offer portions of its territory to other countries at theeventual peace settlement, Britain could now hold out the lure ofterritorial gains in order to bring Italy and the Balkan countries intothe war on her side.

Italy, a latecomer to the pursuit of colonial empire, had come tosee the vulnerable Ottoman domains as the principal terri tories st i l lavailable for acquisit ion. She remained anxious to acquire even moreOttoman terri tory. Eventually, the lure of acquisit ion helped to bringher into the war on the Allied side.

The Balkan countries, too, coveted addit ional terri torial gains. ForBritain to forge an alliance with all the Balkan countries by thepromise of Ottoman terri tory required the reconcil iat ion of some oftheir r ival ambitions; but if this could be achieved, such a combi

nation would bring powerful forces to bear against the Ottoman andHabsburg empires, and offered the prospect of helping bring the waragainst Germany to a swift and successful conclusion.

Already on 14 August, Asquith noted that "Venizelos, the GreekPrime Minister, has a great scheme on foot for a federation of BalkanSta tes aga ins t Germ an y and Aus t r ia . . . " 2 7 On 21 August , Asqui thcharacterized a number of his ministers as looking to Italy, Rumania,or Bulgaria as potential al l ies of importance; Lloyd George asbeing "keen for Balkan confederation"; and "Winston violently anti-

Turk." He himself , however, was "very much against any aggressiveaction vis-a-vis Turkey wh. wd. exci te our Mussulmans in India &E g y p t . " 2 8 Churchil l was not so impetuous as that made him sound.In fact he had taken the time and trouble to communicate personallywith Enver and other Ottoman leaders who were hoping to keeptheir country neutral. He had given up on them two months toosoon; but it was only when he had become convinced that there wasno chance of keeping Turkey out of the war that he had swungaround to pointing out the advantages of having her in it.

By the end of Au gu st , Chu rchil l an d Ll oy d Ge or ge were enthu siastic advocates of the Balkan approach. On 31 August Churchil lwrote a private letter to Balkan leaders urging the creation of aconfederat ion of Bulg ar ia , Serb ia , Ru ma ni a , Monten egr o, and Gre eceto join the Allies. On 2 September he initiated private talks with theGreek government to discuss the form that mili tary cooperation


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A N I N T R I G U E A T T H E S U B L I M E P O R T E 75

between their two countries might take in an offensive operationagains t the Ot toman Empire .

At the end of September, Churchil l wrote to Sir Edward Greythat "in our attempt to placate Turkey we are crippling our policy in

the Balkans. I am not suggesting that we should take aggressiveaction against Turkey or declare war on her ourselves, but we oughtfrom now to make arrangements with the Balkan States, part icularlyBulgaria, without regard to the interests or integri ty of Turkey." Heconcluded his additional remarks by adding that "All I am asking isthat the interests and integrity of Turkey shall no longer be consideredby you in any efforts which are made to secure common actionamong the Chr i s t i an Ba lkan S ta te s . " 2 9

Grey and Asquith were more cautious in their approach, and lessenthusiast ic about the proposed Balkan Confederat ion than wereChurchil l and Lloyd George, but in at least one respect their thinkingevolved in a parallel way. In order to persuade Turkey to remainneutral , the representat ives of the Bri t ish government eventually hadbeen instructed to give assurances that , i f she did so, Ottoman terr itorial integrity would be respected. From this there followed a converse proposit ion, that Grey had made explici t as early as 15 August ,"that , on the other hand, i f Turkey sided with Germany and Austria,

and they were defeated, of course we could not answer for whatmight be taken f rom Turkey in Asia Minor." 3 0

When the Ottoman Empire entered the warpulled into i t byChurchil l as i t seemed then, pushed into i t by Enver and Souchon asi t seems nowthe conclusion that Bri t ish policy-makers drew therefore seemed to be inescapable. In a speech delivered in London on9 November 1914, the Prime Minister predicted that the war had"rung the death-knell of Ottoman dominion, not only in Europe, buti n A s i a . " 3 1

Earlier in 1914, Sir Mark Sykes, the Tory M.P. who was hisparty 's leading expert on Turkish affairs , had warned the House ofCommons that "the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire must bethe f irst s tep towards the disappearance of our own." 3 Well ington,Canning, Palmerston, and Disraeli had al l fel t that preserving theintegri ty of the Ottoman Empire was of importance to Bri tain and toEurope. Yet in a little less than a hundred days the British government had completely reversed the policy of more than a hundredyears, and now sought to destroy the great buffer empire that in timespast Bri t ish governments had r isked and waged wars to safeguard.

The Cabinet 's new policy was predicated on the theory that Turkeyhad forfeited any claim to enjoy the protection of Britain. In theturmoil of war the Asquith government had lost sight of one of themost important t ruths about tradit ional Bri t ish foreign policy: thatthe integrity of the Ottoman Empire was to be protected not in order


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to serve the best interests of Turkey but in order to serve the bestinterests of Britain.

In turn, the Brit ish decision to dismantle the Ottoman Empirefinally brought into play the assumption that Europeans had shared

about the Middle East for centuries: that i ts post-Ottoman poli t icaldestinies would be taken in hand by one or more of the Europeanpowers.

Thus the one thing which British leaders foresaw in 1914 withperfect clarity was that Ottoman entry into the war marked the firststep on the road to a remaking of the Middle East: to the creation,indeed, of the modern Middle East .


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PART I I

KITCHENER OF

KHARTOUM LOOKSAHEAD


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8

KITCHENER TAKES COMMAND

iDuring the summer and autumn of 1914, as the Ot toman Empirewas drif t ing into the war, an important new governmental appointment in London was beginning to affect Bri t ish policy in the MiddleEast . I t began, as so many things did, with Winston Churchil l .

On 28 July 1914, the same day that he initiated the seizure of theTurkish vessels , Churchil l held a luncheon meeting with FieldMarshal Horat io Herber t Ki tchener to d iscuss the deepening in ter

national crisis . As proconsul in Egypt, the veteran commander ofBritain's imperial armies was responsible for the security of the SuezCanal and of the troops from India who were to be transportedthrough it in the event of war. Churchill, the First Lord of theAdmiralty, was responsible for the naval escort of the troopships ontheir long voyage to Europe; and over lunch the young politician andthe old soldier exchanged views.

Churchill told Kitchener that "If war comes, you will not go backt o E u r o p e . " 1 It was not what the field marshal wanted to hear.Kitchener had come to Bri tain intending to stay only long enough toattend the 17 July ceremonies elevating him to the rank and title ofEarl Kitchener of Khartoum; he was anxious to return to his post asBrit ish Agent and Consul-General in Egypt as soon as possible. Hiseyes had always been turned toward the East; he told King Georgethat he wanted to be appointed Viceroy of India when that postbecame available as scheduled in 1915, though he feared that "thepol i t ic ians" would b lock his appointment . 2 The c rus ty, bad- t emperedKitchener loathed poli t icians.

Even the disintegrating international situation could not keep himin London. Early in August he traveled to Dover to catch a Channelsteamer; the plan was that he would take the train from Calais toMarseil les, and there would board a cruiser for Egypt. Short ly beforenoon on 3 August , he boarded the steamer at Dover, and complained

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80 K I T C H E N E R O F K H A R T O U M L O O K S A H E A D

impatiently when it failed to set off for Calais at the scheduleddeparture t ime.

As i t happened, his departure was about to be cancelled ratherthan delayed. The previous evening, in the smoking room of Brooks 's ,

a London club, someone who fell into conversation with a Conservative Member of Parliament remarked that the War Office was in anabsolutely chaotic state and that it was a pity that Kitchener had notbeen asked to take i t over. Later that evening, the M.P. reported hisconversation to two of his party 's leaders who were in a semi-privateroom of the club discussing the international si tuation. AndrewBonar Law and Sir Edward Carsonthe leaders to whom the conversation was re po rt ed t oo k the mat ter up with Ar thu r Balfou r, theformer Conservat ive Pr ime Minis ter, who passed the suggest ion onto Churchill , with whom he was on good terms.

On the morning of 3 Augustthe day Germany declared war onFrancean ar t i c le appeared in The Times, written by its militarycorrespondent , urging the appointment of Kitchener to head the WarOffice. That same morning, Churchill saw the Prime Minister andproposed Kitchener 's appointment , though apparent ly without indicating that the proposal came from the Conservatives as well as fromhimself. Churchill 's notes indicate that he thought that Asquith had

accepted the proposal at the t ime; but in fact the Prime Minister wasreluctant to make the appointment, and decided instead to keepKitchener in Britain merely in an advisory posit ion.

On board the Channel steamer, which had not yet left Dover,Kitchener received a message from the Prime Minister asking him toreturn immediately to London. The field marshal at f irst refused;and it was with difficulty that he was persuaded to disembark. Hisfears were justif ied; back in London he found that Asquith did notseem to be thinking of a regular position for him, let alone one with

clearly defined powers and responsibil i t ies. Urged on by his colleagues, Kitchener decided to force the issue; he went to see thePrime Minister for a one-hour meeting on the evening of 4 Augustthe night Britain decided to go to war, by which t ime German armieswere a l ready overrunning Belgiumand s ta ted that , i f obl iged toremain in London, he would accept no posit ion less than Secretaryof State for War.

Pushed by polit icians and the press, the Prime Minister gave waythe next day, and Kitchener was appointed War Minister. As hewr ote : " K . wa s (to do hi m jus tic e) not at all an xio us to co me in, b utwhen it was presented to him as a duty he agreed. It is clearlyunderstood that he has no politics, & that his place at Cairo is keptopenso that he can return to i t when peace comes. I t is a hazardousexperiment, but the best in the circumstances, I think." 3 Assuming ,as did nearly everybody else, that the war would last no more than a


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K I T C H E N E R T A K E S C O M M A N D 81

few months, Asquith did not replace Kitchener as Agent and Consul-General in Egypt; he thought that the field marshal would be returning to his post there shortly. On 6 August Kitchener took up hisnew duties in the War Office in Whitehall.

Lord Kitchener lived in a borrowed house in London, making itplai n that he di d not inten d to st ay . It wa s loc ated ju st off theintersect ion of Carl ton House Terrace and Carl ton Gardens, lessthan a five-minute walk from the War Office, which meant that hecould spend almost every waking moment on the job. He arose at6:00 a.m., arrived at his office at 9:00 a.m., generally took a coldlunch there, returned to his temporary home at 6:00 p.m. to read theevening papers and nap, and then after dinner would read officialcables until late at night. 4 The glass or two of wine with dinner andthe nightly scotch and soda that had been his comforts in Egypt wereforsworn; at the request of George V he had pledged to set a nationalexample by drinking no alcoholic beverages during the war.

Asquith's reluctance to bring the famous soldier into the Cabinetseems to have been prompted by the fear that, as Secretary for War,Kitchener, rather than the Prime Minister, would emerge as Britain'swartime leader. No great soldier had served in a major office of statesince the Duke of Wellington's ministry nearly a century before; andno serving army officer had been included in a Cabinet since GeneralGeorge Monk, who in 1660 restored the monarchy and then wasrewarded with high office. The principle of civilian authority hadbeen upheld jealously since then; but Asquith felt obliged to subordinate it to his urgent need for Field Marshal Kitchener's services.

Kitchener was a figure of legenda national myth whose photohung on walls throughout the kingdom. After he took up his Cabinetappointment, large crowds would gather to watch him enter andleave the War Office each day. As the Prime Minister's daughter later

wrote:

He was an almost symbolic figure and what he symbolized, Ithink, was st re ng th , de cis ion , and ab ov e all su cc es s . . . [Everything that he touched 'came off. There was a feeling thatKitchener could not fail. The psychological effect of his appointment, the tonic to public confidence, were instantaneous andoverwhelming. And he at once gave, in his own right, a nationalstatus to the government. 5

The public, i t was said, did not reason about Kitchener, but simplytrusted him completely, saying "Kitchener is there; it is all right." 6

In the past he had always brought things to a successful conclusion.

In March 1915 he moved into York House, St James's Palace, a residenceprovided for him by King George.


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He had avenged the murder of General Char les George Gordon inthe fall of Khartoum by destroying the empire of the Dervishes andreco nque r ing the Su da n. T h e Frenc h had then a t te mpte d to in t rudeupon Britain 's imperial domains, but in 1898 Kitchener f irmly con

fronted them at the fort of Fashoda in the Sudan, and the Frenchcontingent backed down and withdrew from the fort . In SouthAfrica the Boer War had begun badly; then Kitchener came to takecharge and brought i t to a victorious conclusion. As commander ofthe armies of India in the early twentieth century, he had imposedhis will as decisively as he had done in Egypt.

T h e far-off ou tp os ts of em pi re in which he won his brillian tvictories lent him their glamor. Distance made him seem at oncemagical and larger-than-life, l ike a sphinx presiding over the desert .A lone, insecure, and secretive figure who used a small group ofaides as a wall against the world, he appeared instead to be the strongand silent hero of popular mythology. His painful shyness was notseen as such; his fear of his political colleagues appeared to bedisdain. A young Foreign Office clerk who watched the field marshalat a gat her ing with the Pr ime Minist er, S ir Ed wa rd G re y, an d Da vi dLloyd George, recorded in his diary that "Kitchener looked l ike anofficer who has got mixed up with a lot of strolling players and is

trying to pretend he doesn' t know them."7

Tal l , b roa d-shou ldered , square - jawed , with bushy eyebrows , b r i s tl ing moustache, cold blue eyes set widely apart , and an intimidatingglower, he towered physically over his fellows and looked the part forwhich destiny and the popular press had cast him. From his earl iestcampaigns, he was fortunate in the journalists who followed hiscareer and who created his public image. He was fortunate, too, inthe timing of his career, which coincided with the rise of imperialsentiment, l i terature, and ideology in Britain. Disraeli , Kipling,

A. E. W. Ma so n (au thor of Four Feathers) , Lionel Curtis (a founderof the Round Table, the imperia l is t quar ter ly) , John Buchan, andothers created the tidal wave of feeling on the crest of which he rode.

George Steevens of the Daily Mail, who was perhaps the leadingwar correspondent of his time, told his readers in 1900 thatKitchener 's "precision is so unhumanly unerring he is more l ike amachine than a man." 8 Steevens wrote a book about the Sudancampaign, tel l ing how Kitchener ( then sirdar, or commander, of theEgyptian army) led his armies south over nearly a thousand miles ofrock and sand, from the waters of the Nile Valley to lands where rainnever falls , to conquer a country of a mill ion square miles. Ignoringthe episodes in which Kitchener 's generalship was open to cri t icism,the book dwelt at length on the characteristic organizational abilitythat derived from the sirdar 's background as an engineering officer.According to Steevens, Ki tchener prepared his movements wi th such


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care that "he has never given battle without making certain of anannihilat ing victory . . . " Ste eve ns wrote that "the ma n has di sappear ed . . . there is no man Herb ert Kit che ner , but only the Si rd ar ,neither asking affection nor giving it. His officers and men are

wheels in the machine: he feeds them enough to make them efficient,and works them as mercilessly as he works himself." 1 0

When he joined the Cabinet, and indeed for many months afterward, i ts other membersto most of whom he was a strangerwerein awe of him. Although they were jolted by his military pronouncements, which ran counter to everything which they had been led tobelieve, they accepted his judgments without demur. They hadbelieved the professional British army to be of adequate size, butduring his first day at the War Office, Kitchener remarked, "Thereis no army." 1 1 The accepted view was that the war would be a shortone, but Kitchener with unerring foresight told an astonished (and,according to Churchil l , a skeptical) Cabinet that Bri tain would haveto maintain an army of millions of men in the field; that the warwould last at least three years; and that it would only be decided bybloody batt les on the continent of Europe and not at sea. 1 2 Defyingthe conventional view that a large army could be created only byconscript ion, Kitchener instead raised his mass army by a volunteerrecruitment campaign, which surprised his contemporaries as muchas it has amazed posterity.

Kitchener proposed to win the war by organizing his forces asthoroughly as he had done in advance of the Khartoum campaign.He would spend the first years methodically creating, training, andequipping an army of overwhelming strength, and would concentratehis forces, not dissipate them in sideshows. The impending Ottomanwar, he felt, would be a sideshow; it would be a waste of resources tosend addit ional t roops to f ight the Turks. He feared a Turkish at tack

on the Suez Canalhis only mil i tary concern in the Middle Eastbut he believed that the British forces in Egypt could deal with it .The Middle East played no role in his plans for winning the war.But that did not mean that Kitchener had no Middle Eastern policy;as will be seen presently, he held strong views about what roleBritain should play in the region once the European war was won.

I I

It was pure accident that the military hero brought into the government to preside over the war effort should have been one whoregarded himself, and was regarded by others, as having the East forhis special province. From that accident came the distinctive outlinesof the policy that emerged.


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Most recently, Kitchener had governed Egypt, a country official lystill part of the Ottoman Empire, but which had in effect been anindependent country until the British had occupied it in 1882, withthe stated aim of restoring order and then leaving. Instead of leaving,

the British stayed on. As of 1914, Egypt was a relatively recentaddition to the British sphere of influence, and British officers whoserved there with Kitchener had begun to develop a distinctiveoutlook on events. Stat ioned as they were in an Arabic-speakingcountry, they had come to regard themselves, mistakenly, as expertson Arab affairs, and were all the more frustrated to be excluded fromforeign policy making by the Foreign Office and by the Governmentof Indiathe two bodies that t radit ionally dealt with the Arabic-speaking port ions of the Ottoman Empire. Neither Kitchener nor his

aides demonstrated any real awareness of the great differences between the many communit ies in the Middle East . Arabians andEgypt ians , for example , though both Arabic-speaking, were o therwisedifferentin populat ion mix, history, culture, outlook, and circumstances. Even had they been the experts on Egypt which they believedthemselves to be, that would not necessari ly have made Kitchener 'saides the experts on Arabia they claimed to be.

In the Sudan campaign, undertaken in the face of misgivings withinboth the Fore ign Off ice and Lord Cromer ' s Egypt ian adminis t ra t ion ,Kitchener had greatly expanded the area of Britain's control of theArabi c-spe akin g wor ld . I t may have been dur in g the Su da n cam pai gnthat Kitchener first began to dream of carving out a great newimperial domain for Britain in the Middle East, in which he wouldserve as her viceroy.

As early as the end of the nineteenth century, British officials wereaware that the Khedivethe native prince from behind whose throneBritain ruled Egyptwas ambit ious to expand his authori ty. Al

though in theory he was the Ottoman Sultan 's viceroy in Egypt,there were persistent rumors that he considered the possibility oftaking the Sultan 's place as temporal and spir i tual lordSultan andCaliphof the Arabic-speaking provinces of the empire, therebysplitting the empire in half. A variant was the rumor that he plannedto annex the Moslem Holy Places in Arabia and establish a caliphthere under h is protec t ion . 1 3 The Bri t ish and Egyptian officersattached to him would understand that the achievement of any suchplan would bring greatly enlarged authori ty to themselves.

At the timethe end of the nineteenth centurythe Great Powerprincipally opposed to the expansion of Bri t ish Egypt was France,which had aligned herself with Russia. As viewed from Britain'soutposts bordering the Mediterranean, the al l iance seemed to bedirected against Bri tain. But Russia was far away; and in Egypt andthe Sudan, France was the enemy whose threatening presence was


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felt close at hand. Rivalry with France for position and influence inthe Arabic-speaking world: that was the policy in the service ofwhich Kitchener's officers had been reared.

Larger combinations and considerat ions in world poli t ics were

beyond the range of the typical officer in British Cairo, an enclavethat possessed (wrote one of Kitchener 's aides) "al l the narrownessand pro vin cia l i s m of an Eng l is h garr is on town . . . " 1 4 The localcommunity of Bri t ish officials and their families was t ight and homogeneous. I ts l i fe centered around the Sport ing Club, the Turf Club,and the balls given at a leading hotel six nights out of seven.

I t was from this provincial garrison communityits views on Arabpolicy hitherto ignored by the makers of British world policythatLord Ki tchener emerged .

Ill

The outbreak of the war against the Ottoman Empire made i t necessary to clarify the nature of Britain's presence in Egypt and Cyprus,for both were nominally still part of the Sultan's empire. The Cabinetwas in favor of annexing both countries and, indeed, according to

what officials in Cairo were told, had already made the decision.Ronald Storrs, the Oriental Secretary (which is to say, the staffspecial is t in Eastern affairs) to Lord Kitchener in Cairo, protestedthat, in the case of Egypt, such a decision violated forty years ofpromises by Brit ish governments that the Bri t ish occupation wasmerely temporary. The Agency (that is, the office of the BritishAgent in Egypt, Lord Kitchener) advocated a protectorate status forEg yp t, with at least token reference to, eventual ind epe nd enc eacase argued effectively by Milne Cheetham (acting chief of the Agency

in Kitchener 's absence). The Cabinet abandoned i ts own views indeference to those of the Agency, and thus showed the direction ofthings to come.

The Cabinet , in this instance, al lowed Kitchener 's Agency toestablish the prototype of the form of rule that the field marshal andhis staff eventually wanted Britain to exercise throughout the Arabic-speaking world. It was not to be direct rule, such as was practiced inparts of India. In Kitchener 's Egypt a hereditary prince and nativeCabinet ministers and governors went through the motions of governing. They promulgated under their own name decisions recommended to them by the Bri t ish advisers at tached to their respectiveoffices; that was the form of protectorate government favored by theKitchener group. In the artful words of Ronald Storrs: "We deprecated the Imperative, preferring the Subjunctive, even the wistful ,Op ta t ive mood ." 1 5


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The Egyptian decision was the forerunner of others in whichStorrs and other members of Kitchener 's entourage made policydecisions for the Middle East under cover of the reclusive fieldmarshal 's authority. When the views of the government about the

East came into conflict with those of Lord Kitchener, it was thelatter that were likely to prevail. Decisions that normally would havebeen made by the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Viceroyof India, or the Cabinet were instead made by relatively juniorofficials who represented Kitchener and purported to represent hisviews. Only the f ield marshal 's unique prest ige made this possible.

On one telegram from Cairo, Sir Edward Grey, the ForeignSecretary, minuted "Does Lord Kitchener agree? If so, I wil l app r o v e . " 1 6 He could have written the same inscription on them all.Kitchener was scrupulous in clearing foreign-policy decisions withGrey, but Grey deferred to him, and approved even those proposalsof the War Minister with which he disagreed.

One reason that Members of Parliament and the Cabinet lefteastern quest ions so much to Kitchener and his entourage was thatthey themselves knew little about them. To a government official inthe 1980s, accustomed to bulging reference l ibraries, to worldwidepress coverage, and to the overwhelming supply of detai led infor

mation about foreign countries gathered by the major governments,British ignorance of the Middle East during the 1914 war would beunimaginable. Shortly after Britain found herself at war with thePorte, Sir Mark Sykes, one of the few M.P.s who had traveled in theEast, complained that in the English language there was not so muchas one authent ic h is tory of the Ot toman Empire . 1 7 Of the historiesthen current, none was based on original research, and all were basedon a German work that left off in the year 1744, and were thereforelong out of da te . 1 8 As late as 1917, when British armies were poisedto invade northward toward Syria, Bri t ish Intel l igence, asked by thearmy to provide a guide to conditions there, reported that there wasno book in any European language that provided a survey of thesocial and political conditions of the area. 9

The Brit ish government lacked even the most elementary type ofinformationincluding mapsof the empire with which i t was atwar . In 1913 14, on e of Kit ch en er 's intel ligen ce officers ha d secr etl ysurveyed and mapped a wilderness area close to Bri t ish Egypt 's

Sinai frontier; it was one of a mere handful of surveys gathered byBr i t i sh In te l l igence . 2 0 For the most part, British officers conductingoperations in Ottoman territory in the first years of the war wereoperating in the dark. One of the many reasons for the failure ofBritain's invasion of Turkey in 1915 was that the British invasionforce was supplied with only one map of the peninsula it was toattackand that map, i t turned out , was inaccurate. When i t came to


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the Middle East, the politicians, like the soldiers, were aware thatthey were moving in areas that were literally uncharted.

But the Cabinet ministers who deferred to Kitchener in MiddleEastern matters were unaware of how little was really understood

about the Middle East either by the War Minister or by the aides inCairo and Khartoum on whom he rel ied for advice and information.


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9

KITCHENER'S LIEUTENANTS

iAvoiding not merely women (as he had always done) but the outsideworld as a whole, the War Minister lived in a masculine preservewith his personal Military Secretary, Lieutenant-Colonel OswaldFitzGerald, as his almost sole and constant companion. Fi tzGeraldcorresponded and conversed on Kitchener's behalf; when people saidthey had written to or heard from Kitchener, they meant that theyhad written to or heard from FitzGerald.

Ki tc he ne r had alway s relied heavily on his staff. No w that he hadmoved into the center of power in London, not only FitzGerald, butalso the staff remaining in Egypt and the Sudan moved toward thecenter of power with him. Thus Lord Kitchener imposed his designon policy not merely by shaping a new approach toward the MiddleEast, but also by delegating power to chosen officers in the field whowould guide and execute that policy. Instead of being ignored orneglected, as they felt they had been in the past, British officials inEgypt and the Sudan were given a chance to make their weight felt.

Kitchener's old lieutenants in the Arabic-speaking world rose withhim to pre-eminence in Eastern policy-making. What was conspicuousat the end of 1914 was that Kitchener had stamped his personalbrand on the government's policies, but what turned out to be ofmore lasting importance was that he had chosen the people who wereto inform and to advise the British government about the MiddleEast throughout the warand afterward. By tranferring authority tothem, Kitchener moved much of the evaluation of information andthe making of policy from the capital city of a world empire, whereofficialseven though not specifically knowledgeable about MiddleEastern affairstended toward a broad and cosmopolitan view ofmatters, to the colonial capitals of Egypt and the Sudan, where theprejudices of old hands went unchallenged and unchecked. TheBritish enclaves in Cairo and Khartoum were the environment to

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K I T C H E N E R ' S L I E U T E N A N T S 89

which the War Minister longed to return and from which spirituallyhe had never departed.

The War Minister 's weakness, according to one observer, was that"He is more or less a foreigner" in England. 1 To him, London was

more al ien than Cairo or Calcutta. The f ield marshal was profoundlyill at ease with un fa mi li ar faces . In st ea d of rely ing on the War Officeand the Foreign Office in London for information and advice aboutthe Middle East, he continued to fall back on his staff in Egypt.When he was appointed War Minister, he asked Ronald Storrs , hisOriental Secretary, to stay on in London with him. Storrs pointedout that governmental regulations would not allow it but, whenStorrs returned to Egypt, Kitchener continued to be inspired by hissuggestions. Storrs , the son of an Anglican clergyman, was anintel lectually elegant graduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge,then in his mid-thirties. Although he had no more than an undergraduate education in Eastern languages and l i terature, service asOriental Secretary of the Agency in Cairo for more than a decadehad established him as a special is t in Middle Eastern affairs . Hislowly rankafter the outbreak of war, he finally obtained diplomaticstanding, though only as a second secretarygave no indication ofhis high position in the field marshal 's esteem.

I I

By the end of 1914, it was clear that the war was not coming to aquick conclusion, that the field marshal would not be able to returnto Cairo for some time, and that therefore a new British proconsulhad to be selected for Egypt. Kitchener, in order to keep the positionin Cairo vacant for his return, personally selected Sir Henry

McMahon to serve as his replacement (under the-new t i t le of HighCommissioner, rather than Agent); McMahon was a colorless officialfrom India, on the verge of retirement.

Despi te McMahon 's appointment , Ronald Storrs and his col leaguesin Egypt and the Sudan continued to look upon the War Minister astheir real chief . Si r J oh n Maxwel l , c om ma nd in g general of the Bri t ishforces in Egypt, reported directly to Kitchener at the War Officerather than to, or through, the new High Commissioner.

The senior figure in the War Minister 's following in the MiddleEast was Lieutenant-Genera l Si r Francis Reginald Wingate , who hadsucceeded Ki tchener as s i rdar of the Egypt ian army and Governor-General of the Sudan. Wingate's entire career had been one ofmilitary service in the East, principally in Military Intelligence. Hepassed for a master of Arabic. Of his role in Kitchener 's Khartoum


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campaign, the journal is t George Steevens wrote that "Whatever therewas to know, Colonel Wingate surely knew it, for he makes it hisbu sin es s to know every thing . . . As for that mys ter iou s child of l ies,the Arab, Colonel Wingate can converse with him for hours, and at

the end know not only how much truth he has told, but exactly whatt ruth he has suppressed . . . Nothing is hid f rom Colonel Wingate ." 2

Wingate governed the Sudan from Khartoum, a sun-scorchedcapital city of some 70,000 inhabitants that had been completelyrebuilt to the specifications of Lord Kitchener. By steamer andrailroad, it was 1,345 miles away from Cairo, and Wingate felt cut offand neglected. On 18 February 1915, he sent a letter marked Very

Private to his Agent in the Egyptian capital that cried out with hissense of hurt:

The more that I think over the Arabian Policy question &the peculiar situation into which it has drifted owing to thenumber of "cooks" concerned in i ts concoctionthe less I consider i t desirable we should show our hands unless we areofficially called upon for a statement of our views.

Speaking for myselfyou must remember that in spite of myposit ion in Egypt & the Sudan & the number of years I havebeen in the country, little use has been made of my experience

in this, or in other matters connected with the situation.

As I have often said before, I think that our geopoliticalposit ion & our connection with the Arabian Provinces nearest tous, has given us opportunities for understanding the si tuationthereand the views of the Moslems of the Holy Placesbetterthan many others; but clearly that view is not shared by eitherthe Home or Indian authorities & therefore, I prefer to keep

silent for the t ime being.3

In fact Wingate could not bear to keep silent, and only twelve dayslater he wrote that he had changed his mind and had decided "thatwe ought not to keep entirely to ourselves information & views whichmay be helpful" to those responsible for making policy. 4

Wingate 's Agent in Cairothe official representative in Egypt ofthe Sudan governmentwas Gilber t Clayton, who had also servedunder Lord Kitchener in the Sudan campaign. After receiving hiscommission in the Royal Artillery in 1895, Clayton went out toEgypt and had been stationed there or in the Sudan ever since.F r o m 1908 to 1913 he ser ved as Priv ate Secr eta ry to Win gat e. F r o m1913 onward he served as Sudan Agent in Cairo and, at the sametime, as Director of Intell igence of the Egyptian army. Claytonmoved into a central position in making Britain's Arab policy on 31


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Octo ber 1914, when, b y decision of the Co mm an di ng Gener al inEgypt, Sir John Maxwell , who reported direct ly to Kitchener, hebecame head of all intelligence services in Cairoof the Britishcivil authority and the British army, as well as the Egyptian army.

Thus London heard only one version of intel l igence data fromEgy pt Cl ayt on ' si nst ead of three . A former army capta in , Claytonrapidly moved up the ranks during'the war and by the end of it was ageneral .

In this fatherly way, Clayton served as mentor to the adventurousyoung archaeologists and orientalists who flocked to Cairo to serve inthe intelligence services during the war. He must have had outstanding human qualities, for his young men, though diverse in otherregards, all liked and respected him. They saw him as shrewd, sober,sensible, and steady. He was about ten years older than most of themand, whether or not they took it, they listened to his advice. Forthem he was the incarnation of the old hand.

Ill

Although the Foreign Office and the India Office often disputed the

views or pr op os al s that Winga te and Cla yton esp ou sed , n obod y durin gthe war questioned their professional ability or their expert knowledge based on long experience in the Middle East. It was not untilyears after the war had ended that David Lloyd George, usinginformation that became available from the German side, made acase for the proposit ion that they were dangerously incompetent .

According to Lloyd George, the Bri t ish authori t ies in Cairo wereblind to what was happening behind enemy lines. In particular, hewrote, there was a point in 1916 when the Ottoman Empire was too

exhausted to continue fighting. If the British forces in Egypt hadlaunched an attack on Sinai and Palestine thenor even in 1915little effort would have been needed, according to Lloyd George, to"have cr um pl ed . . . u p" the T u r k s , which in turn woul d haveallowed Britain to move through the Balkans to defeat Germany. 5

The opportunity was missed, according to him, because the intel l igence services either did not know, or failed to report, what wasgoing on inside the Ottoman Empire. As a result , he claimed, theBritish government failed to win the war during the years when thewar still could have been won on British terms.

A more easily proved failing of Cairo Intelligence was that it wasunaware of the extent to which the Egyptian government had beeninfiltrated by enemy agents. It was not until that expert on Ottomanaffairs, Wyndham Deedes, went to work in Cairo in 1916, and


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i9 2 K I T C H E N E R O F K H A R T O U M L O O K S A H E A D

discovered that the Egyptian police forces were honeycombed withspies, that the Turkish network was smashed.

An early sign of the inadequacy of Cairo 's intel l igence apparatusthat ought to have sent up a warning signal, but did not, appeared in

the autumn of 1914, about a month before the Ottoman war began,when the local Bri t ish army commander, General Maxwell , wrotefrom Egypt to Lord Kitchener that "It is very difficult to put atrue value on al l the reports from Constantinople, Asia Minor andSyr ia . . . I can get no informat ion direct as the T u r k s gu ar d thefrontier very closelyour agents cannot get throughthose we hadon the other side have been bagged." He added a disquiet ing noteabout the intel l igence imbalance: "The East is ful l of German spiesand they get fair ly good information." 6

At least Maxwell was aware that he did not know what was goingon in Constantinople. Wingate and Clayton fell into the trap ofbelieving that they did. They accepted Gerald FitzMaurice 's mistakentheory that the Ottoman government was in the hands of a group ofpro-German Jews. At the end of 1914 General Wingate blamed thewar on "a syndicate of Jews, financiers, and low-born intriguers" inC o n s t a n t i n o p l e . 7

He and his colleagues compounded the error by linking it to

misleading information about the state of Moslem opinion. Just afterthe war began, Storrs sent Maxwell a report of remarks made by aSyrian informant about public opinion behind enemy l ines. Accordingto the informant, the inhabitants of Syria were filled with hatred ofthe Ottoman government because they believed i t would supportZionism. "These Zionists are closely connected with Berl in andConstantinople and are the most important factor in the policy ofPales t ine ," the informant s ta ted . 8 The false rumor that Berlin andConstantinople were about to back Zionism echoed back and forth

through the years, and later in the war misled the British Cabinet intobelieving that i t had to issue a pro-Zionist Declarat ion immediately.

Storrs wrote to Kitchener (which is to say, to his personal militarysecre tary, Lieut enan t-Co lonel Oswal d Fi t zGe ral d) a t the end of theyear. He commented on plans for the postwar Middle East , andclaimed that Moslems would oppose a Jewish Palest ine because theyblamed Jews for the war. "Again would not Islam be extremelyindignant at the idea of handing over our conquests to a peoplewhich has taken no part as a nation in the war, and a section ofwhich has undoubtedly helped to thrust the Turks over the precip i c e . " 9 In fact, as Foreign Office and Arab Bureau reports later wereto show, Moslem opinion, even in non-Turkish areas, general lysuppor ted the Ot toman Empire and i t s a l l iance wi th Germany. Storrswas wrong, too, in supposing that Moslems were opposed to a JewishPalest ine because of the war; Moslem opposit ion to a Jewish Palest ine


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had arisen long before the war, in the wake of Zionist colonization atthe end of the nineteenth century.

A characterist ic flaw in the information-gathering conducted byClayton and Storrs was that they frequently accepted information

supplied by a single informant without testing and checking i t .Instead they seemingly relied on the sort of intuitive ability thatSteevens had ascribed to Wingate: the gift of being able to divine theextent to which any native is tell ing the truth. John Buchan, wholater became wart ime Director of Informat ion in London, wrote inthe second chapter of his adventure novel Greenmantle that "thetruth is that we are the only race on earth that can produce mencapable of gett ing inside the skin of remote peoples. Perhaps theScots are better than the English, but we're all a thousand percent

better than anybody else." Wingate, Clayton, and Storrs acted asthough they understood the natives of the Ottoman Empire as well asdid the Scots hero of Buchan's novel. As i t transpired, their abil i ty tounderstand the natives was quite l imited.

In evaluating reports that there was dissatisfaction with Ottomanrule in some sections of the empire, Brit ish Cairo particularly misunderstood one of the salient characterist ics of the Moslem MiddleEast: to the extent that it was politically conscious, it was not willingto be ruled by non-Moslems. Behind enemy l ines there were Moslemswho were dissatisfied with the Young Turk government, but theyproposed to replace i t with a different Turkish government, or at anyrate a different Is lamic government . They regarded rule by a Christian European power, such as Britain, as intolerable.

Storrs apparently believed that he could get around that by pretending that i t was Egyptian rule that would be substi tuted forTurkish rule. He proposed to create what would appear to be a newEgypt ian empire to replace the Ottoman Empire in the Arabic-

speaking Middle East ; i t was behind that facade that Lord Kitchenerwould rule as Britain 's viceroy. Storrs derived particular satisfactionfrom reports that Ot toman rule had become unpopular in Syria ; hebelieved thai he could offer the Syrians a popular alternative. Accurate reports, received with some frequency, indicated thatotherthan the Maronites, a Christian sect with t ies to the FrenchmostSyrians who held polit ical views objected to the prospect of beingruled in the postwar world by France, and since Storrs and hiscolleagues took i t for granted that the Arabic-speaking peoples could

not govern themselves, the only possibil i ty left was the one advocatedby Storrs : the incorporat ion of Syria into Bri t ish Egypt .

Seen in that l ight , reports that Syrians considered the Germansand Turks to be Zionists and the French to be detestable meant thatthe Syr ians mus t be pro-Br i t i sh . Summar iz ing a memorandum submitted by a Syrian leader who called for Arab independence, Clayton


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stated that "it is to England, and to England alone, that both SyrianChr i s t i ans and Pan-Arabs a re tu rn ing . " 1 0 On 2 February 1915, Storrswrote to FitzGerald/Kitchener that "There is no doubt that localSyrian feel ing, both Christ ian and Muslim, is s trongly in favor of our

add ing that coun t ry to the Egyp t i an Su l t ana te . . . " 1

The ques t ionwas whether actively to promote that feeling. The newly arrivedHigh Commiss ioner in Cairo , McMahon, wr i t ing the same day toFi tzGerald /Ki tchener to seek guidance , out l ined the a l ternat ives asthey had undoubtedly been described to him by Storrs and Clayton:"The Syrians want our intervention and say that unless we can givethem some assurance of support they will have to turn to the Frenchaltho they would prefer us to the French." 1 2

Wrong-headed and professionally ambit ious, Bri tain 's men on thespot supposed tha t Arabs wanted to be ru led by Europeans , andbuoyed by this mistaken belief , Kitchener 's l ieutenants aimed attaking control of Syria. France 's men on the spot were wrong-headedand ambit ious too; and they also aimed to take Syria.

I V

During the Crusades , French knights won kingdoms and bui l t cas t lesin Syria; and in 1914a millennium laterthere were st i l l Frenchmen who regarded Syr ia as proper ly par t of France . France maintained close ties with one of the Christian communities along theMo un t Le ba no n coast of Sy ri a, and Fren ch shi ppi ng, s i lk, and otherinterests eyed commercial possibi l i t ies in the area. Thus for rel igious, economic, and historical reasons, France saw herself ashaving a role to play in Syria's affairs.

The moment that the Ottoman Empire entered the war, French

officials in the Middle East ( l ike their Bri t ish counterparts , Wingate,Clayton, and Storrs) therefore formula ted p lans to annex Turkey 'sSyr ian provinces . France ' s minis ter in Cairo and Consul-Genera l inBeirut immediately joined in urging their government to invade theLebanese coast . Their quixotic plan cal led for a landing of onlyabout 2 ,000 French t roops , who would be jo inedthey bel ievedby30,000 local volunteers. Speed was of the essence, in their view;France would have to str ike before Turkey could raise an army andbefore Bri tain could str ike f irst . 1 3

Their proposal could hardly have been more inopportune. I treached the French government in November 1914, when i t was st i l lin exile in Bordeaux, having fled from Paris in the face of theGerman advance to the Marne. While there were powerful colonial istf igure s in Parl ia ment , th e Fo rei gn Min istry , a nd the Cabi net ,November was a month in which everyone's attention was still focused


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on the mortal s truggle in northern France and Belgium. The proposalto dispatch troops to Syria was rejected.

The following month, howeverthe contending armies in Europehaving settled down in their trenches, and the government having

returned to Paristhe proposal to invade Syria did receive at tention.A delegation of colonialist politicians secured the agreement, in principle, of Alexandre Millerand, the Minister of War, to support aSyr ian expedi t ion . Fore ign Minis ter Theophi le Delcasse , however,remained vehement ly opposed: "Nothing appears less des i rable thanintervent ion in Syr ia ," he sa id . 1 4 Delcasse was one of the manyFrench officials who believed that annexing Syria would be of muchless value to his country than preserving the Ottoman Empire wouldbe. As of 1914 France supplied 45 percent of the foreign capital in

the private sector of the Ottoman economy and 60 percent of theOttoman public debt , and thus had an enormous stake in the empire 'scont inued exis tence and vi ta l i ty. 1 5

On 3031 December 1914, Sir Henry McMahon, who was aboutto take up his duties as Kitchener 's replacement in Cairo, visi tedParis. He met with officials of the Foreign Ministry and War Ministrybut failed to reply coherently to their questions about Britain's MiddleEastern policy. McMahon was notoriously dull-wit ted and ineffectual ,but the French, who did not know him, assumed he must be cleverand astute: his incompetent replies were interpreted by Millerand,the War Minister, as deliberate and subtle evasions, masking a secretBr i t i sh p lan to invade and occupy Syr ia by themselves . 1 6

Millerand immediately reported these conversat ions to the FrenchCabinet , which authorized him to create an expedit ionary force toinvade Syria whenever Britain did, whether invited by her to part icipate or not . In February 1915, Delcasse went over to London andtook up the matter of Syria with Sir Edward Grey. The French

Foreign Minister was reassured that Bri tain would not invade Syriawithout giving prior notice. The two foreign ministers appear tohave agreed that i f the Ottoman Empire were to be part i t ioned,Britain would not oppose France's designs on Syria, but that i twould be far preferable for the empire not to be broken up.

Thus the foreign ministers settled the differences between theirtwo countriestemporari ly. But their men on the spot in the MiddleEast continued to st ir up trouble between Britain and France; and,misunderstanding the region, Kitchener and his l ieutenants also wenton to pursue other dangerous designs there.


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10

KITCHENER SETS OUT TOCAPTURE ISLAM

i

The West and the Middle East have misunderstood each otherthroughout most of the twentieth century; and much of that misunderstanding can be traced back to Lord Kitchener 's ini t iat ives inthe early years of the First World War. The peculiarities of hischaracter, the deficiencies of his understanding of the Moslem world,the misinformation regularly supplied to him by his lieutenants inCairo and Khartoum, and his choice of Arab poli t icians with whomto deal have colored the course of political events ever since.

To appreciate the novelty of Kitchener 's approach to the MiddleEast , i t must be remembered that when the Ottoman Empire enteredthe First World War, Asquith, Grey, and Churchil l did not intend toretaliate by seizing any of its domains for Britain. They did proposeto allow Britain's allies to make territorial gains in Europe and AsiaMinor at Turkey's expense; but Asquith 's Bri tain had no terr i torialdesigns of her own on Ottoman lands, either in the Middle East orelsewhere. Kitchener, however, maintained that when the war was

over, it was in Britain's vital interest to seize much of the OttomanEmpire for herself : the Arabic-speaking part . This would mean atotal reversal of Britain's traditional policy.

Kitchener, like most Britons who had lived in the East, believedthat in the Moslem world religion counts for everything. But thefiel d mars hal and his colle agues in Cair o and K h ar to um mistakenlyseemed to believe that Mohammedanism was a central ized, authoritarian structure. They regarded Islam as a single entity: as an "it," asan organization. They believed that i t obeyed i ts leaders. Centuriesbefore, Cortez had won control of Mexico by seizing the Aztecemperor; and medieval French kings had tr ied to control Christendomby keeping the pope captive in Avignon. In much the same spirit ,Kitchener and his colleagues believed that Islam could be bought,manipula ted , or captured by buying, manipula t ing , or captur ing i t s

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K I T C H E N E R S E T S O U T T O C A P T U R E I S L A M 97

religious leadership. They were intrigued by the notion that whoevercont ro l led the person of the Cal iphMohammed ' s successorcontrol led Is lam.

Central to Kitchener 's analysis was the contention that the Caliph

might hur l Is lam against Bri ta in . Since Sunni Moslems (who predomi nate d in M oh am me da n Ind ia) regar ded the Tu rk is h Sul t an as aCaliph, Kitchener perceived this as a continuing threat. In Cairo andKhartoum it was believed that, as of 1914, the Caliph had fallen intothe hands of Jews and Germans; the War Minister worried that oncethe world war was won, the Caliph might become a tool in the handsof Bri ta in 's Middle East r ivals , par t icular ly Russia .

In enemy hands, the caliphate could be used (Kitchener believed)to und er min e Bri ta in 's posi t ion in Jn di a , Eg yp t , and the Su da n.Britain ruled over half of the world's Moslems. 1 In India alone therewere a lmost seventy mil l ion of them, and Mohammedans const i tuteda disproportionately large part of the Indian Army. In Egypt and theSudan, Britain ruled mill ions more, who lived alongside the SuezCanal sea road to India. Tiny Brit ish garrisons policed these tens ofmillions of natives, but Kitchener knew that they could not evenbegin to deal with a revolt.

The Brit ish imagination was haunted by the Indian Mutiny

(18579), the mysterious uprising, incited by religion, that hadbrought down the rule of the East India Company. More recentlythe uprising in the Sudan, which Kitchener had so bril l iantlyavenged, was inspired by a new religious leader who called himselfthe Mahdi , a t i t le Europeans t ransla ted as "Messiah." Pan-Is lamicunrest in Egypt in 19056 had caused Britain deep concern. ForKitchener and his entourage, the possibil i ty of a Moslem Holy Waragainst Britain was a recurring nightmare.

T h e Dir ect or of Infor mat io n, Joh n Bu ch an, dra mati zed these fears

in his 1916 novel Greenmantle, in which Germany makes use of aMoslem prophet in a plot to destroy Bri ta in 's empire . The prophetappears in Turkey; there are portents of his coming; there is anancient prophecy; there is a modern revelation; and the region inwhich he intends to ignite a rebellion is made explicit. "There is adry wind blowing through the East, and the parched grasses wait thespark. And the wind is blowing towards the Indian border." 2

Kitchener believed that a call to arms by the Caliph against Britainduring the 1914 war could perhaps be offset by the words or actionsof other Moslem religious leaders. After Britain had won the war,however, more decisive action would be necessary. The reason wasthat when the war had been won, Russia was sure to take possessionof Constant inople andunless something were done about i tofthe Cal iph. Ki tchener saw a German-control led Cal iph as merely


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dangeroushe would at tempt to foment unrest in India to throwBritain off balance in the European war. But he saw a Russian-controlled Caliph as a mortal danger to the Bri t ish Empire; for(unlike Asquith and Grey). Kitchener believed that Russia st i l l har

bored ambit ions of taking India away from Britain. In Kitchener 'sview, Germany was an enemy in Europe and Russia was an enemy inAsia: the paradox of the 1914 war in which Britain and Russia wereallied was th at by winn ing in E u r o p e, Brit ain risked losing in As ia .The only completely satisfactory outcome of the war, fromKitchener's point of view, was for Germany to lose it without Russiawinning itand in 1914 it was not clear how that could be accomplished. So the War Minister planned to strike first in the comingpostwar struggle with Russia for control of the road to and into

India.

Kitchener's proposal was that, after the war, Britain should arrangefor her own nominee to become Caliph. Mohammed had been anArabian; Ki tchener proposed to encourage the v iew that Mohammed'ssuccessors as Caliph should be Arabian, too. The advantage of thiswas that the coastline of the Arabian peninsula could easily becontrolled by the British navy; Britain would be able to insulate theCaliph from the influence of Bri tain 's European r ivals . Once Britaincould install the Caliph within her sphere of influence in Arabia,Kitchener believed she could gain control of Islam. And even beforethe Ottoman Empire entered the war, Kitchener 's l ieutenants inCairo reminded the War Minister that an obvious candidate to be theArabian cal iphthe ruler of Meccahad already been in touch withhim.

I I

Toward the end of the summer of 1914, as the Ottoman war approached, Gilbert Clayton recalled that Abdullah, the favori te son ofHussein, the ruler of Mecca, had visited Cairo some months earlierand had suggested that Arabia might be ripe for revolt. At the time,Abdullah had been afraid that the Young Turks were about to moveagainst his father; and Abdullah, whose indolent disposit ion hid abold intel l igence, looked about for possible support from abroad. Butshortly afterward his father and the Porte composed their differences,so that British assistance was no longer needed.

Even now, it is not certain what Abdullah said in Cairo and whatwas said to him. Abdullah apparently f irst met Lord Kitchener therein 1912 or 1913. He met Kitchener in Cairo again in February andApril 1914, and also met with Ronald Storrs . Abdullah seems tohave sought assurances of British help if the Porte were to seek to


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depose his father. At the time, Kitchener, who inquired in detailabout the difficulties in Arabia, seems to have disclaimed any interestin interfering in internal Ottoman affairs . Abdullah may have beenless impressed by the disclaimer of interest than by the expression of

c o n c e r n . 3

To Storrs , Abdul lah apparent ly c la imedfalse lythat the r iva lchiefs of the Arabian peninsula were prepared to follow his father inopposing the Porte 's designs. He suggested a future relat ionshipbetween Arabia and Britain similar to that between Afghanistan andBritain, in which the former exercised internal self-rule and the latteradministered al l foreign relat ions. Though the idea was at tract ive tohim, Storrs, like his chief, was unable to offer Abdullah the encouragement tha t he sought . 4

Several Arabian emirs had indeed been in conflict for years withthe Young Turk leadership in Constant inople . But Gi lber t Claytonfailed to appre cia te the exten t to which relig iou s, dyn ast ic, an d othe rdifferences divided them. Arabic-speaking emigres in Cairo, withwhom he met, may have misled him in this connection. In fact noneof the Arabian emirs was willing to accept one of the others as aleader.

Prominent among the Arabic-speaking exiles l iving in Cairo with

whom Clayton spoke was a colorful former Ottoman army officer andC.U.P. pol i t ic ian named Aziz Al i a l -Masr i . Al-Masr i , of Circass ianancestry,* was born and brought up in Egypt; he had at tendedmilitary school in the Ottoman Empire. After military service in thefield, he had emerged as a leader of the Young Turkey Party. Yet hewas a mere major attached to the General Staff at a time whenEnver, a classmate of whom he held a low opinion, had becomeMinister of War. Discontented, al-Masri responded by organizing al-'Ahd, a small secret society of army officers who objected to the

C.U.P. 's centralizing policies and its failure to give those who spokeArabic their fair share of high office. The officers of al- 'Ahd wereunited in their opposit ion to the Turkifying policies adopted by theC.U.P. They advocated e i ther admit t ing the Arabic-speaking populations to a greater share of power in the central government, or elsedecentralizing and allowing them greater autonomy at the local level,o r pe rhaps bo th . 5

Enver Pasha was responsible for having had Major al-Masri arrestedand convicted on trumped-up charges in early 1914. Thus al-Masriunwillingly found himself cast in the role of an Arab revolutionaryunwill ingly, because he aspired to leadership of the Ottoman Empireas a whole, not a mere section of it . Responding to opinion in Cairo,

* Th e Circassi ans were a people from the Cau cas us , once ruled by Tu rk ey andlater by Russia.


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Lord Kitchener intervened on his behalf ; and Djemal Pasha arrangedto have him pardoned and exiled to his native Egypt. An opponent,since his childhood, of Bri t ish rule in Egypt, anti-Bri t ish, pro-German,a supporter of the Ottoman Empire who was opposed only to i ts

government, a military politician who numbered a mere handful ofcolleagues among his supporters , al-Masri was misunderstood by theBritish intelligence officers who wrongly regarded him both as powerful and as a potential ally.

In early September 1914, it appears that al-Masri visited theBrit ish Agency in Cairo, and met with Clayton. 6 Al-Masri knew thatAbdul Aziz Ibn Saud and other Arabian leaders had in the pastconsidered r ising against the Porte. Perhaps he told Clayton so.Perhaps Clayton was reminded of Abdullah's visit and of what hehad said to Storrs and Kitchener.

After seeing al-Masri , Clayton met with Ronald Storrs and madearrangements for him to forward a secret memorandum to LordKitchener. The Clayton memorandum was enclosed in a let ter thatStorrs was to send to his old chief on the relatively innocuous subjectof camels.

Ill

I t was a common Brit ish concern in 1914 that the Ottoman Empire,if it entered the war, might launch an attack against the Suez Canal;and, like officials in the war ministries of Europe who analyzed themilitary potential of neighboring enemy countries in terms of railroadfacilities, Ro na ld S to rr s foc use d atte ntion on the su pp ly of ca mel savailable to the Ottoman forces. The Ottoman army, he wrote in hisletter to Kitchener, would count on obtaining its animals from the

camel-breeders of the western distr ict of Arabia, the Hejaz, and whatStorrs proposed was to encourage the local rulerthe Emir ofMeccanot to deliver them.

The message about camels served as his cover: with i t Storrsforwarded Clayton's secret memorandum of 6 September 1914 toKitchener which urged him to enter into conversations with the rulerof Mecca for other purposes. One of the issues raised in Clayton'smemorandum was whether the Ottoman Sultan could be replaced asCaliph of Islam by an Arabian leader friendly to Britain. If so, theEmir of Mecca, the guardian of the Moslem Holy Places, was anobvious candidate, the more so as

123057668 a peace to end all peace the fall of the ottoman empire and the creation of the modern...

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