Part II
THE PALESTINE DIARY By Robert John and Sami Hadawi Third Edition 2006 from Amazon.com Paperback: Volume I 438 pages; ISBN: 1-4196-3570-0 Volume II 424 pages; ISBN: 1-4196-3569-7 Hardcover edition also available at Amazon.com
Part II of a IV part series by C.K. Garabed
In CHAPTER IV headed The Recognition of Zionism (1914-1917), we find on page 62 the following:
The Anglo-French naval attack on the Dardanelles forts had opened on 19 February 1915, and in the interval between February and the landing of troops on Gallipoli on 25 April the Russians managed to extort from Britain and France recognition of a claim for the incorporation in the Russian Empire of the Straits, Constantinople and parts of Armenia in Turkey. But in regard to other dispositions of the Turkish Empire, Grey stipulated that ‘the Mussulman holy places and Arabia shall under all circumstances remain under independent Mussulman dominion.’
And on pages 67-70:
But 1916 was a disastrous year for the Allies. “In the story of the war” wrote Lloyd George, “the end of 1916 found the fortunes of the Allies at their lowest ebb. In the offensives on the western front we had lost three men for every two of the Germans we had put out of action. Over 300,000 British troops were being immobilized for lack of initiative or equipment or both by the Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and for the same reason nearly 400,000 Allied soldiers were for all purposes interned in the malarial plains around Salonika.” The voluntary system of enlistment was abolished, and a mass conscript army of continental pattern was adopted, something which had never before occurred in British history. ( Footnote: Russian nationals resident in the United Kingdom (nearly all of them Jews), not having become British subjects, some 25,000 of military age, still escaped military service. This prompted Jabotinsky and Weizmann to urge the formation of a special brigade for Russian Jews, but the idea was not favorably received by the Government, and the Zionists joined non-Zionists in an effort to persuade Russian Jews of military age to volunteer as individuals for service in the British army. The response was negligible, and in July 1917 the Military Service (Conventions with Allies) Act was given Royal assent. Men of military age were invited to serve in the British army or risk deportation to Russia. However, the Russian Revolution prevented its unhindered application.)
German submarine activity in the Atlantic was formidable; nearly 1 ½ million tons of merchant shipping had been sunk in 1916 alone. The resources of J.P. Morgan and Company, the Allies’ financial and purchasing agents in the United States, though linked with N.M. Rothschild Company, were said to be nearly exhausted by increased Allied demands for American credit. There was rebellion in Ireland. Lord Robert Cecil stated to the British Cabinet: “France is within measurable distance of exhaustion. The political outlook of Italy is menacing. Her finance is tottering. In Russia, there is great discouragement. She has long been on the verge of revolution. Even her man-power seems coming near its limits.” In these circumstances, only one positive hope remained—that the United States should join the Allies. [See Dr. John’s 2007 footnote to this article]
The prospects were not good. Woodrow Wilson had fought and won his presidential re-election in 1916 on a pledge of continued neutrality in this foreign war. British, French and German agents and representatives had been active in the United States on behalf of their causes since the beginning of the war without result. ‘Throughout 1914 and 1915 . . . the story of the relations between America and the belligerents is that of a country driven backwards and forwards between the two sides by an alternation of incidents any one of which might easily have tipped the scales of war, had it not been for the stubborn determination of President Wilson to keep his country out of the fight if he possibly could.’
Into this gloomy winter of 1916 walked a new figure. He was James Malcolm, an Oxford educated Armenian ( Footnote: Born in Persia, where his family had settled before Elizabethan days. He was sent to school in England in 1881, being placed in the care of a friend and agent of the family, Sir Albert (Abdullah) Sassoon. Early in 1915, he founded the Russia Society in London among the British public as a means of improving relations between the two countries. Unlike the Zionists, he had no animus towards Czarist Russia.) who, at the beginning of 1916, with the sanction of the British and Russian Governments, had been appointed by the Armenian Patriarch a member of the Armenian National Delegation to take charge of the Armenian interests during and after the war. In this official capacity, and as advisor to the British Government on Eastern affairs, he had frequent contacts with the Cabinet Office, the Foreign office, the War Office and the French and other Allied embassies in London, and made visits to Paris for consultations with his colleagues and leading French officials. He was passionately devoted to an Allied victory which he hoped would guarantee the national freedom of the Armenians then under Turkish and Russian rule.
(Footnote: There were many precedents for British concern with the welfare of Christian peoples under Ottoman rule. More recently, Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin had dealt with the right of protection of the Armenians from armed assaults by their non-Christian neighbours; in 1876 Britain had protested to the Turkish Sultan at the massacre of 20,000 Christians in Bulgaria; and a British circular of 12 January 1881 to the foreign ministries in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome and St. Petersburg had drawn attention to Turkish persecution of the Armenians.)
Following the 18 march 1915 failure of the British-French naval assault on Gallipoli, there had been further massacres of more than 600,000 Armenians and some Greek Christians in Turkey out of a total of two million.
An aide-memoir presented to Lloyd George by M. Clemenceau at the Paris Peace Conference on 13 September 1919, represented British-French agreement on future responsibility. ‘The French Government, having accepted responsibility for the protection of the Armenian people, the British Government will consent to the immediate dispatch of French troops via Alexandretta for the purpose.’ When Turkish opposition was assessed to require substantial military intervention, the French abandoned Armenian protection. Sir Mark Sykes, with whom he was on terms of family friendship, told him that the cabinet was looking anxiously for United States intervention in the war on the side of the Allies, but when asked what progress was being made in that direction, Sykes shook his head gloomily. “Precious little,” he replied. James Malcolm now suggested to Mark Sykes that the reason why previous overtures to American Jewry to support the Allies had received no attention was because the approach had been made to the wrong people. It was to the Zionist Jews that the British and French Governments should address their parleys. “You are going the wrong way about it,” said Mr. Malcolm. “You can win the sympathy of certain politically-minded Jews everywhere, and especially in the United States, in one way only, and that is, by offering to try and secure Palestine for them.”
Zionism was not new to Sir Mark, but he had lost faith in its value as a means of getting America into the war, and possibly because of the Prime Minister’s disapproval. But what really weighed most heavily now with Sykes were the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. He told Malcolm that to offer to secure Palestine for the Jews was impossible. ‘Malcom insisted that there was no other way and urged a cabinet discussion. A day or two later, Sykes told him that the matter had been mentioned to Lord Milner’ (an extreme imperialist and a very influential member of the War Cabinet who had authorized the South African Zionist Federation in 1902 to act, where the Jews were concerned, as the channel for applications to enter or leave the Transvaal) ‘who had asked for further information. Malcolm pointed out the influence of Judge Brandeis of the American Supreme Court, and his strong Zionist sympathies.’ (ref.71)
In the United States, the President’s adviser, an advocate of Zionism, had been inducted as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on 5 June 1916. That Wilson was vulnerable was evident, in that as early as 1911, he had made known his profound interest in the Zionist idea and in Jewry. When Brandeis had been approved by the Senate, Wilson wrote to Henry Morgenthau: “I never signed any commission with such satisfaction.” The fact that endorsement of Wilson’s nominee by the Senate Judiciary committee had only been made ‘after hearings of unprecedented length,’ was not important. Brandeis had the President’s ear; he was ‘formally concerned with the Department of State.” This was the significant development, said Malcolm, which compelled a new approach to the Zionists by offering them the key to Palestine.
And on page 72:
The new approach of the Zionist movement by Mark Sykes with James Malcolm as preliminary interlocutor took the form of a series of meetings at Chaim Weizmann’s London house, with the knowledge and approval of the Secretary of the War cabinet, Sir Maurice Hankey. The result has been described by Mr. Samuel Landman, a leader of the Zionist-Revisionists, and secretary of the World Zionist Organization from 1917 to 1922, in the review World Jewry: “After an understanding had been arrived at between Sir Mark Sykes and Weizmann and Sokolow, it was resolved to send a secret message to Brandeis that the British Cabinet would help the Jews to gain Palestine in return for active Jewish sympathy and for support in the U.S.A. for the Allied cause, so as to bring about a radical pro-Ally tendency in the United States.” ( Footnote: Stein calls ‘an absurd myth’ and Felix Frankfurter ‘silly nonsense’ the assertion that in the autumn of 1916 the British Government caused to be intimated to Brandeis that it would support Zionist aspirations in Palestine if he used his influence with the President to bring the United States into the war.)
Dr. John’s 2007 footnote to this article: My purpose in writing The Palestine Diary was to make available to the public what happened, without prejudice for Arab or Jew. What is clear is the great tragedy for humanity that the Great War – the “War to end all Wars” Woodrow Wilson would tell the American people – did not end then in negotiation, as it would have in 1916-17, had the United States not come into the war. Pages 101 et seq. record the testimony of William Yale, Special Agent of the State Dept., who became my friend in the 1970s. Zionists also worked actively against peace with Turkey, as Yale has documented. The price was paid by the more men who would die (and their families) when the war continued. The Zionist prize was Palestine – forget Armenia.