ABSTRACT
The McMahon-Husayn correspondence and its subsequent interpretations in the foreign office raise many grave issues about the conduct of foreign affairs by a country with world-wide interests. The idea that the British government had been double-faced and treacherous in its dealings with Husayn was also greatly promoted by T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The British undertaking to King Husayn to recognize and uphold the independence of the Arabs within certain territorial limits had expressly excluded the territory to the west of 'the vilayets of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus'. The Balfour declaration has elicited no protest from Husayn, and it was only in 1920 that Faysal claimed, for the first time, that Palestine had been among the territories promised to his father. It was in order to deal with this new claim that Young put forward the notion that the 'district' of Damascus meant the 'vilayet' of Damascus, and that Palestine was to the west of this 'vilayet'.
