ABSTRACT
In the period of the peace settlement in the Near and Middle East Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, the emir of Nejd, acted throughout with great caution, refraining from attempting a conquest of the Gulf states and the Hedjaz lest a policy of expansion result in a confrontation with the British. In a speech given at the Central Hall, Westminster, in January 1918, Lloyd George, who in December 1916 had succeeded H. H. Asquith as prime minister, had declared that 'while we do not challenge the maintenance of the Turkish Empire in the homelands of the Turkish race, with its capital at Constantinople, the passage between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea being internationalised and neutralised, Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine are in our judgement entitled to a recognition of their separate national conditions'. The actual task of destroying the last vestiges of the Armenian dream of independence was left to the Turkish nationalists.
