ABSTRACT

The Arab Bureau memorandum was mistaken in declaring that the British negotiators had in any way agreed that any part of Mesopotamia which Britain held, it would hold not by Imperial right, but under concession from the Arabs. The McMahon-Husayn correspondence was offered by Harold Nicolson in a memorandum of July 1917. Nicolson began by reviewing British obligations to European Powers in respect of the Ottoman empire and declared that in respect of these people are bound only, in so far as important issues are involved, by treaties which are liable, and indeed destined, to be revised. The memorandum affirmed that the British government had not agreed to recognize Arab independence in Syria 'west of the line Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Damascus'. This way of putting the matter gave yet another twist to Gibbon's original remark. Toynbee's memorandum, which he seems to have written on his own initiative, strongly attacked Wilson.