ABSTRACT
The secret messages to the Sharif instigated by Storrs and Kitchener and the various proclamations which followed them were of course immediately occasioned by apprehended, and later on, by actual hostilities with the Ottoman empire. The hostilities were bound to force a reconsideration of traditional British policy towards the Ottoman empire. By March 1915, Grey had come to have one other idea about the future disposal of the Ottoman empire in Asia. This related to the Muslim holy places and the Arabian peninsula. As has been seen, he informed McMahon in a telegram of 14 April that the British government make it an essential condition of any terms of peace that the Arabian Peninsula and its Moslem Holy Places should remain in the hands of an independent Moslem State. The Bunsen Report considered four alternative schemes for dealing with the Ottoman empire in Asia.
