Lord Maugham

Summary

The Right Honourable The Lord Maugham, P.C., Lord High Chancellor of England, who sat for His Majesty’s Government on the 1939 committee on the McMahon–Hussein correspondence and whose memorandum of the United Kingdom case is Annex B of its report, with a closing statement as Annex E (Report of a Committee set up to consider certain correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca, lines 165-180, 389-436).

At the outset he explained he was not present in any judicial capacity and made no claim to decide, as a judge, which side was right; he was present as His Majesty’s Government’s representative only, to expound and advocate their views (lines 181-190).
His memorandum (Annex B) holds that all United Kingdom Governments since 1915 have held that Henry McMahon intended to leave Palestine outside Arab independence and that the correspondence cannot be read otherwise, resting the case on the surrounding circumstances and on a specific geographical reservation and a general reservation (lines 395-436).
He signs the report as MAUGHAM, first of the United Kingdom signatories (lines 279-295).
Annex B runs to para. 44 (lines 389-491): the general French-interests reservation, fixed as at 24 October 1915, carries the case; the Sharif’s deferral of “Beirut and its coasts” was “a provisional acceptance of a reservation of nearly half of Palestine”; breach of faith is repudiated “very strongly”. In his closing statement (Annex E, lines 678-717) he repeats that the Arab district-phrase point “has been shown to have greater force than has appeared hitherto” but holds the French reservation undiminished, and holds that “Holy Places” in the correspondence “meant and was taken to mean the Holy Places of Mecca and Medina”.