Memorandum Submitted to the Conference of Allied Powers at the House of Commons

Summary

Amir Faisal’s memorandum of 10 March 1921, submitted by General Hoddad Pasha on Faisal’s delegation and on behalf of King Hussein, asks the Conference of Allied Powers to reconsider the Arabs’ treatment under the Treaty of Sevres and to grant the independence and unity for which, Faisal says, the Arabs fought: the British pledges to his father had promised independence for the Arab-speaking provinces within a line from Alexandretta along the 37th parallel to Persia and down to the Gulf, Syria — “in which I include Palestine” — and Mesopotamia are racially homogeneous and economically interdependent, and their division into separate states is justified by no consideration of practical statesmanship (Memorandum Submitted to the Conference of Allied Powers at the House of Commons, lines 79-95).

What the file is

• The memorandum as reproduced by UNISPAL, downloaded from https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-203679/ (access basis: public-domain). The original is the HTML page; the supplied text copy (about 1,190 words, lines 1-163) is a plain-text rendering with no page markers, so locators are line numbers. UN page furniture occupies lines 1-71 and 99-162; the memorandum and its headnote are lines 73-97.
• The page’s headnote is editorial, not part of the signed text: it records that the Allied Powers Conference assigned Britain as Mandatory for Palestine on 24 April 1920, and that Faisal, son of King Hussein of Hejaz, later became King of Iraq (lines 75-77). The delivery instruction for this source named it Memorandum to the Supreme Council at the Paris Peace Conference; the file’s own title is the one used here, and the variant is kept as an alias.

Section by section

• Headnote and submission (lines 73-81): memorandum submitted to the Conference of Allied Powers at the House of Commons, by General Hoddad Pasha (Hejaz Army), delegated by His Royal Highness Amir Faisal, on 10 March 1921, on behalf of His Majesty.
• The pledges (line 83): the Arabs entered the war for independence. King Hussein did not lead the Arab revolt before obtaining British assurances of a commensurate reward; the pledges gave “the definite promise of independence” within a line from Alexandretta along the 37th degree of latitude to the Persian frontier and down to the Persian Gulf, bounded west by the Red Sea, the Sinai Peninsula and the Mediterranean. Some British reservations his father accepted; the rest, affecting a comparatively small portion, were to be settled by discussion after the war. On those pledges he held the essential unity and independence of the Arab-speaking provinces of the Turkish Empire secure, and the Arabs answered his call, performing their “comparatively small, though not unimportant, part in the common task”.
• Disillusion and unity (line 85): “To none of the Allies has the peace brought more bitter disillusion.” The Arabs have not gained independence and have lost even their relative unity under Constantinople. Separation, and still less division into separate and independent states, is unjustifiable: the provinces are racially homogeneous and economically interdependent, neither Syria — “in which I include Palestine” — nor Mesopotamia can flourish without complete freedom of trade through the whole country, nomad tribes pass between them yearly, and only a united front can withstand pressure from the north.
• The settlement’s failure (line 87): the Allied Powers ignored these obvious considerations in the Middle East settlement they drew up, and did not even establish any link or bond between the separated provinces.
• Allied interests and the Wilson principle (lines 89-93): King Hussein admits Allied interests in parts of the Arab Provinces and will discuss, in a liberal spirit, the declarations made to “racial entities”, though nothing about them was said in the pledges he holds. Such discussions should follow the sentiments the President of the United States expressed, dated in the text to July 4th, 1919: settlement of every question of territory, sovereignty, economic arrangement or political (as printed) on the basis of free acceptance by the people immediately concerned, not the material interest of any other nation. Allied statesmen have frequently declared these principles guide their policy.
• The ask (line 95): on behalf of King Hussein, the Conference should reconsider the Arabs’ treatment under the Treaty of Sevres. Faisal solemnly asks for “that independence and unity for which we fought, and for which many thousands of my countrymen laid down their lives”, wishes friendly relations with the Allied Powers maintained and no detriment to any foreign Power’s legitimate interests, and holds that until the desire to order their own national life is satisfied, peace can never be established in the Arab provinces.
• Signature (line 97): “(Signed) Faisal”.

Key passages

• “Those pledges, given to my Father by the British Government, offered to the Arabs the definite promise of independence within the limits included by a line, drawn from Alexandretta along the 37th degree of latitude up to the Persian frontier and then down to the Persian Gulf” (line 83)
• “To none of the Allies has the peace brought more bitter disillusion.” (line 85)
• “neither Syria, in which I include Palestine, nor Mesopotamia can flourish” (line 85)
• “I stand here on behalf of the Arabs and solemnly ask for that independence and unity for which we fought, and for which many thousands of my countrymen laid down their lives.” (line 95)

Evidence the work relies on

• The memorandum rests its case on the British pledges to King Hussein, which it describes but does not quote or annex (line 83), on the wartime record as known from “the official communiques issued during and after the war” (line 83), and on the presidential statement it quotes at lines 91-93. No figures are given except the boundary line, the 37th degree of latitude and “many thousands” of dead (line 95).

Analysis

• A diplomatic appeal in the first person, structured as bargain, grievance and remedy: the pledges define what was owed; the post-war settlement is measured against Arab unity — racial, economic and military — and found to have delivered neither independence nor even a link between the parts; the remedy asked is reconsideration under the Treaty of Sevres, argued on the Allies’ own declared principle of free acceptance by the people concerned.
• Palestine is never argued separately in the memorandum: it enters only inside Syria, in the single clause “in which I include Palestine” (line 85), which is the file’s whole statement of where Palestine belongs.

People, organizations, places and events

Amir Faisal, Sherif Hussein of Mecca, Britain, Syria, Treaty of Sèvres

Concepts

Self-determination

How it relates to other sources

• Faisal’s reservation to the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement in January 1919 made his concurrence depend on the Arabs obtaining the independence demanded in his memorandum of 4 January 1919 (Faisal-Weizmann Agreement (1919), line 121); this 1921 memorandum is the same claim pursued two years later, after the mandate assignment the headnote dates to 24 April 1920.
• Its account of the pledges — a definite promise of independence within stated limits, with small reservations deferred — is Faisal’s summary of the bargain his father’s letters conducted; the letters themselves, which never name Palestine, are ingested at Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915–March 1916, and the 1939 committee’s dispute over whether Palestine was included is at Report of a Committee set up to consider certain correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca.
• The Zionist Organization’s February 1919 statement asks the Peace Conference for the opposite disposition of Palestine — sovereignty vested in the League, government entrusted to Britain as Mandatory to secure a Jewish National Home (Statement of the Zionist Organization regarding Palestine, lines 83-91).

Open questions

• The delivery title for this source, Memorandum to the Supreme Council at the Paris Peace Conference, does not match the file, which titles it a memorandum to the Conference of Allied Powers at the House of Commons and dates its submission 10 March 1921. Both titles are recorded; the file’s is used as the page title.
• The presidential sentiments are dated July 4th, 1919 in the text (line 89), and the quotation as printed breaks off after “or of political,” (lines 91-93). Held as printed; the file gives no source for the quotation.
• At line 85 the text reads “still less justification is there for the decision of provinces into various separate and independent states” — “decision” as printed, where the sense requires division. Held as printed.
• The pledges to King Hussein are described, not reproduced, so their exact reservations — and whether Palestine fell within them — cannot be checked from this file; the memorandum asserts the unity and independence of the Arab-speaking provinces as its father’s understanding (line 83).

Coverage

lines 1-163 of 163, read in full.