Page 204 - Life of Gertrude Bell

i86 GERTRUDE BELL
inclusive’. Sykes, with Gertrude virtually at the helm in Meso­
potamia, felt safe in his dealings with that territory, and by the
same token he was becoming worried about the direction of
Bureau policies in Egypt. He damned McMahon with faint praise.
‘With regard to Egypt, I am strongly of opinion that Sir II.
McMahon requires help in the way of instructions. There has
been a steady effort to carry on the administration as though very
little was afoot, with the result that people have gone in for
junketing, entertainment, and have drifted into a tendency to let
tilings slide ... Native and civil British opinion was that Sir
Henry McMahon was only a temporary holder of the position,
and that Lord Kitchener was coming back ... I now come to the
Gulf and Mesopotamia and the political work of Sir Percy Cox.
This is the most difficult thing I have to say ... that the Govern­
ment of India is incapable of handling the Arab question ...
Lastly, it is useless to ignore the jealousy which subsists between
Simla and Cairo. This is an old-lasting feud, but real nevertheless ...
I cannot speak too highly of Sir Percy Cox’s work ... but he will
never be free so long as it depends upon Simla. The only way to
unity and co-ordination ... is to place the political affairs of
Mesopotamia, Aden and Muscat directly under the Foreign Office,
London and appoint Sir Percy Cox High Commissioner with
equal rank to Sir Henry McMahon ...’
The unimaginative and loyal McMahon was about to take the
rap for negotiations which had, by common consent, entangled
the Government in a web of intrigue and promises from which
it would have great difficulty in extricating itself; negotiations in
which he, McMahon, had been the unsuspecting intrument of
wild and dishonourable men. While McMahon’s negotiations had
been in progress, Sykes had been formulating the secret Sykes-
Picot agreement designating British, French and Italian spheres
of control and influence in the Ottoman dominions, which was
to cut across some of the promises made to Husain. And Husain
for his part was already calling himself Malik al Bi/ad al Aarab,
King of the Arab Lands, to the consternation of the French who
suspected that he included metropolitan Syria in ‘Arab Lands’.
Britain insisted that he should style himself ‘King of the Hijaz
but he held to the end that he had been promised not only the
Caliphate of Islam but the kingship of a territory which embraced
most of the peninsula and included part of what became French-
mandated Syria and British-mandated Palestine. Meanwhile, his