Page 231 - Life of Gertrude Bell

THE MANDATE 211
rather too anti Turk and anti Muhammedan to be quite a safe
guide for HMG in these matters I should think.

While Wilson and Gertrude moved around Paris putting their
somewhat divergent viewpoints to all and sundry, a separate cause
was being canvassed at the same hotel tables and in the same
chambers and lobbies: that of the Zionists and the demand of the
Jews for a national home in compliance with the Balfour Declara­
tion. In 1917, at the start of his final campaign against the Turks
in Syria, Allenby had taken the precaution of appointing his own
military intelligence chief in Cairo, Colonel Richard Meinertz-
hagen, the nephew of Sidney Webb. He worked alongside
Wyndham Deedes, Wingate’s right-hand man until then, who was
responsible for political intelligence under the new regime.
Meinertzhagen’s first act was to appoint as his chief ‘agent’ in
Palestine the fair-haired, blue-eyed Jew Aaron Aaronsohn who
had hitherto been in Cairo as Chaim Weizmann’s representative
among the intriguing factions of the British war administration.
Aaronsohn, who also kept in close touch with the Americans
through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for whom he worked
as a botanist in pre-war Palestine, knew the Turks, Arabs,
Germans and Britons who roamed the region better than any man
alive, though few of them knew him as anything more than an
innocent among them. He proved one of the most brilliant spies
of the war, contributing vitally to the success of Allenby’s cam­
paign, only to be killed in a mysterious air accident over the
English Channel during the Peace Conference in 1919.
After the capture of Jerusalem Meinertzhagen was transferred
to the War Office as deputy to General ‘Freddie’ Maurice, the
Director of Military Operations, where he acted as a counterbalance
to what had come to be regarded as the ‘Lawrence’ or ‘Sharifite’
lobby. His own political vacillations were just about comparable
with Lawrence’s. When he first went to the Middle East he was a
convinced Zionist who was suspicious of the Jews. After he left
the area he became a Hebraphile who was suspicious of Zionism.
At Paris he was to be seen for the most part in the company of
Weizmann, and while Gertrude was present at the Conference he
brought Faisal, Lawrence and Weizmann together to compose
a famous letter to Felix Frankfurter, the head of the American
Zionist delegation. The letter was eventually signed by Faisal:
‘Dear Mr Frankfurter—I want to take this opportunity of my
p