The Hogarth message

In January 1918 Commander David George Hogarth of the Arab Bureau, the British office for intelligence and Arab policy, arrived in Jeddah from Cairo. He brought King Hussein of the Hejaz a message from the government in London in which the British explained their intentions towards the Arabs and Palestine. The British chronology of the war dates this message to 4 January. Accounts usually state only that Hogarth spoke with the king at Jeddah in January 1918, and according to some of them the text of the message was dated 4 January.

Why Hussein was asking

Hussein, an ally of the British since the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in June 1916, had reason to be uneasy. On 2 November 1917 the British government had issued the Balfour Declaration, supporting the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. A few weeks later the Bolsheviks, who had seized power in Russia, published in Izvestia the secret documents of tsarist diplomacy, among them the Sykes–Picot Agreement on the partition of Turkey’s Asian lands between Britain and France. On 26 November it was reprinted by the British Manchester Guardian, and the Turks used it in propaganda aimed at the Arabs. Hussein, who had been promised Arab independence in the correspondence with McMahon, demanded an explanation.

What London promised

According to some historians, the text of the message was drafted by Sir Mark Sykes, one of the secretaries of the War Cabinet, who dealt with Middle Eastern affairs. It had three points. In the first, the Entente powers gave assurance that they were determined that the “Arab race” should be given full opportunity of once again forming a nation. This, however, could be achieved only by the Arabs themselves, if they united, and Britain and her allies would pursue a policy aimed at that unity. The second point concerned Palestine: the British declared that “no people shall be subjected to another”. Because of the holy places and the waqfs of Muslims, Jews and Christians, important to people all over the world, they were to be placed under a special regime approved by the world. The Mosque of Omar, as Europeans then called the Dome of the Rock, was to remain a matter for Muslims alone and not be subject, directly or indirectly, to any non-Muslim authority.

The third point concerned Zionism. Since Jewish opinion throughout the world favoured a return of the Jews to Palestine, and the British government viewed this aspiration favourably, it would put no obstacle in its way, but only “in so far as is compatible with the freedom of the existing population, both economic and political”. The message argued that the friendship of world Jewry meant support for the Arab cause in all the states where Jews had political influence, and that the Zionist leaders wished to achieve their aim in friendship and co-operation with the Arabs. Such an offer, it said, should not be lightly thrown aside. The reservation about the “political freedom” of the existing population went further than the Balfour Declaration, which guaranteed the non-Jewish communities only civil and religious rights.

The king’s reply

Hogarth, an Oxford archaeologist, before the war a director of excavations and mentor of the young Thomas Edward Lawrence, had known the Middle East for years. In his report on the mission he wrote that the king had accepted the formula on Jewish settlement without objection, even with satisfaction, and said that Jews would be welcome in Arab lands. He added, however, that Hussein would not accept an independent Jewish state in Palestine, and that he himself had not been instructed to warn him that Britain was contemplating such a state. The king took notes in Arabic during the talks. In time the Arabs relied above all on the assurance recorded in them that Jewish settlement would be allowed only in so far as it did not infringe the political and economic freedom of the Arab population.

The message remained secret. The British government published its full text and Hogarth’s report only in 1939, when a joint British-Arab committee examined Hussein’s correspondence with McMahon. Since then historians have argued over whether Hussein really came to terms with the Balfour Declaration, or accepted only a softened version of it which the British later failed to honour. For the time being the king remained loyal to the alliance, and his sons fought on against the Turks. He asked London separately about the Sykes–Picot Agreement. The answer came in February 1918.