130 A Short History of the Middle East
political aspirations of nationalist Indians or Egyptians as having
greater moral force than the interests of Britain in those lands.
Such idealists were only a minority; but for the reasons previously
stated, the majority of the British people were reluctant to resort to
any extreme measures to maintain the imperial status-quo un-
changed. The nationalists of the Middle East and elsewhere were
consequently able from 1918 onwards to obtain greater concessions
by pressure and violence than reasoned argument would probably
have achieved; and not being aware of the symptoms in the British
public mind which favoured their own violent course, they attri-
buted their success solely to that violence and were encouraged to
continue in it.1
In the flush of their victorious power in the immediate post-war
period Britain and France extended and intensified their interests
In the Middle East at the expense of the nationalist movements
which were rising there. Britain sought from 1919 to 1921 to make
permanent her direct protectorate over Egypt, which had been
proclaimed as a temporary expedient at the outbreak of war- to
replace the undefined proconsulship of Cromer. British and
French pre-war cultural and economic penetration of the Fertile
Crescent crystallized into the Imposition of their direct rule over
the whole region, Palestine and TYansjordan, Syria and Lebanon,
Iraq. Nor was this imposition mitigated in fact by the invention of
the Mandates system as much as might appear on the surface. The
Mandates system was little more than a polite fiction created in
order to satisfy President Wilson and the idealists who had in-
augurated the League of Nations. Britain and France arrogated to
themselves their mandates over the Middle East by the Treaty of
San Remo in April 1920, and the League dutifully subscribed to
their will. In June 1920 Lord Curzon, then Foreign Secretary,
could tell the House of Lords, 'It is quite a mistake to suppose that
under the Covenant of the League or any other instrument the gift
of a mandate rests with the League of Nations. It rests with the
Powers who have conquered the territories, which it then falls to
them to distribute.5 The Permanent Mandates Commission of the
League could in theory recommend the withdrawal of a mandate
from an offending Power, but this authority was never exer-
cised. It could, and sometimes did, animadvert critically on
the conduct of a Mandatory; but It had no powers to inspect
1 cf. A. J. Toynbee, The Islamic World since the Peace Conference, 11 f.