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history again in the Council of Four. Sykes-Picot, said Wilson in disgust afterward, sounded like a type of tea; “a fine example of the old diplomacy.” Sykes himself was dead by this time, carried off in the great flu epidemic, and Picot was in Beirut, trying valiantly to uphold his country’s interests in the face of a hostile British military administration. Allenby, who had been summoned to Paris from Damascus, warned that the Arabs would violently oppose a French occupation. Wilson tried to find a compromise. After all, as he pointed out, his only interest was in peace. Why not send a fact-finding inquiry to ask the Arabs themselves what they wanted? The Peace Conference, he said, using a favorite formula, would find “the most scientific basis possible for a settlement.” To annoy the British, Clemenceau slyly suggested that the commission look at Mesopotamia and Palestine as well. With the insouciance that drove the French colonial lobby mad, he told Poincaré that he had agreed to the commission only to be nice to Wilson and that, in any case, the commissioners would find nothing but support for France in Syria, “where we have traditions of 200 years.” The French president was horrified. As he told his diary, “Clemenceau is a man for catastrophes; if he cannot prevent them, he will also provoke them.” Lloyd George agreed to the commission, but privately thought it a dreadful idea, and so, on second thought, did Clemenceau. The two stalled when it came to naming their representatives, with the result that Wilson, in exasperation, finally decided in May to go ahead unilaterally and send his own commissioners out to the Middle East.31

When Feisal heard the initial news that a commission was to be appointed, he drank champagne for the first time in his life. He was confident, as was the ubiquitous Lawrence, that it would confirm Syrian independence under his rule. The months in Paris had been frustrating and boring for both men. A flight over the city helped relieve their feelings. “How dreadful, to have no bombs to throw upon these people,” Feisal exclaimed. “Never mind, here are some cushions.” Lawrence became increasingly difficult, playing silly practical jokes such as throwing sheets of toilet paper down a stairwell at Lloyd George and Balfour one evening. In April, Feisal and Clemenceau had their long-delayed meeting, at which they discussed yet another plan providing for a mild form of French mandate, which had been drawn up by British and French experts. Clemenceau found Feisal friendlier and more reasonable than before and believed that Feisal had accepted the terms. In fact, Feisal was stalling, on Lawrence’s advice. By May, when it was quite clear that there was no agreement and no serious Allied commission of inquiry, Feisal was safely back in Damascus.32

In Paris the wrangling between Britain and France went on, culminating, on May 21, with a violent scene between Clemenceau and Lloyd George over the whole Ottoman empire. Clemenceau pointed out that France had agreed to the incorporation of Cilicia into an Armenian mandate under the United States. He reminded Lloyd George that he had given up Mosul the previous December. “I have thus abandoned Mosul and Cilicia; I made the concessions you asked of me without hesitation, because you told me that, afterwards, no difficulty would remain. But I won’t accept what you propose today; my government would be overthrown the next day, and even I would vote against it.” Clemenceau threatened to go back on his offer of Mosul. That put before the Peace Conference the question of not just Mosul but the whole area stretching south to the Persian Gulf, now known as Iraq, an issue the British had managed to avoid up to this point.33

Mesopotamia—the term the British used loosely to refer to the old Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra—had scarcely been mentioned at the conference except as a possible mandate to be held, everyone assumed, by Britain. British troops were in occupation, British administrators from India were running it and British ships were sailing up