The spirit of the East breathed in this Yorkshire gentleman. In his earliest youth he showed a keen interest for Arabia, for Islam and the Turkish Empire. At Cambridge he studied Arabic under Professor E. G. Browne, and there also he met the lady who was afterwards to be his wife and true helpmeet, a daughter of Sir John Gorst, who was at the time one of the members of parliament for the University. In the year 1898 Sykes, then a young student, undertook a second journey to the East, and stayed much of his time in the Hauran. He devoted himself with the entire freshness and sincerity of his youth (he was then but twenty years old) to his observations as a traveller. In the year 1900 appeared his first book, which recounts his impressions in an elegant style and light form.[¹] In this book he ascribes to his guide, a Christian Arab named Isa, the following words apropos of the Jews there, that they were “dirty like Rooshan and robber like Armenian.”[²] Sykes himself had at that time no clear idea of Jews or of Armenians—of the two peoples for whom he strove and died nineteen years later. He cites an expression of opinion and repeats it in the bad English of an Arab guide. After his return from the East, he devoted his attention to military studies, in which he distinguished himself. He served in the South African War in 1900–2. He gave a proof of his technical knowledge in his work on strategy and military training which he had compiled in collaboration with Major George d’Ordel.[³] In the year 1904 he was travelling again, and the literary product of his later and earlier journeys was his second considerable book on Islam and the Orient.[⁴] This book is dedicated to his fellow-soldiers in the South African War.[⁵] In this work already speaks to us a young but mature man who had travelled much in four continents and had been through the South African Campaign. Here we already perceive the fundamentals of his later Zionism. As regards the future of the Orient he looks not to modern civilisation and capitalism, but to the latent force of national life. He was not deceived by the specious platitudes so dear to that deplorable product of modern European democracy ‘the man in the street’ as to ‘extending the blessing of Western civilisation’; he regarded rather with unconcealed apprehension the contingency of the Western Asiatics becoming ‘a prey to capitalists of Europe and America,’ “in which case a designing Imperial Boss might, untrammelled by the Government, reduce them to serfdom for the purpose of filling his pockets and gaining the name of Empire-maker.” (Prof. Browne’s Preface, Dar-ul-Islam, p. iv.). He had a great predilection for all national individualities, and detested the desire to imitate and assimilate. “He hated the hybrid Levantine ... and faithfully portrayed the Gosmopaleet (Cosmopolite)” (ibid.). He condemned interfering tutelage. “Orientals hate to be worried and hate to have their welfare attended to.... Oppression they can bear with equanimity, but interference for their own good they never brook with grace” (ibid.). He shows a profound historic sense: “he does not disguise his preference for countries with ‘a past’ over countries with ‘a future’” (ibid.), and finds in the nature of the Oriental the conditions for a true equality. “He recognises the fact that there is more equality because less snobbery and pretence in Asia than in Europe” (ibid.). The only feature that is wanting in this book is a knowledge of Jews and of Zionism. He makes but once mention of this matter, in a short sketch of the Jews at Nisibin. “The Jews at Nisibin ... their appearance is much improved by Oriental costume ... in which they look noble and dignified.” He then adds: “I trust that the Uganda Zionists will adopt my suggestion” (p. 141). One who believes in the assimilation of the Jews may snobbishly consider this also as anti-Semitic, but in fact it is only the harmless joke of an artist, for Sykes was essentially an artist. His drawings were excellent, he was also very musical, and had a great predilection for all true individuality, for the archaic, the original, the unadulterated, for race, nationality, genius loci, for everything racy and natural, and for everything that was not cliché, mechanical and snippety.
[¹] Through Five Turkish Provinces, by Mark Sykes. London, Bickers and Son. 1900.
[²] Ibid., p. 127.
[³] Tactics and Military Training. By Major George d’Ordel and Captain Mark Sykes. London. 1902.
[⁴] Dar-Ul-Islam. A record of a journey through Ten of the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey. By Mark Sykes. London. 1904.
[⁵] “The F Company, 3rd Batt. Princess of Wales’ Own Yorkshire Regiment, who served in South Africa, 1900–2.”
This was the foundation of his latent Zionism. From 1904 to 1911 he pursued his military studies, managed his estates and travelled much. In 1911 he entered Parliament as member for Hull. Although nominally a Tory, Sir Mark was at bottom no party man, but a man of convictions. Full of faith, greedy for work, energetic, confident, capable, quick of study, charmed with a fight. Equally ready to defend or attack, he was unselfish. Over the Irish question he fell out with the Conservatives; he was an outspoken champion of Home Rule, and throughout his life he remained a loyal friend of Irish nationalism. His speeches soon made him popular in Parliament; they were never long and yet never trite. He showed the same qualities in his letters to the Press. He had always something to say, some original thought which he expressed in his own individual style. He told me once, how he had learned public speaking at school. He had to prepare the outline of the speech and afterwards to state in short and simple terms the substance of his speech. The latter, he added, was the more difficult task, because a facile speaker can make long speeches, and yet find it impossible to repeat later the essential facts of his speeches. He was not a facile speaker in this sense; he never spoke quite extempore, but always prepared his speeches carefully, often by means only of simple key words or of a few pictures, resembling hieroglyphics, as, for example, the sun with streaming rays. He never spoke to the gallery, never flattered, never perverted the truth under the mask of sincerity, and never sought to create effects. His speeches were full of beauty and deep idealism with a breath of religious fervour, as he leant forward to address himself to the hearts of his audience. This practical man was at bottom a poet. He could tell most fascinating stories. He had not been brought up in the chilling atmosphere of severe Puritanism, but in the medieval glamour of Catholic cathedrals and under the sun of the East. Yet he had remained a proud and staunch Briton. He was a remarkable and extremely unusual combination of a blue-eyed, simple and modest Englishman of childlike sweetness, and of a medieval knight full of Oriental reminiscences, with ardent faith and picturesque imagination. We loved him and he loved us, because his nature was gentle, kind and sympathetic. He chatted freely: he told all about his enthusiasms, his “castles in the air,” his stories about dervishes, his travelling impressions, with a lively dramatic touch with appropriate gesture and expression, often drawing his round, brown stylo pen from his pocket in order to explain the matter more pointedly by means of a rapid sketch. How often I regretted that no shorthand writer was present. His ways were dignified and courteous, his modesty so natural and so frank that he gave the impression of being himself unconscious of it. When the talk took a jesting turn, there was no sting in his witticisms, his jests were easy and never offensive. When he was angered, his emotion lasted but a few seconds, and afterwards he was as light-hearted as a child.
Such was the Mark Sykes of 1914 when the War broke out. He took up his part in the War with all his patriotism and with his idealistic faith in the victory of justice. In 1915 he was with his regiment busy in hard training and ready for the field. He often told me how it had come to pass that the East had become his sphere of action. One day Lord Kitchener said to him: “Sykes, what are you doing in France, you must go to the East.” “What am I to do there?” asked Sykes. “Just go there and then come back,” was Lord Kitchener’s answer. Sykes travelled to the East, made his way through accessible and inaccessible districts, and came back. His observations and experiences constituted the material upon which all the great things that afterwards happened were based. He then voluntarily entered the service of the Government as expert, as adviser, and as draughtsman of their policy. He was one of the pioneers of the new British War Policy in the East, one of the protagonists of the “Eastern School.” In the year 1916 he undertook with M. Georges Picot a journey to Russia. It was then the Czarist Russia with its eye fixed upon Constantinople; that was the occasion upon which the so-called Sykes-Picot agreement was signed. From the standpoint of Zionist interests in Palestine this agreement justly met with severe criticism; but it was Sykes himself who criticised it most sharply and who with the change of circumstances dissociated himself from it entirely. It was a product of the time, a time when there was as yet no decided plan formed of launching a definite campaign in the East, when the prime necessity was some sort of agreement, since otherwise no progress would have been made. This was long before Mr. Balfour’s declaration, and since at this time the Zionist interests in Palestine had as yet received no attention because they were unknown and not debatable, and also as it was essential to come to terms about Constantinople with the old regime in Russia, this agreement was a necessary prelude to action. This agreement Sykes regarded later as an anachronism.
Zionism had been at work in England for two full years without its coming to know anything of Sykes, who himself worked on his own lines for a year and a half, without knowing anything of Zionist organisation or a definite programme of Zionism. What happened resembled the construction of a tunnel begun at two sides at once. As the workers on each side approach one another they can hear the sound of blows through the earth. It seems at first a strange enough story; a certain Sir Mark appears, he makes some enquiries, and then expresses a wish to meet the Zionist leaders. Finally a meeting actually takes place and discussions are entered upon. Sir Mark showed a keen interest and wanted to know the aims of the Zionist Organisation, and who were its representatives. The idea assumed a concrete form; but this acquaintance, however, valuable as it was, had as yet no practical significance. Acquaintanceships were made and discussions took place during the years 1914–16 by the hundred with influential people and with some who had more voice in affairs than Sir Mark ever had. They constituted certainly a most important introductory chapter, and one without which the book itself could not have been written, but they were naturally fragmentary, preliminary, without cohesion and without sanction. The work itself began only after the 7th of February, 1917.
The subsequent chapters describe this work in general outlines. A thousand details remain for the pen of some future historian, when the time comes for the archives of the Foreign Office, of the Ministries for Foreign Affairs of the other Entente Powers, and of the political offices of the Zionist Organisation in London and Paris to be made public. In the whole proceedings there are no secret treaties, no secret diplomacy, in fact neither diplomacy nor conspiracy; but they constitute a series of negotiations, schemes, suggestions, explanations, measures, journeys, conferences, etc., to which each of those who took a part gave something of the best in himself.