THE PEACE CONFERENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1919, Page 5

THE PEACE CONFERENCE.

"THE ARABIAN AGREEMENTS FRENCH CRITICISM. f ' POSITION CLEARLY EXPLAINED.--Received Feb. 13, 7.50 p.m. Paris, Feb. 11. A number of American correspondents have lodged cablegrams stating that, in view of the pointed criticism of the French press, t\v.> of the foremost Powers were insisting on the removal of the conference from Paris. The cablegrams were apparently intended as an indirect way of informing the French Government of American official perturbation, but there is not the slightest foundation for bracketing Britain with the threatened action. The British delegates are somewhat perturbed by the free French criticism on the Arabian agreements, and the insinuation that Britain is flirting with the comic opera Arabian nation in order to prevent France getting Syria. Even the leading French" papers, including Le Temps, have been indiscreet. The fact is that fifteen million Arabs make up a powerful Mahomedan people. The King of Hedjaz has no desire to extend his boundaries, but wishes full independence, with British assistance. The Palestine Arabs and Mesopotamian Arabs wish for independence similar to that of Egypt under Britain; and the Syrian Arabs, excluding some of the Lebanon tribes, would accept America aa the mandatory country, but prefer Britain. They absolutely do not want France, for the Arabs have determinedly declared they would fight France if the French came to Syria with Algerian ideas. The centre of the trouble is Damascus and Beyrout, which France claims under the old secret Franco-British treaty, which was made at the time Syria was thought to be an enemy State and Lord Kitchener wished a big French buffer Slate between British Mesopotamia and Russian Armenia.—United Service.