Note 24 — Chapter VIII · GREAT BRITAIN BLOCKS THE WAY

See a statement by Lord Lansdowne, in the House of Lords, Parliamentary Debates, fourth series, Volume 121 (1903), p. 1347, and a statement by Lord Curzon, ibid., fifth series, Volume 7 (1911), pp. 583–587; also Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, Volume II, Chapter XXVII. The strategic importance of the Persian Gulf to the British Empire was realized by foreign observers, as well as by English statesmen. Writing in 1902, Admiral A. T. Mahan, an American, said, “The control of the Persian Gulf by a foreign state of considerable naval potentiality, a ‘fleet in being’ there based upon a strong military port, would reproduce the relations of Cadiz, Gibraltar, and Malta to the Mediterranean. It would flank all the routes to the farther East, to India, and to Australia, the last two actually internal to the Empire, regarded as a political system; and although at present Great Britain unquestionably could check such a fleet, so placed, by a division of her own, it might well require a detachment large enough to affect seriously the general strength of her naval position.” A. T. Mahan, Retrospect and Prospect (New York, 1902), pp. 224–225. Lord Curzon is said to have remarked that he “would not hesitate to indict as a traitor to his country any British minister who would consent to a foreign Power establishing a station on the Persian Gulf.” A. J. Dunn, British Interests in the Persian Gulf (London, 1907), p. 7. See also The Persian Gulf (No. 76 of the Foreign Office Handbooks); Handbook of Arabia, Volume I (Admiralty Intelligence Division, London, 1916); Lovat Fraser, India under Curzon and After (London, 1911).