WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

86 WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
divisions, the General Staff estimated that he would need
three, which could not be spared if the plans agreed for the
summer offensive on the Western Front were adhered to.
It was part of Sir William Robertson's strategy to exaggerate
the numbers of the Turkish forces opposed to us in Palestine
and Mesopotamia in order to deter us from ordering an
advance in that quarter. As a matter of fact, it was within
his knowledge at that hour that the forces at Murray's disposal
considerably exceeded those of the Turks, both in
number of men and equipment. This knowledge he withheld
from the Cabinet.
There were at this time, as I have already stated, about
thirty thousand Turkish troops in Southern Syria. Their
force which took part in the first Battle of Gaza, in March,
1917, numbered sixteen thousand rifles.
As regards the proposal for more troops from India
to reinforce the Egyptian Army in the autumn, the War
Cabinet decided that the Secretary of State for India and
the Secretary of State for War must make all necessary
arrangements for pressing forward the raising of the new
Indian battalions, so that they might be ready by August for
the operations mentioned in the Note of the Chief of the
Imperial General Staff.
The situation was somewhat complicated by the desire
of the French to put a finger in any Palestinian pie that
might be baking. They had an interest in Syria and North
Palestine. The agreement as to respective spheres of interest
in Asia Minor, prepared by Sir Mark Sykes under
Sir Edward Grey's instructions, and M. Georges Picot, under
orders from the Quai d'Orsay, and confirmed by the British
Government in May, 1916, had placed the region from Acre
to Aleppo in the French sphere. It was a fatuous arrangement
judged from any and every point of view. Under this Sykes-
Picot Agreement, Russia was to push her frontier south-