Table One. Wellington House Publications Distributed.

We have enough to show that they were extremely busy. We have enough to show that they were engaged in a massive undertaking. Unfortunately what we do not have are the documents that would show us the day to day workings of Wellington House. We do not know, for instance, how many American journalists they got drunk so that they would be receptive to the official tales that were told. (And getting journalists drunk was an essential part of the operation.) We do not know how many stories they planted, or who was paid what. We do not have those kinds of references. We do, however, have one specific group of Foreign Office records for propaganda that was sent from London, especially to America. These records show the numbers of publications distributed. Unfortunately we do not know exactly what those publications were. We only know that they were publications of Wellington House. As you can see from the numbers, starting out on a very small rate in 1914, the number of publications they brought out kept on going up until there were quite a sizeable number of them distributed. By June of 1915 they had distributed two and a half million publications. Not even a year later, seven million publications. Unfortunately we do not have any record that goes beyond that. We are lucky to have this at all. It can be assumed that the numbers continued to grow.

What that means in essence is that Wellington House was a massive undertaking. We do have two good sources for the kind of work that was done. The main source is a book in the Imperial War Museum that is simply identified as "Wellington House Library." Now this would ordinarily mean the books on their shelves, but actually these are the books that Wellington House subvened or distributed--the books that they had written for them, and the books that were written by someone else which they bought and distributed because they liked them. The only reason we know that is because when they destroyed everything else Wellington House eYempted copies of bound books, which they obviously saw no reason to destroy. And so the books that W'ellington House possessed were sent off to the Foreign Office Library, eventually to the publicly-available Foreign Office library, where anyone can now read them. Studying in that library, I saw a strange notation written by hand in one of the bound book catalogues. Out of curiosity I requested the book, which I believe had not been seen since 1918. They blew the dust off and brought it over to me. It was the Wellington House record of the distribution of propaganda books. It was all hand written in ledger form, but someone had very carefully bound it. That meant it had been taken to be an ordinary bound book, and thus was not destroyed. So we have the list and know the books that were distributed by Wellington House.

Table Two. Wellington House Publications on Turhs.

E.F. Benson, Crescent and lron Cross
E.F. Benson, Deutschland iiber Allah
British Pafestine Committee, Palestine
anon., The "Clean-Fighting Turk, " a Spurious Claim
Israel Cohen, The Turkish Persecution of the Jews
anon., The Conunercial Future ofBaghdad
Edward Cook, Britain and Turkey
Delegates of the Red Cross, Turkish Prisoners in Egypt
Leon Dominion, The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe
' Fa'iz El-Ghusein, "Bedouin Notable of Damascus" [sic], Alarlyred Armenia
anon., General Sir Edmund Allenby's Dispatch . . . orr the Operations in Egypt and Palestine
S. Georgevitch, Serbia and Kossovo
anon., Germany, Turkey, and Armenia: Selections of Documentary Evidence
anon., Great Britain, Palestine, and the Jews: Jewry's Celebratior7 oflts National Charter
anon., Great Britain, Palestine, and the Jews: A Survey of Christian Opinion
A.P. Hacobian, Armenia and the War
E.W.G. Masterman, The Deliverance of Jerusalem
Basil Mathews, The Freedorn ofJerusalem
Esther Mugerditchian, From Turkish Toils
Martin Niepage, The Horrors of Aleppo
anon., The Ottoman Domination
Canon Parfit, Mesopotamia: the Key to the Future
Pavle Popovic, Serbian Macedonia
anon., Report on the Pan-Turanian Movement
R.W. Seton-Watson, Serbia, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
George Adam Smith, Syria and the Holy Land
Harry Stuermer, Two War Years in Constantinople
anon., Subject Nationalities ofthe German Alliance
anon., Syria During March 1916: Her Miseries aud Disasters
S. Tolkowsky, Jewish Colonisation in Palestine
Arnold J. Toynbee, Arrnenian Atrocities: the murder of a Nation
Arnold J. Toynbee, ed., The Treatment ofArmenians in the Ottontan Empire, 1915 -1916
Arnold J. Toynbee, Turkey' A Past and a Future
Arnold J. Toynbee, The Murderous Tyranrry of Turks
Josiah Wedgwood, M.P., With Machine- Guns in Gallipoli
Chaim Weizmann, R. Gottheil, Whal is Zionism?
J.S. W'illmore, The Welfare of Egypt

The list of pubtications is long, but for the Middle East there are a more limited number of books. The table gives only those volumes, but it offers an idea of the breadth and the scope of the Wellington House interests. They included Palestine, Jews and Zionism, and especially the Turks, quite a bit about Ihe Turks. I have left off a number of other books that had multiple subjects, such as The Germans and the Turks, what the Germans were doing in the Middle East, or Toynbee's work on the "subject nationalities of the German empire." Even with those excluded, there is a large number of books, so I have selected a few as examples.

Table Three. Selected Wellington House Publications.

E. W.G. Masterman
The Deliverance of Jerusalem

Fa'iz EI-Ghusein
Bedouin Notable of Damascus" [sic]
Martyred Armenia

Mark Sykes
The "Clean-Fighting Turk, " a Spurious Claim

Arnold J. Toynbee
Armenian Atrocities: the Murder of a Nation

Amold J. Toynbee
The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks

Amold J. Toynbee, ed.
The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916

The first one is by a man named Masterman. I do not really know if this Masterman is related to the other. Perhaps someone in the audience does know. Tlus book is an example of relatively harmless propaganda. It does little injury to anyone, because it really is a celebration of the fact that Jemsalem was now once again in the hands of the Christians, thanhs to the British, who succeeded where che Crusaders tiuled. It is primarily a positive statement about the British. Whether you feel that the British conquest of Jemsalem was a good or a bad thing depends on which side you are on, I expect. But this book does not do much damage to the Turks or anyone else. There are a number of publications like this. Their primary purpose was to extol the British.

One of my favorites is the next one. Notice this rather strange looking name, Fa'iz EI-Ghusein. The book savs this EI-Ghusein was "a Bedouin notable of Damascus." Of course, the term Bedouin notable of Damascus is perhaps by itself an indication that something is wrong. But there is quite a bit more. Let me give you hts description from the book. It says he was the son of one of the heads, whatever that means, ofa Bedouin tribe that lived in the Hawran, an interesting statement in itself He had been educated in Istanbul and was employed as a bureaLicrat in the Ottoman government. He was put on the staff of the Vali of Damascus, then he was made Kaymakam, or the district leader, of Mamuretiilviz. He then became Member for Hawran of "the Assembly in Damascus." Now I can see the people who are familiar the Ottoman Government saying, "W'ait a minute, there are some problems here." Wait. He states he was arrested by Cemal Paşa, the govemor of Syria. He was imprisoned in Diyarbakir, a city in the southeastem part of Turkey, and then he was released. In Diyarbakir, according to his own story, he heard much of the massacres of Armenians. He heard what was going on and he thought he had to do something to record it. So he escaped to Basra and then to India, where he wrote his report. And it made its way to the British Foreign Office. The book does not ever say the manuscript made its way to the British Poreign Office, it just says it made its way to England, where it was published. There is no indication of its delivery to Wellington House, London.

There are a number of internal inconsistencies in this story, errors that should not have been made by a supposed Ottoman official, such as placing cities in the wrong provinces. But forgetting about those, if you read the book you will notice that he wrote about things that he never could have known, secret conversations. (In fact there was at the time almost a closet industry in making up quotes from Talat Paşa He seems to have sat in prison hearing what Talat Paşa was telling Enver Paşa in the cabinet in Istanbul, writing it down for later publication. Where he fottnd this information I am not sure. He also knew about secret activities of Armenian revolutionary leaders, news of which was also reaching him in his prison in the Diyarbakır. Obviously this is more than unlikely.

He gave great detail. He talked about what was done to Armenians, who stole their goods, which Ottoman official was here, which man was there. Some of this is hard to evaluate. If he says, "Ahmet Bey took the Armenians' goods," you might ask yourself which of the hundreds of Ahmet Beys he was discussing, and whether the author knew himself So you are not sure, but it does look a little strange. Outright lies are easier to spot: He states that after the Balkan wars Iarge numbers of Turks were settled in Zeytun. Of course, none were settled there as a matter of fact, but who among the readers would have known? The stories he tells about what the Turks did to the Armenians are, even tmder the category of war stories, absolutely horrible. They include Turkish soldiers copulating with Armenian corpses.

From reading the book alone one can see that it has all been made up, bur the most telling thing about Fti iz al-Ghusein comes hom an investigation of Ottoman records: There was no such person. If he indeed was employed in the govenmlent in zither Syria or Manuuetiilaziz he would have appeared in the list of government officials. Not only is thzre no Fa'iz al-Ghusein, there is no Fa'iz at all. The man simply did not exist. He was never there. Because Wellington house bumed their records, we do not know who actually did write the book, but we can trust that it wasn't Fa'iz.