MEMOIR OF THE SECOND LEBANESE DELEGATION

AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE

The Maronite patriarch, chairman of the Lebanese delegation at the Peace Conference, on behalf
of the government and the administrative council of Lebanon , in which he has mandate, and on
behalf of the people of the Lebanese towns and countryside who are asking their attachment to
Lebanon, without distinction of rites or confessions, populations of which he is duly mandated
and whose terms have been filed, of the tasks of Minister of Foreign Affairs of the French
Republic, at the General Secretariat of the Peace Conference, has the honor to request from the
high court of Their Excellencies the plenipotentiaries of the allied powers and associates, present
in the Supreme Council at the Peace Conference:

1. The recognition of the independence of Lebanon proclaimed by the government and the
Lebanese people, on May 20, 1919.

2. The restoration of Lebanon in its historical and natural boundaries by returning its
territories that were taken by Turkey.

3. Sanctions against the perpetrators or instigators of atrocities and executions committed in

Lebanon by Turkish- German authorities; repairs required by Turkey, necessary repairs to
the reconstitution and repopulation of Lebanon, decimated by systematic starvation
organized by the enemy.

4. The principle of the mandate being posed by the Versailles Peace Treaty of 28 June 1919,
and without having it remove Lebanon’s rights to sovereignty, the term of mandate of the
Government of the French Republic which, according to Article 22 of the Covenant of
the League of Nations, wants to grant Lebanon its help and advice.

The patriarch, president of the Lebanese delegation, has the honor to give to the demands of his
country the following explanations and justifications:

I- INDEPENDENCE OF LEBANON

The independence of Lebanon, which was proclaimed and conceived by almost the unanimity of
the Lebanese, is not simply the fact of independence resulting from the collapse of the Ottoman
power; it is also and above all complete independence to all the Arab state which might
constitute Syria. By an abusive conception of the basic knowledge of language, there was a
desire to confuse Lebanon and Syria, or rather merge Lebanon into Syria. This is a mistake.
Without going back to their Phoenician ancestors, the Lebanese people have always been a
distinct national entity with its neighboring group through its language, manners, affinities, and
Western culture. And so, after only 400 years of Arab occupation of Syria, the language of the
conqueror ended long ago through infiltrating in Lebanon, many localities of it have maintained
since then and to this day an accent and a particular idiom which, to them only, not to mention
the liturgical language of the country, would be enough to remove any value to the language as
an attribute to the nationality. Moreover, the example of South America, Belgium Wallonia and,
more recently, German Austria, brings back to its proper proportions the nationalistic value [sic]
of the language.
This independence of Lebanon other than any Syrian government, Arab or other, is justified by
other considerations whose importance will not be evaded at the Peace Conference.

1. HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Anyone who has studied the history of this country knows, with no doubt , and the documents
are plenty, that Lebanon preserved amidst the absolute subjection of the neighboring populations
of Arabic or Turkish conquerors, often complete independence , always an anatomy which the
organic regulations , developed by the major powers in 1860, restricting , only confirmed . This
independence which consecrated Lebanon’s exemption from taxation, from military service
which Turkey itself, during the war, did not step back neither in removing capitulations, nor
before the massacres, nor before the starvation of the Lebanese population, while kept at its
highest level of success modifying the principle and never sought to merge Lebanon with
neighboring villages.

The Allies and Associates for which Lebanon has suffered so much, will they do less for this
country than Turkey itself?

2. POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS

This independent situation in Lebanon was based on a political organization, then parliamentary
which, until 1908, when the Ottoman constitution was promulgated, remained throughout the
Empire's territory the only of its kind. While neighbor Syria suffered the fate of all Turkish
provinces, and seemed to ignore all that constitutes the political life of a country, Lebanon,
despite the tightening of its borders which were imposed by the machinations of Turkish
diplomats of perpetrators of the organic regulation in 1860, enjoyed a representative government
that until the eve of the war, also sought to improve. The political activity of Lebanon went
furthermore. It continued to demand from Turkey the payment of arrears of its debt and often
called in its financial and territorial claims, upon the Protecting Powers. The Administrative
Council of Lebanon, the numerous amount of Lebanese committees, in Lebanon and abroad,
became ardent Supporters of these claims. Is there anything at all comparable in the point of
view of political developments between Lebanon and Syria? And would it not be elementary
justice to respect the complete independence of Lebanon other than Syria, so that nothing unites
the two countries, neither their past nor their aspirations or their intellectual development, nor
their political development?

Can the Allied Powers and Associates, in this regard, do less today than did Europe in 1860,
solemnly consecrating by a diplomatic act the political and ethnic needs having at any time
separated Lebanon from the neighbor Syria?

3. CONSIDERATIONS OF CULTURE

These historical and political considerations, very briefly exposed, do not distinguish the
Essential differences between Lebanon and Syria.

While education and European culture are, except the large cities, not widespread in Syria where
nomadic element forms a significant part of the population, Lebanon, on the contrary is in the
East the main home of Western culture. Not to mention the schools of Beirut where many
comers from all parts of the East receive a solid education, there is not a small town or village in
Lebanon that does not have its college or school.
The degree of culture that has reached Lebanon and constitutes this country, in morphology if
precise and distinct, one of the most indisputable titles of independence.

4. CONSIDERATIONS OF FACT AND LAW

Finally, there are three critically important considerations - the Lebanese delegation has intimate
conviction - ensure to Lebanon full independence he claims and to which he has all the right:
1- Although from a legal and international point of view, Lebanon has not been at war with
central Empires, this state of war has existed in fact. Starting in August 1914, and despite the
difficulties of all kinds, Lebanese troops rushed from Lebanon and the countries of
emigration enlisted under the Allied flags; many people on the fronts of France, the
Dardanelles, Salonika and Palestine, paid their blood their allies sympathies and their love of
freedom. Others, also numerous, brought the Red Cross ally, as in Egypt, at the Dardanelles
expedition, even in France, their dedicated contest. Finally and most importantly,
Lebanon paid during the most formidable war, the bloodiest toll people ever had to pay for
defending a cause. The plenipotentiary Allies and Associates know that the starvation of
Lebanon ordered by Turkish-German authorities in retaliation for Lebanese sympathies for
France, led to the deaths of more than third of the country's population of which a great
number of localities are now completely deserted and in ruins.

It was not war, if as bloody as it was, which gave this percentage of mortalities.

2- On May 20, 1919, the Lebanese Parliament, elected by the people and obeying the
unanimous will of the residents, proclaimed the independence of Lebanon which, by its
agents, has the honor today to seek recognition. The Lebanese delegation strongly hopes that
the allied powers and associates who solemnly proclaimed the right of people to dispose
themselves and who have made this principle basic to the organization of the new humanity,
will want to dedicate this right which the national Lebanese will has used and for which was
shed a lot of Lebanese blood.

3- Without going back to the declaration of the Government of the French Republic on 27
December 1917, about the independence of Lebanon , the Lebanese delegation respectfully
reiterates that the principle of this independence was formally recognized in Article 22 of the
Covenant of the League of 1nations Treaty Peace of 28 June 1991.This independence
committed to recognize the Allied Powers and Associate has become a fact since the
ratification of the Versailles Treaty and does not need to have at all its legal and executoru
force of the conclusion of peace with Turkey. (...)

II- RESTORATION OF LEBANON

(...) By claiming its expansion, Lebanon does not claim, in reality, but its territorial restoration
which was according to history and the map of the French Major State from 1860 to 1862.

This Lebanese territorial restoration in its historical limits, marked limits – in the W. Over the
Mediterranean; in the N. In Nahr -el- Kebir (Eleutherus); in the N-E. By a line running thereof
and bypassing the plain of El- Bukeia and the eastern shore of Lake Homs; in the E. By the peaks
of Jebel el Charki (Anti - Lebanon) and those of Jebel el-Sheikh (Mount Hermon); to S.E. By a
line drawn from foothills of Mount Hermon and bypassing the basin and Lake Hula
(Samachonitis); in the S. By a line passing from the mountains to the east of the lake and
bypassing it to end in the west to Cape said Ras al- Naqoura , - responds to a geographical entity
that was formerly Phoenicia and which in Modern times until 1840, formed the Lebanese
territory.
It constitutes the repair of a series of injustice and spoliation whose victim was Lebanon because
of the Turks. It meets a vital need for a country, deprived of the northern plains (Akkar), of those
in the east (Baalbek, Bekaa), is a chain of mountains unproductive and unable to assure the lives
of their inhabitants. The experience of war has demonstrated in a peremptory and painful manner
for it. While neighboring villages were able to, throughout the war, produce significant quantities
of wheat which, on the spot, ensured life and relative ease of populations, Lebanon, blocked and
delivered systematically from its own resources without possibility to import wheat from
neighboring regions, starved to death about third of its population. This is decisive proof of the
need for the Lebanon, to recover, to survive, all the territories that once belonged to it. Out of
these territories, some provide itself with the grain required for its existence and others (Tyre,
Sidon, Beirut, Tripoli) constituting the natural outlets absolutely essential for its economic life.

Regardless of the reasons of justice and humanity that impose the restoration of Lebanon in its
mentioned limits, it is a consideration to which their Excellencies plenipotentiary allies and
associates strongly want, hopefully, to give all the importance it deserves. The vast majority of
populations occupying the territories claimed by Lebanon have pronounced the reattachment of
these territories to Lebanon and opted for Lebanese nationality which has always been the ideal
of these populations who are mostly of Lebanese origin.

This ideal, the principle of the right of people to dispose themselves, solemnly proclaimed by
The Allies allows them to achieve it today. The mandates presented before the Secretariat of the
Peace Conference express clearly and forcefully the wish of these populations.

Paris, October 25, 1919

Chairman of the Lebanese Delegation
ELIAS PIERRE HOYEK
Maronite Patriarch of Antioch and All the East.