This on our part is at present largely a matter of words, and to succeed we must use persuasive terms and abstain from academic haggling over conditions – whether about Baghdad or elsewhere. The ten letters are summarised in the table below, from the letters published in full in 1939 as "Cmd. 5957":  Elie Kedourie said the October letter was not a treaty and that even if it was considered to be a treaty, Hussein failed to fulfil his promises from his 18 February 1916 letter. Arguing to the contrary, Victor Kattan describes the correspondence as a "secret treaty" and references  that includes the correspondence. He also argues the UK government considered it to be a treaty during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference negotiations with the French over the disposal of Ottoman territory. McMahon's promises were seen by the Arabs as a formal agreement between themselves and the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour represented the agreement as a treaty during the post-war deliberations of the Council of Four. On this understanding the Arabs, under the command of Hussein's son Faisal, established a military force that fought, with inspiration from T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), against the Ottoman Empire during the Arab Revolt. In an intelligence memo written in January 1916 Lawrence described Sherif Hussein's Arab Revolt as:  beneficial to us, because it marches with our immediate aims, the break up of the Islamic 'bloc' and the defeat and disruption of the Ottoman Empire, and because "the states [Sharif Hussein] would set up to succeed the Turks would be … harmless to ourselves" … The Arabs are even less stable than the Turks. "If properly handled they would remain in a state of political mosaic, a tissue of small jealous principalities incapable of cohesion" (emphasis in original). In June 1916 the Arab Revolt began when an Arab army moved against Ottoman forces. They participated in the capture of Aqabah and the severing of the Hejaz railway, a strategic link through the Arab peninsula that ran from Damascus to Medina. Meanwhile, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force under the command of General Allenby advanced into the Ottoman territories of Palestine and Syria. The British advance culminated in the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918 and the capitulation of the Ottoman Empire on 31 October 1918. The Arab revolt is seen by historians as the first organized movement of Arab nationalism. It brought together Arab groups with the common goal to fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire for the first time.