"TURKS AND ADEN."ENGAGEMENT AT LAHEJ."The India Office issued the followingcommuniquélast night through the Press Bureau:"'In consequence of rumours that a Turkish force from the Yamen had crossed thefrontier of the Aden Hinterland and was advancing towards Lahej, the General Officer Commanding at Aden recently dispatched the Aden Camel Troop to reconnoitre."'They reported the presence of a Turkish force with field-guns and a large number of Arabs and fell back on Lahej, where they were reinforced by the advance guard of the Aden Movable Column consisting of 250 rifles and two 10-pounder guns."'Our force at Lahej was attacked by the enemy on July 4 by a force of several thousand Turks with twenty guns and large numbers of Arabs, and maintained its position in face of the enemy artillery's fire until night, when part of Lahej was in flames. During the night some hand-to-hand fighting took place, and the enemy also commenced to outflank us."'Meanwhile the remainder of the Aden Movable Column was marching towards Lahej, but was delayed by water difficulties and heavy going. It was therefore decided that the small force at Lahej should fall back."'The retirement was carried out successfully in the early morning of July 5, andthe detachment joined the rest of the column at Bir Nasir. Our troops, however, were suffering considerably from the great heat and the shortage of water, and their difficulties were increased by the desertion of Arab transport followers. It was therefore decided to fall back to Aden, and this was done without the enemy attempting to follow up."'Our losses included three British officers wounded: names will be communicated later. We took one Turkish officer (a major) and thirteen men prisoners.'"
"TURKS AND ADEN.
"ENGAGEMENT AT LAHEJ.
"The India Office issued the followingcommuniquélast night through the Press Bureau:
"'In consequence of rumours that a Turkish force from the Yamen had crossed thefrontier of the Aden Hinterland and was advancing towards Lahej, the General Officer Commanding at Aden recently dispatched the Aden Camel Troop to reconnoitre."'They reported the presence of a Turkish force with field-guns and a large number of Arabs and fell back on Lahej, where they were reinforced by the advance guard of the Aden Movable Column consisting of 250 rifles and two 10-pounder guns."'Our force at Lahej was attacked by the enemy on July 4 by a force of several thousand Turks with twenty guns and large numbers of Arabs, and maintained its position in face of the enemy artillery's fire until night, when part of Lahej was in flames. During the night some hand-to-hand fighting took place, and the enemy also commenced to outflank us."'Meanwhile the remainder of the Aden Movable Column was marching towards Lahej, but was delayed by water difficulties and heavy going. It was therefore decided that the small force at Lahej should fall back."'The retirement was carried out successfully in the early morning of July 5, andthe detachment joined the rest of the column at Bir Nasir. Our troops, however, were suffering considerably from the great heat and the shortage of water, and their difficulties were increased by the desertion of Arab transport followers. It was therefore decided to fall back to Aden, and this was done without the enemy attempting to follow up."'Our losses included three British officers wounded: names will be communicated later. We took one Turkish officer (a major) and thirteen men prisoners.'"
"'In consequence of rumours that a Turkish force from the Yamen had crossed thefrontier of the Aden Hinterland and was advancing towards Lahej, the General Officer Commanding at Aden recently dispatched the Aden Camel Troop to reconnoitre.
"'They reported the presence of a Turkish force with field-guns and a large number of Arabs and fell back on Lahej, where they were reinforced by the advance guard of the Aden Movable Column consisting of 250 rifles and two 10-pounder guns.
"'Our force at Lahej was attacked by the enemy on July 4 by a force of several thousand Turks with twenty guns and large numbers of Arabs, and maintained its position in face of the enemy artillery's fire until night, when part of Lahej was in flames. During the night some hand-to-hand fighting took place, and the enemy also commenced to outflank us.
"'Meanwhile the remainder of the Aden Movable Column was marching towards Lahej, but was delayed by water difficulties and heavy going. It was therefore decided that the small force at Lahej should fall back.
"'The retirement was carried out successfully in the early morning of July 5, andthe detachment joined the rest of the column at Bir Nasir. Our troops, however, were suffering considerably from the great heat and the shortage of water, and their difficulties were increased by the desertion of Arab transport followers. It was therefore decided to fall back to Aden, and this was done without the enemy attempting to follow up.
"'Our losses included three British officers wounded: names will be communicated later. We took one Turkish officer (a major) and thirteen men prisoners.'"
Aden seems to have made no attempt to stem the tide of Turkish influence while she could. The best fighting tribe in the protectorate stretches along the coast and far inland north-east of Aden, and its capital is only a few hours' steam from that harbour. The Turks made every effort to win over this important tribal unit, which might have been a grave menace on their left flank. Its sultan made frequent representations to Aden for even a gunboat to show itself off his port, but to no purpose. After the Turks had succeeded in alienating those of his tribe they could get at, or who could get at them, a tardy political visit was paid by sea from Aden. Theindignant old sultan came aboard and spoke his mind. "You throw your friends on the midden," he said bitterly, and departed to establish amodus vivendion his own account with the Turks.
The situation at Aden has had a marked effect in bolstering up the Turkish campaign of spurious pan-Islamism, and those of us who have been dealing with chiefs in other parts of Arabia have met it at every turn. It is idle to blame individuals—the whole system is at fault. The policy of non-interference which the Liberal Government introduced, after the Boundary Commission had finished its task and withdrawn, has been over-strained by the Aden authorities to such an extent that they would neither keep in direct personal touch themselves nor let anyone else do so.
As an explorer and naturalist whose chief work has lain for years in that country, I have made every effort to continue my researches there until my persistency has incurred official persecution. The serious aspect of this attitude is that at a time when accurate and up-to-date knowledge of the hinterland would have been invaluable it was not available. The pernicious policy of selecting any one chief (unchecked by a European) to keep her posted as to affairs in her own protectorate has been followed blindly byAden to disaster. The excuse in official circles there is that the Haushabi sultan had been suborned by the Turks without their knowledge and he had prevented any information from getting through Lahej to them. Can there be any more damning indictment of such a system?
The Aden incident is similar to the Mesopotamian medical muddle, both being due to sporadic dry-rot in high places which the test of war revealed. The loyalty of its princes and the devotion of its army prove that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with British rule in India to command such sentiments, but some of those mandarins who have had wide control of human affairs and destinies have ignored a situation until it was forcibly thrust upon them and have fumbled with it disastrously. It is difficult to bring such people to book, for they shuffle responsibility from one to the other or take refuge in the truly oriental pose of heaven-born officialdom. Such types should be obsolete even in India by now, but this war has proved that they are not, and when their inanities fritter away gallant lives and trail British prestige in the dust they need rebuke. I hope some day, if I live, to deal faithfully with Aden's hinterland policy.
In the autumn of 1915 I was fit enough to join the Red Sea maritime patrol as political officerwith the naval rank of lieutenant. Our duties were to harry the Turk without hurting the Arab, to blockade the Arabian coast against the Turk while allowing dhow-traffic with foodstuffs consigned to Arab merchants and steamer-cargoes of food for the alleged use of pilgrims to go through. Incidentally we had to keep the eastern highway free of mines and transportable submarines, prevent the passage of spies between Arabia and Egypt, and fetch and carry as the shore-folk required.
Taking it all round, it was not an easy job, but I think the blockade presented the most complex features. You knew where you were with spies—anyone with the necessary experience could spot a doubtful customer as soon as the dhow that carried him came alongside; and irregular but frequent visits at the various ports soon put a stop to the mine-industry and prevented any materialisation of the submarine menace except in reports from Aden which caused me a good many additional trips in an armed steam-cutter to "go, look, see."
But the problems presented by the blockade required some solving with very little time for the operation, and if your solution was not approved by the authorities on the beach they lost no time in letting you know it—usuallyby wireless, which was picked up by most ships in the patrol by the time it reached you.
The basic idea was that if in doubt it was better to let stuff through to the Turks than pinch Hejazi bellies and get ourselves disliked. In theory this was perfectly sound, for we wanted the Hejaz to like us well enough to fight on our side, and only the Huns think you can get people to love you by afflicting them. In practice, however, we soon found that the Hejazi merchants were selling direct to the Turks and letting their fellow-countrymen have what was left at the highest possible price. On top of it all India started a howl that her pilgrims in the Hejaz were starving, and we had to defer to this outcry. I have never had to legislate for highly-civilised Moslems with a taste for agitation, but I have always sympathised with those who have, and could quite appreciate India's position in the matter. Still, after comparing her relief cargoes with the number of her pilgrims in the country and finding that each had enough to feed him for the rest of his natural life, I ventured to ask that this wholesale charity might cease, more especially as these big steamer-cargoes were dealt with much as the dhow-borne cereals and chiefly benefited the Turks and local profiteers.
As regards dhows, our rule was to allow coastaltraffic from Jeddah and empties returning there, as it tended to distribute food among the Arabs and get it away from the Turks. Dhows bringing cargo from the African coast or from Aden were permitted, provided they did not carry contraband of war; this permitted native cereals, such as millet, but barred wheat and particularly barred barley, which the local Arab does not eat for choice, but which the Turks wanted very badly for their cavalry.
In this connection a typical incident may be mentioned as illustrating the sort of thing we were up against.
The ship I was serving in at the time lay off Jeddah and had three boats down picketing the dhow-channels leading in to that reef-girt harbour, for which dhows were making like homing bees. In such cases my post was usually on the bridge, while the ship's interpreter and Arab-speaking Seedee-boys went away in the boats. The dhows were reached and their papers examined, then allowed to proceed if all was in order. Otherwise the officer examining signalled the facts and awaited instructions. Usually it was some technical point which I could waive, but on this occasion one of the cutters made a signal to the effect that barley in bulk had been found in one dhow. I was puzzled, because all thedhows were from Suakin or further south, quite outside the barley-belt, except on very high ground which rarely exports cereals. However, the signal was repeated, and I had to have the dhow alongside. Meanwhile the "owner" was anxious to get steerage-way, for we were not at anchor and in very ticklish soundings; so I slid off the bridge and had a sample of the grain handed up to me: it was a species of millet, looking very like pearl-barley as "milled" for culinary purposes. I shouted to thereisto go where he liked as long as he kept clear of our propellers, which thereupon gave a ponderous flap or two as if to emphasise my remarks, and he bore away from us rejoicing. In the ward-room later on I rallied that cutter's officer on his error. "Well, it was just like the barley one sees in soup," was his defence.
In the southern part of the Red Sea, which was handled politically from Aden, the problems of blockade were even more complex, for there even arms and ammunition were allowed between certain ports to meet the convenience of the Idrisi chief, who was theoretically at war with the Turks, but rather diffident about putting his principles into practice, especially after the Turkish success outside Aden.
This meant that the sorely-tried officers responsiblefor the conduct of the blockade in those waters had frequently to decide on a cargo of illicit-looking rifles and cartridges, not of Government make, but purchased from private firms and guaranteed by a filthy scrap of paper inscribed with crabbed Arabic which carried no conviction. All they had to help them was the half-educated ship's interpreter, with no knowledge of the political situation, for Aden had not an officer available for this work. To enhance the difficulties of the position, some of these coastal chiefs were importing contraband of war to sell to the Turks for private gain. Up north there were no difficulties with illicit arms; we allowed a reasonable number per dhow, provided that they were the private property of the crew, and when rifles were dished out to our Arab friends the Navy delivered the goods, which were all of Government mark and pattern.
The political aspect of the blockade required delicate handling anywhere along the Arabian littoral of the Red Sea, but especially so on the Hejazi coast. We were at war with the Turks but not with the Arabs, whom it was our business to approach as friends if they would let us. The Turks, however, used Arab levies freely against us whose truculence was much increased on finding they could make hostile demonstrationswith impunity, as the patrol only fired on the Turkish uniform, since few people can distinguish between a Turco-Arab gendarme and an armed tribesman at long range unless they know both breeds intimately.
The general standard of honour and good faith at most places along the Arabian littoral is not high, even from an Oriental point of view, and is nowhere lower than on the Hejazi coast. Frequently an unattached tribesman would take a shot at a reconnoitring cutter on general principles and then rush off to the nearest Turkish post with the information and a demand for bakshish, and there were several attempts (one successful) to lure a landing party on to a well-manned but carefully hidden position. As for the actual levies, they would solemnly man prepared positions within easy range of even a 3-pounder when we visited their tinpot ports, relying on us not to fire, and telling their compatriots what they would do if we did.
Even when examining dhows one had to be on one's guard, and it was best not to board them to leeward and so run the risk of having their big, bellying mainsail let go on top of you and getting scuppered while entangled in its folds. African dhows could generally be trusted not to resist search, for when areishas got his owners oragents at a civilised port like Suakin he likes to keep respectable even if heissmuggling. Our chief difficulty with such craft, before we tightened the blockade, was due to the nonchalant manner in which they put to sea and behaved when at sea. Their skippers had the sketchiest idea of what constituted proper clearance papers and why such papers must agree with their present voyage. Their confidence too in our integrity, though touching, was often embarrassing. One of our rules was that considerable sums in gold must be given up against a signed voucher realisable at Port Sudan. I was never very brisk at counting large sums of money, and one day when hove to off Jeddah there were five dhows rubbing their noses alongside, with about £800 in gold between them and very little time to deal with them, as we were in shoal water with no way on the ship. My operations were not facilitated by the biggest Crœsus of the lot producing some £400 in five different currencies from various parts of his apparel and stating that he had no idea how much there was but would abide by my decision. I believe he expected me to give him a receipt in round hundreds and take the "oddment," as we call it in Warwickshire, for myself. As it was, I was down half a sovereign or so over the transaction, having given him the benefit of the doubtover two measly little gold coins of unascertainable value.
Some of them were just as happy-go-lucky in their seamanship, though skilful enough in handling their outlandish craft. Early one morning, about fifty miles out of Jeddah, I boarded a becalmed dhow and found them with the dregs of one empty water-skin between a dozen men. Not content with putting to sea with a singlemussickof water, they had hove to and slept all night, and so dropped the night breeze, which would have carried them to Jeddah before it died down. We gave them water and their position, but I told thereisthat he was putting more strain on the mercy of Allah than he was, individually, entitled to.
But the craft that plied along the Hejazi coast were sinister customers and wanted watching. Some time before I joined the patrol one of our ships was lying a long way out off Um-Lejj, as the water is shallow, and her duty-boat was working close in-shore examining coastal craft. One of these had some irregularity about her and was sent out to the ship with a marine and a bluejacket in charge while the cutter continued her task. That dhow stood out to sea as if making for the ship and then proceeded along the coast. The cutter, still busied with other dhows, presumedthat the first craft had reported alongside the ship and been allowed to proceed; the ship naturally regarded her as a craft that had been examined and permitted to continue her journey. And that is all we ever knew for certain of her or the fate of our two men. Their previous record puts desertion out of the question; besides, no sane men would desert to a barren, inhospitable coast among semi-hostile fanatics whose language was unknown to them. On the other hand, the men were, of course, fully armed, and there were but five of the dhow's crew all told, of whom two were not able-bodied. There must have been the blackest treachery—probably the unfortunate men goodnaturedly helped with the running gear and were knocked on the head while so engaged. Their bodies would, no doubt, have been put over the side when the dhow was out of sight, and their rifles sold inland at a fancy price.
When I first joined the patrol we were not allowed to bombard or land at any point between the mouth of the Gulf of Akaba and the Hejaz southern border. The Turkish fort up at Akaba had been knocked about a good deal by various ships of the patrol, and the whole place was uninhabited; but we visited it frequently, as drifting mines were put in up there, havingbeen taken off the rail at Maan and brought down to the head of the gulf, in section, by camel. I always suspected the existence of a Turkish observation-post, but no signs of occupation had been seen for a long time till H.M.S. "Fox" went up one dark night without a light showing. All dead-lights were shipped, and dark blue electric bulbs replaced the usual ones where a light of some sort was essential and visible from out-board. The padre, who had opened the "vicarage" dead-light about an inch to get a breath of air, was promptly spotted by an indignant Number One who said that it made the ship look like a floating gin palace. This must have been a pardonable hyperbole, for the signal-fires ashore which used to herald our approach from afar were not lit.
We were off Akaba at peep of day, and two armed cutters raced each other to the beach. I went with the one that made for the stone jetty in the middle front of the town; we had to jump out into four feet of water, as the port has deteriorated a good deal since Solomon used it and called it Eziongeber. A careful search revealed no one in the town, but water had been drawn recently from the well inside the fort, and a mud hut out in the desert behind the town seemed a likely covert to draw.
The cutter's officer accompanied me, leaving the crew ensconced in the cemetery, which was a wise move, for, when we were close to the hut, heavy fire was opened on us from a hidden trench some three hundred yards away. We both dropped and rolled into a shallow depression caused by rain-wash, where we lay as flat as we could while the flat-nosed soft lead bullets kicked sand and shingle down the backs of our necks. As we had only revolvers—expecting resistance, if any, to be made among the houses—we could not reply, but the ship handed out a few rounds of percussion shrapnel which shook the Turks up enough for us to withdraw. Fortunately for us, they were using black powder, and outside four hundred yards one has time to avoid the bullet by dropping instantly at the smoke. Otherwise they should have bagged us in spite of the support of our covering party in the cemetery, for the ground was quite open and so dusty that they could see the break of their heavy picket-bullets to a nicety.
We landed in force an hour later and turned them out of it. On returning, the men who searched the hut (which the ship's guns had knocked endways) brought me a budget of correspondence. It was chiefly addressed to theofficer in charge and told me that the detachment was Syrian, which I had already suspected from their using the early pattern Mauser. It gave other useful information, and the men did well to bring it along; but I would have given much to have found some channel through which I could return it. Most of it was private; there were several congratulatory cards crudely illuminated in colours by hand for the feast of Muled-en-Nebi (the birthday of the Prophet), which corresponds with our Christmas. There was also a letter from the officer's wife enclosing a half-sheet of paper on which a baby hand had imprinted a smeared outline in ink. It bore the inscription "From your son Ahmed—his hand and greeting."
Early in the spring of 1916 we managed to persuade the political folk at Cairo to extend our sphere of action. I had particularly marked down Um-Lejj as containing a well-manned Turkish fort which could be knocked about without damaging other buildings in the town if we were careful. It was also a rallying-point for Turkish influence, and it was not conducive to our prestige or politically desirable that it should flourish unmolested.
I was in the "Fox" again for that occasion, she being the senior ship of the patrol and theonly one that could land an adequate force if required.
The evening before we anchored far out on the fishing-grounds of Hasani Island, and I managed to pick up a fisherman who knew where the Turkish hidden position was, outside the town, and, having been held a prisoner once in their Customs building, could point that out too. Next morning we stood slowly in for Um-Lejj with the steam-cutter groping ahead for the channel, which is about as tortuous a piece of navigation as you can get off this coast, and that is saying a good deal.
When we cleared for action I went to my usual post on the bridge with the S.N.O. and took my fisherman-friend with me. The civil population was streaming out of the town across the open plain in all directions like ants from an over-turned ant-hill, probably realising that we meant business this time. This was all to the good, as otherwise I should have had to go close in with the steam-cutter, a white flag and a megaphone to warn Arab civilians; thus giving the Turks time to clear, besides the chance of a sitting-shot at us if they thought my address to the townsfolk a violation of the rules of war, which, technically, it might be.
However, the fort was a fixture and our businesswas first of all with it. Standing close in, the ship turned southwards and moved slowly abreast of the town. The port battery of four-point-sevens loaded with H.E. and the two six-inchers fore and aft swung out-board and followed suit. The occasion called for fine shooting, as a minaret rose just to the right of the fort, and the houses were so massed about it that there was only one clear shot—up the street leading from the beach past the main gate.
"At the southern gate of the fort, each gun to fire as it comes to bear up the street from the water-side."
As I turned my glasses on the big portico of the southern gate, out stepped a Turkish officer who regarded us intently; the next instant the bridge shook to the crashing concussion of our forward six-inch, and through a drifting haze of gas-fume I saw him blotted out by the orange flash of lyddite and an up-flung pall of dust anddébris.
There was a pause, cut short by the clap of the bursting shell reverberating like thunder against the foot-hills beyond the town.
A little naked boy ran in an attitude of terrified dismay up the water-street just as the first four-point-seven fired. I saw him through my glasses duck his head between hisarms, then dive panic-stricken through a doorway as the fort was smitten again in dust and thunder. "Was the poor little beggar hit?"
"No, sir, only scared."
While the target was still veiled in its dust the second four-point-seven spoke, and the minaret disappeared from view behind a dun-coloured shroud.
"Cease fire" sounded at once. "Who fired that gun? Take him off," came in tones of stern rebuke from the bridge. Luckily the minaret showed intact as the dust drifted clear and firing continued.
As the fort crumbled under our guns, Turkish soldiers began to break cover at various points of the town and fled across the plain. The cutter, in-shore, opened with Maxim-fire, and so accurately that we could see the sombre-clad figures lying here and there or seeking frantically for cover, while an Arab in their vicinity, leading a leisurely camel, continued his stroll inland unperturbed. We drove the main body out of their hidden position and into the hills with well-timed shrapnel, and finished up by demolishing the Customs (where a lot of ammunition blew up), to the temporary satisfaction of my fisherman, who was curled up in a corner of the bridge, nearly stunned by the shock of modern ordnancein spite of the cotton-wool I had made him put in his ears. Before we picked up our cutter the civil population was already streaming back.
The incident is worth noting in view of remarks made by a popular fiction-monger in one of his latest works, that indiscriminate aerial raids on civil centres in England are on the same level of humanity as naval bombardments.
I visited the fishing-banks off Hasani Island a week or so after to get the latest news of Um-Lejj, which came from Turkish sources. There was one civilian casualty—a woman who was in the Turkish concealed position. No casualties among Turkish officers, but one of them left in charge of the fort had disappeared. There were bits of the fort left, but the Commandant had moved his headquarters to the school-house within the precincts of the mosque—sagacious soul. The object-lesson which we gave the Arabs at Um-Lejj put a check to their irresponsible sniping of boats and landing-parties, though one could always expect a little trouble with an Arab dhow running contraband for the Turks. In these cases their guilty consciences usually gave them away. Returning to the coast toward Jeddah unexpectedly, having played the well-worn ruse of "the cat's away," we sighted a small dhow close in-shore, and should have lefther alone as she was in shoal-water, but, on standing in to get a nearer view of her, she headed promptly for the beach and ran aground, disgorging more men than such a craft should carry.
I went away in the duty cutter to investigate, and we had barely realised that she was heavily loaded with kerosene in tins (a heinous contraband) when the fact was emphasised by a sputtering rifle-fire from the scrub along the beach. The ship very soon put a stop to that demonstration with a round or two of shrapnel, while we busied ourselves with the dhow. There was no hope of salving her, as she had almost ripped the keel off her when she took the ground and sat on the bottom like a dilapidated basket. We broached enough tins to start a conflagration, lit a fuse made of a strip of old turban soaked in kerosene, and backed hard from her vicinity, for the kerosene was low-flash common stuff as marked on the cases, and to play at snapdragon in half an acre of blazing oil is an uninviting pastime. However, she just flared without exploding, and we continued our cruise up the coast just in time to overhaul at racing speed a perfect regatta of dhows heeling over to every stitch of canvas in their efforts to make Jeddah before we could get at them, for they had seen the smoke of that burning oil-dhow and realised that thecat was about. Good money is paid at Cowes to see no more spirited sailing—we had to put a shot across the bows of the leading dhow before they would abandon the race.
There was always trouble off Jeddah—the approaches to that reef-girt harbour lend themselves to blockade-running dhows with sound local knowledge on board. At night, especially, they had an advantage and would play "Puss-in-the-Corner" until the cutter lost patience, and a flickering pin-point of light stabbed the velvet black of the middle watch, asking permission to fire; one rifle-shot fired high would stop the game, and I made them come alongside and take a wigging for annoying the cutter and turning me out; there was seldom anything wrong about the dhow—it was sheer cussedness.
All through the early part of 1916 we were keeping in touch with the Sharif of Mecca by means of envoys, whom we landed where they listed, away from the Turks, picking them up at times and places indicated by them. Sharif Husein had long chafed under Turkish suzerainty, in spite of his subsidy and the deference which policy compelled them to accord him. He knew that the Hejaz could never realise its legitimate aspirations under Ottoman rule, which was a blight on all Arab progress and prosperity, as theYoung Turkish party was hardly Moslem at heart, being more national (that is Tartar)—certainly not pro-Arab.
Husein's difficulty was to get his own people to rise together and throw off the Turkish yoke, for the Hejazi tribesman, especially between the coast and Mecca, has long been more of a brigand than a warrior, as any pilgrim will tell you. Such folk are apt to jib at hammer-and-tongs fighting, and of course we could not land troops to assist them, as it would have violated the sacred soil that cradled Islam and merely stiffened the bogusjihadwhich the Turks had proclaimed against us, besides compromising the Sharif with his own tribesmen.
The Hejazis' ingenuous idea was to go on taking money from us, the Turks and the Sharif, while—thanks to our lenient blockade—a regular dhow-traffic fed them. We did not approve of this Utopian policy, and the fall of Kut brought matters to a climax. After certain communications had passed between the representatives of His Majesty's Government and the Sharif, it was decided to tighten the blockade and so induce the gentle Hejazi to declare himself. The day was fixed, May, 15, on and after which date no traffic whatever was to be permitted with the Arabian coast other than that specially sanctionedby Government. In palaver thereon I managed to get local fishing-craft exempted. The fisher-folk are not combatants either on empty stomachs or full ones, and could be relied on to consume their own fish in that climate unless very close to a market, where the pinch would be great enough to make them exchange it for foodstuffs, thus helping the situation we wished to bring about. I knew that allbona fidefishing-craft were easily recognisable by their rig and comparatively small size, and hoped that good will would combine with freedom of movement to make these folk useful agents for Intelligence.
I heard with some relief that the movements of the patrol would place H.M.S. "Hardinge" (a roomy ship of the Indian Marine) on station duty off Jeddah, which was to be my post while the enhanced blockade was in force—there are few more trying seasons than early summer in those waters. I joined her from Suez the day after the blockade was closed, and found her keeping guard over a perfect fleet of dhows. There were about three dozen craft with over three hundred people on board, for many native passengers were trying to make Jeddah before we shut down. The feckless mariners in charge had made the usual oriental calculation that a day more or less did not matter, but found to theirhorror that the Navy was more precise on these points—and there they were.
The first thing to ensure was that the crew, and especially the passengers, among whom were a good many women and children, did not suffer from privation. This had already been ably seen to by the ship's officers—I merely went round the fleet to sift any genuine complaints from the discontent natural to the situation in which their own slackness had placed them. I insisted on hearing only one complaint at a time, otherwise it would have been pandemonium afloat, for they were anchored close enough together to converse with each other; vociferous excuses for their unpunctuality were brushed aside, legitimate requests for more water or food or condensed milk for the children or more adequate shelter for the women from the sun were attended to at once, and our floating village quieted down.
The craft were all much the same type of small dhow orsanbukwhich frequents the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, having little in common with the big-bellied buggalows which ply with rice and dates between the Persian Gulf and Indian ports but do not come into the Red Sea. These were much smaller and saucier-looking craft, some fifty to eighty feet long, with a turn of speed and raking masts. All werelugger-rigged with lateen sails, and only the poop and bows were decked, the bulwarks being heightened with strips of matting to prevent seas from breaking in-board. Sanitary arrangements were provided for by a box-like cubby-hole over-hanging the boat's side; inexperienced officers often take it for a vantage-point to heave the lead from, and only find out too late after attempting to board there, that things are not always what they seem.
These little vessels are practically the corsair type of Saracenic sailing-galley which used to infest the Barbary coast in days gone by. They do everything different from our occidental methods. For example, they reef and furl their tall lateens from the peak, and have to send a man up the long tapering gaff to do it. Their masts rake forward and not aft, which enables them to swing gaff, sail, and sheet round in front of the mast when they come about, instead of keeping the sheet aft and dipping the butt of the gaff with the sail to the other side of the mast, which would be an impossibility for that rig, as the butt of their enormous mainyard or gaff is bowsed permanently down in the bows, while the soaring peak may be nearly a hundred feet above the water. Cooking was done over charcoal in a kerosene tin half full of sand, andthe "first-class" passengers lived under an improvised awning on the poop, the women's quarters being under that gim-crack structure. All the same, they are good sea-boats and remarkably fast, especiallyona wind, quite unlike the big-decked buggalows which are built for cargo capacity and have real cabins aft but sail like a haystack on a barge.
It was inhuman (as well as an infernal nuisance) to keep all those people sweltering indefinitely at sea; on the other hand, our orders as to the strict maintenance of the blockade were explicit. The "owner" and I conferred and decided that the situation could be met by transferring their cargo to the ship and letting the dhows beach. This was referred and approved by wireless. The job took us some days, as the weather was rather unfavourable and all the cargoes had to be checked by manifest with a view to restitution later. Each dhow as she was cleared had to make for the shore and dismast or beach so that she could not steal out at night and add to the difficulties of the blockade. None attempted to evade this order, most carried out both alternatives; perhaps a casual reminder that they would be within observation and gun-fire of the ship had some influence on their action.
Hitherto the Turco-Teutonic brand of Holy War had been fairly successful. The Allied thrust at the Dardanelles and Gallipoli had failed, the Aden Protectorate was in Turkish hands, we had spent a most unpleasant Easter in Sinai, and Kut had fallen. Still, the Turks were soon to realise that a wrongly-invokedjihad, like a mishandled musket, can recoil heavily, and, before the end of May, signs were not wanting that trouble was brewing for them in the Hejaz.
We were in close touch with the shore through fishing-canoes by day and secret emissaries by night, who brought us news that some German "officers" had been done to death by Hejazi tribesmen some eight hours' journey north of Jeddah. They had evidently been first over-powered and bound, then stabbed in the stomach with the huge two-handed dagger which the Hejazis use, and finally decapitated, as a Turkish rescue party which hurried to the spot found their headless and practically disembowelled corpses with their hands tied behind them. Their effects came through our hands in due course, and we ascertained that the party consisted of Lieut.-Commander von Moeller (late of a German gunboat interned at Tsing-Tao) and five reservists whom he had picked up in Java. They had landed on the South Arabian coast in March, hadvisited Sanaa, the capital of Yamen, and had come up the Arabian coast of the Red Sea by dhow, keeping well inside the Farsan bank, which is three hundred miles long and a serious obstacle to patrol work. They had landed at Konfida, north of the bank, and reached Jeddah by camel on May 5. Against the advice of the Turks they continued their journey by land, as they had no chance of eluding our northern patrol at sea. They were more than a year too late to emulate the gallant (and lucky) "Odyssey" of the Emden's landing-party from Cocos Islands up the Red Sea coast in the days when our blockade was more lenient and did not interfere with coasting craft. They hoped to reach Maan and so get on the rail for Stamboul and back to Germany, as the Sharif would not sanction their coming to the sacred city of Medina, which is the rail-head for the Damascus-Hejaz railway. After so staunch a journey they deserved a better fate. Among their kit was a tattered and blood-stained copy of my book on the Aden hinterland.[A]
Meanwhile affairs ashore were simmering to boiling-point, and on the night of June 9 we commenced a bombardment of carefully located Turkish positions, firing by "director"to co-operate with an Arab attack which was due then but did not materialise till early next morning, and was then but feebly delivered. We found out later that the rifles and ammunition we had delivered on the beach some distance south of Jeddah to the Sharif's agents in support of this attack had been partly diverted to Mecca and partly hung up by a squabble with their own camel-men for more cash.
We continued the bombardment on the night of the 11th and were in action most of the day on the 12th, shelling the Turkish positions north of Jeddah, which we had located by glass and the co-operation of friendly fishing-craft who gave us the direction by signal. During the morning the Hejazis made an abortive and aimless attack along the beach north of Jeddah, and so masked our own supporting fire, while the Turks gave them more than they wanted.
By this time the senior ship and others had joined us, and the S.N.O. approved of my landing with a party of Indian signallers to maintain closer touch with their operations, provided that Arab headquarters would guarantee our safety as regards their own people. This they were unable to do.
The bombardment grew more and more strenuous and searching as other ships joinedin and our knowledge of the Turkish positions became more accurate. On the 15th it culminated with the arrival of a seaplane carrier and heavy bombing of the Ottoman trenches which our flat-trajectory naval guns could hardly reach. The white flag went up before sunset, and next day there werepourparlerswhich led to an unconditional surrender on June 17, 1916.
Mecca had fallen just before, and Taif surrendered soon after, leaving Medina as the only important town still held by the Turks in the Hejaz.
We began pouring food and munitions into Jeddah as soon as it changed hands; for the rest of this cruise my ship was a sort of parcels-delivery van, and when the parcel happens to be an Egyptian mountain battery its delivery is an undertaking.
My personal contact with the Turks and their ill-omenedjihadended soon after, as I was invalided from service afloat, but I kept in touch as an Intelligence-wallah on the beach and followed the rest of it with interest.
They got Holy War with a vengeance. The Sharif's sons (more especially the Emirs Feisal and Abdullah, who had been trained at the Stamboul Military Academy), ably assisted by zealous and skilled British officers as mine-plantersand aerial bombers, harried outlying posts and the Hejaz railway line north of Medina incessantly.
The Turkish positions at Wejh fell to the Red Sea flotilla, reinforced by the flagship. I should like to have been there, if only to have seen the Admiral sail in to the proceedings with a revolver in his fist and theélanof a sub-lieutenant. The Hejazis failed to synchronise, as usual, so the Navy dispensed with their support.
On February 24, 1917, Kut was wrested from the Turks again; on March 11 they lost Baghdad; on November 7 their Beersheba-Gaza front was shattered, and Jerusalem fell on December 9.
Early next year Jericho was captured (February 21), a British column from Baghdad reached the Caspian in August, and after a final, victorious British offensive in Palestine the unholy alliance of Turkish pan-Islamism and GermanKulturgot its death-blow when Emir Feisal galloped into Damascus.
The Turks had drawn the blade ofjihadfrom its pan-Islamic scabbard in vain; its German trade-mark was plainly stamped on it. There had been widespread organisation against us, and the serpent's eggs of sedition and revolt had been hatched in centres scattered all over the eastern hemisphere, but their venomousprogeny had been crushed before they became formidable.
As a world-force this band of pan-Islamism had failed because it had been invoked by the wrong people for a wrong purpose. Such a movement should at least have as its driving power some great spiritual crisis: this Turco-German manifestation of it had its origin in self-interest, and if successful would have immolated Arabia on the demoniac altar ofWeltpolitik. Seyid Muhammed er-Rashid Ridha, a descendant of the Prophet and one of the greatest Arab theologians living, has voiced the verdict of Islam on this unscrupulous and self-seeking adventure in a trenchant article published in September, 1916. He showed up Enver and his Unionist party as an atheist among atheists who had deprived the Sultan of his rightful power and Islam of its religious head, and contrasted their conduct with that of the British, who exempted the Hejaz from the blockade enforced against the rest of the Ottoman Empire until it became quite clear that the Turks were benefiting chiefly by that exemption, and who, out of respect for the holy places of Islam, refrained from making that country a theatre of war.
True to the Teutonic tradition, the movement had been laboriously organised, but lackedpsychic insight, for the Turk is too much of a Tartar and too little of a Moslem to appreciate the Arab mind, and the German ignored it, rooting with eager, guttural grunts among the carefully cultivated religious prejudices of Islam like a hog hunting truffles until whacked out of it by the irate cultivators.
The following incident may serve to illustrate their crude tactics. Soon after the Turks came into the war the mullah of the principal mosque at Damascus was told to announcejihadagainst the British from his pulpit on the following Friday in accordance with an order from the Grand Mufti at Stamboul. The poor man appears to have jibbed considerably and sent his family over the Nejd border to be out of reach of Turkish persecution. Finally he decided to conform, but when he climbed the steps of his "minbar" and scanned his congregation he saw a group of German officers wearing tarboushes with a look of almost porcine complacency. His fear fell from him in a gust of rage and he spoke somewhat as follows: "I am ordered to proclaimjihad. Ajihad, as you know, is a Holy War to protect our Holy Places against infidels. This being so, what are these infidelpigsdoing in our mosque?"
There was a most unseemly scuffle; the Turco-Germancontingent tried to seize the mullah; the Arab congregation defended him strenuously from arrest. In the confusion that worthy man got clear away and joined his family in Nejd.Jihadis incumbent on all Moslems if against infidel aggression. We stood on the defensive when the Turks first attacked us on the Canal, and when we finally overran Palestine and Syria it was in co-operation with the Arabs, who have more right there than the Turks.
Those who forged the blade of this counterfeitjihadcould not temper it in the flame of religious fervour, and it shattered against the shield of religious tolerance and good faith: we make mistakes, but can honestly claim those two virtues.
FOOTNOTES:[A]"The Land of Uz," Macmillan.
FOOTNOTES:
[A]"The Land of Uz," Macmillan.
[A]"The Land of Uz," Macmillan.
Togauge the strength or weakness of pan-Islam as a world-force we may best compare it with its great militant rival, the Christian Church, choosing common ground as the only sound basis of comparison, and remembering that it is pan-Islam we are examining rather than Islam itself—the tree, not the root; and though we cannot study the one without considering the other, Islam has already been extensively discussed by men better qualified than myself to deal with it: the requirements of this work only call for comparison so far as the driving-power of pan-Islam is concerned as a material force.
First of all we must discard common factors. I set the great Shiah schism against the Catholic Church (omitting the word "Roman" as a contradiction in terms) and cancel both for the purposes of comparison. Catholicism, is not, of course, schismatic, otherwise there are points ofresemblance, such as observances of saints and shrines, which have permeated the other sects to a certain extent; also the degree of antagonism is about the same. Therefore we can ignore the Catholic Church in this chapter, and when we are talking of pan-Islam we should consider it a Sunnite (or Orthodox) movement, and count the Shiites out, as they do not even recognise the same centre of pilgrimage.
Perhaps the strongest factor in pan-Islam as a political movement or a world-wide fellowship is the Meccan pilgrimage. I have already alluded to its cosmopolitan nature in the previous chapter, but never realised it so much till after the surrender of Jeddah, when stately Bokhariots, jabbering Javanese, Malays, Chinese, Russians, American citizens and South Africans were among those who beset me as stranded pilgrims. This implies a very wide sphere of influence, against which we can only set the well-known immorality and greed which pilgrims complain of at Mecca; a huge influx of cosmopolitan visitors toanycentre will generally cause such abuses. On the feast of Arafat there are normally 100,000 pilgrims in the Meccan area who represent 100 million orthodox Moslems throughout the world, while the actual population of the city is only 50,000.
The Arabic language is another strong bond of brotherhood in Islam. I do not mean to say that it is generally "understanded of the people," any more than Latin is throughout the Catholic world; but it is the language of most Sunnites and is moderately understood in Somaliland, East Africa, Java and the Malay peninsula as the language of the Koran; in fact, it is the only written language in Somaliland, and Turkey uses the script though not the tongue.
The daily observances of prayer, with their simple but obligatory ceremonial, and the yearly fast for the month of Ramadhan unite Moslems with the common ties of duty and hardship, as in the comradeship which sailors and soldiers have for each other throughout the world.
Then, again, there is no colour-line in Islam; a negro may rise to place and power (he often does), and usually enjoys the intimate confidence of his master as not readily amenable to local intrigue. Difference of nationality is not stressed except by the Young Turks, who have slighted Semitic Moslems to their own undoing. Contrast this attitude with our Church and estimate the precise amount of Christian brotherhood between an Orthodox Greek, a Welsh Wesleyan, an Ethiopian priest, a Scotch Presbyterian, and an Anglican bishop (since the Kikuyu heresy). Even withinthe narrow limits of one sect there is nothing like the fellowship one finds in secular societies. Which is the stronger appeal, "Anglican communicant" or "Freemason"? Is a cross or the quadrant and compasses the more potent charm?
Arabs credit us Christians with a much stronger bond of sympathy between co-religionists than is actually the case. It is true that those who come into any sort of contact with us realise that there is a distinct difference in form of worship and sentiment between Catholics (whom they callChristyân) and Protestants (orNasâra), but I shall not readily forget the extraordinary conduct of a Hejazi who boarded us off Jeddah with some of the effects belonging to the murdered Germans mentioned in the previous chapter. He must have had the firm conviction that we Christians would avenge the killing of other Christians by Moslems, for he merely told me that he had in his possession certain property of theAllemani, and I told him that he would be suitably rewarded on producing it; I found out later that he had boasted to our ship's interpreter (a Mussulman) that he was one of the slayers, and it occurred to me that if that were the case he might be able to give me further information, or perhaps produce papers of theirs which might appear valueless to him but would be of interestto us. I interviewed him on deck and suggested this, reminding him of what he had told the interpreter, but laying no stress on the deed he had confessed, for it was outside our jurisdiction and no concern of mine.
"Papers?" he said. "By all means, I will go and fetch them," and breaking from my light hold of his sleeve he flickered over the rail and dropped into the sea some thirty feet below. Two armed marines stepped to the rail with a clatter of breech-bolts and looked inquiringly at me. Meanwhile my bold murderer was calling on his God, for he wore a full bandoleer, which was weighing him down. Out darted a fishing-canoe from under our quarter and made for him, but its occupants took the hint I conveyed through a megaphone and confined their efforts to saving him for the duty-cutter to pick up.
He was brought before me dripping wet, with the fear of death in his eyes. I thought this was due to the foolish risk he had taken, and spoke in gentle reproof of his conduct, pointing out that if any boat had been alongside where he leaped he would have met with a bad accident. To my surprise he fell at my feet and scrabbled at my clean white shoes, imploring me to spare his life. I put him down as somewhat mad, and asked "Number One" to put a sentry over himto see that he did not repeat his attempt to avoid our acquaintance. He clung to me like a limpet and had to be removed by force, with despairing entreaties for mercy, disregarding my still puzzled assurances as to his personal safety. I learned afterwards his true reason for alarm; he thought that after leaving my presence he would be quietly made away with in traditional Eastern style.
Another very strong feature of pan-Islam is the consistency of the creed from which it grows. I do not necessarily imply that Islam itself is benefited thereby, for consistency sometimes means narrowness, and we are not considering creeds; but there is no doubt about the dynamic force of a movement based on a religion which is sure of itself. A Moslem has one authorised version of the Koran, and only one; his simple creed is contained in its first chapter and is as short as the Lord's Prayer, which it somewhat resembles in style. Praising God as the Lord of the worlds (not only of this world of ours), it attributes to Him mercy and clemency with supreme power over the Day of Judgment and is an avowal of worship and service. Its only petition is to be led in the way of the righteous, avoiding errors that incur His wrath. Contrast this with the many confusing aspects of Christianity.Perhaps diverse opinions tend to purify and invigorate a creed, but they certainly do not strengthen the cohesion of any secular movement based on it.
Then, again, the Moslem conception of God and the hereafter stiffens the backbone of pan-Islam in adversity. They are taught to believe that He isreallyomnipotent and that His actions are beyond criticism—welfare and affliction being alike acceptable as His will. We, on the other hand, seem to be developing the theory of a finite God warring against, and occasionally overcome by, evil, which includes (in this new thesis) human suffering and sorrow as well as sin. There is a growing idea, pioneered partly by Mr. H. G. Wells and apparently supported by many of the clergy, that the acts of God must square with human ideals of mercy or justice, and as many occurrences do not, the inference is that evil gets the best of it sometimes. Now the Moslem slogan is "Allah Akbar" (God is Greatest), and that seems to me a better battle-cry than, for example, "Gott mit uns," as God will still be great and invincible to Moslems in their victory or defeat; but the finite idea presumes, in disaster, that you and your God have been defeated together. It is not my business to criticise either conception from a religious point of view, but inmundane affairs it is the former that will make for fighting force, especially as we still insist that our God is a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers, etc.: surely this is not a human ideal of justice; the obvious deduction is that our modern Deity is stronger to punish than protect—hardly an encouraging attribute.
Whether a religion is the better for an organised priesthood or not is irrelevant to our subject, but the absence of it in Islam certainly strengthens the pan-Islamic movement, as each Moslem may consider himself a standard-bearer of his faith, while we are apt to leave too much to our priests, thus engendering slackness on our part and meticulous dogma on theirs; both undermine Christian brotherhood. The fact that priestly stipends seem to the ordinary layman as in inverse ratio to the duties performed also widens the breach between clergy and laity, besides sapping clericalmoral. This is not the particular feature of any one sect—the reader can supply cases within his own experience, but here is one that is probably outside it and showing how widespread the system is. The rank and file of the Greek Orthodox clergy are notoriously ill-paid. Yet their monastery at Jerusalem costs £E.15,000 per annum to maintain and pays £E.40,000 annually in clerical salaries to archbishops andclergy who control the spiritual affairs of less than fifteen thousand people. It derives £E.30,000 from its property in Russia, £E.25,000 from the property of the Holy Sepulchre, and as much again from visitors and other sources; and this in a region where the Founder of our faith was content to wander with less certainty of shelter than the wild creatures of the countryside.
Incidentally, the monastery seems to have been unable to curtail its expenditure during the War, for it has accumulated debts to the amount of £E.600,000, most of its sources of income having ceased for the time. I quote from current newspapers. Blame does not necessarily attach to the monastery or its administrators, who may have done their best to fulfill their obligations under adverse circumstances; I would merely draw attention to the incongruity of the whole system as regards a universal brotherhood based on Christian teaching. There are no such exotic growths to impede the march of pan-Islam.
So much for the strength of the pan-Islamic movement. Now let us consider its weak points.
To begin with, the gross abuse of pan-Islam by interested parties for non-spiritual ends during the War has done the genuine movement harm. That lying, political appeal tojihadhas made thinking Moslems mistrust the infallibility oforganised pan-Islam, of which the culminating expression is Holy War, one of the most sacred Mussulman duties if justly invoked. We Christians do not make such mistakes. When Italy was fighting the Turks in Tripoli the Pope himself warned Christian soldiers against regarding the campaign as a Crusade, and when we took Jerusalem we took it side by side with our Mussulman allies and forthwith placed an orthodox Moslem guard on Omar's mosque. In this connection it may be of interest to note that the officer commanding a mixed Christian guard at the Holy Sepulchre was a Jew.
Another source of weakness, so far as a united Moslem world is concerned, may be found in the antagonistic points of view between civilised and uncivilised Moslems (I use the attribute in its modern sense). Uncivilised Moslems view with suspicion and, in fact, derision the dress and customs of their civilised co-religionists, insisting that European coats and trousers display the figure indecently and that their Frankish luxuries and amusements are snares of Eblis. The enlightened Moslem, on the other hand, regards the tribesman as ajungliwala, or wild man of the woods, derides his illiteracy, and is revolted by the harsh severity of the old Islamic penal code as practised still in semi-barbaric Moslem States.Now we Christians are fairly lenient as regards each other's customs, and still more so with regard to dress (judging by the garb we tolerate), while we have quite outgrown our old playful habits of boiling, burning, or torturing our fellow-men except on the battle-fields of civilised warfare.
Civilisation (as we understand it) is a two-edged weapon and tool smiting or serving pan-Islam and Christendom, but on the whole it serves the latter rather than the former, as the superior resources of Christendom can take fuller advantage of it as a tool or a weapon, though both turn to scourges when used against each other in battle. Also its handmaid, Education, though in itself a foe to no religion,doestend to tone down dogma and engender tolerance, thus minimising the dynamic force of bigotry in pan-Islam, though consolidating the real stability of religion on its own base. Moreover, some gifts of civilisation can do a lot of harm if wrongly used; I refer more especially to drink, drugs, and dress. Just as hereditary exposure to the infection of certain diseases is said to confer, by survival of the fittest, a certain immunity therefrom—for example, consumption among us Europeans and typhoid among Asiatics—so moral ills seem to affect humanity to a greater or less extent in inverse proportion to the temptation in thatparticular respect which the individual and his forebears have successfully resisted. The average European and his ancestors have been accustomed to drink fermented liquor for many centuries, and in moderation as judged by the standard of his time, but he has always been taught to avoid opium and has not known the drug for long. The oriental Moslem, on the other hand, has used opium as a remedy and prophylactic against malaria for generations, but is strictly ordered by his creed to consider the consumption, production, gift or sale of alcohol a deadly sin. In consequence, the European can usually take alcohol in moderation, but almost invariably slips into a pit of his own digging when he tries to do the same with opium, while the oriental Moslem can use opium in moderation (provided that he confines himself to swallowing it and does not smoke it), but when he drinks, usually drinks to excess because he has not learned to do otherwise. It is a melancholy fact that hitherto in countries opened up by our Western civilisation drink has got in long before education, unless extraordinary precautions have been taken to prevent it; that is one reason why Moslem States are so wary of civilised encroachment. As for drugs other than opium (and far more dangerous), civilised Moslems,especially in Egypt, are alarmed at the spread of hashish-smoking among their co-religionists, while the cultured classes, including women-folk, are taking to cocaine: the material for both vices is supplied from European sources, mostly Greek. Dress, compared with the other two demons, is merely a fantastic though mischievous sprite and can be quite attractive, but it breaks up many a Moslem home when carried to excess in the harem, as it frequently is in civilised circles, while the younger men vie with each other in the more flagrant extravagances of occidental garb: prayers and ablutions do not harmonise with well-creased trousers and stylish boots any more than a veil does with a divided skirt. The native Press is always attacking the above abuses, but they are firmly rooted. All three undermine the pan-Islamic structure by causing cleavage in public opinion. European dress has already been mentioned as widening the gap between civilised and uncivilised Moslems, but it also tends to disintegrate cultured Moslem communities, for the older men are apt to regard it with suspicion or downright condemnation. I once asked an eminent and learned Moslem whether he thought modern European dress impeded regular observance of prayers and ablutions. He replied, "Perhaps so, but thoseMoslems who wear such clothes indicate by so doing that the observances of Islam have little hold upon them."
All these defects, however, are mere cracks in the inner walls of the pan-Islamic structure and can be repaired from within, but the Turkish Government, which represented the Caliphate, and should have considered the integrity of Islam as a sacred trust, has managed to split the outer wall and divide the house against itself, just as the unity of Christendom (such as it was) has been rent asunder by one of its most prominent exponents. Pan-Islam has received the more serious damage because the wreckers still hold the Caliphate and the prestige attached thereto; it is for Moslems (and Moslems only) to decide what action to take; but in any case, the breach is a serious one and has been much widened by the action of Turkish troops at the Holy Places. They actually shelled the Caaba at Mecca (luckily without doing material damage), and their action in storing high explosives close to the Prophet's tomb at Medina may have saved them bombardment, but has certainly not improved their reputation as Moslems. Even before the War I often heard Yamen Arabs talking of "Turks and Moslems"—a distinctly damning discrimination—and the situation has not been improvedby Ottoman slackness in religious observances and their inconsistent national movement.
At the same time, their rule in Arabia will be awkward to replace at first. I described the Turks in the final chapter of a book[B]published early in the War as pre-eminently fitted to govern Moslems by birthright, creed, and temperament, summing them up as individually gifted but collectively hopeless as administrators because they lacked a stable and consistent central Government. They have proved the indictment up to the hilt, but that does not dower any of us Christians with their inherent qualifications as rulers in Islam. If any of us are called upon to face fresh responsibilities in this direction, it would take us all our time to make up for these qualities by tact, sound administration, and strict observance of local religious prejudice. Even then there is a Mussulman proverb to this effect: "A Moslem ruler though he oppress me and not akafirthough he work me weal"—it explains much apparent ingratitude for benefits conferred.
The lesson we have to learn from pan-Islamic activities of the last decade or two is that countries which are mainly Moslem should have Moslem rulers, and that Christian rule, however enlightened and benevolent, is only permissible where Islamis outnumbered by other creeds. At the same time, in countries where Christian methods of civilisation and European capital have been invited we have a right to control and advise the Moslem ruler sufficiently to ensure the fair treatment of our nationals and their interests. But with purely Moslem countries which have expressed no readiness to assimilate the methods of modern civilisation or to invite outside capital we have no right to interfere beyond the following limit: if the local authorities allow foreign traders to operate at their ports their interests should be safeguarded, if important enough, by consular representation on the spot, or, if not, by occasional visits of a man-of-war to keep nationals in touch with their own Government, presuming that the place is too small to justify any mail-carrying vessel calling there except at very long intervals.
There should always be a definite understanding as to foreigners proceeding or residing up-country for any purpose. If the local ruler discourages but permits such procedure, all we should expect him to do in case of untoward incidents is to take reasonable action to investigate and punish, but if he has guaranteed the security of foreign nationals concerned, he must redeem his pledge in an adequate manner or take the consequences.There should seldom be occasion for an inland punitive expedition; in these days, when many articles of seaborne trade have become, from mere luxuries, almost indispensable adjuncts of native life in the remotest regions, a maritime blockade strictly enforced should soon exact the necessary satisfaction.
Such rulers should bear in mind that if they accept an enterprise of foreign capital they must protect its legitimate operations, just as a school which has accepted a Government grant has to conform to stipulated conditions.
Where no such penetration has occurred, all we should concern ourselves with is that internal trouble in such regions shall not slop over into territory protected or occupied by us, and this is where our most serious difficulties will occur in erstwhile Turkish Arabia.
The Turk, with all his faults, could grapple with a difficult situation in native affairs by drastic methods which might be indefensible in themselves, but were calculated to obtain definite results. At any rate, we had a responsible central Government to deal with and one that we could get at. Now we shall have to handle such situations ourselves or rely on the local authorities doing so. The former method is costly and dangerous, yielding the minimum of result to themaximum of effort and expense, while involving possibilities of trouble which might compromise our democratic yearnings considerably: the latter alternative presupposes that we have succeeded in evolving out of the present imbroglio responsible rulers who are well-disposed to us and prepared to take adequate action on our representations.
In Syria and Mesopotamia, where communications are good and European penetration an established fact, there should not be much difficulty, but in Arabia proper the problem is a very prickly one.
Beginning with Arabia Felix, which includes Yamen, the Aden protectorate, and the vague, sprawling province of Hadhramaut, we may be permitted to hope that nothing worse can happen in the Aden protectorate than has happened already; the remoter Hadhramaut has always looked after its own affairs and can continue to do so; but Yamen bristles with political problems which will have to be solved, and solved correctly, if she is going to be a safe neighbour or a reliable customer to have business dealings with. Hitherto none of her local rulers have inspired any confidence in their capacity for initiative or independent action. During the War the Idrisi, who had long been in revolt against the Turks innorthern Yamen, kept making half-hearted and abortive dabs at Loheia—like a nervous child playing snapdragon—but his only success (and temporary at that) was when he occupied the town after the Red Sea Patrol had shelled the Turks out of it. As for the Imam, he has been sitting on a very thorny fence ever since the Turks came into the War. We have been in touch with him for a long time, but all he has done up to date is to wobble on a precarious tripod supported by the opposing strains of Turks, tribesmen, and British. Now one leg of the tripod has been knocked away he has yet to show if he can maintain stability on his own base, and, if so, over what area. The undeniable fighting qualities of the Yamen Arab, which might be a useful factor in a stable government, will merely prove a nuisance and a menace under a weakrégime, and tribal trouble will always be slopping over into our Aden sphere of influence. Then the question will arise, What are we going to do about it? We cannot bring the Yamenis to book by blockading their coast and cutting off caravan traffic with Aden, because, in view of our trade relations with the country by sea and land, we should only be cutting our nose off to spite our face. Moreover, the punishment would fall chiefly on the respectable community,traders, the cultured classes, etc., to whom seaborne trade is essential, while it would hardly affect the wild tribesmen, except as regards ammunition, and to prevent them getting what they wanted through the Hejaz is outside the sphere of practical politics.
In the Hejaz itself we can at least claim that authority is suitably represented and accessible to us. Before the War we kept a British consul at Jeddah with an Indian Moslem vice-consul who went up to Mecca in the pilgrim season. A responsible consular agent (Moslem of course) to reside at Medina, also another to understudy the Jeddah vice-consul when he went to Mecca and to look after the Yenbo pilgrim traffic, would safeguard the interests of our nationals, who enormously outnumber the pilgrims of any other nation. Further interference with the Hejaz, unless invited, would be unjustifiable.
Trouble for us does not lie in the Hejaz itself, but in its possible expansion beyond its powers of absorption, or, in homely metaphor, if it bites off more than it can chew. There is a certain tendency just now to overrate Hejazi prowess in war and policy; in fact, King Husein is often alluded to vaguely as the "King of Arabia," and there is a sporadic crop of ill-informedarticles on this and other Arabian affairs in the English Press. One of the features of the War as regards this part of the world is the extraordinary and fungus-like growth of "Arabian experts" it has produced, most of whom have never set foot in Arabia itself, while the few now living who have acquired real first-hand knowledge of any part of the Arabian peninsula before the War may be counted on the fingers of one hand. Yet the number of people who rush into print with their opinions on the most complex Arabian affairs would astonish even the Arabs if they permitted themselves to show surprise at anything. These opinions differ widely, but have one attribute in common—their emphatic "cock-sureness." Each one presents the one and only solution of the whole Arabian problem according to the facet which the writer has seen, and there are many facets. They are amusing and even instructive occasionally, but there is a serious side to them—their crass empiricism. Each writer presents (quite honestly, perhaps) his point of view of one or two facets in the rough-cut, many-sided and clouded crystal of Arabian politics without considering its possible bearing on other parts of the peninsula or even other factors in the district he knows or has read about. The net result is an appallingly crude patchwork,no one piece harmonising with another, and, in view of the habit Government has formed in these cases of accepting empirical opinions if they are shouted loud enough or at close range, there is more than a possibility that our Arabian policy may resemble such a crazy quilt. If it does, we shall have to harvest a thistle-crop of tribal and intertribal trouble throughout the Arabian peninsula, and the seed-down of unrest will blow all over Syria and Mesopotamia just at the most awkward time when reconstruction and sound administration are struggling to establish themselves. Weeds grow quicker and stronger than useful plants in any garden.