Evening Post. SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1919. FUTURE OF ARABIA

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 74, 29 March 1919, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1919. FUTURE OF ARABIA

Two of the most picturesque, romantic, and significant figures at the Peace Conference are those of the Emir Feisul and his aide-de-camp, Colonel Lawrence. When the Emir arrived in London early in December to present the respects of his father, the King of the Hedjaz, to King George, his tall, dignified figure, "wearing a long black 'abba' or cloak and a headcloth of Damascus silk, with golden head-ropes of Mecca manufacture," attracted every eye. There was also some attention to spare for the Emir's aide<.de-camp, who, though an Englishman, was adorned with a Mecca head-dress of crimson and gold. These two men were the mainstay of the movement for the liberation of Arabia from the Turk, and carried through with brilliant success a campaign which, though a sort of back-water from the main currents of the war, was as full of danger and difficulty and hardship as* any other, provided an invaluable supplement to Allenby's great work in Palestine, and in its political effects upon the future of the East may prove to be of the first magnitude. To what extent this last point will be realised will depend in large measure upon the success of the mission which has since taken the Emir and his adviser to Paris. The proposal which they were to submit to the Peace Conference was, as the cable has informed ua, "for the formation of a federation of all Arab- States from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, free from Turkish domination, under the protection of the United States." We were also told that Colonel Lawrence was expected to be the first of the Hedjaz delegates. Even at a time when the destinies of the whole world are more or less in the melting-pot, and great events proceed from day to day at a pace which leaves us breathless, we ought to be able to spare a. thought for the wonder and the significance of this strange development. With the help of Britain and her Allies, the man who four years ago was but the Grand Sherif of Mecca has thrown off tho Turkish yoke and proclaimed, after the lapse of four centuries, a new Arabian Kingdom; and now he is pleading before a Conference of the Great Powers through a British spokesman for leave to form a federation of the Arabian race under the protection of the United States.

It was early in 1916 that the Sherif of Mecca declared his independence of the Sultan, and his selection of the dark hour after the fall of Kut as the proper time for so doing is sufficient evidence that he was not inspired by a mere desire to back the winning horse. Though the military value of a revolt in the far corner of Arabia was not then apparentj the fact that the Sherif of Mecca and a descendant of the Prophet had declared war upon the Turk was of immense value in dissipating any doubts that lingered in the Moslem world as to the summons which it had received from the Sultan and his master to a "Holy War." To this descendant of Mahomet the Turk is a Turanian, an alien inspired and controlled by German infidels. On the fall of Bagdad the King of the Hedjaz, as he had then become, declared in his message of congratulation "that this city should,, thank God Almighty for its liberation from the criminal hands of the Turanians." The "Holy War" was thus put on, the same level in the Moslem estimation as att the other nnholiness that had emanated from Berlin. Though Mecca thus passed out of the power of the Turk at the very beginning of this revolt, and the Turk himself had unconditionally capitulated at the end of October last, it is interesting to note that Medina, the other sacred city of Islam, remained in Tnrkish hands till within a week of the opening of the Peace Conference. Tlie difficulties of communication, and the determination of King Hussein not to shell a city which contains the tomb of the Prophet, aided the procrastination of the Turk in procuring this long delay; and it is said that it was only by a threat to destroy the forts of the Dardanelles that "Hfel j«Biii!.f.irf.i vt _> tiHimft.fily ov«> come in time to permit of the Emir

Abdulla's triumphal entry into Medina on behalf of the King on 13th January.

An account of the campaign which was supplied to Tlie Times by a correspondent who is said to have been in close touch with the Arabs throughout suffers from only one defect—that the writer seems also to have been in such close touch with Colonel Lawrence as to have been unable to mention his name. "In the annals of the British Army," says The Times, "there is nothing more bold and adventurous, more typically English, than the mission of Colonel Lawrence in the army of the Sherif." Of this mission The Times correspondent unfortunately ' tells us nothing, but his description of the general features of the campaign and of the character and exploits of the Emir Feisul and some of his officers makes this narrative one of the most stirring that the war has produced. "It is refreshing," as The Times observes, "to turn for a moment from tho grand operations of war in Europe and to read of those touch-and-go campaigns in Arabia, where victory or defeat is seen to depend on the valour of one man and war still preserves some of the old-fashioned romance." Such an incident as that by which Feisul got his men out of a very tight place during the first attack on Medina fully justifies the eulogy of The Times : —

The Turks opened with all their guns from th 9 town wall, covering the open ground with bursting shrapnel, and after their first losses the Arabs wavered, and then took cover in the gardens. Feisul rode up to the front line on his horse, and called to them to follow him. Their chief refusedj saying that it was death to cross the plam. Feisul laughed, and turning his horse forced it at a walk through the Turkish fire till he had gained tho shelter of the opposite gardens. Then he waved to the men behind him, who charged across to him at a wild'gallop, losing only about twenty men on the way.

It is difficult to see that any theatre of war can have furnished a more exacting test than that which was applied both to the ill-equipped and at first entirely undisciplined troops of the Hedjaz and to their commanders. A small expedition which waß sent to capture ■ Akaba is described as marching through the Hedjaz hills, "picking up a few adherents, across a dreadful lava field which foundered their camels, over the Hedjaz railway in a thunder of dynamite explosions, into the pathless central desert of Arabia, where they wandered for weeks in great pain of" heat and hunger and thirst, losing many of their party and disheartening more." When they did reach water the attenuated force was further reduced by snakebite. Bijt after 400 miles of this heartbreaking work those who survived were still game. Of the heat that made movement torture to another expedition we are told that, "the burning ground seared the skin off the forearms of our snipers, and the camels went as lame as the men with the agony of the sunburnt flints." Yet Feisul and his men won through, and'they now await the verdict of the Peace Conference. Let us trust that their courage and fidelity will be rewarded in a manner that will justify the hopes that were expressed on the fall of Bagdad by a cpntributor to The Times who appeared to know all that there is to be known about the East:—

To-day o little breeze of life is stirring in the Arab world. Isolated, dispersed, sundered by creed and geographical circum?tanee, warped as thoy are by misortune, nevertheless there is among the Arabs a movement, vague, undefined, at _ times almost imperceptible, yet it exists. . The Turks, please God, are going from the lands they have ruined and broken. The Arabs are on the verge of a new contact, contact with the post-war Europe that is not yet. What may come of it, who can tell?_ Approached as " natives " or in " a white man's burden " manner the Arab will shut up like an oyster. Approached as what he isi in the light of what he was (and, if the teachings of 2000 years mean anything, again shall be), the Arab of the future will prove to be one of the great world-assets. Firmness, tolerance, humility, and understanding are the qualities which those who would help to raise this people must pray for. To help the Arab once again to greatness, to partnership in the fruitfulness of the earth, to break tho spell of the Turanian destroyer, and begin afresh the great story of Semitic civilisation, is more than an Imperial task—it is.a contribution to tho fulfilment of the destiny of mankind.