Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 1945 SYRIAN BACKGROUND

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 9 June 1945, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 1945 SYRIAN BACKGROUND

IN a finely-written study called “The Battle Ground” Mr Hilaire Belloc has pointed out that Syria and Palestine, forming a bottleneck between Asia and Africa, have century after century endured the passage of great armies and suffered grievously in Too poor in resources to be the nucleus of an empire themselves, they have always lain within reach of powerful neighbours, and the independence for which they are clamouring to-day represents something quite alien to their traditions. It is true that there was a kingdom of Syria in the second and third centuries before Christ, but its ruling dynasty was of Greek descent, and its brief existence was merely an interlude between domination by Assyrians and Persians on the one hand, and Romans on the other. In the seventh century A.D. the Omayyad Caliphs made Damascus the centre of a powerful Moslem empire ; but they were themselves Arabs from the south, and their glory lasted less than a century. After their fall Syria passed successively under the control of Egyptians, Saracens and Mongols ; in 1514 it was conquered by the Turks, who here, as ip every other part of their empire, allowed the natural resources of the country to become hopelessly impoverished, and maintained their baneful influence until the present century. The liberation of Syria was achieved by the Arab revolt in the Great War, mainly instigated and directed by the famous T. E. Lawrence. The success of the campaign, which reached its climax with the entry of General Allenby into Damascus in October 1918, was unfortunately vitiated by the diplomatic tangle which followed. The British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir 1

Henry Macmahon, had promised through Lawrence that a free Arab state, with its capital in Damascus, would be erected after the war, and Feisal, son of the Shereef of Mecca, had been nominated as its ruler. The French, however, who had been interested in the Levant since the faroff days of the Crusades, and had been the recognised protectors of the Maronites or Syrian Christians for two centuries, insisted on a share in the settlement, and exacted from the British Government a secret treaty providing for French control of Syria in the peace settlement. The indignation of the Arab delegates when they arrived at Versailles and were tardily acquainted with the revised arrangements can be readily imagined, and it was this breach of faith more than anything else that warped and embittered Lawrence’s outlook in the years that followed. Syria became a French mandate; Feisal indeed was installed at Damascus, but under strict French supervision. Becoming restive under unsympathetic surveillance, he was soon expelled, and was fortunate in finding a throne, which he filled with credit, in the neighbouring British mandate of Iraq. Since 1921 the French have ruled Syria virtually as one of their possessions.

France’s Levantine administration during the last twenty years has been strongly criticised, but the fault has not lain entirely with the rulers. Two thousand years ago a Roman soldier scratched on a stone near Damascus the words, “The Syrians are a rotten crowd” ; and the twentieth century French soldiers would heartily endorse this opinion. Dr Margret Boveri, a German traveller and scholar who writes with knowledge and judgment, declares that the intentions of the French were honest and sincere, but they did not understand the nature of the problem, and their experience in ruling native races in Africa and Indo-China turned out to be less helpful than they had expected. Their purely constructive work, indeed, has been excellent. The roads, orchards and plantations of Syria are the finest in the Middle East ; irrigation has been restored, the slopes of Lebanon are being reafforested, and the splendid harbour of Beirut has been twice enlarged. The French, however, have resolutely discouraged the training of an intelligent and civilised people in selfgovernment. Besides separating the coastal strip of Lebanon from the rest of Syria, they further subdivided the country until in 1939 there were five separate states, each with its own capital and system of government. They explained this decentralisation by pointing to the innumerable races, languages and sects that divide the country in factious rivalry ; the Syrians ascribed it to belief in the maxim, “Divide and conquer.” Probably both were right ; certainly the French persistently followed a policy of repression. In 1925 General Sarrail quelled a riot in Damascus by such a severe bombardment that even French opinion was shocked and he was recalled. The French, however, were never allowed to forget that Syria, as a Class A mandate, was considered by the framers of the Versailles Treaty to be ready, or nearly ready, for self-government, and the grant of autonomy to Iraq in 1930 underlined France’s responsibilities in the matter. In 1936 the French government agreed to negotiate, and implicit approval was given in Paris to a treaty drawn up by the Syrian Parliament, which provided for independence subject to French interests being respected. The French Chamber, however, studiously delayed ratification of the treaty, and matters were still in a state of suspense when the war broke out in 1939. In 1940 the French officials in Syria sided with Vichy; but with the occupation of the country in the following year by British and Free French forces it was clearly indicated that independence would be accelerated. General de Gaulle, however, has proved as intractable here as he has over other issues, and ill-timed French troop movements were naturally interpreted as an an-ti-Liberal measure. But the Syrian independence movement is now strongly rooted ; and with Britain and America taking a firm stand against French intolerance it seems probable that the promise given of Levantine independence will be redeemed.