unity. Meanwhile Feisal and an army composed of Syrian Arab elements, with a small but influential infusion of Mesopotamian Arabs, went forward to play its part in the liberation of Syria-a part, in fact, of great importance, and certain to be regarded by Arabs as having more than fulfilled their implicit obligation, if any, to work out their own salvation in that region.

The Sherifian flag was hoisted in Damascus a day before our own, and in Beirut nearly a week ahead of the tricolour. When, in Beirut, we had to bid it be hauled down, and in Damascus could permit it to remain only pending settlement, and on condition that Feisal accepted meanwhile a commission under our military administration, the day of reckoning was in sight; and we could only postpone default by imposing a moratorium while the Peace Conference was sitting. How, during the delay, all our efforts, well-intentioned and sincere enough, to harmonise our obligations by procuring the cancellation of some and the readjustment or postponement of others, so failed as to make matters worse, is very recent history. The French stood by their bond; so did the Jews. The American deus ex machina failed of effect. Feisal had our support in debate but not in action; and, having pushed him into the Councils of Paris as the accredited representative of an allied nation, we let him return to tell his nation that, except in Hejaz, its independence was to be, in fact, dependence on two alien Powers for an indefinite period.

Thus in the West did the Allies bring to nothing the hopes, which from the first had inspired the Arab nationalists and in particular the Syrian Arabs, by imposing on them just that assimilative domination which, rightly or wrongly, they believe to compromise most deeply their prospects of independence. To the letter of our own pledges we had not been false, for we had never promised the Syrians anything without reserving in full the interests of France; but to the spirit in which, according to Entente declarations about small nations and Self-determination, the Arabs believed we had given these pledges, we had assuredly not been true. Consistently we had put forward an ideal of Arab unity, only to render its realisation impossible, in this generation at least; and, having betrayed the Arab sentiment of

independence, we had not secured to the Syrians anything they counted as material gain. No Arab doubts that, whether there be immediately a Jewish State or not in southern Syria, the promotion of a Jewish 'National Home' will mean that, sooner or later, the Jew and not the Arab will possess the best fruits of the land. As for northern Syria, French exclusive influence is held with equal assurance to entail the ultimate absorption of all that is lucrative by the French trader, the French financier, the French official; further, the Moslem majority, taught how France uses abroad the religion she officially repudiates at home, believes that the Christian minority will be preferred above itself.

Grave as these fears may be, they are, however, only secondary causes of the present discontent in Syria. Above them stands the primary cause, not to be removed by any tact of government or finesse of administration-the refusal of that absolute independence which two years ago was thought to be won and assured.

In Mesopotamia our slowness about setting up any sort of Arab government began to be a subject of Arab complaint in 1918, when for a year we had been in possession of Baghdad. If reminded that we were still at war with Turkey and debarred, by the strict letter of the Hague Convention, from dealing with occupied territory at our own or its inhabitants' discretion until peace was made, the objectors countered the argument by citing instances of inconsistent German action in occupied Poland, and inconsistent action of our own in occupied Palestine. After Damascus had been freed from the Turks, such complaints crystallised into organised propaganda, of which the mouthpiece was the Baghdadi element in the Sherifian army and Government, but the true instigators were rather Syrians, who, seeing their own autonomy in danger, thought to improve its prospects by teaching the Entente a lesson in Iraq. In actual fact, more was being done there in the direction of local administrative devolution than these agitators acknowledged, or perhaps knew. Still less was it known to them that British officials in Mesopotamia had already expressed opinions favourable to the rapid development of autonomy, and unfavourable to the

introduction of a complicated alien system of government. What they heard from Mesopotamia itself was that administration continued to be carried on under a British-Indian raj. What they heard from Europe was, not so much proposals for further devolution as insistence on British interests in Mesopotamian oil, suggested British control of a block of territory which divides into two halves the Moslem world, British obligation to support Shiites against Sunnites, Mesopotamia as a home for surplus Indian population, and other similar reasons for treating that country as prize of war.

It would be idle to deny that, in spite of the body of British liberal opinion alluded to above, there existed among our Mesopotamian officers, military and civil, a stronger party which did in fact regard the country as potential British territory. Our arms had conquered it; and passion of possession follows conquest. That this particular conquest was, in great part, impermanent— that, so long as there existed no fundamental desire for British rule, it was not likely to command either sufficient white troops or sufficient will-to-power at home to be sustained-this was imperfectly appreciated in the theatre of our warfare which was less acquainted and concerned than any other with the European political situation and the trend of democratic opinion. Agitators without and agitators within, therefore, had no lack of evidence to support their warnings to the Arabs of Mesopotamia, that, unless they bestirred themselves, the British were come to stay. These agitators have had, no doubt, Turkish helpers and Sherifian helpers and Bolshevist helpers; but their chief allies have been two obvious facts-the betrayal of Syrian independence, and the efficacy of even an unsuccessful revolt in Egypt.

Since the discontent, with whose fundamental causes the foregoing review is concerned, is at this moment patently matured and beyond any stage in which either extenuating circumstances of our past action or demonstration of the impracticable element in the Arab ideal would avail to allay it, no account has been taken of counterarguments and no attempt made justly to apportion blame for regrettable facts. There are extenuating circumstances enough to be found in the exigencies of the life-and-death struggle during which, and because of

which, we involved ourselves with the Arabs. We saw, and cannot but see still, that the interests of our Indian Empire on the one hand and European peace upon the other outweigh Arab interests in the scale of world civilisation. We know that we had, and have still, the honourable intention to ameliorate the political and economic lot of the Arab lands; and, through representative officers of every grade, working day and night amid discomfort and danger, in singleness of purpose for small reward beyond such satisfaction as bare achievement brings, we have been fulfilling that intention since the first day of our occupation. But to expect considerations, which go far to justify our position to ourselves, so to justify it to Arabs that they will be content to be used as a means to an end not theirs, and sink their own ideals of political and economic well-being in ours, would be pronounced preposterous enough by any one who knows Arab, or indeed common human, nature, even if he had not (as unfortunately he now has !) the advantage of arguing after the fact.

This matter is already up for judgment. One of two courses can be followed by the Allies in the Arab lands, or in some parts of them. They can either, at enormous expense of lives and treasure and by the sacrifice of consistency with recent lip-service to the higher humanistic ideals, hold the Arabs down under themselves; or, at some sacrifice of pride and realisation of self in efficient government, they can put themselves under Arabs. If the last course is to be adopted and carried through to any good purpose, it must be inspired by a belief in Arab local independence developing towards Arab unity. But if either one course or the other is to be followed with any hope of practical success, so far as we in particular are concerned, we must begin by imposing unity on our own Imperial policy and control in the Near and Middle East; and that can only come about through some radical change in the ministerial arrangements of Whitehall.

D. G. HOGARTH.

Vol. 234.-No. 465.

2 E

Art. 12.-TRANS-CAUCASIA PAST AND PRESENT.

SOUTH of the great mass of the Caucasus lies a land of anomalies-anomalies both of nature and of humanity. Through the gloomy iron-grey cleft of Dariel, past Kazbek's 16,000 feet of rock and ice, the Georgian Military Road leads down to Tiflis; and beyond roll the rich corn-fields and pleasant woodlands of the Rion and Kur valleys. The Black Sea coast, land of melons and malaria, is but two days' journey from the parched steppe of Kara Bagh; and from the orchards of Erivan, noted for their little sweet seedless grapes, their luscious peaches, and their peculiar grey bees, can be seen the twin ice-tipped peaks of 'sublime' Ararat. Here too barbarism and civilisation meet in their most extreme forms-and collide. The wild aboriginal tribesmen of the Caucasian highlands can almost look down upon Tiflis, with its electric trams and automobiles in the broad Golovinski Prospekt, its clubs and offices; surrounded by Tatar villages, and facing, across the Caspian, the Turkoman steppe, Baku rises up, the ugliest, the most inhospitable, the most uninhabitable of all industrial cities; in Batum-the port for Europe-with its oiltanks, its oil-case factory, and its docks, struts, now and then a wild Adjar* from the neighbouring hills.

Historically the Caucasus has always been a NoMan's-Land; its valleys a battle-ground for contending Imperial races, its gorges a refuge for the remnants of broken nations. In the remoter villages can be found a hundred different racial types, the last survivors of forgotten tribes; the Armenians and Georgians themselves are refugee peoples, driven into this corner of the earth by the aggressions of Persians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Tatars, Turks. For brief periods during the tenth and twelfth centuries the Armenians and Georgians produced mushroom civilisations, only to be shattered by the great brigand-armies of Central Asia. When Peter the Great descended upon the Caucasus (1722), he found it in a state of feudal anarchy. Georgian 'kings' ruled the western lands, and Tatar khans, vassals of the

*The Adjars, ethnically Georgian but culturally Turkish, inhabit the hill-country south of Batum.