ARAB COUNTRIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 162, 1 October 1941, Page 3

ARAB COUNTRIES

FROM WHENCE CAME THEIR

FREEDOM

"All these Arab countries —Egypt the Hejaz, Palestine, Syria and Irak •—owo tlielv freedom from Ottoman domination to Great Britain; three of them—Egypt, the Hejaz and Irak— have received from Great Britain an absolute independence upon which -neither Nazism nor Fascism is likely to improve. There are those who believe that things need not have reached this pass had there been fewer and less rapid changes of British representatives in Bagdad. The East is influenced by personalities and the sympathy that comes with close knowledge. Ambassadors to Eastern Powers are not like the standardised interchangeable parts of motor cars equally serviceable in Madrid, Copenhagen or Rio de Janeiro. The recently published illuminating life of Sir Percy Cox—still remembered through Irak and up and down the Gulf as "Cukkus"—is an instance of this truth deserving careful study. Another example is Lord Gromen's long unchanged proconsulship —to which Britain owes her vital relations with Egypt, and Egypt her place in the sun." —Sir Ronald Storrs. in the Sunday Dispatch.