The Dominion. SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1918. THE ARAB REVOLT

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 110, 26 January 1918, Page 6

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1918. THE ARAB REVOLT

Though some of the oppressed races of the Ottoman Empire have been reduced by massacre and the cumulative effects of ago-long misrule to a state which precludes any hope of an effort for their own liberation, they are not all in this state of extreme dependence. The Arabs in particular have already given some very convincing proofs that they are not entirely deficient in the qualities which enabled their forefathers to rear an imposing empire. Only a few days ago it was reported that the Araps were successfully extending their operations against the Turks on the line of the Hejaz railway. At the narrowest view these activities are lightening the task uf the British army of invasion in Palestine, but they are still more important as a late indication of the vitality of that Arab renaissance which the war has made possible. Precisely how far the "nationality" movement has extended amongst the four million Arabs who inhabit various parts of Asiatic Turkey will not be known until the veil of the Turco German censorship has been finally torn asuader, but it has undoubtedly made promising headway, and those who best know the Arab race are full of hope that its time lias come to pass from degrading thraldom into a new ago of freedom in which something of its ancient glories will be revived. Suggestive evidence on this point is supplied in the triumphant success of the Aral) revolt in Hejaz. Since November, 1916, when he set up the standard of revolt, the Ghand Sherif Hussain of Mecca has conducted a victorious campaign against the Turks, driving them almost completely out of Western Arabia. Ho is to-day securely installed as an independent Arab king ah the seats of the Prophot, and has been recognised in that character by the Allies. He has from the outset been in touch with powerful neighbouring chieftains, and tho military operations against the Turks lately reported indicate that the revolt "is extending northward through tho tribes of Syria. Amongst its other results, the independence' movement in Hejaz has made an end of tho pretensions of tho Ottoman Sultans to tho Caliphate—pretensions under cover of which they claimed • a general, though ill-defined, authority over all Moslems. This authority Was tested and found wanting when Turkey, under German instigation, attempted to promote a "Holy War." It has now been abolished. These events at the spiritual headquarters of tho Moslem faith are calculated to stir the whole Arab race, but there is much to suggest that an even more powerful impulse has been given to the independence movement by the British campaign in Mesopotamia, which thus far has involved the occupation of Bagdad and tho liberation of numerous Arab tribes inhabiting the most fertile areas of Mesopotamia. The enthusiasm awakened in tho Arab mind by the expulsion of the Turks from tho City of the Caliphs is reflected in the observations of the leading Arabic daily of Cairo, AlMoicattam. "What magnificent visions are brought before tho imagination of an Arab by the namo of

Bagdad! It reminds us of nil tin: glory of ancient days, of the great Avail Empire founded on justice and order by our progressive and daring ancestors who loved science and developed art, commerce, and agriculture. •■ Such was Bagdad, the seat of glory and wealth, the capital of the Aiabs and Ihc whole East."

In considering tho importance of tho Arab revolt as setting disruptive forces in motion within tho Ottoman Empire, and equally in looking to the prospecte it opens for the future, duo account must bo taken of what the Arabs accomplished in their former days of greatness. For more- than six centuries Arab sovereigns ruled over Nearer Asio, Northern ifr-ica, and no inconsiderable portion of Europe; from the Upper Nile to the Black Sea, and from the Persian Gulf to the Pyrenees. It is recorded to their credit, too, that ; "whore they conquered they knew how to establish a settled administration which did not rest entirely upon military power; they fostered agriculture, trade, manufactures, irrigation; they had good laws and good judges; they showed a high respect for art. learning, literature, science and philosophy." In tho Arab heyday Bagdad was not, as it is to-day, "a disorderly agglomeration __ of tortuous streets," sprinkled with'ruins and inhabited by a squalid_ and ragged population, sunken in disease and poverty. It was a spacious city traversed by broad avenues and enclosed in massive walls—a city with a population more than ten times as great as at the present clay and boasting a society of wits and poets, philosophers and statesmen, lexicographers, learned doctors and metaphysicians. That a race with such traditions has languished for six centuries under the blight of Turksh rule may seem to imply that its greatness is extinct, but those who speak of tho modern Arab from a standpoint of intimate knowledge deny that he is an example of racial degeneracy. A partial explanation of tho causes which led to the Arabs becoming the prey and victims of peoples far inferior to themselves was , supplied by the late Sir Stanley Maude in the proclamation he issued on entering Bagdad.' Ho reminded'the Arabs'ori that occasion that for twenty-six generations they had suffered under strange tyrant's, "who have ever endeavour- | ed to set one Arab house against I another in order to profit by your dissensions.' . An even nearer approach to the heart of the matter I seems to bo made by those authorij ties who maintain that the Aral} J intellect is one that only produces j itself to the utmost in contact with i other minds. Developing this'theory j one writer observes that in the day's i of the Prophet the Arabs of Arabia i were, as to-day, intensely arhtoI cratic in sentiment- as regards birth and breed, desultory but courageous warriors, brilliant poets, fine conversationalists, and astute diplomatists.

Tho Arabs that Arabia has put forth (he continues) have been whatever tho contacts they have established with the outer world made them. When they met Borne they produced Palmyra, when they met Byzantium they produced the brilliant Ommayad civilisation, when they absorbed Sassanian -;ulture they produced Bagdad, when they invaded Spain they produced Cordova, but when <Aey were in turn subjected to tho Turks, not by conquest, but by the infiltration of Turkish dynasties and the Turcofication of the mercenary armies of the potty States, the Arabs wero divorced from civilisation and intellectual contact; they lost all tho trappings of material civilisation, keeping only their fiery hearts, their agile thoughts, their poetry, and their individuality. The Turk has not been able to oppress an Arab and reduce him to slavery and sullen bondage as he could Armenians, Bulgarians, and Greeks, The Arab tomained the intellectual superior of his master; the Turks could fight and bully, divide and rule; the Turk could redueo all Arabistan to ruins, but he could not make the Arab admit Turkish superiority. But just as the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Sassanian, and Spanish contacts were fruitful, bo tho Turco-Arab contact has been sterile, fruitful only iu ruins. The world-war has brought tho Arab race into touch with Western civilisation, and in the revivifying effect of this experience history is repeating itself. The present-day standards of the race as a race aro not measured by the achievements of its more enterprising members \v v ho are actively tattling for freedom or, as in Hejaz, substituting order and good government for tho f abuses of Turkish misrule. But the belief seems to bo amply warranted that tho Arabs to-day are not only doing something to hasten tho downfall of the corrupt Ottoman tyranny, but are in a fair way to recover something of their former standing as a nation.