FRESH ROUTES FOR ANCIENT RUTS.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 September 1920, Page 3

FRESH ROUTES FOR ANCIENT RUTS.

(From the Bulletin)

The last time I paßsed through the Suez Canal, Tommies and Indian troops were hastily entrenching on the Turkish side, and the first Australian armada was a few hours out from Suez. To-day , gangs of coolies are collecting the vast 1 debris of war nnd dumping it along the , Canal for transportation. All the length ,of the grey, ugly ditch ‘the bank is honeycombed with trenches, and out j into the desert stretches a cobweb of rusty wire entanglements. At one spot is a dump of light railway material sufficient to span a minor continent, and strings of camels float up and over the i long desert swells, bearing fresh salvage from the wreck. I Near the Bitter Lakes we tie up to the bank to let an oil tramp through. Not a living thing is in sight. Then, with a sudden windy roar, an aeroplane soars like a great bird across our forestry, glides along our side on a level with the lower portholes, and comes to rest in the desert near by, no longer a bird, but a gaily-painted dragon-fly. Out of its body bounds a little black Irish poodle, followed by a large brown bulldog. These are joined by an officer in khaki, bareheaded under the fieice Egyptian sun, and' a pilot clothed in dungarees and grease spots. The four move across to the Canal hank and hail the ship. The officer wants a friend, a passenger from India. They have flown from Cairo on the off-chance of meeting him, and will fly hack there. Meantime < they will just buzz across to Suez for j afternoon tea and pick him up at Is- j mailia. - It leaves us a little breathless, this i talk of long distances as if they were mere catlcaps. From our floating palace, imprisoned in the narrow gutter dug by De Lesseps, we watched the curious quartette walk back to tlieir ( dragon-fly, climb into its palpitating j bowels and go soaring over an oasis in 1 the direction of Suez. J Port Said is full of British, French L and Indian soldiers. Motors patrol the streets. There are the usual rumours , of native trouble and more than the ( usual truculent insolence from the swarms of street parasites. There is real trouble brewing over the sky line, J and there lias been some fighting. At the moment when the friends of the 1 young Turks were asking the Pence Con- \ ference to give Turkish nationalisation t another chnnee, Mustnpha Kernel's fol- n lowers took that offered by the poorly manned Allied garrisons to drive the French, with 800 casualties of the Marash, celebrating their victory with the customary massacre of the American • population. On March Bth the National Syrian Congress sitting at Damascus, proclaimed the independence of Syria and offered Emil Feisal the. kingship of : Palestine and United Syria. That pic-, turesque person, whose romantic apr pearance and fine bearing so captivated the native and suscepU •!;?. politicians of the Paris Conference, proiopM./ accepted ; it. At the same time and place a Mesopotamian Congress proclaimed the independence of Mesopotamia under Emir . Abdullah, the brother,of Feisal, Two days later 52 members* pfe the Legisla- | tivq Assembly at Cairo proclaimed the , independence' of Egypt and the Sudan Turks and Arabs have united in a de- , termination, to, turn the French out of y Syria, a.nt\ iue threatening Alexan- • clftt.rva, Adana and other important ceil- - tres of Asja Minor. Arabia is to Ke for the Art#-. T hi . s < is to be,the iir\\ dft? tripe, i\'bp'h t\\e dilnto.Yivies.s pf the Big Four in\d the dis- * seusipns of fho Allies have created in . the wreckage As ’ a Minor. The f awakening of national sentiment fos- _ tered by tiie sham spiritual clangs of the Sultan which pintle fflndus and Moliaptpio.tfaiiii in India join in incongruous - alliance to mourn over the proposed ex- . pulsion of the Graqd XIU’U StfiUV s ] lioul. Bpt; whether (he Syiltan stays in j or nfit, Feisal intends to < stay ip Damascus, To the sorrow of 1 our Hebrew millionaires, who were pre- j paring to loave Fifth Avenue and Potts j points to return to their ancestral ( homos, there will bo no farflung new i Zion in Palestine. The Arab cultivator < has no intention of giving up. $$ holdI ing to any alien. For fhtt and Jewish there wlv TCmains fhe, alternative pf Utviritg _in . goy.evnnient with the Avabs or suffering a persepntion probably worse than that of the Turks. The French, English, Italian and Greek dream of founding in Asia Minor a vast Tom Tiddler’s ground requires for its realisation the wbyjp*. sale reconquering of pn\Yitp:>. restored to the Arabs apd the, crushing of a national spirit,”as, the Allies have found : in Y.arious parts' of fhe world, 1.8 »» «** ! citing pastinu;, Vftpidly becoming unj fasbmqablp. Even' the blessed word I “mandate” fails to make it lucrative, i It was a young Oxford graduate namI et j Lawrence who had most to do with 1 the genesis of this new Arab empire. While the limelight shope brightly upon 1 Feisal, L.iiwiwi Fits, quietly at work 1 amongst tl'e disunited tribes of the Hncljaz, iie accomplished what caliphs and sultans had failed to achieve in the 1 course of centuries, and out of the warring Bedouin tribes created a unified force with which he drove the Turks out of Arabia, 1 Standing under the statue of UcLes- ‘ i seps that waves an inviting hand to--1 wards his tedious ditch, we felt that this link of empire, forged so laboriously and defended in the latest war at such a cost of good British and Australian lives, has become a very shak.v | link indeed. With a potential Arab empire stretching from Mnsuf to Damas.cus and £rp,m Painaseus to the Hodjaz on fhp \>ne side, and on the other • Fgypt demanding independence more ' a nd more insistently, the great Canal J becomes as a lhm <>f communication J strategically unsound. The remedy is ‘ obvious. It should be abandoned be- ? fore it is seriously threatened. Let tho desert blow into it, or drain it, and let the Arab cultivate in it Jerusalem i artiohokes or whatever the Arab is in the habit of cultivating. Develop insjpad a line of communication which can never be cut—the route through the t air.