Big Battle in Arabia

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 279, 18 April 1911, Page 5

Big Battle in Arabia

TURKS v. ARABS. 1000 MEN KILLED AND WOUNDED. By Cable —Press Association —Copyright. Received 17, 7 p.m. Riza Bey heavily defeated the Yemen rebels. Three leaders were killed, and a thousand men killed or wounded. The Turkish casualties were slight. The main army has entered Sanaa. THE TERROR OF YEMEN. CAN THE YOUNG TURKS LAST 1 The dispatch of another large body of tTOops to Yemen, wrote Sir William Bamsav in the Manchester Guardian of January 30, is the worst augury for the stability of the present Turkish Administration. The Avar has dragged on for many years. The Arabs hate the Turks, and are subject only under compulsion. The task of holding* Arabia becomes for the Turks more and more difficult in proportion to the distance from their own country. Yemen has been long a name of horror to the villagers of Anatolia, who supply the strength of the ] Turkish armies. Service in Yemen has been accepted a death warrant. When twelve men went from a Turkish village to Yemen sometimes one returned, sometimes none. The patience and loyalty ■with which those poor peasants obeyed the call unmurmuringlv was marvellous; but it must find a limit even among the Anatolian Turks, the most patient and obedient of races. The men died, and they had not even the satisfaction of serving their Sovereign in the field. The Arabs were too elusive, and left the Turkish soldiers to the hand of Allah and the ravages of disease. A trifling skirmish occasionally, in which the Arabs rarely stood their ground, was the only show of war and fighting. Very few Turks were killed, or even wounded, by the enemy. Tney died from the effects of a climate to which they were unaccustomed. No attempt was made to teach them how to suit themselves to the heat and the surroundings of South Arabian life. Nothing was provided to alleviate their lot. They lived and died like flies, ignorant and uncared for. A CEASELESS DRAIN. This steady, ceaseless drain of the life-blood of Turkey was fatal, and as useless as it was fatal. The Turks cannot hold a land so distant and so hostile as Yemen, and there was nothing to sain from it if they could have held it They introduced no improvements; they u.u not civilise the people, or cultivate the ground, or do anything but extort a wretched pittance of taxation from a scanty and poverty-stricken population where they exercised their power. It was, however, a point of honor to hold Arabia; and one can understand that the old Sultan Abdul-Hamid was obliged to hold at least the northern province of j Hedjaz, for there lay the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. He based his authority—first among Ottoman Sultans to do so—on his rights and duties as Khalif; and only the owner of Mecca can be. recognised as Khalif. There was nothing for him to rest upon if he lost Mecca and the Khalifate. Hence his pet project of the Hedjaz railway, which should enable him to maintain his hold on Arabia without depending on the Suez Canal. The Young Turks cannot well abandon the holy cities. If they did so their prestige would be lost. They know that thov must hold them; and they shrink! from abandonee even Yemen, to the south, lest Mohometan feeling should regard them as unable to maintain what Abdul-Hamid maintained. In trying to hold both they are likely to lose all. There can be no doubt that, an effective maintenance of a smaller territory, and better administration of a narrower Empire was their wise course. Thev have chosen otherwise. They have squandered and are squandering money and men and all their little strength in these miaous and distant wars, especially in Arabia and Albania. The process cannot last much longer.