CHAPTER V

A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE 187

PAN-ISLAM

CHAPTER I

ITS ORIGIN AND MEANING

Much has been written about Christianity and Islam, so I hasten to

inform my readers that this is not a religious treatise, nor do I class

them with the globe-trotter who searched Benares brass-bazar diligently

for "a really nice image of Allah" and pronounced the dread name of

Hindustan's avenging goddess like an effervescing drink.

I presuppose that Christians or Moslems who read this book have got

beyond the stage of calling each other pagans or _kafirs_, and it will

have served its purpose if it brings about a friendlier feeling between

the two great militant creeds whose adherents have confronted together

many a stricken field.

Most people have heard of the pan-Islamic movement, especially during

the War. Some of us have called it a political bogey and some a

world-menace, but these are extremist views--it is really the practical

protest of Moslems against the exploitation of their spiritual and

material resources by outsiders.

Pan-Islam (as its name implies) is a movement to weld together Moslems

throughout the world regardless of nationality. The ethics and ideals of

Islam are more attainable to ordinary human beings than those of

Christianity: whether it is better to aim high and score a partial

success or aim lower and achieve is a matter of personal opinion and

need not be discussed here, but one tangible fact stands out--that

Islam, with its easier moral standard and frequent physical discipline

of attitudes and observances connected with obligatory prayer, enters

far more into the daily life of its adherents than Christianity does

with us. Hence pan-Islam is more than a spiritual movement: it is a

practical, working proposition which has to be reckoned with when

dealing with Moslems even in secular matters.

Pan-Islam is no new thing--it is as old as the Hejira, and then helped

to knit together Moslem Arabs against their pagan compatriots who were

persecuting them. In the palmy days of the Abbaside Caliphate it was

quiescent enough, and men of all creeds were welcomed at Baghdad for

their art, learning, or handicraft when we were massacring Jews in

London as part of a coronation pageant.

Medieval Moslems never fanned the movement into flame as long as they

were let alone, and even now tribes living beyond the scope of

missionaries and traders prefer the Christian traveller whom they know

to the Moslem stranger from the coast whom they usually distrust, and

who, to do him justice, seldom ventures among them, unless compelled by

paramount self-interest, generally in connection with some European

scheme or other.

Hitherto pan-Islam had been an instinctive and entirely natural

_riposte_ to the menace or actual aggression of non-Moslems; it assumed

the character of a definite organisation under the crafty touch of that

wily diplomat Abdul Hamid, once called by harsh critics "the Damned,"

though his efforts in that direction have been quite eclipsed by more

recent exponents.

In extreme evangelical circles it used to be frequently urged that

pan-Islam was a bugbear discovered, if not created, by one of India's

most eminent Viceroys, whose remarks thereon are said to have given

Abdul Hamid the hint. This method of eliminating a danger by denying its

existence has been discredited, since 1914, as completely as the

somewhat similar one (attributed to Mississippi engineers) of sitting on

the safety-valve just too long for safety. Moreover, in view of Abdul's

undoubted ability, he probably discovered for himself its efficacy as a

weapon of reprisal when hard pressed by pertinacious and inquisitive

Ambassadors, for he often found himself much embarrassed in his dealings

with Armenia and other domestic affairs by the intrusions of the more

formidable Christian Powers.

Great Britain naturally felt the point of this weapon most as governing

wide Moslem territories, and one can imagine some such interview as

this:

"Frontier rectifications, my dear Sir Nicholas? By all means--and,

talking about frontiers, I do hope affairs are quite quiet now on your

north-west frontier; I take such an interest in my East Indian

correspondence."

And those Britons who have handled Oriental affairs for the last twenty

years can appreciate the extent of that interest when we remember that

even while Yamen Arabs were fighting the Turks, their neighbours on the

Aden side of the frontier were praying in their mosques that the Sultan

and his troops might be victorious "by land and sea."

All this, however, was merely playing with intrigue as a political

counterpoise; it remained for a Christian nation to put pan-Islam on a

business footing. First we have polite bagmen calling at Stamboul with

German guns and a German military system. Then "our Mr. William" of the

well-known Potsdam firm of Hohenzollern and Sons made his great

advertising campaign in the Near East; many of us remembered his

theatrical visit to Saladin's tomb and the tawdry wreath with its

bombastic inscription, "From the Emperor of the Franks to the Emperor of

the Saracens--Greeting."

That astute "pilgrim" made himself especially affable to the American

Protestant missionaries in the Holy Land, preached to a small but select

congregation at the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and posed alternately

as a pious but militant Moslem (when Hajji Guiyaum rode in military pomp

into Jerusalem) and as a prince of peace. That the hospice of Kaiserin

Augusta Victoria on the top of the Mount of Olives was loop-holed for

musketry and mounted a searchlight in its tower that could signal with

Haifa was possibly due to some wayward caprice of the builder, but it

came in very useful later on. So did the scholarly researches of eminent

Germans in Sinai, assisted as they were by maps which the Anglo-Egyptian

authorities courteously placed at their disposal, and which formed a

basis for a more detailed survey of wells and routes.

But the old firm at Potsdam excelled itself in its representatives on

the Palestine coast. There was, for example, the German Consul at Haifa

famed for his culture and diplomacy (the Teutonic brand), who also spoke

Arabic, Turkish, French and English fluently. This gifted official

frequented native cafes, where he fraternised with the local Arabs and

conducted a vigorous verbal propaganda against the Entente. Then there

was the German engineer who wrecked the British railway scheme to

connect Haifa and Damascus and re-naturalised as a German citizen after

being American Consul. The Belgian Vice-Consul too, that merry Hun, who

was also agent for our Khedivial mail line. When the Turks came in

against us this good and faithful servant danced on the Belgian and

British flags and threw himself heart and soul into pan-Islamic

propaganda.

Nor must we overlook that reverend pastor and Koranic scholar who

distributed anti-Christian and more especially anti-British propaganda

by means of native emissaries. Last but not least, the Herr Direktor of

the Hejaz Railway, who was collecting railway material for Sinai before

war broke out. Some time before the Turks came in he imported, for the

alleged use of the Jewish technical school, so great a quantity of high

explosives that it caused a panic in Haifa. Yet it did not sufficiently

impress our Levantine Vice-Consul there for him to report it, though the

German Consul's remarkable activity to get the stuff landed might have

given him the hint.

At Jeddah our Khedivial Mail Agency, under the good old English name of

Robinson, was a perfect nest of Germans and pro-German Dutchmen when I

called there in 1912. They were very active early in the War, but had

wisely disappeared before my last visit, when Jeddah fell to our

blockade and bombardment.

As for Hodeidah, the chief port of Yamen, it was the happy

hunting-ground of a great German firm, and the American Consul was

himself a German.

Decidedly, for people who believed that they had a monopoly of Divine

assistance, they had taken a lot of pains that their Holy War should be

a success.

To grasp the world-wide conspiracy which hatched out so many formidable

events during the War and to appreciate the causes which contributed to

its final collapse we must take a comprehensive glance at the Ottoman

Caliphate and how it came about.

Remember, the Ottoman Turks are not Semitic, as is the bulk of the

Moslem world. Tradition derives them from Turk, son of Japhet, and they

are a Turco-Mongol blend which most people agree to call Tartar. Their

language is closely allied to Mongolian, though written in Arabic, or

rather Persian, character, and its Arabic words are pronounced

unintelligibly to an Arab. A true Turk learns Arabic with difficulty,

and a far higher percentage of Britons in India speak Hindustani than

Turks do Arabic in Turkish Arabia.

Then, again, look at their early history. Their Mongol-Turkish ancestors

were driven westward because they made Mongolia too hot for them, and we

hear of Turks smelting iron for their Mongol masters in what is now

Eastern Turkestan until they threw off the Mongol yoke in A.D. 552, when

Turkish history begins.

At the dawn of Islam (A.D. 632) Turks and Mongols were harrying each

other all over the Caspian countries like rival wolf-packs, sometimes

combining for a raid on their neighbours and then fighting over the

loot. That is why you find racial Turks in such outlandish places as

Merv, Khiva, Samarcand, Bokhara and Cabul, for the Turkish race is not

confined to Asia Minor and Turkey in Europe, but is scattered over parts

of Russia and China and Afghanistan.

Now to consider the Ottoman Turks, with whom we are chiefly concerned.

They were superior to their Mongol fellow-wolves in that they could

smelt iron and had some idea of constructive enterprise. They had also

adopted Islam, which was a great advance from the Shamanistic wizardry

and totem-worship they used to practise, and their contact with the

Arabs who raided them and afterwards accepted their military service to

the Caliphate had civilised them considerably. Their Seljouk cousins

were already ruling in Asia Minor, whither they had been driven by the

Mongols when a wandering Turkish band sought similar asylum there in the

earlier part of the thirteenth century and intervened most opportunely

to help the Seljouks repulse a Mongol raid; in return, the Seljouk

Emperor gave them a grant of land in Bithynia.

In 1300 the Seljouk Empire was finally smashed by the Mongols, who

withdrew eastward without occupying the country, for they were merely

predatory and destructive and had no gift or desire for permanent

colonisation. So it came about that the Ottoman Empire began in 1326

under Othman I in Bithynia and grew by absorption and lack of effective

opposition until, in 1517, we find it spreading under Selim I (the

Magnificent) to the gates of Vienna and extending from Germany to Persia

and from Arabia to the Atlantic.

The benign sun of the Arabian Caliphate, under which learning and

industry flourished securely, had long since set in blood under

circumstances of treachery and murder which have hardly been surpassed

even in the late war.

Under the later Abbasides, when the glories of the Caliphate were

waning, there were bitter dissensions between Sunnis and Shiahs (the

main orthodox and schismatic sects of Islam) which culminated in fierce

rioting at Baghdad in 1258. The then Caliph was foolish enough to appeal

for assistance against the schismatic seditionists to his Mongol

neighbours. It had been done before under similar conditions, and even

in these days such a manoeuvre seems still to appeal to some types of

religious fanaticism, judging by certain passages between our sister

isle and the modern Hun. On the above occasion, however, it was

practised once too often. Hulaku Khan, the fierce Mongol chief, had long

had his eye on Baghdad as holding princely loot in all too slack a grip,

for the Caliphate had been relying on Tartar mercenaries for years.

He approached that queen of cities, as she then was, with a great host,

lured the Caliph out to meet him by the promise of an alliance, and

murdered the whole party, the Caliph being trampled to death. Then

Baghdad was given over to sack and massacre for more than a month, by

which time 1,800,000 people are said to have perished.

The Caliphate was transplanted to Cairo, where it dragged out an anaemic

existence until Selim I seized it, with the person of the then Caliph,

by right of conquest, and it has been an appanage of the Ottoman

reigning house ever since.

Selim the Magnificent may be called the Turkish top-note. After him the

Ottoman Empire gradually declined. It has generally taken advantage of

disaster or dissension to extend its borders--a precarious method of

empire-building unless consolidated by benevolent and sound

administration, which is not a feature of Turkish rule. Add to this the

facts that Turks are slack Moslems, that the national party which ousted

Abdul Hamid (himself most orthodox) is not religious at all, with all

its barbarian, totemistic nonsense of the "White Wolf," and that they

_would_ pose as conquerors on insufficient grounds, and we begin to see

why they have been kicked out of their Asiatic empire bit by bit.

If Turk and Mongol had been capable of dynastic evolution and

co-ordinate policy they might have shared most of the Eastern Hemisphere

between them. We have seen the high-water mark of the Ottoman Empire;

Marco Polo has told us of Kubla Khan's Chinese Empire, and the Moguls

did much for India in their prime. But the wolf-taint was in their

blood, and just as a pet wolf gets fat and degenerate, so it has been

with these Tartars. Their undoubted soldierly qualities are sapped by

luxury, and they possess no constructive gifts which peace and

prosperity might develop. Hence it is that every empire they have

founded has risen to a culminating point of conquest and then dwindled

away in sloth and corruption.

The Turk is not fit to be put in charge of any race but his own, for he

is at heart a bitter wolf who will turn and rend without ruth or

warning. I have met Turks who have shown tact, humanity, and ability

under trying conditions, and I have met well-mannered wolves in

captivity, but would not trust the pack ranging in its native forest. I

once heard a member of our Ottoman Embassy who has unique experience of

the Turk size him up as follows: "The Turk can be a suave and cultured

gentleman till his time comes, and then he will tear your guts out and

_dance_ on them." It was the Seljouk Turks whose persecutions caused

the Crusades. Before them, Arab rule in Palestine was tolerant enough,

and the Caliph Omar was scrupulously careful when he entered Jerusalem

as a conqueror to respect Christian prejudices and the monuments of our

creed.

So it came about that their empire was dropping from them piecemeal even

before the War, for a race that can no longer conquer and has never

learned to conciliate must draw in its borders or cease to exist as a

State.

When war broke out Turkey was just hanging on to the last scrap of her

empire in Europe and had lost all but the shadow of sovereignty in

Egypt, while Arabia was seething with discontent, where not in actual

revolt, and regarded the belated efforts of local officials to govern

tactfully as signs of weakness.

The colossal brigandage of Germany appealed to her freebooting

instincts, although it took a corrupt, self-seeking Government and a

final push from the "Goeben" and the "Breslau" to plunge her into war

against her best friends.

To proclaim a _jihad_ was her obvious course, if only to keep Arabia

moderately quiet, apart from its value as a weapon against her Christian

foes. We will now see how she fared in the "Holy War."

CHAPTER II

ITS BEARING ON THE WAR

Quite early in the War those of us who had to deal with pan-Islamic

propaganda realised that the widespread organisation which Germany had

grafted on to the original Turkish movement must have existed some time

before the outbreak of actual hostilities.

For example, there was a snug, smooth-running concern at San Francisco

which spread its tentacles all over the Moslem world, but specialised in

a seditious newspaper called _El'-Ghadr_, which means treachery or

mutiny. This was particularly directed at our Indian Army, but Egypt was

not forgotten. A gifted censor sent us an early copy, but had,

unfortunately, lost the wrapper, so our earnest desire to make the

addressee's closer acquaintance was thwarted.

Stamboul was naturally an active centre, and, before the Turks entered

the War, Turkish officers in full uniform, and sometimes even wearing

swords, permeated Cairo cafes with espionage and verbal propaganda,

trying to fan into flame the military ardour of Egyptian students and

men about town. This last activity was wasted effort, as anyone who knew

the type could have told them; the effendis abstained from the crudities

of personal service and confined themselves to stirring up the town

riffraff, who wanted a safer form of villainy than open riot, and the

_fellahin_, who wanted a safe market for their produce and easy

taxation, both of which they stood to lose by violence. Many a _fellah_

still believes that the War was a myth created by the authorities to put

prices up. Even Teuton activity failed to stimulate these placid folk,

and the glad tidings preached by the madder type of German missionary

that the Kaiser was the Messiah left them unmoved.

When the Turks came in against us, and the ex-Khedive, safe among his

new-found friends, threw off the mask, the Cairene effendis became

tremendously active. Forgetting how they had disliked Abbas II and

called him a huckstering profligate, they mourned for his deposal by

wearing black ties, especially the students. Some of these enthusiastic

young heroes even went so far as to scatter chlorate of potash crackers

about when their school was visited by poor old Sultan Husein (who was

worth six of his predecessor), and he got quite a shock, which was

flagrantly and noisomely accentuated by asafoetida bomblets.

The ex-Khedive did not share their patriotic grief. He was quite

comfortable while awaiting the downfall of British rule, for, with

shrewd prescience that almost seems inspired, he had taken prudent

measures for his future comfort and luxury before leaving Egypt on his

usual summer tour to Europe. He had mortgaged real estate up to the

hilt, realised on immobile property as far as possible, and diverted his

fluid assets through various channels beyond the reach of his sorrowing

subjects and the Egyptian Government. When an official inventory was

taken in Abdin Palace at the accession of the late Sultan Husein, it was

ascertained that the famous inlaid and begemmed coffee-service, which,

like our Crown jewels, was not supposed to leave the country, had been

sent after the ex-Khedive to his new address--truly a man of parts. I

have often wondered whether his Hunnish friends got him to disgorge by

means of a forced loan or war-bonds, or something of that sort. If so,

they achieved something notable, for he has left behind him, beside his

liabilities, the name of being a difficult man to get money out of.

When the Turco-Teuton blade was actually drawn in Holy War I was down

with enteric, which I had contracted while working in disguise among

seditious circles in the slums of Old Cairo. I just convalesced in time

to join the Intelligence Staff on the Canal the day before Jemal Pasha's

army attacked. His German staff had everything provided for in advance

with their usual thoroughness. From the documents and prisoners that

came through our hands we learnt that the hotel in Cairo where the

victors were to dine after their triumphant entry had actually been

selected, and some enthusiasts went so far as to insist that the menu

had been prepared. If so, they omitted to get the Canal Army on toast,

and for want of this indispensable item the event fell through. All the

same, it was a soldierly enterprise, and if the Senussis had invaded in

force or the population risen behind us, as they hoped would be the

case, the result might have been different.

As it was they put up a very good fight and their arrangements for

getting across the Sinaitic desert were excellent. For the last ten

miles they man-handled their pontoons to the edge of the Canal. These

craft were marvels of lightness and carrying capacity, but, of course,

no protection whatever against even a rifle-bullet, and they had not

fully reckoned with the Franco-British naval flotilla, which proved a

formidable factor.

The morning after the main fight a little Syrian subaltern passed

through my hands. He had been slightly wounded in the leg and still

showed signs of nervous shock, so I made him sit down with a cigarette

while I questioned him. He had been in charge of a pontoon manned by his

party and said that they had got halfway across the Canal in perfect

silence when "the mouth of hell opened" and the pontoon was sinking in a

swirl of stricken men amid a hail of projectiles. He and two others swam

to our side of the Canal, where they surrendered to an Indian

detachment.

Our Indian troops on the Canal were naturally a mark for pan-Islamic

propaganda reinforced by Hindu literature of the _Bande Mataram_

type,--a double-barrelled enterprise to bag both the great creeds of

India. The astute propagandists had a pamphlet or two aimed at Sikhism,

which they seemed to consider a nation, as they spoke of their national

aspirations, though an elementary study of the subject might have taught

them that it was a religious and secular movement originally intended to

curb Moslem power in India during the sway of the later Moguls. Anyone

but a Moslem can be a Sikh.

Naturally I was on the _qui vive_ for signs of pan-Islamic activity on

the enemy's side, and I questioned my little Syrian very closely to

ascertain how far the movement was used as a driving force among the

troops engaged against us. He, personally, had rather a grievance on the

subject, for the Indian Moslems who took him had reproached him bitterly

for fighting on the wrong side. "I fought," he said, "because it was my

duty as an officer of the Ottoman Army. I know that men were invited to

join as for a _jihad_, but we officers did not deceive ourselves. _Par

exemple_, I think myself a better Moslem than any Turk, but what would

you?" I consoled the little man while concealing my satisfaction at the

feeling displayed against him. An extraordinarily heterogeneous

collection of prisoners came dribbling through my hands directly after

the Turks were repulsed. Most were practically deserters who had been

forcibly enrolled, given a Mauser and a bandoleer, and told to go and

fight for the Holy Places of Islam. As one of the more intelligent

remarked, "If the Holy Places are really in danger, what are we doing

down this way?"

They came from all over the Moslem world. There were one or two Russian

pilgrims returning from Mecca to be snapped up by the military

authorities at Damascus railway station when they got out of the pilgrim

train from Medina. There were cabdrivers from Jerusalem, a stranded

pilgrim from China, several Tripolitans who had been roped in on the

Palestine seaboard while trying to get a passage home, a Moor who tried

to embrace my feet when I spoke of the snow-crowned Atlas above Morocco

City (Marraksh) and told him that he would be landed at Tangier in due

course--Inshallah. Of course we released, and repatriated as far as we

could, men who were not Ottoman subjects and had obviously been forced

into service against us. A few days later, when Jemal Pasha's army was

getting into commissariat difficulties out in the Sinaitic desert (for

the Staff had relied on entering Egypt), we began to get the real Turks

among our prisoners.

I was very curious to ascertain if they had been worked up with

pan-Islamic propaganda or carried any of it on them, for there was not

even a Red Crescent Koran on any of the Arabic-speaking prisoners. A

search of their effects revealed a remarkable phase of propaganda. There

was hardly any religious literature except a loose page or two of some

pious work like the "Traditions of Muhammad," but there were quantities

of rather crude (and very lewd) picture-cards portraying soldiers in

Turkish uniform outraging and murdering nude or semi-nude women and

children, while corpses in priestly garb, shattered crucifixes, and

burning churches indicated the creed that was being so harried and gave

the scene a stimulating background. From their appearance I should say

these pictures were originally engraved to commemorate Balkan or

Armenian atrocities, but their possessors, on being closely questioned,

admitted that the impression conveyed to them was of the joyous licence

which was to be theirs among the Frankish civilians after forcing the

Canal. One Kurdish gentleman had among his kit fancy socks, knitted

craftily in several vivid colours, also ornate slippers to wear in his

promised palatial billet at Cairo. There were some odd articles among

the kit of these Turkish prisoners, to wit, a brand-new garden

thermometer, which some wag insisted was for testing the temperature of

the Canal before immersion, and a lavatory towel looted from the Hejaz

railway. Still, nothing was quite so remarkable as a white flag with a

jointed staff in a neat, compact case which had been carried by a German

officer. Among his papers was an indecent post-card not connected, I

think, with propaganda of any sort, as it portrayed a bright-coloured

female of ripe figure and Teutonic aspect, wearing a pair of long

stockings and high-heeled shoes, and bore the legend "Gruss von

Muenchen."

A certain coyness, or possibly an appreciation of their personal value,

kept most of the German officers from actual contact with our line. Only

one reached the Canal bank, and he is there still. The German touch,

however, was much in evidence. There were detailed written orders about

manning the pontoons, not to talk, cough, sneeze, etc., and for each man

to move along the craft as far as feasible and then sit down. They seem

to have relied entirely on surprise, and ignored the chance of its

occurring on the wrong side of the Canal. The emergency rations too

which we found on the earlier batches of prisoners had a distinctly

Teutonic flavour--they were so scientifically nourishing in theory and

so vilely inedible in practice. They were a species of flat gluten cake

rather like a dog-biscuit, but much harder. An amateur explosive expert

of ours tested one of these things by attempting detonation and ignition

before he would let his batch of prisoners retain them, which, to do

their intelligence justice, they were not keen on doing, but offered any

quantity of the stuff for cigarettes. We ascertained from them that you

were supposed to soak it in water before tackling it in earnest, but as

the only supply (except the runlet they still carried on them) was in

the fresh-water canal behind our unshaken line, such a course was not

practicable; the discovery of a very dead Turk some days later in that

canal led to the ribald suggestion that he had rashly endeavoured to eat

his ration. Our scientist laid great stress on its extraordinary

nutritive properties, but desisted, after breaking a tooth off his

denture, in actual experiment.

German influence, too, was apparent in the relations between officers

and men. A Turkish _yuzbashi_ was asked to get a big batch of prisoners

to form two groups according to the languages they spoke--Arabic or

Turkish. It was not an easy task in the open on a pitch-black night, but

he did it with soldierly promptitude and flung his glowing cigarette end

in the face of a dilatory private. As a natural corollary it may be

mentioned here that one or two of our prisoners had deserted after

shooting officers who had struck them.

For some days after the battles of Serapeum and Toussoum we expected

another attempt, but they had been more heavily mauled than we thought

at first. The dead in the Canal were kept down by the weight of their

ammunition for some time, and the shifting sand on the Sinaitic side

was always revealing hastily-buried corpses on their line of retreat.

Jemal Pasha hurried back to Gaza and published a grandiloquent report

for Moslem consumption, to the effect that the Turks were already in

Cairo (as was indeed the case with many hundreds), and that, of the

_giaour_ fleet, one ship had sunk, one had been set on fire, and the

rest had fled. Two heavy howitzers, as a matter of fact, had managed by

indirect fire from a concealed position to land a couple of projectiles

on the "Hardinge," which was not originally built for such rough

treatment, being an Indian marine vessel taken over by the Navy. She

gave more than she got when her four-point-sevens found the massed

Turkish supports.

A great deal of criticism has been flung at this first series of fights

on the Canal, mostly by Anglo-Egyptian civilians. They asked derisively

whether we were protecting the Canal or the Canal us. The answer is in

the affirmative to both questions. Ordinary steamer traffic was only

suspended for a day during the first onslaught, and the G.O.C. was not

such a fool as to leave the Canal in his rear and forgo the defensive

advantage. There are some who, in their military ardour, would have had

him pursue the enemy into the desert, forgetting that to leave a sound

position and pursue a superior force on an ever-widening front in a

barren country which they know better than you do and have furnished

with their own supply-bases is just asking for trouble. Our few

aeroplanes in those days could only reconnoitre twenty miles out, and

there was no evidence that the enemy had not merely fallen back to his

line of wells preparatory to another attempt. We had not then the men,

material, or resources for a triumphant advance into Sinai; it was

enough to make sure of keeping the enemy that side of the Canal with the

Senussi sitting on the fence and Egypt honeycombed with seditious

propaganda.

Anyone at all in touch with native life in Cairo could gauge the extent

of propagandist activity by gossip at cafes and in the bazars. The

Senussi was marching against us. India was in revolt and the Indian Army

on the Canal had joined the Turks. The crowning stroke of ingenuity was

a tale that received wide credence among quite intelligent Egyptians. It

was to the effect that the Turks had commandeered an enormous number of

camels and empty kerosene tins. This was quite true so far, but the yarn

then rose to the following flight of fancy: These empty tins were to be

filled with dry cement and loaded on camels, which were to be marched

without water for days until they reached the Canal, when the pangs of

thirst would compel them to rush madly into the water. The cement would

solidify and the Faithful would march across on a composite bridge of

camel and concrete. Our flotilla was to be penned in by similar means.

There must be something about a Turk that hypnotises an Egyptian. His

country has suffered appallingly under Ottoman rule, and a pure-blooded

Turk can seldom be decently civil to him and considers him almost

beneath contempt. This is the conquering Tartar pose that has earned the

Turk such detestation and final ruin in Arabia, but it seems to have

fascinated the Egyptian like a rabbit in the presence of a python. Quite

early in the Turkish invasion of Sinai a detachment of Egyptian camelry,

operating in conjunction with the Bikanirs, deserted _en masse_ to the

enemy. It was at first supposed that they had been captured, but we

afterwards heard of their being feted somewhere in Palestine. On the

other hand, an Egyptian battery did yeoman service on the Canal; I saw a

pontoon that looked like a carelessly opened sardine-tin as a result of

its attentions.

The most tragic aspect of this spurious and mischievous propaganda was

its victims from Indian regiments. The Indian Moslem as a rule has no

illusions about the Turks, and will fight them at sight, but there will

always be a few misguided bigots to whom a specious and dogmatic

argument will appeal. There is no occasion to dwell on these cases,

which were sporadic only and generally soon met with the fate incurred

by attempted desertion to the enemy.

We looked on the movement as an insidious and dangerous disease and did

our best to trace it to its source and stop the distributing channels.

After events on the Canal had simmered down, I was seconded to Cairo to

help tackle the movement there: to show how little hold it had over the

minds of thinking Moslems. I may mention that my colleague was a Pathan

major who was a very strict Moslem and a first-rate fellow to boot.

We both served under an Anglo-Indian major belonging to the C.I.D., one

of the most active little men I have ever met. There were also several

"ferrets," or Intelligence agents, who came into close contact with the

"suspects" and could be trusted up to a certain point if you looked

sharply after them. This is as much as can be said for any of these men,

though some are better, and some worse, than others. On the Canal we

employed numbers of them to keep us informed of the enemy's movements

and used to check them with the aerial reconnaissance--they needed it.

It did not take us long to find out that these sophisticated Sinaites

had established an Intelligence bureau of their own. They used to meet

their "opposite numbers" employed by the enemy at pre-arranged spots

between the lines and swop information, thereby avoiding unnecessary

toil or risk (the Sinaitic Bedouin loathes both) and obtaining news of

interest for both sides. It was a magnificently simple scheme; its sole

flaw was in failing to realise that some of us had played the Great Game

before. We used to time our emissaries to their return and cross-check

them where their wanderings intersected those of others--all were

supposed to be trackers and one or two knew something about it. Of

course they were searched and researched on crossing and returning to

our outpost line, for they could not be trusted to refuse messages to or

from the Turks. It was among this coterie that the brilliant idea

originated of shaving a messenger's head, writing a despatch on his

scalp, and then letting his hair grow before he started to deliver it. I

doubt if any of our folk were thorough enough for this, but we tested

for it occasionally, and an unpleasant job it was. Generally they would

incur suspicion by their too speedy return and the nonchalant way in

which they imparted tidings which would have driven them into ecstasies

of self-appreciation had they obtained such by legitimate methods. Then

a purposely false bit of information calculated to cause certain

definite action on the other side would usually betray them. Some

purists suggested a firing party as a fitting end for these gambits, but

that would have been a waste. Such men have their uses, until they know

they are suspected, as valuable channels of misinformation. No doubt the

enemy knew this too, and that is how an Intelligence Officer earns his

pay, by sifting grain from chaff as it comes in and sending out empty

husks and mouldy news.

But to return to Cairo. We netted a good deal of small fry, but only

landed one big fish during the time I was attached. He was a

Mesopotamian and a very respectable old gentleman, who followed the

calling of astrologer and peripatetic quack--a common combination and

admirably adapted for distributing propaganda. He came from Stamboul

through Athens with exemplary credentials, and might have got through to

India, which was the landfall he proposed to make, if his propagandist

energy had not led him to deviate on a small side-tour in Egypt. Here

we got on his track, and I boarded the Port Said express at short notice

while he and the "ferret" who had picked him up got into a third-class

compartment lower down. As the agent made no signal after the train had

pulled out, I knew our man had not got the bulk of his propaganda with

him, otherwise I had powers to hold up the express, for it was more

important to get his stuff than the man himself. At Port Said he had a

chance of seeing me, thanks to the agent's clumsiness, and I had to

shave my beard off and buy a sun-helmet in consequence, for I was

travelling in the same ship along the Canal to see that he did not

communicate with troops on either side of the bank, and on the slightest

suspicion he would have put his stuff over the side. All went smoothly

and he was arrested in Suez roads by plain-clothes men with a sackful of

seditious literature for printing broadcast in India. Of course they

arrested the "ferret" too, as is usual in these cases. I went ashore

with them in the police-launch as a casual traveller and was amused to

hear the agent rating the old man for not having prophesied this mishap

when telling his fortune the night before.

The propagandist was merely interned in a place of security--it was not

our policy to make martyrs of such men, especially when they were _bona

fide_ Ottoman subjects.

I was rather out of touch with the pan-Islamic movement during the

summer of 1915, as my lungs had become seriously affected on the Canal,

and the trouble became so acute that I had to spend two or three months

in the hills of Cyprus. Before I had been there a week the G.O.C. troops

in Egypt cabled for me to return and proceed to Aden as political

officer with troops.

I was too ill then to move and had to cable to that effect. My chagrin

at missing a "show" was much alleviated when I heard what the show was.

As it had a marked effect on the pan-Islamic campaign by enhancing

Turkish prestige, it is not out of place to give some account of it

here.

While I was still on the Canal in February (1915) a "memo" was sent for

my information from Headquarters at Cairo to say that the Turks had

invaded the Aden protectorate at Dhala, where I once served on a

boundary commission.

I noted the fact and presumed that Aden was quite able to cope with the

situation, as the Turks had a most difficult terrain to traverse before

they could get clear of the hills and reach the littoral, while the

hinterland tribes are noted for their combatant instincts and efficiency

in guerilla warfare, besides being anti-Turk. I had, however, in spite

of many years' experience, failed to reckon with Aden apathy. True to

the policy of _laissez faire_ which was inaugurated when our Boundary

Commission withdrew some twelve years ago, Aden had been depending for

news of her own protectorate on office files and native report,

especially on that much overrated friend and ally the Lahej sultanate.

The Turks knew all about this, for the leakage of Aden affairs which

trickles through Lahej and over the Yamen border is, and has been for

years, a flagrant scandal.

The invasion at Dhala was a feint just to test the soundness of official

slumber at Aden; the obvious route for a large force was down the Tiban

valley, owing to the easier going and the permanent water-supply.

Our border-sultan (the Haushabi) was suborned with leisurely

thoroughness all unknown to his next-door neighbour, that purblind

sultanate at Lahej, unless the latter refrained from breaking Aden's

holy calm with such unpleasant news.

In May Aden stirred in her sleep and sent out the Aden troop to

reconnoitre. This fine body of Indian cavalry and camelry reported that

affairs seemed serious up the Tiban valley; then inertia reasserted

itself and they were recalled. Also the Lahej sultanate, in a spasm of

economy, started disbanding the Arab levies collected for the emergency

from the tribes of the remoter hinterland which have supplied fine

mercenaries to many oriental sultanates for many centuries.

The watchful Turk, with his unmolested spy system, had noted every move

of these pitiful blunders, and, at the psychological moment, came

pouring down the Tiban valley some 3,000 strong with another 5,000 Arab

levies. They picked up the Haushabi on the way, whose main idea was to

get a free kick at Lahej, just as an ordinary human boy will serve some

sneak and prig to whom a slack schoolmaster has relegated his own

obvious duty of supervision. To do that inadequate sultanate justice, it

tried to bar the way with its own trencher-fed troops and such levies as

it had, but was brushed aside contemptuously by the hardier levies

opposed to it and the overwhelming fire of the Turkish field batteries.

Then a distraught and frantic palace emitted mounted messengers to Aden

for assistance like minute-guns from a sinking ship.

Aden behaved exactly like a startled hen. She ran about clucking and

collecting motor-cars, camel transport, anything. The authorities dared

not leave their pet sultan in the lurch--questions might be asked in the

House. On the other hand they had made no adequate arrangements to

protect him. Just as a demented hen will leave her brood at the mercy of

a hovering kite to round up one stray chick instead of sitting tight and

calling it in under her wing, so Aden made a belated and insane attempt

to save Lahej.

The Aden Movable Column, a weak brigade of Indians, young Territorials,

and guns, marched out at 2 p.m. on July 4, _i.e._ at the hottest time of

day, in the hottest season of the year and the hottest part of the

world. Motor-cars were used to convey the infantry of the advanced

guard, but the main body had to march in full equipment with ammunition.

The casualties from sunstroke were appalling. The late G.O.C. troops in

Egypt mentioned them to me in hundreds, and one of the Aden "politicals"

told me that not a dozen of the territorial battalion remained effective

at the end of the day. Many were bowled over by the heat before they had

gone two miles.

Most of the native camel transport, carrying water, ammunition and

supplies,--and yet unescorted and not even attended by a responsible

officer--sauntered off into the desert and vanished from the ken of that

ill-fated column.

Meanwhile the advanced guard of 250 men (mostly Indians) and two

10-pounder mountain-guns pushed on with all speed to Lahej, which was

being attacked by several thousand Turks and Turco-Arabs with 15-pounder

field batteries and machine-guns. They found the palace and part of the

town on fire when they arrived, and fought the Turks hand-to-hand in the

streets. They held on all through that sweltering night, and only

retired when dawn showed them the hopeless nature of their task and the

fact that they were being outflanked. They fell back on the main body,

which had stuck halfway at a wayside well (Bir Nasir) marked so

obviously by ruins that even Aden guides could not miss it. Shortage of

water was the natural result of sitting over a well that does not even

supply a settlement, but merely the ordinary needs of wayfarers.

This well is marked on the Aden protectorate survey map (which is

procurable by the general public) as Bir Muhammad, its full name being

Bir Muhammad Nasir. There are five wells supplying settlements within

half an hour's walk of it on either side of the track, but when we

remember that the column's field-guns got no further owing to heavy

sand, and that the aforesaid track is frequently traversed by ordinary

_tikkagharries_, we realise the local knowledge available.

The column straggled back to the frontier town of Sheikh Othman, which

they prepared to defend, but Simla, by this time thoroughly alarmed,

ordered them back for the defence of Aden, and they returned without

definite achievement other than the accidental shooting of the Lahej

sultan. This was hardly the fault of the heroic little band which

reached Lahej; that ill-starred potentate was escaping with his mounted

retinue before dawn and cantered on top of an Indian outpost without the

formality of answering their challenge. He was brought away in a

motor-car and died at Aden a few days later--another victim to this

deplorable blunder. Any intelligent and timely grasp of the enemy's

strength and intention would have given the poor man ample time to pack

his inlaid hookahs, Persian carpets, and other palace treasures and

withdraw in safety to Aden while our troops made good the Sheikh Othman

line along the British frontier. I am presuming that Aden was too much

taken by surprise to have met the Turks in a position of her own

choosing while they were still entangled in hilly country where levies

of the right sort could have harried them to some purpose, backed by

disciplined, unspent troops and adequate guns. What I wish to impress

is that the Intelligence Department at Aden must have been abominably

served and organised, for I decline to believe that _any_ G.O.C. would

have attempted such an enterprise with such a force and at such a time

had he any information as to the real nature of his task. As it was, the

British town of Sheikh Othman, within easy sight of Aden across the

harbour, was held by the Turks until a reinforcing column came down from

the Canal and drove them out of it, while the protectorate has been

overrun by the Turks and the Turco-Arabs until long after the armistice,

and the state of British prestige there can be imagined.

Official attempts to gloze over the incident would have been amusing if

they were not pathetic. Needless to say they did not deceive Moslems in

Egypt or the rest of Arabia.

Here is the most accurate account they gave the public:

"TURKS AND ADEN.

"ENGAGEMENT AT LAHEJ.

"The India Office issued the following _communique_ last night

through the Press Bureau:

"'In consequence of rumours that a Turkish force from the

Yamen had crossed the frontier of the Aden Hinterland and

was advancing towards Lahej, the General Officer Commanding

at Aden recently dispatched the Aden Camel Troop to

reconnoitre.

"'They reported the presence of a Turkish force with

field-guns and a large number of Arabs and fell back on

Lahej, where they were reinforced by the advance guard of

the Aden Movable Column consisting of 250 rifles and two

10-pounder guns.

"'Our force at Lahej was attacked by the enemy on July 4 by

a force of several thousand Turks with twenty guns and

large numbers of Arabs, and maintained its position in face

of the enemy artillery's fire until night, when part of

Lahej was in flames. During the night some hand-to-hand

fighting took place, and the enemy also commenced to

outflank us.

"'Meanwhile the remainder of the Aden Movable Column was

marching towards Lahej, but was delayed by water

difficulties and heavy going. It was therefore decided that

the small force at Lahej should fall back.

"'The retirement was carried out successfully in the early

morning of July 5, and the detachment joined the rest of

the column at Bir Nasir. Our troops, however, were

suffering considerably from the great heat and the shortage

of water, and their difficulties were increased by the

desertion of Arab transport followers. It was therefore

decided to fall back to Aden, and this was done without the

enemy attempting to follow up.

"'Our losses included three British officers wounded: names

will be communicated later. We took one Turkish officer (a

major) and thirteen men prisoners.'"

Aden seems to have made no attempt to stem the tide of Turkish influence

while she could. The best fighting tribe in the protectorate stretches

along the coast and far inland north-east of Aden, and its capital is

only a few hours' steam from that harbour. The Turks made every effort

to win over this important tribal unit, which might have been a grave

menace on their left flank. Its sultan made frequent representations to

Aden for even a gunboat to show itself off his port, but to no purpose.

After the Turks had succeeded in alienating those of his tribe they

could get at, or who could get at them, a tardy political visit was paid

by sea from Aden. The indignant old sultan came aboard and spoke his

mind. "You throw your friends on the midden," he said bitterly, and

departed to establish a _modus vivendi_ on his own account with the

Turks.

The situation at Aden has had a marked effect in bolstering up the

Turkish campaign of spurious pan-Islamism, and those of us who have been

dealing with chiefs in other parts of Arabia have met it at every turn.

It is idle to blame individuals--the whole system is at fault. The

policy of non-interference which the Liberal Government introduced,

after the Boundary Commission had finished its task and withdrawn, has

been over-strained by the Aden authorities to such an extent that they

would neither keep in direct personal touch themselves nor let anyone

else do so.

As an explorer and naturalist whose chief work has lain for years in

that country, I have made every effort to continue my researches there

until my persistency has incurred official persecution. The serious

aspect of this attitude is that at a time when accurate and up-to-date

knowledge of the hinterland would have been invaluable it was not

available. The pernicious policy of selecting any one chief (unchecked

by a European) to keep her posted as to affairs in her own protectorate

has been followed blindly by Aden to disaster. The excuse in official

circles there is that the Haushabi sultan had been suborned by the Turks

without their knowledge and he had prevented any information from

getting through Lahej to them. Can there be any more damning indictment

of such a system?

The Aden incident is similar to the Mesopotamian medical muddle, both

being due to sporadic dry-rot in high places which the test of war

revealed. The loyalty of its princes and the devotion of its army prove

that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with British rule in India to

command such sentiments, but some of those mandarins who have had wide

control of human affairs and destinies have ignored a situation until it

was forcibly thrust upon them and have fumbled with it disastrously. It

is difficult to bring such people to book, for they shuffle

responsibility from one to the other or take refuge in the truly

oriental pose of heaven-born officialdom. Such types should be obsolete

even in India by now, but this war has proved that they are not, and

when their inanities fritter away gallant lives and trail British

prestige in the dust they need rebuke. I hope some day, if I live, to

deal faithfully with Aden's hinterland policy.

In the autumn of 1915 I was fit enough to join the Red Sea maritime

patrol as political officer with the naval rank of lieutenant. Our

duties were to harry the Turk without hurting the Arab, to blockade the

Arabian coast against the Turk while allowing dhow-traffic with

foodstuffs consigned to Arab merchants and steamer-cargoes of food for

the alleged use of pilgrims to go through. Incidentally we had to keep

the eastern highway free of mines and transportable submarines, prevent

the passage of spies between Arabia and Egypt, and fetch and carry as

the shore-folk required.

Taking it all round, it was not an easy job, but I think the blockade

presented the most complex features. You knew where you were with

spies--anyone with the necessary experience could spot a doubtful

customer as soon as the dhow that carried him came alongside; and

irregular but frequent visits at the various ports soon put a stop to

the mine-industry and prevented any materialisation of the submarine

menace except in reports from Aden which caused me a good many

additional trips in an armed steam-cutter to "go, look, see."

But the problems presented by the blockade required some solving with

very little time for the operation, and if your solution was not

approved by the authorities on the beach they lost no time in letting

you know it--usually by wireless, which was picked up by most ships in

the patrol by the time it reached you.

The basic idea was that if in doubt it was better to let stuff through

to the Turks than pinch Hejazi bellies and get ourselves disliked. In

theory this was perfectly sound, for we wanted the Hejaz to like us well

enough to fight on our side, and only the Huns think you can get people

to love you by afflicting them. In practice, however, we soon found that

the Hejazi merchants were selling direct to the Turks and letting their

fellow-countrymen have what was left at the highest possible price. On

top of it all India started a howl that her pilgrims in the Hejaz were

starving, and we had to defer to this outcry. I have never had to

legislate for highly-civilised Moslems with a taste for agitation, but I

have always sympathised with those who have, and could quite appreciate

India's position in the matter. Still, after comparing her relief

cargoes with the number of her pilgrims in the country and finding that

each had enough to feed him for the rest of his natural life, I ventured

to ask that this wholesale charity might cease, more especially as these

big steamer-cargoes were dealt with much as the dhow-borne cereals and

chiefly benefited the Turks and local profiteers.

As regards dhows, our rule was to allow coastal traffic from Jeddah and

empties returning there, as it tended to distribute food among the Arabs

and get it away from the Turks. Dhows bringing cargo from the African

coast or from Aden were permitted, provided they did not carry

contraband of war; this permitted native cereals, such as millet, but

barred wheat and particularly barred barley, which the local Arab does

not eat for choice, but which the Turks wanted very badly for their

cavalry.

In this connection a typical incident may be mentioned as illustrating

the sort of thing we were up against.

The ship I was serving in at the time lay off Jeddah and had three boats

down picketing the dhow-channels leading in to that reef-girt harbour,

for which dhows were making like homing bees. In such cases my post was

usually on the bridge, while the ship's interpreter and Arab-speaking

Seedee-boys went away in the boats. The dhows were reached and their

papers examined, then allowed to proceed if all was in order. Otherwise

the officer examining signalled the facts and awaited instructions.

Usually it was some technical point which I could waive, but on this

occasion one of the cutters made a signal to the effect that barley in

bulk had been found in one dhow. I was puzzled, because all the dhows

were from Suakin or further south, quite outside the barley-belt, except

on very high ground which rarely exports cereals. However, the signal

was repeated, and I had to have the dhow alongside. Meanwhile the

"owner" was anxious to get steerage-way, for we were not at anchor and

in very ticklish soundings; so I slid off the bridge and had a sample of

the grain handed up to me: it was a species of millet, looking very like

pearl-barley as "milled" for culinary purposes. I shouted to the _reis_

to go where he liked as long as he kept clear of our propellers, which

thereupon gave a ponderous flap or two as if to emphasise my remarks,

and he bore away from us rejoicing. In the ward-room later on I rallied

that cutter's officer on his error. "Well, it was just like the barley

one sees in soup," was his defence.

In the southern part of the Red Sea, which was handled politically from

Aden, the problems of blockade were even more complex, for there even

arms and ammunition were allowed between certain ports to meet the

convenience of the Idrisi chief, who was theoretically at war with the

Turks, but rather diffident about putting his principles into practice,

especially after the Turkish success outside Aden.

This meant that the sorely-tried officers responsible for the conduct

of the blockade in those waters had frequently to decide on a cargo of

illicit-looking rifles and cartridges, not of Government make, but

purchased from private firms and guaranteed by a filthy scrap of paper

inscribed with crabbed Arabic which carried no conviction. All they had

to help them was the half-educated ship's interpreter, with no knowledge

of the political situation, for Aden had not an officer available for

this work. To enhance the difficulties of the position, some of these

coastal chiefs were importing contraband of war to sell to the Turks for

private gain. Up north there were no difficulties with illicit arms; we

allowed a reasonable number per dhow, provided that they were the

private property of the crew, and when rifles were dished out to our

Arab friends the Navy delivered the goods, which were all of Government

mark and pattern.

The political aspect of the blockade required delicate handling anywhere

along the Arabian littoral of the Red Sea, but especially so on the

Hejazi coast. We were at war with the Turks but not with the Arabs, whom

it was our business to approach as friends if they would let us. The

Turks, however, used Arab levies freely against us whose truculence was

much increased on finding they could make hostile demonstrations with

impunity, as the patrol only fired on the Turkish uniform, since few

people can distinguish between a Turco-Arab gendarme and an armed

tribesman at long range unless they know both breeds intimately.

The general standard of honour and good faith at most places along the

Arabian littoral is not high, even from an Oriental point of view, and

is nowhere lower than on the Hejazi coast. Frequently an unattached

tribesman would take a shot at a reconnoitring cutter on general

principles and then rush off to the nearest Turkish post with the

information and a demand for bakshish, and there were several attempts

(one successful) to lure a landing party on to a well-manned but

carefully hidden position. As for the actual levies, they would solemnly

man prepared positions within easy range of even a 3-pounder when we

visited their tinpot ports, relying on us not to fire, and telling their

compatriots what they would do if we did.

Even when examining dhows one had to be on one's guard, and it was best

not to board them to leeward and so run the risk of having their big,

bellying mainsail let go on top of you and getting scuppered while

entangled in its folds. African dhows could generally be trusted not to

resist search, for when a _reis_ has got his owners or agents at a

civilised port like Suakin he likes to keep respectable even if he _is_

smuggling. Our chief difficulty with such craft, before we tightened the

blockade, was due to the nonchalant manner in which they put to sea and

behaved when at sea. Their skippers had the sketchiest idea of what

constituted proper clearance papers and why such papers must agree with

their present voyage. Their confidence too in our integrity, though

touching, was often embarrassing. One of our rules was that considerable

sums in gold must be given up against a signed voucher realisable at

Port Sudan. I was never very brisk at counting large sums of money, and

one day when hove to off Jeddah there were five dhows rubbing their

noses alongside, with about L800 in gold between them and very little

time to deal with them, as we were in shoal water with no way on the

ship. My operations were not facilitated by the biggest Croesus of the

lot producing some L400 in five different currencies from various parts

of his apparel and stating that he had no idea how much there was but

would abide by my decision. I believe he expected me to give him a

receipt in round hundreds and take the "oddment," as we call it in

Warwickshire, for myself. As it was, I was down half a sovereign or so

over the transaction, having given him the benefit of the doubt over

two measly little gold coins of unascertainable value.

Some of them were just as happy-go-lucky in their seamanship, though

skilful enough in handling their outlandish craft. Early one morning,

about fifty miles out of Jeddah, I boarded a becalmed dhow and found

them with the dregs of one empty water-skin between a dozen men. Not

content with putting to sea with a single _mussick_ of water, they had

hove to and slept all night, and so dropped the night breeze, which

would have carried them to Jeddah before it died down. We gave them

water and their position, but I told the _reis_ that he was putting more

strain on the mercy of Allah than he was, individually, entitled to.

But the craft that plied along the Hejazi coast were sinister customers

and wanted watching. Some time before I joined the patrol one of our

ships was lying a long way out off Um-Lejj, as the water is shallow, and

her duty-boat was working close in-shore examining coastal craft. One of

these had some irregularity about her and was sent out to the ship with

a marine and a bluejacket in charge while the cutter continued her task.

That dhow stood out to sea as if making for the ship and then proceeded

along the coast. The cutter, still busied with other dhows, presumed

that the first craft had reported alongside the ship and been allowed to

proceed; the ship naturally regarded her as a craft that had been

examined and permitted to continue her journey. And that is all we ever

knew for certain of her or the fate of our two men. Their previous

record puts desertion out of the question; besides, no sane men would

desert to a barren, inhospitable coast among semi-hostile fanatics whose

language was unknown to them. On the other hand, the men were, of

course, fully armed, and there were but five of the dhow's crew all

told, of whom two were not able-bodied. There must have been the

blackest treachery--probably the unfortunate men goodnaturedly helped

with the running gear and were knocked on the head while so engaged.

Their bodies would, no doubt, have been put over the side when the dhow

was out of sight, and their rifles sold inland at a fancy price.

When I first joined the patrol we were not allowed to bombard or land at

any point between the mouth of the Gulf of Akaba and the Hejaz southern

border. The Turkish fort up at Akaba had been knocked about a good deal

by various ships of the patrol, and the whole place was uninhabited; but

we visited it frequently, as drifting mines were put in up there,

having been taken off the rail at Maan and brought down to the head of

the gulf, in section, by camel. I always suspected the existence of a

Turkish observation-post, but no signs of occupation had been seen for a

long time till H.M.S. "Fox" went up one dark night without a light

showing. All dead-lights were shipped, and dark blue electric bulbs

replaced the usual ones where a light of some sort was essential and

visible from out-board. The padre, who had opened the "vicarage"

dead-light about an inch to get a breath of air, was promptly spotted by

an indignant Number One who said that it made the ship look like a

floating gin palace. This must have been a pardonable hyperbole, for the

signal-fires ashore which used to herald our approach from afar were not

lit.

We were off Akaba at peep of day, and two armed cutters raced each other

to the beach. I went with the one that made for the stone jetty in the

middle front of the town; we had to jump out into four feet of water, as

the port has deteriorated a good deal since Solomon used it and called

it Eziongeber. A careful search revealed no one in the town, but water

had been drawn recently from the well inside the fort, and a mud hut out

in the desert behind the town seemed a likely covert to draw.

The cutter's officer accompanied me, leaving the crew ensconced in the

cemetery, which was a wise move, for, when we were close to the hut,

heavy fire was opened on us from a hidden trench some three hundred

yards away. We both dropped and rolled into a shallow depression caused

by rain-wash, where we lay as flat as we could while the flat-nosed soft

lead bullets kicked sand and shingle down the backs of our necks. As we

had only revolvers--expecting resistance, if any, to be made among the

houses--we could not reply, but the ship handed out a few rounds of

percussion shrapnel which shook the Turks up enough for us to withdraw.

Fortunately for us, they were using black powder, and outside four

hundred yards one has time to avoid the bullet by dropping instantly at

the smoke. Otherwise they should have bagged us in spite of the support

of our covering party in the cemetery, for the ground was quite open and

so dusty that they could see the break of their heavy picket-bullets to

a nicety.

We landed in force an hour later and turned them out of it. On

returning, the men who searched the hut (which the ship's guns had

knocked endways) brought me a budget of correspondence. It was chiefly

addressed to the officer in charge and told me that the detachment was

Syrian, which I had already suspected from their using the early pattern

Mauser. It gave other useful information, and the men did well to bring

it along; but I would have given much to have found some channel through

which I could return it. Most of it was private; there were several

congratulatory cards crudely illuminated in colours by hand for the

feast of Muled-en-Nebi (the birthday of the Prophet), which corresponds

with our Christmas. There was also a letter from the officer's wife

enclosing a half-sheet of paper on which a baby hand had imprinted a

smeared outline in ink. It bore the inscription "From your son

Ahmed--his hand and greeting."

Early in the spring of 1916 we managed to persuade the political folk at

Cairo to extend our sphere of action. I had particularly marked down

Um-Lejj as containing a well-manned Turkish fort which could be knocked

about without damaging other buildings in the town if we were careful.

It was also a rallying-point for Turkish influence, and it was not

conducive to our prestige or politically desirable that it should

flourish unmolested.

I was in the "Fox" again for that occasion, she being the senior ship of

the patrol and the only one that could land an adequate force if

required.

The evening before we anchored far out on the fishing-grounds of Hasani

Island, and I managed to pick up a fisherman who knew where the Turkish

hidden position was, outside the town, and, having been held a prisoner

once in their Customs building, could point that out too. Next morning

we stood slowly in for Um-Lejj with the steam-cutter groping ahead for

the channel, which is about as tortuous a piece of navigation as you can

get off this coast, and that is saying a good deal.

When we cleared for action I went to my usual post on the bridge with

the S.N.O. and took my fisherman-friend with me. The civil population

was streaming out of the town across the open plain in all directions

like ants from an over-turned ant-hill, probably realising that we meant

business this time. This was all to the good, as otherwise I should have

had to go close in with the steam-cutter, a white flag and a megaphone

to warn Arab civilians; thus giving the Turks time to clear, besides the

chance of a sitting-shot at us if they thought my address to the

townsfolk a violation of the rules of war, which, technically, it might

be.

However, the fort was a fixture and our business was first of all with

it. Standing close in, the ship turned southwards and moved slowly

abreast of the town. The port battery of four-point-sevens loaded with

H.E. and the two six-inchers fore and aft swung out-board and followed

suit. The occasion called for fine shooting, as a minaret rose just to

the right of the fort, and the houses were so massed about it that there

was only one clear shot--up the street leading from the beach past the

main gate.

"At the southern gate of the fort, each gun to fire as it comes to bear

up the street from the water-side."

As I turned my glasses on the big portico of the southern gate, out

stepped a Turkish officer who regarded us intently; the next instant the

bridge shook to the crashing concussion of our forward six-inch, and

through a drifting haze of gas-fume I saw him blotted out by the orange

flash of lyddite and an up-flung pall of dust and _debris_.

There was a pause, cut short by the clap of the bursting shell

reverberating like thunder against the foot-hills beyond the town.

A little naked boy ran in an attitude of terrified dismay up the

water-street just as the first four-point-seven fired. I saw him through

my glasses duck his head between his arms, then dive panic-stricken

through a doorway as the fort was smitten again in dust and thunder.

"Was the poor little beggar hit?"

"No, sir, only scared."

While the target was still veiled in its dust the second four-point-seven

spoke, and the minaret disappeared from view behind a dun-coloured

shroud.

"Cease fire" sounded at once. "Who fired that gun? Take him off," came

in tones of stern rebuke from the bridge. Luckily the minaret showed

intact as the dust drifted clear and firing continued.

As the fort crumbled under our guns, Turkish soldiers began to break

cover at various points of the town and fled across the plain. The

cutter, in-shore, opened with Maxim-fire, and so accurately that we

could see the sombre-clad figures lying here and there or seeking

frantically for cover, while an Arab in their vicinity, leading a

leisurely camel, continued his stroll inland unperturbed. We drove the

main body out of their hidden position and into the hills with

well-timed shrapnel, and finished up by demolishing the Customs (where a

lot of ammunition blew up), to the temporary satisfaction of my

fisherman, who was curled up in a corner of the bridge, nearly stunned

by the shock of modern ordnance in spite of the cotton-wool I had made

him put in his ears. Before we picked up our cutter the civil population

was already streaming back.

The incident is worth noting in view of remarks made by a popular

fiction-monger in one of his latest works, that indiscriminate aerial

raids on civil centres in England are on the same level of humanity as

naval bombardments.

I visited the fishing-banks off Hasani Island a week or so after to get

the latest news of Um-Lejj, which came from Turkish sources. There was

one civilian casualty--a woman who was in the Turkish concealed

position. No casualties among Turkish officers, but one of them left in

charge of the fort had disappeared. There were bits of the fort left,

but the Commandant had moved his headquarters to the school-house within

the precincts of the mosque--sagacious soul. The object-lesson which we

gave the Arabs at Um-Lejj put a check to their irresponsible sniping of

boats and landing-parties, though one could always expect a little

trouble with an Arab dhow running contraband for the Turks. In these

cases their guilty consciences usually gave them away. Returning to the

coast toward Jeddah unexpectedly, having played the well-worn ruse of

"the cat's away," we sighted a small dhow close in-shore, and should

have left her alone as she was in shoal-water, but, on standing in to

get a nearer view of her, she headed promptly for the beach and ran

aground, disgorging more men than such a craft should carry.

I went away in the duty cutter to investigate, and we had barely

realised that she was heavily loaded with kerosene in tins (a heinous

contraband) when the fact was emphasised by a sputtering rifle-fire from

the scrub along the beach. The ship very soon put a stop to that

demonstration with a round or two of shrapnel, while we busied ourselves

with the dhow. There was no hope of salving her, as she had almost

ripped the keel off her when she took the ground and sat on the bottom

like a dilapidated basket. We broached enough tins to start a

conflagration, lit a fuse made of a strip of old turban soaked in

kerosene, and backed hard from her vicinity, for the kerosene was

low-flash common stuff as marked on the cases, and to play at snapdragon

in half an acre of blazing oil is an uninviting pastime. However, she

just flared without exploding, and we continued our cruise up the coast

just in time to overhaul at racing speed a perfect regatta of dhows

heeling over to every stitch of canvas in their efforts to make Jeddah

before we could get at them, for they had seen the smoke of that burning

oil-dhow and realised that the cat was about. Good money is paid at

Cowes to see no more spirited sailing--we had to put a shot across the

bows of the leading dhow before they would abandon the race.

There was always trouble off Jeddah--the approaches to that reef-girt

harbour lend themselves to blockade-running dhows with sound local

knowledge on board. At night, especially, they had an advantage and

would play "Puss-in-the-Corner" until the cutter lost patience, and a

flickering pin-point of light stabbed the velvet black of the middle

watch, asking permission to fire; one rifle-shot fired high would stop

the game, and I made them come alongside and take a wigging for annoying

the cutter and turning me out; there was seldom anything wrong about the

dhow--it was sheer cussedness.

All through the early part of 1916 we were keeping in touch with the

Sharif of Mecca by means of envoys, whom we landed where they listed,

away from the Turks, picking them up at times and places indicated by

them. Sharif Husein had long chafed under Turkish suzerainty, in spite

of his subsidy and the deference which policy compelled them to accord

him. He knew that the Hejaz could never realise its legitimate

aspirations under Ottoman rule, which was a blight on all Arab progress

and prosperity, as the Young Turkish party was hardly Moslem at heart,

being more national (that is Tartar)--certainly not pro-Arab.

Husein's difficulty was to get his own people to rise together and throw

off the Turkish yoke, for the Hejazi tribesman, especially between the

coast and Mecca, has long been more of a brigand than a warrior, as any

pilgrim will tell you. Such folk are apt to jib at hammer-and-tongs

fighting, and of course we could not land troops to assist them, as it

would have violated the sacred soil that cradled Islam and merely

stiffened the bogus _jihad_ which the Turks had proclaimed against us,

besides compromising the Sharif with his own tribesmen.

The Hejazis' ingenuous idea was to go on taking money from us, the Turks

and the Sharif, while--thanks to our lenient blockade--a regular

dhow-traffic fed them. We did not approve of this Utopian policy, and

the fall of Kut brought matters to a climax. After certain

communications had passed between the representatives of His Majesty's

Government and the Sharif, it was decided to tighten the blockade and so

induce the gentle Hejazi to declare himself. The day was fixed, May, 15,

on and after which date no traffic whatever was to be permitted with the

Arabian coast other than that specially sanctioned by Government. In

palaver thereon I managed to get local fishing-craft exempted. The

fisher-folk are not combatants either on empty stomachs or full ones,

and could be relied on to consume their own fish in that climate unless

very close to a market, where the pinch would be great enough to make

them exchange it for foodstuffs, thus helping the situation we wished to

bring about. I knew that all _bona fide_ fishing-craft were easily

recognisable by their rig and comparatively small size, and hoped that

good will would combine with freedom of movement to make these folk

useful agents for Intelligence.

I heard with some relief that the movements of the patrol would place

H.M.S. "Hardinge" (a roomy ship of the Indian Marine) on station duty

off Jeddah, which was to be my post while the enhanced blockade was in

force--there are few more trying seasons than early summer in those

waters. I joined her from Suez the day after the blockade was closed,

and found her keeping guard over a perfect fleet of dhows. There were

about three dozen craft with over three hundred people on board, for

many native passengers were trying to make Jeddah before we shut down.

The feckless mariners in charge had made the usual oriental calculation

that a day more or less did not matter, but found to their horror that

the Navy was more precise on these points--and there they were.

The first thing to ensure was that the crew, and especially the

passengers, among whom were a good many women and children, did not

suffer from privation. This had already been ably seen to by the ship's

officers--I merely went round the fleet to sift any genuine complaints

from the discontent natural to the situation in which their own

slackness had placed them. I insisted on hearing only one complaint at a

time, otherwise it would have been pandemonium afloat, for they were

anchored close enough together to converse with each other; vociferous

excuses for their unpunctuality were brushed aside, legitimate requests

for more water or food or condensed milk for the children or more

adequate shelter for the women from the sun were attended to at once,

and our floating village quieted down.

The craft were all much the same type of small dhow or _sanbuk_ which

frequents the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, having little in common with

the big-bellied buggalows which ply with rice and dates between the

Persian Gulf and Indian ports but do not come into the Red Sea. These

were much smaller and saucier-looking craft, some fifty to eighty feet

long, with a turn of speed and raking masts. All were lugger-rigged

with lateen sails, and only the poop and bows were decked, the bulwarks

being heightened with strips of matting to prevent seas from breaking

in-board. Sanitary arrangements were provided for by a box-like

cubby-hole over-hanging the boat's side; inexperienced officers often

take it for a vantage-point to heave the lead from, and only find out

too late after attempting to board there, that things are not always

what they seem.

These little vessels are practically the corsair type of Saracenic

sailing-galley which used to infest the Barbary coast in days gone by.

They do everything different from our occidental methods. For example,

they reef and furl their tall lateens from the peak, and have to send a

man up the long tapering gaff to do it. Their masts rake forward and not

aft, which enables them to swing gaff, sail, and sheet round in front of

the mast when they come about, instead of keeping the sheet aft and

dipping the butt of the gaff with the sail to the other side of the

mast, which would be an impossibility for that rig, as the butt of their

enormous mainyard or gaff is bowsed permanently down in the bows, while

the soaring peak may be nearly a hundred feet above the water. Cooking

was done over charcoal in a kerosene tin half full of sand, and the

"first-class" passengers lived under an improvised awning on the poop,

the women's quarters being under that gim-crack structure. All the same,

they are good sea-boats and remarkably fast, especially _on_ a wind,

quite unlike the big-decked buggalows which are built for cargo capacity

and have real cabins aft but sail like a haystack on a barge.

It was inhuman (as well as an infernal nuisance) to keep all those

people sweltering indefinitely at sea; on the other hand, our orders as

to the strict maintenance of the blockade were explicit. The "owner" and

I conferred and decided that the situation could be met by transferring

their cargo to the ship and letting the dhows beach. This was referred

and approved by wireless. The job took us some days, as the weather was

rather unfavourable and all the cargoes had to be checked by manifest

with a view to restitution later. Each dhow as she was cleared had to

make for the shore and dismast or beach so that she could not steal out

at night and add to the difficulties of the blockade. None attempted to

evade this order, most carried out both alternatives; perhaps a casual

reminder that they would be within observation and gun-fire of the ship

had some influence on their action.

Hitherto the Turco-Teutonic brand of Holy War had been fairly

successful. The Allied thrust at the Dardanelles and Gallipoli had

failed, the Aden Protectorate was in Turkish hands, we had spent a most

unpleasant Easter in Sinai, and Kut had fallen. Still, the Turks were

soon to realise that a wrongly-invoked _jihad_, like a mishandled

musket, can recoil heavily, and, before the end of May, signs were not

wanting that trouble was brewing for them in the Hejaz.

We were in close touch with the shore through fishing-canoes by day and

secret emissaries by night, who brought us news that some German

"officers" had been done to death by Hejazi tribesmen some eight hours'

journey north of Jeddah. They had evidently been first over-powered and

bound, then stabbed in the stomach with the huge two-handed dagger which

the Hejazis use, and finally decapitated, as a Turkish rescue party

which hurried to the spot found their headless and practically

disembowelled corpses with their hands tied behind them. Their effects

came through our hands in due course, and we ascertained that the party

consisted of Lieut.-Commander von Moeller (late of a German gunboat

interned at Tsing-Tao) and five reservists whom he had picked up in

Java. They had landed on the South Arabian coast in March, had visited

Sanaa, the capital of Yamen, and had come up the Arabian coast of the

Red Sea by dhow, keeping well inside the Farsan bank, which is three

hundred miles long and a serious obstacle to patrol work. They had landed

at Konfida, north of the bank, and reached Jeddah by camel on May 5.

Against the advice of the Turks they continued their journey by land,

as they had no chance of eluding our northern patrol at sea. They were

more than a year too late to emulate the gallant (and lucky) "Odyssey"

of the Emden's landing-party from Cocos Islands up the Red Sea coast in

the days when our blockade was more lenient and did not interfere with

coasting craft. They hoped to reach Maan and so get on the rail for

Stamboul and back to Germany, as the Sharif would not sanction their

coming to the sacred city of Medina, which is the rail-head for the

Damascus-Hejaz railway. After so staunch a journey they deserved a

better fate. Among their kit was a tattered and blood-stained copy of my

book on the Aden hinterland.[A]

Meanwhile affairs ashore were simmering to boiling-point, and on the

night of June 9 we commenced a bombardment of carefully located Turkish

positions, firing by "director" to co-operate with an Arab attack which

was due then but did not materialise till early next morning, and was

then but feebly delivered. We found out later that the rifles and

ammunition we had delivered on the beach some distance south of Jeddah

to the Sharif's agents in support of this attack had been partly

diverted to Mecca and partly hung up by a squabble with their own

camel-men for more cash.