Yet the school of Turkish politics was so ignoble that not even the best could graduate from it unaffected. Hussein when young had been honest, outspoken . . . and he learned not merely to suppress his speech, but to use speech to conceal his honest purpose. The art, over-indulged, became a vice from which he could not free himself. In old age ambiguity covered his every communication. Lake a cloud it hid his decision of character, his worldly wisdom, his cheerful strength. Many denied HIM such qualities: but history gave proof.

One instance of his worldly wisdom was the upbringing of his sons. The
Sultan had made them live in Constantinople to receive a Turkish
education. Sherif Hussein saw to it that the education was general and
good. When they came back to the Hejaz as young effendis in European
clothes with Turkish manners, the father ordered them into Arab dress;
and, to rub up their Arabic, gave them Meccan companions and sent them
out into the wilds, with the Camel Corps, to patrol the pilgrim roads.

The young men thought it might be an amusing trip, but were dashed when
their father forbade them special food, bedding, or soft-padded
saddles. He would not let them back to Mecca, but kept them out for
months in all seasons guarding the roads by day and by night, handling
every variety of man, and learning fresh methods of riding and
fighting. Soon they hardened, and became self-reliant, with that blend
of native intelligence and vigour which so often comes in a crossed
stock. Their formidable family group was admired and efficient, but
curiously isolated in their world. They were natives of no country,
lovers of no private plot of ground. They had no real confidants or
ministers; and no one of them seemed open to another, or to the father,
of whom they stood in awe.

The debate after supper was an animated one. In my character as a
Syrian I made sympathetic reference to the Arab leaders who had been
executed in Damascus by Jemal Pasha. They took me up sharply: the
published papers had disclosed that these men were in touch with
foreign Governments, and ready to accept French or British suzerainty
as the price of help. This was a crime against Arab nationality, and
Jemal had only executed the implied sentence. Feisal smiled, almost
winked, at me. 'You see,' he explained, 'we are now of necessity tied
to the British. We are delighted to be their friends, grateful for
their help, expectant of our future profit. But we are not British
subjects. We would be more at ease if they were not such
disproportionate allies.'

I told a story of Abdulla el Raashid, on the way up to Hamra. He had
groaned to me of the British sailors coming ashore each day at Rabegh.
'Soon they will stay nights, and then they will live here always, and
take the country.' To cheer him I had spoken of millions of Englishmen
now ashore in France, and of the French not afraid.

Whereat he had turned on me scornfully, asking if I meant to compare
France with the land of Hejazi?

Feisal mused a little and said, I am not a Hejazi by upbringing; and
yet, by God, I am jealous for it. And though I know the British do not
want it, yet what can I say, when they took the Sudan, also not wanting
it? They hunger for desolate lands, to build them up; and so, perhaps,
one day Arabia will seem to them precious. Your good and my good,
perhaps they are different, and either forced good or forced evil will
make a people cry with pain. Does the ore admire the flame which
transforms it? There is no reason for offence, but a people too weak
are clamant over their little own. Our race will have a cripple's
temper till it has found its feet.'

The ragged, lousy tribesmen who had eaten with us astonished me by
their familiar understanding of intense political nationality, an
abstract idea they could hardly have caught from the educated classes
of the Hejaz towns, from those Hindus, Javanese, Bokhariots, Sudanese,
Turks, out of sympathy with Arab ideals, and indeed just then suffering
A little from the force of local sentiment, springing too high after
its sudden escape from Turkish control. Sherif Hussein had had the
worldly wisdom to base his precepts on the instinctive belief of the
Arabs that they were of the salt of the earth and self-sufficient.
Then, enabled by his alliance with us to back his doctrine by arms and
money, he was assured of success.

Of course, this success was not level throughout. The great body of
Sherifs, eight hundred or nine hundred of them, understood his
nationalist doctrine and were his missionaries, successful missionaries
thanks to the revered descent from the Prophet, which gave them the
power to hold men's minds, and to direct their courses into the willing
quietness of eventual obedience.

The tribes had followed the smoke of their racial fanaticism. The towns
might sigh for the cloying inactivity of Ottoman rule: the tribes were
convinced that they had made a free and Arab Government, and that each
of them was It. They were independent and would enjoy themselves--a
conviction and resolution which might have led to anarchy, if they had
not made more stringent the family tie, and the bonds of
kin-responsibility. But this entailed a negation of central power. The
Sherif might have legal sovereignty abroad, if he hiked the high-sounding
toy; but home affairs were to be customary. The problem of the
foreign theorists--Is Damascus to rule the Hejaz, or can Hejaz rule
Damascus?' did not trouble them at all, for they would not have it set.
The Semites' idea of nationality was the independence of clans and
villages, and their ideal of national union was episodic combined
resistance to an intruder. Constructive policies, an organized state,
an extended empire, were not so much beyond their sight as hateful in
it. They were fighting to get rid of Empire, not to win it.

The feeling of the Syrians and Mesopotamians in these Arab armies was
indirect. They believed that by fighting in the local ranks, even here
in Hejaz, they were vindicating the general rights of all Arabs to
national existence; and without envisaging one State, or even a
confederation of States, they were definitely looking northward,
wishing to add an autonomous Damascus and Bagdad to the Arab family.
They were weak in material resources, and even after success would be,
since their world was agricultural and pastoral, without minerals, and
could never be strong in modern armaments. Were it otherwise, we should
have had to pause before evoking in the strategic centre of the Middle
East new national movements of such abounding vigour.

Of religious fanaticism there was little trace. 

The Sherif refused in
round terms to give a religious twist to his rebellion.

 His fighting creed was nationality. 

The tribes knew that the Turks were Moslems, and
thought that the Germans were probably true friends of Islam. 

They knew that the British were Christians, and that the British were their
allies. In the circumstances, their religion would not have been of
much help to them, and they had put it aside. 'Christian fights
Christian, so why should not Mohammedans do the same? 

What we want is a
Government which speaks our own language of Arabic and will let us live
in peace.

 Also we hate those Turks.'