ituation of Egypt at this present writing: a situation frankly not so
encouraging as it was last year.

Meanwhile the storm which had begun in Egypt had long since spread to
other parts of the Near East. In fact, by the opening months of 1920,
the storm-centre had shifted to the Ottoman Empire. For this the Allies
themselves were largely to blame. Of course a constructive settlement of
these troubled regions would have been very difficult. Still, it might
not have proved impossible if Allied policy had been fair and
above-board. The close of the war found the various peoples of the
Ottoman Empire hopeful that the liberal war-aims professed by the Allied
spokesmen would be redeemed. The Arab elements were notably hopeful,
because they had been given a whole series of Allied promises (shortly
to be repudiated, as we shall presently see), while even the beaten
Turks were not entirely bereft of hope in the future. Besides the
general pronouncements of liberal treatment as formulated in the
"Fourteen Points" programme of President Wilson and indorsed by the
Allies, the Turks had pledges of a more specific character, notably by
Premier Lloyd George, who, on January 5, 1918, had said: "Nor are we
fighting to deprive Turkey of its capital or of the rich and renowned
lands of Asia Minor and Thrace, which are predominantly Turkish in
race." In other words, the Turks were given unequivocally to understand
that, while their rule over non-Turkish regions like the Arab provinces
must cease, the Turkish regions of the empire were not to pass under
alien rule, but were to form a Turkish national state. The Turks did not
know about a series of secret treaties between the Allies, begun in
1915, which partitioned practically the whole of Asia Minor between the
Allied Powers. These were to come out a little later. For the moment the
Turks might hope.

In the case of the Arabs there were far brighter grounds for
nationalist hopes--and far darker depths of Allied duplicity. We have
already mentioned the Arab revolt of 1916, which, beginning in the
Hedjaz under the leadership of the Shereef of Mecca, presently spread
through all the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire and contributed so
largely to the collapse of Turkish resistance. This revolt was, however,
not a sudden, unpremeditated thing. It had been carefully planned, and
was due largely to Allied backing--and Allied promises. From the very
beginning of the war Arab nationalist malcon