med resistance but also by the fact that the
Allies were now quarrelling among themselves. These quarrels of course
extended all over the Near East, but there was none more bitter than the
quarrel which had broken out between England and France over the
division of the Arab spoils. This dispute originated in French
dissatisfaction with the secret treaties. No sooner had the Sykes-Picot
Agreement been published than large and influential sections of French
opinion began shouting that they had been duped. For generations French
imperialists had had their eye on Syria,[182] and since the beginning of
the war the imperialist press had been conducting an ardent propaganda
for wholesale annexations in the Near East. "La Syrie integrale!" "All
Syria!" was the cry. And this "all" included not merely the coast-strip
assigned France by the Sykes-Picot Agreement, but also Palestine and the
vast Aleppo-Damascus hinterland right across to the rich oil-fields of
Mosul. To this entire region, often termed in French expansionist
circles "La France du Levant," the imperialists asserted that France had
"imprescriptible historic rights running back to the Crusades and even
to Charlemagne." Syria was a "second Alsace," which held out its arms to
France and would not be denied. It was also the indispensable fulcrum of
French world-policy. These imperialist aspirations had powerful backing
in French Government circles. For example, early in 1915, M. Leygues had
said in the Chamber of Deputies: "The axis of French policy is in the
Mediterranean. One of its poles is in the West, at Algiers, Tunis, and
Morocco. The other must lie in the East, with Syria, Lebanon,
Palestine."[183]

After such high hopes, the effect of the Sykes-Picot Agreement on French
imperialists can be imagined. Their anger turned naturally upon the
English, who were roundly denounced and blamed for everything that was
happening in the East, Arab nationalist aspirations being stigmatized as
nothing but British propaganda. Cried one French writer: "Some
psychiatrist ought to write a study of these British colonial officials,
implacable imperialists, megalomaniacs, who, night and day, work for
their country without even asking counsel from London, and whose
constant care is to annihilate in Syria, as they once annihilated in
Egypt, the supremacy of France."[184] In answer to such fulminations,
English writers scored French "greed" and "folly" which was compromising
England's p