Yamen, kept making half-hearted and abortive dabs at
Loheia--like a nervous child playing snapdragon--but his only success
(and temporary at that) was when he occupied the town after the Red Sea
Patrol had shelled the Turks out of it. As for the Imam, he has been
sitting on a very thorny fence ever since the Turks came into the War.
We have been in touch with him for a long time, but all he has done up
to date is to wobble on a precarious tripod supported by the opposing
strains of Turks, tribesmen, and British. Now one leg of the tripod has
been knocked away he has yet to show if he can maintain stability on his
own base, and, if so, over what area. The undeniable fighting qualities
of the Yamen Arab, which might be a useful factor in a stable
government, will merely prove a nuisance and a menace under a weak
_regime_, and tribal trouble will always be slopping over into our Aden
sphere of influence. Then the question will arise, What are we going to
do about it? We cannot bring the Yamenis to book by blockading their
coast and cutting off caravan traffic with Aden, because, in view of our
trade relations with the country by sea and land, we should only be
cutting our nose off to spite our face. Moreover, the punishment would
fall chiefly on the respectable community, traders, the cultured
classes, etc., to whom seaborne trade is essential, while it would
hardly affect the wild tribesmen, except as regards ammunition, and to
prevent them getting what they wanted through the Hejaz is outside the
sphere of practical politics.

In the Hejaz itself we can at least claim that authority is suitably
represented and accessible to us. Before the War we kept a British
consul at Jeddah with an Indian Moslem vice-consul who went up to Mecca
in the pilgrim season. A responsible consular agent (Moslem of course)
to reside at Medina, also another to understudy the Jeddah vice-consul
when he went to Mecca and to look after the Yenbo pilgrim traffic, would
safeguard the interests of our nationals, who enormously outnumber the
pilgrims of any other nation. Further interference with the Hejaz,
unless invited, would be unjustifiable.

Trouble for us does not lie in the Hejaz itself, but in its possible
expansion beyond its powers of absorption, or, in homely metaphor, if it
bites off more than it can chew. There is a certain tendency just now to
overrate Hejazi prowess in war and policy; in fact, King Husein is often
alluded to vaguely