o 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