of spurious pan-Islamism, and those of us who have been
dealing with chiefs in other parts of Arabia have met it at every turn.
It is idle to blame individuals--the whole system is at fault. The
policy of non-interference which the Liberal Government introduced,
after the Boundary Commission had finished its task and withdrawn, has
been over-strained by the Aden authorities to such an extent that they
would neither keep in direct personal touch themselves nor let anyone
else do so.

As an explorer and naturalist whose chief work has lain for years in
that country, I have made every effort to continue my researches there
until my persistency has incurred official persecution. The serious
aspect of this attitude is that at a time when accurate and up-to-date
knowledge of the hinterland would have been invaluable it was not
available. The pernicious policy of selecting any one chief (unchecked
by a European) to keep her posted as to affairs in her own protectorate
has been followed blindly by Aden to disaster. The excuse in official
circles there is that the Haushabi sultan had been suborned by the Turks
without their knowledge and he had prevented any information from
getting through Lahej to them. Can there be any more damning indictment
of such a system?

The Aden incident is similar to the Mesopotamian medical muddle, both
being due to sporadic dry-rot in high places which the test of war
revealed. The loyalty of its princes and the devotion of its army prove
that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with British rule in India to
command such sentiments, but some of those mandarins who have had wide
control of human affairs and destinies have ignored a situation until it
was forcibly thrust upon them and have fumbled with it disastrously. It
is difficult to bring such people to book, for they shuffle
responsibility from one to the other or take refuge in the truly
oriental pose of heaven-born officialdom. Such types should be obsolete
even in India by now, but this war has proved that they are not, and
when their inanities fritter away gallant lives and trail British
prestige in the dust they need rebuke. I hope some day, if I live, to
deal faithfully with Aden's hinterland policy.

In the autumn of 1915 I was fit enough to join the Red Sea maritime
patrol as political officer with the naval rank of lieutenant. Our
duties were to harry the Turk without hurting the Arab, to blockade the
Arabian coast against the Turk