an
correspondence."

And those Britons who have handled Oriental affairs for the last twenty
years can appreciate the extent of that interest when we remember that
even while Yamen Arabs were fighting the Turks, their neighbours on the
Aden side of the frontier were praying in their mosques that the Sultan
and his troops might be victorious "by land and sea."

All this, however, was merely playing with intrigue as a political
counterpoise; it remained for a Christian nation to put pan-Islam on a
business footing. First we have polite bagmen calling at Stamboul with
German guns and a German military system. Then "our Mr. William" of the
well-known Potsdam firm of Hohenzollern and Sons made his great
advertising campaign in the Near East; many of us remembered his
theatrical visit to Saladin's tomb and the tawdry wreath with its
bombastic inscription, "From the Emperor of the Franks to the Emperor of
the Saracens--Greeting."

That astute "pilgrim" made himself especially affable to the American
Protestant missionaries in the Holy Land, preached to a small but select
congregation at the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and posed alternately
as a pious but militant Moslem (when Hajji Guiyaum rode in military pomp
into Jerusalem) and as a prince of peace. That the hospice of Kaiserin
Augusta Victoria on the top of the Mount of Olives was loop-holed for
musketry and mounted a searchlight in its tower that could signal with
Haifa was possibly due to some wayward caprice of the builder, but it
came in very useful later on. So did the scholarly researches of eminent
Germans in Sinai, assisted as they were by maps which the Anglo-Egyptian
authorities courteously placed at their disposal, and which formed a
basis for a more detailed survey of wells and routes.

But the old firm at Potsdam excelled itself in its representatives on
the Palestine coast. There was, for example, the German Consul at Haifa
famed for his culture and diplomacy (the Teutonic brand), who also spoke
Arabic, Turkish, French and English fluently. This gifted official
frequented native cafes, where he fraternised with the local Arabs and
conducted a vigorous verbal propaganda against the Entente. Then there
was the German engineer who wrecked the British railway scheme to
connect Haifa and Damascus and re-naturalised as a German citizen after
being American Consul. The Belgian Vice-Consul too, that merry Hun, who
was also agent for our Khedivial mail line. Whe