wrong about the
dhow--it was sheer cussedness.

All through the early part of 1916 we were keeping in touch with the
Sharif of Mecca by means of envoys, whom we landed where they listed,
away from the Turks, picking them up at times and places indicated by
them. Sharif Husein had long chafed under Turkish suzerainty, in spite
of his subsidy and the deference which policy compelled them to accord
him. He knew that the Hejaz could never realise its legitimate
aspirations under Ottoman rule, which was a blight on all Arab progress
and prosperity, as the Young Turkish party was hardly Moslem at heart,
being more national (that is Tartar)--certainly not pro-Arab.

Husein's difficulty was to get his own people to rise together and throw
off the Turkish yoke, for the Hejazi tribesman, especially between the
coast and Mecca, has long been more of a brigand than a warrior, as any
pilgrim will tell you. Such folk are apt to jib at hammer-and-tongs
fighting, and of course we could not land troops to assist them, as it
would have violated the sacred soil that cradled Islam and merely
stiffened the bogus _jihad_ which the Turks had proclaimed against us,
besides compromising the Sharif with his own tribesmen.

The Hejazis' ingenuous idea was to go on taking money from us, the Turks
and the Sharif, while--thanks to our lenient blockade--a regular
dhow-traffic fed them. We did not approve of this Utopian policy, and
the fall of Kut brought matters to a climax. After certain
communications had passed between the representatives of His Majesty's
Government and the Sharif, it was decided to tighten the blockade and so
induce the gentle Hejazi to declare himself. The day was fixed, May, 15,
on and after which date no traffic whatever was to be permitted with the
Arabian coast other than that specially sanctioned by Government. In
palaver thereon I managed to get local fishing-craft exempted. The
fisher-folk are not combatants either on empty stomachs or full ones,
and could be relied on to consume their own fish in that climate unless
very close to a market, where the pinch would be great enough to make
them exchange it for foodstuffs, thus helping the situation we wished to
bring about. I knew that all _bona fide_ fishing-craft were easily
recognisable by their rig and comparatively small size, and hoped that
good will would combine with freedom of movement to make these folk
useful agents for Intelligence.

I heard with some relief