Ali Shah al Khassib chose that ringing appeal as the cue for his next move in the game.  He called on Sheikh Abdul Ali, “as well known in Damascus as in this place,” to address the mejlis.

There was instant silence.  Even the coffee cups ceased rattling.  Abdul Ali got to his feet with the manner of a man long used to swaying assemblies.  He had just the right air of authority; exactly the right suggestion of deference; the quiet smile of the man with secrets up his sleeve; and he paused just long enough before speaking to whet curiosity and fix attention.

He did not speak floridly or fast, and he indulged in none of those flights of oratory that most Arabs love.  There was ample time between his sentences for Mahommed ben Hamza to translate into my wet and itching ear.  But every sentence of his speech had measured weight in it, and every word he used was chosen for its poison or its sting.

He began by reminding them of the war and of Emir Feisul’s share in it.  Of how they, and their fathers, and their sons had fought behind Feisul and helped to establish him in Damascus.  Then he spoke of the British promise that the Arabs’ should have a kingdom of their own, with Damascus for its capital and borders to include all the peoples of Arab blood in the Near East.  He paused for a full minute after that.  Then: 

“But the French are in Syria.  The French, who also promised us an Arab kingdom.  They have assembled at the coast an army that already threatens Emir Feisul.  The British are in Palestine, where they are admitting a horde of Zionist Jews to displace us Arabs, rightful owners of the soil.  The British are also in Mesopotamia, which they have seized for themselves for the sake of the oil which Allah, in His wisdom, created beneath the fertile earth.  Feisul makes ready to defend Syria against the French.  But the British will march to the aid of the French.  Can anybody tell me how much of that promise to us Arabs has been kept, by either nation, French or British?”

So far he was on thoroughly safe ground.  A man who preached against the French could hardly be suspected of being hired by the French to do it.  There was nobody there but he who could say what Feisul’s intentions actually were.  You can say what you like against the British anywhere, at any time, and find some one to believe what you say.  And it needed no wizardry to prove that the Allies had broken every promise they ever made to the Arabs.

“Are you going to sit idle, and let Emir Feisul and the Syrians fight the French alone?” he asked, and paused again.

There was a great deal of murmuring—­not quite all of it, I thought, entirely in his favour.

“What is the alternative to sitting still like camels waiting to be doubly burdened?  If you raid Palestine, the local Arabs will all rise to your assistance.  The throat of every Zionist from the Lebanon to Beersheba will be cut.  There will be plunder beyond reckoning.  And you will help Feisul by holding back the British army from marching to the assistance of the French.  The question is, are you men?—­are you Arabs?—­are you true Moslems? —­or do you like to look down from these heights of El-Kerak over the home of your ancestors in the hands of so-called Zionists who are nothing but Jews, under a new name?”