Vainly I tried to pin him down to personal reminiscences.  He was not interested in his own story.

“The British promised old King Hussein of Mecca that if he’d raise an Arab army to use against the Turks, there should be a united Arab kingdom afterward under a ruler of their own choosing.  The kingdom was to include Syria, Arabia and Palestine.  The French agreed.  Well, the Arabs raised the army; Emir Feisul, King Hussein’s third son, commanded it; Lawrence did so well that he became a legend.  The result was, Allenby could concentrate his army on this side of the Jordan and clean up.  He made a good job of it.  The Arabs were naturally cock-a-hoop.”

I suggested that the Arabs with that great army could have enforced the contract, but he laughed again.

“They were being paid in gold by the British, and had Lawrence to hold them together.  The flow of gold stopped, and Lawrence was sent home.  Somebody at the Foreign Office had changed his mind.  You see, they were all taken by surprise at the speed of Allenby’s campaign.  The Zionists saw their chance, and claimed Palestine.  No doubt they had money and influence.  Perhaps it was Jewish gold that had paid the wages of the Arab army.  Anyhow, the French laid claim to Syria.  By the time the war was over the Zionists had a hard-and-fast guarantee, the French claim to Syria had been admitted, and there wasn’t any country left except some Arabian desert to let the Arabs have.  That’s the situation.  Feisul is in Damascus, going through the farce of being proclaimed king, with the French holding the sea-ports and getting ready to oust him.  The Zionists are in Jerusalem, working like beavers, and the British are getting ready to pull out as much as possible and leave the Zionists to do their own worrying.  Mesopotamia is in a state of more or less anarchy.  Egypt is like a hot-box full of explosive—­may go off any minute.  The Arabs would like to challenge the world to mortal combat, and then fight one another while the rest of the world pays the bill—­”

“And you?”

“The French, for instance.  Their army is weak at the moment.  They’ve neither men nor money—­only a hunger to own Syria.  They don’t play what the English call ‘on side.’  They play a mean game.  The French General Staff figure that if Feisul should attack them now he might beat them.  So they’ve conceived the brilliant idea of spreading sedition and every kind of political discontent into Palestine and across the Jordan, so that if the Arabs make an effort they’ll make it simultaneously in both countries.  Then the British, being in the same mess with the French, would have to take the French side and make a joint campaign of it.”

“But don’t the British know this?”

“You bet they know it.  What’s the Intelligence for?  The French are hiring all the Arab newspapers to preach against the British.  A child could see it with his eyes shut.”