to the throne in the European sense by France and Britain.  Since then he was formally recognized by the five Powers.  His representatives in Paris demanded the annexation of all the countries of Arabic speech which were under Turkish domination.  These included not only Mesopotamia, but also Syria, on which France had long looked with loving eyes and respecting which there existed an accord between her and Britain.  The project community would represent a Pan-Arab federation of about eleven million souls, over which France would have no guardianship.  And yet the written accord had never been annulled.  Palestine was excluded from this Pan-Arabian federation, and Syria was to be consulted, and instead of being handed over to France, as M. Clemenceau demanded, was to be allowed to declare its own wishes without any injunctions from the Conference.  Mesopotamia would be autonomous under the League of Nations, but a single mandatory was asked for by the king of the Hedjaz for the entire eleven million inhabitants.

The comments of the French press on Britain’s attitude, despite their studied reserve and conventional phraseology, bordered on recrimination and hinted at a possible cooling of friendship between the two nations, and in the course of the controversy the evil-omened word “Fashoda” was pronounced.  The French Temps’s arguments were briefly these:  The populations claimed occupy such a vast stretch of territory that the sovereignty of the Hedjaz could hardly be more than nominal and symbolical.  In fact, they cover an area of one-half of the Ottoman Empire.  These different provinces would, in reality, be under the domination of the Great Power which was the real creator of this new kingdom, and the monarch of the Hedjaz would be a mere stalking-horse of Britain.  This, it was urged, would not be independence, but a masked protectorate, and in the name of the higher principles must be prevented.  Syria must be handed over to France without consulting the population.  The financial resources of the Hedjaz are utterly inadequate for the administration of such a vast state as was being compacted.  Who, then, it was asked, would supply the indispensable funds?  Obviously Britain, who had been providing the Emir Faisal with funds ever since his father donned the crown.  If this political entity came into existence, it would generate continuous friction between France and Britain, separate comrades in arms, delight a vigilant enemy, and violate a written compact which should be sacred.  For these reasons it should be rejected and Syria placed under the guardianship of France.

The Americans took the position that congruously with the high ethical principles which had guided the labors of the Conference throughout, it was incumbent on its members, instead of bartering civilized peoples like chattels, to consult them as to their own aspirations.  If it were true that the Syrians were yearning to become the wards of France, there could be no reasonable objection on the part of the French delegates to agree to a plebiscite.  But the French delegates declined to entertain the suggestion on the ground that Syria’s longing for French guidance was a notorious fact.