very nice too.  Arab troops and Arab gendarmerie in their quaint spiked head-gear; while hundreds of British staff officers (where they come from, or what they do I don’t know), with tabs of all colours (and as one officer remarked to me only the other day, ’When the blue and green tabs appear it’s time to capture another town’!) And a sprinkling of combatant officers, English sisters, French attaches, and American Red Cross workers, represent the western world.

     “THE RACING.

“Now we go and place our solitary 10 pt. on a promising pony ridden by one of the two ‘real’ jockeys.  It is all we can spare, as the Field Cashier happens to be away (as usual).  Suddenly a bugle blows, and we hear the usual cry ‘They’re off!’ But they aren’t; at least two are and there’s no stopping those two.  No, they mean to carry on now; neck and neck they go, and soon they are round the distant corner, and thundering past the four furlong point.  On they come shouting for Allah and Mohammed, and standing high in their stirrups they wave their sticks madly in the air, yelling at each other with all the frenzy of the faithful followers of El Islam!  A dead heat they reach the post and gallop wildly on, to end up somewhere on the banks of the Kuwaik Su!

“Now, the bugle goes again, and the start has really begun this time, the field getting away something like a compact lump.  But soon they string out, and we notice our two orthodox men well in rear.  This time the race is even more exciting, and as the post is neared the yells of defiance, the flowing robes, the waving arms and the bump, bump, bump of the riders brings pictures to the mind of the fiery followers of Saladin, or an attack by the Arabs in the ‘Tragedy of the Korosko’.

     “HOME AGAIN!

“Well, it’s over at last, and our ‘choice’ and the other smartly dressed jockey are miles behind.  But that doesn’t matter as I hear the winner is only paying out 5 pt.  Oh! that ‘Tote’!  Six races are the usual number run; and then the sun sinks behind the Taurus Mountains, the shadows fall long and blue, and the high-up Citadel, flanked by mosques and minarets, becomes bathed in the orange light of the setting rays.  As the last horse is led in, the crowd flows back towards the town, and then the arabiyehs crack their whips, the camels grunt, the staff start up their motor cars, and the combatant officers with light hearts and lighter pockets mount their chargers, and wend their way back to camp.

     “Such is an Aleppo Race Meeting, and so do we attempt to pass the
     monotony of an enforced exile in a barren and a dreamy land.

“Very soon the rain will come, and then the mud, and then we shall look for the Christmas parcels, British books, local papers, and more than all—­that long-promised holiday for the Army-of-Occupation-Volunteer!!”.

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