around the docks, where crowds of women and children
congregated daily in the hope of obtaining food. I saw one small boy
walking in front of me with a curious, unsteady gait, and just as I drew
level with him he pitched forward on to his face without a sound. He was
stone-dead when I turned him over; and judging by the terrible emaciation
of his body he had died of protracted starvation.

Until the foodships arrived the British Army fed most of the people; I use
the word "most" advisedly, for even here there were fat profiteers who had
made fortunes out of the War, and who cared nothing for the sufferings of
others. The poorer inhabitants literally thronged the various camps in
search of food, and with characteristic generosity the troops tried to feed
them all! They gave away bully-beef and biscuits to those most in need,
and, whenever possible, their tea and sugar rations also; it was painful to
see the gratitude of the recipients.

Except amongst the very wealthy both tea and sugar had been literally
unknown for four years. When we entered Beyrout the price of tea was four
hundred piastres (L4 2s.) per lb.--and chemically-treated stuff at that;
and sugar, which was all but unobtainable by anybody, cost three hundred
piastres per lb.! Within a week of our arrival you could buy both
commodities in the shops at about twenty piastres and five piastres per lb.
respectively.

But distress and suffering were not confined to Beyrout alone. On the
pleasant hills of Lebanon north of the town are numerous villages through
which the Turks had swept like a plague. Here the policy had been not so
much starvation as extermination: whole villages were stripped of their
inhabitants, who had been forcibly carried away, the men to slavery or
death; the women to something worse. You could ride through village after
village without seeing a soul, save perhaps an old man who would tell you
that he was keeping the keys of the houses for their owners--who would
never return. It is impossible to describe the pall of desolation that hung
over those silent villages, a desolation that seemed to be accentuated by
the beauty of the surrounding country.

Upwards of a quarter of a million people were either deported or massacred
by the Turks in the Lebanon hills alone; and only in the villages occupied
by Circassians, whom the Turks themselves had subsidised, were there any
signs of even moderate prosperity. These people, moreover, showed marked