sh, 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."

"Then why in thunder don't the British have a showdown?"

"That's where the joker comes in. The French know there's a sort
of diplomatic credo at the London Foreign Office to the general
effect that England and France have got to stand together or
Europe will go to pieces. The French are realists. They bank
on that. They tread on British corns, out here, all they want
to, while they toss bouquets, backed by airplanes, across the
English Channel."

"Then the war didn't end the old diplomacy?"

"What a question! But I haven't more than scratched the Near
East surface for you yet. There's Mustapha Kemal in Anatolia,
leader of the Turkish Nationalists, no more dead or incapacitated
than a possum. He's playing for his own hand--Kaiser Willy
stuff--studying Trotzky and Lenin, and flirting with Feisul's
party on the side. Then there's a Bolshevist element among the
Zionists--got teeth, too. There's an effort being made from
India to intrigue among the Sikh troops employed in Palestine.
There's a very strong party yelling for an American mandate. The
Armenians, poor devils, are pulling any string they can get hold
of, in the hope that anything at all may happen. The orthodox
Jews are against the Zionists; the Arabs are against them both,
and furious with one another. There's a pan-Islam movement on
foot, and a pan-Turanian--both different, and opposed. About 75
per cent of the British are as pro-Arab as they dare be, but the
rest are strong for the Zionists. And the Administrator's
neutral!--strong for law and order but taking no sides."

"And you?"

"I'm one of the men who is trying to keep the peace."

He invited me to stay to dinner. The other members of the mess
were trooping in, all his juniors, all obviously fond of him
and boisterously irreverent of his rank. Dinner under his
chairmanship was a sort of school for repartee. It was utterly
unlike the usual British mess dinner. If you shut your eyes for
a minute you couldn't believe that any one present had ever worn
a uniform. I learned afterward that there was quite a little
competition to get into that mess.

After di