ncy would
have been considerably greater if there had been more target-shooting.
From the very first, however, we felt that there was a scarcity of
ammunition. This shortage the drill-masters, in a spirit of
compensation, attempted to make up by abundant severity. The whip of
soft, flexible, stinging leather, which seldom leaves the Turkish
officer's hand, was never idle. This was not surprising, for the Arab is
a cunning fellow, whose only respect is for brute force. He exercises it
himself on every possible victim, and expects the same treatment from
his superiors.

So far as my comrades and I were concerned, I must admit that we were
generally treated kindly. We knew most of the drill-exercises from the
gymnastic training we had practiced since childhood, and the officers
realized that we were educated and came from respectable families. The
same was also true with regard to the native Christians, most of whom
can read and write and are of a better class than the Mohammedans of the
country. When Turkey threw in her lot with the Germanic powers, the
attitude toward the Jews and Christians changed radically; but of this I
shall speak later.

It was a hard life we led while in training at Saffed; evening would
find us dead tired, and little disposed for anything but rest. As the
tremendous light-play of the Eastern sunsets faded away, we would gather
in little groups in the courtyard of our mosque--its minaret towering
black against a turquoise sky--and talk fitfully of the little
happenings of the day, while the Arabs murmured gutturally around us.
Occasionally, one of them would burst into a quavering, hot-blooded
tribal love-song. It happened that I was fairly well known among these
natives through my horse Kochba--of pure Maneghi-Sbeli blood--which I
had purchased from some Anazzi Bedouins who were encamped not far from
Aleppo: a swift and intelligent animal he was, winner of many races, and
in a land where a horse is considerably more valuable than a wife, his
ownership cast quite a glamour over me.

[ILLUSTRATION: THE AUTHOR ON HIS HORSE KOCHBA]

In the evenings, then, the Arabs would come up to chat. As they speak
seldom of their children, of their women-folk never, the conversation
was limited to generalities about the crops and the weather, or to the
recitation of never-ending tales of Abou-Zeid, the famous hero of the
Beni-Hilal, or of Antar the glorious. Politics, of which they have
amazing ideas, also c