the Metawali, and the Druses in the Syrian mountains, Shiite
Arabs on the Gulf coast and the Persian border, with pagan Kurds and
Yezidis in the latter region and north Mesopotamia. As for the Christians,
their divisions are notorious, most of these being subdivided again into
two or more hostile communions apiece. It is almost impossible to imagine
the inhabitants of Syria concerting a common plan or taking common action.
The only elements among them which have shown any political sense or
capacity for political organization are Christian. The Maronites of the
Lebanon are most conspicuous among these; but neither their numbers nor
their traditional relations with their neighbours qualify them to form the
nucleus of a free united Syria. The 'Arab Movement' up to the present has
consisted in little more than talk and journalese. It has not developed
any considerable organization to meet that stable efficient organization
which the Committee of Union and Progress has directed throughout the
Ottoman dominions.

As for the rest of the empire, Asia Minor will stand by the Osmanli cause,
even if Europe and Constantinople, and even if the Holy Places and all the
Arab-speaking provinces be lost. Its allegiance does not depend on either
the tradition of Roum or the caliphate, but on essential unity with the
Osmanli nation. Asia Minor is the nation. There, prepared equally by
Byzantine domination and by Seljukian influence, the great mass of the
people long ago identified itself insensibly and completely with the
tradition and hope of the Osmanlis. The subsequent occupation of the
Byzantine capital by the heirs of the Byzantine system, and their still
later assumption of caliphial responsibility, were not needed to cement
the union. Even a military occupation by Russia or by another strong power
would not detach Anatolia from the Osmanli unity; for a thing cannot be
detached from itself. But, of course, that occupation might after long
years cause the unity itself to cease to be.

Such an occupation, however, would probably not be seriously resisted or
subsequently rebelled against by the Moslem majority in Asia Minor,
supposing Osmanli armaments to have been crushed. The Anatolian population
is a sober, labouring peasantry, essentially agricultural and wedded to
the soil. The levies for Yemen and Europe, which have gone far to deplete
and exhaust it of recent years, were composed of men who fought to order
and without imaginatio