them among the big
hill-centres; including Sanaa, the political capital where the Imam
holds, or should hold, his court as hereditary ruler spiritual and
temporal. This ecclesiastical potentate has backed the Turk in a
non-committal but flamboyant manner during the War up to the turning of
the tide against them, when he sat on the fence until his Turkish
subsidy ceased. He now looks to Western diplomacy in general and the
British Government in particular not only to continue but to enhance
this subsidy, in order that he may really govern in Yamen. His attitude
throughout is natural and, indeed, justifiable in the interests of
himself and his dynasty; at least occidental politicians cannot cavil at
his motives; but what they ought to ascertain is how far he can fill the
bill as a ruler in Yamen and the extent to which he should be backed.
Without a considerable subsidy his administrative powers (not hitherto
very marked) will not carry far even in the highlands.

Missionaries were allowed to enter Yamen before the War, but did not
establish themselves, even on the coast. Some of them went up-country
and stayed there some time without being molested. The average Yameni is
not fanatical by temperament; there is more bigotry among the urban Jew
colonies than in the whole Moslem countryside.

In the Aden protectorate there has been long established the Falconer
Medical Mission, which, though actually at Sheikh Othman, just inside
the British border, has done splendid work among natives of the
hinterland, who visit it from all parts. Its relations with the Arabs
have always been excellent, though the local ruffians looted the Mission
when the Turks held Sheikh Othman temporarily.

The province of Hadhramaut, politically, includes not only the vast
valley of that name with its tributaries, but the whole of the western
part of Southern Arabia outside the Aden protectorate from the Yamen
border to the confines of Oman near longitude 55. Mokalla is the capital
and principal port. Missionaries have been well received there by the
enlightened ruler--a member of the Kaaiti house with the local title of
Jemadar, inherited from an ancestor who soldiered in the Arab bodyguard
of a former Nizam at Haiderabad. The interior is not suited to
missionary enterprise.

Muscat, the capital of Oman, has already been occupied by missionaries.
The Sultan (at whose court there is a British Resident) is well-disposed,
but has lost most of his i