Palestine]
their own domestic affairs in their own language, of developing their own country, and of themselves enjoying the responsibilities and emoluments of its administration. Nothing more, even on the witness of Ahmed Jemal Pasha himself, was in the programme of the three or four Arab literary and political clubs which had come into being at Constantinople by the end of 1908, or in that of the larger Reform Club," which was formed at Beirut in the following year.
Attempts at Ottoman Nationalisation.—The Committee of Union and Progress, however, lost no time in showing that it would have none of these ideals— not any nationalism but Ottoman Turk, not any official language but Turkish, not any home rule within the Empire, not any of the higher power in other hands than those that subscribed to its programme of one race, one language, one administration. One Constantinople club, the Akha el-Arab, founded by Shefik el-Muayad and Nadra Mutran, was snuffed out; Arab deputies heard plain words in the Chamber, and plainer if they attended meetings of the Committee of Union and Progress; the Adana massacre showed Arab-speaking Christians that they had not found a new earth; and the undisguised contempt testified by the Turks towards Arab Moslems warned these to expect no superior offices or emoluments. There was no mistaking the survival of the Old Turk in the Young one. All spirit of home rule was dealt with promptly and drastically, whether it was the Kurdish spirit of Ibrahim Pasha Milli in 1908; or the Arab spirit of the Mujaliah of Kerak, which threatened the Hejaz railway in 1910; or the Druse spirit, which provoked Sami Pasha in 1911; or the Armenian spirit of Zeitun, which never rested till broken in August 1914.
Anti-Turkish Committees.—By the time the Balkan War was going ill for the Turks the temper of Syrian Arabs had changed for the worse. Clubs like the Kahtaniya, which had been formed without a thought
