of separatism, now contemplated a national jihad against Turkish "infidels," which Christians and Jews were called to join. Other clubs, the Jemiyat el-Islahiah, for example, were started to invite foreign intervention in Syria and even permanent foreign protection; and the attempt to suppress them in Beirut was met by a cessation of all trade and business for three days. In 1912 we find many of the Syrian Committeemen gathered into Egypt, where a "decentralisation society' ("el-La-Merkesiah ") had been constituted with a non-separatist programme. It gradually became bitterly anti-Turk, and inclined to seek French or other European intervention. When the meagre concessions offered to the Arab Convention at Paris had proved a dead letter, the secret societies of Syria became definitely separatist; and the year 1914 was occupied with revolutionary intrigues in all the principal cities, the Turks knowing something of them and suspecting more, but being unable to lay their hands as yet on the leaders or on proofs of their guilt.
Incriminating correspondence was, however, found by the Turks soon after the outbreak of the recent war; and courts-martial, constituted in permanence at Aley, Damascus, and Aleppo, found excuse for instituting a reign of terror, which sent to execution or exile almost all possible leaders of Syrian revolt, and also for infringing the Constitution of the Lebanon. A Moslem Governor and Turkish garrisons were despatched to the Mountain in 1915, pending formal denunciation of the Organic Statute in the following year.
