English embarrassments in the Hejaz and Egypt

King Hussein has abdicated. The talks between Macdonald and Zaghloul Pasha have broken off, the English Premier not having appreciated the proposal made to him by his interlocutor to substitute the control of the League of Nations for British control in Egypt...
It has been said that the entire policy of the English revolves around the possession of the Indies. If they refuse to evacuate Egypt, it is because they intend to keep control of the Suez Canal; if they have worked to create an Arab kingdom on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, it was to replace with a friendly power the "infidel gatekeeper" who had cut off the route to the Indies during the war.

It should not be believed that the abdication of King Hussein directly marks an English failure. Relations between him and the London cabinet had cooled considerably since the day he refused to sign the treaty that would have definitively subjected Iraq to England. This attitude had made him lose British support. He claimed it in vain against the Wahhabis. If he had obtained it, he would have, if not conquered, at least prolonged his resistance. England, which never gives up its goal, does not persist in using means that experience shows to be ineffective. What will it find to replace the Hashemite combination?

The task will be hard for it. Today it bears the punishment of its ambition. It has chosen in the world of Islam, to extend its influence, the best regions and the richest populations; but it is naturally there that the more advanced civilization engenders a stronger national resistance against all European domination. The progress of this feeling threatens with ruin the entire English colonial empire in Asia and Egypt.

Maurice TURPAUD.