Chapter 4

Aden had bolstered up his authority in every possible way and had relied on him and his predecessor for years to act as semi-official suzerain and go-between for other tribes--a withered stick which snapped the first time it was leant upon. I could also point to the Imam of Yamen, strong in opposition to the Turks as a rallying point of tribal revolt, but weak and vacillating on the side of law and order. I might go on giving instances _ad nauseam_, but here is one more to clinch the argument, and it is typical of Arab politics. Aden had just cause of offence against a certain reigning sultan of the Abd-ul-Wahid in her eastern sphere of influence. He had intrigued with foreign States, oppressed his subjects, persecuted native trade and played the dickens generally. Therefore Aden rebuked him (by letter) and appointed a relative of his to be sultan and receive his subsidy. The erring but impenitent potentate reduced his relative to such submission that he would sign monthly receipts for the subsidy and meekly hand over the cash: these were his only official acts, as he retired into private life in favour of Aden's _bete noir_, who flourished exceedingly until he blackmailed caravans too freely and got the local tribesmen on his track.

When we also consider how early in Islamic history the Caliphate split as a temporal power, and the difficulty which even the early Caliphs (with all their prestige) had to keep order in Arabia, it should engender caution in experiments toward even partial centralisation of control: apart from the fact that they might develop along lines diverging from the recognised principles of self-determination in small States, they could land us into a humiliating _impasse_ or an armed expedition.

We parried the Turco-German efforts to turn pan-Islam against us, thanks to our circumspect attitude with regard to Moslems, but a genuine movement based on any apparent aggression of ours in Arabia proper might be a more serious matter.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote B: "_Arabia Infelix_," Macmillan.]