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Although the Arab leaders despaired of seeing a happier day for their country, Shereef Hussein and his sons concealed their hatred for the autocratic triumvirate and the whole Young Turk party. Because of the help he had given the triumvirate before he was disillusioned as to their real aims, they granted him the title of Keeper of the Holy Places of Islam, or the sixty-sixth Emir of Mecca of the Ottoman period.

Miss Gertrude Bell, the only woman staff captain in the British army and one of the foremost authorities on Near Eastern affairs, in a letter to “The Times” of London declared that the Arab Nationalist movement was given vitality by the Young Turks, who as soon as they came into power changed their whole attitude.

“Liberty and equality are dangerous words to play with in an empire composed of divergent nationalities,” wrote Miss Bell. “Of these the Arabs, adaptable and quick-witted, proudly alive to their traditions of past glory as founders of Islam, and upholders for 700 years of the authority of the Khilafat, were the first to claim the translation of promise into performance, and in the radiant dawn of the constitutional era the Arab intelligentsia eagerly anticipated that their claim would be recognised. If the Turks had responded with a genuine attempt to allow Arab culture to develop along its own lines under their ægis, the Ottoman Empire might have taken on new life, but their inelastic mentality precluded them from embracing the golden opportunity. Moreover, Prussian militarism made to them a peculiarly powerful, and, if the political configuration of their Empire be considered, a peculiarly dangerous appeal. The Committee of Union and Progress was determined to hack its way through the sensibilities of subject races, and, not content with this formidable task, by neglecting the cautious diplomatic methods of Abdul Hamid it found itself involved in a disastrous and debilitating struggle with its neighbour States in Europe.