When General Maude took over the command, the effect of the Holy War that,
at the Kaiser's instigation, was being preached in the mosques had not as
yet been determined. This jehad, as it was called, proposed to unite all
"True Believers" against the invading Christians, and give the war a
strongly religious aspect. The Germans hoped by this means to spread
mutiny among the Mohammedan troops, which formed such an appreciable
element of the British forces, as well as to fire the fury of the Turks
and win as many of the Arabs to their side as possible. The Arab
thoroughly disliked both sides. The Turk oppressed him, but did so in an
Oriental, and hence more or less comprehensible, manner. The English gave
him justice, but it was an Occidental justice that he couldn't at first
understand or appreciate, and he was distinctly inclined to mistrust it.
In course of time he would come to realize its advantages. Under Turkish
rule the Arab was oppressed by the Turk, but then he in turn could oppress
the Jew, the Chaldean, and Nestorian Christians, and the wretched
Armenian. Under British rule he suddenly found these latter on an equal
footing with him, and he felt that this did not compensate the lifting
from his shoulders of the Turkish burden. Then, too, when a race has been
long oppressed and downtrodden, and suddenly finds itself on an equality
with its oppressor, it is apt to become arrogant and overbearing.
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