Semitic Friends

Although Nazis preach Nordic racial superiority, they have little hesitation in stringing along with a Mediterranean people like the Italians or an Oriental one like the Japanese. Moreover, they strenuously try to cultivate friendship with the Arabs, who are not only non-Aryan but Semitic. Last week Adolf Hitler received at his Berchtesgaden retreat a tall, straight, bearded Arab dressed in a beautifully embroidered flowing robe. His name was Khalid al Hud, and his position is that of counselor and emissary of Ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, "Guardian of the Holy Places," the most potent and most independent of the Near East's monarchs.

Nazi rumor had it last week that stubborn Ibn Saud, most listened-to of Arab nationalist leaders, and Great Britain, most respected of Western powers in the Near East, were on the outs. The Nazis, in fact, wanted it believed that His Majesty was so exasperated by British "broken promises" in the-Near East that hereafter Arab nationalists in general and Ibn Saud in particular would come to Rome and Berlin for help and guidance. Although a discreet silence was kept over what, if anything, Fuehrer Hitler promised Khalid al Hud and vice versa, it was news simply that they had talked. When the German Foreign Office mouthpiece, the Deutsche Diplo-matische Politische Korrespondenz, announced on the heels of the meeting that the Axis would support the Arabs in eliminating British and French influence in the Near East, it was doubly news. For Britain it was alarming.

Likelihood was that Khalid al Hud's visit would not result immediately in anything concrete, but was simply another instance of the Axis policy of goading the British and French by flattering the Arab. Although Benito Mussolini allows his Arabs in Libya precious little freedom, he has long been mightily concerned about Arab independence in French-mandated Syria and British-mandated Palestine. Il Duce proclaimed himself "Protector of Islam" two years ago, but last spring he nevertheless invaded Albania, a predominantly Moslem country. In Germany hand-picked Arabs are invited as honor guests to the Nazi Party's annual Congress at Nuernberg, where they usually hear Nazi orators bait the Jews. Both Nazi and Fascist newspapers, moreover, rarely miss a chance to fight the battle of the Arab in Palestine and Syria. Last week they found some choice items to report.

> In Haifa, Palestine, 18 Arabs were killed, 24 wounded, by a time bomb exploding in a vegetable market. British authorities believed Jews, probably of the Revisionist organization, the culprits. Arabs planned a general strike, while members of Haifa's Christian community asked the British High Commissioner to protect the Arab population. Jewish communal leaders hastened to condemn the "dastardly murder of innocent Arabs, women and children." and Chairman David Ben Gurion, of the Palestine Jewish Agency, again warned his people that "we must not sully our struggle with despicable acts of madness."

> But the Arab world's biggest loss last week took place at Ankara, capital of Turkey, where the French and the Turks signed a treaty ceding to Turkey the Republic of Hatay. This 1,500-square-mile region, situated just south of the big bulge of Turkish Asia Minor, was known until last September as the Sanjak of Alexandretta. It was geographically a part of Syria, held in mandate by France, and hence an integral part of that great Empire which Pan-Arab leaders envision creating some day. One of its cities is Antioch, where Paul and Barnabas taught and Ben Hur raced his chariot. But the most important city of Hatay is Alexandretta, terminus of the never completed Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway, one of the best ports of the Levantine Coast, the natural sea outlet for Syria and for the upper Euphrates Valley of Iraq.

Hatay is a melting pot of Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Alaouites, Greeks, Circassians and Turks. Of these, the Turks are most numerous, constituting 40% of the population. Taking a leaf from Fuehrer Hitler's book and even improving on his methods, the Turks first asked for (and got) minority rights for their nationals in Hatay, next autonomy for the region, next "independence," with Turkish and French troops jointly "keeping order." At one time the late President Kamal Atatuerk backed up his demands by massing troops along the Syrian border. At another time a League of Nations plebiscite was to be held in the district, but when most of the non-Turks banded together and it became obvious that the Turks could not win, the obliging French invited the League Commission to leave.

When early this spring France and Britain began to form their Stop Hitler bloc, they wanted an alliance with Turkey. Quickly the Turks signed up with Britain, but to join France they asked a price: out & out annexation of Hatay.

Last week the French paid the price, and as Turkish Foreign Minister Sukru Saracoglu and French Ambassador Rene Massigli signed Hatay away at Ankara, at Paris French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet and Turkish Ambassador Suad Davaz initiated a treaty of mutual assistance. Out of the Hatay deal France was able to wangle only a few concessions: minorities who want to leave the territory within 18 months will be able to do so with all their goods and cattle; the northern slopes of Jebel Akra, a mountainous part of Hatay largely populated by Armenians, will go to adjacent Syria. To go to Turkey, however, is the mountain of Musa Dagh, scene of the 1935 best-seller Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Last week the tough Armenians who underwent the siege of 1915 there served notice on the French Chamber of Deputies that they would again resist a Turkish occupation.

But the real losers of last week's French-Turkish diplomacy were the Arabs. As for the Republic of Syria, it will be a landlocked country, dispossessed of a sea outlet. From the sloping hills of Southern Anatolia to the sharp, barren rocks of Aden there were bound to be universal and indignant protests that the Arabs had again been betrayed, that an Arab State had again suffered as the pawn of British-French power politics. The soft, sweet words that Aggrandizer Hitler undoubtedly whispered to Khalid al Hud at Berchtesgaden, the inflammable anti-British and anti-French propaganda that goes over the ether nightly from Italian and German radio stations, will probably fall on more receptive Arab ears hereafter.

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