Recently the Acting Governor has been Captain Carbillet, whom the
Druses charge with having treated them not as members of an independent State but as colonial u_nderlings. When Captain Carbillet left the country recently on leave the Druses tried to secure that he should never return, and sent a deputation to General Sarrail, the High Commissioner in Syria, at Beirut. General Sarrail refused to receive the delegates. When they reached Damascus some were detained, and others were placed under supervision in the Hauran. Riots followed, the worst of which was probably that in which a Druse religious assembly was dispersed under the misapprehension that it was a political meeting. The dispersal was resisted, and several persons were killed on both sides. Such, according to sources of information which are frankly opposed to the French, were the principal steps which led up to the outbreak and the investment of Sueida. * * *
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