THE REVOLT IN YEMEN.
WE rather wonder at the absence of intelligence from Aden as to the progress of the revolt in Yemen. The officials there ought to know all about it, and Aden itself, as the principal port of export, is the natural change- house for all news from the great and fertile plateau, 4,000 ft. high, which gives Yemen its special place among the divisions of Arabia. It seems certain that the rebellion which broke out some months since has not been sup- pressed ; that the Turkish General, who, when last heard of, was advancing from the Hedjaz with five thousand regulars to relieve Sanaa, has failed in that attempt; and that, although the Arabs, who never can manage a siege, have not captured the garrison of the capital, they still invest it, and have raised a considerable army. According to a recent telegram in the Times, purporting to record the news which has reached Vienna, the Sheiks have com- plete control of the country outside Sanaa, they have with them forty thousand fighting-men, and they expect speedily to receive the submission of the capital. If they do, there will be serious alarm, and perhaps confusion, in Constantinople, where the Sultan, though trusted as a diplomatist, is not believed in as a soldier, and where the meaning of a success- ful revolt of this kind is better understood than anywhere in the West. The Treasury will be bankrupt, to begin with, for the Sultan must reconquer Yemen or see his dynasty fall, and the expense of moving an army with sufficient artillery across deserts where it must carry everything or shrivel up from daily losses, will be counted in millions. The Arabs, though as brave as the Turks and far more intelligent, are hardly equal to them as soldiers, lacking, as they themselves admit, their rigid discipline and power of cohesion ; but they are protected, until the plateau has been climbed, by the deserts along their frontier ; they are splendid fighters in a loose way ; and if they are sufficiently in earnest to refuse bribes, they may destroy army after army. Hitherto the Turks, when fairly overmatched, have usually recovered themselves by buying the tribes in detail ; but this expedient has not apparently this time been successful. If the Arabs of Yemen maintain the struggle continuously and without any marked defeat, the flame is sure to spread to the Hedjaz, and Mecca once disaffected, the Ottoman and the Arab will once more be face to face, burning with the old traditions, the enmities which never sleep, and that scorn of each other which is so keen when the people long defeated and oppressed know themselves to be in every respect except coherence the superiors of those who have defeated them.
Of the comparative resources of the two races, it is diffi- cult to form a confident opinion. Their numbers are probably nearly equal. The German estimates of the population of Arabia are almost certainly false, the immense extent of the peninsula, which is larger than India, though with huge expanses of desert, making calculation nearly impossible. We know, however, pretty accurately from the results of Omar's conscription, that the peninsula once contained fourteen millions of people, and there seems no reason why the population should have dwindled, as the Germans say, to less than half that number. The Arabs, too, are outside the peninsula, in the whole of Eastern Africa, in Syria, and Egypt, and throughout the entire region, a world in itself, which we describe as the southern shore of the Mediterranean. They all recognise their kinship, they all detest the Ottoman rule, and they all implicitly believe that the headship of the Mussulman world belongs to them of divine right, and has only been taken from them by Allah in punishment for sins which ought by this time to be expiated. They still produce the greatest doctors in the Mahommedan world; they furnish all its effective missionaries, who count by thousands ; and they can rely, if they achieve one striking success, on all Mussulman Negroes, who as soldiers are not to be despised. On the other hand, the Ottomans are far better organised than their rivals ; they possess, which the Arabs do not, the costly plant necessary in our day to successful campaigning ; and though their numbers decline steadily, they can still pro- duce on any emergency an astonishing number of men, who take to soldiership by a sort of instinct. After a tremendous sacrifice of life, not so much in battle as in marching, from disease, and from their rooted conviction that the life of a wounded man is in the hands of Allah, who, if he favours him, takes him to Paradise, they would probably win, but at the cost of their possessions in Europe, and of all safe ascendency in Asia. The struggle would wear out the remnant of the race, which does not multiply, and has lost, without losing its courage, all confidence in its destiny. The Ottomans have come too close to the white man, and feel that, whatever the events of the hour, he will conquer in the end.
The Sultan is said to be under the odd delusion that the English have got up the revolt—probably because his agents report that the Arabs of Yemen buy English guns, which we dare say is the case—and we suppose that at some point or other, if Arabia does take fire, we shall be involved in the consequent revolution which would directly and dangerously threaten Egypt. The Arabs look on Egypt as their natural heritage, and the best possession they ever had, and if only temporarily victorious, could hardly restrain themselves from one more effort to regain the fertile valley. We should have, we suppose, to stop them, as we stopped the Mandi, for many reasons, one peremptory one being the safety of India, where a revival of Arab power would drive the Mahommedan community frantic with excitement ; but we could wish it were not so. A revival of the Arab Caliphate might revive the whole East, including in that word Persia and the South of the Mediterranean. It is very hard on the Mussulman world, if you will think of it, that it should never have a chance of reinvigorating itself, and that though its worst and most destructive race is growing feeble, it should be kept at the top by Christian support, and influences with which the welfare of Western Asia has nothing whatever to do. The Eastern method of reinvigoration is, when a dynasty or a dominant caste has worn itself out—partly by sensual excesses, partly by an abnormal expenditure of energy in feats of conquest and construction which, their rapidity being considered, Europe has never rivalled save under Alexander—its subjects revolt, subjugate or drive it away, and elevate a new dynasty or caste which reigns, founds, builds, fosters a kind of civilisation, and then in its turn decays and passes away. Europe, for its own reasons, chiefly though not wholly selfish, being mistress of all seas, and therefore potentially of all ports, armoured in science beyond the possibility of attack, and possessed of terrible though not weighty weapons of offence—the European armies which have invaded Asia, have in modern times invariably been small—stops this reinvigorating process, and thereby con- demns Western Asia to long-continued stagnation and decay, sometimes so protracted that, as in Persia and parts of Asia Minor, the very population which ploughs the fields silently perishes away. If Europe would conquer for itself, it would be a different matter, for the West, when sovereign, does secure something to the East, the extinction of terrorism to begin with, and an enormous multiplication of the people ; but the European States are too jealous for that, so that the sum-total of her influence, considered from the historic point of view, is to produce only an increasing tendency to paralysis. The people become hopeless, the Pashas seek only to make fortunes, and the Sultan, whose interest, of course, is general prosperity, is only anxious to play off his enemies against each other, and so keep himself from the necessity of doing anything, either in attack or de- fence. Unfortunately for himself, he cannot play that game when attacked in the rear, and so we suppose he will borrow money somewhere, conciliate Mecca with great gifts, send 30,000 men to Yemen, losing half on the road, and so reim- pose for a few years more the old dull tyranny which secures neither order nor prosperity, but keeps the Arabs quiet, and puts off the ultimate struggle for the headship of the Mussulman world. It is a poor prospect for Western Asia ; but we do not see that England can improve it, or that, until Europe grows less jealous, anything can be done except to allow fighting for a time, and then, when it might produce something for the world, issue the irresistible order that it must cease. Nothing, not even fanaticism or a decisive victory, can enable either the Arab or Ottoman to cross a mile of water or approach the sea when Europe has once forbidden it, and under that disability an Asiatic revolution can never be carried out.
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