Bat whatever the correct explanations Ï****, *«° facte stand
out la any survey ofiyriJtoday. One is th. hostility to the French
mandate which i. a^n stronger than it was in 1919. At that tl.e the
pro-?reneh minority was vigorous and oat-spoken. In the spriBgpfp** j
except far a few office holders of dubious character who are subsidised
by high salaries, the Syrians seemed almost unanimously opposed to any
dealings, official or otherwise, with the French. The pro-French minority
had alaost completely disappeared. In 1919, for example, the Maronites
were so dewotedly in sympathy with theCji'rench that they were scarcely
courteous to the British and Americans. In 1922 the Maronite Patriarch
sad his associates stated to Americans that they regretted deeply the
grave mistake they had made in asking for the French. Syrian opposition
to the French mandate is intensified by the assurance given in the mandate
resolutions adopted by the Allies on January 30th, 1919, that "The wishes
of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection
of the mandatory power•• According to the Syrians their wishes have been
considered only in the sense that they have bean completely frustrated.
The second outstanding fact is the persistence of Syrian
nationalisa and thorough-going opposition to colonization by any power.
There are three planks in their present notionalist platform. The first j
is the unity of Syria including Palestine and the trans-Jordan districts
now under British nandate. This is urged for economic even more than
for political reasons. The separation of Palestine and Trana-Jordania,
sndsthe areas north and east of Syria as now constituted, with the
easterns barriers that have been erected on these frontiers, is, it is
said, disastrous to the industriss asd commerce of Damascus, Aleppo.
offi™VXS1 Tmh-y be protected by copyri9ht law
reproduced or distributed without the specific "
sSZ?rA^t H°OVer lns«t»«on Archives,
Stanford, CA 94305-6010.