“He proved a remarkable, energetic commander, a friend to his soldiers.
“He planned and carried out personally several important operations against the Damascus-Medina railway, and captured El-Ouedjy and Akaba.
“From August, 1917, till September, 1918, he led numerous attacks north and south of Maan, capturing several railway stations and taking a great number of prisoners.
“He helped to destroy the 4th, 7th, 8th, and 9th Turkish armies by cutting off their communications to the north, south, and west of Deraa, and after a very bold raid he entered Damascus on October 1, and Aleppo on the 26th with the Allied troops.”
On February 6, 1919, he asked the Committee of the Ten on behalf of his father, Hussein ibn Ali, to recognise the independence of the Arabian peninsula, and declared he aimed at grouping the various regions of Arabian Asia under one sovereignty. He did not hesitate to remind the members of the Conference that he was speaking in the name of a people who had already reached a high degree of civilisation at a time when the Powers they represented did not even exist; and at the end of the sitting in the course of which the scheme of a League of Nations was adopted, he asked that all the secret treaties about the partition of the Asiatic dominion of the Ottoman Empire between the Great Powers should be definitely cancelled.
In March, 1919, the Emir went back to Syria, under the pretext of using his influence in favour of a French collaboration. He was given an enthusiastic greeting; but the supporters of the Arabian movement, which was partly his own work, declared their hostility to any policy that would bring about a mandate for Syria.
On March 7 it was announced that a National Syrian Congress, sitting at Damascus, had just proclaimed Syria an independent country, and the Emir Feisal, son of the Grand Sherif of Mecca, King of Syria.
It was reported that a declaration, issued by a second congress that was held in the same town and styled itself Congress of Mesopotamia, had been read at the same sitting, through which the latter congress solemnly proclaimed the independence of Irak—Mesopotamia—with the Emir Abdullah, the Emir Feisal’s brother, as King under the regency of another brother of his, the Emir Zeid.
All this, of course, caused a good deal of surprise in London, though something of the kind ought to have been expected.
In the above-mentioned document, after recalling the part played by the Arabs in the war and the declarations made by the Allies about the right of self-determination of peoples, the Congress declared the time had come to proclaim the complete independence and unity of Syria, and concluded as follows: