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From Bagdad, Jerusalem, Damascus and Aden radios began to crackle last week: HODEIDA . . . HODEIDA . . . IMAM YAHYA OF YEMEN . . . WAHABI . . IBN SAUD . . . YEMEN . . . ABDUL AZIZ . . . YAHYA . . . YEMEN.
All this had nothing to do with Cab Calloway. It meant that the 33-year-old movement, to build a great Arab nation under a single ruler, had reached a crisis. Huge, gaunt Ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, was about to capture Yemen, last important independent territory on the Peninsula. The Imam of Yemen was reported dead and Ibn Saud's men already in the streets of the seaport of Hodeida. Belching clouds of black smoke, British and Italian cruisers and destroyers raced to Yemen "to protect nationals."
When the Arab tribes were bribed to intensify their revolt against Turkey during the War, they were definitely promised a chance to develop either an Arab Confederation or a single Arab Kingdom of their own. Realists well knew that the Allies would not like the idea of a new nation, one third as big as all Europe, blocking the way to India and the East, but the Arabs believed the Wartime promise. So did the mysterious Colonel Lawrence until his disgust at the duplicity of politicians caused him to flee theatrically from the world.
In 1916 France and Britain had already split the swag in anticipation by the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement. With the Armistice both powers took steps to be sure that no Arab state of real importance could arise by cutting off the richest territory as league of nations mandates. Mesopotamia with its rich Tigris-Euphrates valley went to Britain as Irak; France took Syria, also rich in oil. Aden, at the mouth of the Red Sea, had been British since 1839.