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In the Arab world, where Adolf Hitler's Germany has long tried to make things difficult for France and Great Britain, the local potentates were almost as loyal. Scarcely had the war started before Egypt and Iraq forgot their peeves and declared for the British. In Palestine, heretofore irreconcilable Arab and Jewish leaders, all knowing that in wartime Britain lavishly hands out not only promises but money, swore allegiance to the Allies. Even in French-mandated Syria Cabinet officials, tribal leaders, religious heads picked Britain and France as winners. Other Arab developments:
> Early last month ambitious Emir Abdullah, ruler of British-mandated Trans-Jordan, the desert State between Palestine and Iraq, who aspired to add to his titles that of King of Syria, went to Jerusalem and there, before the British High Commissioner, swore his allegiance to King George. Last week the Emir made it official by proclaiming, in the Official Gazette of Palestine and Transjordan, that Germany was an "enemy State." > The six sheiks who rule over the Tru-cial Coast (a modern euphemism for a 400-mile stretch on the Persian Gulf formerly called the "Pirate Coast") let it be known through His Britannic Majesty's High Commissioner that they were heart & soul with Britain. Their Highnesses did not have to go through the formalities of recalling envoys from Berlin; in 1853 these States (combined population: 80,000, including nomads) signed a Perpetual Peace Treaty with Britain, and later followed with an Exclusive Agreement by which no Trucial Coast ruler is allowed to have any truck with any outside power.
> Particularly gratifying to the British Government was the fact that His Highness Sheik Sir Hamad bin isa al Khalifa, potentate of Bahrein, an island State in the Persian Gulf which fairly oozes oil, lost no time in casting in his lot with them. He made a cash donation of $120,000 out of the big royalties he gets from Standard Oil Co. of California.
> The Sultan of Skihr & Mukalla, the Emir of Dhala, the Sultan of Lahes, and many another lesser chief along the entire southern and eastern Arabian coastline, from Aden to Basra, swore that henceforth Adolf Hitler was his mortal enemy and George VI his stanch friend.
Among all these important Arab well-wishers there were only two noticeable dissidents. Powerful King Ibn Saud, of Saudi Arabia, Guardian of the Holy Places of Mecca and Medina, who long has been annoyed because famed Colonel T. E. Lawrence did not consider him a very important Arab leader in the last war, remained discreetly silent, played a lone hand. Farther north one of Ibn Saud's warm friends, Haj Amin el Husseini, exiled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was having other troubles.