The Struggle for Independence 165
who could scarcely read Arabic were taught the Marseillaise.
Specially-prepared history-books were at pains to demonstrate
that the Syrians were not ethnically Arab. The administrative
machine was frequently abused to further the interests of French
companies and concession-holders. As instruments of their policy
the French made great use of two minority communities foreign to
Syria and without any defined habitat in the country: the Cir-
cassians, who had been introduced by the Turks fifty years before
when their homeland was annexed by Russia; and the Armenians
who had escaped the Turkish massacres during and after the War.
The former made useful if undisciplined soldiers, especially apt for
punitive expeditions and for garrisoning restive districts; the
latter, with their keen intelligence and sense of superiority to other
Levantines, gave good service as informers.
By 1925 the ruling families of the Jebel Draze, who had not
originally been averse to French rule in preference to S minis from
Damascus, had grown restive under their impetuous French local
governor, who may be described as a French equivalent of Arnold
Wilson: 'sincere, disinterested, energetic; extremely effective in
putting his immediate aims into action, especially when they were
related to the production of material results; but he was tyrannical
in his methods, and psychologically blind in his dealings with
human beings, to a degree which made it inevitable that his well-
meant efforts should end in disaster. During twenty months he
forced upon the outraged but intimidated Druze a host of material
benefits which they neither dreamt of nor desired/1 Protests to
the French High Commissioner met with a discourteous rebuff
and the four principal Druze leaders were arrested as conspirators.
This was followed by a general rising in the Jebel, landlords and
tenants together, which completely overpowered the French
garrison. The revolt spread to the cities of Syria, the rebels being
well-organized and led by members of the great famiHes and ex-
Ottoman officers with military experience.2 By November 1925
the French began to gain the upper hand by greatly increasing
their garrison, but they did not penetrate the Jebel Druze till the
early summer of 1926, and peace was not finally restored for
another year. The rebellion had been even more costly in lives and
1 Toynbee, Islamic World after the Peace Conference, Part III, sec. vii.
2 Such as Fawzi al-Qawuqji, who was to lead the Palestine Arab rebels in 1936
and served the Axis during the Second World War.