CHAPTER VII

HP,

The Second World War and Afterl
IHE DENIAL of independence to the Arab populations of
• Palestine and Syria had created intense feeling against
JL Britain and France, not only in these countries but among
the politically-conscious younger generation in Egypt and Iraq
also. In all these countries the rapid extension of a superficial
education along Western lines had greatly widened the cleavage of
opinion which naturally exists between middle-aged parents and
their adolescent offspring. The young men resented the fact that
political power in their own countries remained in the hands of the
elderly, who were slow to admit the claims of the young to parti-
cipate. The nationalists of the older generation had organized the
young students and secondary-schoolboys for political agitation
against the inhibiting Western imperialisms in such movements as
the Wafdist Blueshirts in Egypt; and now the young men were
themselves forming new extremist organizations which exalted
the principle of devotion to a Leader on distinctly Fascist lines.
Among such extremist organizations were the Misr al-Fatat or
Young Egypt, also known as the Greenshirts, founded by the
lawyer-demagogue Ahmed Husain; the Syrian National Party,
founded by Antun Sa'adi, which drew its membership mainly from
Lebanese who desired reunion with Syria; the Syrian League of
National Action; and the Arab Club of Damascus, founded by a
young dentist educated iri Germany. In Iraq especially the great
influence of the Army in public affairs, which reached a peak under
the dictatorship of Bakir Sidqi but remained important down to the
outbreak of war, stimulated the youth to the formation of extreme
nationalist organizations run on militarist lines.
The Axis Powers were not slow to exploit this favourable situa-
. tion. It appears that they had reached an agreement that the
Levant and Egypt fell within the Italian sphere of interest, while
1 The writer is now engaged in a detailed study of the Middle East in
this period.