The Second World War and After 207
come to put an end to the mandatory regime and declare Syria and
Lebanon free and independent. But the Free French reluctantly
allowed nationalist exiles to return; they made no constitutional
concessions beyond a formal declaration of independence; and the
Syrian and Lebanese governments were filled with French puppets.
There was no change in the methods, and little change in the per-
sonnel, of the French administration. In the spring of 1943, how-
ever , the French permitted the holding of elections, which resulted
in Syria in an overwhelming victory tor the National Bloc led by
Shukri al Quwwatii, and in Lebanon for a complete defeat of the
^French-supported Lebanese separatists led by Emile Edde. The
elections were thus a signal defeat for the French, and it was to be
expected that the new governments would not be slow to attack
the French limitations on their independence. The French Com-
mittee of National Liberation, the acting French government in
Algiers, insisted, however, that no radical changes could be made
without the approval of the League of Nations, which had author-
ized the original mandate, or its successor; and that any concessions
by France depended on the conclusion of treaties recognizing Kef
special position and interests. It was indeed difficult for the Frencli
Committee, which still had to justify to the forty million French-
men under German occupation its claim to speak in the name of
France, to sign away at this stage any of the hard-won and jealously-
guarded rights of France in the Levant; and it was equally ."bard fox'
the two nationalist governments of Syria and Lebanon to admit
any further limitation of the sovereignty for which they hadf
struggled for a generation. The first challenge came from the
jfiebanese government led by Riyadh as-Sulh, which in November
11943 unanimously voted amendments to the constitution throwing
I offall French limitations upon its sovereignty. The French Delegue-
General responded by suspending the constitution, arresting the
Lebanese president and the majority of the cabinet, and appointing
|the pro-French Emile Edde as head of the state. The townspeople
'{proclaimed a general strike, there were bloody clashes with
I French troops in Beirut and elsewhere, and two ministers who had
escaped arrest began to organize their retainers in the mountains;
into armed bands. The British government declared that it re^.
Agarded the Lebanon as *of vital importance to the war-effort bof&
as an operational base and from the point of view of communka-.
tions' and was therefore *^Brecdy concerned in any threat of a,