246 A Short History of the Middle East
of restoring the Greater Syria over which his brother Faisal ruled
from 1918 to 1920;x and he regards Ibn Sa'ud as a barbarous in-
truder from Najd into his own ancestral Hijaz. Egyptian politic-
ians desire that the pre-eminence of Egypt in population and wealth
should continue to be reflected by her predominant influence in the
Arab League; Syrians, on the other hand, regard the Egyptians as
intellectually and culturally inferior to themselves, as speaking an
uncouth kind of Arabic, as Arabized Africans rather than true
Arabs. In Lebanon the majority of the Maronites, or about one-
third of the whole population, reject the notion that Lebanon has
any place in the Arab League, and wish to maintain and strengthen
their links with France as a bulwark against Muslim encroachment;
and though the governments of the last four years are opposed to
this pro-French element, they have to defer to local Christian fears
and suspicions by emphasizing the distinctness and independ-
ence of Lebanon, while Arab League personalities are con-
stantly assuring Lebanon that her peculiar status will be respected.
The activities of King Abdullah and the Iraqi politicians who
support him have ranged the rest of the Arab League against the
Hashimite dynasty, and the two blocs so formed are constantly
manoeuvring for position; but the anti-Hashimite block of
Egypt, Sa'udi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon has in itself no
cohesive force other than the common opposition to King
Abdullah.
The budgets of the independent Arab countries are marked by a
characteristic desire to build up armies and air-forces out of their
slender financial resources as a matter of national prestige, however
unserviceable these forces may be in practice. Other disproportion-
ately large sums are expended by the states of Arab Asia, none of
which numbers more than 4,000,000 inhabitants and those poverty-
stricken, on diplomatic representation abroad and official ostenta-
tion at home. During the War, faced with the difficulties arising
from the stoppage of supplies from overseas, not only did these in-
dependent administrations fail to prevent a manifold increase in
the cost-of-living, caused in part by maldistribution and wide-
spread hoarding and black-marketing on the part of producers and
merchants, but in some cases highly-placed members of the
administrations themselves were involved in these malpractices;
and widespread famine in areas that were not self-sufficient in grain
1 The World To-Day, January 1948, 15 ff.