THE  POWERS THAT BE	169
uniform is a dark blue turban, kilt and jacket, with plain silver buttons, but the men usually wear the ordinary-tribal kilt of unbleached, native fabric.
It is a shrewd stroke of policy to keep them always in arrears, for their fidelity to the existing regime is thereby guaranteed to a very great extent. Men will stand by a government whose fall would involve their back pay. Still the idea can be overdone, and patience pressed too far. I saw a good deal of the poverty to which these men were reduced last year. The battalion for emergency service up at Sanaa did not do so badly as a big detachment of them were on escort duty with the Vali on the Asiri border for a month or two, and would not leave Sanaa till some of their arrears were paid.
The battalion on duty in Sanaa also gets a bit on account, for it is in a position to make itself unpleasant, if goaded too far ; but the men on detached duty, in outlying districts, are kept very short. There are not enough of them together to organize and enforce some adjustment of their grievances, and if they did combine they are too far from headquarters to get at the men who matter.
The straits to which the local gendarmerie were reduced last year had a very bad effect on discipline and were unworthy of an organized government. My own small escort did not feel the pinch quite as much as the others, for they got a piastre a day each from me, and the umbashi in charge two piastres, paid regularly. This slender allowance kept them going, and there was considerable competition to get on my escort, though a man was never changed unless the local authorities wanted his services, or he proved unsuited to my requirements, which seldom happened.